The purpose of this study was to describe and explore factors affecting students' listening comprehension. The study assessed both linguistic and non-linguistic factors. It was a descriptive study in which data were obtained through both quantitative and qualitative methods. The participants of the study were first year English major students of Jimma College of Teachers Education (Jimma CTE); 46 students who were taking the course 'listening skills' were selected to take part in the study. Data were collected using closed-ended questionnaire, semi-structured interview, observation and content analysis. The data obtained through the questionnaire were analyzed quantitatively. The data gathered through interview and observation were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively.Contentanalysis was analyzed qualitatively. The study identified linguistics related factors such as pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar to have influence on students' listening comprehension. Therefore, it is recommended that the listening teacher and lor material developers are required to select listening texts composed of appropriate level linguistic elements such as pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. It is also found out that non -linguistics factors in relation to the listener, speaker, listening texts and tasks, listening practice and timing to have impact on the learners' listening comprehension. Thus,the instructor is needed to make aware and encourage students to use listening strategies during their practice of listening and should advise them not to feel worried and to keep on practicing even if they face difficulties in their listening. The instructor should read aloud or present audio tapes having appropriate speedand should not expose students to native accents until they become acquainted enough with the target language pronunciation. The listening instructor and lor material developers are required to select listening texts that are interesting and with appropriate length and conceptual difficulty and arerecommended to designappropriate listening tasks with respect to length and level of difficulty and different types of tasks and pre-listening activities need to be incorporated in the listening materials and finally, the listening instructor is required to provide sufficient opportunities and time for the students to practice their listening comprehension.


The results of the research were obtained, featured MSME's in Buleleng regency namely: (a) The agricultural sector are rice paddy, cattle, mango, cloves, pork, coffee, wine, fish, cocoa and strawberry; (b) The manufacturing sector are rice milling unit (RMU), processing and preserving fish, processing of red sugar, ingkewebbing industrial, weaving handicraft industrial, poultry slaughterhouses, refill drinking water, food products of various chips, processing of coffee powder, and industrial of dodol from fruits; (c) The construction sector are a building construction contractor; (d) Trade, hotels and restaurants is are jasmine hotel, restaurant/ cafe, HP counter, homestay, villa, minimarket and retail shops (klontong), trading of agricultural products, and Artshop; (e) transport and communications sector are the land transport of goods (trucks), urban and rural passenger transport, package delivery services, motorcycle transport (ojek), rent car, and netcafe; (f) the financial sector, leasing, and other services are village credit institutions (LPD), saving and loan cooperation (KSP), village unit cooperation (KUD), people credit banks (BPR), and money changer; (g) The other services sector are barber shop and beauty salon, sewing of clothes, services of workshop cars and motorcycles, photocopying, tour guides, laundry, early childhood education (PAUD), a tourist attraction of Gitgit waterfall, tourist attractions of Lovina beach, and tourism attraction of Air Sanih.


The successful operation of the present Internet depends mainly upon TCP/IP which employs end-to-end congestion
control mechanisms built in the end hosts. In order to further enhance this paradigm of end-to-end control the
Random Early Detection algorithm (RED) has been proposed, which starts to mark or drop packets at the onset of congestion.
The paper addresses issues related to the choice of queue length
indication parameters for packet marking/dropping decisions
in RED-type algorithms under varying traffic conditions. Two
modifications to RED are proposed: (i) use of both instantaneous queue size and its Exponential Weighted Moving Average
(EWMA) for packet marking/dropping and (ii) reducing the effect of the EWMA queue size value when the queue size is less than
$min_{th}$ for a certain number of consecutive packet arrivals.

The newly developed Hybrid RED algorithm can effectively improve the performance of TCP/IP based networks while working in a control loop formed by either dropping or marking of packets during congestion epochs. New guidelines are developed for better marking/dropping of packets to achieve a faster response of RED-type algorithms. The hybrid RED algorithm has been tested using ns-2 simulations, which show better utilization of network bandwidth and a lower packet loss rate.


Segment Routing (SR) leverages the source routing and tunneling
paradigms. A node steers a packet through a controlled set of
instructions, called segments, by prepending the packet with an SR
header. A segment can represent any instruction, topological or
service-based. SR allows to enforce a flow through any topological
path and service chain while maintaining per-flow state only at the
ingress node of the SR domain. The Segment Routing architecture can
be directly applied to the MPLS dataplane with no change on the
forwarding plane. It requires minor extension to the existing link-
state routing protocols. Segment Routing can also be applied to IPv6
with a new type of routing extension header.


NICU Nurses' Perceptions of Obstacles and Supportive Behaviors in End-of-Life Care Ann Rogerson Background: Losing an infant is difficult for parents to face. To improve EOL care for dying neonates and their families, NICU nurses need to overcome obstacles and implement supportive behaviors. Understanding the size of obstacles and supportive behaviors will better enable NICU nurses to provide quality EOL care. Objectives: To determine the largest obstacles and supportive behaviors in NICU EOL care. Methods: A descriptive quantitative study of a random national sample of 1058 NICU nurses who were members of NANN (National Association of Neonatal Nurses). The National Survey of NICU Nurses' Perceptions of End-of-Life Care questionnaire was mailed twice yielding 234 usable questionnaires for a response rate of 26%. Results: Three themes emerged in the top rated obstacles: (a) obstacles related to families, (b) obstacles regarding language and communication, and (c) obstacles concerning ethical dilemmas. The lowest rated obstacles were nurses believing that life-saving measures/treatments were prematurely discontinued and unit visiting hours being too liberal. The top eight supportive behaviors included helping families cope with the infant's death and those involving helpful physician behaviors. Lowest rated supportive behaviors were those related to the nurses' own family death experience and behaviors promoting nurse convenience. Conclusions: Obstacles and supportive behaviors for NICU EOL care have been identified. Issues regarding families, communication, and ethical dilemmas need to be addressed. Efforts should be made to more quickly align the plan of care with the projected outcome to limit both infant suffering and nurse distress from inappropriate use of life-extending measures. College of Nursing, BYU Master of Science Table of


An immersive, interactive environment and the non-player characters populating it often play a key role in interactive narrative experiences. We posit that if a procedurally generated narrative is better able to reflect real-world attributes of the player's surroundings, then the experience would be more transportive for the player. With this comes the problem of generating believable narratives and characters for an open, complex, real world. Simulating such a society within the constraints of the real environment, and allowing for virtual characters to more accurately mimic human behavior could increase the believability of the agents. The interactions amongst these agents sharing their cultural views, biases, and histories based on their real-world geolocation could inform the study of audience modeling and machine enculturation, allowing computers to learn or reason about social norms in regions. Finally, we posit this research would afford better applications in the field of entertainment or computational social science.


Abstract : This is one of several reports that provide the current status on the work being done by the Software Engineering Institute (SEIsm) to understand the relationship between quality requirements and architectural design. The ultimate objective of this work is to provide analysis-based guidance to designers so that the quality attributes of generated designs are more predictable and better understood. Currently, four distinct problems must be solved to achieve that objective: (1) the precise specification of quality attribute requirements, (2) the enumeration of architectural decisions that can be used to achieve desired quality attribute requirements, (3) a means of coupling one quality attribute requirement to the relevant architectural decisions, and (4) a means of composing the relevant architectural decisions into a design. Embodying the solutions to these four problems into a design method that is sensitive to business priorities is an additional problem. This report deals with the third problem-coupling one quality attribute requirement to architectural decisions that achieve it. This report provides initial evidence that there is, in fact, a systematic relationship between general scenarios, concrete scenarios, architectural tactics, and design fragments. It examines, in detail, two concrete scenarios for performance and one for modifiability-and describes how to move from each scenario, through tactics, to design fragments that satisfy the scenario.


Located sets are sets from which the distance of any point may be measured; they are used extensively in modern constructive analysis. Here a general method is given for the construction of all located sets on the line. It is based on a characterization of a located set in terms of the resolution of its metric complement into a union of disjoint open intervals. The characterization depends on a strong countability condition for the intervals, called the locating condition. Included as a special case is the characterization and construction of compact sets. The techniques used are in accord with the principles of Bishop's Foundations of Constructive Analysis, 1967.


In the present study 19 urine samples were collected from Rio Lab, Global hospital located in Salem. The samples were serially diluted and 92 different colonies were isolated and identified. The isolates bacterial colonies were tested for its susceptibility to fourteen different antibiotics. Among the 14 antibiotics screened against the 92 isolates three isolates viz., Staphylococcus aureus (30%), Escherichia coli (70%) and Klebsiella sp. (50%) were resistant to erythromycin, amikacin and tetracycline. The concentration at which organism turns into sensitive was tested by increasing the concentration of the antibiotics. The spectrum of antibiotic activities showed that some antibiotics retain their efficiency on bacterial antibiotics such as amoxicillin, nitrofurantoin and ampicillin. The ampicillin resistant Klebsiella sp., was chosen for plasmid curing analysis. Plasmid curing analysis was performed using ethidium bromide at different concentrations viz., 75, 100 and 125 μg/ml to check whether the drug resistance was plasmid mediated. In the present study it was observed that the ampicillin resistant isolate was converted to sensitive after ethidium bromide treatment proving that resistance was plasmid mediated.


Estimates imply that only one-third of elderly persons who are eligible for food stamps actually participate in the program, which is half the rate that exists among younger people. This study investigates potential reasons for the relatively low take-up rate among the elderly. Analyzing new data, we conclude that the low take-up rate is not explained by measurement error and little is explained by various behavioral factors. Despite this much lower take-up rate, elderly who are eligible for assistance but not enrolled in the program do not appear to be especially needy.


New psychoactive substances (NPS) can be generally described as a set of compounds that have been designed to mimic the effects of illegal recreational drugs, but are not subject to restriction or control with respect to existing regulations and legislation. In recent years, the number and chemical diversity of emergent NPS has increased substantially, and regulators have struggled to develop methods for accurate detection of NPS at the same rate. Existing approaches to NPS classification are pragmatic and/or semi-systematic and do not lend themselves to objective spectroscopic classification of emergent NPS. As such, this research discusses the identification of a systematic NPS classification based on chemical structures. A set of 478 NPS were grouped according to the similarity between their chemical structural features using hierarchical clustering and a maximum common substructure of 9 atoms, which included both hydrogen and heavy atoms. The rationale for including hydrogen atoms is that accurate spectroscopic identification of NPS will be dependent upon variations in substitution patterns in the molecules. This analysis generated 79 clusters, arising from 21 superclusters. The medoid substances of each cluster were used to form a dataset that was representative of the chemical space encompassed by known NPS. Subsequent categorisation of a test set of NPS showed that the test substances were assigned to an appropriate cluster when the Tanimoto similarity coefficient between the cluster medoid and the test substance was at least 0.5. This indicates that the cluster medoids could be used for assignment of emerging NPS to systematically-defined categories based on chemical structure. These medoids will also aid in the prediction of spectroscopic properties for emergent NPS, which will be invaluable for structure-based classifications and development of methods for detection of emerging NPS.


This Note argues that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's interpretation of the new grace period under the America Invents Act (AIA), 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)(1)(B), is overly narrow and that an alternative interpretation proposing a broader reading of the grace period is more appropriate. Evidence for a broader reading includes the effect of each interpretation on the administrative burden at the Patent and Trademark Office, speed of patent disclosure, innovative activity by specific inventor groups, and inventor behavior in patent races. This analysis shows that a narrow interpretation of the grace period creates greater administrative burdens, discourages disclosure, disfavors small inventors and universities, and may make blocking firms in a patent race virtually costless. In contrast, a broad grace period is simpler to administer, accelerates disclosure, supports innovation by small inventors and universities, and provides firms with a defensive maneuver in patent races.


The paper reviews evidence from the economic literature on the nature of the relationship between excess capacity and inflation, better known as the Phillips curve. In particular, we examine the linearity of this relationship. This is an important issue in the current economic context in which advanced economies are approaching or exceed their potential output. In fact, several theoretical frameworks in the literature support the existence of non-linearity in the Phillips curve. To that end, we review 35 international studies that empirically analyze the shape of the Phillips curve in advanced economies. Most of the studies reviewed find evidence supporting a convex Phillips curve. This result would imply a stronger relationship between excess capacity and inflation during periods of high economic activity relative to periods of low economic activity.


Iron–phthalocyanine (FePc) molecules deposited on the Au(110) surface self-organize in ordered chains driven by the reconstructed Au channels. The interaction process induces a rehybridization of the electronic states localized on the central metal atom, breaking the 4-fold symmetry of the molecular orbitals of the FePc molecules. The molecular adsorption is controlled by a symmetry-determined mixing between the electronic states of the Fe metal center and of the Au substrate, as deduced by photoemission and absorption spectroscopy exploiting light polarization. DFT calculations rationalize this mixing of the Fe and Au states on the basis of symmetry arguments. The calculated electronic structure reproduces the main experimental spectral features, which are associated to a distorted molecular structure displaying a trigonal bipyramidal geometry of the ligands around the metal center.


Human and industrial development over the past hundred years has led to a huge increase in fossil fuel consumption and CO 2 emissions, causing a dramatic increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentration. This increased CO 2 is believed to be responsible for a significant rise in global temperature over the past several decades. Global-scale climate modeling suggests that the temperature increase will continue, at least over the next few hundred years, leading to glacial melting and rising sea levels. Increased atmospheric CO 2 also leads to ocean acidification, which will have drastic consequences for marine ecosystems. In an attempt to solve these problems, many have proposed the large-scale sequestration of CO 2 from our atmosphere. This introductory article presents a summary of some of the evidence linking increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentration to global warming and ocean acidification and our efforts to stem this rise though CO 2 sequestration.


Introduction: The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of restraints applied in intensive care units and the neurovascular effects on patients to whom physical restraints are applied. Material and Methods: The cross-sectional observational study was conducted between April 2018 and September 2018 in the internal and surgical intensive care units of a state hospital. The study included 120 patients to whom physical restraints were applied. The data were collected using a data collection form developed in accordance with the literature through a review of patient records in addition to observation and interview methods. The patients under restraint were observed and the nurses responsible for patient care were interviewed. Approval for the study was granted by the Local Ethics Committee, permission was obtained from the institution and informed consent from the relatives of the intensive care units patients in the study. Data obtained in the study were analysed statistically using SPSS vn 22.0 software and descriptive statistics, the Cochran Q test, Chi-square test, Friedman test and the Kruskal Wallis test. Results: A statistically significant increase was observed in oedema and colour change in the region below the physical restraint in a 5-day observation period and pulse strength was determined to have decreased (p<0.05). No significant change was determined in the temperature and capillary filling time of the restrained area in the 5-day observation period (p>0.05). No significant difference was determined between the restraining materials used in respect of oedema and pulse strength. A statistically significant difference was determined between the restraining materials used in respect of colour change, capillary filling time and temperature parameters on the second and third days of the restricted area (p<0.05). Conclusion: The results of the study showed that in physical restraint, which is mostly preferred in intensive care units, an increase in the period of physical restraint increases the possibility of neurovascular complications and the use of special restraint equipment could reduce the potential development of neurovascular complications.


N ear-surface alkali reaction (NSAR) gel has been reported as the cause of debonding and blistering of epoxy coatings. In this article, we describe blistering in a low-permeance floor coating system where lithium silicate was applied to a shot-blasted concrete surface. The initial analysis, based solely on optical studies, suggested that alkali-silica reaction (ASR) was the cause. Without additional, specialized analysis, such as scanning electron microscopy and electron dispersive spectroscopy (SEM/ EDS), lithium silicate residue or its gel can mistakenly be identified as ASR gel. Although lithium cannot be detected by EDS, other alkalis found in ASR gel, such as sodium and potassium, can be identified. It is possible to inadvertently assume the residue or reaction product of lithium silicate applied on shot-blasted concrete surface is an ASR byproduct.


Al-Azhar is one of the institution's pride the Islamic Ummah. History has recorded how the existence of Al-Azhar of the early Fatimid Dynasty to this day holds a great story very interesting. Not only that, Al-Azhar also contribute on the development of civilization and Islamic intellectuals. Many scientists the great scientists who were born from there. One thing that is not less important is that it turns out that the existing educational system in Al-Azhar turned out at the adoption by the institutions which exist in Western countries. Therefore, this paper will try to uncover the historical return of Al-Azhar during the Fatimid Dynasty, history of the establishment, and the factors that affect the educational system.


We demonstrate the intensity enhancement of a single high-order harmonic (27th harmonic) at 29.44 nm by using lowly charged tellurium ions in a laser-ablation plume. The enhancement of a single harmonic is due to multiphoton resonance with a Te II transition having strong oscillator strength. By tuning the wavelength of the pump laser, we found that the enhancement factor depends on the difference between the wavelength of the enhanced harmonic and that of the strong radiative transition. For tellurium, we show that intense single harmonic generation can be generated when the wavelength of the 27th harmonic is closer to the wavelength of the strong transition.


Autoimmunity to antigens in pancreatic islets contributes to type 1 diabetes and thus control of this process has been of particular interest. Both tolerance (a process in which reactive CD8+ T cells are removed by apoptosis) or ignorance (a process in which autoreactive T cells do not respond to antigens in the islet) can occur. However, it has been unclear why some antigens induce one process but other antigens produce the other. Kurts et al. studied the effects of ovalbumin expressed in the islets of transgenic mice. They found that the concentration of the antigen determined whether tolerance or ignorance was observed. In low concentrations, ovalbumin was not detected by CD8+ T cells. However, if larger amounts of ovalbumin were expressed, cross-presentation (in which CD8+ T cells are activated in the lymph nodes by presentation of antigen from non-lymphoid tissues) occurred and resulted in deletion of CD8+ T cells reactive with ovalbumin. These two alternative mechanisms may allow an organism to be protected from autoimmunity in response to low or high concentrations of antigen. Kurts, C., Sutherland, R.M., Davey, G., Li, M., Lew, A.M., Blanas, E., Carbone, F.R., Miller, J.F.A.P., and Heath, W.R. (1999) CD8 T cell ignorance or tolerance to islet antigens depends on antigen dose Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 96: 12703-12707. [Abstract] [Full Text]


Atmospheric nitrogen inputs to the ocean are estimated to have increased by up to a factor of three as a result of increased anthropogenic emissions over the last 150 years, with further increases expected in the short‐ to mid‐term at least. Such estimates are largely based on emissions and atmospheric transport modeling, because, apart from a few island sites, there is very little observational data available for atmospheric nitrogen concentrations over the remote ocean. Here we use samples of rainwater and aerosol we obtained during 12 long‐transect cruises across the Atlantic Ocean between 50°N and 50°S as the basis for a climatological estimate of nitrogen inputs to the basin. The climatology is for the 5 years 2001–2005, during which almost all of the cruises took place, and includes dry and wet deposition of nitrate and ammonium explicitly, together with a more uncertain estimate of soluble organic nitrogen deposition. Our results indicate that nitrogen inputs into the region were ∼850–1420 Gmol (12–20 Tg) N yr−1, with ∼78–85% of this in the form of wet deposition. Inputs were greater in the Northern Hemisphere and in wet regions, and wet regions had a greater proportion of input via wet deposition. The largest uncertainty in our estimate of dry inputs is associated with variability in deposition velocities, while the largest uncertainty in our wet nitrogen input estimate is due to the limited amount and uneven geographic distribution of observational data. We also estimate a lower limit of dry deposition of phosphate to be ∼0.19 Gmol P yr−1, using data from the same cruises. We compare our results to several recent estimates of N and P deposition to the Atlantic and discuss the likely sources of uncertainty, such as the potential seasonal bias introduced by our sampling, on our climatology.


Statement of the problem: Cultural landscape is a landscape that is affected by culture and is originated from the interactions between humans and nature throughout time. Meanwhile, culture acts as the operant and nature as the mediator and cultural landscape is the product of these two. The cultural landscape of Iranian tribes is very diverse and miscellaneous, to the extent that even in places that are geographically similar to each other we witness deep-rooted differences between them. It should be mentioned that, during recent decades, the lack of attention to the elements that develop cultural landscape has led to the distortion of some local characteristics and destruction of the nomadic cultural landscape. Identifying these factors will be a great help for the life perpetuation of this culturally rich heritage and the revival of these perspectives. In the present research, we are in search of these differences and the factors which cause them among these nomadic people, specifically among Bakhtiari nomads. Furthermore, we are looking for the impact of these differences on their housing and architectural patterns. The question is that "does transformation of culture cause the formation of different cultural landscapes? If so, what are the variables that cause the formation of the nomadic culture and how does it manifest itself it their architecture? Objective: By utilizing field studies, the present research has studied the most important characteristics of the nomadic cultural landscape and their impact on the structure of their architecture within the subject of cultural landscape. Therefore, the aim of conducting studies on the nomadic architecture and investigating the characteristics of their cultural landscape is trying to identify and present the cultural landscape pattern gained from the nomadic lifestyle. Research Methodology: This research is conducted based on the qualitative method and relies on description and analysis.Conclusion: The findings show that the following factors play a significant role in the development of the nomadic cultural landscape: climate, pastureland, migration, nomadic camps, subsistence, construction materials, construction technology and its available resources, the status of women, traditions and language, entertainment and leisure, faith, religion and beliefs, color, safety and kinship. The results indicate that geographical and economic factors are influential in the tent's shape formation and how they are positioned, the use of local materials and building supplementary structures. The factor of belief is effective on the colors used in the tent, the location of the kitchen in the tent and the status of women. The important factors of the need is effective on the nomadic architecture by establishing a social camp, the positioning of the tents in a way that the sight of every tent complements the other and relevant spaces with entertainment and leisure such as "Kollah".


Semiconductor quantum dots have been on demand for niche optoelectronic applications providing color tenability and possessing high quantum yield and high extinction coefficient. Although the investigation of II-VI have attained a mature level of understanding of the photo physical properties, suppression of the nonradiative decay channels and enhancing the optical properties for III-V material systems still remain a challenge. In this study, we have developed and demonstrated a simple, very fast, and efficient strategy to synthesize the highly luminescent III-V group based In(Zn)P quantum dots (QDs) utilized by the effect of core growth temperature, revealing their emission kinetics and their outstanding application for white light generation. Varying the core growth temperature from 240°C to 90°C, limiting the extent of the precursors involved in the synthesis, and a substantial enhancement of the photoluminescence quantum yield up to 75% is demonstrated. Further modification of the synthesis procedure with optimizing the In:P precursor ratio for the first time up to 88.5 ± 5.5% quantum yield of alloyed core/shell In(Zn)P/ZnS QDs is achieved, in which the whole synthesis process takes only around one hour. In addition, as a demonstration of Cd-free pellets, versatile pellets of green and orange emitting QDs within KCl macrocrystals are prepared. Hybridizing with blue LED, a white light with correlated color temperature of 4597K along with an unprecedentedly high color rendering index of 90 is presented.


Heavily Beryllium doped (~1.5 ×10 19 cm -3 ) InP/InGaAs single heterojunction bipolar transistors (SHBTs) and double heterojunction bipolar transistors (DHBTs) have been successfully grown by solid source molecular beam epitaxy (SSMBE). The epitaxial growth was performed on a VG 90H MBE system with 100mm wafer growth capability. The novelty of this process was the use of dimeric phosphorus generated from a gallium phosphide (GaP) decomposition source which permitted growth at fairly low temperature (420 o C) while conserving extremely high quality materials. Thermal stability studies were then performed on the heavily doped HBTs using postgrowth annealing in an N2 ambient. The devices were annealed over a temperature range of 350-550 o C for 15 minutes prior to fabrication. The relatively low growth temperature of ~420 o C and the use of stoichiometric conditions for both the arsenides and phosphide materials produced remarkably thermally stable, high-gain SHBTs and DHBTs up to annealing temperatures of 550 o .


microRNAs (miRNAs) are non-coding RNAs with short sequences that negatively regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional levels by either binding to mRNAs for degradation or by inhibiting protein translation. miRNAs are highly evolutionarily conserved from lower mosses to higher flowering plants and have been shown to play an important role in plants by regulating growth and development developmental timing hormone signaling organogenesis and response to environmental stresses. Based on the conservation of mature miRNA sequences computational methods have been used to predict thousands of miRNAs in numerous plant species such as soybean maize cotton potato rice apple and switchgrass. In this project using tobacco as my model organism I first employed genome survey sequence analysis to identify conserved miRNAs in tobacco and then investigated their expression profiles during different growth conditions. My results identified 259 potentially conserved miRNAs in tobacco belonging to 65 miRNA families. In addition I also discovered antisense miRNAs as well as miRNA clusters in tobacco and predicted putative target genes for the newly identified tobacco miRNAs. Eleven of these miRNAs are highly expressed in young tobacco seedlings as well as under different environmental stress conditions. The expression profiles of tobacco miRNAs were significantly affected by Titanium Dioxide nanoparticles salt and drought stresses in a dosage-dependent manner. Some miRNAs for example miR395 exhibited a change in expression of one thousand fold after exposure to stress conditions. Abiotic stresses also affected the expression of two stress-related genes alcohol dehydrogenase and alcohol peroxidase. Given the results of this project I believe that miRNAs may play an important role in tobacco growth and development and that miRNAs may function in tobacco tolerance to environmental stresses.


Scholars have long argued that in new product development integrated innovation processes replace sequentially organized ones because of changing capabilities, integration of knowledge, and the increasing importance of market orientation. The intention of this paper is to study whether this also applies in process-oriented industries. Process-oriented settings are fundamentally different from product-oriented ones as the emphasis is on efficiency, clear guidelines, and tacit knowledge, while radical innovation is less important. It is also less obvious why market orientation—a key driver of integration in new product development—should change the way the innovation process is organized, as there is no product to be developed in the first place. A Stage Gate Model could therefore be well-suited to achieve more efficiency and effectiveness. In order to investigate process innovation in a process-oriented setting, we decided to study the upstream oil and gas industry, a scale-intensive, process-oriented setting that substantially contrasts with traditional science-driven industries such as biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, where patents are relevant. The particular advantage of this setting is that virtually no product innovation occurs, allowing the isolation of process innovation. Relying on five inductive case studies of major projects (BP's Prudhoe Bay, Chevron's Kern River, Conoco Philips's Ekofisk, ENI's el-Bouri, and Shell's Troll field), we find that integration occurs in process-oriented settings but does so for different reasons than in product-oriented ones. Integration emerges from an innovation mode characterized by: (1) trial and error (not RD (2) the cooperation of experts from different knowledge backgrounds; (3) the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which facilitates this cooperation across disciplines and projects; and (4) the need to increase efficiency as demand outstrips supply. More precisely, demand shapes reward systems and determines whether new raw materials will be used (creating new supply that requires innovation of processes in periods when demand outstrips supply). Supply and reward systems therefore create the conditions where trial and error, integration of knowledge, and ICT development mutually enforce each other, leading to the integration of the innovation process. Besides contributing to the literature on innovation the paper also offers interesting insights for managers. In order to foster innovation in process-oriented settings they need to provide specialists with room to experiment over extended periods of time, encourage cooperation across disciplines, and create both incentives and systems to facilitate this process. Finally, managers need to consider the ability of staff to cooperate at the outset, when they set up their recruitment process.


The 2003 rediscovery of the long 'lost' Ozora, Missouri classical conodont locality of Branson & Mehl (1933b), from which the world's first Late Ordovician conodont fauna was described, has made it possible to obtain topotype specimens of the several important conodont species introduced by Branson and Mehl from this site. A taxonomic reassessment of the Ozora conodont fauna indicates that it includes at least 14 multi-element species, eight of which were previously known from this locality. Several specimens of the taxonomically diagnostic M element of the biostratigraphical key species Amorphognathus ordovicicus were recovered. This element was previously not known from the type locality of the species at Ozora. A general review of the evolution of the genus Amorphognathus shows that some elements, particularly the M and Pa elements, exhibit relatively rapid gradual morphological changes that are helpfull for distinguishing a series of biostratigraphically useful species through the Upper Ordovician (Sandbian–Hirnantian) interval. No ancestor of Amorphognathus has yet been identified but currently available data suggest that the genus appeared in the latest Darriwilian or earliest Sandbian and went extinct in the late Hirnantian. None of the Early Silurian platform genera appears to be closely related to Amorphognathus.


1,2-dichloroethane (DCA) is one of the most widely used and produced chemicals of the modern world. It is used as a metal degreaser, solvent, chemical intermediate as well as a fuel additive. This carcinogen is toxic to both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and accidental spills and poor handling has resulted in contamination of the environment. Thus far several bacteria in the Northern hemisphere have been identified that are capable of utilizing this compound as a sole carbon and energy source. This report focuses on the isolation and characterization of bacterial isolates from the Southern hemisphere that are capable of degrading DCA as well as the global distribution of the DCA catabolic route. Samples obtained from waste water treatment plants were batch cultured in minimal medium containing DCA and repeatedly sub-cultured every five days over a 25 day period. A halogen release assay was performed in order to determine whether individual isolates possessed dehalogenase activity. Confirmation of DCA utilization by bacterial isolates positive for dehalogenase activity was done by sub-culturing back into minimal medium containing DCA. Enzyme activities were confirmed with cell free extracts using all of the intermediates in the proposed DCA degradative pathway and compared to a known DCA degrading microorganism. Biochemical tests and 16SrDNA sequencing indicated that all the South African isolates belonged to the genus Ancylobacter and were different from each other. Based on enzyme activities, it was found that the South African isolates may possess a similar degradative route as other DCA degrading microorganisms. Primers based on genes involved in DCA degradation were synthesized xiii and PCR analysis was performed. It was found that all isolates possessed an identical hydrolytic dehalogenase gene whereas the other genes in the pathway could not be PCR amplified. Southern hybridization using probes based on known genes indicated that some of the isolates had homologous genes. Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis indicated that the five South African isolates of Ancylobacter aquaticus are distinguishable from each other. This study is the first report indicating that microbes from different geographical locations use similar metabolic routes for DCA degradation. The first gene of the pathway (dhlA) has undergone global distribution which may be due to widespread environmental contamination.


We solve exactly a simple model of trend following strategy, and obtain the analytical shape of the profit per trade distribution. This distribution is non trivial and has an option like, asymmetric structure. The degree of asymmetry depends continuously on the parameters of the strategy and on the volatility of the traded asset. While the average gain per trade is always exactly zero, the fraction f of winning trades decreases from f = 1/2 for small volatility to f = 0 for high volatility, showing that this winning probability does not give any information on the reliability of the strategy but is indicative of the trading style.


Abstract Herbivores may negatively impact plants by reducing biomass and decreasing fecundity. Rare or endangered plants may be particularly vulnerable to herbivore damage. However, plants may compensate for herbivory by increased growth or reproductive output. We investigated compensatory growth and reproductive effort in Liatris ohlingerae (S.F.Blake) B.L.Robe, a federally-listed herb narrowly endemic to pyrogenic Florida scrub on the Lake Wales Ridge, by conducting biweekly surveys of observed herbivory and an herbivore exclusion experiment. In the field surveys, we assessed the effects of vertebrate herbivory ("topping") and invertebrate leaf herbivory on plant size and fecundity and compared observed levels of herbivory across sites with different disturbance histories (scrub vs. roadside; scrub sites with differing time-since-fire). In the herbivore exclusion experiment, we compared the effects on plant size and fecundity of excluding vertebrate herbivores (toppers) only vs. excluding both vertebrate and invertebrate herbivores. We found that 62% of plants in the survey had one or more topped stems and that topping occurred more frequently in recently burned sites (< 8 years since fire vs. > 14 years since fire) and in scrub than in roadside sites. Topped plants were significantly shorter and had a greater number of stems (untopped plants only produced 1 stem). Topped plants were less likely to flower, began flowering later in the growing season, and produced fewer inflorescences, infructescences, achenes, and full achenes than untopped plants. Fifty-two percent of surveyed L. ohlingerae plants also showed evidence of invertebrate leaf herbivory with a mean of 24% of leaves damaged. Plants damaged by invertebrate herbivores did not differ significantly in growth or reproduction compared with undamaged plants. In the experiment, exclusion of vertebrate herbivores resulted in taller plants, fewer stems, higher flowering frequency, earlier first flowering, and greater production of inflorescences, infructescences, achenes, and full achenes per plant; plants gained no additional benefits when invertebrates were excluded. Our study demonstrates that L. ohlingerae partially compensates for vertebrate herbivore damage at some sites, depending on the disturbance history. There are population level consequences of undercompensation; vertebrate topping resulted in a 30% reduction in mean fecundity. Future research is necessary to determine if undercompensation jeopardizes the long-term persistence of L. ohlingerae populations.


Importance
Genital herpes is a prevalent sexually transmitted infection in the United States, occurring in almost 1 in 6 persons aged 14 to 49 years. Infection is caused by 2 subtypes of the herpes simplex virus (HSV), HSV-1 and HSV-2. Antiviral medications may provide symptomatic relief from outbreaks but do not cure HSV infection. Neonatal herpes infection, while uncommon, can result in substantial morbidity and mortality.

Objective
To update the 2005 US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation on screening for genital herpes.

Evidence Review
The USPSTF reviewed the evidence on the accuracy, benefits, and harms of serologic screening for HSV-2 infection in asymptomatic persons, including those who are pregnant, as well as the effectiveness and harms of preventive medications and behavioral counseling interventions to reduce future symptomatic episodes and transmission to others.

Findings
Based on the natural history of HSV infection, its epidemiology, and the available evidence on the accuracy of serologic screening tests, the USPSTF concluded that the harms outweigh the benefits of serologic screening for genital HSV infection in asymptomatic adolescents and adults, including those who are pregnant.

Conclusions and Recommendation
The USPSTF recommends against routine serologic screening for genital HSV infection in asymptomatic adolescents and adults, including those who are pregnant. (D recommendation).


Software engineering (SE) plays a fundamental role in wireless sensor network (WSN) development due to the appearance of WSN adoption over wide range of the real-world physical applications. The WSN software development process focuses on "low phases" of development such as programming, testing and deployment. In current practice, programmers decompose the problem and then develop code for sensor nodes based on the functionality provided by the operating system platform of choice before integrating with low level hardware. The current WSN development process is performed under very limited OS or development resource available. Simulation testing, emulation testing and laboratory testbed techniques are the main approaches to analyse and evaluate the correctness and performance of network algorithms and protocols. However, since WSNs have been applied to safety-critical application domains from healthcare to military applications, the high-level abstraction and verification and validation techniques have become an important key for current WSN development. It is quite evident that they lack SE methods, techniques and tools which support "high phases" of current practices on WSN development such as requirements and architecture specification. This research proposes a hybrid verification and validation approach for the "high phases" of WSN development process by integrating formal methods with existing simulation technologies.


We study employee absence in Danish organizations. In contrast to Steers and Rhodes (1978), who stress the importance of individual and organizational characteristics in shaping employees' motivation to attend work, we show that absence is predominantly an individualized phenomenon. Because the within-group variation in absence clearly dominates the between-group variation in absence, we argue that companies need to invoke individualized policies to reduce employee absence and demonstrate that HR Analytics is a useful tool in the process; policies targeting particular employee groups such as women or senior workers are inefficient. An additional intriguing finding is that incentives (through promotions and dismissals) are linked to individual absence.


We develop a method based on computer vision and a hierarchical multilevel model to derive an Urban Street Tree Vegetation Index which aims to quantify the amount of vegetation visible from the point of view of a pedestrian. Our approach unfolds in two steps. First, areas of vegetation are detected within street-level imagery using a state-of-the-art deep neural network model. Second, information is combined from several images to derive an aggregated indicator at the area level using a hierarchical multilevel model. The comparative performance of our proposed approach is demonstrated against a widely used image segmentation technique based on a pre-labelled dataset. The approach is deployed to a real-world scenario for the city of Cardiff, Wales, using Google Street View imagery. Based on more than 200,000 street-level images, an urban tree street-level indicator is derived to measure the spatial distribution of tree cover, accounting for the presence of obstructing objects present in images at the Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) level, corresponding to the most commonly used administrative areas for policy-making in the United Kingdom. The results show a high degree of correspondence between our tree street-level score and aerial tree cover estimates. They also evidence more accurate estimates at a pedestrian perspective from our tree score by more appropriately capturing tree cover in areas with large burial, woodland, formal open and informal open spaces where shallow trees are abundant, in high density residential areas with backyard trees, and along street networks with high density of high trees. The proposed approach is scalable and automatable. It can be applied to cities across the world and provides robust estimates of urban trees to advance our understanding of the link between mental health, well-being, green space and air pollution.


The research investigates the role of performance measurement within the hospitality industry and in particular, the UK's licensed retail sector. The research aimed to: 1) Analyse what is meant by performance management and to establish its application and use in various types of business; 2) Explain the balanced scorecard approach to performance measurement and to assess its theoretical and business value; 3) Establish the methods of performance measurement utilised by licensed retailers and to evaluate the effectiveness of these methods; 4) Apply the balanced scorecard method in selected collaborating organisations and to compare its usefulness to more traditional methods of performance measurement; and 5) Make recommendations and evaluate how a balanced scorecard approach might improve performance management in the licensed house sector.

The research highlighted a shortage of hospitality-related research with the industry predominantly using financial performance measures. The balanced scorecard was therefore put forward as a solution as it measures both the financial and non-financial performance of an organisation.

The financial and non-financial performance measures used by financial analysts and pub companies were identified through questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews, the results of which demonstrate the licensed retail sector's reliance on financial performance measures. Case studies were developed on a number of Managed and Leased/Tenanted pub companies (PubCo's) which also demonstrated this reliance, although the Managed PubCo's are beginning to embrace non-financial measures and two of the Managed PubCo's had adopted the balanced scorecard approach.

The fast pace of consolidation which is evident within the UK's licensed retail sector had impacted upon the research as three of the PubCo's featured in the case studies had been acquired by competitors during the study. The PubCo's sampled for the questionnaires also changed during the data collection process, mainly due to consolidation.

It was recommended that further research would be necessary to develop a balanced scorecard for the UK's licensed retail sector. It was also suggested that further empirical research could be conducted within those PubCo's identified as using the balanced scorecard, to determine the extent to which the balanced scorecard assists them in managing and improving both their financial and non-financial performance.

The author suggests that The Centre for Licensed Retailing at Nottingham Trent University might provide the resources to continue with the research with a need also to develop standardised definitions of the financial performance measures used by PubCo's. This development would enable performance data to be compared across the sector whilst also removing the opportunities for data manipulation by PubCo's which was identified during the research.


In both academic and policy circles international interventions tend to mean 'military' interventions and debates tend to focus on whether such interventions are 'good' or 'bad' in general. This article aims to open up scholarly engagement on the topic of the thorny reality of interventions in different contexts by reconceptualising international interventions as 'security interventions.' The article draws attention to the ambiguous meaning of 'security' as both an objective (i.e. safety) as well as a practice (military forces, police, intelligence agencies and their tactics), something that is reflected in the different approaches to be gleaned from the security studies literature. From this ambiguity, it derives two interlinked concepts: 'security culture' and 'security gap,' as analytical tools to grasp the complexity of international interventions. The concept of 'security culture' captures specific combinations of objectives and practices. The concept of 'security gap' captures the particular relationship or the distinct kind of 'mismatch' between objectives and practices as it occurs in a 'security culture.' This reading of international interventions through the concept of 'security culture' and the interlinked analytical tool 'security gap' allows an analysis and understanding that goes beyond simplistic assumptions both about traditional military capabilities and the role of the 'international community' as a unitary actor.


It has been observed that the Reactor Coolant System (RCS) flowrate dissymmetry phenomenon (i.e. imbalance of primary flowrates between loops) appears in several Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) units. As an initial condition of fault studies, the RCS flowrate is very important to nuclear safety. The consequences of RCS flowrate dissymmetry are rarely investigated so far, and thus worthy of studying. This paper aims to analyze the safety margin of Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) under specific accidents. A plant model is set up and accidents due to malfunction of a component in a single loop are simulated, in order to figure out whether Departure from Nucleate Boiling (DNB) is probable to happen. The results show that the Departure from Nucleate Boiling Ratio (DNBR) criterion is met for Partial Loss of Primary Flow accident with margins. For Main Steam Line Break accident, the flow dissymmetry has little impact on the accident consequences and the minimum DNBR meets the requirements. The Feedwater Line Break accident consequences are sensitive to the primary loop flowrate, while Departure from Nucleate Boiling (DNB) is not probable to happen with dissymmetry larger than 1500 m3/h. The results prove that the plant has enough safety margins and is able to operate under limited flow dissymmetry situation.


In this issue, we announce a new editorial board. The previous members served for a long time, and it is time for new blood. The editorial board previously did not have a clearly-defined role. We have adapted the following from IEEE journal practice: The Editorial Board (EB) provides guidance to the Editor-in- Chief. It helps to identify new opportunities to attract authors, it promotes awareness of the journal, and nominates Associate Editors. The EB also serves in the role of Appeal Board in problematic review cases. EB members are encouraged to promote the concept of special issues, and to identify potential themes and guest editors. An EB member is appointed for 5 years with the option to be reappointed for an additional 5 year term.


Detecting liquid, solid or gaseous features in the ocean is generating considerable interest in the geoscience community, because of their potentially high economic values (oil & gas, mining), their significance for environmental management (oil/gas leakage, biodiversity mapping, greenhouse gas monitoring) as well as their potential cultural and traditional values (food, freshwater). Enhancing people's capability to quantify and manage the natural capital present in the ocean water goes hand in hand with the development of marine acoustic technology, as marine echosounders provide the most reliable and technologically advanced means to develop quantitative studies of water column backscatter data. This is not developed to its full capability because (i) of the complexity of the physics involved in relation to the constantly changing marine environment, and (ii) the rapid technological evolution of high resolution multibeam echosounder (MBES) water-column imaging systems. The Water Column Imaging Working Group is working on a series of multibeam echosounder (MBES) water column datasets acquired in a variety of environments, using a range of frequencies, and imaging a number of water-column features such as gas seeps, oil leaks, suspended particulate matter, vegetation and freshwater springs. Access to data from different acoustic frequencies and ocean dynamics enables us to discuss and test multifrequency approaches which is the most promising means to develop a quantitative analysis of the physical properties of acoustic scatterers, providing rigorous cross calibration of the acoustic devices. In addition, high redundancy of multibeam data, such as is available for some datasets, will allow us to develop data processing techniques, leading to quantitative estimates of water column gas seeps. Each of the datasets has supporting ground-truthing data (underwater videos and photos, physical oceanography measurements) which provide information on the origin and chemistry of the seep content. This is of first importance when assessing the physical properties of water column scatterers from backscatter acoustic measurement.


Enterprises often have no integrated and comprehensive view of their enterprise topology describing their entire IT infrastructure, software, on-premise and off-premise services, processes, and their interrelations. Especially due to acquisitions, mergers, reorganizations, and outsourcing there is no clear 'big picture' of the enterprise topology. Through this lack, management of applications becomes harder and duplication of components and information systems increases. Furthermore, the lack of insight makes changes in the enterprise topology like consolidation, migration, or outsourcing more complex and error prone which leads to high operational cost. In this paper we propose Enterprise Topology Graphs (ETG) as formal model to describe an enterprise topology. Based on established graph theory ETG bring formalization and provability to the cloud. They enable the application of proven graph algorithms to solve enterprise topology research problems in general and cloud research problems in particular. For example, we present a search algorithm which locates segments in large and possibly distributed enterprise topologies using structural queries. To illustrate the power of the ETG approach we show how it can be applied for IT consolidation to reduce operational costs, increase flexibility by simplifying changes in the enterprise topology, and improve the environmental impact of the enterprise IT.


This study does not support the notion developed from cross cultural advertising literature that members of a particular cultural group will prefer a particular message advertising appeal if it reflects values that are congruent to its culture. An experimental design is applied to examine whether emotional/ high context appeals (n=120) are more persuasive than factual/ low context appeals (n=124) among target groups from collectivist cultural backgrounds. Analysis of Chinese smokers' pre-and-post intentions to contact the Chinese Quitline after viewing print advertisements determined that there was no difference between the two ad groups' shift scores. The common use of direct translations of Australian mainstream campaigns for this culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) target group could be viewed as an acceptable practice.


Code design of slab-column connections to resist seismically induced drifts is currently based on empirical relationships for both moment and deformation capacity. The results of tests on slabcolumn connections are however sensitive to the conception of the test setup. This paper presents a new setup configuration as well as first results of an experimental campaign carried out at EPFL. Within this campaign slabs without shear reinforcement will be subjected to constant vertical loads and increasing seismic moments. Parameters investigated are the vertical loads, the longitudinal reinforcement content of the slabs, the column size and the loading history (monotonic vs. cyclic). Results of the first three out of sixteen tests showed that the drift capacity of relatively thick slabs is smaller when compared to thinner ones tested by other researchers [7]. The influence of the gravity induced shear force on the seismic moment and deformation capacity of the connections is found to be well pronounced. A comparison of a monotonic and cyclic test for high vertical loads showed that the deformation capacity of the cyclically loaded slab is smaller than of the monotonically loaded one.


Fundamental understanding of the early stages of electrodeposition at the nanoscale is key to address the challenges in a wide range of applications. Despite having been studied for decades, a comprehensive understanding of the whole process is still out of reach. In this work, we introduce a novel modelling approach that couples a finite element method (FEM) with a random walk algorithm, to study the early stages of nanocluster formation, aggregation and growth, during electrochemical deposition. This approach takes into account not only electrochemical kinetics and transport of active species, but also the surface diffusion and aggregation of adatoms and small nanoclusters. The simulation results reveal that the relative surface mobility of the nanoclusters compared to that of the adatoms plays a crucial role in the early growth stages. The number of clusters, their size and their size dispersion are influenced more significantly by nanocluster mobility than by the applied overpotential itself. Increasing the overpotential results in shorter induction times and leads to aggregation prevalence at shorter times. A higher mobility results in longer induction times, a delayed transition from nucleation to aggregation prevalence, and as a consequence, a larger surface coverage of smaller clusters with a smaller size dispersion. As a consequence, it is shown that a classical first-order nucleation kinetics equation cannot describe the evolution of the number of clusters with time, N(t), in potentiostatic electrodeposition. Instead, a more accurate representation of N(t) is provided. We show that an evaluation of N(t), which neglects the effect of nanocluster mobility and aggregation, can induce errors of several orders of magnitude in the determination of nucleation rate constants. These findings are extremely important towards evaluating the elementary electrodeposition processes, considering not only adatoms, but also nanoclusters as building blocks.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


The President has "two bodies." One body is personal, temporary, and singular. The other is impersonal, continuous, and composite. American public law reveals different perspectives on how to manage—but cannot escape—this central paradox. Our major disagreements and confusions about presidential power track what we might think of as the fault lines between these two bodies. An array of seemingly disparate debates on topics ranging from presidential impeachment, to the ownership of presidential papers, to the availability of executive privilege, to a presidential duty to defend statutes in court, to the legal status of presidential tweets, to the role of the White House counsel, to the nature of presidential intent, to the legal remedies available for presidential misconduct reflect this longstanding, ongoing ambivalence about the nature of the presidential office.

The goal of this article is to make the President's two bodies central to American public law. Recognizing the two bodies provides analytical coherence to the structure of presidential power. It illuminates both our contestations over, and the constituted reality of the constitutional presidency. The President's duality brings into view traces of a personal, charismatic authority simultaneously in deep tension with and fundamentally constitutive of the institutional presidency. It reconstructs seemingly far-flung aspects of American public law (ranging in form from Founding-era debates, to judicial decisions, to statutory enactments, to presidential norms) as a shared effort to negotiate the President's two bodies. And it illuminates what is at stake—for presidential legitimacy, for governmental capacity, for checks and balances, and for our substantive constitutional commitments—in how public law handles this defining ambiguity. Ultimately, the legal lines connecting the two bodies cannot emerge from the duality itself. Rather, it is a normative project of public law to construct them—and to do so in furtherance of articulated substantive commitments. Even as the two-bodies prism reveals a crucial role for public law in constituting the office of the President, it shows as well the limits of law and legal methods in managing its central tension. Presidential charisma is both inseparable from American constitutionalism and itself governed—incompletely and provisionally—by choices that lawyers and jurists make about how to construct the President's duality.


A spatially partially coherent two-dimensional beamlike wave field with arbitrary distributions of the optical intensity and complex degree of spatial coherence is assumed incident on a diffraction grating with an arbitrary periodic permittivity modulation. Rigorous electromagnetic diffraction theory of gratings is used, together with the coherent-mode representation of partially coherent fields, to calculate near-field and far-zone distributions of the zeroth-order beam and the Bragg-diffracted beam. A volume grating with significant Bragg selectivity is shown to increase the spatial coherence of the diffracted beam, but the diffraction efficiency is simultaneously reduced.


The recent landmark "right to be forgotten" ruling by the EU Court gives EU citizens the right to remove certain links that are "inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive" from search results under their names. While we agree with the spirit of the ruling--to empower individuals to manage their personal data while keeping a balance between such right and the freedom of expression, we believe that the ruling is impractical as it provides neither precise criteria for evaluating removal requests nor concrete guidelines for implementation. Consequently, Google's current implementation has several problems concerning scalability, objectivity, and responsiveness.

Instead of the right to be forgotten, we propose the right to obscure certain facts about oneself on search engines, and a simple mechanism which respects the spirit of the ruling by giving people more power to influence search results for queries on their names. Specifically, under our proposed mechanism, data subjects will be able to register minus terms, and search results for their name queries that contain such terms would be filtered out. We implement a proof-of-concept search engine following the proposed mechanism, and conduct experiments to explore the influences it might have on users' impressions on different data subjects.


ABSTRACT This article makes a theoretical argument stemming from our study of the European Commission's hotspot approach to the management of migrant populations. It draws on empirical research findings from field research which took place on the island of Lesbos and in the city of Athens over the course of 20 months and links these to emerging critical studies of the new EU border regime. No clear definition exists of what comprises a hotspot: instead, the European Commission describes this as an integrated 'approach' for the enhancement of the capacity of member states to deal with crises resulting from pressures at the Union's external borders. Effective in its ambiguity, the 'hotspot approach' therefore constitutes, as we argue, an integral part of the Europeanisation and institutionalisation of border management: a powerfully ambiguous dispositif in the EU's emerging border regime. The article unpacks the notion of the hotspot from a historical perspective and explores the ways in which the hotspot contributes toward the culmination of European integration, paving the way for the flexible governance of mobility and asylum. We situate the hotspot within the historical shift of migration and mobility control from the border to the territory as a whole and conclude by arguing that the hotspot plays the role of a territorial incubator for the liminal EU territory: a paradigmatic space for a new form of governance that further disentangles territory from rights.


Why do people working in mental health fail to use evidence-based practices? A review of the literature suggests two main barriers to staff dissemination: 1) individual service providers lack the knowledge and skills to assimilate these practices and 2) organisational dynamics undermine staffs' ability to implement and maintain innovative approaches. Given these barriers, three strategies to foster dissemination may be useful: 1) packaging evidence-based practices so interventions are more user-friendly 2) educating providers about relevant knowledge and skills, and 3) addressing organisational dynamics that facilitate implementation. Research on dissemination is less developed than the clinical and services research that has led to evidence-based practices. There is a need for continued work on dissemination if evidence-based practices are to be used in the real-world.

There are many reasons why evidence-based strategies are not implemented in routine mental health care. These include administrative policies, funding priorities, community resources, advocate concerns, federal and state laws, local ordinances, local consumer interests and staffing. This article focuses on barriers to staff use of evidence-based treatments and strategies to reduce these barriers.

There are two main sets of staff barriers to implementing evidence-based practices in mental health care:

1. Individual service providers may lack the skills to assimilate evidence-based practices into their regular approach to treatment. Moreover, work-related variables like job burnout undermine some staff's interest in new and innovative practices.

2. Many evidence-based practices require a team of service providers. Organisational barriers such as poor leadership, change-averse culture, insufficient collegial support and bureaucratic constraints may hinder a team's effort to implement evidence-based practices.

Providers who wish use an evidence-based approach need to have mastered three basic sets of competencies. They need to acquire attitudes that are the foundation of evidence-based practices.1 Most important among these is a change from seeing treatment as "working on" people to …


A method of automatically identifying and tracking polar-cap plasma patches, utilising data inversion and feature-tracking methods, is presented. A well-established and widely used 4-D ionospheric imaging algorithm, the Multi-Instrument Data Assimilation System (MIDAS), inverts slant total electron content (TEC) data from ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers to produce images of the free electron distribution in the polar-cap ionosphere. These are integrated to form vertical TEC maps. A flexible feature-tracking algorithm, TRACK, previously used extensively in meteorological storm-tracking studies is used to identify and track maxima in the resulting 2-D data fields. Various criteria are used to discriminate between genuine patches and "false-positive" maxima such as the continuously moving day-side maximum, which results from the Earth's rotation rather than plasma motion. Results for a 12-month period at solar minimum, when extensive validation data are available, are presented. The method identifies 71 separate structures consistent with patch motion during this time. The limitations of solar minimum and the consequent small number of patches make climatological inferences difficult, but the feasibility of the method for patches larger than approximately 500 km in scale is demonstrated and a larger study incorporating other parts of the solar cycle is warranted. Possible further optimisation of discrimination criteria, particularly regarding the definition of a patch in terms of its plasma concentration enhancement over the surrounding background, may improve results.


The purpose of this paper is to explore how Organisational Learning (OL) affects satisfaction and loyalty in commercial business relationships. The unit of analysis considered in the theoretical framework of the study is the dyadic relationship that manufacturing companies keep with their main distributors. For the data analyses of structural equation modelling was employed a sample of Spanish firms. The empirical findings reveal that the manufacturer's OL may be an antecedent of the results achieved in relational exchanges. In this regard, a high level of OL in the manufacturer may increase the level of satisfaction of its main distributor and may also indirectly affect its level of loyalty. It is also shown that OL directly enhances the manufacturer's business performance. The study limitations are those typically associated with the use of survey-based research. Finally, results indicate that common method variance was not a problem in this study.


Abstract Background Poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase inhibitors (PARPis) are U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for treatment of BRCA‐mutated metastatic breast cancer. Furthermore, the BROCADE studies demonstrated benefit of adding an oral PARPi, veliparib, to carboplatin and paclitaxel in patients with metastatic breast cancer harboring BRCA mutation. Given multiple possible dosing schedules and the potential benefit of this regimen for patients with defective DNA repair beyond BRCA, we sought to find the recommended phase II dose (RP2D) and schedule of veliparib in combination with carboplatin in patients with advanced breast cancer, either triple‐negative (TNBC) or hormone receptor (HR)‐positive, human epidermal growth receptor 2 (HER2) negative with defective Fanconi anemia (FA) DNA‐repair pathway based on FA triple staining immunofluorescence assay. Materials and Methods Patients received escalating doses of veliparib on a 7‐, 14‐, or 21‐day schedule with carboplatin every 3 weeks. Patients underwent [18]fluoro‐3′‐deoxythymidine (18FLT) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. Results Forty‐four patients (39 TNBC, 5 HR positive/HER2 negative with a defective FA pathway) received a median of 5 cycles (range 1–36). Observed dose‐limiting toxicities were grade (G) 4 thrombocytopenia (n = 4), G4 neutropenia (n = 1), and G3 akathisia (n = 1). Common grade 3–4 toxicities included thrombocytopenia, lymphopenia, neutropenia, anemia, and fatigue. Of the 43 patients evaluable for response, 18.6% achieved partial response and 48.8% had stable disease. Median progression‐free survival was 18.3 weeks. RP2D of veliparib was established at 250 mg twice daily on days 1–21 along with carboplatin at area under the curve 5. Patients with partial response had a significant drop in maximum standard uptake value (SUVmax) of target lesions between baseline and early in cycle 1 based on 18FLT‐PET (day 7–21; p trend = .006). Conclusion The combination of continuous dosing of veliparib and every‐3‐week carboplatin demonstrated activity and an acceptable toxicity profile. Decrease in SUVmax on 18FLT‐PET scan during the first cycle of this therapy can identify patients who are likely to have a response. Implications for Practice The BROCADE studies suggest that breast cancer patients with BRCA mutation benefit from addition of veliparib to carboplatin plus paclitaxel. This study demonstrates that a higher dose of veliparib is tolerable and active in combination with carboplatin alone. With growing interest in imaging‐based early response assessment, the authors demonstrate that decrease in [18]fluoro‐3′‐deoxythymidine positron emission tomography (FLT‐PET) SUVmax during cycle 1 of therapy is associated with response. Collectively, this study established a safety profile of veliparib and carboplatin in advanced breast cancer while also providing additional data on the potential for FLT‐PET imaging modality in monitoring therapy response.


There is a body of literature that cuts across all religious traditions called "spiritual wisdom." For those in public administration, this literature is especially helpful to make more informed decisions on values and ethical choices at the individual and group levels. In this globalized world where information related technology is rapidly changing society, secular thinking found in governmental and educational settings as well as the thinking of religious institutions are fundamentally inadequate in confronting our most fundamental public administration problems and difficulties. The former has stripped out of itself the wisdom of the ages and the latter seeks too often to advance its own interests rather than those of society as a whole. This article argues that we now need to examine the common spiritual wisdom of all religious traditions to help us confront and properly deal with our ultimate values and ethical challenges of our profession.


A better conceptual understanding and more realistic parameterizations of convective boundary layers in climate and weather prediction models have been major challenges in meteorological research. In particular, parameterizations of the dry convective boundary layer, in spite of the absence of water phase-changes and its consequent simplicity as compared to moist convection, typically suffer from problems in attempting to represent realistically the boundary layer growth and what is often referred to as countergradient fluxes. The eddy-diffusivity (ED) approach has been relatively successful in representing some characteristics of neutral boundary layers and surface layers in general. The mass-flux (MF) approach, on the other hand, has been used for the parameterization of shallow and deep moist convection. In this paper, a new approach that relies on a combination of the ED and MF parameterizations (EDMF) is proposed for the dry convective boundary layer. It is shown that the EDMF approach follows naturally from a decomposition of the turbulent fluxes into 1) a part that includes strong organized updrafts, and 2) a remaining turbulent field. At the basis of the EDMF approach is the concept that nonlocal subgrid transport due to the strong updrafts is taken into account by the MF approach, while the remaining transport is taken into account by an ED closure. Large-eddy simulation (LES) results of the dry convective boundary layer are used to support the theoretical framework of this new approach and to determine the parameters of the EDMF model. The performance of the new formulation is evaluated against LES results, and it is shown that the EDMF closure is able to reproduce the main properties of dry convective boundary layers in a realistic manner. Furthermore, it will be shown that this approach has strong advantages over the more traditional countergradient approach, especially in the entrainment layer. As a result, this EDMF approach opens the way to parameterize the clear and cumulus-topped boundary layer in a simple and unified way.


Abstract. Associations between cloud properties and aerosol loading are frequently observed in products derived from satellite measurements. These observed trends between clouds and aerosol optical depth suggest aerosol modification of cloud dynamics, yet there are uncertainties involved in satellite retrievals that have the potential to lead to incorrect conclusions. Two of the most challenging problems are addressed here: the potential for retrieved aerosol optical depth to be cloud-contaminated, and as a result, artificially correlated with cloud parameters; and the potential for correlations between aerosol and cloud parameters to be erroneously considered to be causal. Here these issues are tackled directly by studying the effects of the aerosol on convective clouds in the tropical Atlantic Ocean using satellite remote sensing, a chemical transport model, and a reanalysis of meteorological fields. Results show that there is a robust positive correlation between cloud fraction or cloud top height and the aerosol optical depth, regardless of whether a stringent filtering of aerosol measurements in the vicinity of clouds is applied, or not. These same positive correlations emerge when replacing the observed aerosol field with that derived from a chemical transport model. Model-reanalysis data is used to address the causality question by providing meteorological context for the satellite observations. A correlation exercise between the full suite of meteorological fields derived from model reanalysis and satellite-derived cloud fields shows that observed cloud top height and cloud fraction correlate best with model pressure updraft velocity and relative humidity. Observed aerosol optical depth does correlate with meteorological parameters but usually different parameters from those that correlate with observed cloud fields. The result is a near-orthogonal influence of aerosol and meteorological fields on cloud top height and cloud fraction. The results strengthen the case that the aerosol does play a role in invigorating convective clouds.


The use of high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) as a method for ablation of a localized tumor growth is not new. Several attempts have been made to apply the principles of HIFU to the treatment of pelvic, brain, and gastrointestinal tumors. However, only in the past decade has our understanding of the basic principles of HIFU allowed us to further exploit its application as a radical and truly noninvasive, intent-to-treat, ablative method for treating organ-confined prostate cancer. Prostate cancer remains an elusive disease, with many questions surrounding its natural history and the selection of appropriate patients for treatment yet to be answered. HIFU may play a crucial role in our search for an efficacious and safe primary treatment for localized prostate cancer. Its noninvasive and unlimited repeatability potential is appealing and unique; however, long-term results from controlled studies are needed before we embrace this new technology. Furthermore, a better understanding of HIFU's clinical limitations is vital before this treatment modality can be recommended to patients who are not involved in well-designed clinical studies. This review summarizes current knowledge about the basic principles of HIFU and its reported efficacy and morbidity in clinical series published since 2000.


Retinoid-related molecules (RRM) are novel agents with tumor-selective cytotoxic/antiproliferative activity, a different mechanism of action from classic retinoids and no cross-resistance with other chemotherapeutics. ST1926 and CD437 are prototypic RRMs, with the former currently undergoing phase I clinical trials. We show here that ST1926, CD437, and active congeners cause DNA damage. Cellular and subcellular COMET assays, H2AX phosphorylation (γ-H2AX), and scoring of chromosome aberrations indicate that active RRMs produce DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) and chromosomal lesions in NB4, an acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cell line characterized by high sensitivity to RRMs. There is a direct quantitative correlation between the levels of DSBs and the cytotoxic/antiproliferative effects induced by RRMs. NB4.437r blasts, which are selectively resistant to RRMs, do not show any sign of DNA damage after treatment with ST1926, CD437, and analogues. DNA damage is the major mechanism underlying the antileukemic activity of RRMs in NB4 and other AML cell lines. In accordance with the S-phase specificity of the cytotoxic and antiproliferative responses of AML cells to RRMs, increases in DSBs are maximal during the S phase of the cell cycle. Induction of DSBs precedes inhibition of DNA replication and is associated with rapid activation of ataxia telangectasia mutated, ataxia telangectasia RAD3-related, and DNA-dependent protein kinases with subsequent stimulation of the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase. Inhibition of ataxia telangectasia mutated and DNA-dependent protein kinases reduces phosphorylation of H2AX. Cells defective for homologous recombination are particularly sensitive to ST1926, indicating that this process is important for the protection of cells from the RRM-dependent DNA damage and cytotoxicity. [Mol Cancer Ther 2008;7(9):2941–54]


Variational autoencoders (VAE) combined with hierarchical RNNs have emerged as a powerful framework for conversation modeling. However, they suffer from the notorious degeneration problem, where the decoders learn to ignore latent variables and reduce to vanilla RNNs. We empirically show that this degeneracy occurs mostly due to two reasons. First, the expressive power of hierarchical RNN decoders is often high enough to model the data using only its decoding distributions without relying on the latent variables. Second, the conditional VAE structure whose generation process is conditioned on a context, makes the range of training targets very sparse; that is, the RNN decoders can easily overfit to the training data ignoring the latent variables. To solve the degeneration problem, we propose a novel model named Variational Hierarchical Conversation RNNs (VHCR), involving two key ideas of (1) using a hierarchical structure of latent variables, and (2) exploiting an utterance drop regularization. With evaluations on two datasets of Cornell Movie Dialog and Ubuntu Dialog Corpus, we show that our VHCR successfully utilizes latent variables and outperforms state-of-the-art models for conversation generation. Moreover, it can perform several new utterance control tasks, thanks to its hierarchical latent structure.


The need to know "what can be done" in case of abnormal behaviour of the CO2 storage reservoir has been outlined by various regulation frameworks on CCS operations. Therefore, a proper risk management scheme should include a remediation plan to demonstrate that any undesired consequences can be corrected. The available remediation measures mainly stem from the field of pollution engineering and of oil and gas industry. But due to the uniqueness of CO2 geological storage activities (time and spatial scale), the extent to which such measures can be used, if not adapted, for CO2 storage in deep saline aquifers should be investigated. We adopt the global framework of the "source – transfer – target" approach in case of an accidental CO2 leakage from the reservoir (either through faults or through abandoned wells). At each stage of the approach, the feasibility of the remediation measures is assessed based on large scale multiphase fluid flow transport simulations using TOUGH2 (LBNL). At the "source" level, the proposed intervention strategy relies on the pore pressure control of the reservoir. The injection of CO2 at an industrial scale is simulated using a large scale model of the Dogger layer in the Paris basin. Once an irregularity has been detected, the first corrective action is to stop injection leading to the aquifer pressure recovery. We show that the overpressure in the injection zone rapidly decreases and it can be strongly accelerated by fluid production directly at the CO2 injection well. Nevertheless, lowering pressure at a larger distance from the injection zone requires the creation of an additional production well. Considering the "transfer" component, we propose an intervention strategy based on the creation of a hydraulic barrier, which consists in injecting brine in the overlying aquifer to prevent the CO2 leak from vertically migrating through the leakage pathway. Results of the parametric simulations (injection rates, local conditions) show that this technique can be efficient, but might be at the cost of large over-pressure. At the "target" level, we define a synthetic shallow freshwater aquifer based on the Paris basin case. We investigate the feasibility to rely on natural processes without human intervention to both reduce the mass of mobile accumulated CO2 and the concentrations of potentially releaseable trace elements. We show that the natural attenuation is characterized by very large time scales, hence requiring the combination with more active intervention procedures (e.g. pump and treats techniques).


We prove that finding all globally optimal two-layer ReLU neural networks can be performed by solving a convex optimization program with cone constraints. Our analysis is novel, characterizes all optimal solutions, and does not leverage duality-based analysis which was recently used to lift neural network training into convex spaces. Given the set of solutions of our convex optimization program, we show how to construct exactly the entire set of optimal neural networks. We provide a detailed characterization of this optimal set and its invariant transformations. As additional consequences of our convex perspective, (i) we establish that Clarke stationary points found by stochastic gradient descent correspond to the global optimum of a subsampled convex problem (ii) we provide a polynomial-time algorithm for checking if a neural network is a global minimum of the training loss (iii) we provide an explicit construction of a continuous path between any neural network and the global minimum of its sublevel set and (iv) characterize the minimal size of the hidden layer so that the neural network optimization landscape has no spurious valleys. Overall, we provide a rich framework for studying the landscape of neural network training loss through convexity.


Previous tourism partnership research has not made the most of opportunities to consult related literature from a broad range of disciplines and use associated theoretical developments as a basis for analysis. This technical report addresses this gap through a multi-disciplinary review of partnerships research to reconcile the often multifarious definitions of partnership and allied concepts, such as collaboration and cooperation, and the various meanings given to success, as well as to identify factors which might impact upon partnership success or failure. Eight theoretical perspectives are explored, covering social exchange theory, adoption and diffusion of innovation, environmental dispute resolution (EDR), social representation theory, network theory, stakeholder theory, social capital theory and the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework. Theoretical constructs offering the greatest potential for framing future research into successful tourism protected area partnerships were social capital theory and EDR, with application of the IAD framework to cover any remaining gaps. This review suggests that it is important to consider as broad a range of factors as possible,not only those that are easy to measure. As such, factors such as administrative setting and the availability of resources, which are under-represented in the partnerships research, but intuitively seem to play a part in partnership success, should be considered. These findings provide a robust platform for further research that will be progressed as part of the broader study of which this review formed a foundational part.


This panel examines diverse ways of promoting independent or indie video game design through initiatives at the government, corporate, community, and individual levels. While the parameters of what constitutes indie game design continue to be debated (Ruffino, 2013), we will consider small teams and single authors of games who work with limited resources and use digital distribution methods. The dramatic rise in this type of game production over the past decade can be traced to a number of factors, including the initiatives each presenter will discuss during this session, along with technological shifts that have enabled broader access to online development tools, distribution channels, and microfunding opportunities via Indiegogo and Kickstarter.

By increasing the diversity of video games and game production methods beyond those of major game studios, indie game design may offer a resistant alternative to mainstream games (Anthropy, 2012; Pedercini, 2012) as well as corporate production processes (Westecott, 2013). By consistently redefining what constitutes "innovation," indie game designers and companies actively position themselves as different from the mainstream. Yet this positioning is not necessarily evenly executed, since indies often show an affinity for their large-scale counterparts (Dovey & Kennedy, 2006), even while framing themselves as resistant underdogs. Moreover, the resistance and appropriation cycle of indie game design is an important dynamic within an industry that is dominated by a few AAA game studios, where the co-optation of non-professional labour is an everyday practice and smaller companies often get acquired as they rise in prominence (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009). As such, we describe a series of promotional strategies and tactics for bolstering indie game production as an alternative mode of production in different contexts. Michel de Certeau's definition of strategies versus tactics – technocratic strategies "are able to produce, tabulate and impose" conformity upon spaces, "whereas tactics can only use, manipulate and divert these spaces" (1984, p. 30) – informs the variety of approaches to indie game design offered in this panel.

The first paper, "Towards Creative Autonomy: Tactics for Survival," broadly describes recent shifts in the video game industry as a backdrop for the results of surveys and action research with indies in Ireland over the past ten years. While indie game companies have grown in number over this period – spurring on attendant growth in market share and game design diversity – they have also had to contend with increased economic pressures. Second, the paper "Does Being Indie Mean Trading Financial Freedom for Creative Freedom?" discusses how the language of indie is currently being contested, appropriated, and reshaped in Montreal game development incubators. In questioning the meanings of indie, the paper explores how indie ideals are challenged within incubator walls. The third paper, "Indies, Incubators, and Inclusion: Reconfiguring Gendered Participation in Game Design," presents the results of two ethnographic studies of women-only game design initiatives, contextualized in the local game design cultures of Toronto and Montreal. The possibilities as well as the limitations of these two initiatives are framed in relation to the gendered participation gap in video game production and game culture more broadly. The fourth paper, "Mixed Messages: Policing the Public/Private Boundaries of Cultural Production on the Nintendo DS," examines the ambiguous character of videogame console modification chips (MOD chips) in the space of videogame piracy through an ethnographic study of Nintendo DS MOD communities. MOD chips enable users to act as indie designers by creating software and videogames that run on these consoles outside the typical rules and regulations of the videogame industry; the paper illuminates this understudied space of cultural production. Together, these four papers illustrate how recent initiatives to promote indie game design from both strategic and tactical perspectives are crucial within the larger terrain of video game production that shapes diversity of digital culture at the levels of both representation and labour.

References

Anthropy, A. (2012). Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You are Taking Back an Art Form. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.

de Certeau, M. (1984). "Making do": Uses and tactics. In S Marshall (Trans.), The Practice of Everyday Life (pp. 29-42). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dovey, J. & Kennedy, H. (2006). Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. Maidenhead and Milton Keynes: Open University Press

Dyer-Witheford, N., & de Peuter, G. (2009).Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Pedercini, P. (2012). Toward independence – Indiecade 2012. Retrieved from http://www.molleindustria.org/blog/toward-independence-indiecade-2012-microtalk/.

Ruffino, P. (2013). Narratives of independent production in video game culture. Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 7(11). Retrieved from http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/120/155.

Westecott, E. (2013). Independent game development as craft. Loading… The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 7(11). Retrieved from http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/124/153.


Macrophages in lungs can be classified into two subpopulations, alveolar macrophages (AMs) and interstitial macrophages (IMs), which reside in the alveolar and interstitial spaces, respectively. Accumulating evidence indicates the involvement of IMs in lung metastasis, but the roles of AMs in lung metastasis still remain elusive. An i.v. injection of a mouse hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell line, BNL, caused lung metastasis foci with infiltration of AMs and IMs. Comprehensive determination of arachidonic acid metabolite levels revealed increases in leukotrienes and PGs in lungs in this metastasis model. A 5-lipoxygenase (LOX) inhibitor but not a cyclooxygenase inhibitor reduced the numbers of metastatic foci, particularly those of a larger size. A major 5-LOX metabolite, LTB4, augmented in vitro cell proliferation of human HCC cell lines as well as BNL cells. Moreover, in this lung metastasis course, AMs exhibited higher expression levels of the 5-LOX and LTB4 than IMs. Consistently, 5-LOX–expressing AMs increased in the lungs of human HCC patients with lung metastasis, compared with those without lung metastasis. Furthermore, intratracheal clodronate liposome injection selectively depleted AMs but not IMs, together with reduced LTB4 content and metastatic foci numbers in this lung metastasis process. Finally, IMs in mouse metastatic foci produced CCL2, thereby recruiting blood-borne, CCR2–expressing AMs into lungs. Thus, AMs can be recruited under the guidance of IM-derived CCL2 into metastatic lungs and can eventually contribute to the progression of lung metastasis by providing a potent arachidonic acid–derived tumor growth promoting mediator, LTB4.


The wave-front curvature of an incident laser beam can modify the spatial phase modulation of the beam, and hence the diffraction of the beam, traversing a liquid-crystal film. It is shown both theoretically and experimentally that this explains the anomalous fine structure in the diffraction ring pattern observed with laser intensities above the Freederickscz transition threshold.