We model the open magnetic field region in Saturn's southern polar ionosphere during two compression regions observed by the Cassini spacecraft upstream of Saturn in January 2004, and compare these with the auroral ovals observed simultaneously in ultraviolet images obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope. The modelling employs the paraboloid model of Saturn's magnetospheric magnetic field, whose parameters are varied according to the observed values of both the solar wind dynamic pressure and the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) vector. It is shown that the open field area responds strongly to the IMF vector for both expanded and compressed magnetic models, corresponding to low and high dynamic pressure, respectively. It is also shown that the computed open field region agrees with the poleward boundary of the auroras as well as or better than those derived previously from a model in which only the variation of the IMF vector was taken into account. The results again support the hypothesis that the auroral oval at Saturn is associated with the open-closed field line boundary and hence with the solar wind interaction.


Balasubramanian, P. M., Conner, R. L., McLaren, D. L., Chatterton, S. and Hou, A. 2014. Partial resistance to white mould in dry bean. Can. J. Plant Sci. 94: 683-691. White mould, caused by Sclerotinia sclerotiorum (Lib.) de Bary, is a constraint on dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) production across Canada. Under high disease pressure, dry bean cultivars succumb to the disease resulting in a severe loss of seed yield and quality. Disease development is highly influenced by environmental conditions. In the absence of complete resistance to white mould, dry bean cultivars with both field resistance (avoidance) and physiological resistance would be preferred by growers in order to reduce disease risk and production costs. The objective of this study was to characterize select dry bean genotypes for field resistance to white mould in inoculated disease nurseries, and physiological resistance in a controlled environment. White mould ratings ranged from moderately susceptible to susceptible. Dry bean cultivars lacked both field resistance and physiological resistance. Germplasm lines I9365-25, G122, A 195 and I9635-31 had low disease severity ratings (5.1 to 5.6 at 26 d after inoculation using a 1 to 9 visual disease rating scale) in controlled environment indicating physiological resistance. L 192, MO162, 92BG-7 and OAC Rico also had acceptable levels of physiological resistance (severity ratings of 5.8 to 6.2 at 26 d after inoculation). G122, A 195, L 192 and MO 162 had low white mould disease incidences (16 to 25%) in the field over 4 yr indicating field resistance to white mould. These genotypes may be used as parents in the development of dry bean cultivars with enhanced resistance to white mould.


Fragmentation is a continuing threat to the sustainability of forests in the Eastern United States, where land use changes supporting a growing human population are the primary driver of forest fragmentation (Stein and others 2009). While once mostly forested, approximately 40 percent of the original forest area has been converted to other land uses, and most of the remainder is not original forest (Smith and others 2009). The direct loss of forest land is an obvious threat; less obvious are the threats posed by isolation and edge which encompass a wide range of negative biotic and abiotic influences on remnant forest (e.g., Forman and Alexander 1998, Harper and others 2005, Laurance 2008, Murcia 1995, Ries and others 2004). Landcover data from 1992 indicated that forest tended to be dominant and well-connected where it occurred, but also that fragmentation was so pervasive that only 10 percent of the eastern forest area was not fragmented at a landscape scale of 66 ha, and that at least 40 percent of forest area was within 90 m of forest edge (Riitters and others 2002, 2004). Between 1992 and 2001, there was a net loss of interior forest in the east, and landscapes once dominated by forest are now dominated by other land uses (Wickham and others 2007, 2008). In 16 of the 31 Eastern States, the wildland-urban interface now encompasses more than 25 percent of total land area (Radeloff and others 2005), and one-third of the eastern forest exists within neighborhoods that also contain at least 10 percent agricultural landcover (Riitters 2011).


We consider the task of recovering two real or complex $m$-vectors from phaseless Fourier measurements of their circular convolution. Our method is a novel convex relaxation that is based on a lifted matrix recovery formulation that allows a nontrivial convex relaxation of the bilinear measurements from convolution. We prove that if the two signals belong to known random subspaces of dimensions $k$ and $n$, then they can be recovered up to the inherent scaling ambiguity with $m >> (k+n) \log^2 m$ phaseless measurements. Our method provides the first theoretical recovery guarantee for this problem by a computationally efficient algorithm and does not require a solution estimate to be computed for initialization. Our proof is based Rademacher complexity estimates. Additionally, we provide an ADMM implementation of the method and provide numerical experiments that verify the theory.


Background and purpose — Metal-on-metal hip implants have been widely used, especially in the USA, Australia, England and Wales, and Finland. We assessed risk of death and updated data on the risk of cancer related to metal-on-metal hip replacements. Patients and methods — A cohort of 10,728 metal-on-metal hip replacement patients and a reference cohort of 18,235 conventional total hip replacement patients were extracted from the Finnish Arthroplasty Register for the years 2001–2010. Data on incident cancer cases and causes of death until 2011 were obtained from the Finnish Cancer Registry and Statistics Finland. The relative risk of cancer and death were expressed as standardized incidence ratio (SIR) and standardized mortality ratio (SMR). SIR/SIR ratios and SMR/SMR ratios, and Poisson regression were used to compare the cancer risk and the risk of death between cohorts. Results — The overall risk of cancer in the metal-on-metal cohort was not higher than that in the non-metal-on-metal cohort (RR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.82–1.02). The risk of soft-tissue sarcoma and basalioma in the metal-on-metal cohort was higher than in the non-metal-on-metal cohort (SIR/SIR ratio = 2.6, CI: 1.02–6.4 for soft-tissue sarcoma; SIR/SIR ratio = 1.3, CI: 1.1–1.5 for basalioma). The overall risk of death in the metal-on-metal cohort was less than that in the non-metal-on-metal cohort (RR = 0.78, CI: 0.69–0.88). Interpretation — The overall risk of cancer or risk of death because of cancer is not increased after metal-on-metal hip replacement. The well-patient effect and selection bias contribute substantially to the findings concerning mortality. Arthrocobaltism does not increase mortality in patients with metal-on-metal hip implants in the short term. However, metal-on-metal hip implants should not be considered safe until data with longer follow-up time are available.


Short-chained sugar compounds, thought to be involved in the synthesis of callose, were formed in small amounts from UDP-glucose by soluble extracts from hypocotyls of seedlings of Phaseolus aureus. The properties of the glycosides were investigated by treatment with various chemicals and analysis by paper chromatography, g.l.c. and mass spectrometry. The data obtained support the characterization of these compounds as myoinositol-beta-glucoside and diglucosylmyoinositol. The cyclitol moiety was provided by the enzyme extract. Free myoinositol was not the immediate substrate but a compound containing myoinositol, isolated from the enzyme extract, may be involved. The method of synthesis of these glucosides is compared with that of other cyclitol glycosides.


Abstract. Accurate measurement of distances is of paramount importance to transportation infrastructure planning. Be it for estimating travel time, locating accidents and hazards through road markers, planning maintenance services, or setting prices for building contracts, distance is the primary metric upon which all aspects of the job are based, given that transportation infrastructure deals mostly with linear features. Yet, countries with older infrastructure often don't know for how long their networks run – especially so in case of developing countries. Brazil currently has over 2640000 km of roads, with construction documentation lacking for most of the network. The most used method for generating distance measurements, the car odometer from driving between two points, while apt for doing macro-regional planning, is unfit for large-scale engineering work, as this study shows below.The industry standard for measuring distances uses a precision odometer connected to specialized tires, used either on their own or as a "fifth wheel" on a vehicle. Such method, however, is laborious and slow, and only generates a scalar between two points, with any new distance necessitating a new measurement, even if the two sets share a common space, or if one distance is a subset of the other. This paper proposes the usage of systematic mapping techniques to generate topographic linear features with measuring information, from which any distance can be calculated. To generate these features, first a linear path is constructed in GIS software over a route. The height information of each node in the path is then extracted from a source, and then the topographic distance is calculated from the vertical profile. Finally, an M coordinate is generated for each node.For comparison between sources, a base path was used as ground truth. This path was constructed from a GNSS survey along the road, collected on cinematic mode at 10Hz (1.1 m gap between points), and post-processed with fixed-phase relative positioning tied to a base station. The mean positional quality achieved was 2.5 cm of planimetric, and 4.3 cm of altimetric precision. Two other sources of height information were used for comparison, one a flight DTM with 33 cm LE90 and 1 m of cell size, and the NASA 1 Arc-second SRTM with a nominal 9 m LE90 and 30 m cell size. Furthermore, a planimetric distance using a navigational GPS device (C/A code only) was also calculated. Two highways were selected for testing, and divided into 341 segments of 200 meters each, to account for the influence of slope in the calculations.As expected, the flight DTM came the closest to the base model, deviating from it at an average of 31.95 ppm, with 2.8 ppm of standard error. It is, however, the most expensive and time-consuming method. The SRTM deviated an average of 5131.53 ppm and showed very high variation, with 8481.96 ppm of standard error. The navigation GPS deviated at an average of 685.18 ppm, with 633.11 ppm of standard error. Both the SRTM and GPS appear to deviate further from the base model as slope increases, but given that few segments with over 2.5° of slope were present in the sample, a correlation could not yet be established. For comparison, the average of the car odometer method was 16654.51 ppm, with a standard error of 22661.69 ppm. Given its high deviation, the SRTM is unfit for precision work, but is a big improvement over using the car odometer for general indications. Further studies with mid-range DTMs should be done to provide a remote sensing alternative. The handheld GPS had better results than expected, given its nominal precision of 15 m. Despite a probable larger absolute positioning error, its relative error distribution remained steady enough to allow a good distance measurement.


The study of microbial communities has been revolutionised in recent years by the widespread adoption of culture independent analytical techniques such as 16S rRNA gene sequencing and metagenomics. One potential confounder of these sequence-based approaches is the presence of contamination in DNA extraction kits and other laboratory reagents. In this study we demonstrate that contaminating DNA is ubiquitous in commonly used DNA extraction kits, varies greatly in composition between different kits and kit batches, and that this contamination critically impacts results obtained from samples containing a low microbial biomass. Contamination impacts both PCR based 16S rRNA gene surveys and shotgun metagenomics. These results suggest that caution should be advised when applying sequence-based techniques to the study of microbiota present in low biomass environments. We provide an extensive list of potential contaminating genera, and guidelines on how to mitigate the effects of contamination. Concurrent sequencing of negative control samples is strongly advised.


The purpose of the following study is to explore the psychological practice and racing experience of competitive distance runners. It is proposed that a new mindset called DARE state be used to describe the mental experience of athletes when they are engaged in training that encompasses a "love of challenge," deliberate practice and flow state in the same workout or race. The presence of both deliberate practice and flow in the same session is a new proposition as previously these two concepts have been viewed to be opposed. Seventy-four competitive college runners completed measures that assessed deliberate practice, flow state, and athletes' love of challenge after intense practices and races. We found that runners do experience aspects of deliberate practice and flow during the same session when both practicing and racing. In fact, deliberate practice and flow scales were found to be positively correlated. The second hypothesis of this study, which stated that DARE state scores would be positively correlated with running performance improvement was supported. DARE state scores were positively related to athletes' subjective ratings of performance, coaches ratings of athlete improvement, and the degree to which athletes were meeting their coach's expectations. DARE state was also positively correlated with objective measures of running improvement, but this failed to reach significance. In sum, we found evidence that both deliberate practice and flow can be experienced by athlete's in the same training session, and that athletes who experience both of these phenomena in the same session frequently may improve more quickly then athletes who do not.


Abstract. A new precipitation and convection dataset for the Mediterranean Basin, derived from operational satellite microwave data is documented. The dataset is derived from diagnostics that rely on brightness temperatures measured since 1999 in the water vapour absorption line (183–191 GHz). The dataset consists of twice-daily (a.m. and p.m.) and monthly maps of precipitation and convection occurrences on a 0.2° lat × 0.2° long grid for the area 25°–60° N, 10° W–50° E. The instruments used so far are the AMSU-B sensor on the NOAA-15 to -17 satellites, and the MHS sensor on the NOAA-18 and -19 and METOP-2 satellites, with precipitation and convection available separately for the different sensors. The slightly different radiometric characteristics of MHS compared to AMSU-B do not affect significantly the continuity of the dataset. Precipitation and convection data from different sensors on different satellites are remarkably consistent, with generally small biases between the instruments. When larger biases appear, they can be explained either by the drifts in the satellite orbit, scan asymmetry, or temporal aliasing from insufficiently resolving the diurnal cycle of precipitation and convection. After a description of climatological aspects of rain and deep convection occurrence, the interest of this dataset to evaluate model uncertainties for simulating a high-impact weather event and for climatic regional runs over this area is illustrated.


Objective: This work aimed to report our observations on idiopathic or immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) in elderly patients.
Patients and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed a cohort of 41 consecutive elderly ITP patients (≥65 years old) in two ITP reference centers, namely the university hospital groups of Strasbourg and Reims, France. We particularly analyzed patient clinical characteristics, along with the therapies used and side-effects, and patient response rates.
Results: The mean age of the 41 patients was 76.7 years (range: 65-91), 21 (51%) were older than 75 years and 27 were female. Initial presentations included the following: thrombocytopenia revealed by routine blood count or bleeding limited to the skin in 27 cases (66%); severe cutaneous bleeding or visceral bleeding in one or more other sites in 14 (34%). The mean platelet count was 34.4 x 109/L (range: 1-120). Spontaneous remission and complete response under therapy were reported in eight patients (20%) and 33 (80%) still exhibited chronic ITP at time of writing. There were three deaths during long-term follow-up. After 6 months, the response rate was 35% with corticosteroids, 50% with splenectomy, and 40% with danazol. Side-effects were reported in 100% of elderly ITP patients, with 60% and 50% corresponding to corticosteroids and danazol, respectively. The response rate to biological agents, namely rituximab and thrombopoietin (TPO) receptor agonists, was 80%, with no adverse effects observed.
Conclusions: Our results confirm that age influences the hemorrhagic pattern of ITP expression as well as responses to and adverse effects of conventional ITP therapies.


Objectives This study aims to identify themes associated with St John volunteer first aiders' post-resuscitation experience following an out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest, and to make suggestions for future practice in education and research. Methods This study was exploratory and descriptive in design, utilising a single focus group as a means of data collection. All five participants from a single resuscitation event participated in the focus group. The focus group was electronically recorded and transcribed verbatim. The results were then thematically analysed. Finding The focus group participants described four themes associated with successful resuscitation of a casualty following sudden cardiac arrest. These themes were: postresuscitation casualty management; interactions with health care professionals; critical incident stress management and learning about the casualty's outcome. Discussion Education of first aid service providers should include post-resuscitation casualty management, this could be achieved by including the chain of survival in its entirety rather than the DRABCD (danger, response, airway, breathing, circulation and defibrillation) resuscitation action plan only. Similarly, ambulance paramedics require an understanding of semi-automatic external defibrillators as used by first aid service providers. In particular, the limitations of semi-automatic external defibrillators should be included in education programs for ambulance paramedics and emergency department staff. Finally, first aid service providers should implement formal mechanisms to provide feedback to participants regarding casualty outcomes following a critical event.


We propose a robust pointing detection with virtual shadow representation for interacting with a public display. Using a depth camera, our shadow is generated by a model with an angled virtual sun light and detects the nearest point as a pointer. The position of the shadow becomes higher when user walks closer, which conveys the notion of correct distance to control the pointer and offers accessibility to the higher area of the display.


Many mammal species communicate olfactorily via specialised scent glandular secretions, urine and/or dung. Despite a large body of work on olfactory communication, the extent to which mammals communicate via dung odours, and what information is transmitted, is unknown. White rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) have poor eyesight but an acute sense of smell and therefore rely heavily on olfactory signals. Moreover, white rhinos of all ages and sex defecate communally in middens, thus it is possible that these middens act as olfactory information centres for male-male, female-male, malefemale and female-female communication. To explore these possibilities, I first analysed the odours emitted from the dung of free-ranging white rhinos. In doing so, I identified distinct odour profiles that indicated an individual's sex, age, male territorial status, and female oestrous state. Once I had identified the information transmitted, I then explored how long these signals lasted. In order for an olfactory signal to be effective it must persist in the environment for an extended period. To determine signal longevity I analysed the temporal changes of white rhino dung odours. I found that over a short period male dung odours had shorter longevity than female odours. Within males, territorial odours had shorter longevity than non-territorial, while non-oestrous female odours had a shorter longevity than oestrous odours. The high temperature and humidity of the wet season decreased the longevity of all adult dung odours. However, white rhinos did not adjust their visitation or defecation frequency during the wet season to counteract this decrease in longevity. Having identified the odours and how long they lasted, I then investigated the behaviour of white rhinos at middens to determine which individuals were primarily transmitting information and who were the intended targets. I found that middens were utilised predominately by adults. Moreover, the primary function of middens was for territorial males to transmit and obtain information (male-male and female-male communication), with secondary functions for nonterritorial males to also assess female reproductive state, and females to assess the quality and number of potential mates (male-female communication). In addition to olfactory signals there was a spatial aspect to defecating in middens, where territorial males defecated in the centre of the midden and other individuals around the periphery. Further, territorial males regulated their dung output, with a higher defecation frequency and smaller dung volume than any other adult. Finally, I conducted an experiment to investigate the purpose of territorial male dung kicking. Using non-territorial adult male dung as a surrogate, I found that the dispersal of male white rhino dung caused olfactory signal amplification by increasing the emission of hydrocarbon acids. However, despite the benefits of odour amplification, dung dispersal also carried a cost of decreased odour longevity, ultimately decreasing signal longevity. Territorial males likely counteract this by defecating in middens during peak visitation times by other individuals. Ultimately, my results highlight the mechanism behind olfactory communication in white rhinos and the importance of middens in this communication system. Moreover, as many other mammal


All existing 10Be records from Greenland and Antarctica show increasing concentrations during the Maunder Minimum period (MM), 1645?1715, when solar activity was very low and the climate was colder (little ice age). In detail, however, the 10Be records deviate from each other. We investigate to what extent climatic changes influence the 10Be measured in ice by modeling this period using the ECHAM5-HAM general circulation model. Production calculations show that during the MM the mean global 10Be production was higher by 32% than at present due to lower solar activity. Our modeling shows that the zonally averaged modeled 10Be deposition flux deviates by only ~8% from the average increase of 32%, indicating that climatic effects are much smaller than the production change. Due to increased stratospheric production, the 10Be content in the downward fluxes is larger during MM, leading to larger 10Be deposition fluxes in the subtropics, where stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE) is strongest. In polar regions the effect is small. In Greenland the deposition change depends on latitude and altitude. In Antarctica the change is larger in the east than in the west. We use the 10Be/7Be ratio to study changes in STE. We find larger change between 20° N?40° N during spring, pointing to a stronger STE in the Northern Hemisphere during MM. In the Southern Hemisphere the change is small. These findings indicate that climate changes do influence the 10Be deposition fluxes, but not enough to significantly disturb the production signal. Climate-induced changes remain small, especially in polar regions.


This paper is concerned with the design and implementation of a distributed proportional-derivative (PD) controller of a 7-degrees of freedom (DOF) robot manipulator using the Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy framework. Existing machine learning approaches to visual servoing involve system identification of image and kinematic Jacobians. In contrast, the proposed approach actuates a control signal primarily as a function of the error and derivative of the error in the desired visual feature space. This approach leads to a significant reduction in the computational burden as compared to model-based approaches, as well as existing learning approaches to model inverse kinematics. The simplicity of the controller structure will make it attractive in industrial implementations where PD/PID type schemes are in common use. While the initial values of PD gain are learned with the help of model-based controller, an online adaptation scheme has been proposed that is capable of compensating for local uncertainties associated with the system and its environment. Rigorous experiments have been performed to show that visual servoing tasks such as reaching a static target and tracking of a moving target can be achieved using the proposed distributed PD controller. It is shown that the proposed adaptive scheme can dynamically tune the controller parameters during visual servoing, so as to improve its initial performance based on parameters obtained while mimicking the model-based controller. The proposed control scheme is applied and assessed in real-time experiments using an uncalibrated eye-in-hand robotic system with a 7-DOF PowerCube robot manipulator.


The study was carried out on 19 ewes of local Awassi sheep and 12ewes local Arabi sheep in the Al-kafeel sheep station Karbala, to determine the effect of breed and some non-genetic factors such as (sex of the lamb, type of birth, age and weight of ewes at birth) on daily and total milk production and lactation period and some of milk components (fat, protein and lactose). The results showed that a significant effect (P <0.05) of the breed on milk production traits where Awassi sheep recorded the highest mean (0.91 kg , 101.63 kg , 104.86 day) compared to the Arabi sheep she was means (0.77 kg , 88.15 kg , 99.15 day) respectively. As well as in proportions of milk components with mean( 5.1 , 4.90 , 5.51) % respectively compared to the Arabi sheep (4.70 . 4.20 . 4.89) ewes with male lambs also exceeded superior ewes with female lambs in daily and total milk production and the lactation period the sex of the lamb did not affect the proportions of milk components the weight of the ewes had a significant effect (P <0.05) in milk production attributes with superior weight of ewes on lower ewes and did not affect the proportions of milk ingredients except for lactose. The type of birth and the age of the ewes did not have a significant effect in all the studied traits except for the superiority (P<0.05) of young ewes on age ewes in the fat percentage of milk.


This paper will describe a method for machine-based creation of high quality subject indexing and classification for both electronic and print documents using tables of contents (ToCs). The technology described here is primarily focused on electronic and print documents for which, because of technical or licensing reasons, it is not possible to index full text. However, the technology would also be useful for full text documents, because it could significantly enhance the accuracy and relevance of subject description by analyzing the structure of ToCs.


Abstract. Voxels have been used in various application domains successfully for the last several decades. Their main advantage is the underlying discrete data structure allowing to reliably work with surrounding voxels all the time. In this paper, capabilities of the Unity game engine for voxels management and geometry voxelisation are assessed, where 4 native solutions and 7 open-source projects written for Unity are investigated. Although many voxel-based options exist in Unity, they only deal with one part related to voxels. Therefore, the available capabilities to voxelise, visualise, structure and export voxels are combined and extended with the goal of successfully processing large 3D models and geometries. Many voxel visualisation techniques are investigated including mesh, VFX, point clouds and SVO, which have distinctive benefits in various aspects. Possibilities to structure voxels for effective management in simulations and other tasks are shown. Also, it is enabled to export voxels as point clouds and to the Postgres database for further processing, spatial analysis and distribution. One of the main conclusions is the lack of support for state-of-the-art voxel data structures, where the presented platform can easily be extended to support any. This platform can be used by people who deal with 3D discrete data, require voxelising 3D data, visualise voxels in different ways and technologies, as well as manage more efficiently sparsely occupied voxels.


We suggest two new, translation-based methods for estimating and correcting for bias when estimating the edge of a distribution. The first uses an empirical translation applied to the argument of the kernel, in order to remove the main effects of the asymmetries that are inherent when constructing estimators at boundaries. Placing the translation inside the kernel is in marked contrast to traditional approaches, such as the use of high-order kernels, which are related to the jackknife and, in effect, apply the translation outside the kernel. Our approach has the advantage of producing bias estimators that, while enjoying a high order of accuracy, are guaranteed to respect the sign of bias. Our second method is a new bootstrap technique. It involves translating an initial boundary estimate toward the body of the dataset, constructing repeated boundary estimates from data that lie below the respective translations, and employing averages of the resulting empirical bias approximations to estimate the bias of the original estimator. The first of the two methods is most appropriate in univariate cases, and is studied there; the second approach may be used to bias-correct estimates of boundaries of multivariate distributions, and is explored in the bivariate case.


Asperger Syndrome (AS) is considered to belong to the spectrum of autistic disorders. Although people with AS are more cognitively able than many others with autism, they share a number of traits including the social impairments identified by Wing and Gould ( 1979). Problems with processing emotional information may underlie some of these social impairments. Reported difficulties in this area include perceptual deficits which interfere with processing visual cues offered by others, difficulties in matching emotional signals across modalities (e.g. visual, auditory, and contextual), and lack of comprehension about affective information. The present study aimed to investigate the above emotional impairments, and to determine whether an intervention which developed the cognitive skills of adults with AS could compensate for some of these difficulties. Four participants, diagnosed as having AS by a psychiatrist, took part in the study. Each was assessed on emotion-processing tasks before and after finishing a six session intervention focusing ori the use of cognitive and behavioural strategies to decipher affective information. Prior to the intervention, the difficulties reported by other studies on matching visual and cross-modal signals of emotional information were generally found, but results for comprehension of verbal terms and recounting emotional experiences were not clearly replicated. Following the intervention, all participants improved on or performed at ceiling level for the visual and cross-modal tasks. Predicted improvement on the comprehension tasks was not always found. lt is suggested that although linguistic ability is obviously important in such tasks, exposure to social situations is required if connections are to be made between verbal labels, affective behaviours, and social contexts. Strengths and weaknesses of the overall design are discussed. lt is argued that the single-case study approach was useful for revealing operational problems in an efficient manner. However, the small number of participants make it difficult to generalise the findings, and the materials used can be criticised in terms of their reliability and validity. Questions are raised about the potential to generalise improvement found in a controlled environment to more natural settings. lt is concluded that although the design can be criticised on a number of counts, the results suggest it is possible to train adults with AS to systematically decipher visual and cross-modal emotional cues using their cognitive abilities. Recommendations for improving the intervention include concentrating on one aspect of emotional processing at a time. In view of the clearer findings for visual and cross-modal processing tasks it is proposed that these areas should be the starting point of an intervention. Further research could determine whether people with AS who have been taught to categorise visual cues in a systematic way can then be taught to link other forms of affective information to these physical images.


Serious games have become a key segment in the games market as well as in academic research. Although the number of games that identify themselves as belonging to this category as well as the research done on their effects has been rapidly growing, there has thus far been no attempt to define all of the various opportunities that digital games provide for learning. To address this issue we look at existing definitions of serious games and their potential for learning. We identify the shortcomings of existing definitions and typologies. We discuss opportunities for an educational use of serious games which have been marginalized so far and develop a more flexible classification system for serious games in order to include commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) games for learning purposes and description options for future developments of gaming technology. This classification system for digital and serious games uses labels and tags as a preferable solution instead of fixed genre categories. The aim of this paper is to move the focus from what serious games and their uses for learning currently are to what they can be.


This paper presents the results of an effort to predict the optical properties of a clean-water type as a function of wavelength. The prediction is based on extensive experimental spectral values for the irradiance-attenuation coefficient and the irradiance reflectance for clean, naturally occurring water, together with an analytical expression for the shape of the asymptotic radiance distribution and a synthesized table of spectral values for the total scattering coefficient based on recent experimental data obtained by Morel in the Mediterranean Sea. The values predicted for the total attenuation coefficient are found to compare favorably with recent data for the total attenuation coefficient obtained at several wavelengths by Austin, in the Sargasso Sea. Other optical properties predicted herein are found to be consistent with experimental values recently reported in the literature.


Addressing values may be an important aspect of environmental literacy and eco-centric paradigms. This mixed-methods content analysis compares five state environmental education standards, national environmental education guidelines and the Earth Charter for inclusion of sustainability values. Data were generated through traditional hand-coding, computer text analysis and document profiling through qualitative methods. Triangulation showed state standards and national guidelines adequately address ecological integrity principles, but not environmental justice principles. Although some documents addressed sustainability and reflection on environmental values through issue analysis, documents from the most populous states focused on the science of ecology, excluding terms such as values and sustainability.


Current medical decision support systems have evolved from the automation of medical decision routines to improving the quality of health care services. Knowledge-based systems, compared to conventional data-driven techniques, are promising to support medical decision making. However, knowledge acquisition is usually a bottleneck in the process of developing such systems. One possibility for acquiring medical knowledge, particularly tacit knowledge, is to use data or cases in both syntactic and semantic ways. Case-based Reasoning (CBR) methodology provides a practical way of problem solving with recalled knowledge memory of solved cases. To reduce the difficulty of knowledge acquisition, this paper proposes a design of the system framework that utilizes the simplified medical knowledge: disease-symptom ontology for prediagnosis, given patient's symptoms and signs as input. In the first stage, simple pattern matching is used to gather candidate diseases in diagnosis. Following that, case-based reasoning is used to refine diagnostic decision. The case base is structured with ontological knowledge model. The case retrieval process is based on semantic similarity. The diagnostic system uses a composite knowledge base, and will allow automated diagnosis recommendation. The system framework also aims at facilitating semantic explanations to the solution derived.


Background: Craniosynostosis refers to the premature fusion of one or more of the fibrous joints (sutures) that normally separate the bony plates of infant's skull. This study investigated the prevalence of craniosynostosis in infants resident in Sokoto metropolis.
Materials and methods: A total of 51 infants (32 males and 19 females) aged between 0 and 36 months presented at the Institute of Child Health Unit of the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital (UDUTH) Sokoto were recruited for this study. The head circumference (HC), height and weight of the children were obtained using standard measurements. The 3rd and 97th percentiles of HC were calculated for the study participants using the Standard Infant Head Circumference for Age Percentiles Calculator.
Results: Microcephaly was observed in 12.5% of the infants, 1.79% had macrocephaly and 31.25% were normocephalic. The overall mean values for HC was 45.65±3.86 cm in males and 43.37±4.19 cm in females.
Conclusion: Craniosynostosis could not be properly established due to non-availability of neuro-imaging records as most of the infants could not afford the cost. Routine neuro-developmental screening including three dimensional CT (computerized tomography) scan and referral of children with Craniosynostosis or abnormal head sizes is recommended


2004 marked the 20th anniversary of the Southern Regional Project on Infant Mortality, a joint effort by the SLC and the Southern Governors' Association. This special series report reviews the successes and failures of the past 20 years and assesses the work of the Project. It also compares statistical data on the various preventative programs and measures available in each state, and highlights the current basic government provisions used to curtail the infant death rate.


In over thirty years of its existence, World Heritage has proven to be very popular. It attracted the attention of not only the heritage professionals, but also of tourists, the tourism industry and scholars. It seems that as World Heritage was becoming popular among tourists, it was also gaining momentum in scholarly research. Based on an interdisciplinary study undertaken on a global level, this paper explores the issues and debates surrounding World Heritage and its future as seen by heritage professionals rather than the local population, governmental bodies, tourists or the tourism industry. In seeking to include the voices that are often left unheard in scholarly research, this study had a sample of 180 heritage professionals based in 45 countries, all of which were States Parties, signatories to the World Heritage Convention. Each of the 45 countries was represented by a chairman or a highly ranked representative from the IUCN and the ICOMOS, a World Heritage Site manager and a Cultural Attache. An analysis of their responses to an on-line questionnaire and of the information from semi-structured interviews is presented in this paper. It reveals that among all the existing issues and debates such as the question of the (un)equal representation by geographical region and category and the question of indefinite expansion of the World Heritage List, heritage professionals were also concerned with the phenomenon of the evident growth in popularity of World Heritage among tourists and the issues related to balancing conservation and tourism at existing World Heritage Sites.


The recent advancement in the field of ultrasonography allows for the prenatal precocious diagnosis of an ever increasing number of congenital defects found in various areas of the foetal body. These phenotype variants (markers) and/or morphological anomalies reveal in the majority of cases of a foetus with chromosome defects. They represent ''alarm bells'' that intrigue us to uncover any average case with more tests. It is for this that many more efforts are made to identify echographical markers which allow us to select among the pregnant women those that are not at risk and to advise those that may be of the existence of a specific cytogenetic test. One of these markers is actually represented by the single umbilical artery. This anomaly is made up of the presence of only two vessels (an artery and a vein) at the level of the umbilical cord, and its lack of an artery. The clinical meaning of this pathology is not yet completely known today. Often, in fact, when isolated, it is not associated with a chromosome defect and to other foetal pathologies. When, however, it is presented as associated to other soft markers or other structural anomalies, the risk of a chromosome defect is notably higher.


A relaxation peak has been observed in the internal friction spectrum of 18-carat AuAgCu yellow gold alloys at about 750K for 0.5Hz. It is related to the presence of grain boundaries, since it is absent in the spectrum of single crystals. For the 14-carat yellow gold alloy (Au38%Ag32%Cu30%), a phase decomposition between silver-rich and copper-rich solid solution occurs in the same temperature range. The effects of the phase decomposition on the internal friction and the dynamic modulus are studied by isochronal and isothermal measurements and correlated with the microstructure evolution. Upon cooling, the phase decomposition starts at grain boundaries at about 840K, producing a fine lamellar structure, and the grain boundary peak amplitude strongly decreases. As the phase decomposition progresses at the interior of the grains upon further cooling, the internal friction background increases. It remains very high in heating until solid solution homogenisation, which occurs above 890K. Such an increase of the internal friction background is observed also in the single crystalline alloy and may be attributed to the interfaces between lamellae of the silver and copper-rich phase.


The analysis of remotely sensed altimeter data and in situ measurements shows that ERS 2 radar can monitor the ocean permanent thermocline from space. The remotely sensed sea level anomaly data account for ∼2/3 of the temperature variance or vertical displacement of isotherms at a depth of ∼550 m in the Subtropical North Atlantic Ocean near 32·5°N. This depth corresponds closely to the region of maximum temperature gradient in the permanent thermocline where near semi-annual internal vertical displacements reach 200 to 300 m. The gradient of the altimeter sea level anomaly data correlates well with measured ocean currents to a depth of 750 m. It is shown that observations from space can account for ∼3/4 of the variance of ocean currents measured in situ in the permanent thermocline over a 2-y period. The magnification of the permanent thermocline displacement with respect to the displacement of the sea surface was determined as −×650 and gives a measure of the ratio of barotropic to baroclinic decay scale of geostrophic current with depth. The overall results are used to interpret an eight year altimeter data time series in the Subtropical North Atlantic at 32·5°N which shows a dominant wave or eddy period near 200 days, rather than semi-annual and increases in energy propagating westward in 1995 (west of 25°W). The effects of rapid North Atlantic Oscillation climate change on ocean circulation are discussed. The altimeter data for the Atlantic were Fourier analysed. It is shown how the annual and semi-annual components relate to the seasonal maximum cholorophyll-a SeaWiFS signal in tropical and equatorial regions due to the lifting of the thermocline caused by seasonally varying ocean currents forced by wind stress.


The policy and health service background to this discussion are the radical changes in cancer services currently underway in the wake of the Calman-Hine Report and the wider changes ushered in by the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 (UK). Using the changing face of hospice care as the focus, the authors explore some of the potential issues and dilemmas involved in providing supportive care for cancer patients and their families. Three 'themes', or areas of concern, are highlighted: links between services, changing organizational factors, and increasing 'medical imperialism'. Potential benefits and drawbacks of the changing ethos and organizational structures are discussed. Interview data are used as 'triggers' for the presentation of the authors' own reflections on developments in the hospice and cancer services' arenas. The paper draws on interview data collected in the pilot phase of a 3-year study on the psycho-social needs of cancer patients and their informal carers in north-west England. Twenty-nine interviews were conducted with a range of professionals involved in the provision of cancer services in Lancaster and Kendal. In the spirit of 'gathering thoughts' and facilitating debate, a commentary on developments in the hospice sector is offered rather than any firm conclusion.


James O'Neill. Garrison Tales from Tonquin: An American's Stories of the French Foreign Legion in Vietnam in the 1890s. Edited, with an introduction, by Charles Royster. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006, Pp. lxiv, 119. $30.00.) Charles Royster, editor of this slim volume, is owed a good deal of thanks for bringing these little-known stories back to light. Given their setting in late-nineteenth century Indochina and their anti-imperial tone, the tales would have made appropriate reading during the 1960s, and it is surprising that their recovery has taken so long. Even still, they bear some relevance, if that's what a prospective reader seeks, to our present predicament. James O'Neill was born in Connecticut in 1860 to a working-class family. During the 1870s he and his sister gained the attention of a priest affiliated with the Anglo-Catholic Cowley Fathers, who had set up a mission, based first in Bridgeport and then in Boston. Eventually, O'Neill was sent to be educated at the order's mission school at Oxford University, while his sister became an Anglican nun in the Society of Saint Margaret. O'Neill returned to the United States during the mid-1880s, but he does not seem to have ever felt comfortable there. He returned to Europe in 1887 and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. His regiment was based in Algeria, but a detachment of 300, including O'Neill, sailed for Tonkin in 1890. Two years later, he was one of twenty-seven members of the battalion who returned. Not all of the legionnaires had died (many had been sent back earlier because of injury, illness, or end of service) , but the number offers ample evidence of the horrors O'Neill and his polyglot comrades faced on the Vietnamese, or Annamite, peninsula. After his service had ended, O'Neill returned to America and tried to become a man of letters. Garrison Tales from Tonquin appeared in 1895, receiving some favorable mentions in the press but selling poorly. Next to nothing is known of him after about 1897. Royster's lengthy introduction masterfully weaves O'Neill's life story (sketchy as it is) with historical analyses of service in the French Foreign Legion, French imperial efforts in Indochina, and the Cowley Fathers order (also known as the Society of St. John the Evangelist) . He also displays a sure footing with the stories themselves, offering trenchant, if often overbearing, comments on the themes with which O'Neill grappled. …


Introduction: the industry of aquarium fish is developing quickly in Iran and the number of people interested in keeping them increases every day. In this regard, fish growers and reproducers are trying to respond to this increasing demand by increasing the highly8demanded fish including sword tail aquarium live8breeding type. In fact, attempts have been made to improve the productivity and regeneration of these fishes through researches, experimental operations, variations in temperature, and various diets. Methodology: the current study was conducted on 80 sword fish aquarium live8breeding types in two aquariums over 90 days during summer and autumn of 2013. Each of the 2 aquariums was divided to four sections. A certain degree of temperature was required for each part of these aquariums and a heater was installed in every section to provide the required heat. The temperature of each section was set respectively on 23, 25, 28 and 32 degrees centigrade. The results were later reported in the form of graphs and tables. The behavioral observation of the fishes was also studied by monitoring the aquariums. Results: we believe that rising temperature to 23 to 28 degrees centigrade increases the number of fully8fledged fetuses in sword fish type. We also think that raising temperature to 28 to 32 degrees centigrade will decrease the number of non8fledged fetuses in sword fish type. Discussion and conclusion: according to the above mentioned results, we can say that a relative increase in temperature has positive consequences on the evolution process of evolving fetuses, while an excessive increase in temperature has negative consequences on the evolution process of evolving fetuses. Based on the collection of the results of behavioral observations in sword tail type, it is possible that sword tail type members have group relations with their peers while swimming and feeding.


The analysis of RNA secondary structure has become more and more important throughout the last decades after it was recognised that RNA does not only serve as a passive messenger (mRNA), but also as a functional compound of the cell. Furthermore, it was elucidated that mainly the structure rather than the sequence determines the function of such non-protein-coding RNA. This means that two RNA molecules which have low sequence similarity but high structure similarity are likely to have a similar function.
The prediction of RNA secondary structure is based on parameters that have been measured in vitro. This results in rather static parameters, that do not incorporate the dynamic change of environment occurring in living organisms. Nevertheless, the use of these parameters, that are summarised in the energy model, gave valuable results, especially for short sequences. Several refinements throughout the years improved the predictions, but still the calculated optimal structure is not guaranteed to correspond to the native one. In this case, and due to the fact that the native structure is feasible under the energy model, it is common practice to additionally calculate suboptimal structures and incorporate these in the study. The set of all suboptimal structures is referred to as the structure space, which actually holds the information needed to answer questions such as: Is the optimal structure also the native one? Are there more than one structure an RNA molecule can adopt? How well-defined is the optimal structure?
Major problems in the analysis of the structure space are its size and its shape. The number of suboptimal structures is exponential in the sequence length, which means that for sequences of moderate length the size quickly exceeds several billion. Besides the size, the appearance of the structure space complicates its study. The structure space can be imagined as a rough landscape with valleys, holding local optimal structures, separated by mountains and saddles. This landscape is not smooth but cliffy and complex, which prevents the development of a practical and still intuitive visualisation.
In general, the intention of structure space analysis is not its visualisation, but its complexity also hampers approaches to derive specific features hidden in the structure space. Despite these problems, several tools exist that analyse the complete structure space or at least a part of it to answer the aforementioned questions. Among these are MFOLD which produces a subset of all possible structures according to a threshold of structural similarity, SFOLD which samples the structures in a probabilistic fashion and provides a method to identify alternating structures, RNAsubopt to produce all suboptimal structures within a given energy threshold, barriers to identify valleys, mountains and saddles of the structure landscape, and others.
My contribution to this area of research is twofold: First, I present paRNAss (prediction of alternating RNA secondary structures) which focuses on the detection of conformational switches and analyses the structure space based on pairwise comparisons. paRNAss has been available since 1997 and I could improve its predictive power as well as its speed which made possible a systematic evaluation. During this evaluation it turned out that paRNAss can even be used to identify more than two competing structures and hence get a deeper insight into the structure space. The second tool I introduce is RNAshapes which facilitates different kinds of analyses. The algorithm makes use of abstract representations of the secondary structure to compute only those that are morphologically dissimilar, i.e. are composed of different structural elements. Structures being morphologically similar are pooled in a class of structures and each class is represented by its best member. The list of these representatives gives a general overview of what is there in the structure space. In addition to this, I introduce an algorithm to compute probabilities of the aforementioned classes of structures. This gives hints to properties such as alternating secondary structures (two classes with similar probabilities) and structural well-definedness (one class with very high probability).


Handmade and handcrafted objects are a part of daily life in Gujurat. The crafts of Gujurat demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between humans and Nature and offer meanignful lessons in sustainable living for future generations. The ingenious use of natural and locally available materials is combined with a unique aesthetic, bringing together form and function in each magnificent product. With simple tools, adherence to norms set by tradition and with their imagination, the artisans of Gujurat have embodied human potential. Traditional skills are now applied to create products for the contemporary world, demonstrating convincingly that natural and handmade products are adaptable over time. And, that tradiition continues to be relevant in modern times.


The moderate-size earthquake (local magnitude 5.7) which occurred on November 22, 2014 in Vrancea region (Romania), is the largest crustal event instrumentally recorded. Its aftershock sequence lasted around 70 days, 222 earthquakes with local magnitude ≥ 0.1 being located using the records collected by the Romanian seismic network. The seismic sequence occurred mainly in the lower crust (depths greater than 25 km), and the epicenter distribution – along a NNE-SSW direction followed the orientation of the Vrancea crustal earthquakes alignment. The sequence, occurred in the Focsani Basin (part of the Moesian Platform) and is related to the normal fault system associated to the major Peceneaga - Camena fault, which separates the Moesian Platform from the North Dobrogea promontory. The spatio-temporal distribution of the seismic activity, as well as the seismic energy released during the seismic sequence are analysed in detail, and the focal mechanisms of the largest events – 34 shocks with M L ≥ 1.8 – are determined using reliable P-wave polarities and amplitude ratios. Taking into consideration that the moderate-size shock of November 22, 2014 is the strongest instrumentally recorded crustal earthquake in the region, its focal mechanism provides highly relevant seismological information on the deformation field in front of the Carpathian bend. The obtained fault plane solution indicates normal faulting with a dominant dip-slip component; both nodal planes being oriented NW-SE.


The Effective Fragment Potential (EFP) is a quantum-mechanical based model used to describe non-covalent interactions of small molecules or fragments. It can be used along with fully ab initio methods to study the electronic properties of complex systems, such as solvated chromophores or proteins. For this purpose, the system is divided into two regions: one modeled with quantum mechanics and the other with EFP. The interaction between the QM region and the effective fragments has popularly been described through electrostatics and polarization only. This thesis focuses on the development of the QM/EFP exchange-repulsion term, as well as the evaluation of the dispersion term and a charge-penetration correction. The goal of is to determine how these terms can increase the accuracy of QM/EFP calculations without an increase in their computational cost.


Planning for International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008 is well underway. IPY 2007-2008 will be an intense, internationally coordinated campaign of polar observations, research and analysis that will further our understanding of physical and social processes in Polar Regions, examine their globally-connected role in the climate system, and establish research infrastructure for the future. It will galvanize new and innovative observations and research while building on and enhancing existing relevant initiatives. It will seek to excite the public and help develop the next generation of polar scientists. It will run for two years, from 1 March 2007 until 1 March 2009, to allow two field seasons of research and activities in each Polar Region. This IPY, unlike previous international science years in 1882-83, 1932-33, and 1957-58, includes a strong human dimension and thus health-related activities are being planned. The Arctic Human Health Initiative (AHHI), in particular, includes many potentially important elements.


We consider the problem of portfolio risk diversification in a Value-at-Risk framework with heavy-tailed risks and arbitrary dependence captured by a copula function. We use the power law for modelling the tails and investigate whether the benefits of diversification persist when the risks in consideration are allowed to have extremely heavy tails with tail indices less than one and when their copula describes wide classes of dependence structures. We show that for asymptotically large losses with the Eyraud-Farlie-Gumbel-Morgenstern copula, the threshold value of tail indices at which diversification stops being beneficial is the same as for independent losses. We further extend this result to a wider range of dependence structures which can be approximated using power-type copulas and their approximations. This range of dependence structures includes many well known copula families, among which there are comprehensive, Archimedian, asymmetric and tail dependent copulas. In other words, diversification increases Value-at-Risk for tail indices less than one regardless of the nature of dependence between portfolio components within these classes. A wide set of simulations supports these theoretical results. JEL Classification: C13


Historical mining in the Coeur d'Alene River Basin of northern Idaho has resulted in elevated concentrations of some trace metals (particularly cadmium, lead, and zinc) in water and sediment of Coeur d'Alene Lake and downstream in the Spokane River in Idaho and Washington. These elevated trace-metal concentrations in the Spokane River have raised concerns about potential contamination of ground water in the underlying Spokane Valley/Rathdrum Prairie aquifer, the primary source of drinking water for the city of Spokane and surrounding areas. A study conducted as part of the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water-Quality Assessment Program examined the interaction of the river and aquifer using hydrologic and chemical data along a losing reach of the Spokane River. The river and ground water were extensively monitored over a range of hydrologic conditions at a streamflow-gaging station and 25 monitoring wells situated from 40 to 3,500 feet from the river. River stage, ground-water levels, water temperature, and specific conductance were measured hourly to biweekly. Water samples were collected on nearly a monthly basis between 1999 and 2001 from the Spokane River and were collected up to nine times between June 2000 and August 2001 from the monitoring wells. Hydrologic and chemical data indicate that the Spokane River recharges the Spokane Valley/ Rathdrum Prairie aquifer along a 17-mile reach between Post Falls, Idaho, and Spokane, Washington. Ground-water levels in the near-river aquifer (less than 300 feet from the river) indicate variably saturated conditions below the river and a ground-water flow gradient away from the losing reach of the river. Calculated monthly mean losses, during water years 2000 and 2001 along a nearly 7-mile reach between two gages, ranged from near 69 to 810 cubic feet per second. Losses generally increased with increased streamflow. However, late summer warm water temperatures also appear to be a factor as losses increased due to lower viscosity as water temperatures increased. Chemical data indicated that river recharge may influence ground-water chemistry as far as 3,000 feet from the river, but ground water within a few hundred feet of the river is most affected. Major-ion concentrations, stable isotopes, and temperature of the river and ground water from near-river wells were similar and exhibited similar temporal trends, whereas ground water from wells located farther from the river generally had higher major-ion concentrations and more stable temperatures and chemistry. Although trace-element concentrations sometimes exceeded aquatic-life criteria in the water of the Spokane River and were elevated above national median values in the bed sediment, trace-element concentrations of all river and ground-water samples were at levels less than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency drinking-water standards. The Spokane River appears to be a source of cadmium, copper, zinc, and possibly lead in the near-river ground water. Dissolved cadmium, copper, and lead concentrations generally were less than 1 microgram per liter (μg/L) in the river water and ground water. During water year 2001, dissolved zinc concentrations were similar in water from near-river wells (17-71 μg/L) and the river water (2266 μg/L), but were less than detection levels in wells farther from the river. Arsenic, found to be elevated in ground water in parts of the aquifer, does not appear to have a river source. Although the river does influence the ground-water chemistry in proximity to the river, it does not appear to adversely affect the ground-water quality to a level of human-health concern.


Purpose: This study aimed to implement and quantitatively evaluate the Mind-Body Medicine (MBM) Skills program among Dutch medical and Swedish nursing students.Methods: The MBM Skills program was piloted among second year medical students at Utrecht University and first year nursing students at Mid Sweden University in the period 2011–2013. During the course, the participating students learned and practiced Mind-Body techniques such as relaxation, meditation, guided imagery, biofeedback, physical exercise, art, music and movement. The effects of the MBM skills program on perceived stress, empathy, and self-reflection were evaluated by the following validated scales: Perceived Stress Scale, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and Groningen Reflection Ability Scale. Participating students and controls answer(-ed) the different questionnaires at baseline, at the end of the course, and 6 and 12 months later.Results: In total, 55 medical students and 49 nursing students have participated in the MBM skills program. Baseline analysis (age, gender, mind-body experience, perceived stress, four subscales of the IRI, and self-reflection) demonstrated that participating nursing students were significantly older (p<0.001), and had higher scores for empathetic concern (p<0.001) and self-reflection (p=0.001) than participating medical students. Further, baseline analysis showed no significant differences in baseline characteristics between intervention and control group for medical students, except from significantly higher levels of perceived stress among controls (p=0.008). Regarding nursing students, no differences were found between intervention and control group, except from significantly higher scores for empathetic concern among participants (p=0.023).Conclusion: We have successfully implemented the MBM Skills program for medical and nursing students. Baseline analysis showed that participants of the course were not a selected group, except from perceived stress among medical students and empathetic concern among nursing students. Data on the effects of the MBM skills program on perceived stress, empathic concern and self-reflection are currently being evaluated and will be presented at the conference.


Ecological compensation is the latest member of a growing family of concepts aimed at reducing degradation of environmental quality. This and other concepts of the family – like ecosystem services, green infrastructure, and nature-based solutions – have been subject to a range of different interpretations and subsequent implementation practices. The result is a complex governance system with unclear boundaries and implications for the management efforts of environmental quality. In this paper, we seek to map and disentangle this complexity – with a particular focus on ecological compensation and related concepts (such as biodiversity offsetting and no net loss), which all have gained momentum in recent years and which share the notion that intrusion in nature should be compensated in one way or the other. In a first step, we seek to map similarities, differences and overlaps, between the concepts, by using a set of analytical categories including: the origin of the concept (scientific or policy context), the aim of its application, the type of decision-making process it generates, its relation to urban or rural contexts, and the extent to which it has been subjected to regulation. In a second step, and as a result of this mapping, we will advance knowledge about how governments, municipalities and business actors in different ways work with environmental quality, ecosystem services and biodiversity. First, we draw conclusions about the degree to which the concepts under scrutiny are mutually reinforcing or competing. Second, our analysis enables conclusions about why some concepts are preferred in certain institutional contexts and what institutional preconditions are needed for their use. Third, we discuss possible implications of this governance complexity for questions of effectiveness and legitimacy. (Less)


Chaos breaks loose when the Governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be installed on all streets and highways, and warns that motorists will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric inhabitants of Tangier, fourteen miles off the coast of Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay, respond by threatening to secede and set up an independent state, claiming that their independence lies in the history of America's first settlers, those who set sail from London's Isle of Dogs in 1607. Judy Hammer, newly installed as the superintendent of Virginia State Police, and Andy Brazil, state trooper and Hammer's right hand confidant, find themselves at their wit's end as they try to protect the public from the politician's and vice versa in this pitch-perfect, darkly comic romp. With a Swiftian eye for the absurd and a deadly accurate aim on her targets, Cornwell has created another knowing story about real life policing. Visit the author's own website at patricia-cornwell.com


Let $S$ be a set of integers. A graph G is said to have the S-property if
there exists an S-edge-weighting $w : E(G) \rightarrow S$ such that any two
adjacent vertices have different sums of incident edge-weights. In this paper
we characterise all bridgeless bipartite graphs and all trees without the
$\{0,1\}$-property. In particular this problem belongs to P for these graphs
while it is NP-complete for all graphs.


It is now clear that the global economic crisis was not just the pricking of another bubble. It is the extreme manifestation of the post-Cold War globalisation model that had been promoted vigorously by the Atlantic powers. It has brought to the fore not only the structural weaknesses of America's real economy but also the extraordinary disadvantage of having a single reserve currency system. Most analyses of the international political economy in the post-crisis phase, however, remains perfunctory even as several observers pay lip service to a new world order. The structural causes and possible consequences of the contemporary situation are addressed in this article.


One of the main theories for explaining the formation of spiral arms in galaxies is the stationary density wave theory. This theory predicts the existence of an age gradient across the arms. We use the stellar cluster catalogues of the galaxies NGC 1566, M51a, and NGC 628 from the Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS) program. In order to test for the possible existence of an age sequence across the spiral arms, we quantified the azimuthal offset between star clusters of different ages in our target galaxies. We found that NGC 1566, a grand-design spiral galaxy with bisymmetric arms and a strong bar, shows a significant age gradient across the spiral arms that appear to be consistent with the prediction of the stationary density wave theory. In contrast, M51a with its two well-defined spiral arms and a weaker bar does not show an age gradient across the arms. In addition, a comparison with non-LEGUS star cluster catalogues for M51a yields similar results. We believe that the spiral structure of M51a is not the result of a stationary density wave with a fixed pattern speed. Instead, tidal interactions could be the dominant mechanism for the formation of spiral arms. We also found no offset in the azimuthal distribution of star clusters with different ages across the weak spiral arms of NGC 628.


We report on on-going work to derive translations of phrases from parallel corpora. We describe an unsupervised and knowledge-free greedy-style process relying on innovative strategies for choosing and discarding candidate translations. This process manages to acquire multiple translations combining phrases of equal or different sizes. The preliminary evaluation performed confirms both its potential and its interest.


This paper explores the extent to which recent social, economic, demographic and environmental changes in Botswana have enabled women to inherit land, housing and other household assets. Using qualitative data from a study undertaken in the peri-urban village of Tlokweng, the paper notes that, unlike in the past when women were largely excluded from property inheritance, the majority of parents who participated in the study on which this paper is based are now more inclined and willing to share their estate equally among all their children or to favour daughters over sons in deciding who should inherit residential properties. The changes, which are heavily contested by older women, young men and teenage boys, appear to have been due primarily to increased numbers of female heads of households and the role played by unmarried daughters in developing the family estate and caring for the aging parents.


When intracellular pathogens invade mammalian hosts, naïve CD8+ T cells differentiate into cytotoxic killers, which lyse infected target cells and secrete cytokines that activate intracellular microbicides. We show that CD8+ T cells deficient in the transcription factors T-bet and eomesodermin (Eomes) fail to differentiate into functional killers required for defense against lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus. Instead, virus-specific CD8+ T cells lacking both T-bet and Eomes differentiate into an interleukin-17–secreting lineage, reminiscent of the helper T cell fate that has been implicated in autoimmunity and extracellular microbial defense. Upon viral infection, mice with T cells lacking both T-bet and Eomes develop a CD8+ T cell–dependent, progressive inflammatory and wasting syndrome characterized by multi-organ infiltration of neutrophils. T-bet and Eomes, thus, ensure that CD8+ T cells adopt an appropriate course of intracellular rather than extracellular destruction.


To the Editor: Leptospirosis is a major emerging infectious disease with a worldwide distribution (1). It is a systemic disease of humans and domestic animals (2). Regarded globally as a zoonosis because it is acquired by humans from contact with animals or from water contaminated with the urine of infected animals, it is presumed to be the most widespread zoonotic disease in the world (1,2). Species such as mice (Mus spp.) and rats (mainly Rattus norvegicus and R. rattus) serve as reservoirs for their host-related serovars (3).

Human patients usually exhibit a nonspecific self-limiting febrile illness; however, in 5%–10% of cases, severe forms of the disease develop, including Weil disease and severe pulmonary hemorrhagic syndrome. Case-fatality rates for Weil disease and severe pulmonary hemorrhagic syndrome are >10% and >74%, respectively (4,5).

Because leptospirosis has been found in humans in the Canary Islands (J. Alcoba-Flores, pers. comm.), detecting carrier animals is vital to the understanding of enzootic and epizootic leptospirosis in this environment. We examined the possible role of the rodent species found in the Canary Islands in the transmission of this pathogen to determine the risk for humans in these islands.

A total of 149 wild rodents (74 R. rattus and 75 Mus domesticus) were captured during 20009–2010 from 4 of the Canary Islands (Tenerife, El Hierro, La Gomera, Lanzarote). Urinary bladders of the animals were collected and preserved in 100% ethanol. Genomic DNA was extracted by using the Fast DNA Kit (BIO 101 Systems: MP Biomedicals, Santa Ana, CA, USA).

The lipL32 fragment (497 bp), which is present only in pathogenic leptospires, was amplified according to the method of Bomfim et al. (6) by using a MyCycler thermocycler (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA, USA). L. interrogans serovar Icterohemorragiae (RGA strain) was used as a positive control.

Twenty-two samples were positive for Leptospira spp., indicating a general prevalence of 14.8% in the rodents. Although the prevalence was higher in rats (20.3%) than in mice (9.3%) (Table), the difference was not significant (χ2 test). Positive samples were obtained from all the studied islands and for both host species in all of them (Table), without significant differences in the prevalences between host species or between islands.

Table

Prevalence of pathogenic Leptospira spp. in rodents, by island, Canary Islands, 2009–2010*

To confirm the amplified products belonged to pathogenic Leptospira spp., we sequenced some amplicons. Sequencing reactions were performed for both strands at the University of La Laguna Genomic Service. When the sequences were compared, 2 different sequences were obtained. The first sequence, L19 (GenBank accession no. {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"HQ231747","term_id":"345105450","term_text":"HQ231747"}}HQ231747), from rats, clustered with L. interrogans serovar Copenhageni (GenBank accession no. {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"AE016823","term_id":"45602555","term_text":"AE016823"}}AE016823) and different serovars of the same species by BLAST (99% identity). Previous results associate L. interrogans serovar Copenhageni with Rattus spp (7). However, the sequence obtained from mice (GenBank accession no. {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"HQ231748","term_id":"345105452","term_text":"HQ231748"}}HQ231748), L47, showed a 100% BLAST identity with L. borgpetersenii (GenBank accession nos. {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"DQ320625.1","term_id":"84043218","term_text":"DQ320625.1"}}DQ320625.1 and {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"DQ286415.1","term_id":"82706283","term_text":"DQ286415.1"}}DQ286415.1).

New and published Leptospira sequences were aligned with the multiple alignment program ClustalW in MEGA3.1 (8), and minor corrections were made manually. The alignment for the 497-bp fragment starts at nt position 208, with respect to the complete sequence of the lipL32 ({"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"AY609332","term_id":"48526319","term_text":"AY609332"}}AY609332), and ends at nt position 705.

Phylogenetic relationships were inferred by using the neighbor-joining distance method with MEGA3.1. At least 1,000 bootstrap replicates were used to infer statistical support at branch nodes. The consensus tree yielded 3 monophyletic groups clearly separated by high bootstrap values. The first clade was formed by L. interrogans, L. kirschneri, and L. noguchii (93% bootstrap value). The sequence L19 was included in the L. interrogans node (92% bootstrap value). The second clade included L. borgpetersenii and L. weilii as a monophyletic group (97% bootstrap value). The sequence L47 clustered with L. borgpetersenii {"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"DQ286415","term_id":"82706283","term_text":"DQ286415"}}DQ286415 with a high bootstrap value (82%). These results are in accordance with those obtained by Haake et al. (9) based on lipL32. Finally, L. santarosai sequences formed the third separate clade (100% bootstrap) (data not shown).

Although the method we used does not enable specific identification, determining the most similar species by BLAST is needed for control programs. L. interrogans serovar Copenhageni is the predominant infecting serovar among patients with severe leptospirosis (7), and L. borgpetersenii is also commonly acquired from mice.

On the basis of these findings, the global distribution of Leptospira spp. must be revised to include the Canary Islands, with rodents as natural hosts. Because pathogenic Leptospira spp. were detected on every island studied and in both analyzed species, R. rattus and M. domesticus, the distribution of this pathogen likely extends to even the islands not studied. The high incidence found suggests that rodents play a role in transmission of human leptospirosis. Further studies are needed to identify other possible reservoir hosts and to determine the risk areas for acquiring pathogenic leptospires in the Canary Islands.


We consider the issue of which criteria to use when evaluating the design of a wireless multihop network. It is known, and we illustrate in this paper, that maximizing the total capacity, or transport capacity, leads to gross imbalance and is not suitable. An alternative, which is often used in networking, is to consider the max-min fair allocation of rates, or of transport rates per node. We apply max-min fairness to the class of wireless, multi-hop networks for which the rate of a wireless link is an increasing functions of signal-to-noise ratio. This class includes CDMA and UWB. We show that, for a network in this class, the max-min fair allocation of bit or transport rates always gives the same rate to all flows. We show on one example that such an allocation is highly undesirable when the network is asymmetric. Another form of fairness, utility fairness, does not appear to have the same problem.


Abstract Objective To evaluate the duration of prescriptions for antibiotic treatment for common infections in English primary care and to compare this with guideline recommendations. Design Cross sectional study. Setting General practices contributing to The Health Improvement Network database, 2013-15. Participants 931 015 consultations that resulted in an antibiotic prescription for one of several indications: acute sinusitis, acute sore throat, acute cough and bronchitis, pneumonia, acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), acute otitis media, acute cystitis, acute prostatitis, pyelonephritis, cellulitis, impetigo, scarlet fever, and gastroenteritis. Main outcome measures The main outcomes were the percentage of antibiotic prescriptions with a duration exceeding the guideline recommendation and the total number of days beyond the recommended duration for each indication. Results The most common reasons for antibiotics being prescribed were acute cough and bronchitis (386 972, 41.6% of the included consultations), acute sore throat (239 231, 25.7%), acute otitis media (83 054, 8.9%), and acute sinusitis (76 683, 8.2%). Antibiotic treatments for upper respiratory tract indications and acute cough and bronchitis accounted for more than two thirds of the total prescriptions considered, and 80% or more of these treatment courses exceeded guideline recommendations. Notable exceptions were acute sinusitis, where only 9.6% (95% confidence interval 9.4% to 9.9%) of prescriptions exceeded seven days and acute sore throat where only 2.1% (2.0% to 2.1%) exceeded 10 days (recent guidance recommends five days). More than half of the antibiotic prescriptions were for longer than guidelines recommend for acute cystitis among females (54.6%, 54.1% to 55.0%). The percentage of antibiotic prescriptions exceeding the recommended duration was lower for most non-respiratory infections. For the 931 015 included consultations resulting in antibiotic prescriptions, about 1.3 million days were beyond the durations recommended by guidelines. Conclusion For most common infections treated in primary care, a substantial proportion of antibiotic prescriptions have durations exceeding those recommended in guidelines. Substantial reductions in antibiotic exposure can be accomplished by aligning antibiotic prescription durations with guidelines.


Here we compare the standard European benchmark of wood treatment by molecularly dissolved copper amine (Cu-amine), also referred to as aqueous copper amine (ACA), against two nanoenabled formulations: copper(II)oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) in an acrylic paint to concentrate Cu as a barrier on the wood surface, and a suspension of micronized basic copper carbonate (CuCO3·Cu(OH)2) for wood pressure treatment. After characterizing the properties of the (nano)materials and their formulations, we assessed their effects in vitro against three fungal species: Coniophora puteana, Gloeophyllum trabeum, and Trametes versicolor, finding them to be mediated only partially by ionic transformation. To assess the use phase, we quantify both release rate and form. Cu leaching rates for the two types of impregnated wood (conventional and nanoenabled) are not significantly different at 172 ± 6 mg/m2, with Cu being released predominantly in ionic form. Various simulations of outdoor aging with release sampling by runoff, during condensation, by different levels of mechanical shear, all resulted in comparable form and rate of release from the nanoenabled or the molecular impregnated woods. Because of dissolving transformations, the nanoenabled impregnation does not introduce additional concern over and above that associated with the traditional impregnation. In contrast, Cu released from wood coated with the CuO acrylate contained particles, but the rate was at least 100-fold lower. In the same ranking, the effectiveness to protect against the wood-decaying basidiomycete Coniophora puteana was significant with both impregnation technologies but remained insignificant for untreated wood and wood coated by the acrylic CuO. Accordingly, a lifecycle-based sustainability analysis indicates that the CuO acrylic coating is less sustainable than the technological alternatives, and should not be developed into a commercial product.


This paper is the product of a study of what top management find interesting and what is of concern to them in relation to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in the second wave of ERP. Very little empirical research exists on the subject of the interests and concerns of CEOs in relation to a company's ERP System. However research into information system literature indicates that CEOs are valued as key players in the management of IT to secure that the IT strategy is aligned with the business strategy. Based on the fact that very little prior research exists on the CEOs' interests and concerns in relation to the ERP system in the second wave, we employed an interpretive explorative case study with a grounded approach carried out through open interviews with CEOs. The research was conducted in three mid-size Danish production companies all of which have an ERP system. The contribution of this paper is five propositions that represent the core of what top management interests and concerns are in relation to the ERP systems. As our methodology also reflects, this case study is not representative and can therefore not be generalised. Rather, it is a first insight into the field and it can be used for reflection and/or tested in future research. The five propositions are: establishing a decision structure, ensuring that the IT strategy is aligned with the business strategy, identifying the impact that an ERP system has on the organisation, establishing ERP target measures and identifying innovative possibilities in ERP. The paper ends with a discussion of the findings of the case study, the implications for practice and research and the possibilities for future research.


This guide provides access to resources on 2SLGBTQ+ issues in Canada and NS, as well as statistics and links to community organizations. It was developed in consultation with NSCC's Office of Diversity and Inclusion.


There is much to admire about Barry Friedman's new book, The Will of the People. Explaining how the institution of judicial review was made safe for democracy in America, Friedman's story is extensively researched, beautifully written, scrupulously nonpartisan about the modern Court, and frequently humorous. What is more, his primary claim - that the Supreme Court of the United States is very much a democratic institution because judicial review always has been responsive to public opinion - is, to a large extent, convincing. I have taught The Will of the People in my first-year constitutional law course, and I plan to do so again. Despite its many virtues, certain aspects of The Will of the People give me pause. For one thing, I fear that the book may fail to fully register the power and potential influence of the particular individuals who sit on the Supreme Court at a given time. If law professors and political scientists may become "so fascinated by the Court as political actor that they [forget] that it is also acted upon politically," Friedman's project may be vulnerable to the opposite criticism. That is, the book may under-appreciate the capacity of the Justices to shape social values or otherwise to decide important matters effectively with finality. For another thing, even if I am wrong about the Court's potential efficacy as a political actor, there remains reason for skepticism that the book has tamed the counter-majoritarian difficulty, at least when the problem is framed properly.Part I of this essay summarizes Friedman's main thesis, including his implicit suggestion that the present composition of the Court matters much less than is commonly believed - and may not even matter much at all. Part II offers some reasons to doubt that the substantive visions of the Justices themselves are as relatively inconsequential as Friedman seems to believe. Part III explains why the counter-majoritarian difficulty endures even in the wake of Friedman's formidable contribution.


Recent evidence suggests a role for the gut microbiome in the development and progression of colorectal cancer. In this study we compare MinION sequencing with meta-transcriptomics and amplicon-based sequencing for microbiome analysis of colorectal tumour tissue samples. DNA and RNA were extracted from 11 colorectal tumour samples. RNA-Sequencing, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and MinION genomic sequencing was carried out and resulting data used as input for taxonomic classification using Kraken2. Taxonomic concordance between the three platforms at different taxonomic levels was tested on a per sample basis. The average number of reads per sample using RNA-Sequencing was more than 129 times that generated using MinION sequencing. However, the average read length of MinION sequences was more than 13 times that of RNA or 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. 16S sequencing was less informative beyond the genus level, and both RNA-Sequencing and MinION sequencing could detect more phyla and genera in the same samples, compared to 16S sequencing. Long-read sequences generated using MinION sequencing can compensate for low numbers of reads for bacterial classification. MinION sequencing can discriminate between bacterial strains and plasmids and shows potential as a tool for microbiome sequencing of colorectal cancers in a clinical setting.


Abstract Improvements in our understanding of green plant phylogeny are casting new light on the connection between character evolution and diversification. The repeated discovery of paraphyly has helped disentangle what once appeared to be phylogenetically coincident character changes, but this has also highlighted the existence of sequences of character change, no one element of which can cleanly be identified as the "key innovation" responsible for shifting diversification rate. In effect, the cause becomes distributed across a nested series of nodes in the tree. Many of the most conspicuous plant "innovations" (such as macrophyllous leaves) are underlain by earlier, more subtle shifts in development (such as overtopping growth), which appear to have enabled the exploration of a greater range of morphological designs. Often it appears that these underlying changes have been brought about at the level of cell interactions within meristems, highlighting the need for developmental models and experiments focused at this level. The standard practice of attempting to identify correlations between recurrent character change (such as the tree growth habit) and clade diversity is complicated by the observation that the "same" trait may be constructed quite differently in different lineages (e.g., different forms of cambial activity), with some solutions imposing more architectural limitations than others. These thoughts highlight the need for a more nuanced view, which has implications for comparative methods. They also bear on issues central to Stephen Jay Gould's vision of macroevolution, including exaptation and evolutionary recurrence in relation to constraint and the repeatability of evolution.


Quantum dots and their chemical adaptation for various photonic applications are presented in this review. The use of quantum dots as photoactive components in many applications requires their combination with other materials playing specific roles for separation and transport of charge carriers. Achieving good interfaces between electronically matched component materials is key to improved performance in photodetectors, photovoltaics, electroluminescence application, etc.


Incipient stator winding fault in permanent magnet synchronous wind generators (PMSWGs) is very difficult to be detected as the fault generated variations in terminal electrical parameters are very weak and chaotic. This paper simulates the incipient stator winding faults at different degree of insulation degradation of one turn in the winding of a PMSWG. Cosimulation method by combining finite element model and external circuits is used. Hilbert-Huang transformation is applied to detect the very early stage fault in interturn insulation by analyzing the stator current. Detection results show that the minimum detectable severity degree of interturn fault in this paper is 0.1488%, which is much better than the best record in the literature.


This paper presents a differential synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) interferometry (DIFSAR) approach for investigating
deformation phenomena on full-resolution DIFSAR interferograms.
In particular, our algorithm extends the capability
of the small-baseline subset (SBAS) technique that relies on
small-baseline DIFSAR interferograms only and is mainly focused
on investigating large-scale deformations with spatial resolutions
of about 100 100 m. The proposed technique is implemented by
using two different sets of data generated at low (multilook data)
and full (single-look data) spatial resolution, respectively. The
former is used to identify and estimate, via the conventional SBAS
technique, large spatial scale deformation patterns, topographic
errors in the available digital elevation model, and possible
atmospheric phase artifacts; the latter allows us to detect, on
the full-resolution residual phase components, structures highly
coherent over time (buildings, rocks, lava, structures, etc.), as well
as their height and displacements. In particular, the estimation of
the temporal evolution of these local deformations is easily implemented
by applying the singular value decomposition technique.
The proposed algorithm has been tested with data acquired by the
European Remote Sensing satellites relative to the Campania area
(Italy) and validated by using geodetic measurements.


Police use of social media has increased in the United Kingdom since 2008 (Crump, 2011),
 yet there has been little qualitative exploration of how police-owned Facebook sites work to shape the identity of forces. This
 study explores the action orientation of small stories on the Facebook site of a UK metropolitan police force. The research
 considers the collaborative ways in which stories are positioned and constructed collectively by multiple narrators (both formal
 police posts, and the commenting public). Given the ability of social media to enact identity through interaction, this research
 explores how the identity of the police force is positioned, and repositioned, by social media activity. It concludes that both
 the opportunity for dyadic interactions that may underpin effective community policing, and the potential benefits of harnessing
 the opportunity for effective identity work, are currently being under utilised on police Facebook sites.


Objectives To examine how transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) tried to penetrate the Bulgarian cigarette market and influence tobacco excise tax policy after the fall of communism and during Bulgaria's accession to the European Union (EU). Design Analysis of internal tobacco industry documents supplemented by analysis of press coverage, tobacco industry journals, market reports and key informant interviews. Results TTCs have been involved in cigarette smuggling to and through Bulgaria since at least 1975 and used smuggling as a market-entry strategy. National tobacco company Bulgartabac appears to have been involved in smuggling its own cigarettes from and reimporting them to Bulgaria. Since Bulgaria's accession to the EU opened the market to the TTCs, TTCs have exaggerated the scale of the illicit trade to successfully convince politicians and public health experts that tax increases lead to cigarette smuggling. Yet, sources point to TTCs' continued complicity in cigarette smuggling to and through Bulgaria between 2000 and 2010. TTCs aimed to influence the Bulgarian tobacco excise tax regime, import duties and pricing mechanism, but appear to have been less successful than in other former communist countries in part due to the co-existence of a state-owned tobacco company. Undisclosed meetings between the tobacco industry and government ministers and officials are ongoing despite Bulgaria being a party to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Conclusions The TTCs continued involvement in smuggling suggests that deals in 2004, 2007 and 2010 which the European Commission has reached with TTCs to address cigarette smuggling are inadequate. The TTCs' continued access to policymakers suggests that the FCTC is not being properly implemented.