The article shows how the ecclesiastical activities of the monk and later bishop of Sortavala, Kiprian (d. 1914), auxiliary to Sergiy, Orthodox archbishop of Vyborg and all Finland, aroused critical interpretations that contributed to the construction of Finnish-language Orthodoxy and Finnish nationalism. The sources analysed here are the Orthodox magazine Aamun Koitto (1896–1907), the mouthpiece of the Archangel Karelian national activists, Karjalaisten Pakinoita (1906–1909), and the newspaper published by the Sortavala-based Lutheran nationalists, Laatokka (1882–1914). In all these papers, the speakers represented the literate elite, mostly priests, schoolteachers, or journalists. Their writing thus tells more about the elite ideals than about grass-root nationalism. All three also occasionally quoted each other, thus creating an image of a 'common front'.

As representative of the Finnish Orthodox diocese, Aamun Koitto's main interest was religious. Because the Orthodox in Finland were a tiny majority (less than two percent of the population, divided into a Karelian majority and a Russian minority), the magazine strived to establish Orthodoxy as an 'accepted' religion in the predominantly Lutheran Finland. However, it fought only for the 'Finnish' Orthodox, ignoring Finland's Russians. On the one hand, the magazine tried to convince its readers that Kiprian favoured Karelians and the construction of Finnish-language Orthodoxy. With this view, Aamun Koitto argued that the archbishop and his auxiliary supported the use of Finnish in liturgy, domestic mission, and other educational projects. When, around 1907, conservative elements were reinforced in Russia, Aamun Koitto stepped back but never fully dismissed the hierarchs. Rather, the magazine implied that they had (temporarily) taken a wrong course but would in the end return on the 'right' track.
Karjalaisten Pakinoita, representing the Archangel Karelian merchants and political activists, many of them living in Finland and supported by (Lutheran) Finnish nationalists, at first advocated the turning of Archangel Karelia (in Finnish, Viena) into a Finland-oriented territory. In the background was the notion that Russia was a backward country and that the development of Archangel Karelia was possible only in connection with Finland. Therefore, Karjalaisten Pakinoita tried to convince its readers of the necessity of Finnish schools and Finnish economical contacts. Kiprian, in turn, claimed that the success of the region depended on its close contacts with Orthodoxy and Russia as the guarantor of 'true religion'. When he started to advocate Russian-language ecclesiastical schools (in place of the Finnish 'profane' schools), Karjalaisten Pakinoita dubbed him the enemy of all things Karelian, a 'Russificator' who threatened to impose a wrong national identity on the (Archangel) Karelians. Hence, most of what the magazine wrote of Kiprian, can be understood as attempts to make the Archangel Karelians accept the journal's view that they were in fact 'Finns', not Russians or subjects of Russia, as Kiprian suggested. The same holds for Laatokka, which represented a more Finnish, and more Lutheran, view of nationalism. According to the newspaper, Karelians were Finns, because despite their 'wrong' religion, they (allegedly) spoke Finnish, not a Karelian language or dialect. Therefore, they belonged to the Finnish nation, and when Kiprian and Sergiy argued otherwise, they were 'enemies of the people'. The magazine fiercely attacked Kiprian's activities in founding ecclesiastical schools in Karelia, his plans to establish a convent in Karelia, and his efforts to educate Orthodox Karelian teachers in a Russian seminary (and not in Sortavala, where a teacher seminary was established in 1880 for Lutherans and Orthodox alike). Hence Laatokka represented an aggressive form of Finnish, Lutheran-tinged nationalism, which it also wanted to 'plant' in its readers by slandering Kiprian beyond any reasonable claims.


Freire's cogitation on Information Technology (IT), resources for education have been known since the decade of the 50s. And now, within the current context, this analysis outlines the literacy problem as an issue of gnosis and anthropology while existing in a virtual dimension. Based on research/experiences that also were carried out in Brazil, it can be noted that the literacy that is being discussed includes the skill in handling a mouse, selecting, dragging, cutting, pasting, CTRL C+CTRL V, writing a text and searching the internet, but although it seems "obvious", public education policy has not given sufficient thought nor assumed a pedagogical position on these issues. This discussed cogitation considers contributions of the Freire pedagogy, in the attempt to attain, through this type of literacy, the unprecedented accomplishment of something viable–that what teachers realize as unprecedented, due to the fact that nobody has accomplished it before, however viable, because all of the conditions to make it happen are there, including a critical preparation of the educators. Within the internet context, the proposal implies a digital writing and reading ability that is based on communication and dialogue skills and, as fundamental strategies for reading the world, the real/virtual world, the knowledge of the daily speech, of writing and reading within a multi-diversification of digitally generated texts.


In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to achieve the multi-object tracking in video surveillance system using a combination of tracking by detection method. For the foreground objects detection part, we implement a modified codebook model. First, the block-based model upgrades the pixel-based codebook model to block level, thus improving the processing speed and reducing memory. Moreover, by adding the orientation and magnitude of the block gradient, the codebook model contains not only information of color, but also the texture feature in order to further reduce noises and refine more entire foreground regions. For the tracking aspect, we further utilize the data from the foreground detection that a color-edgetexture histogram is used by calculate the local binary pattern of the edge of the foreground objects which could have a good performance in describing the shape and texture of the objects. Finally, occlusion solutions strategies are applies to order to overcome the occlusion problems during tracking. Experimental results on different data sets prove that our method has better performance and good real-time ability.


Ranking residential real estates based on investment values can provide decision making support for home buyers and thus plays an important role in estate marketplace. In this paper, we aim to develop methods for ranking estates based on investment values by mining users' opinions about estates from online user reviews and offline moving behaviors (e.g., Taxi traces, smart card transactions, check-ins). While a variety of features could be extracted from these data, these features are Interco related and redundant. Thus, selecting good features and integrating the feature selection into the fitting of a ranking model are essential. To this end, in this paper, we first strategically mine the fine-grained discrminative features from user reviews and moving behaviors, and then propose a probabilistic sparse pair wise ranking method for estates. Specifically, we first extract the explicit features from online user reviews which express users' opinions about point of interests (POIs) near an estate. We also mine the implicit features from offline moving behaviors from multiple perspectives (e.g., Direction, volume, velocity, heterogeneity, topic, popularity, etc.). Then we learn an estate ranking predictor by combining a pair wise ranking objective and a sparsity regularization in a unified probabilistic framework. And we develop an effective solution for the optimization problem. Finally, we conduct a comprehensive performance evaluation with real world estate related data, and the experimental results demonstrate the competitive performance of both features and the proposed model.


This paper looks at the experiences associated with teaching Indigenous studies in an Australian university. It employs the concept of racialized assemblages in relation to Indigenous academics and pre-service teachers when teaching about Indigenous students. It also investigates the university's ethical obligation of teaching in this complex space. In the lecturing and tutoring, the Indigenous educator's body is 'raced' and 'othered' within the dominant Western discourses of knowledge production. This paper challenges and disrupts Western epistemic knowledge practices of racializing Indigenous body and supports a praxis of Indigenous humanness for the Indigenous educator.


The current global crisis may change globalization itself, as both developed and developing countries adjust to global imbalances that contributed to the crisis. Will these changes help or hinder economic recovery and growth in South Asia? This is the focus of this paper. The three models of globalization--trade, capital, and economic management--may not be the same in the future. Changes in globalization could change the composition of trade flows, capital flows, and economic management, which in turn, could accelerate or restrain growth. South Asia is somewhat peculiar and different from other regions in how it has globalized, although there is a lot of diversity within the region. Its trade characteristics are different. India's growth has been spearheaded by exports of modern services and less by goods exports. Modern service trade tends to be more resilient compared with goods trade. Globalization of services is still at an early stage. So, as consumers pull back in the United States, service trade is likely to be less impacted compared to goods trade. Trade also contributes to growth through knowledge spillovers, externalities, and learning. The global crisis has not reduced the stock of global knowledge. Changes in capital flows are also not likely to have a big impact on growth in South Asia, as South Asia's investments are largely driven by domestic savings. Its dependence on foreign capital is low. South Asia has attracted capital flows that are less volatile. Remittances, which are more resilient, have been the dominant form of capital inflows, exceeding foreign direct investment and other inflows.This global downturn calls for counter-cyclical economic management. But South Asia has limited room for fiscal stimulus, given high debt-to-gross domestic product ratios. Nevertheless, reduced commodity prices have created some fiscal space that can be used for growth enabling infrastructure and safety nets. As South Asia undergoes structural transformation, the region is well positioned to bounce back with global economic recovery.


Mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MUAVs) are becoming popular research platform and drawing considerable attention, particularly during the last decade due to their multi-dimensional applications in almost every walk of life. MUAVs range from simple toys found at electronic supermarkets for entertainment purpose to highly sophisticated commercial platforms performing novel assignments like offshore wind power station inspection and 3D modelling of buildings. This paper presents an overview of the main aspects in the domain of distributed control of cooperating MUAVs to facilitate the potential users in this fascinating field. Furthermore it gives an overview on state of the art in MUAV technologies e.g. Photonic Mixer Devices (PMD) camera, distributed control methods and on-going work and challenges, which is the motivation for many researchers all over the world to work in this field.


COUSINS AND STRANGERS America, Britain and Europe in the New Century Chris Patten New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006. 3O9pp, USSiy.oo paper.TESTIMONY France in the 2ist Century Nicolas Sarkozy, trans. Philip H. Gordon New York: Random House, 2007. 251pp, US$24.95 cloth.It seems increasingly possible, if by no means guaranteed, that the next British general election will see the Conservative party return to government. If (as is also likely but not certain) that election is held in 2009, it will come 30 years after Margaret Thatcher's first victory over Labour. In 1979, she led the Tories out of opposition at a time of international instability. In the US, the White House was struggling with the legacy of a lost war and Middle Eastern crises that had challenged the west's energy security. Iran in particular was causing trouble-Thatcher took power in London just two months after Ayatollah Khomeini's return from exile to Tehran. If the current Conservative leader, David Cameron, does indeed become prime minister, he may be struck by the parallels between the dilemmas that faced Thatcher and those on his own agenda.He may also take comfort in the belief that Thatcher-often an uneasy opposition leader and initially uncertain on foreign policy-grew into the job. She drew closer to the United States, fought for the Falklands, and parlayed with Gorbachev. In spite of her own suspicions and later rhetoric, she made important decisions to deepen Britain's commitment to Europe. Whatever one's visceral reaction to Thatcher (in this author's case, one of residual fear) she at least seemed to have a vision of Britain's global role.But Mr. Cameron may also be moved to wonder where it all went wrong. As Chris Patten (a minister under Thatcher and her successor John Major before going on to govern Hong Kong and be a European commissioner) observes in Cousins and Strangers, the years after the Cold War saw the sudden and utter intellectual enfeeblement of the Conservative party. This phenomenon was rooted in international-and especially European-affairs. Patten's book is a tour d'horizon of today's international scene, but also "the nearest I shall ever get to writing my memoirs" (49)-the British edition was entitled Not Quite the Diplomat. Although he was largely in Hong Kong through the mid-1990s, he dwells on the party's self-destruction in that period. While Thatcher contributed to European integration, her own unease with the process became a psychosis on the Conservative right. This intensified after the Tories' defeat in 1997, as their dogmatic anti-Europeanism left them looking "so unsophisticated in the field of foreign policy, where they had traditionally thought themselves supreme" (97).Thus Cousins and Strangers is not only a memoir and analysis of international affairs (it is very good as both), but an effort to remedy this lack of sophistication. For Patten, this is all the more urgent, as the impoverishment of Conservative thought is now a transatlantic problem. He liked "big, beefy, brainy" Bill Clinton but has pithy contempt for the Republicans that followed (27). This is partly personal-if you ever wanted to excoriate Dick Cheney but couldn't find the words, this is the book for you. But Patten also has an ideological horror of the neoconservatives. "As a conservative," he explains, "I assert that the one thing that neoconservative does not mean is conservative" (225). If the British Tories destroyed their reputation for competence through turning on a European project that Margaret Thatcher had helped construct, the Bush administration seems to have made a similar yet more catastrophic mistake by assaulting the institutions and norms of "a world made by America, largely in America's image" (225).So the British Tories must now contend not only with the legacy of their internal debacle over Europe, but the wreckage left by the American right on the world scene. The task of a conservative, as defined throughout this book, must now be to restore some equilibrium. …


Changes in the pattern of electric currents that accompany the transformation of growing hyphae of Achlya bisexualis into sporangia have been examined. When hyphae were transferred to a non-nutrient buffer, they continued to extend for several hours and then gave rise to sporangia. Throughout this process, current (positive charge) flowed into the apical region that corresponds approximately to the future sporangium. The current ceased after the crosswall appeared. The sporangium then remained electrically quiescent, except for a brief intense burst of outward current at the 'homogeneous' stage of spore cleavage. The inward current during sporangium formation largely represents an influx of protons. Addition of nitrate abolished the flow of electric current with little effect on sporulation. The late burst of outward current is most probably an artefact, generated by the discharge of salts from the sporangial vacuole. The transcellular electric current apparently plays no role in sporangium formation or in spore cleavage. Calcium ions, however, are required and may traverse the plasma membrane.


The availability of modern hardware with large amounts of memory created a shift in the development of data-centric software; from optimizing I/O operations to optimizing computation. As a result, the main challenge has become using the memory hierarchy (cache, RAM, distributed, etc) efficiently. In order to overcome this difficulty, programmers of data-centric programs need to use low-level APIs such as Pthreads or MPI to manually optimize their software because of the intrinsic difficulties and the low productivity of these APIs. Data-centric systems such as Apache Spark are becoming more and more popular. These kinds of systems offer a much simpler interface and allow programmers and scientists to write in a few lines what would have been thousands of lines of low-level MPI code. The core benefit of these systems comes from the introduction of deferred APIs; the code written by the programmer is actually building a graph representation of the computation that has to be executed. This graph can then be optimized and compiled to achieve higher performance.In this dissertation, we analyze the limitations of current data-centric systems such as Apache Spark, on relational and heterogeneous workloads interacting with machine learning frameworks. We show that the compilation of queries in multiples stages and the interfacing with external systems is a key impediment to performance because of their inability to optimize across code boundaries. We present Flare, an accelerator for data-centric software, which provides performance comparable to the state of the art relational systems while keeping the expressiveness of high-level deferred APIs. Flare displays order of magnitude speed up on programs combining relational processing and machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow. We look at the impact of compilation on short-running jobs and propose an on-stack-replacement mechanism for generative programming to decrease the overhead introduced by the compilation step. We show that this mechanism can also be used in a more generic way within source-to-source compilers. We develop a new kind of static analysis that allows the reverse engineering of legacy codes in order to optimize them with Flare. The novelty of the analysis is also useful for more generic problems such as formal verification of programs using dynamic allocation. We have implemented a prototype that successfully verifies programs within the SV-COMP benchmark suite.


The distribution of a lectinlike glycoprotein, PsNLEC-1, was examined with a specific antiserum in nodule tissue from a symbiotically defective pea mutant, Sprint2Fix¯(sym31), and the parent line, Sprint2. Immunostaining of Western blots (immunoblots) revealed that, whereas wild-type nodules contained three antigenic isoforms of PsNLEC-1, nodule homogenates of mutant sym31 contained only one isoform, PsNLEC-1C. Fractionation studies indicated that PsNLEC-1C was not associated with symbiosomes in either the mutant or the wild-type parent (unlike the other two isoforms from wild-type nodules). Light microscopy revealed that PsNLEC-1 antigen was more abundant in the infected tissues of wild-type nodules than in nodules of sym31. By contrast, in situ hybridization indicated that the PsNlec1 gene transcript was strongly expressed in infected cells of both Sprint2 and sym31 nodule tissues. At the ultrastructural level, most of the PsNLEC-1 antigen in sym31 nodule tissue was visualized as inclusion bodies in the...


This Article discusses the results of a field survey of the criminal discovery process in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California - the first of at least 10 jurisdictions to adopt the "omnibus procedure" promulgated by the American Bar Association in the Standards Relating to Discovery and Procedure Before Trial (Standards), part of its Project on Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice. The study is based primarily upon information obtained through personal interviews with attorneys who represented defendants in cases tried before juries in San Diego in the spring of 1974. The study analyzes the functioning of a largely informal discovery system, describes the disclosures generated by that system, and assesses the impact of those disclosures upon the trial processes. In particular, the study focuses on the following questions: (1) What claims for the discovery process in San Diego are supported by the field research and what defects or malfunctions are revealed by it? (2) What are the attitudes of the defense bar toward the discovery system and the disclosures made under it? (3) Of what usefulness are the disclosures and how is the trial process affected by them? (4) Are the disclosures made under this system of informal discovery of a greater scope than those called for either by the ABA Standards or by Rule 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.


Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) and Selective Laser Melting (SLM) are parent Additive Manufacturing processes using a laser to solidify metallic, ceramic, polymer or composite powders. During the process, the object is built layer by layer. A laser source is responsible for the consolidation, by local heating. The light is deviated by a scanning head according to the instructions of an STL file. Then partial fusion of the particles takes place, followed by a solidification of the liquid created. Kinetics of these steps are very high and play an important role in the final microstructure (rearrangement of the particles, pore creation, residual stresses). In the case of polymers and composites the technique is now well understood and widely used, but for metals and ceramics it suffers from a lack of precision, surface roughness and poor mechanical properties. The goal of this Ph.D. work is to understand the effect of the thermal gradients on the consolidation process, using different laser parameters (power, pulse frequency, scan speed,…). In SLS, microscopic thermal gradients arise, due to the fact that the laser is pulsed and that only the exterior of the powder particles is molten. A thermal model to describe the interaction between a laser beam and a (spherical) grain is proposed. This model allows for the incorporation of the latent heat of fusion and for a realistic surrounding. The absorbed laser intensity is modeled by means of the Mie theory. Experiments where two particles of powder are isolated and illuminated by the laser are carried out in order to measure the interparticular necks and the volume of liquid formed for different repetition rates. The thermal model leads to good predictions of the particles final sintering state. Fluid flow models are investigated in order to determine the dynamic of the molten liquid. The main issue is to explain the capillary flow mechanisms leading from the molten material to the neck formation. Two models are derived to simulate the fluid flow between the particles. The first one simulates a capillary flow between two parallel plates. The second one deals with energetic considerations arising from Frenkel's principle. In both cases, the final output is the liquid life-time necessary to get the interparticular neck lengths experimentally observed. We point out that the two models predict the same liquid lifetime, although they are derived with different hypotheses. In SLM, continuous lasers are used and one has to deal with macroscopic thermal gradients, since the particles are completely molten. A very high laser power is used and the negative thermal effects (like thermal stresses or balling effects) are important. A solution to control them is to adjust the scanning strategy. Four scanning strategies are investigated for material with different thermal conductivities. The three-dimensional model used to describe the laser-matter interactions and the temperature evolution of the scanned powder bed allows for a finite latent heat (Stefan-problem) and for conductivity modifications due to the consolidation. We show that this finite element thermal model can be efficiently used to anticipate most of the problems (like cracks or balling) arising in practice. The benefit of avoiding thermal gradients is shown, in particular by EBSD analysis. Finally, applications of the SLS/SLM technique on different pieces built during this work are shown. A new way to build support structure is also proposed.


A small molecule immune checkpoint inhibitor of the adenosine A2A receptor (ADORA2A) with potential antineoplastic activity. Upon oral administration, ciforadenant binds to adenosine A2A receptors expressed on the surface of immune cells, including T-lymphocytes, natural killer (NK) cells, macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs). This prevents tumor-released adenosine from interacting with the A2A receptors on these key immune surveillance cells, thereby abrogating adenosine-induced immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment. This may stimulate anti-tumor immune responses, resulting in tumor regression.


A study was conducted of the relationships among neuroprotective factors and cytokines in brain tissue of mice at different ages that were examined on the effect of dietary restriction on protection after experimentally induced brain stroke. It was of interest to assess whether the cross-product of the slopes of pairs of variables vs. age was positive or negative. To accomplish this, the product of the slopes was estimated and tested to determine if it is significantly different from zero. Since the measurements are taken on the same animals, the models used must account for the non-independence of the measurements within animals. A number of approaches are illustrated. First a multivariate multiple regression model is employed. Since we are interested in a nonlinear function of the parameters (the product) the delta method is used to obtain the standard error of the estimate of the product. Second, a linear mixed-effects model is fit that allows for the specification of an appropriate correlation structure among repeated measurements. The delta method is again used to obtain the standard error. Finally, a non-linear mixed-effects approach is taken to fit the linear-mixed-effects model and conduct the test. A simulation study investigates the properties of the procedure.


The legitimacy of the state's authority is in crisis, as one is informed from all quarters. The future of representative democracy is in danger, and the era of post-democracy has been proclaimed. One of the most pressing constitutional and policy discussions in recent years has accordingly been whether, and to what extent, the representative system has reached its limits and how democracy can be revitalised. The debate has been ignited at the parliamentary as well as at the administrative level. This phenomenon can be observed in Germany and South Africa alike.

Despite the differences between South Africa and Germany, both States' constitutions provide for a federal parliamentary system and a powerful constitutional court.

The conference proceedings develop possible solutions for solving the challenges to the principle of democracy. After the initial diagnosis of the loss of the legitimation of the representative state, possible cures inherent in the representative system itself are explored. In a further step, it is asked to what extent more participation on the legislative as well as the executive level can help to strengthen the legitimation of the state.


Infratentorial subdural empyema is a life-threatening rare complication of bacterial meningitis. Infratentorial subdural empyemas constitute only a small portion of all cases with intracranial infectious diseases. We present a 15-yearold boy with infratentorial subdural empyema. Empyema was diagnosed with serial follow-up computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging while he was being treated for bacterial meningitis secondary to neglected mastoiditis. The patient was successfully treated with emergent surgery and appropriate antibiotics. Empyema should be considered in patients with suspected or proven bacterial menengitis and associated ear nose throat infection with neurological signs that suggest a posterior fossa lesion.


For efficient and reliable data transmission, the traffic load should be as uniformly distributed as possible in the network, and the average distance traveled by the data should be short. This criterion has been shown to be fundamental. The key design problem is therefore to find the optimal solution that achieves this criterion. With a fixed network topology, the traffic load distribution and the transmission efficiency are determined by the specific routing algorithm. In this brief, we apply a simulated annealing algorithm to find the near optimal configuration of routing paths, which effectively balances traffic loads and improves the overall traffic performance.


Capturing a scientific change in thinking about personality and individual differences that has been building over the past 15 years, this volume stands at an important moment in the development of psychology as a discipline. Rather than viewing individual differences as merely the raw material upon which selection operates, the contributing authors provide theories and empirical evidence which suggest that personality and individual differences are central to evolved psychological mechanisms and behavioral functioning. The book draws theoretical inspiration from life history theory, evolutionary genetics, molecular genetics, developmental psychology, personality psychology, and evolutionary psychology, while utilizing the theories of the "best and the brightest" international scientists working on this cutting edge paradigm shift. In the first of three sections, the authors analyze personality and the adaptive landscape; here, the authors offer a novel conceptual framework for examing "personality assessment adaptations." Because individuals in a social environment have momentous consquences for creating and solving adaptive problems, humans have evolved "difference-detecting mechanisms" designed to make crucial social decisions such as mate selection, friend selection, kin investment, coalition formation, and hierarchy negotiation. In the second section, the authors examine developmental and life-history theoretical perspectives to explore the origins and development of personality over the lifespan. The third section focuses on the relatively new field of evolutionary genetics and explores which of the major evolutionary forces-such as balancing selection, mutation, co-evolutionary arms races, and drift-are responsible for the origins of personality and individual differences. Existing as a seminal work in the newly emerging evolutionary psychology field, this book is a "must-read" for anyone invested in the development of psychology as a field.


Herein, a novel dual-responsive two-color fluorescent nanoprobe has been designed for the fluorescence activation imaging of cell apoptosis in living cells. The nanoprobe consists of a gold nanoparticle core functionalized with a dense layer of DNA aptamers and peptides, which shows high affinity and specific response to cytochrome c (Cyt c) and caspase-3, respectively. The formation of the aptamer-Cyt c complex and the cleavage of the specific peptide by caspase-3 can liberate the dye labelled aptamers and peptides from the surface of gold nanoparticles, and then recover their fluorescence. The turn-on and specific recognition properties of our nanoprobe allow for the sensitive and selective detection of Cyt c concentration and caspase-3 activity both in solutions and in living cells. The here proposed nanoprobe with the abilities of real-time monitoring the cell apoptosis and evaluating the apoptosis-related drug efficacy might serve as a potential interesting tool for studying the molecular mechanisms of apoptosis regulation or screening the apoptosis-based drugs.


Future missions for astrophysical studies in the submillimeter region will need detectors with very high sensitivity and large fields of view. Bolometer arrays can fulfill these requirements over a very broad band. We describe a technique that enables bolometer arrays that use quarter-wave cavities to have a high spectral response over most of the submillimeter band. This technique is based on the addition on the front of the array of an antireflecting dielectric layer. The optimum parameters (layer thickness and distance to the array) are determined by a 2D analytic code. This general principle is applied to the case of Herschel PACS bolometers (optimized for the 60 to 210 μm band). As an example, we demonstrate experimentally that a PACS array covered by a 138 μm thick silicon layer can improve the spectral response by a factor of 1.7 in the 450 μm band.


Intimidation and disruptive behavior can undermine patient care and cause staff dissatisfaction and turnover of professionals in the health care setting. These behaviors have been linked to patient safety issues, nurse satisfaction, nurse retention, as well as ineffective communication and collaboration (Fontaine & Gerardi, 2005; Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), 2004; Martin, 2008; Rosenstein & O"Daniel, 2005). The Joint Commission has made recommendations to reduce the incidence of disruptive behaviors. Hospitals are being asked to take responsibility, hold physicians accountable for their actions, and address workplace intimidation (ISMP, 2004; Rosenstein & O"Daniel, 2005; The Joint Commission, July 2008). The purpose of this investigation was to examine the perception of intimidation and disruptive behaviors in the health care setting. Differences, if any, between perceptions and the frequency and effects of intimidation and disruptive behaviors was investigated. Data collected from identified variables can assist hospital administrators to understand the perceptions of intimidation and disruptive behaviors in their organizations and identify contributing factors that negatively affect those working in the health care setting. This investigation utilized a convenience sample of nurses and administrators working in two hospital settings in a Midwest rural state. A pilot study with a sample size of 7 and a larger convenience study with a sample size of 104 were used. This addressed the power analysis recommendation for at least 98 in the sample. This sample size will reduce the likelihood of a Type II error. The first research questions investigated was, "What is the difference, if any, of perception of intimidation and disruptive behavior frequency among nurses with varying levels of work experience?" The second research question was, "What is the difference, if any, of perception of the effects of intimidation and disruptive behavior frequency among nurses with varying levels of work experience?" It is hoped the results of the study will provide health care providers and administrators a better understanding of how intimidation and disruptive behaviors affect nurses, physicians, administrators, and hospitals. This will make it possible to find ways to improve collaboration and communication, patient outcomes, and relationships between health care providers in hopes that these improvements become integrated as expected professional health care practice.


Background: Hot-spot detection of Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) can assist in identifying the exact geographic location of regions that need urgent attention. Aims &Objectives: To detect hot-spots of MMR at district level in the selected nine states of India and the observed pattern was further correlated with hot-spots of certain known risk factors of MMR in the same region. Material &Methods: Data on MMR was obtained from Annual Health Survey 2012-13. Moran's I was computed for MMR to quantify spatial autocorrelation. The hot-spot analysis of MMR and its potential risk factors were performed using Getis-Ord Gi* statistic, a measure of local indicators of spatial autocorrelation (LISA). The spatial analysis was based on queen's contiguity weight matrix and analyses were done using ArcGIS 10.3. Results: The Moran's I value of MMR was found to be 0.69 indicating a positive spatial autocorrelation. Districts with MMR hot-spotting was largely observed in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, followed by Assam, Bihar and Jharkhand. The hot-spot analysis unveiled an inverse relation of MMR with female literacy rate, mothers who received any antenatal check-up (%), mothers who utilized Janani Suraksha Yojana (%), safe delivery (%) and urbanization (%). Marriages among females below 18 years (%), total fertility rate and women with unmet need for spacing (%) had a direct relation with MMR. Conclusion: Information on hot-spots as depicted in this study can help locate the regions vulnerable to MMR and the potential risk factors, which in turn could aid in implementing targeted intervention programs.


The crisis in the eurozone has had a dramatic impact on the economic and social fabric of European countries. However, the economic dimension is only the symptom of a broader problem. The crisis is primarily political in nature. Lorenzo Bini Smaghi argues in this book that the crisis reflects the inability of western democracies to solve problems that have been building for over two decades. He finds that democratically elected officials are loathe to take unpopular decisions that could jeopardize their reelection. Emergency thus becomes the engine of political action, and the justification for corrective measures vis-a-vis the voters. As a consequence, the cure in the form of austerity, administered belatedly under pressure from the markets, becomes even more painful and unpopular, giving rise to populist movements and endangering democracy itself.


Antigen presenting cells such as macrophages and dendritic cells play an
important role between the interface of the innate and adaptive immune responses. One
property shared by dendritic cells and macrophages is that upon activation they secrete
either pro- or anti-inflammatory cytokines dependent on the pathogen derived product
and the T cell derived signal they encounter. The panel of cytokines they produce
determines the class of the adaptive immune response.
Tpl-2 was originally described as a proto-oncogene. It was later found to
function as a Map-3 kinase leading to phosphorylation of MEK and ERK. Upon
stimulation of dendritic cells and macrophages with Toll like receptor ligands (TLR)
such as LPS and CpG, Tpl-2 phosphorylates MEK, which in turn phosphorylates ERK,
leading to production of cytokines.
In the Tpl-2 knockout mice, it has been shown that TNF production is decreased.
We have confirmed this finding and shown that this is both at the transcriptional and
post-transcription level. In the complete absence of Tpl-2 we have shown that
production of the suppressive cytokine IL-10 is reduced in response to TLR stimulation
in macrophages and dendritic cells. On the other hand, when macrophages and dendritic
cells are stimulated with LPS or CpG in the absence of Tpl-2, production of IL-12 is
increased. IFN-b is also upregulated in absence of Tpl-2. Tpl-2 can regulate IL-12 either
directly via IL-10, but also independently of IL-10 via ERK.
IL-10 is an important cytokine in regulating the immune response in order to
inhibit immune pathology. We crossed the Tpl-2 knockout with an IL-10 knockout
mouse in order to investigate whether Tpl-2 regulates IL-12 and IFN-b in the complete
absence of IL-10. These studies are currently in progress. Preliminary results however, show that the Tpl-2/IL-10 double knockout develop diarrhoea and colitis around 8
weeks of age, leading to minimal weight gain and even weight loss compared to
littermates. This is in contrast to the Tpl-2 knockout, which does not develop colitis and
the IL-10 knockout, which only develops colitis at 4 months of age. These findings have
important implications for treatment of autoimmune diseases with drugs that inhibit
ERK, to inhibit TNF mediated pathology.
The aim of this thesis was to investigate to role ERK has in regulating cytokine
production in DC and macrophages. We used two different strategies to do this. Firstly
we pharmacologically blocked ERK phosphorylation with an inhibitor. Secondly we
used genetically modified mice lacking Tpl-2.


'A very important analysis of British naval victualling, with wide implications for economic as well as naval history.' N.A.M. RODGER, All Souls College, Oxford This book, by a leading French maritime historian, discusses how Britain's success in the Seven Years War (1756-63) was made possible by the creation of a superb victualling system for the British navy. It shows how this system had been developed over the preceding centuries, how it balanced carefully the advantages of state control with the flexibility of commercial contracting, and how the system was designed to mesh with and support British strategic ambitions. It provides rich detail on how the system worked, how it was administered, how key products were priced, bought, stored and transported, and how it compared, very favourably, to equivalent systems in France and elsewhere. The book shows how the increasing efficiency of the Victualling Board enabled the navy to take advantage of agricultural, commercial and financial advances in the British economy to supply its front line fighting forces over ever longer distances and ever longer periods. The Victualling Board was one of a number of interfaces between the demands of the State and the supply facilities of the economy, to their mutual benefit. As a major purchaser through competitive tender, the Board made a positive contribution to the entrepreneurial spirit of British society. The book goes beyond maritime history by discussing how naval supply provided a huge stimulus for British finance, agriculture, trade and manufacturing, and argues that all this together was one of the principal causes of Britain's later Industrial Revolution. CHRISTIAN BUCHET is Professor of Modern History and Director of the Centre d'Etudes de la Mer at the Institut Catholique de Paris. Besides comparative studies of the British and French navies 1688-1783, he has written extensively on maritime environmental issues and is Secretary General of the National Council of the French Archipelago.


Saliency detection has been a desirable way for robotic vision to find the most noticeable objects in a scene. In this paper, a robust manifold-based saliency estimation method has been developed to help capture the most salient objects in front of robotic eyes, namely cameras. In the proposed approach, an image is considered as a manifold of visual signals (stimuli) spreading over a connected grid, and local visual stimuli are compared against the global image variation to model the visual saliency. With this model, manifold learning is then applied to minimize the local variation while keeping the global contrast, and turns the RGB image into a multi-channel image. After the projection through manifold learning, histogram-based contrast is then computed for saliency modeling of all channels of the projected images, and mutual information is introduced to evaluate each single-channel saliency map against prior knowledge to provide cues for the fusion of multiple channels. In the last step, the fusion procedure combines all single-channel saliency maps according to their mutual information score, and generates the final saliency map. In our experiment, the proposed method is evaluated using one of the largest publicly available image datasets. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art unsupervised saliency detection methods, yielding higher precision and better recall rates. Furthermore, the proposed method is tested on a video-type test dataset where a moving camera is trying to catch up with the walking person---a salient object in the video sequence. Our experimental results show that the proposed approach can successful accomplish this task, revealing its potential use for similar robotic applications.


Industry 4.0 production systems must support flexibility in various dimensions, such as for the products to be produced, for the production processes to be applied, and for the available machinery. In this article, we present a novel approach to design and control smart manufacturing systems. The approach is reactive, that is responds to unplanned situations and implements an iterative refinement technique, that is, optimizes itself during runtime to better accommodate production goals. For realizing these advances, we present a model-driven methodology and we provide a prototypical implementation of such a production system. In particular, we employ Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) as our artificial intelligence environment for automated planning of production processes and combine it with one of the most prominent Industry 4.0 standards for the fundamental production system model: IEC 62264. We show how to plan the assembly of small trucks from available components and how to assign specific production operations to available production resources, including robotic manipulators and transportation system shuttles. Results of the evaluation indicate that the presented approach is feasible and that it is able to significantly strengthen the flexibility of production systems during runtime. Note to Practitioners—Smart production is an umbrella for a number of shifts and initiatives that deal with digitization of manufacturing/production systems and related issues and potentials. In this work, we present an approach for utilizing automated planning for creating production plans. This is in contrast to the traditional approach, where recipes are programmed into the production system ahead-of-time. However, automated planning relies on specific languages and tools that are hard to master by nonexperts, which is a factor that strongly limited the utilization of plan-driven approaches for industrial automation in practice. Thus, we propose to generate planning tasks automatically with model-driven engineering techniques. We are utilizing the industrial standard IEC 62264 for the description of the production system, and the academic standard Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL) for planning. PDDL is handled completely transparent to the user, that is the user is shielded from its complexity by employing the IEC 62264 model as the sole frontend.


The prediction accuracy of any learning algorithm highly depends on the quality of the selected features; but often, the task of feature construction and selection is tedious and nonscalable. In recent years, however, there have been numerous projects with the goal of constructing general-purpose or domain-specific knowledge bases with entity-relationship-entity triples extracted from various Web sources or collected from user communities, e.g. YAGO, DBpedia, Freebase, UMLS, etc. This paper advocates the simple and yet far-reaching idea that the structured knowledge contained in such knowledge bases can be exploited to automatically extract features for general learning tasks. We introduce an expressive graph-based language for extracting features from such knowledge bases and a theoretical framework for constructing feature vectors from the extracted features. Our experimental evaluation on different learning scenarios provides evidence that the features derived through our framework can considerably improve the prediction accuracy, especially when the labeled data at hand is sparse.


Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) belongs to the group of motor neuron diseases, in which the degeneration, the weakness of voluntary muscles, and death of motor neurons gradually spread along disease progression. ALS comes from Greek language and means "no muscle nourishment" ("amyotrophic"), "area of the spinal cord where affected nerve cells are localized" ("lateral"), and "the degeneration and hardening of the spinal cord" ("sclerosis"). The fundamental contributions of the celebrated neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at the end of the nineteenth century provided the first description of ALS. His neurological work was based on the "anatomo-clinical method," in which he determined the correlation between clinical signs detected during life and anatomical lesions seen at death. Nowadays, the pathophysiological mechanisms that prompt the neurodegenerative process in both forms of the disease, familial and sporadic ALS, still remain to be elucidated. However, there is growing evidence that the pathogenic process involved in ALS is multifactorial and includes oxidative stress, glutamate excitotoxicity, mitochondrial dysfunction, axonal transport systems, and dysfunction of glial cells, yielding the damage of critical proteins and organelles in the motor neurons and muscles and triggering the neurodegeneration. In this complex scenario, the need for identifying potential biomarkers that could make an earlier prognosis and diagnosis of the disease possible becomes an essential step to finally decode the molecular basis of ALS and to provide promising therapeutic strategies.

This special issue provides more in-depth information, not only considering relevant molecular and plastic features in ALS but also including accurate reviews focused on potential biomarkers of the disease in different tissues. More specifically, the role of two molecular factors, the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and the glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), is described. In particular, detailed characterization of VEGF in different human tissues and its connection to a potential therapeutic approach for ALS is addressed. Regarding GDNF, recent findings could pave the way for further studies dealing with its receptor, c-Ret, and its possible connection to the enteric nervous system in ALS human samples. Following with the molecular characterization of the disease, the involvement of dorsal root ganglion sensory neurons under misfolded SOD-1 mediated neurotoxicity is described in a murine model of ALS. In line with the neuronal plasticity in the spinal cord from G93A mice, neuronal progenitor cells differentiation towards a neuron-like phenotype under lithium treatment is reported.

A novel 3D mechanoelectrochemical model that can predict and quantify the impact of immobilized cartilage from ALS patients suffering a progressive loss of motion is documented in this issue. Particularly interesting is the use of neuroimaging techniques to provide an accurate identification of potential prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers of the disease at any stage. In this regard, a detailed review about neuroimaging studies in ALS, especially magnetic resonance imaging studies and spinal cord neuroimaging, is presented.

Last but not least, a careful revision of novel biomarkers, such as aquaporin-4, AQP4, and the inwardly rectifying potassium channel Kir4.1, and their role in the maintenance of ion homeostasis at the blood-brain barrier in ALS animal models and patients is addressed. A more extended revision focused on a wide-ranging panel of biomarkers in blood is described based on the different pathological mechanisms that can contribute to the progression of the disease. Finally, a general update in ALS focusing on the potential ALS biomarkers identified along disease progression in animal models and ALS patients is also included.

We hope that the accurate and updated manuscripts in this issue will provide not only new insights into the search of reliable biomarkers but also a starting point for innovative perspectives in the disease.

Ana Cristina Calvo

Pierre-Francois Pradat

Deise M. F. Mendonca

Raquel Manzano


By analyzing energy barriers for electrons at interfaces of Ge, GaAs, and In0.15Ga0.85As with insulating high-permittivity oxides (HfO2, ZrO2) using the spectroscopy of internal photoemission, we found that the insertion of a nanometer-thin interlayer of a dissimilar semiconductor, i.e., Si on Ge or Ge on GaAs, has no measurable influence on the interface band alignment. This result indicates the absence of any substantial interface dipoles across the stack composed of a semiconductor heterojunction and an insulating oxide and suggests the validity of the transitivity rule previously inferred on the basis of bulk–density–of–states arguments in the case of nanometer-sized multilayer structures.


Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) play a critical role in economic growth and wage employment in both developed and developing economies, yet significant obstacles remain in unlocking the potential of these businesses - especially as regards access to credit. A confluence of three new market trends is reshaping longstanding efforts to overcome this dilemma: 1) increasing access to real-time, 'electronically verifiable' cash-flows; 2) the mining of cash-flow data to reveal insights into repayment likelihood beyond that discoverable in traditional credit analysis; and 3) the adoption of financial technology and certain principles of microfinance lending - most specifically uncollateralized lending and frequent incremental repayment - to meet the funding needs of MSMEs. This paper explores the interrelationship of these trends and contends that, together, they enable suitably empowered financial institutions to originate and manage short-term, unsecured loans to formal MSMEs on a profitable ...


The aim of this investigation was to investigate whether an immediate objective increase in hip strength was observed after an ipsilateral sacroiliac manipulation in patients suffering from chronic sacroiliac syndrome. The actions of hip flexion, extension, abduction and adduction were assessed. The study also investigated the patients' subjective perception of pain due to the chronic sacroiliac syndrome before and after the manipulation. The proposed increases in strength would have been as a result of a reduction in arthrogenic muscle inhibition. Stimulation of nociceptors caused by the chronic sacroiliac syndrome would have lead to the presence of the arthrogenic muscle inhibition within the joint. Arthrogenic muscle inhibition has been described as an inability of a muscle group to utilise all its muscle fibres when performing a maximum voluntary contraction of that muscle group. Arthrogenic muscle inhibition is a joints natural response to pain, damage or distension within the joint. The response is an ongoing reflex inhibition of the muscles surrounding the joint in order to protect the joint. The inhibition of the surrounding musculature clinically manifests itself as a decrease in strength of the affected muscles. The decreased strength levels hampers rehabilitation of the affected joints as active exercise forms a vital role in the rehabilitation process. Current treatment options used to reduce arthrogenic muscle inhibition include lidocaine injection into the joint, cryotherapy and transcutaneous nerve stimulation. These treatments are aimed rather at the reduction of pain, joint effusions and atrophy of the related musculature than at the reduction of arthrogenic muscle inhibition. Recent studies have proposed that manipulation reduced arthrogenic muscle inhibition by causing excitation of the joint receptors, called the Wyke receptors. Stimulation of these joint receptors is thought to cause an alteration in the afferent input to the motorneuron pool resulting in a reduction of arthrogenic muscle inhibition. This study aimed to investigate whether sacroiliac manipulation could reduce arthrogenic muscle inhibition at the hip by assessing the immediate gains in hip muscle strength. The problem statement was to evaluate if an immediate subjective or objective change in hip strength was observed after an ipsilateral sacroiliac manipulation in patients suffering from chronic sacroiliac syndrome.


The corona pandemic and the political measures undertaken to contain it are changing the working conditions of many people in Germany. Based on data from the first tranche of a supplementary survey (SOEP-Cov) to the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this study analyzes the effects of the corona crisis on Germany's working population in 2019. In this paper, we investigate how severely people have been affected by the pandemic in three dimensions: individual level of education, gross individual earned income in 2019, and equivalent net household income in 2019. The key findings are that just under 20 percent of the working population are working reduced hours (on "short-time work"), and a good third are working partially or completely from home. Reported working hours have fallen by an average of four hours per week compared to the previous year. The extent to which working people have been affected by the corona crisis differs across the three dimensions. It is primarily those with higher incomes and a higher level of education who are using the opportunity to work from home, whereas those with a lower level of education are more likely to be on short-time work. Although most employees are not concerned about their own financial situation, they are concerned about the overall development of the German economy as of spring 2020.


The effect of cadmium (Cd) toxicity was studied in four Solanaceae plants (tomato, Solanum lycopersicum L.; pepper, Capsicum annuum L.; eggplant, Solanum melongena L., and goldenberry, Physalis peruviana L.) grown in greenhouse under natural light conditions. The soil was treated with five levels of Cd (0, 2.5, 5, 10 and 20 mg kg-1). Except for the tomato, the shoot and root dry biomass decreased with increasing Cd. Plant growth, bioaccumulation and translocation of Cd and accumulation of metal nutrient ions [potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sodium (Na), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn)] were investigated. On the basis of the percent reductions in the shoot dry biomass, the tomato was determined to be Cd-tolerant, and the other plants Cd-sensitive. The shoot and root Cd contents, uptakes, and total accumulation rate (TAR) were increased with increasing rate of Cd applied, except for the shoot Cd content and root uptake of the goldenberry. The bioconcentration factor (BCF) and the translocation factor (TF) of Cd diminished at all plants, with the exception of the TF for tomato. With respect to Cd translocation, plant species showed a ranking as follows: goldenberry <pepper<eggplant<tomato. The accumulation of all metal nutrient ions increased with Cd applications in the goldenberry shoots. While the accumulation of divalent metal nutrient ions, except for Zn and Cu, increased for the pepper and eggplant, the accumulation of K as monovalent metal nutrient ion decreased for only the pepper.


ABSTRACT: This is the first part of a two-part article on the concept of brainwashing in the study of new religious movements (NRMs). The use of this term has become so emotionally charged that scholars find it difficult to discuss its merits and scientific utility with calmness and objectivity. I devote Part One of this article to an examination of the cultural and structural sources of an extreme polarization that has occurred among scholars of new religious movements. I argue that a majority faction within the discipline has acted with a fair degree of success to block attempts to give the concept of brainwashing a fair scientific trial. This campaign has resulted in a distortion of the original meaning of the concept so that it is generally looked at as having to do with manipulation in recruitment of new members to religious groups. Its historically consistent use, on the contrary, should be in connection with the manipulation of exit costs for veteran members. In Part Two of this paper (to be published in a later issue of this journal), I go on to examine the epistemological status of the brainwashing concept and compare theories based on brainwashing to alternative theories accounting for patterns of switching out of new religious movements.


We have recently demonstrated the anti-diabetic effect of
borapetol B (C1) isolated from the plant Tinospora crispa
to be associated with stimulation of insulin release in the pancreatic islets. This present study aims to reveal the mechanisms by which C1 stimulates insulin release in the isolated pancreatic islets of normoglycemic control Wistar (W) and spontaneously type 2 diabetic Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rats. Isolated pancreatic islets from Wistar (W) and Goto Kakizaki (GK) rat were cultured overnight and then exposed to incubation conditions at 3.3 mM and 16.7 mM glucose. Several modulators and inhibitors were used; 0.25 mM diazoxide only (to open the K-ATP channel, 50 mM of KCl (for depolarization of beta cells), nifedipine (to block the L-type Ca2+ channels), 10 uM H89 and 1.5 uM of calphostin-C (to block PKA-and PKC respectively) and 100 ng/ml pertussis toxin (to inhibit the Ge protein).The insulin released during incubation was measured using radioimmunoassay (RIA) assay. C1 significantly stimulated insulin release at both low and high glucose in W and GK rat islets. The opening of K-ATP channels by adding diazoxide inhibited insulin release at 16.7 mM glucose in W (P<0.01) and GK (P<0.05) rat islets compared to control. Diazoxide decreased insulin response to C1 in W and in GK (both P<0.01) only at 16.7 mM glucose. The insulin release of both W and GK rat islets incubated with C1+diazoxide+KCl was significantly higher (when compared with islets incubated either with C1 or only or diazoxide+KCl) at both 3.3 mM and 16.7 mM glucose. Nifedipine decreased insulin release in W (P<0.05) and in GK (P<0.01) rat islets at 16.7 glucose only. In the presence of nifedipine, C1-induced insulin secretion of islets was decreased in W (P<0.01) and GK rat islets at 16.7 mM glucose. H89 and calphostin C inhibitors did not affect the insulin response to C1 respectively in W and GK islets at both 3.3 mM and 16.7 mM glucose. At 16.7 mM glucose, pertussis toxin decreased the insulin response to C1 in the W (P<0.01) and GK rat islets (P<0.05). When exploring the mechanisms of insulin release in the W and GK pancreatic islets, we showed that the C1 effect was exerted partly via K-ATP channels since diazoxide partly, but not totally suppressed C1 stimulation at 16.7 mM glucose. C1 effect was also dependent on L-type Ca2+ channels since nifedipine suppressed the insulin response to C1 at 16.7 mM. There was no modulation by PKA and PKC
inhibitors. Furthermore, C1 effect was partly dependent on pertussis toxin sensitive Ge-protein. Therefore, the major stimulatory effect of C1 might be on the exocytosis.


Purpose: High-dose interleukin 2 (IL-2) is a Food and Drug Administration–approved regimen for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. However, the toxicity and limited clinical benefit associated with IL-2 has hampered its use. Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors have been shown to have antitumor activity in different tumor models including renal cell carcinoma, and to have immunomodulatory properties. In our study, we tested the effectiveness of combination therapy of IL-2 with the HDAC inhibitor MS-275 in a murine renal cell carcinoma (RENCA) model. Experimental Design: RENCA luciferase–expressing cells were implanted in the left kidney of BALB/C mice. Animals were randomly divided into four groups and treated with either vehicle, 150,000 IU of IL-2 twice daily by i.p. injections (twice weekly), 5 mg/kg of MS-275 daily by oral gavage (5 d/wk), or its combination. Treatment was started either 3 or 9 days following tumor cell injection. Results: Weekly luciferase images and tumor weight after 2 weeks of treatment showed significant tumor inhibition (>80%) in the combination treatment as compared with the IL-2 (no significant inhibition) or MS-275 (∼40% inhibition) treatment groups. Spontaneous lung metastases were also inhibited in the combination treatment (>90% inhibition) as compared with the single treatment group. Kaplan-Meier analyses showed statistically significant increased survival in the combination group as compared with controls and single agents. Splenocytes from mice treated with combination treatment showed greater lysis of RENCA cells than splenocytes from mice treated with single agents. The percentage of CD4+CD25+ T cells and Foxp3+ T cells (T regulatory cells) was increased or reduced, respectively, in lymph nodes from tumor-bearing animals treated with the combination of MS-275 and IL-2 as compared with control and single agents. Depletion of CD8+ T cells abrogated the survival benefit from MS-275 + IL-2 combination. Conclusions: These results show that the combination of IL-2 and MS-275 has a synergistic antitumor effect in vivo in an immunocompetent murine model of renal cell carcinoma. The antitumor effect was associated with the decreased number of T regulatory cells and the increased antitumor cytotoxicity by splenocytes. In conclusion, these preclinical data provide the rationale for clinical testing of the combination of IL-2 and HDAC inhibitors in the treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma.


During the first seven decades following the enactment of the Sherman Act, competition was the uncontroversial goal of antitrust. The introduction of the consumer welfare standard led to the dissipation of "competition" as the goal of U.S. competition laws. This Essay explores how antitrust lost the goal of competition and argues that this goal should be restored. The Essay reevaluates several influential antitrust propositions. First, while "consumer welfare" was offered as a remedy for reconciling contradictions and inconsistencies in antitrust, the adoption of the consumer welfare standard sparked an enduring controversy, causing confusion and doctrinal uncertainty. In effect, the consumer welfare standard established the greatest antitrust paradox yet. Second, the small-business interests hypothesis, which has often been used to explain the enactment of the Sherman Act, is inconsistent with the well-documented historical record. Third, the logic of Robert Bork's consumer welfare thesis requires restoration of "competition" as the goal of antitrust. The Essay concludes with a straightforward observation: "consumer welfare" may continue serving as the stated goal of U.S. competition laws but, practically, antitrust has always been and will always be about the preservation of competition.


Energy-time entangled photons are critical in many quantum optical phenomena and have emerged as important elements in quantum information protocols. Entanglement in this degree of freedom often manifests itself on ultrafast time scales, making it very difficult to detect, whether one employs direct or interferometric techniques, as photon-counting detectors have insufficient time resolution. Here, we implement ultrafast photon counters based on nonlinear interactions and strong femtosecond laser pulses to probe energy-time entanglement in this important regime. Using this technique and single-photon spectrometers, we characterize all the spectral and temporal correlations of two entangled photons with femtosecond resolution. This enables the witnessing of energy-time entanglement using uncertainty relations and the direct observation of nonlocal dispersion cancellation on ultrafast time scales. These techniques are essential to understand and control the energy-time degree of freedom of light for ultrafast quantum optics.


Abstract Backpropagation (BP) algorithm [1], which is commonly used in training multilayer neural networks might take long time to converge in many cases. However, momentum is a standard method that is used to speed up convergence and escape from local minima. This paper presents a new technique called, an optical backpropagation algorithm (OBP) [2] with momentum factor that tries to speed up the training process. This has been demonstrated through a comparison analysis between the proposed one and similar one in the literature such as BP, BPM, Quickprop and Delta-bar-Delta. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm is shown through experiments on two training problems: XOR, and character recognition. The efficiency results for the proposed algorithm show its superiority over the existing ones. Therefore, the promising results that obtained may be used in different real areas of classifications.


Cross-sectional regression analysis identifies key variables affecting the initial excess three-year holding period returns of foreign equities traded as American Depository Receipts (ADRs) on the NASDAQ. Results suggest stock market timing effects and changes in the U.S. prime interest rate are the main determinants of the initial three-year holding period returns for 100 ADRs listed from January 1990 through December 2002. The determinants vary once the sample is broken into subsets, comparing ADRs issued before 1998 to those issued afterwards, ADRs issued in emerging markets versus developed markets, and Asia Pacific ADRs versus European and other regional ADRs.


Many latent-variable applications, including community detection, collaborative filtering, genomic analysis, and NLP, model data as generated by low-rank matrices. Yet despite considerable research, except for very special cases, the number of samples required to efficiently recover the underlying matrices has not been known. We determine the onset of learning in several common latent-variable settings. For all of them, we show that learning $k\times k$, rank-$r$, matrices to normalized $L_{1}$ distance $\epsilon$ requires $\Omega(\frac{kr}{\epsilon^2})$ samples, and propose an algorithm that uses ${\cal O}(\frac{kr}{\epsilon^2}\log^2\frac r\epsilon)$ samples, a number linear in the high dimension, and nearly linear in the, typically low, rank. The algorithm improves on existing spectral techniques and runs in polynomial time. The proofs establish new results on the rapid convergence of the spectral distance between the model and observation matrices, and may be of independent interest.


In this paper we show a simple isocratic chromatographic method for the detection of serotonin and its precursors and metabolites from various types of gastrointestinal tissue. The paper measures for the first time basal measurements of melatonin in the gastrointestinal tract, which has recently been shown to be released from the musosal lining of the gut. Tissue samples were stable following sample preparation in either 0.1 m perchloric acid or mobile phase. Analysis was carried out using a mobile phase consisting of 10% acetonitrile-90% acetate acid buffer pH 4.0 with 2 mm decane-sulfonic acid sodium salt at a column temperature of 50 degrees C. Electrochemical detection was utilized at a potential of +850 mV vs Ag/AgCl reference electrode at 10 microA full-scale deflection. The detection limit of 5-HT and melatonin was 241 and 308 nm respectively for a 10 microL injection. As a result of the method optimization, total analysis was reduced to 30 min. Accurate responses of the tissue samples following sample preparation could be obtained following a week after storage at -80 degrees C. This method is capable of preparing and analysing of samples from all regions of the gastrointestinal tract.


Vulnerability analysis constitutes an important part to sustainability research. The theoretical system of vulnerability, expanding from geographical or earth science and environmental science to other sciences related to development of human society, is fundamental of building up vulnerability assessment methods. The vulnerability analysis is the practical operations of the assessment methods. This study applies vulnerability analysis and assessment to the economy of South China during a period from 2005 to 2010. This research finds that the average growth of exposure-sensitivity (Si) index is close to twice as the average growth of adaptation capability (Ai) index, indicating the regional development is in a high risk of vulnerability. In addition, Si index of year 2010 dramatically decreased by 88.3% from the previous year's level, which is the first time decrease in six years.


Antitrust law has always allowed buyers of the products of a pricefixing cartel to obtain compensation even when the buyers are not consumers, but rather downstream firms in the supply chain, and even when these firms are able to pass the increase in price brought about by the cartel on to the ultimate consumer of the finished good. Antitrust has so far failed to appreciate, however, that suppliers to a cartel or to the cartel's customers are in the same economic position as buyers from a cartel insofar as they suffer the harm of reduced output, because those higher cartel prices reduce demand, and that in turn reduces the amount of inputs the cartel demands from suppliers. Moreover, component suppliers will have to lower their prices in reaction to the reduced demand and so will sustain damage due to a cartel-induced underpayment that is economically related to the overcharge that harms the cartel's customers. It is argued that the courts should reverse the current doctrine, which essentially limits antitrust standing to direct purchasers. While this would constitute a major change under federal law, it would be consistent with current law in those states that grant antitrust standing to indirect purchasers.


Many of today's processing plasma tools are operated at low pressures to achieve high etch directivity and reduce side erosion on the wafer. At these pressures electron-neutral collisions are rare and the electrons cannot gain energy through the Ohmic heating process. Instead the heating mechanism is attributed to a stochastic process between the electrons and the sheath electric field. Theoretical models of this stochastic process include the hard wall approximation and the pressure heating effect. The former is inconsistent with electron current conservation at the sheath whilst the later shows a difference in power absorption when electron loss to the electrodes is considered.

This thesis examines the effects of electron current on power coupling in a capacitive sheath by controlling this current with an additional DC bias applied to an rf biased electrode. Experimental and particle-in-cell model results for a low pressure argon plasma are compared and presented. Results show th a t the electron power absorption is more effective when the electron conduction current is removed, as predicted by the earlier theoretical work.

The model also shows a high harmonic content on the sheath voltage which is attenuated by removing the electron current. These high frequency harmonics are measured in the experiment, with an unbiased probe connected to a spectrum analyzer, and their correlation with the electron current is in agreement with the model results. It is found th a t the high frequency oscillations do not contribute to the power absorption in an average sense.

Finally a novel rf power sensor is presented and compared with an industrial standard power meter. The design incorporates directional coupler and I-V probe techniques to determine the power. This sensor is found to out perform the standard meter over a wide range of conditions. Its ability to measure the power at the fundamental as well as harmonic frequencies makes it a particularly useful plasma diagnostic.


Frequent preventable emergency department (ED) visits is an area of great concern among healthcare administrators. Although pharmacist interventions have been shown to reduce re-hospitalizations, studies demonstrating reduction in ED utilizations among the elderly are limited. Additionally, factors influencing readmissions in the ED are multifactorial. Hence, some healthcare systems struggle to reduce readmissions using pharmacy services. This has been a major issue facing care provided to the elderly in the ED. As healthcare care systems develops and implement a collaborative pharmacist and physician/mid-level provider comprehensive transitional model of care in the ED, the quality of care provided to the elderly will be enhanced which will ultimately translate to reduced inappropriate ED visit and re-hospitalization with corresponding reduction in financial burden placed on both the patient, caregiver and the society. Therefore, the objective of this article is to discuss our process with implementing pharmacist-providers transitional model in the ED. The intent is to elucidate some pharmacist-intervention principles and a pharmacist-driven, patient-care transitional model that would provide direction for other healthcare systems to improve ED visits within their locality.


One of the most distinctive differences between team sports in Europe and North America is the institution of promotion and relegation. This paper looks into the history of why this institution developed in Europe but not North America, and considers what effects it may have on the competitive balance of the leagues. While dominance of the leagues by a small number of wealthy teams is a more severe problem in Europe, its effects are mitigated by the opportunity for new teams to enter from below and the excitement generated by the struggle for survival among the weaker teams.


Previous bidding studies have focussed on optimum bid pricing and several
approaches have been proposed for this problem. Unfortunately, there are problems
with each of these approaches and so to date there is no generally accepted approach
to bid pricing. Furthermore. bid pricing is only one of a series of interrelated
decisions that need to be addressed when formulating an overall bidding strategy. For
many organisations decisions concerning whether or not to bid and the level of
resources to allocate to bid preparation are equally important. Both of these areas,
however, have received scant attention from the academic community, Together
these observations suggest that radically different approaches for improving bidding
performance should be investigated. Expert systems display several characteristics
which suggest that they offer a possible route to further progress in work on bidding
and this thesis explores the possible roles and benefits that expert systems can provide
in this area.
In particular this thesis describes a case study concerning the development of an
expert support system for tender enquiry evaluation. The system was developed for
use by the senior management of a large electro-mechanical engineering company to
assist with their decisions concerning whether or not to bid and the level of resources
to allocate to bid preparation. In the case considered the expertise of two senior
managers involved in a~sessing enquiries was developed into an expert supportsystem.
Knowledge was elicited from these managers by asking them to consider
previous tenders and specify the factors used in discriminating between them. Their
responses were represented in repertory grids,
A subsequent validation study suggested that the system developed provides an
appropriate model of the organisation's consensual business perspective regarding its
bid versus no bid and bid resourcing decisions. Furthermore, collaboration helped the
organisation to clarify its bidding expertise in a changing business envirorunent. In
particular, it highlighted the organisation's current bidding policy and forced the
organisation to reconsider what its ideal policy should be. It also drew attention to
some dissenting views amongst the organisation's senior management and highlighted
possible weaknesses within their own expertise.frIn summary, the resulting expert
support system was perceived to improve both the objectivity and consistency of the
organisation's enquiry review group and was generally welcomed by the organisation."
It is concluded that expert systems are appropriate tools for modelling competitive
bidding situations. However, owing to the nature of bidding domains and non-formal
managerial domains in general. the case study suggests that several problems need to
be addressed if commercially viable systems are to be developed. Most importantly
of which are the identification of appropriate development and validation
methodologies in domains characterised by multiple unarticulated experiential based
models.


Reaching agreement to end war and violent combat can plant the seeds fromwhich peaceful relations can emerge. Implementation of a peace agreementinitially focuses on stopping the same set of characters returning to war on thesame set of issues; hence the question of how to sustain the agreement andimplement what has been agreed becomes paramount. This consideration isimmeasurable in terms of the potential for saving lives and preventing conflictamid future generations. In February 2012 the Northern Ireland CommunityRelations Council commissioned "Implementing Peace Agreements" and thisarticle is a reflection on a series of findings to emerge from that desk basedreview of literature on peace agreements.1 It reviews the considerable attemptsat building peace internationally in Georgia-Russia, Aceh-Indonesia and in theBalkans and aims to draw some lessons from other post-conflict societies. Herewe can consider what Northern Ireland can learn and what more it can shareacross these contexts.


The game of chess has many times been discussed and used for test purpose by science departments of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although the technique of agent and as well multi-agent systems is quite old, the use of these offspring of AI within chess is limited. This report describes the project performed applying the use of agents to a chess program. To measure the performance of the logic has tests between the developed program main parts been performed. Further tests against a traditional chess program as well to position test suites have been done. The results and the impact of the different logic parts is presented and discussed. The aim of the project is to take the use of agents in chess a step forward.


We discuss the problem of combining the conflicting objectives of equity and utilitarianism, for social policy making, in a single mathematical programming model. The definition of equity we use is the Rawlsian one of maximizing the minimum utility over individuals or classes of individuals. However, when the disparity of utility becomes too great, the objective becomes progressively utilitarian. Such a model is particularly applicable not only to health provision but to other areas as well. Building a mixed-integer/linear programming (MILP) formulation of the problem raises technical issues, because the objective function is nonconvex and the hypograph is not MILP representable in its initial form. We present a succinct formulation and show that it is "sharp" in the sense that its linear programming relaxation describes the convex hull of the feasible set (before extra resource allocation or policy constraints are added). We apply the formulation to a healthcare planning problem and show that instances of realistic size are easily solved by standard MILP software.

This paper was accepted by Dimitris Bertsimas, optimization.


In the very early morning at 03 h 53.7 m on 15 April 1909 (local time), a large earthquake occurred in northern Taiwan. In all, 9 persons were killed and 51 injured; 122 houses collapsed along with damage to another 1050 houses. This earthquake was one of the largest and most damaging events of the 20th century for the Taipei Metropolitan Area. The epicenter estimated by Hsu (1971) was determined to be 25°N, 121.53°E and its focal depth and earthquake magnitude evaluated by Gutenberg and Richter (1954) were ~80 km and MGR = 7.3, respectively. The event took place underneath the Taipei Metropolitan Area and might be located at the western edge of the subduction zone of the Philippine Sea plate. In this study, the magnitudes of the earthquakes determined by others will also be described.


The present study was carried out to analyse the biological properties and chemical composition by GC-MS analysis of the essential oil of the needles of Pinus roxburghii . Sixteen components were identified from their fragmentation pattern in the essential oil. Major component present in the essential oil belonged to monoterpene (84.38 %), oxygenated monoterpene (4.23 %) and Sesquiterperne (11.35 %) category. The antibacterial potential was analysed by paper disc diffusion assay against 5 gram-positive bacteria and 5 gram-negative bacteria. Oil showed a broad spectrum of activity by inhibiting all the 5 gram-positive bacteria and 2 gram-negative bacteria viz., Escherichia coli and Campylobacter coli . The antiproliferative property was measured against A-549 (lung), T98G (glioblastoma), PC-3 (prostate) and T47D (breast) human cancer cell lines by Sulphorhodamine-B assay. Here, the essential oil exhibited cytotoxic properties against human cancer cell lines with IC 50 values of 161.30 μg/mL and 154.30 μg/mL for A549 and T98G respectively. The results suggest that active component of the essential oil of Pinus roxburghii possess antimicrobial and antiproliferative properties which may be useful for food preservation, pharmaceutical treatment and natural therapies.


We investigate the general problem of establishing whether a swarm satisfies an emergent property. We put forward a formal model for swarms that accounts for their nature of unbounded collections of agents following simple local protocols. We formally define the decision problem of determining whether a swarm satisfies an emergent property. We introduce a sound and complete procedure for solving the problem. We illustrate the technique by applying it to the Beta aggregation algorithm.


A crustal model of a 322 km long transect from the Knipovich Ridge to Bear Island (Bjørnøya) has been obtained by use of reflection seismic data and wide angle Ocean Bottom Seismometer (OBS) data. Further constraints of the model have been provided by gravity modeling. The study is part of the IPY (International Polar Year) consortium "Plate Tectonics and Polar Gateways in Earth History". The primary objective is to gain detailed insights into the structure of oceanic crust created by the slow to ultraslow spreading Knipovich Ridge. A secondary objective is to investigate the southern part of the sheared Hornsund margin segment of the Western Barents Sea. The thickness of oceanic crust varies greatly along the profile, from 4 to 8 km. The youngest part of the oceanic crustal layer 2 is dominated by relatively low p-wave velocities of 4.4 km/s, while the older parts with a thicker sedimentary overburden have velocities varying from 5.2 to 6.2 km/s. These variations appear to be correlated to variations in the total crustal thickness. The continent ocean boundary (COB) has been located to a 15 km wide zone, and a new location of the COB is proposed for the area around the line. East of the COB, a downfaulted terrace is identified between the Hornsund Fault Zone and the Knølegga Fault. The Knipovich Escarpment is a prominent feature on this profile, marking a 3 km rise in the oceanic basement over 20 km. It is associated with a shallowing of the Moho, and is interpreted to mark the location of a detachment fault which developed around 10 Ma or later.


Coffee, tea, and chocolate converge Caffeine has evolved multiple times among plant species, but no one knows whether these events involved similar genes. Denoeud et al. sequenced the Coffea canephora (coffee) genome and identified a conserved gene order (see the Perspective by Zamir). Although this species underwent fewer genome duplications than related species, the relevant caffeine genes experienced tandem duplications that expanded their numbers within this species. Scientists have seen similar but independent expansions in distantly related species of tea and cacao, suggesting that caffeine might have played an adaptive role in coffee evolution. Science, this issue p. 1181; see also p. 1124 The genetic origins of coffee's constituents reveal intriguing links to cacao and tea. Coffee is a valuable beverage crop due to its characteristic flavor, aroma, and the stimulating effects of caffeine. We generated a high-quality draft genome of the species Coffea canephora, which displays a conserved chromosomal gene order among asterid angiosperms. Although it shows no sign of the whole-genome triplication identified in Solanaceae species such as tomato, the genome includes several species-specific gene family expansions, among them N-methyltransferases (NMTs) involved in caffeine production, defense-related genes, and alkaloid and flavonoid enzymes involved in secondary compound synthesis. Comparative analyses of caffeine NMTs demonstrate that these genes expanded through sequential tandem duplications independently of genes from cacao and tea, suggesting that caffeine in eudicots is of polyphyletic origin.


This volume presents the study of a number of variants of Romano-Hispanic burial rituals. The research was carried out focusing on structural typologies, the analyses of materials found in the necropolis, the development of the burial practices, and the specificity of a variety of solutions (local and regional) adopted by the inhabitants of Roman Spain. This study is not only based on a primarily archaeological approach, but also takes into account other disciplines such as ancient history, iconography, anthropology and the history of religions. The main purpose of the study is to update the current state of research in burial rites in classical cultures and, above all, Hispanic cultural practices. All this provides plenty of largely new information that will enlighten future research.


Objectives: Rheum undulatum L. has traditionally been used for the treatment of many diseases in Asia. However, its anti-proliferative activity in cancer has still not been studied. In the present study, we investigated the anti-cancer effects of methanol extract of Rheum undulatum L. (MERL) on human adenocarcinoma gastric cell lines (AGS). Methods: To investigate the anti-cancer effect of MERL on AGS cells, we treated the AGS cells with varying con¬centrations of MERL and performed 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assays. Cell cycle analyses, measurements of the mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), caspase activity assays and Western blots were conducted to determine whether AGS cell death occurred by apoptosis. Results: Treatment with MERL significantly inhibited growth of AGS cells in a concentration dependent manner. MERL treatment in AGS cells leaded to increased accumulation of apoptotic sub G1 phase cells in a concentration dependent manner. In control cultures, 5.38% of the cells were in the sub G1 phase. In MERL treated cells, however, this percentage was significantly increased (9.95% at 70 μg/mL, 15.94% at 140 μg/mL, 26.56% at 210 μg/mL and 38.08% at 280 μg/mL). MERL treatment induced the decreased expression of pro-caspase-8 and -9 in a concentration dependent manner, whereas the expression of the active form of caspase-3 was increased. A subsequent Western blot analysis revealed increased cleaved levels of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) protein. Also, treatment with MERL increased the activities of caspase-3 and -9 compared with the control. MERL treatment increased the levels of the pro-apoptotic truncated Bid (tBid) and Bcl2 Antagonist X (Bax) proteins and decreased the levels of the anti-apoptotic B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) protein, whose is the stabilization of mitochondria. However, inhibitions of p38, extracellular signal regulated kinases (ERKs) and C-Jun N-terminal kinases (JNK) by MERL treatment did not affect cell death. Conclusion: These results suggest that MERL mediated cell death is associated with an intrinsic apoptotic pathway in AGS cells.


Researchers across disciplines increasingly acknowledge that embracing the multi-sensory character of everyday perception can provide invaluable insights for social and design interventions that aim to improve the experience of products and services. Where fashion design traditionally focuses on the aesthetic, visual side of design, empirical studies prove that the way clothes feel, sound, or smell, is equally important for the way they are experienced and appreciated in everyday use. The aim of this paper is therefore to explore how users' sensory engagement with clothing can inform the creative practice of designers who wish to design for continuity and increased user satisfaction. Satisfaction with a garment often leads to its repeated use and accumulation of pleasurable memories that can both positively influence the active lifetime of the garment. The paper draws on my on-going PhD research and presents initial findings of the second phase of my project (in-progress), which consists of a series of wardrobe studies conducted in participant's homes. The results so far indicate that sensory experiences connected with clothing, although rarely explicitly acknowledged by users, can significantly affect user satisfaction and therefore deserve a greater attention in the context of sustainable design and design for longevity.


OBJECTIVES
To determine the protein expression of TNFAIP3 in synovium and to show the capability of 6q23 intergenic SNPs, associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) susceptibility, to influence TNFAIP3 gene transcription.

METHODS
Immunohistochemistry for TNFAIP3, NF-kB p65 and phosphorylated NF-kB p65 protein expression was performed in 6 RA knee joint synovium samples compared to 9 osteoarthritis (OA) samples. Luciferase reporter gene assays were used to examine the regulatory ability of RA associated SNP variants on TNFAIP3 promoter activity. Sense and antisense constructs were prepared for rs6920220 alleles, together with each of the 4 SNPs in r2=1 with it (rs6933404, rs2327832, rs6927172 and rs17264332), coupled to the TNFAIP3 promoter. Transient transfections were performed in a human T lymphoblastoid (CEMC7A) cell line. Bioinformatic software was utilised to prioritise SNPs for further investigation. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA), using CEMC7A nuclear extracts, were conducted for the rs6927172 SNP alleles.

RESULTS
TNFAIP3 protein expression was seen in the synovium samples and differential TNFAIP3 protein expression between RA vs. OA synoviocytes observed. Within RA synoviocytes TNFAIP3 expression is predominately cytoplasmic, whereas in OA its expression is strongly nuclear and cytoplasmic. For 3 of the 5 SNPs investigated (rs6920220, rs6933404, rs6927172) evidence of repressor activity of TNFAIP3 transcription was seen and EMSA data showed evidence of differential transcription factor binding to rs6927172 alleles.

CONCLUSIONS
This is the first observation of TNFAIP3 protein expression in RA and OA synovium. In vitro analysis of 6q23 intergenic SNPs supports the possibility of the functional regulation of TNFAIP3.


This paper describes an attempt to understand better the endogenous relationships between urban form, accessibility to public transit, and daily travel distance. A model of two simultaneous equations was implemented. The model took into account the interaction between the ownership of vehicles and the choice of household location as explanatory endogenous variables for total distance traveled by respondents. Choice of household location was defined on the basis of cluster analysis (neighborhood typology) driven by land use mix, population density, and accessibility to transit. With socioeconomic variables controlled for, the impacts of neighborhood typologies combined with car ownership levels as endogenous choices were estimated with the use of a model with simultaneous equations. This research used data from the Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, origin–destination survey conducted in 2001. The data set included responses from more than 50,000 individuals. Among other results, the presence of endogeneity was confirmed. When endogeneity was not taken into account, the joint effects of car ownership and household location choices were underestimated. According to the model with simultaneous equations, the total distance traveled by individuals was primarily influenced by employment status and household structure. In fact, the total distance per individual had an average rate of growth of 50% when the individual was working full-time. The distance also increased by 5.7% per child and decreased by 2.4% per person. Although the elasticities of urban form and transit supply variables introduced individually into the model were small, the elasticities of neighborhood type as endogenous variables were much more relevant.


Research policy favours projects that integrate disciplinary knowledge and involve non-academic stakeholders. Consequently, integrative concepts - interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity - are gaining currency in landscape research and planning. Researchers are excited by the prospect of merging disciplinary and non-academic expertise to improve their understanding and performance, but often struggle with the challenges of operationalizing integration. This book provides guidelines for those coping with these challenges, whether they are members of an integrative research team or individuals working on a problem that demands integration. They must define terminology, choose appropriate methodologies, overcome epistemological barriers and cope with the high expectations of some stakeholders while encouraging others to participate at all. The book deals with the development of integrative theory and concepts, the development of integrative tools and methods, training and education for integration, and the application of integrative concepts in landscape research. As it also presents examples of successful integrative PhD studies, it is not only valuable for experienced scientists but will also help other PhD students find their way in integrative research.