The study was carried out in Awaran district of Balochistan during the year 2014. Following the random sampling 60 farmer respondents were selected from the district. The data were elicited through personal interview method. The results of the present study conducted to determine the age group of 21-30 years, 21.66 percent, 31-40 years, 25.00 percent, 41-50 years, 31.66 percent of onion farmer age group. With more than 50 years old farmers, the percentage of onion farmer age group 21.66 percent. Literacy status of the educational level of selected rearers were analyzed and found that 21.66 percent onion farmers were illiterate, 25.00 percent onion farmers were Primary level of education; the 33.33 percent were middle, 16.66 percent of matriculation and 3.33 percent farmers of the bachelor/master education in the study area. In this study the categories were formed for the farming experience of selected farmers were analyzed and found that up to10 years; they had 41.66 percent, 11-20 years of onion farming experience had 13.33 percent, 21-30 years of onion farming experience possessed 25.00 percent of onion farming. Similarly, farmers with more than 30 years of onion farming experience had 20.00 percent of onion farming. Their family size of 5-10 members, and they had 41.66 percent of the onion farming 11-15 Members and they had 46.66 percent of the onion farming and more than 15 members they had 12.66 percent of the onion farming. The results of the present study conducted to determine the on average per acre spent a total cost of production of Rs. 75050.00 during study this included Rs.18100.00, Rs.9600.00, Rs.28510.00 and Rs.18840.00 on a fixed cost, labor costs marketing costs respectively on capital inputs. Thus the onion growers in Awaran Balochistan area obtained per acre 144 in mound on an average. And revenue per acre earned of Rs. 172800.00 that obtained by the grower of onion. On an average per acre earned during the study, Rs.97750.00 on net income, Rs.172800.00 on gross income and Rs.75050.00 on total expenditure in the Awaran Balochistan. Thus the onion growers in Awaran Balochistan area on a gross income Rs.172800.00 and total expenditure is  Rs.75050.00 in Awaran Balochistan area, therefore they availed input output ratio of 1:2.30. A net income per acre earned Rs.97750.00 and total expenditure Rs.75050.00 in Awaran Balochistan area, therefore they availed input, output ratio of 1:1.30 from onion growing in the study area. Keywords: Onion, Economics Analysis, Production and Marketing


This study investigates the hybrid EDM technique performed in a magnetic field environment for refining process execution. Earlier magnetic-field-assisted EDM (MFAEDM) techniques were confined to use with a category of magnetic materials. In this investigation, the magnetic field was paired with traditional EDM plasma zone to examine this hybrid process on Al-based metal matrix composites. The parameters, for instance, peak current, pulse on duration and electrode variant were selected to determine their after effects on the response such as material removal rate (MRR) and surface integrity. A semi-empirical model for MRR on the MMC has been built by incorporating dimensional analysis depending on relevant process parameters selected out by the design of experiments (DOE). The experimental results witness improved recast layer formation along with an improvement of 11.7% MRR at higher spark energy. As the experimental results inferred that the MFAEDM facilitated the process stability, predictions of the semi-empirical model have conferred a good correspondence with experimental verifications.


In an earlier article, Regulation, Unemployment, and Cost-Benefit Analysis, we argued that regulatory agencies should incorporate the costs of unemployment into cost-benefit analyses of proposed regulations. We argued that alternatives to including unemployment costs in cost-benefit analysis — including feasibility analysis and job loss analysis — make little sense because they do not specify the threshold at which job loss is excessive and do not explicitly make tradeoffs between unemployment effects and social gains. Our paper was cited in a 2012 draft OMB report that sought advice from commentators as to whether cost-benefit analysis should incorporate unemployment costs and, if so, how it should do so. This chapter, prepared for a volume on the treatment of unemployment costs within cost-benefit analysis, builds and expands upon that earlier work. We first respond to some important questions and critiques that commentators have raised regarding our paper in the intervening years since we published it. We then discuss some broader issues raised by the debate about the incorporation of unemployment costs into cost-benefit analysis, including the role of "second-order" or remote costs and benefits and the treatment of the ex ante incentives of regulation.


High soil temperatures (>45°C) inhibit the field emergence of sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] in the semiarid tropics. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that the measurement of embryo protein synthesis (EPS) is convenient an d rapid technique for the assessment of sorghum emergence at high soil temperatures. Two experiments were conducted, one using four landrace accessions and another using 14 commercially available lines. Seedling emergence was measured in a large water bath containing a series of soil-filled clay pots. The temperature of the soil in the pots could be regulated (35–50°C) using infrared lamps. Protein synthesis was measured by incubating embryo-containing half-seeds with 14C-labeled amino acids at different temperatures (35–40°C); the resulting labeled proteins were extracted for counting. The relative rankings of the landraces with respect to EPS and emergence demonstrated that the EPS technique clearly distinguished between lines that were able or unable to emerge at 50°C. However, with the commercially available lines, despite the agreement between the ranking of EPS and emergence, two lines diverged from this relationship, which is attributed to the greater complexity of the overall emergence process.


This thesis examined the experiences of women academics in relation to their family contribution, educational experiences and, factors that motivated them towards academia, while highlighting strategies that they have employed to reach their present professional and academic ranks. In addition, any challenges experienced by the women academics were explored. The study is a contribution to knowledge and the extant literature on women academics' career experiences which has been under-researched, especially in Kenya. It claims to have made a contribution to a wider understanding of women academics' experiences, exposing a significant impact of culture, family, work tensions, gender role expectations, male-dominated university cultures, and a lack of role models and mentors, which contribute to the slow progress of women academics' careers in Kenyan universities. Using a qualitative research approach, the researcher used a face- to- face in- depth interviewing technique with sixteen women academics from three universities in Kenya while drawing from a feminist perspective. My aim was to create a dialogue on the lived experiences while at the same time using theory to inform and reflect on those experiences. With the use of thematic analysis, the data generated five themes; family socialisation, educational attributes, motivational factors, challenges and strategies. The findings of this research demonstrated that very few women have progressed into senior academic and professional ranks and that, the pace is slow. They continue to be hampered by socio-cultural attitudes towards women and their roles in Kenyan society. This is not the full story as some of the women interviewed reported that they had to put off marriage for career and likewise, others put on hold or postponed career for family responsibilities. To maintain their positions or climb the professional ladder, they therefore, had to employ a range of strategies such as; working hard, focusing on research and publication for promotion purposes. The wider implications of these findings are discussed.


This paper describe the design and implementation of an "Automatic method of protecting transformer as an alternative to the fuse protection technique". The aim of this paper is to provide an alternative, effective, efficient and more reliable method of protecting fault from power transformer which may arose as a result of overload, high temperature or a high input voltage. Generally, fault may occur in transformers due to the stated reasons. To safeguard the damage of the transformer with the aid and help of microcontroller we monitor and control the entire circuitry. Thereafter regarding the monitoring and control, information about the operation of the parameters would be transmitted to a personal computer for general monitoring and control, which avoid the need of the lines men who had to go to the transformer to re-fix fuses. Lastly, a working system was demonstrated to authenticate the design and possible improvements were also


We examine whether large-scale environment affects the mass assembly history of central galaxies. To facilitate this, we constructed dark matter halo merger trees from a cosmological N-body simulation and calculated the formation and evolution of galaxies using a semi-analytic method. We confirm earlier results that smaller halos show a notable difference in formation time with a mild dependence on large-scale environment. However, using a semi-analytic model, we found that on average the growth rate of the stellar mass of central galaxies is largely insensitive to large-scale environment. Although our results show that the star formation rate (SFR) and the stellar mass of central galaxies in smaller halos are slightly affected by the assembly bias of halos, those galaxies are faint and the difference in the SFR is minute, therefore it is challenging to detect it in real galaxies given the current observational accuracy. Future galaxy surveys, such as the BigBOSS experiment and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which are expected to provide observational data for fainter objects, will provide a chance to test our model predictions.


Background: The "smoking paradox" indicates that patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) who smoke at the time of their stroke may have a better prognosis after intravenous thrombolysis than non-smokers. However, findings are inconsistent and data analyzing the effect of smoking on treatment efficacy of intravenous thrombolysis are scarce. Methods: We performed a pre-specified post-hoc subgroup analysis of the Efficacy and Safety of MRI-Based Thrombolysis in Wake-Up Stroke (WAKE-UP) trial that randomized AIS patients with unknown time of symptom onset who had diffusion-weighted imaging-fluid attenuation inversion recovery (DWI-FLAIR) mismatch to either alteplase or placebo. Patients were categorized as current smokers or non-smokers (including former smokers and never-smokers). Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics, as well as clinical and imaging follow-up data were analyzed according to smoking status. Results: Four hundred and eighty six patients were included in the analysis. Current smokers (133, 27.4%) were younger (60.1 ± 13.0 vs. 67.2 ± 10.3 years; p < 0.001) and less often had arterial hypertension (45.0% vs. 56.8%; p = 0.02) or atrial fibrillation (3.8% vs. 15.3%; p < 0.001). The acute stroke presentation was more often due to large vessel occlusion among current smokers (27.1 vs. 16.2%; p = 0.01), and smokers had a trend towards more severe strokes (National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score>10 in 27.1% vs. 19.5%; p = 0.08). The treatment effect of alteplase, quantified as odds ratio for a favorable outcome (modified Rankin Scale [mRS] score at 90 days of 0 or 1), did not differ between current smokers and non-smokers (p-value for interaction: 0.59). After adjustment for age and stroke severity, neither the proportion of patients with favorable outcome, nor the median mRS score at 90 days differed between current smokers and non-smokers. When additional potential confounders were included in the model, the median mRS score was higher in current smokers than in non-smokers (cOR of better outcome for current smokers vs. non-smokers: 0.664 [0.451–0.978], p = 0.04). Conclusions: In patients with mild to moderate MRI-proven AIS and unknown time of symptom onset with DWI-FLAIR mismatch, current smokers had worse functional outcome as compared to non-smokers. Current smoking did not modify the treatment effect of alteplase. Clinical Trial registration: Main trial (WAKE-UP): ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01525290; and EudraCT, 2011-005906-32. Registered 02 February 2012.


We investigate under which conditions a single simulation of joint default times at a final time horizon can be decomposed into a set of simulations of joint defaults on subsequent adjacent sub-periods leading to that final horizon. Besides the theoretical interest, this is also a practical problem as part of the industry has been working under the misleading assumption that the two approaches are equivalent for practical purposes. As a reasonable trade-off between realistic stylized facts, practical demands, and mathematical tractability, we propose models leading to a Markovian multi-variate survival--indicator process, and we investigate two instances of static models for the vector of default times from the statistical literature that fall into this class. On the one hand, the "looping default" case is known to be equipped with this property, and we point out that it coincides with the classical "Freund distribution" in the bivariate case. On the other hand, if all sub-vectors of the survival indicator process are Markovian, this constitutes a new characterization of the Marshall--Olkin distribution, and hence of multi-variate lack-of-memory. A paramount property of the resulting model is stability of the type of multi-variate distribution with respect to elimination or insertion of a new marginal component with marginal distribution from the same family. The practical implications of this "nested margining" property are enormous. To implement this distribution we present an efficient and unbiased simulation algorithm based on the L\'evy-frailty construction. We highlight different pitfalls in the simulation of dependent default times and examine, within a numerical case study, the effect of inadequate simulation practices.


MODFLOW-2000, the newest version of MODFLOW, is a computer program that numerically solves the three-dimensional ground-water flow equation for a porous medium using a finite-difference method. MT3DMS, the successor to MT3D, is a computer program for modeling multi-species solute transport in three-dimensional ground-water systems using multiple solution techniques, including the finite-difference method, the method of characteristics (MOC), and the total-variation-diminishing (TVD) method. This report documents a new version of the Link-MT3DMS Package, which enables MODFLOW-2000 to produce the information needed by MT3DMS, and also discusses new visualization software for MT3DMS. Unlike the Link-MT3D Packages that coordinated previous versions of MODFLOW and MT3D, the new Link-MT3DMS Package requires an input file that, among other things, provides enhanced support for additional MODFLOW sink/source packages and allows list-directed (free) format for the flow model produced flow-transport link file. The report contains four parts: (a) documentation of the Link-MT3DMS Package Version 6 for MODFLOW-2000; (b) discussion of several issues related to simulation setup and input data preparation for running MT3DMS with MODFLOW-2000; (c) description of two test example problems, with comparison to results obtained using another MODFLOW-based transport program; and (d) overview of postsimulation visualization and animation using the U.S. Geological Survey's Model Viewer.


OBJECTIVES: This prospective clinical study evaluated dentoskeletal changes in Class II malocclusion patients after treatment with the Twin Block functional appliance. METHODS: The treatment group consisted of 19 subjects (mean age 9.5 years) and the control group consisted of 19 subjects (mean age 9.9 years) situated before the pubertal growth spurt. Unpaired Student's t test showed the sample homogeneity at the beginning of the study. Initial (T1) and one year follow-up (T2) cephalometric radiographs were obtained for all subjects. Wilcoxon test and Mann-Whitney test were used to evaluate changes intra and inter groups from T1 to T2. RESULTS: A Class I molar relationship was achieved in 15 subjects of the TB group while no modification occurred in the control group. No significant effect was observed either in the maxilla or in the vertical pattern. A significant increase in total mandibular length and an anterior displacement of the mandibular position occurred in the treated group (p<0.05) as well as an overjet reduction, influenced by significant upper incisor retroclination and lower incisor proclination (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: Class II treatment with the Twin Block appliance in Brazilian patients showed skeletal and dental effects, including increase in mandibular length and incisors compensation, respectively.


Over the last few years the role of microorganisms in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis has been widely discussed.  Advance in basic science have established a fundamental role for inflammation immediating all stages of cardiovascular diseases. Chlamydia pneumoniae activates immune cells to produce cytokines such us TNF-α that are important contributor to atherosclerosis. All blood samples were assayed for molecular detection of Chlamydia pneumonia e by using conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) relying on16SrRNAand the level of serum TNF-α measured by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).Seventy patients who suffering from CVD (angina, myocardial Infarction and atherosclerosis) aged between 33-86 years have been investigated and compared to twenty of apparently healthy individuals were studies as control group. Twenty six sample (37.14) %detected positive results for Chlamydia pneumonia e by PCR techniques in patient group, while all control group were negative, furthermore current study revealed a highly significant elevation (p<0.01) in the mean level of TNF-α in sera of patients with CVD compared to control group. Also there were considerable differences in the level of TNF-α between Chlamydia pneumonia e positive and negative within the patient group. The present study concludes there is a significant proportion among patients who infected with C. Pneumoniae and these bacteria play an essential role in the pathogenesis of CVD through stimulation of the inflammatory response.


A highly sensitive protocol for signaling norepinephrine (NEP) in human fluids and neuronal cell line models should be established for clinical investigation of some neuronal diseases. A metal-free electrode catalyst was designed based on a sulfur-doped carbon spheroidal surface (S-CSN) and employed as a transducing element for selective signaling of NEP in biological samples. The designed electrode of S-CSN features a spherical construct and curvature surface to form a spheroidal nanolayer with an average layer size of <2 nm. S-CSN shows surface topography of a circular surface curvature with a rugged surface texture, ridge ends, and free open spaces between interlayers. The rich-space diversity surfaces offer highly active surface with facile molecular/electron diffusion, multi-diffusive centers, and high target loading along with in-/out-of-plane circular spheres of the S-CSN surface. The active doping of S atoms onto the carbon-based electrode creates an active transducing element with many active sites, strong binding to targeted molecules, facile diffusion of charges/molecules, long-term durability, and dense reactive exposure sites for signaling NEP at ultratrace levels. S-CSN could be a sensitive and selective nanosensor for signaling NEP and establishing a sensing protocol with high stability and reproducibility. The sensory protocol based on S-CSN exhibits high sensitivity and selectivity with a low detection limit of 0.001 μM and a wide linear range of 0.01-0.8 μM. The in vitro sensory protocol for NEP secreted from living cells (neuronal cell line model) under stimulated agents possesses high sensitivity, low cytotoxicity, and high biocompatibility. These results confirm the successful establishment of NEP sensor in human blood samples and neuronal cells for clinical investigation.


Background The effectiveness of antipsychotic monotherapy in schizoaffective disorder is limited, and further constrained by safety concerns. Aims We aimed to compare the efficacy, tolerability and safety profile of the new pharmaceutical, olanzapine, with haloperidol. Method Data were assessed from 300 DSM – III – R schizoaffective subjects from a larger double-blind prospective international study. Subjects were randomly allocated to six weeks of olanzapine (5–20 mg) or haloperidol (5–20 mg) treatment; responders were followed for up to one year of double-blind, long-term maintenance therapy. Results Olanzapine-treated patients achieved a statistically significant greater improvement than haloperidol-treated patients on overall measures of efficacy, including clinical response. Significantly fewer olanzapine patients left the study early, and fewer adverse events were observed among those receiving olanzapine. During maintenance, olanzapine-treated patients continued to experience additional improvement, with fewer EPS but more weight gain than those on haloperidol. Conclusions Olanzapine demonstrated substantial advantages over the conventional antipsychotic haloperidol in the management of schizoaffective disorder.


Recently, learning methods have been designed to create Multiplane Images (MPIs) for view synthesis. While MPIs are extremely powerful and facilitate high quality renderings, a great amount of memory is required, making them impractical for many applications. In this paper, we propose a learning method that optimizes the available memory to render compact and adaptive MPIs. Our MPIs avoid redundant information and take into account the scene geometry to determine the depth sampling.


Implementation of ICT within Health and Social Care requires an aligned blend of strategic policy alongside research to promote innovation and creativity within services. This chapter explores the strategic context of developments within Europe, with a focus on the United Kingdom. In addition the value and opportunity for service orientated research as a mode to achieve high impact and sustainable implementation is proposed, thereby supporting evidence-based healthcare in this domain.


Taxes and transfers can have significant impacts on poverty and inequality. All standard measures are by definition anonymous in the sense that we do not know the identity of winners and losers. That a given combination of taxes and transfers makes some of the poor poorer, however, may be important information to incorporate into a fiscal incidence analysis. The directional mobility literature provides a useful framework to identify which individuals are adversely/favorably impacted by a particular policy. This paper introduces a "fiscal mobility matrix" to identify winners and losers. We show that taxes and transfers can lower inequality and poverty (including the severity of poverty) but still make a subgroup of the poor worse off. We use Brazilian data to illustrate how indirect taxes make around 11 percent of the non-poor poor, 15 percent of the moderate poor extremely poor, and 4 percent of the extremely poor "ultra-poor" despite any cash transfers they receive, even when standard poverty and inequality indicators decline and overall taxes are progressive.


Many algorithms have been proposed for detecting disjoint communities (relatively densely connected subgraphs) in networks. One popular technique is to optimize modularity, a measure of the quality of a partition in terms of the number of intracommunity and intercommunity edges. Greedy approximate algorithms for maximizing modularity can be very fast and effective. We propose a new algorithm that starts by detecting disjoint cliques and then merges these to optimize modularity. We show that this performs better than other similar algorithms in terms of both modularity and execution speed.


Introduction: This cross-sectional study assessed factors affecting access to antiretroviral therapy (ART) among HIV patients. The aim of this study was to explore factors that delay patients from accessing antiretroviral treatment at an East London Hospital Complex clinic and to determine the pathway that people from communities in the surrounding area take in order to access antiretroviral treatment at the referral hospital ART clinic

Methods: The study design was a descriptive cross-sectional survey using both open and closed questions to generate qualitative and quantitative data. The survey used a questionnaire administered via a face to face interview. 200 Adult patients (> 18years old) from the local population with a CD4 count of ≤ 100/mm3 referred to the ART clinic at East London Hospital Complex for the first time during May to October 2011 were interviewed.

Results: With the health system, some issues were structural (staffing, availability of CD4 counts) and most were process related and reflected a poor patient experience and lack of trust in the quality of care. Contextual related issues were mainly geographic accessibility (cost and lack of transport, distance to health care facility), stigma and discrimination about HIV. Patients related factors included misperceptions and false beliefs about HIV, low level of education, socioeconomic factors, lack of family and social support such as unavailability of treatment supporter and status of patient's general health discouraged people from seeking ART. Coping strategies such as denial of results and reluctant to disclose results to other people came out as a distrust of patients in community.

Conclusions: This study gives evidence that people living with HIV experience health system, patient and contextual related barriers to access HIV treatment. The majority accessed care via their local primary care clinic and traditional or alternative practitioners did not appear to play a major role. The distance from and cost of transport to the referral hospital ART service was a major issue compounded by the difficulty of travelling when acutely sick. The expectation of long waiting times and sometimes negative staff attitudes reduced motivation. A number of other factors related to the patient, the health service and the community context were also identified. Many of these factors that reduce access to ART are amenable to change.


Improvements in information & communication technologies have reshaped production and consumption relations in the post-modern era. Societies have tried to readapt themselves to the requirements of new knowledge based economy. It has also became vital for the organizations to answer the needs of knowledge society. Whether they are public or private, organizations will play a key role during the transformation process of the societies and economies. It is not only important for the organizations to use the latest information technologies but also create social structures which can ease information flow throughout the organization. Social network studies which are quite different from traditional approaches in sociology can be used as a tool to understand and manipulate organizational networks. The results of several research activities have shown that actors use their social connections to reach information, resources and possible opportunities (Garguilo and Benassi, 2000). It is not enough to use advanced information technologies in the organization to build an effective knowledge distribution system regarding to social network perspective, it is required to understand the patterns of social interactions between actors and to find a fit between technical structure and social structure for effective knowledge based organizational design. Structural holes theory (Burt, 1992) emphasized importance of brokerage roles of the actors in a social network. Structural holes, represent unconnected parts between actors and brokers are the actors who connects the unconnected parts of the social systems (Burt, 1992). If there are lots of structural holes in an organization, there will also be lots of brokerage opportunities for some actors in an organizational network. Brokers are the bridges and gatekeepers who are INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF eBUSINESS AND eGOVERNMENT STUDIES Vol 2, No 2, 2010 ISSN: 2146-0744 (Online) 42 controlling information flow in the organizations. It is vitally important to explore brokerage patterns in an organizational network for an effective knowledge based design. This study is a conceptual framework aims at bringing an explanation to socially created information flow structures in the organizations by using structural holes theory. Keyworks: Social networks, structural holes theory, brokerage roles & information flow JEL Classification: Z13


Blood pressure has a genetic component influenced by several to many genetic loci in both humans and animals; that is, blood pressure is a polygenic trait. Ultimately, the primary causes of genetic hypertension can only be established with genetic techniques. The primary tools for this analysis in animals are inbred strains of rodents selectively bred for differences in blood pressure and the genetic analysis of these strains by cosegregation techniques. This analysis determines whether it is possible to separate specific alleles at a candidate genetic locus from a component of blood pressure in genetically segregating populations. If the candidate alleles cosegregate with a component of blood pressure, these alleles must be the cause of the blood pressure differences or be linked on the same chromosome to alleles at other loci that cause blood pressure differences. If, on the other hand, the candidate alleles do not cosegregate with blood pressure, they cannot be the cause of the blood pressure differences. This analysis is straightforward in the case of a single-locus Mendelian candidate trait but is less informative if a candidate trait is itself polygenic In this case, genetic analysis yields either 1) results that are compatible with, but not definitive proof for, a genetic role of the trait in causing blood pressure differences or 2) results that eliminate the trait as a cause of genetic differences in blood pressure. A complete listing of all the traits that have undergone genetic cosegregation analysis in rodents is given.


In late 2010 the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library participated in a global ebook user study conducted by Elsevier Publishing.  The 129 UIUC participants performed searches on ScienceDirect in their research subject areas, which resulted in reading 2-4 ebooks per person from the Elsevier ebook platform.  After examining the ebooks, the participants responded to a questionnaire concerning their format preferences, they completed a logbook for each ebook they read/used, and they subsequently provided feedback, including their estimation of ebook value.  Qualitative data gathered from comment boxes were analysed to compare to quantitative survey results because while the survey showed very favourable reactions to the ebook format, the written comments were mixed.  This case study examines how the technical aspects of access to ebooks affect user's attitudes and acceptance of e formats for research purposes and addresses the importance of qualitative research in a primarily quantitative study.


ABSTRACT Background: Sepsis is the leading cause of death in hospitalized children worldwide. Despite its hypothesized immune-mediated mechanism, targeted immunotherapy for sepsis is not available for clinical use. Objective: To determine the association between longitudinal cytometric, proteomic, bioenergetic, and metabolomic markers of immunometabolic dysregulation and pathogen type in pediatric sepsis. Methods: Serial peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) samples were obtained from 14 sepsis patients (34 total samples) and 7 control patients for this observational study. Flow cytometry was used to define immunophenotype, including T cell subset frequency and activation state, and assess intracellular cytokine production. Global immune dysfunction was assessed by tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) production capacity and monocyte human leukocyte antigen DR (HLA-DR) expression. Mitochondrial function was assessed by bulk respirometry. Plasma cytokine levels were determined via Luminex assay. Metabolites were measured by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Results were compared by timepoint and pathogen type. Results: Sepsis patients were older (15.9 years vs. 10.4 years, P = 0.02) and had higher illness severity by PRISM-III (12.0 vs. 2.0, P < 0.001) compared to controls; demographics were otherwise similar, though control patients were predominately male. Compared to controls, sepsis patients at timepoint 1 demonstrated lower monocyte HLA-DR expression (75% vs. 92%, P = 0.02), loss of peripheral of non-naïve CD4+ T cells (62.4% vs. 77.6%, P = 0.04), and reduced PBMC mitochondrial spare residual capacity (SRC; 4.0 pmol/s/106 cells vs. 8.4 pmol/s/106 cells, P = 0.01). At sepsis onset, immunoparalysis (defined as TNF-α production capacity < 200 pg/mL) was present in 39% of sepsis patients and not identified among controls. Metabolomic findings in sepsis patients were most pronounced at sepsis onset and included elevated uridine and 2-dehydrogluconate and depleted citrulline. Loss of peripheral non-naïve CD4+ T cells was associated with immune dysfunction and reduced cytokine production despite increased T cell activation. CD4+ T cell differentiation and corresponding pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines varied by pathogen. Conclusion: Pediatric sepsis patients exhibit a complex, dynamic physiologic state characterized by impaired T cell function and immunometabolic dysregulation which varies by pathogen type.


We all know that both literature and film have power to move us, inviting us to identify with strangers, creating an opportunity to make all relations "thicker."  It is a challenging task, however, to represent an event that involves a lot of emotions, especially traumatic ones, on behalf of someone else .  There is also a problem of priority, when there are many competing stories of "victimization" that need to be told at the same time. Ibuse is not a victim of A-bomb himself, and his strategy in Black Rain was to draw extensively on a "real-life" diary by a survivor who has witnessed the carnage in Hiroshima, which has been received positively by some as an exemplary "non-victim novel" with a documentary look, but criticized by some as a work of plagiarism disguised as fiction. With Imamura's filmatization, another issue related to representation is introduced.  Even as the film is generally acknowledged to have successfully strived for "the look of nonfiction" with its minimalism, Carole Cavanaugh argues that the film, by adding a story about the female protagonist's romantic union with a veteran soldier suffering from PTSD, attempts to "fixate world memory on the icons of Japanese suffering" and "simultaneously blott[s] out recollection of Japan at war" and of marginalized others. [i] Whose story deserves to be told, and how?  This paper tries to probe into these questions by using Ibuse Masuji's Black Rain , and Imamura Shohei's 1989 filmatization of it as case studies, with the specificity of the media in mind.  [i] «A Working Ideology for Hiroshima: Imamura Shohei's Black Rain ," Word and Image in Japanese Cinema (Cambridge UP 2001): 266.


The Acadian (mid-Devonian) deformation in NW Europe has typically been interpreted as the culminating event of the Silurian closure of the Iapetus Ocean. This view has been challenged by the recognition of an intervening early Devonian transtensional event across part of the assembled Laurussian continent. Instead, the Acadian shortening must be driven by a renewed 'push from the south', involving subduction of the Rheic Ocean, and either flat-slab subduction or impingement of another Gondwana-derived continental fragment. A problem with either hypothesis is the lack of Acadian deformation or even correlative unconformity in the segment of the Rhenohercynian Zone between the Acadian belt and the Rheic suture. The possibility is explored that this Rhenohercynian segment was juxtaposed with the Acadian belt and the Midland Microcraton only during latest Acadian and/or Variscan tectonics. If so, a major lithospheric suture lies buried just south of the Variscan Front, along the Bristol Channel Fault Zone, and the missing Acadian terranes must now lie elsewhere along the orogen. A case is made that they are related to the allochthonous terranes of NW Iberia. In any case, the Acadian event in Europe should properly be regarded as proto-Variscan rather than late Caledonian.


The Messaging Layer Security (MLS) project is an IETF effort aiming to establish an industry-wide standard for secure group messaging (SGM). Its development is supported by several major secure-messaging providers (with a combined user base in the billions) and a growing body of academic research. MLS has evolved over many iterations to become a complex, non-trivial, yet relatively ad-hoc cryptographic protocol. In an effort to tame its complexity and build confidence in its security, past analyses of MLS have restricted themselves to sub-protocols of MLS---most prominently a type of sub-protocol embodying so-called continuous group key agreement (CGKA). However, to date the task of proving or even defining the security of the full MLS protocol has been left open. In this work, we fill in this missing piece. First, we formally capture the security of SGM protocols by defining a corresponding security game, which is parametrized by a safety predicate that characterizes the exact level of security achieved by a construction. Then, we cast MLS as an SGM protocol, showing how to modularly build it from the following three main components (and some additional standard cryptographic primitives) in a black-box fashion: (a) CGKA, (b) forward-secure group AEAD (FS-GAEAD), which is a new primitive and roughly corresponds to an "epoch'' of group messaging, and (c) a so-called PRF-PRNG, which is a two-input hash function that is a pseudorandom function (resp.\ generator with input) in its first (resp.\ second) input. Crucially, the security predicate for the SGM security of MLS can be expressed purely as a function of the security predicates of the underlying primitives, which allows to swap out any of the components and immediately obtain a security statement for the resulting SGM construction. Furthermore, we provide instantiations of all component primitives, in particular of CGKA with MLS's TreeKEM sub-protocol (which we prove adaptively secure) and of FS-GAEAD with a novel construction (which has already been adopted by MLS). Along the way we introduce a collection of new techniques, primitives, and results with applications to other SGM protocols and beyond. For example, we extend the Generalized Selective Decryption proof technique (which is central in CGKA literature) and prove adaptive security for another (practical) more secure CGKA protocol called RTreeKEM (Alwen et al.,\ CRYPTO '20). The modularity of our approach immediately yields a corollary characterizing the security of an SGM construction using RTreeKEM.


Introduction The prognosis of autoimmune myasthenia gravis (MG) has improved with a reduction in mortality from 75% to a current rate of <5%. However, approximately 20% of MG patients will experience a myasthenic crisis requiring intensive care admission during the course of their illness. Aim To perform a 10 year audit on cases of myasthenic crisis admitted to a neurological intensive care unit. Methods Cases of myasthenic crisis were identified from the ICU register and case notes were retrospectively reviewed Results 38 patients were admitted in myasthenic crisis or were at risk of crisis. Five patients had multiple admissions. The average age at admission was 56.7. Twenty-five were female. Thirteen were male. Average disease duration at ICU admission was 2.6 years. Thirteen patients presented in crisis. 79% of patients were acetylcyholine receptor antibody positive. 13 % tested positive for MuSK antibodies and 7.8 % were seronegative. 31.5% of patients had a history of thymectomy. 58% of patients had a precipitating systemic infection. 50% required invasive mechanical ventilation. 80% received IVIG and 11% were treated with plasma exchange. The average duration of ICU stay was 11.5 days. There were four deaths all due to respiratory failure and sepsis. Conclusion MG continues to be a serious disease with a considerable morbidity and mortality. Management of myasthenic crisis requires specialised neuro-intensive care facilities.


Mammographic screening is an effective way to detect breast cancer. Early detection of breast cancer depends to a high degree on the adequacy of the mammogram from which the diagnosis is made. Today, most of the analysis of the mammogram is performed by radiologists. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems have been proposed as an aid to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the screening procedure by automatically indicating abnormalities in the mammograms. However, in order for a CAD system to be stable and efficient, the input images need to be adequate. Criteria for adequacy include: high resolution, low image noise and high image contrast. Additionally, the breast needs to be adequately positioned and compressed to properly visualise the entire breast and especially the glandular tissue.This thesis addresses questions regarding the automatic determination of mammogram adequacy with the focus on breast positioning and segmentation evaluation. The goal and, thus, the major technical challenge is to develop algorithms that support fully automatic quality checks. The relevant quality criteria are discussed in Chapter 2. The aim of this discussion is to compile a comprehensive list of necessary criteria that a system for automatic assessment of mammographic adequacy must satisfy. Chapter 3 gives an overview of research performed in computer-aided analysis of mammograms. It also provides basic knowledge about image analysis involved in the research area of computerized mammography in general, and in the papers of this thesis, in particular. In contrast, Chapter 4 describes basic knowledge about segmentation evaluation, which is a highly important component in image analysis. Papers I–IV propose algorithms for measuring the quality of a mammogram according to certain criteria and addresses problems related to them. A method for automatic analysis of the shape of the pectoralis muscle is presented in Paper I. Paper II proposes a fully automatic method for extracting the breast border. A geometric assumption used by radiologists is that the nipple is located at the point on the breast border being furthest away from the pectoralis muscle. This assumption is investigated in Paper III, and a method for automatically restricting the search area is proposed. There has been an increasing need to develop an automated segmentation algorithm for extracting the glandular tissue, where the majority of breast cancer occur. In Paper IV, a novel approach for solving this problem in a robust and accurate way is proposed. Paper V discusses the challenges involved in evaluating the quality of segmentation algorithms based on ground truths provided by an expert panel. A method to relate ground truths provided by several experts to each other in order to establish levels of agreement is proposed. Furthermore, this work is used to develop an algorithm that combines an ensemble of markings into one surrogate ground truth.


In this chapter we address the extensive literature which can inform the teaching of
mathematics drawing on our own experience of using and finding value in the literature to
enhance our own knowledge and practice in teaching mathematics at university level. Three
areas of literature are recognised and addressed: professional literature, in which we gain
insights into the ways in which other teachers/lecturers have thought about their teaching
and the approaches/strategies and frameworks they have used; research literature which
offers what is known, findings from research that can enable more informed approaches
to teaching; and pedagogical literature that deals overtly with developing and enhancing
teaching, through the lecturer engaging with new ideas (for example those offered in the
professional literature), attending to research findings or using specific tactics or teaching
approaches recommended by the authors. Many examples are provided, both of particular
sources in the literature and of approaches to learning and teaching in mathematics, with
an extensive reference list. This approach is intended to be informative to mathematics
teachers at university level who look for knowledge and ideas to inform their teaching and
support its development.


We propose and demonstrate the ability and efficiency of using a universal file format for a nanolithography pattern. A problem faced by the physicists working in the field of nanolithography is a lack of a flexible pattern design software (possibly open–source) that could be applied in combination with a broad range of commercial scanning probe microscope (SPM) systems. The current nanolithography software packages are device–specific and not portable. Therefore, it is impossible to make a lithography pattern and share it with fellow physicists working on a networked sub-system. In this paper we describe the software designed to read and interpret a nanolithography pattern stored in a Windows Metafile (WMF) standard graphic format and next to draw it on a substrate using an SPM tip. The nanolithography parameters like height, velocity, feedback force, etc. are coded in the color of the WMF onto the RGB channels of the image establishing a distinct relation between a graphical feature (color) and the used nanolithography scheme (voltage, height, etc.). The concept enables preparation of complex patterns using any standard graphic software and aids an intuitive recognition of the mode and parameters set for a pattern. The advantages of using a WMF over other approaches and the universal scope of the software are discussed.


Grain legumes could serve as a low cost nitrogen (N) and energy source for animal production in the southern Great Plains (SGP). This study evaluated the yield and nutritive value of grains of tropical annual legumes novel to the SGP. Included were cultivars of pigeon pea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.] (cv. GA-2), guar [Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub.] (cv. Kinman), cowpea [Vigna unguiculata (L). Walp.] (cv. Chinese red), mung bean [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilcz.] (cv. Berkins), and the grain soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] (cv. Hutcheson) as a control. Seeds were inoculated and planted (60-cm row spacing) annually in mid-June 2004 through 2006. Seeding rates were varied to achieve 10 seeds m ―1 row length. Grain was harvested at the end of growing seasons (90-120 d since planting), and grain samples were ground (1.0 mm) and analyzed for N concentration and in vitro digestible dry matter (IVDDM). Significant (P < 0.05) year x legume interactions were recorded for all characteristics, with variable legume responses among years. Guar produced both the highest (2730 kg ha ―1 in 2004) and lowest (897 kg ha ―1 in 2005) grain yields. Nitrogen concentrations were the highest in soybean grain (60.2-60.7 g kg ―1 ) and consistently the lowest in pigeon pea (33.3-34.9 g kg ―1 ). Soybean grain had the highest IVDDM (968-969 g kg ―1 ), while pigeon pea had the consistently lowest digestibility (890-894 g kg ―1 ). The four novel legumes produced grains that meet the nutritional requirements for all classes of stocker or feeder cattle.


Preservation and restoration of wetland habitats require maintaining a desirable hydrologic regime. The criteria for such a hydrologic regime are established based on marsh inundation depths and frequencies, magnitude and duration of flood events, water level recession rates, etc. A one-dimensional and a two-dimensional flow models were calibrated for a riverine wetland. Simulated water levels differed slightly from the observed for high flow conditions, indicating that a one-dimensional model is adequate for flood simulations. For low flow conditions, however, the two-dimensional model provided water depth distributions that provided a better evaluation of wetland hydrologic criteria.


The Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (FRAME) Reduction Committee, formed in 1998, comprises experienced professionals in the fields of statistics, experimental design, animal welfare and alternatives. The committee undertakes projects designed to contribute to reduction by addressing the implementation of recommendations made at an European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) workshop on reducing the use of laboratory animals. The use of improved experimental design and statistical analysis techniques are key means of achieving reduction. Literature surveys have shown that there is scope for improvement in these areas. Projects include organising workshops that explain how these techniques can be used to achieve reduction, the creation of guidelines for journal editors and the compilation of a directory of training material on experimental design and statistical analysis. The first FRAME Reduction Committee international symposium will be held in October 2002. 1


On the microscale, migration, proliferation and death are crucial in the development, homeostasis and repair of an organism; on the macroscale, such effects are important in the sustainability of a population in its environment. Dependent on the relative rates of migration, proliferation and death, spatial heterogeneity may arise within an initially uniform field; this leads to the formation of spatial correlations and can have a negative impact upon population growth. Usually, such effects are neglected in modeling studies and simple phenomenological descriptions, such as the logistic model, are used to model population growth. In this work we outline some methods for analyzing exclusion processes which include agent proliferation, death and motility in two and three spatial dimensions with spatially homogeneous initial conditions. The mean-field description for these types of processes is of logistic form; we show that, under certain parameter conditions, such systems may display large deviations from the mean field, and suggest computationally tractable methods to correct the logistic-type description.


This thesis examines the connections between Calvinism and early modern subjectivity as expressed in the drama produced during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. By looking at a range of theological, medicaL popular, legal and polemical writings, the thesis aims to provide a new historical and theoretical reading of Calvinist subjectivity that both develops and departs from previous scholarship in the field. Chapter one examines the critical question of 'authority' in early modern Europe. I trace the various classical and medieval antecedents that reinscribed Christ with political authority during the period, and show how the Reformers' conception of conscience arises out of this movement. In chapter two, I offer a parallel reading of Refonned semiotics in relation to the individual's response to two specific loci of power, the Church and the stage. Chapter three brings the first two chapters together by outlining the development of Calvinist doctrine in early modem England. Chapter four offers a theoretical reading of the early modern 'unconscious' in relation to the construction of England as a Protestant nation state against the threat of Catholicism. In the next four chapters, I show how the stage provided the arena for the exploration of Calvinist subjectivities through readings of four early modern plays. Chapter five deals with Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and in particular the Calvinist conception of Christ interrogated throughout the play. Chapter six looks at The Revenger's Tragedy in relation to the question of masculine lineage and the Name-of-the-(Calvinist)-Father. Finally, in chapters seven and eight, I examine two of William Shakespeare's plays, Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra. In the first, I demonstrate how the play's concern with witchcraft brings about a parody of providential discourse that is crucial to an understanding of Macbeth's subjectivity. And in the second, I excavate the use of the biblical book of Revelation in Antony and Cleopatra in order to show how an understanding of the text's 'religious' concerns problematises more mainstream readings of the drama.


The concept of communication is very hard to define, its complexity spawning controversy and interpretation. Only by taking a very close look at the phenomenon may we be able to unravel its real meanings. Thus, this paper wishes to address the aforementioned goal through: analysis of current situation of communication within higher education (case of Romania), and identification of possible ways to increase communication efficiency. Yet another necessity this paper is aimed at is the need of change within education. This change is imposed upon by the process of lining up the Romanian higher education system with the one of the European Union. This process started in 1999 along with the signing of the Bologna declaration.


Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union, this book offers 'thick' descriptions, contextual histories and critical narratives engaging with leading or minor personalities involved behind the scenes of each case. The contributions depart from the notion that EU law and its history should be narrated in a linear and incremental way to show instead that law evolves in a contingent and not determinate manner. The book shows that the effects of judge-made law remain relatively indeterminate and each case can be retold through different contextual narratives, and shows the commitment of the European legal elites to the experience of legal reasoning. The idea to cluster the stories around prominent cases is not to be fully comprehensive, but to re-focus the scholarship and teaching of EU law by moving beyond the black letter and unravel the lawyering techniques to achieve policy results


Gibberellins (GAs) are biosynthesized through a complex pathway that involves several classes of enzymes. To predict sites of individual GA biosynthetic steps, we studied cell type-specific expression of genes encoding early and late GA biosynthetic enzymes in germinating Arabidopsis seeds. We showed that expression of two genes, AtGA3ox1 and AtGA3ox2, encoding GA 3-oxidase, which catalyzes the terminal biosynthetic step, was mainly localized in the cortex and endodermis of embryo axes in germinating seeds. Because another GA biosynthetic gene, AtKO1, coding for ent-kaurene oxidase, exhibited a similar cell-specific expression pattern, we predicted that the synthesis of bioactive GAs from ent-kaurene oxidation occurs in the same cell types during seed germination. We also showed that the cortical cells expand during germination, suggesting a spatial correlation between GA production and response. However, promoter activity of the AtCPS1 gene, responsible for the first committed step in GA biosynthesis, was detected exclusively in the embryo provasculature in germinating seeds. When the AtCPS1 cDNA was expressed only in the cortex and endodermis of non-germinating ga1-3 seeds (deficient in AtCPS1) using the AtGA3ox2 promoter, germination was not as resistant to a GA biosynthesis inhibitor as expression in the provasculature. These results suggest that the biosynthesis of GAs during seed germination takes place in two separate locations with the early step occurring in the provasculature and the later steps in the cortex and endodermis. This implies that intercellular transport of an intermediate of the GA biosynthetic pathway is required to produce bioactive GAs.


Digitizing books is one of the hypes around us. But the understanding of it is not widespread.

When digital capture of images started it was a rocket science. The machines were bulky and extremely expensive. Fast forward 20 years and almost anyone has in her pocket a capable tool for capturing images.

But do we understand it? Everyone – especially the producers of equipment – talk about resolution, megapixels, color accuracy and numbers, lots of numbers.

How to understand them? How to get digitization right? I want to let anyone grasp the meaning of the most important of those numbers in a test setup made out of two chairs, four LED strip lights, a few pieces of foam board and a power supply for the lights – and a cell phone with a camera.

This is not meant to replace a professional scanner but to use a phone everyone uses on daily basis to show what factors are involved in setting up a proper station for digitization of library materials.

The outcome of the poster was that the spectators got an aha feeling of understanding what and why they needed when scanning words.

For more info contact Tomasz Gruszkowski
firstname.lastname@example.com
IFLA PAC Center for digital preservation at National Library of Poland


Network alignment aims at inferring a set of anchor links matching the shared entities between different information networks, which has become a prerequisite step for effective fusion of multiple information networks. In this paper, we will study the network alignment problem to fuse online social networks specifically. Social network alignment is extremely challenging to address due to several reasons, i.e., lack of training data, network heterogeneity and one-to-one constraint. Existing network alignment works usually require a large number of training data, but such a demand can hardly be met in applications, as manual anchor link labeling is extremely expensive. Significantly different from other homogeneous network alignment works, information in online social networks is usually of heterogeneous categories, the incorporation of which in model building is not an easy task. Furthermore, the one-to-one cardinality constraint on anchor links renders their inference process intertwistingly correlated. To resolve these three challenges, a novel network alignment model, namely ActiveIter, is introduced in this paper. ActiveIter defines a set of inter-network meta diagrams for anchor link feature extraction, adopts active learning for effective label query and uses greedy link selection for anchor link cardinality filtering. Extensive experiments are conducted on real-world aligned networks datasets, and the experimental results have demonstrated the effectiveness of ActiveIter compared with other state-of-the-art baseline methods.


We use a spatially-explicit analytical framework to compare mandatory refuges and a tax on the resistant variety as regulation instruments for pest resistance management. Because the extraction of the common-pool pest susceptibility resource depends on the spatial pattern of pest dispersal, we find that the usual preference for market-based environmental instruments does not necessarily apply to pest resistance management. Mandatory refuges are preferred to a tax on the resistant variety for some assumption sets on heterogeneity between farms and pest dispersal distances.


Nowadays, many applications need data modeling facilities for the description of complex objects with spatial and/or temporal facilities. Responses to such requirements may be found in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), in some DBMS, or in the research literature. However, most of existing models cover only partly the requirements (they address either spatial or temporal modeling), and most are at the logical level, hence not well suited for database design. This paper proposes a spatio-temporal modeling approach at the conceptual level, called MADS. The proposal stems from the identification of the criteria to be met for a conceptual model. It is advocated that orthogonality is the key issue for achieving a powerful and intuitive conceptual model. Thus, the proposal focuses on highlighting similarities in the modeling of space and time, which enhance readability and understandability of the model.


Energy is essential for the world today and the demand of green energy is increasing. Development and research in green energy enables new technologies to be realized. Coriolis A/S contributes to this wave by investigating a more efficient and less costly alternative to harvesting energy from marine currents – the Foil Swing Generator (FSG). A vertically reciprocating hydrofoil containing air in compartments in the foil may produce energy by repeatedly submerging and raising itself in the water column by the lift force induced from the current speed. The hydrostatic pressure is used to compress the air which could run an air turbine or deliver compressed air. A parametric study of the different system and environmental variables are performed to find the optimal design. Solving the conservation of momentum in the vertical direction with 4th order Runge-Kutta for systems in Matlab gives indications of the optimal design. The power production of the FSG depends exponentially on the current speed and the vertical speed of the foil depends more or less linearly on the current speed. Increasing the vertical travelled distance will increase the power somewhat linearly in the start and then with a logarithmic decline. It is optimal to have the foil go deeper with a large number of offloads rather than a small vertical distance with many offloads. The power produced has shown to be in the range of it competitors. A thin foil with chord and span length of 5 and 25 meters is more efficient than a thick foil for most of the different travelled vertical distances and current speeds. Thin foils are believed to be the most efficient for different combinations of small chord and span lengths. Compared to a conventional tidal turbine the FSG is feasible for long vertical distances as the relative costs of the FSG are assumed to be smaller than for the tidal turbine. This suggests that the Foil Swing Generator should be situated in the fast moving large scale ocean currents. Results given in this thesis needs to be considered as an upper bound for the present design of the FSG as a range of approximations and assumptions are set. However, the FSG is assumed to still be feasible as the thesis revealed more efficient design and system configurations which will improve the technology.


Abstract This final article in the series on the medical management of ionizing radiation injuries and illnesses focuses on the effects of acute ionizing radiation exposure to one of the largest organ systems of the body—the skin. These injuries may extend beyond the skin into deeper tissues and cause local radiation injury. There are numerous causes of these injuries, ranging from industrial incidents to medical procedures. In the present article, the authors characterize the clinical course, pathophysiologic process, sources of injury, diagnosis, and management of local radiation injury and describe a clinical scenario. This information is important for primary care physicians, to whom patients are likely to initially present with such injuries. J Am Osteopath Assoc. 2014;114(11):840-848 doi: 10.7556/jaoa.2014.170


Vow-Taking on the Tibetan Plateau In Tibetan areas of the PRC, a new movement to assert Buddhist ethics is gaining momentum. Today Tibetans are taking vows en masse to stop engaging in activities like selling yaks for slaughter, fighting with knives or guns, and wearing tiger, leopard, or otter pelts as trim on their clothing. These vows are based on a newly formulated set of "ten virtues" (dge bcu) with prohibitions against hunting, wearing fur, stealing, visiting prostitutes, drinking alcohol, smoking, gambling, selling livestock for slaughter, fighting with weapons, and trading in arms. Whole villages and towns are committing to these ten virtues (or some portion of them) at the behest of their local lamas and clan leaders. This movement is brand new, and it is happening now. This reformulation of lay Buddhist ethics is novel in several ways. First of all, it does not follow the traditional division of Buddhist virtues into the categories of body, speech, and mind, proscribing the physical acts of killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct alongside unwholesome ways of speaking and thinking, such as lying, slander, covetousness, and malice. (2) Instead, the new ten virtues focus on observable vices that affect social life in Tibetan areas. Each virtue prohibits a specific activity and is easily translatable into a vow to be taken by the laity. By adapting Buddhist ethics to address concrete social problems, Buddhist leaders are shifting the purport of moral choices from individual self-cultivation and the soteriological goal of a favorable rebirth to a concern for Tibetans as a collective in this life. The modernist emphasis on this-worldly social issues further distinguishes the new ten virtues from their traditional Buddhist counterpart. Moreover, the manner of disseminating the new ten virtues through communal vow-taking is novel. The movement began in ad hoc fashion in the 1980s and 1990s with individual Buddhist teachers asking their lay followers to raise their hands in order to forsake specific vices, like drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes or hunting. More recently, this has evolved into more systematic efforts by monasteries and lay associations to promote vow-taking, based on the ten virtues or a local variant of them, household by household among whole communities and later tracking their performance. The epicenter of this movement lies on the border of Sichuan and Qinghai Provinces in the county of Serta (Ch: Seda), (3) emanating from Larung Buddhist Academy, one of the largest and most influential Buddhist institutions in Tibetan areas of the PRC. Certified in 1987 as an ecumenical institute, Larung Buddhist Academy is a leading advocate of ethical reform and the locus of an emergent Buddhist modernism, (4) spearheaded by its charismatic founder Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok (Mkhan po 'Jigs med phun tshogs, 1933-2004) and his successors. (5) The influence of Larung Buddhist Academy is keenly felt across the Tibetan plateau not only because of the prominence of its founder and its scale as an institution--with more than ten thousand monks and nuns--but also because many of the monastics who study there return to their home monasteries, bringing with them attitudes shaped by leading voices at Larung. This means that ethical reform has fanned out to areas surrounding Serta, such as Dzamthang, Drango, Ngawa, and Nyagrong, and also leapfrogged to places further away like Yushu. In what follows, I examine the ideological underpinnings of this movement to rearticulate Buddhist ethics into a platform for social reform. Specifically, I examine how seminal works of advice to the laity by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok and one of his principal successors, Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro (Mkhan po Tshul khrims blo gros), have helped to shape this nascent ethical reform movement on the Tibetan plateau. In respective works of advice, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok provides the broad ideological backdrop for the movement in his influential Heart Advice to Tibetans for the 21st Century (composed in 1995), (6) and Khenpo Tsultrim Lodro formulates this into a coherent series of action points in a later work, Timely Advice: A Mirror that Illuminates the Two Systems (2004). …


Preface. Introduction. Data Sets. Tests of Statistical Significance of Combined Results. Vote-Counting Methods. Estimation of a Single Effect Size: Parametric and Nonparametric Methods. Parametric Estimation of Effect Size from a Series of Experiments. Fitting Parametric Fixed Effect Models to Effect Sizes: Categorical Methods. Fitting Parametric Fixed Effect Models to Effect Sizes: General Linear Models. Random Effects Models for Effect Sizes. Multivariate Models for Effect Sizes. Combining Estimates of Correlation Coefficients. Diagnostic Procedures for Research Synthesis Models. Clustering Estimates of Effect Magnitude. Estimation of Effect Size When Not All Study Outcomes Are Observed. Meta-Analysis in the Physical and Biological Sciences. Appendix. References. Index.


We trace the relationship between firm performance and corporate governance in microfinance institutions (MFI) utilising a self constructed global data set on MFIs, collected from third-party rating agencies. We study the effect of board characteristics, ownership type, competition and regulation on the MFI's outreach to poor clients and its financial performance. The results show that split roles of CEO and chairman, a female CEO, and competition are important explanations. Larger board size decreases the average loan size while individual guaranteed loan increases it. No difference between nonprofit organisations and shareholder firms in financial performance and outreach is found.


In syntax, reconstruction is limited to patterns, that is, repeated surface forms paired with a consistent function or distribution. Comparative reconstruction is illustrated with the example of the pattern of yes/no questions in Kartvelian languages and the core case marking pattern in the languages of the Nakh-Daghestanian family. The method involves setting up correspondences among patterns in languages known to be related. Determination of the ancestral pattern may make use of syntactic relics, dialect data, phonological correspondences, the principle of economy, and identification of internal or external sources of innovation, among other resources. Co-occurrence of all parts of a pattern provides the required safeguards in reconstruction of syntax, just as co-occurrence of all parts of a word does in reconstruction of phonology. Reconstruction of syntax is more likely to be successful in language families with less time depth and in ones with complex morphology reflecting the syntax, than in families lacking these characteristics.


ABSTRACT Reliance on teacher assistants (TAs) in mainstream schools to support students with disability and learning difficulties is an increasing trend in Australia. In 2011, over 80,000 TAs were employed costing approximately $3billion per annum [DEEWR. 2012. Job Outlook. Accessed June 2013. http://joboutlook.gov.au/default.aspx]. This paper reports on the employment procedures and practices that affect TAs working in four mainstream schools in Australia. Using data gathered from a qualitative case study conducted over three years, the study found that TAs and teachers have minimal understanding of the TA role. In addition, TAs have limited understanding of employer expectations, education department system policies, the TA career structure and school policies. Existing procedures and practices, both at the education department system level and at the individual school level, exclude TAs from accessing information afforded to other school staff. As a result, TAs work alone and often fail to provide effective support to both students and teachers. It is recommended that school leaders improve employment conditions for TAs at both system and school levels to ensure that students and teachers receive maximum benefit from employing TAs.


This dissertation addresses the general problem of recognition of acoustic signals which may be derived from speech, sonar, or acoustic phenomena. The specific problem of recognizing speech is the main focus of this research. The intention is to design a recognition system for a definite number of discrete words. For this purpose specifically, eight isolated words from the T1MIT database are selected. Four medium length words "greasy," "dark," "wash," and "water" are used. In addition, four short words are considered "she," "had," "in," and "all." The recognition system addresses the following issues: filtering or preprocessing, training, and decision-making. The preprocessing phase uses linear predictive coding of order 12. Following the filtering process, a vector quantization method is used to further reduce the input data and generate a finite inductive sequence of symbols representative of each input signal. The sequences generated by the vector quantization process of the same word are factored, and a single ruling or reference template is generated and stored in a codebook. This system introduces a new modeling technique which relies heavily on the basic concept that all finite sequences are finitely inductive. This technique is used in the training stage. In order to accommodate the variabilities in speech, the training is performed casualty, and a large number of training speakers is used from eight different dialect regions. Hence, a speaker independent recognition system is realized. The matching process compares the incoming speech with each of the templates stored, and a closeness ration is computed. A ratio table is generated anH the matching word that corresponds to the smallest ratio (i.e. indicating that the ruling has removed most of the symbols) is selected. Promising results were obtained for isolated words, and the recognition rates ranged between 50% and 100%.


The right to health care is considered as being fundamental to the physical, emotional and mental well-being of all individuals. Similarly, it is considered a necessary condition for the exercise of other human rights. Emergency medical treatment (EMT) on the other hand, although an important component of the right to health, has not received the same recognition as a human right on its own. EMT is still deemed a luxury in developing countries with Kenya being no exception. In essence, the right to emergency health care is unwittingly detached from the right to health. This perhaps explains why some countries like South Africa and Kenya have recognized the significance of including in their constitutions an express provision creating an obligation, albeit from a negative right, requiring that no one be denied EMT. In Kenya, Article 43(2) provides, 'A person shall not be denied emergency medical treatment'. What does this mean and does it place any obligation on the state to ensure the realization of this right as a social justice issue? If it does, what sort of obligation is this? Consequently, this paper seeks to identify Kenya's position with respect to its obligation which makes it unconstitutional to refuse a person EMT. What has the country done, in terms of legislative and policy formulation, to realize this constitutional 'negative right'? Does this obligation extend to private medical practitioners or is it limited to public hospitals?


A screen in yeast uncovers new signaling components in the pheromone response pathway. Do we have a relatively complete parts list for understanding cellular signaling? A systematic exploration of genes essential for viability in yeast for their potential roles in signaling indicates that perhaps we do not. Cappell et al. focused on essential genes (which are more likely than the average yeast gene to have human orthologs) and used a library of strains in which the promoter of individual essential genes can be acutely repressed by treating the yeast cells with tetracycline. Screening for genes required for proper signaling through the heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide–binding protein (G protein)–coupled receptors that recognize mating hormones identified 92 such essential genes and some unanticipated regulatory components of the pheromone signaling pathway. Several genes encoding proteins that function in ubiquitin-dependent degradation of proteins were identified, and the authors confirmed that the Cdc34 protein, a ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme, could directly ubiquitinate Gpa1, the yeast G protein α subunit. The ubiquitin ligase complex SCFCdc4 and Cdc34 appear to function in promoting pheromone signaling by enhancing degradation of Gpa1, thus preventing it from sequestering G protein β-γ subunits. Also implicated in signaling were the phosphatidylinositol 4-kinases Pik1 and Stt4. Generation of monophosphorylated phosphoinositides appeared to be required for activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase Fus3. The authors predict that there are in fact "many new pathway components to be found." S. D. Cappell, R. Baker, D. Skowyra, H. G. Dohlman, Systematic analysis of essential genes reveals important regulators of G protein signaling. Mol. Cell 38, 746–757 (2010). [PubMed]


Generative audio models based on neural networks have led to considerable improvements across fields including speech enhancement, source separation, and text-to-speech synthesis. These systems are typically trained in a supervised fashion using simple element-wise l1 or l2 losses. However, because they do not capture properties of the human auditory system, such losses encourage modelling perceptually meaningless aspects of the output, wasting capacity and limiting performance. Additionally, while adversarial models have been employed to encourage outputs that are statistically indistinguishable from ground truth and have resulted in improvements in this regard, such losses do not need to explicitly model perception as their task; furthermore, training adversarial networks remains an unstable and slow process. In this work, we investigate an idea fundamentally rooted in psychoacoustics. We train a neural network to emulate an MP3 codec as a differentiable function. Feeding the output of a generative model through this MP3 function, we remove signal components that are perceptually irrelevant before computing a loss. To further stabilize gradient propagation, we employ intermediate layer outputs to define our loss, as found useful in image domain methods. Our experiments using an autoencoding task show an improvement over standard losses in listening tests, indicating the potential of psychoacoustically motivated models for audio generation.


A growing number of democratic constitutions entrench social and economic rights (SER), impose affirmative obligations on government to promote and fulfill such rights, and render SER judicially enforceable at least in some degree. This combination raises new and challenging questions regarding separation of powers and the relative institutional competence of legislatures and courts. This article explores two judgments, Hartz IV from the German Federal Constitutional Court and Mazibuko & Others v City of Johannesburg & Others from the South African Constitutional Court. In both cases, litigants asked a reviewing court to test the constitutional validity of a legislative or executive program to give effect to a SER in which the key issue was whether the government's program provided the target population with the constitutionally guaranteed social good in a sufficient amount measured in quantitative terms. The article argues that the difference in outcome between these two cases is not based in the doctrine that the Courts say they are applying, but rather in the different understandings the respective Courts have of their constraint to address an issue of SER and the limits of their creativity in a separation of powers doctrine to call the elected branches to account and engage civil society in a democracy.


In this paper, we use differential privacy as a lens to examine online learning in both full and partial information settings. The differential privacy framework is, at heart, less about privacy and more about algorithmic stability, and thus has found application in domains well beyond those where information security is central. Here we develop an algorithmic property called one-step differential stability which facilitates a more refined regret analysis for online learning methods. We show that tools from the differential privacy literature can yield regret bounds for many interesting online learning problems including online convex optimization and online linear optimization. Our stability notion is particularly well-suited for deriving first-order regret bounds for follow-the-perturbed-leader algorithms, something that all previous analyses have struggled to achieve. We also generalize the standard max-divergence to obtain a broader class called Tsallis max-divergences. These define stronger notions of stability that are useful in deriving bounds in partial information settings such as multi-armed bandits and bandits with experts.


Background Migrants account for 35% of HIV diagnoses in the European Union (ECDC/WHO 2014). Little is known about the impact of such a lifelong infection diagnosis on lives that are already disrupted by migration. In this paper, we assess the impact of HIV diagnosis on activity, union, well-being among African migrants living in France, the second group most affected by HIV after MSM. We compare it with the impact of the diagnosis of Hepatitis B, another lifelong infection affecting African migrants. Methods We use the ANRS PARCOURS survey, a retrospective life-event survey led in 2012–2013 in 74 health structures in Paris greater area which collected 926 life histories of Sub-Saharan migrants living with HIV and 779 with Hepatitis B. We modelled the probability year by year since 18 years of age until data collection to lose one's activity, to experience a conjugal break up and degradation of well-being and we estimated the impact of migration and of HIV and Hepatitis B diagnoses on these probabilities, after adjustment on other factors, thanks to discrete-time logistic regressions. Results Migration entailed loss of activity and conjugal break up, though HIV diagnosis after migration did not statistically impact on these outcomes. Yet HIV diagnosis had a massive negative impact on well-being (aOR = 11.31 [4.64–27.56] for men and 5.75 [2.79–11.86] for women). This negative impact on well-being tended to diminish for persons diagnosed after 2004. The negative impact of HIV diagnosis on African migrants' well-being seems to be attenuated in the last decade, which hints at a normalization of the subjective experience of HIV diagnosis.


This Note focuses on the laws of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the United Kingdom as they affect part-time workers in the United Kingdom. Part I provides a general background to the equal pay laws of the EEC and the United Kingdom. Part II traces the legislative history of these laws and analyzes whether the administrative and legislative bodies of the EEC and the United Kingdom intended to apply equal pay laws to part-time workers. Part III chronologically reviews the case law and examines the difficulties encountered by tribunals interpreting the equal pay laws. Finally, Part IV analyzes the European Court of Justice's disregard for the legislative intent behind the equal pay laws and discusses the confusion created by this disregard for courts in the United Kingdom. APPLICATION OF THE LAWS OF THE EEC AND THE UNITED KINGDOM TO PART-TIME WOMEN WORKERS


There is considerable interest in the use of genetic algorithms to solve problems arising in the areas of scheduling and timetabling. However, the classical genetic algorithm paradigm is not well equipped to handle the conflict between objectives and constraints that typically occurs in such problems. In order to overcome this, successful implementations frequently make use of problem specific knowledge. This paper is concerned with the development of a GA for a nurse rostering problem at a major UK hospital. The structure of the constraints is used as the basis for a co-evolutionary strategy using co-operating sub-populations. Problem specific knowledge is also used to define a system of incentives and disincentives, and a complementary mutation operator. Empirical results based on 52 weeks of live data show how these features are able to improve an unsuccessful canonical GA to the point where it is able to provide a practical solution to the problem.


Biodiversity indices are widely used to summarize changes in the distribution and abundance of multiple species and measure progress towards management targets. However, the sensitivity of biodiversity indices to the data, landscape classification and conservation values underpinning them are rarely interrogated. There are limited studies to help scientists and land managers use biodiversity indices in the presence of fire and vegetation succession.

The geometric mean of species' relative abundance or occurrence (G) is a biodiversity index that can be used to determine the mix of post-fire vegetation that maximizes biodiversity. We explored the sensitivity of G to (1) type of biodiversity data, (2) representation of ecosystem states, (3) expression of conservation values, and (4) uncertainty in species' response to landscape structure. Our case study is an area of fire-prone woodland in southern Australia where G is used in fire management planning. We analysed three datasets to determine the fire responses of 170 bird, mammal and reptile species.

G and fire management targets were sensitive to the species included in the analysis. The optimal mix of vegetation successional states for threatened birds was more narrowly defined than the optimal mix for all species combined. G was less sensitive to successional classification (i.e. number of states); although classifications of increasing complexity provided additional insights into desirable levels of heterogeneity.

Weighting species by conservation status or endemism influenced the mix of vegetation states that maximized biodiversity. When a higher value was placed on threatened species the importance of late successional vegetation was emphasized.

Representing variation in individual species' response to vegetation structure made it clearer when a decrease in G was likely to reflect a significant reduction in species occurrences.

Synthesis and applications. Data, models and conservation values can be combined using biodiversity indices to make robust environmental decisions. Combining different types of biodiversity data using composite indices, such as the geometric mean, can improve the coverage and relevance of biodiversity indices. We recommend that evaluation of biodiversity indices for fire management verify how index assumptions align with management objectives, consider the relative merits of different types of biodiversity data, test sensitivity of ecosystem state definitions and incorporate conservation values through species weightings.


The immunity of sheep to Eperythrozoon ovis (E.ovis) has been investigated through the peripheral blood smears stained with Giemsa. A naturally infected flock monitored for a year revealed the activity of peripheral blood monocytes to be involved in active phagocytosis of infected erythrocytes; a process called erythrophagocytosis. Although neutrophils, lymphocytes and thrombocytes were found to be activated in the initial stage of immune response, the monocytes seemed to predominate the phagocytosis at the later stage of infection during erythrophagocytosis. At all stages and degree of infections, no obvious anaemia, jaundice and emaciation were observed in these well fed sheep flocks. Anaemia was observed in flocks where malnourishment and stress conditions were present with a consistent high degree of parasitaemia. E.ovis infection trial in mice exhibited more lymphocytic activities compared to the sheep , although lymphocytes, neutrophils and thrombocytes were involved in the early enhancement of inflammatory process against E.ovis as per in the sheep. These inflammatory processes were observed at day 20 post infection in mice. Similarly, only monocytes were found to be actively involved in erythrophagocytosis at the later stage of infection prior to the disappearance of the organisms from the peripheral circulation. Increased Kupffer cell activity showed liver was also involved in the removal of infected erythrocytes besides the blood peripheral macrophages.
In vitro phagocytosis assay using the Acridine Orange as the flurochrome revealed that peripheral monocytes ingested around eight cells of E.ovis per monocyte within 30 minutes upon contact. These cells were also killed within 30 minutes upon ingestion, characterised as red cells within the cytoplasm of monocytes. The Enzyme–linked Immunosorbent Assay was possible for optimization and was not suitable for further development as the Lang's method yields impure antigen from blood lysates. Latex test development was hindered due to the various host and immune serum factors that have resulted in non- specific agglutinations.
The persistence of infection in the flock throughout the one - year period of observation signified that sheep had been constantly infected with E.ovis and remained carriers for a very long period. The persistent parasitemia may suggest that the immunity to the parasite has been very complex probably due to highly diversed antigenic variants, a characteristic exhibited by most rickettsiae in the Order of Rickettsiales or as a result of detrimental effects of the organism on the immune mechanism.
Sheep flocks naturally infected with E.ovis have remained permanent carriers. The findings from this research suggest that the sheep was unable to confer an effective or protective immune response against the pathogen. Peripheral blood macrophages are the most important first line of defense in removing the E.ovis from the peripheral blood.


While attention has been paid to other industries exhibiting effective use of management accounting practices (MAPs) and performance measurement systems, Malaysian service industry in general and education sector in
particular have received less. At its inception, this research examines the performance of Institutions of Higher Learning (IHLs) in providing management accounting functions by way of looking at the relationship between the application of management accounting techniques (MATs) and the performance of managerial activities of IHLs. This takes into account the
ramifications on two different sets of techniques used, i.e., traditional MATs
(TMATs) and advanced MATs (AMATs). This study also identifies the relevant
key performance indicators (KPIs) of IHLs as to determine the best practiced
measures for tertiary institutions within the Malaysian context. Data are drawn from a survey among finance offices of both public and private
IHLs of 32 responses. Findings indicate the use of performance measurement by
in institutions of higher learning (IHLs) is pervasive, although survey respondents
are less enthusiastic about measurement effectiveness. Study results show subtle
distinctions between public IHLs and private IHLs in their use of performance
measurements for management accounting functions. Research findings
further indicate the eagerness of Malaysian IHLs in using KPIs as one of their
MATs in order to obtain the benefits of best management accounting practices.


Preclinical studies on animal models have discerned the antiamnesic and memory-enhancing potential of Bacopa monniera (Brahmi) crude extract and standardized extracts. These studies primarily focus on behavioral consequences. However, lack of information on molecular underpinnings has limited the clinical trials of the potent herb in human subjects. In recent years, researchers highlight plasticity markers as molecular correlates of amnesia and being crucial to design therapeutic targets. In the present report, we have investigated the effect of a special extract of B. monniera (CDRI-08) on the expression of key neuronal (BDNF and Arc) and glial (GFAP) plasticity markers in the cerebrum of scopolamine induced amnesic mice. Pre- and postadministration of CDRI-08 ameliorated amnesic effect of scopolamine by decreasing acetyl cholinesterase activity and drastically upregulating the mRNA and protein expression of BDNF, Arc, and GFAP in mouse cerebrum. Interestingly, the plant extract per se elevated BDNF and Arc expression as compared to control but GFAP was unaltered. In conclusion, our findings provide the first molecular evidence for antiamnesic potential of CDRI-08 via enhancement of both neuronal and glial plasticity markers. Further investigations on detailed molecular pathways would encourage therapeutic application of the extract in memory disorders.


From Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, and author of My Name is Red and Istanbul, comes a collection of immediate relevance and timeless value. His original pieces have been sympathetically revisited by the author, and the result is a new work of great narrative richness and intensity. Other Colours ranges from lyrical autobiography to essays on literature and culture, from humour to political analysis, from delicate evocations of his friendship with his daughter to provocative discussions of Eastern and Western art. Reflections on Pamuk's first passport, his first trip to Europe, his father's death, his political views, his recent court case, and the Istanbul earthquake share space with a collection of pieces on writers as various as Laurence Sterne and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Vladimir Nabokov and Mario Vargas Llosa. There are sections on Istanbul, New York - where Pamuk lived for two years - and on the writing of each of his novels. Interspersed among these are some of Pamuk's own illustrated works of art, and a short story 'Looking Out the Window'. My Father's Suitcase, Pamuk's 2006 Nobel Lecture, a brilliant illumination of what it means to be a writer, completes the selection from one of literature's most eminent and popular figures.


We report a novel function for BLADE-ON-PETIOLE1 (BOP1) and BOP2 in regulating Arabidopsis thaliana lateral organ cell fate and polarity, through the analysis of loss-of-function mutants and transgenic plants that ectopically express BOP1 or BOP2. 35S:BOP1 and 35S:BOP2 plants exhibit a very short and compact stature, hyponastic leaves, and downward-orienting siliques. We show that the LATERAL ORGAN BOUNDARIES (LOB) domain genes ASYMMETRIC LEAVES2 (AS2) and LOB are upregulated in 35S:BOP and downregulated in bop mutant plants. Ectopic expression of BOP1 or BOP2 also results in repression of class I knox gene expression. We further demonstrate a role for BOP1 and BOP2 in establishing the adaxial-abaxial polarity axis in the leaf petiole, where they regulate PHB and FIL expression and overlap in function with AS1 and AS2. Interestingly, during this study, we found that KANADI1 (KAN1) and KAN2 act to promote adaxial organ identity in addition to their well-known role in promoting abaxial organ identity. Our data indicate that BOP1 and BOP2 act in cells adjacent to the lateral organ boundary to repress genes that confer meristem cell fate and induce genes that promote lateral organ fate and polarity, thereby restricting the developmental potential of the organ-forming cells and facilitating their differentiation.


We describe and comment on two aberrant individuals of the genus Stenella from Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, tropical West Atlantic, which we regard as interspecific hybrids. Each dolphin was found living with a large group of the spinner dolphins, Stenella longirostris. One of the aberrant dolphins is a presumed hybrid between S. longirostris and S. attenuata, and the second one is possibly a hybrid between S. longirostris and S. clymene. Each of the hybrids was accompanied by a spinner female. The S. longirostris × S. attenuata was first sighted as a calf and was re-sighted several times over two years. This individual was recorded being nursed by the female. The other hybrid was re-sighted a few times over three months.


Background: Struma ovarii is a highly specialized form of mature ovarian teratoma consisting of thyroid tissue and exhibiting all the histological features of the thyroid gland. Malignant transformation of thyroid tissue in struma ovarii and metastasis are extremely uncommon. In rare cases, benign thyroid tissue may spread to the peritoneal cavity, and pathologic examination of the peritoneal implants shows multiple nodules of varying sizes of mature thyroid tissue similar to struma ovarii.
Summary: We report a 30-year-old woman with struma ovarii complicated by peritoneal dissemination with thyrotoxicosis. After surgical resection of the struma ovarii and peritoneal implants the patient became euthyroid.


Carbonate strata that occur as blocks encased in gypsum of three different salt diapirs in La Popa Basin contain a single invertebrate fauna indicating a Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) age for all sampled fossiliferous blocks. The most biostratigraphically significant species, present in all diapirs, is the gryphaeid oyster Nanogyra virgula. Other species identified in the blocks include the bivalves Astarte gracilicostula, Cercomya durangensis, Myophorella sp., Grammatodon sp. and the nautiloid Cymatoceras? sp. Geologic relations of the entire assemblage of carbonate blocks, including nodular gypsum interbedded with the fossiliferous beds, salt casts in micrite of the blocks, random structural position of blocks within the diapiric evaporite, absence of blocks younger than Early Kimmeridgian in the diapirs, and regional stratigraphic relations, suggest that the carbonate strata were originally interbedded with, or directly overlie, evaporite strata. This inference is corroborated by the presence of Nanogyra virgula (previously reported as Exogyra cf. E. susplicifera) in carbonate strata directly overlying massive gypsum at Potrero Minas Viejas, adjacent to La Popa Basin. Although previously correlated with the Zuloaga Limestone, the fauna in the carbonate blocks of the diapir instead indicate a correlation with carbonate and evaporite strata of the Olvido Formation, and by extension, with siliciclastic strata of La Caja and La Casita formations. The new biostratigraphic data thus indicate that evaporite deposition persisted into the Kimmeridgian and, because the fossiliferous beds are inferred to have overlain a very thick section of halite (>2 km), it is suggested that evaporite deposition was continuous with only brief interludes of carbonate deposition from Callovian to early Kimmeridgian time in La Popa Basin.