PURPOSE
To determine the molecular basis and the pathologic consequences of a chemically induced mutation in the translational vision research models 89 (tvrm89) mouse model with ERG defects.

METHODS
Mice from a G3 N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea mutagenesis program were screened for behavioral abnormalities and defects in retinal function by ERGs. The chromosomal position for the recessive tvrm89 mutation was determined in a genome-wide linkage analysis. The critical region was refined, and candidate genes were screened by direct sequencing. The tvrm89 phenotype was characterized by circling behavior, in vivo ocular imaging, detailed ERG-based studies of the retina and RPE, and histological analysis of these structures.

RESULTS
The tvrm89 mutation was localized to a region on chromosome 9 containing Myo6. Sequencing identified a T→C point mutation in the codon for amino acid 480 in Myo6 that converts a leucine to a proline. This mutation does not confer a loss of protein expression levels; however, mice homozygous for the Myo6(tvrm89) mutation display an abnormal iris shape and attenuation of both strobe-flash ERGs and direct-current ERGs by 4 age weeks, neither of which is associated with photoreceptor loss.

CONCLUSIONS
The tvrm89 phenotype mimics that reported for Myosin6-null mice, suggesting that the mutation confers a loss of myosin 6 protein function. The observation that homozygous Myo6(tvrm89) mice display reduced ERG a-wave and b-wave components, as well as components of the ERG attributed to RPE function, indicates that myosin 6 is necessary for the generation of proper responses of the outer retina to light.


Purpose Glaucoma-related molecular biomarkers can improve clinical testing to diagnose the disease early, predict its prognosis, and monitor treatment responses. Based on the evidence of increased oxidative stress in glaucomatous tissues, this study analyzed oxidative stress–related biomarker candidates in blood and aqueous humor samples with or without glaucoma. Methods The blood and aqueous humor samples collected from carefully selected groups of 96 patients with glaucoma and 64 healthy subjects without glaucoma were included in the study. The samples were analyzed for protein carbonyls and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) through ELISA-based quantification assays. To allow proper comparisons, the Goldmann-Witmer coefficient that reflects the ratio of aqueous humor to blood values corrected to total protein concentration in individual samples was calculated. Results Blood and aqueous humor levels of protein carbonyls and AGEs were found significantly higher in glaucomatous samples compared with age-matched nonglaucomatous controls (P < 0.001). The glaucoma-related increase in protein carbonyls and AGEs was more prominent in aqueous humor samples than blood samples (2.6-fold versus 1.9-fold for protein carbonyls, and 3.1-fold versus 1.9-fold for AGEs; P < 0.001). Comparison of the Goldmann-Witmer coefficients indicated greater values for protein carbonyls (1.37 ± 0.3 vs. 3.07 ± 0.8) and AGEs (1.2 ± 0.3 vs. 3.2 ± 1.1) in the glaucoma group (P < 0.001). Conclusions Findings of this study encourage further validation studies of oxidative stress–related biomarkers in glaucoma. Analysis of protein carbonyls and AGEs in longitudinal studies of larger and heterogeneous patient cohorts should better assess the value of these promising candidates as molecular biomarkers of glaucoma for clinical predictions.


Plasmonic nanostructures have been extensively used in the past few decades for applications in sub-wavelength optics, data storage, optoelectronic circuits, microscopy and bio-photonics. The enhanced electric field produced within a few hundred nanometers of these surfaces can be used to excite fluorophores in the surrounding environment. Fluorescence based bio-detection and bio-imaging are two of the most important tools in the life sciences and improving the qualities and capabilities of fluorescence based detectors and imaging equipment remains a big challenge for industry manufacturers. We report a novel fabrication technique for producing nano-gap embedded periodic grating substrates on the nanoscale using a store bought HD-DVD and conventional soft lithography procedures. Polymethylsilsesquioxane (PMSSQ) polymer is used as the ink for the micro-contact printing process with PDMS stamps obtained from the inexpensive HD-DVDs as master molds. Fluorescence enhancement factors of up to 118 times were observed with these silver nanostructures in conjugation with Rhodamine-590 fluorescent dye. These substrates are ideal candidates for a robust and inexpensive optical system with applications such as low-level fluorescence based analyte detection, single molecule imaging, and surface enhanced Raman studies.


In this report we determine the dynamic model of a miniature helicopter in hovering flight. Identification procedures for the nonlinear terms are also described. The model is then used to design several linearized control laws and a neural network controller. The controllers were then flight tested on a miniature helicopter flight control test bed the details of which are also presented in this report. Experimental performance of the linearized and neural network controllers are discussed. It was found from experimentation that the adaptive neural network technique was able to improve helicopter flight performance.


Recent progress in nanobiotechnology has allowed the use of glycans and their conjugates as biofunctional molecules for many biological and biomedical applications. Therefore, specific interactions of carbohydrate-binding proteins (lectins) are continuously being elucidated for a deep understanding of their functions and the precise mechanism of their association with specific ligands. New generations of glyconanoparticles with outstanding features that present carbohydrates in a multivalent manner and locally in high concentrations have been showing promise of establishing the glycan code and functioning as a glycan mimic. In the first part of this review article, different types of lectins have been summarised and their main properties highlighted. In the second part, recent successful examples of glyconanoparticles formed of synthetic polymers and in most cases, conjugated with metals, have been discussed in terms of their synthesis and interactions with lectins.


AbstractThe purpose of this study was to find out the effect of using clustering in teaching descriptive text writing skill to the seventh graders at SMP 3 PSKD Jakarta. It involved two groups: control and experimental. This implemented in different techniques; conventional method and clustering technique. The conventional method was implemented in the control class; while the clustering technique was implemented in the experimental class. Based on the findings, it was concluded that students need a technique to build students' interested in writing. However, it should not be the only technique used to improve students' writing skill.

Keywords: Experimental research, clustering technique, descriptive text writing


The intensity of a pathogen infection plays a key role in determining how the host responds to infection. Hosts with high infections are more likely to transmit infection to others, and are may be more likely to experience progression from infection to disease symptoms, to being physiologically compromised by disease. Understanding how and why hosts exhibit variation in infection intensity therefore plays a major part in developing and implementing measures aimed at controlling infection spread, its effects, and its chance of persisting and circulating within a population of hosts. To track the relative importance of a number of variables in determining the level of infection intensity, we ran field-surveys at two breeding sites over a 12 month period using marked larvae of the common midwife toad (Alyes obstetricans) and their levels of infection with the amphibian pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). At each sampling occasion we measured the density of larvae, the temperature of the water in the 48 h prior to sampling, the period of time the sampled individual had been in the water body, the developmental (Gosner) stage and the intensity of Bd infection of the individual. Overall our data suggest that the temperature and the duration of time spent in the water play a major role in determining the intensity of Bd infection within an individual host. However, although the duration of time spent in the water was clearly associated with infection intensity, the relationship was negative: larvae that had spent less than 3–6 months in the water had significantly higher infection intensities than those that had spent over 12 months, although this infection intensity peaked between 9 and 12 months. This could be due to animals with heavier infections developing more quickly, suffering increased mortality or, more likely, losing their mouthparts (the only part of anuran larvae that can be infected with Bd). Overall, our results identify drivers of infection intensity, and potentially transmissibility and spread, and we attribute these differences to both host and pathogen biology.


Estrogens are hypothesized to contribute to breast cancer via estrogen receptor-mediated increases in cell proliferation and via genotoxic processes leading to mutations. In this latter process, estradiol (E(2)) is thought to be oxidized to 4-hydroxyestradiol and then to E(2)-3,4-quinone, which reacts with DNA leading to apurinic sites. These sites represent premutagenic lesions. Additionally, E(2)-3,4-quinone can undergo redox cycling with E(2)-3,4-hydroquinone, leading to the release of reactive oxygen species. Although there is evidence that estradiol and E(2)-3,4-quinone are carcinogenic or mutagenic in several systems, 4-hydroxyestradiol, a key intermediate in the proposed genotoxic pathway, has thus far been negative in mutagenesis assays. Another major metabolite of estradiol, 2-hydroxyestradiol, is essentially inactive in carcinogenicity or mutagenicity assays. Here, we report that when using multiple low-dose exposures 4-hydroxyestradiol is mutagenic in the cII assay in BB rat2 cells. Under similar conditions, 2-hydroxyestradiol is inactive. Furthermore, the mutational spectrum of 4-hydroxyestradiol contains a considerable proportion of mutations at A:T base pairs, consistent with the known ability of E(2)-3,4-quinone to form a significant fraction of DNA adducts at adenines. Thus, the results of this study support the proposal that estradiol can contribute to carcinogenesis via a genotoxic pathway.


The influence of emotion on memory and the role of encoding and retrieval effects were examined in a series of 10 experiments. Retrieval effects were examined in the first 3 experiments by investigating the success of different memory retrieval strategies. Positive emotional enhancement of recognition was found in traditional two-alternative forced-choice recognition and a task which encouraged a nonanalytic retrieval strategy. No emotional enhancement of memory was found in a task which encouraged an analytic retrieval strategy or when a Remember / Know / Guess judgement followed recognition. The paradigm was adapted to a within-participants design but emotional enhancements of recognition were no longer found. The next 7 experiments explored encoding effects with a paradigm investigating visual specificity of memory. Participants identified whether pictures were Same / Similar / New (SSN) in comparison to those shown at study. The findings from the SSN and Remember / Know / New paradigm were compared, with negative emotional enhancement of memory found in both. Negative and positive emotional enhancement of memory for specific visual details was found, with a central-peripheral trade-off in memory with negative emotion when objects were presented on congruent neutral backgrounds. Eye movements were recorded at encoding to examine attentional effects. Attentional narrowing was found on scenes with a negative object but no attentional effects were found with positive emotion. In the last 3 experiments associative memory, implicit memory, distinctiveness of emotional stimuli and warnings of emotion were measured and manipulated but could not account for the memory effects. Surprisingly, the emotional memory effects remained even when stimuli were blocked into emotional groups radically altering the distribution of visual attention. The implications of the results for choice of experimental stimuli, task instructions in experimental paradigms and the memory processes of encoding and retrieval are discussed.


Playing Reality is an anthology of articles on live role-playing, a new art from where the Nordic countries are at the front edge. This book covers a wide range of topics and genres, from practical advice, historical reviews and visions of possible futures to semiotic and philosophical analysis. They Show some of the diversity of participatory arts, and will thus be of interest for anyone in the fields of art, education or performance. It wouldn't be misleading to claim that live role-playing has realized the dream of the Gesamtkunstwerk - at last! Playing Reality is published for Knutpunkt, the Nordic conference on live role-playing which alternates between the Nordic countries. In 2010 it's held in Sweden.


Fibromyalgia is a common musculoskeletal pain condition associated with chronic widespread pain, tenderness at various points on the body, fatigue, and sleep abnormalities. Individuals with fibromyalgia often have comorbid anxiety, depression, and/or other pain syndromes. Research into pharmacologic remedies for fibromyalgia has demonstrated efficacy for a variety of agents, but pharmacology is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to successful management of fibromyalgia. Sensitive and appropriate methods of diagnosis and an integrated treatment plan including proper patient education, aerobic exercise, and cognitive-behavioral therapy have been shown to be effective in alleviating fibromyalgic symptoms.


This paper presents villagers' assessments of young people's sexual and reproductive health vulnerability and of community-based interventions that may reduce both vulnerability and risk in rural Mwanza, Tanzania. The primary methods used were 28 group discussions and 18 in-depth interviews with representatives of various social groups in four villages. The majority of participants attributed young people's sexual and reproductive health risks to a combination of modernisation (and its impact on family and community life), socioeconomic conditions, social norms in rural/lakeshore communities and the difficulties parents and other adults face in raising adolescents in contemporary Tanzania. Community life has limited opportunities for positive development but contains many risky situations. Young and old agreed that parents have a strong influence on young people's health but are failing in their parental responsibility. Parents acknowledged the multiple influences on sexual risk behaviour. They expressed a need for knowledge and skills related to parenting so that they can address these influences both through family- and community-based strategies.


Background The Teenage Pregnancy Strategy was published in July 1999 with the aim halving under-18 pregnancy rates in ten years. The strategy came to an end in 2010 with the UK's change of government. Overall costs of implementation are estimated around £280m. From 1999–2014 rates of pregnancy to women aged under 18 fell by more than 50%. Hailed as a unique, nation-wide, comprehensive, evidence-based intervention, the strategy has been promoted as a reproducible model for other countries with high teenage pregnancy rates. In evaluating policy impact, observational studies alone may not be able to account for background trends and other events. We aimed to evaluate the impact of England's Teenage Pregnancy Strategy on pregnancy and birth rates using natural experimental methods. Methods Women aged under-20 and living in England during the intervention period were the target population. UK pregnancy rates were taken from Office of National Statistics and Information Services Division Scotland reports for years 1992–2016. We compared under-18 pregnancy rates in England with Scotland and Wales as controls using interrupted time series methods. Observed level and trend changes in controls at 1999 were used to predict a 'No Strategy' England. We compared under-18 birth rates and under-20 pregnancy rates of England with European and English-speaking high-income countries using synthetic control methods. Estimates of births were taken from the Human Fertility Database, estimates of population from the Human Mortality Database and abortions from the European Health Information Gateway, supplemented from national statistics bodies, for years 1990–2013. Background trends were estimated using a weighted mean of control countries' rates. Results Although pregnancies and births in England fell during the Strategy period, we found no difference compared with control. In interrupted time series analyses, trends in rates of teenage pregnancy beginning in 1999 in England were similar to Scotland (0.08 fewer pregnancies per 1,000 women per year; -0.74 to 0.60) and Wales (0.14 more pregnancies per 1,000 women per year; -0.48 to 0.76). In synthetic control analyses, yearly under-18 birth rates in England were very similar to synthetic control predictions post intervention, and under-20 pregnancy rates were marginally higher than control across the post intervention time period. Placebo testing and other sensitivity analyses supported the finding of no effect. Conclusion Our analyses cast doubt on the effectiveness of England's teenage pregnancy strategy. These results should be factored into decision making if other countries, or England in the future, were to contemplate similar costly strategies.


Using the model of Rochet and Vives (2004), this note shows that a prudential regulator can in general not mitigate a bank's failure risk solely by means of liquidity requirements. However, their effectiveness can be restored if, in addition, minimum capital requirements are met. This provides a rationale for capital requirements beyond the commonly envoked reasoning that they are to be used to control the riskiness of banks' asset portfolios. JEL classification: G21, G28


There is still a need for catchment hydrological and transport models that properly integrate the effects of preferential flows while accounting for differences in velocities and celerities. A modeling methodology is presented here which uses particle tracking methods to simulate both flow and transport in multiple pathways in a single consistent solution. Water fluxes and storages are determined by the volume and density of particles and transport is attained by labeling the particles with information that may be tracked throughout the lifetime of that particle in the catchment. The methodology allows representation of preferential flows through the use of particle velocity distributions, and mixing between pathways can be achieved with pathway transition probabilities. A transferable 3‐D modeling methodology is presented for the first time and applied to a unique step‐shift isotope experiment that was carried out at the 0.63 ha G1 catchment in Gårdsjön, Sweden. This application highlights the importance of combining flow and transport in hydrological representations, and the importance of pathway velocity distributions and interactions in obtaining a satisfactory representation of the observations.


An effective collision avoidance system for unmanned aircraft will enable them to fly in civil airspace and greatly expand their applications. One promising approach is to model aircraft collision avoidance as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) and automatically generate the threat resolution logic for the collision avoidance system by solving the POMDP model. However, existing discrete-state POMDP algorithms cannot cope with the high-dimensional state space in collision avoidance POMDPs. Using a recently developed algorithm called Monte Carlo Value Iteration (MCVI), we constructed several continuous-state POMDP models and solved them directly, without discretizing the state space. Simulation results show that our 3-D continuous-state models reduce the collision risk by up to 70 times, compared with earlier 2-D discrete-state POMDP models. The success demonstrates both the benefits of continuous-state POMDP models for collision avoidance systems and the latest algorithmic progress in solving these complex models.


The spontaneous emission from luminescent Si photonic layer-by-layer crystals is studied. Luminescence from both implanted Er ions and the polycrystalline Si host is observed in the 1.1-1.7 μm wavelength range and serves as a probe of the photonic band structure. The spontaneous emission is strongly suppressed for wavelengths between 1.4 and 1.7 μm. The spectral changes are described by a model that takes into account changes in the local density of states, internal Bragg scattering in the crystal, and the internal quantum efficiency of the optical transition involved. A spectral attenuation of ∼5 dB per unit cell is derived from the spontaneous emission data, consistent with theory and transmission data.


The Bikaneri camels (8-12 years) weighing 646.4±25.5 kg were subjected to payload of 2.8 kg/kg body weight on a 4-wheel cart. The camels covered 25.5 km distance in 4.9±0.08 hr at an average speed of 1.53±0.04 m/sec in a continuous work spell during summer season. The respiratory frequency, pulse rate, skin and rectal temperature increased by 314,84. 14.8 and 6.8%. respectively, over the initial values. Loss in the body weight due to work stress was 3.6%. With the increase in work stress from initial 5.1 km span to the concluding distance of 25.5 km,the speed.tractive force. work output and power output were reduced by 126.96.36.199 and 33.8% respectively. The power and work output per kg body weight decreased with the increase in live weight. Associations of draught force with some body measurements were estimated.


Model information can be used to predict future trajectories, so it has huge potential to avoid dangerous regions when applying reinforcement learning (RL) on real-world tasks, like autonomous driving. However, existing studies mostly use model-free constrained RL, which causes inevitable constraint violations. This paper proposes a model-based feasibility enhancement technique of constrained RL, which enhances the feasibility of policy using generalized control barrier function (GCBF) defined on the distance to constraint boundary. By using the model information, the policy can be optimized safely without violating actual safety constraints, and the sample efficiency is increased. The infeasibility in solving the constrained policy gradient is handled by an adaptive coefficient mechanism. We evaluate the proposed method in both simulations and real vehicle experiments in a complex autonomous driving collision avoidance task. The proposed method achieves up to four times fewer constraint violations and converges 3.36 times faster than baseline constrained RL approaches.


Estimates of genetic diversity in major geographic regions are frequently made by pooling all individuals into regional aggregates. This method can potentially bias results if there are differences in population substructure within regions, since increased variation among local populations could inflate regional diversity. A preferred method of estimating regional diversity is to compute the mean diversity within local populations. Both methods are applied to a global sample of craniometric data consisting of 57 measurements taken on 1734 crania from 18 local populations in six geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, Australasia, Polynesia, and the Americas. Each region is represented by three local populations. Both methods for estimating regional diversity show sub-Saharan Africa to have the highest levels of phenotypic variation, consistent with many genetic studies. Polynesia and the Americas both show high levels of regional diversity when regional aggregates are used, but the lowest mean local population diversity. Regional estimates of FST made using quantitative genetic methods show that both Polynesia and the Americas also have the highest levels of differentiation among local populations, which inflates regional diversity. Regional differences in FST are directly related to the geographic dispersion of samples within each region; higher FST values occur when the local populations are geographically dispersed. These results show that geographic sampling can affect results, and suggest caution in making inferences regarding regional diversity when population substructure is ignored.


Dopamine transporter messenger RNA (mRNA) expression was assessed by in situ hybridization over individual pigmented neurons from the substantia nigra pars compacta in midbrain sections from 7 parkinsonian and 7 age‐matched, neurologically normal patients. In the normal control brains, high levels of expression of dopamine transporter mRNA were noted over pigmented neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta; neurons in the adjacent nucleus paranigralis of the ventral tegmental area displayed less hybridization. Nigra compacta neurons surviving in brains of patients with Parkinson's disease displayed only 57% of the dopamine transporter mRNA hybridization intensity displayed by nigral neurons in normal control brains. The disease‐related decrease in the apparent level of dopamine transporter mRNA expression in remaining neurons could reflect neuronal dysfunction. Conceivably, it might also reflect differential vulnerability of those neurons that initially expressed higher levels of this transporter to the insult of parkinsonism.


This project is concerned with the Rutherford back-scattering (RBS) analysis of silicon oxide layers formed by ion implantation. The physical, optical and the electrical properties of these layers were assessed as a function of the implant dose, implant energy and the annealing treatment. To ascertain the quality and possible applications of the "implantation grown" oxides, their properties were compared with thermally grown SiO2. Layers formed by implanting oxygen with doses of 1016 to 3 X 1018 ions cm-2, at energies of 40 to 120 keV, were analysed by RBS to determine: a) the implanted oxygen profile b) the stoichiometry of the layer c) the radiation damage. The oxygen profiles agree with the theory at low doses, but at high doses a uniform layer of thickness approximately twice the projected range is formed. The area under the oxygen profile decreases for doses greater than the saturation dose, although the stoichiometry of the layer is not affected. This decrease was correlated with a reduction in the backscattered silicon signal from the implanted layer. This suggests that the oxide thickness is being reduced by sputtering. Stoichiometric SiO2 was found to be formed for a peak oxygen concentration equivalent to twice the silicon atomic density. Annealing at 1000°C had an insignificant effect on the RBS spectra of the implanted layers, however the disorder area under the interface peak was reduced by 70%. Once a uniform layer was formed this disorder area decreased with increased implanted dose. Infrared transmission, capacitance-voltage, dielectric breakdown field, current-voltage, chemical etch rate and ellipsometry measurements were used as complimentary techniques to supplement the RBS results.


The focus of the paper is on the examination of organisational learning (OL) process and its link with organisational performance (OP) which was determined through operationalised OL and OP constructs. The research involved 202 Croatian companies employing more than 50 people. Besides determining the linkage between organisational learning and organisational performance, the research task was to determine which organisational performance measurement variables are the most and the least important, and even further, to identify the best and the worst predictable OP measurement items for each organisational learning variable. The most important finding of the study is the empirical evidence about exsistence of strong, statistically significant, positive relationship between organisational learning and organisational performance. In another words, organisations with development of their learning processes congruently increase their performance. The research also showed that employees' measures are the most strongly related with organizational learning process.


Despite its acknowledged contribution to local, national, and global economies, there is no consensus as to exactly what is meant by the term sports marketing. This conceptual paper attempts to address this deficiency via the development of a new framework that is based upon two key dimensions: type of product and level of sports integration. By categorizing goods and services as either sports products or nonsports products and by differentiating between traditional strategies and sponsorship-based strategies, four sports marketing domains are identified. They are the themebased, product-based, alignment-based, and sportsbased strategic domains. The underlying principles for developing the framework are delineated in this article, and many examples for each strategic domain are provided as a means of illustrating their conceptual differences and how they are implemented.


. The development of new shapes in architecture has deeply influenced the current perception of the built environment. The analysis of the processes behind this evolution is, therefore, of great interest. At least two well known factors, influencing this development, may be pointed out: the great improvement of digital tools and the tendency toward building distinctiveness. In particular, the innovation of digital tools such as parametric modeling is resulting in an overall diffusion of complex shapes, and the phenomenon is also evident in a clear expressionistic search for architectural singularity, that some might consider as a negative effect of globalization trends. Though, if we can consider as a positive result the fact that parameterization allows a deeper control over design factors in terms of reference to cultural, historical and physical context, at the same time such control possibilities are sometimes so stark to be even auto-referential, stepping over site-specific parameterization, to create unusual shapes just for the sake of complexity. The ever-growing diffusion of generative design processes is in fact going to transform niche procedures, frequently limited to temporary decontextualized structures, into an architectural complexification as an end in itself. The hypothesis of this paper is to demonstrate that site-specific parametrization can be considered as a tool able to translate intentions into shape; it is necessary, for this aim, the widening of the meaning of the word singularity.


We report results of a laser-ICP-MS investigation of trace element contents in the main constituent minerals of an amphibole-bearing migmatite from the Variscan orogen in northeastern Sardinia. The migmatite is associated with migmatised orthogneiss and Al-silicate-bearing pelitic migmatites. The protolith of the amphibole-bearing migmatite was a mid-Ordovician igneous rock of intermediate composition characterised by a biotite + plagioclase + quartz assemblage. The migmatite consists of mesosomes and tonalitic (or, less frequently, granodioritic) leucosomes, characterised by amphibole crystals (potassian ferropargasite) up to 2 cm in size. The tonalitic leucosomes are made up of quartz, plagioclase, ±K-feldspar, biotite, ±amphibole, garnet. The mesosomes are foliated rocks made up of the same minerals with different modal proportions. In leucosomes, amphibole is the most abundant mafic mineral, occurring as euhedral crystals rich in plagioclase, quartz, and small garnet inclusions. Garnet occurs as corroded and fractured grains in the matrix or within the amphibole. Zircon forms euhedral bipyramidal grains up to a few hundreds of micrometres in size. Some amphibole rims have higher REE and negative Eu anomalies whereas cores exhibit lower REE and positive Eu anomalies. Garnet has strongly fractionated REE patterns with chondrite-normalised abundances up to 2000 for HREE. Plagioclase has flat REE patterns with pronounced positive Eu anomalies. Zircon displays fractionated REE patterns with HREE enrichment, LREE depletion, positive anomalies for Ce and negative ones for Eu. Monazite shows high REE abundances, LREE enrichment, HREE depletion and negative Eu anomalies. Garnet is mostly a restitic phase, as indicated by significant variation in HREE concentrations between grains in the mesosome, the absence of a noticeable Eu anomaly, and Y depletion in the leucosomes as compared to the mesosomes. In the leucosomes and mesosomes, the cores of zoned amphibole are characterised by positive Eu anomalies: these crystallised from or in the presence of melt produced by anatexis of the original Bt + Pl + Qtz protolith. Adjacent rims with negative Eu-anomalies developed in coexistence with a Eu-depleted melt that had experienced plagioclase fractionation.


For many decades, compounds containing oxygen atoms were excluded from the actinide-catalysis field because of the high oxophilic nature of these complexes. Pursuing the conceptual question about the potential activity of actinide-oxo bonds we were surprised to find that the coupling of aromatic aldehydes catalyzed by Cp*2ThMe2 and Th(NEtMe)4 via thorium-alkoxide intermediates take place in high yields to produce the corresponding esters. Here we present our breakthrough results including comprehensive mechanistic, deuterium labeling, kinetic and thermodynamic studies. In addition, the tetrachloride salt of uranium reacts with one equivalent of Li2[(C5Me4)2SiMe2] in DME to form the complex {[η5-(C5Me4)2SiMe2]UCl2·2LiCl·2DME (13), which reacts with equimolar amounts of water in DME yielding the coordinative unsaturated bridged mono oxide and mono chloride uranium lithium salt complex {[η5-(C5Me4)2SiMe2]UCl}2((μ-O)((μ-Cl)•Li(DME)3•DME (14). The alkylation of complexes 14 with BuLi gives the mono bridged dibutyl complex {[η5-(C5Me4)2SiMe2]UBu}2(μ-O) (16). Complex 16 is an active catalyst for the disproportionation metathesis of TMSC≡CH and the cross-metathesis of TMSC≡CH or TMSC≡CTMS with various terminal alkynes. PhSiH3 reacts with complex 16 producing Ph2SiH2 and SiH4 (caution) indicating the cleavage of the trimethylsilyl group from the phenyl moiety and the formation of uranium-silyl intermediate.


We report a large aperture PPMgLN based OPO generating 21W of average output power at a slope efficiency of 45%. The OPO is pumped with the output from a polarization maintaining Ytterbium doped fiber MOPA operating at 1060nm producing 20ns pulses at a repetition rate of 100kHz and an average output power of 58W (after the isolators). A maximum of 5.5W of optical power was recorded at the idler wavelength of 3.82µm without thermal roll-off. The pulse rise/fall time plays a significant role in the OPO conversion efficiency and that further enhancements in the efficiency should be possible using pulses with faster rise and fall times.


The Souq Waqif is located in the heart of the old downtown of Doha, the capital of the State of Qatar. The Souq Waqif is one of the most important heritage sites in the country. Over the years this market became abounded until his highness Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al Thani and his wife, her highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, recognized the importance of protecting and restoring this heritage site by funding the heritage restoration project of the Souq Waqif. It's a wide-open outdoor space with air-conditioned shops. The users spend most of their time in the outdoor space where most social activates take place. This research study explores how the urban form of the Souq Waqif contributes to the formation of social interactions, and how its urban form can be implemented. The key factor of this research study is the impact of the urban morphology on the thermal comfort of the users in the hot-arid climate of Qatar. Other controlling factors in this process will be explored as well. The research question is answered by adopting both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research study is developed through three steps: (A) theoretical study, (B) analytical and applied study, and (3) interviews. Finally, an approach to enhance open spaces at the Souq Waqif is revealed: namely, the use of more vegetation, the formation of more shaded spaces for more thermally comfortable environment, and the development of a well-designed signage system contribute to implement the users' social engagement.


In mammalian cells, the aurora kinases (aurora-A, -B, and -C) play essential roles in regulating cell division. The expression of aurora-A and -B is elevated in a variety of human cancers and is associated with high proliferation rates and poor prognosis, making them attractive targets for anticancer therapy. AMG 900 is an orally bioavailable, potent, and highly selective pan-aurora kinase inhibitor that is active in taxane-resistant tumor cell lines. In tumor cells, AMG 900 inhibited autophosphorylation of aurora-A and -B as well as phosphorylation of histone H3 on Ser, a proximal substrate of aurora-B. The predominant cellular response of tumor cells to AMG 900 treatment was aborted cell division without a prolonged mitotic arrest, which ultimately resulted in cell death. AMG 900 inhibited the proliferation of 26 tumor cell lines, including cell lines resistant to the antimitotic drug paclitaxel and to other aurora kinase inhibitors (AZD1152, MK-0457, and PHA739358), at low nanomolar concentrations. Furthermore, AMG 900 was active in an AZD1152-resistant HCT116 variant cell line that harbors an aurora-B mutation (W221L). Oral administration of AMG 900 blocked the phosphorylation of histone H3 in a dose-dependent manner and significantly inhibited the growth of HCT116 tumor xenografts. Importantly, AMG 900 was broadly active inmultiple xenograft models, including 3multidrugresistant xenograft models, representing 5 tumor types. AMG 900 has entered clinical evaluation in adult patients with advanced cancers and has the potential to treat tumors refractory to anticancer drugs such as the taxanes. Cancer Res; 70(23); 9846–54. 2010 AACR.


This article explores the recent popular press debates about the Common Core State Standards and their curricular mandates about the percentage of reading that can be fiction in middle school and high school curricula. I suggest that early American arguments about fiction's educational value can help us better understand today's debates about fiction's role in the classroom, because they reveal just how much is taken for granted in our contemporary arguments about fiction. The article argues that recent work on fictionality (and on historical poetics generally) allows us to come to a richer understanding of the terms on which early Americans valued fiction, bringing into view a series of historical contestations over fictionality's cultural meaning and purpose. These contestations, in turn, reveal just how delimited a sense of fiction's value and possible uses underpins our current debates. After a brief reading of Royall Tyler's The Algerine Captive (1797), the article explores how attention to these historical contestations over fiction's value might lead to a reconsideration of the grounds on which we defend fiction's educational value today. I close by considering the more general pedagogical implications of recent scholarship in historical poetics broadly construed.


This thesis examines the extent to which, in an artistic context, personifications, and
allegorical figures and scenes, were embedded in the culture of Late Antiquity from AD 300
to 600. 'Personification' can be read both as a noun and a verb, and I explore it in both
senses. My examination is carried out through a series of case studies of figurative imagery
on contemporary silver plate. I make an empirical study of the primary objects within my
thesis in relation to texts and other objects never considered in conjunction before.

The representations on the silver plate discussed in my thesis are broadly divided into three
categories: secular, imperial and cultic. In the secular grouping, I discuss their links to
literature, the theatre, and their place in the dining room. Imperial imagery often featured
personifications and in addition was circulated throughout the known world, and so I
examine the power held by these particular, and predominantly female, figures. Although
pagan cults were by this time dying out, a few surviving cultic objects such as the
Parabiago Plate allow an examination of this form of personification.

During this period there were huge changes as the Roman Empire divided into Eastern and
Western Empires and adopted the Christian faith. The former became the Byzantine
Empire and the latter went into a perceived decline, particularly after the sack of Rome in
AD 410. I look at how pagan personifications and allegorical groups survived this
transition, and assess the significance of this form of continuity.

This thesis demonstrates that in Late Antiquity the art of personification functioned in all
aspects of life. It was a subliminal language, accessible in varying degrees to contemporary
viewers depending on their education and status. It was a potent propaganda tool, and in
what was then a patriarchal society it provided images of strong, powerful females.


In many practical situations, it is not realistically possible to directly measure the desired physical quantity. In such situations, we have to measure this quantity indirectly, i.e., measure related quantities and use the known relation to estimate the value of the desired quantity. How accurate it the resulting estimate? The traditional approach assumes that the measurement errors of all direct measurements are independent. In many practical situations, this assumption works well, but in many other practical situations, it leads to a drastic underestimation of the resulting estimation error: e.g., when we base our estimate on measurements performed at nearby moments of time, since there is usually a strong correlation between the corresponding measurement errors. An alternative approach is when we make no assumptions about dependence. This alternative approach, vice versa, often leads to a drastic overestimation of the resulting estimation error. To get a more realistic estimate, it is desirable to take into account that while on the local level, we may have correlations, globally, measurement errors are usually indeed independent – e.g., measurements sufficiently separated in time and/or space. In this paper, we show how to analyze such situations by combining Monte-Carlo techniques corresponding to both known approaches. On the geophysical example, we show that this combination indeed leads to realistic estimates.


BACKGROUND
Localized extranodal natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphoma, nasal type, commonly has a low or low-intermediate risk of the international prognostic index (IPI), so the IPI has shown inconsistency in predicting prognosis. Thus, we analyzed Ki-67 expression and proposed a new prognostic model including Ki-67 expression for stage I/II extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We studied Ki-67 expression and its relationship with prognosis in 50 patients with extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma.

RESULTS
The patients were dichotomized by the median value: low (<65%) versus high Ki-67 (> or =65%). High Ki-67 was associated with a worse overall survival (OS; P = 0.021) and disease-free survival (DFS; P = 0.044). In multivariate analysis, Ki-67 expression and primary site of involvement were found to be an independent prognostic factor for OS and DFS (P < 0.05). Based on these results, we proposed a new clinico-pathological prognostic model with Ki-67 expression and the primary site of involvement. It showed a high degree of correlation with worse OS and DFS (P < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
Ki-67 expression is predictive of prognosis, and our prognostic model may become a useful tool for predicting prognosis in patients with stage I/II extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma, nasal type.


Two proteins in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that are encoded by the genes RAS1 and RAS2 are structurally and functionally homologous to proteins of the mammalian ras oncogene family. We examined the role of fatty acylation in the maturation of yeast RAS2 protein by creating mutants in the putative palmitate addition site located at the carboxyl terminus of the protein. Two mutations, Cys-318 to an opal termination codon and Cys-319 to Ser-319, were created in vitro and substituted in the chromosome in place of the normal RAS2 allele. These changes resulted in a failure of RAS2 protein to be acylated with palmitate and a failure of RAS2 protein to be localized to a membrane fraction. The mutations yielded a Ras2- phenotype with respect to the ability of the resultant mutants to grow on nonfermentable carbon sources and to complement ras1- mutants. However, overexpression of the ras2Ser-319 product yielded a Ras+ phenotype without a corresponding association of the mutant protein with the membrane fraction. We conclude that the presence of a fatty acyl moiety is important for localizing RAS2 protein to the membrane where it is active but that the fatty acyl group is not an absolute requirement of RAS2 protein function.


Reducing mutual coupling between elements of an antenna array is one of the main topics in array designs. The use of electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structures built by microstrip technology is an attractive way to mitigate the mutual coupling problem. This letter describes a novel configuration of uniplanar compact electromagnetic band-gap (UC-EBG) structures to reduce mutual coupling between the radiating elements. The idea is to use the UC-EBG structures placed on top of the antenna layer. The main objective is to reduce both the element separation and the mutual coupling between the patch antennas, which in turn increases antenna directivity. The proposed configuration eliminates drawbacks of similar structures presented in previous works.


Abstract This article chronicles the work of the California State University Digital Ambassador Program (DA), a Faculty Learning Community (FLC), which brought together 13 faculty members across the state to create ongoing, targeted spaces of support for colleagues and educational partners to learn about innovative technological and pedagogical practices on their respective campuses. Three different faculty development activities within teacher education are analyzed: (a) a faculty study hall model, (b) preservice classroom activities, and (c) large-scale professional development activities. As a capacity development model, the DA program and its projects promote experimentation, collaboration, mentorship, and professional self-renewal among faculty and influence credential classrooms and clinical practice.


Empirical evidence suggests that working memory (WM) is closely related to arithmetic performance. WM, which is the ability to monitor and update recent information, underlies various cognitive processes and behaviors including planning, self-regulation, and self-control. However, only a few studies have examined whether WM uniquely explains variance in arithmetic performance when other WM-related domain-general factors are taken into account. In this study, we examined whether WM explains unique variance in arithmetic performance when planning, self-regulation, and self-control are considered as well. We used the Tower of London task as a measure of planning, self-rated reports as a measure of self-regulation and self-control, and WM measures, to test which of these domain-general functions predicts complex multiplication performance. Results showed that planning predicted multiplication accuracy and self-control predicted response time, while WM and self-regulation did not predict complex multiplication performance. Although WM was not a direct predictor of multiplication performance, it possibly exerted its influence as part of planning ability. We suggest that complex multiplication is not predicted by WM per se, but rather by WM-related general cognitive and behavioral factors, namely self-control and the planning component of executive functions.


Fascist and extreme right-wing political movements in Britain have been the subject of enduring interest to historians since 1945, with the majority of works centring on the British Union of Fascists (BUF), a political party founded and led by Sir Oswald Mosley between 1932 and 1940. Despite the BUF's failure to achieve levels of support on par with many fascist movements in continental Europe, there is now a sizeable body of historiography dealing with the party as a minor case within the study of European fascism and as a unique phenomenon of radical politics in interwar Britain. By comparison, little interest has been devoted to aspects of British fascism not connected to Mosley or the BUF. Moreover, extreme right movements operating in Britain since 1945 have largely been characterized as either a direct legacy of the interwar movement or an attempt to reform British fascism under a different guise.

This thesis re-examines the continuity between the interwar and the post-war iterations of the extreme right in Britain by focusing on the ideas and activism of Arthur Kenneth (A.K) Chesterton. A high-ranking member of the BUF who made substantial contributions to the party's propaganda, Chesterton split with Mosley in 1938 to pursue an independent career in extreme right-wing politics that persisted until his death in 1973. Outside of his role in the BUF, Chesterton is best known as a prolific author of conspiratorial nationalist literature, as the head of the League of Empire Loyalists (a small right-wing pressure group active from 1954 to 1967), and as the chairman of the National Front between 1967 and 1971. Using Chesterton as a focal point, this study examines the problems encountered by Britain's extreme right in attempting to reconcile the nature and methods of fascism with the prevailing conditions of British politics across seven decades of the twentieth century. While the primary contribution is to the historiography of extreme right-wing movements in Britain, it also expands ongoing theoretical debates regarding the nature and definitional limits of fascism itself.


Increasingly, innovative medical products are creating a quandary for the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") because they often transcend the FDA's traditional categorical approach to regulating medical products. In a recent attempt to simplify this process, the FDA has proposed a new rule for regulating "combination products." This iBrief discusses the FDA's current approach and analyzes the possible affects of the proposed regulation. Because of the many shortcomings of both systems, this iBrief concludes that the FDA should instead stop assigning center jurisdiction based on a product's "primary mode of action," and give the Office of Combination Products internal agency jurisdiction over combination products. This alternative approach would increase consistency and efficiency while maintaining the FDA's high standards for medical product safety and efficacy.


This paper outlines the need for a more structured and simplified Life Cycle Assessment approach – called Strategic LCA. It builds on a previously published and peer-reviewed methodology using backcasting from basic principles of socio-ecological sustainability. The idea is to simplify, not by excluding parts of the traditionally covered dimensions in this field, but by a new way of setting system boundaries. Rather than applying boundaries related to geographic regions, or fields of expertise, or particular impacts, all issues found to be relevant as regards achieving sustainability are taken into account. To that end, we use four previously published generic principles of socio-ecological sustainability for the scrutinizing of materials, products and services.


Summary An eclectic, versatile Tuscan doctor, Eusebio Giacinto Valli (1755-1816) was a scholar of several branches of medicine, particularly public health, preventive medicine and epidemiology. His brilliant and wide-ranging education, and his intense passion for physics and chemistry, as applied to the human body, enabled him to conduct numerous studies in the field of vaccinology. He travelled to the Middle East in order to study the epidemiology of the plague and carried out experiments aimed at discovering a cure and a prophylaxis for rabies, succeeding in attenuating the rabies virus by inoculating a mixture of saliva from rabid dogs and gastric juice from frogs. Having travelled to Spain and then to Cuba, where he undertook the study of yellow fever, he died in Havana in September 1816, after injecting attenuated germs of the disease into his own body. He was buried in the great Monumental Cemetery "Cristobal Colon", where his tomb bears the epigraph: "victima de su amor à la humanidad ("a victim of his love for humanity").


Cities now consume resources and produce waste in amounts that are incommensurate with the populations they contain. Quantifying and benchmarking the environmental impacts of cities is essential if urbanization of the world's growing population is to occur sustainably. Urban metabolism (UM) is a promising assessment form in that it provides the annual sum material and energy inputs, and the resultant emissions of the emergent infrastructural needs of a city's sociotechnical subsystems. By fusing UM and life cycle assessment (UM–LCA) this study advances the ability to quantify environmental impacts of cities by modeling pressures embedded in the flows upstream (entering) and downstream (leaving) of the actual urban systems studied, and by introducing an advanced suite of indicators. Applied to five global cities, the developed UM–LCA model provided enhanced quantification of mass and energy flows through cities over earlier UM methods. The hybrid model approach also enabled the dominant sources of a city's different environmental footprints to be identified, making UM–LCA a novel and potentially powerful tool for policy makers in developing and monitoring urban development policies. Combining outputs with socioeconomic data hinted at how these forces influenced the footprints of the case cities, with wealthier ones more associated with personal consumption related impacts and poorer ones more affected by local burdens from archaic infrastructure.


−Hand-tracking is fundamental to translating sign language to a spoken language. Accurate and reliable sign language translation depends on effective and accurate hand-tracking. This paper proposes an improved hand-tracking framework that includes a tracking recovery algorithm optimising a previous framework to better handle occlusion. It integrates the tracking recovery algorithm to improve the discrimination between hands and the tracking of hands. The framework was evaluated on 30 South African Sign Language phrases that use: a single hand; both hands without occlusion; and both hands with occlusion. Ten individuals in constrained and unconstrained environments performed the gestures. Overall, the proposed framework achieved an average success rate of 91.8% compared to an average success rate of 81.1% using the previous framework. The results show an improved tracking accuracy across all signs in constrained and unconstrained environments.


By drawing upon what is known about risk factors and protective factors with respect to at-risk youth, the author discusses how communities can become more actively involved and supportive of young people, and thereby work towards a model where the community actively promotes resilience among children and youth. She provides a detailed review of the research around resilience to support her contention that many resources, already present in communities but largely untapped, have the potential to encourage vulnerable young people to avoid developing an aggressive posture towards others, dropping out of school, drifting into a criminal lifestyle, or being victimized. She notes the growing and consistent evidence that poverty, unemployment, abuse, family and school problems correlate to crime, and argues that while one cannot say with any certainty that these factors are the causes of crime, they certainly are the causes of disadvantage. It is the disadvantaged, she states, who are the "most thoroughly processed" by the criminal justice system.


Nicotinamide-N-methyltransferase (NNMT) is an enzyme that consumes S-adenosyl-methionine (SAM) and nicotinamide (NAM) to produce S-adenosyl-homocysteine (SAH) and 1-methylnicotinamide (MNAM). How much NNMT contributes to the quantity regulation of these four metabolites depends on whether NNMT is a major consumer or producer of these metabolites, which varies among various cellular contexts. Yet, whether NNMT critically regulates these metabolites in the AML12 hepatocyte cell line has been unexplored. To address this, we knock down Nnmt in AML12 cells and investigate the effects of Nnmt RNAi on metabolism and gene expression. We find that Nnmt RNAi accumulates SAM and SAH, whereas it reduces MNAM with NAM being unaltered. These results indicate that NNMT is a significant consumer of SAM and critical for MNAM production in this cell line. Moreover, transcriptome analyses reveal that altered SAM and MNAM homeostasis is accompanied by various detrimental molecular phenotypes, as exemplified by the down-regulations of lipogenic genes such as Srebf1. Consistent with this, oil-red O-staining experiments demonstrate the decrease of total lipids upon Nnmt RNAi. These results suggest that NNMT maintains proper SAM and MNAM homeostasis, providing an additional example where NNMT plays a critical role in regulating SAM and MNAM metabolism.


We have modified the popular Cafe Scientifique model for engaging adults in dialog on issues at the nexus of science and society to address the specific needs and interests of high-school age youth. Key elements of the model are Youth Leadership Teams that guide the program design and assist with implementation; a speaker preparation process to help scientists better connect with the teen audience; and a highly interactive program that goes beyond the typical short presentation and lively discussion by incorporating other means to actively explore the topic of the event. Our objectives in offering the program are to make science and scientists more engaging and accessible to youth; to help youth see science and technology research and discoveries as relevant to their daily lives; and to encourage positive attitudes toward science, scientists, and science, technology, engineering, and math careers. As a result of this project, we expected youth would develop:• an informal community that engages in scientific discourse, thought, and exploration;• a deep and nuanced understanding of current issues in science and technology and be able to communicate that understanding confidently and expertly;• skills and attitudes for lifelong learning and an appreciation of science as a career and as a way of thinking. The summative evaluation used a quasi-experimental design with matched control-treatment groups (N = 383) to study the impact of the program on (1) attitudes toward science, scientists, and science careers and (2) Positive Youth Development (PYD). The evaluation data demonstrated the program positively impacted participants' science-related attitudes; however, the degree to which the program's PYD outcomes were achieved is less conclusive.


The present document describes a nutritional approach that is nested in the European Innovation Partnership for Active and Healthy Aging (EIP-AHA) and aims to provide the first common European program translating an integrated approach to nutritional frailty in terms of a multidimensional and transnational methodology. The document has been developed by the A3 Nutrition Action Area of the EIP-AHA and aims at providing a stepwise approach to malnutrition in older citizens, identifying adequate interventions based on a unified assessment and ICT-supported solutions. "NutriLive" is an integrated nutritional approach, represented by a structured Screening-Assessment-Monitoring-Action-Pyramid-Model (SAM-AP). Its core concept is the stratification of the nutritional needs, considered by the working group as the key for targeted, effective, and sustainable interventions. "NutriLive" tries to close gaps in epidemiological data within an aging population, creating a unified language to deal with the topic of nutrition and malnutrition in Europe. By assembling all the validated screening, assessment, and monitoring tools on malnutrition in a first pyramid, which is interrelated to a second intervention pyramid, the A3 Nutrition WG identifies a common, integrated vision on the nutritional approach to frailty, which applies to the various health care settings.


We know little about the marine environment, particularly in the inhospitable Arctic region. Whereas national authorities often rely on the construction of a solid knowledge base to allow human activity access to new areas, scientists point to the impossibility of building comprehensive knowledge of subsea ecosystems. This paper presents an ethnographic study of a Norwegian oil and gas company's development of a knowledge infrastructure for measuring the long-term trend of the behaviour of the marine environment, i.e. a baseline to be used as a reference to calculate potential risks in a commercially relevant Arctic area. The company's infrastructuring mechanisms involve selecting and configuring environmental sensing technologies, and tying them into the fabric of the company's operational analysis routines. We identify and discuss how these mechanisms address and articulate temporal, spatial, and social tensions and how, in so doing, they mould new representations of environmental risk.


Evaporation from porous media is a key process in the hydrologic cycles, waste isolation, biological and food processes and other engineering application. Drying rate and patterns in porous media are strongly influenced by transport properties of the medium and the external evaporative demand. Drying rate from porous media often exhibit a transition from a nearly constant and high evaporation rate (stage 1) supplied by capillary liquid flow to a lower rate (stage 2) supplied by vapor diffusion. During stage 1, continuous liquid pathways connect the receding drying front with evaporating surface and sustain high evaporation rates. At a certain drying front depth, gravity overcomes capillary driving forces and a transition from liquid flow-supported stage-1 to diffusion-supported stage-2 evaporation occurs. The front depth at this transition marks a characteristic length defined by the width of pore size distribution. The extent and existence of hydraulic connections through the unsaturated zone above the drying front has been predicted theoretically and demonstrated experimentally using high resolution x-ray tomography and neutron radiography. In addition to provide detailed information regarding to the dynamics of drying front and water content distribution during evaporation, the concept of capillary characteristic length was extended to partially wettable porous media by systematically considering capillarity of clusters of hydrophilic and hydrophobic grains. Simplified geometrical and statistical assumptions have been applied to describe the porous media with mixed wettability. The theoretical predictions were successfully validated using a set of experiments with sands with different fraction of hydrophobic grains. Additionally, neutron radiography was used to investigate the drying of uniform hydrophilic and hydrophobic sand at high spatial and temporal resolutions to investigate the impact of wettability on drying front and water content dynamics. To explore the effect of liquid continuity and clarify the mass transport mechanisms supplying different stages of evaporation, the evaporation from porous media including hydrophobic sand layers was investigated. Results confirm interruption of capillary flow by hydrophobic layers and overall reduction in evaporative mass loss. Persistence of capillary flow to the interface between hydrophilic and hydrophobic layers was evident by accumulation of dye tracer indicating formation of vaporization plane. Evaporation flux across the hydrophobic layer was purely diffusive and proportional to the diffusion length to the surface (thickness of hydrophobic layer). In a further, theoretical and experimental studies were conducted to analyze evaporation behavior of layered porous media affected by the extent and sequence of layering and capillary characteristics of each layer (wettability, pore size distribution). The proposed model shows that the combination of intrinsic capillary characteristic length and the position of a layer below evaporation surface define the ultimate depth of drying front at the end of stage-1 evaporation. The model was tested in laboratory experiments using Hele-Shaw cells filled with layers of coarse and fine sand. Transition to stage-2 evaporation occurring at a depth defined by exceeding of the weakest "capillary link" in the sequence was confirmed. In addition to analyze the drying behavior of porous media under different conditions, a critical review was performed questioning the concept of enhanced water vapor fluxes from partially-saturated porous media relative to fluxes predicted based on Fick's law. This concept led to various mechanistic and phenomenological enhancement factors to reconcile apparent discrepancies between experiments and predictions made based on macroscopic diffusion theory. These concepts were reevaluated considering the role of capillary-induced liquid flow extending from saturated zone to vaporization plane. It was proved that the continuous capillary liquid flow is the main reason to measure experimentally fluxes more than the prediction by Fick's law of diffusion.


The Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) acts as a refuge for zooxanthellate coral communities at high northern latitudes in the eastern Pacific. The diversity of dinoflagellate endosymbionts living with cnidarians (9 genera, 16 species) was examined using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR‐DGGE) fingerprint analysis of the rDNA Internal Transcribed Spacers (ITS) 1 and 2. Although geographically isolated from the rest of the Pacific, coral‐algal associations in the Gulf of California were similar in cladal composition (dominated by clade C Symbiodinium). However, levels of host‐symbiont specificity appeared to be greater than in the western Pacific, where host diversity is considerably higher and environmental conditions are relatively stable. As a result, the cnidarian community lacked a host‐generalist symbiont. Most colonies of the ecologically dominant genus Pocillopora contained uniform populations of either Symbiodinium D1 (in ~70% of colonies) or C1b‐c (~30%). The proportions of D versus C colonies (i.e., D and C holobionts) remained stable between the years 2004 and 2006. The specificity, stability, and prevalence of Symbiodinium D1 found among individuals of Pocillopora spp. in a region minimally impacted by coral bleaching indicate that these symbiotic combinations, exhibiting specific variability, appear to be products of long‐term ecological and evolutionary processes.


In the present article, we aim to provide guidelines on how to conduct research for the enhancement of training for cognitive readiness (CR). After distinguishing between trainable CR skills and stable person-related variables, CR components that are trainable need to be defined in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and person-related variables need to be selected as prerequisites for training success, as they define the composite construct of CR. Training success in turn needs to include indicators of successful performance in unpredictable environments after training of CR that operationalizes temporal and adaptive transfer. We suggest a basic module for training-of-CR research, which includes a pretest measuring the baseline of the participants' knowledge, skills, and attitudes; person-related variables as control variables; predictors and moderators of CR training success; and two posttests for the assessment of training performance directly after training and following a retention interval for both temporal and adaptive transfer. For further research, we suggest extending the basic module with research on spacing of practice, performance under stress, and individual differences in cognition and personality. This research will enhance the understanding of the interplay between person- and training-related variables that best predicts the prerequisites for establishing and sustaining competent performance in complex and stressful environments.


Abstract BACKGROUND Laser Ablation of Abnormal Neurological Tissue using Robotic NeuroBlate System (LAANTERN) is an ongoing multicenter prospective NeuroBlate (Monteris Medical) LITT (laser interstitial thermal therapy) registry collecting real-world outcomes and quality-of-life (QoL) data. OBJECTIVE To compare 12-mo outcomes from all subjects undergoing LITT for intracranial tumors/neoplasms. METHODS Demographics, intraprocedural data, adverse events, QoL, hospitalizations, health economics, and survival data are collected; standard data management and monitoring occur. RESULTS A total of 14 centers enrolled 223 subjects; the median follow-up was 223 d. There were 119 (53.4%) females and 104 (46.6%) males. The median age was 54.3 yr (range 3-86) and 72.6% had at least 1 baseline comorbidity. The median baseline Karnofsky Performance Score (KPS) was 90. Of the ablated tumors, 131 were primary and 92 were metastatic. Most patients with primary tumors had high-grade gliomas (80.9%). Patients with metastatic cancer had recurrence (50.6%) or radiation necrosis (40%). The median postprocedure hospital stay was 33.4 h (12.7-733.4). The 1-yr estimated survival rate was 73%, and this was not impacted by disease etiology. Patient-reported QoL as assessed by the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Brain was stabilized postprocedure. KPS declined by an average of 5.7 to 10.5 points postprocedure; however, 50.5% had stabilized/improved KPS at 6 mo. There were no significant differences in KPS or QoL between patients with metastatic vs primary tumors. CONCLUSION Results from the ongoing LAANTERN registry demonstrate that LITT stabilizes and improves QoL from baseline levels in a malignant brain tumor patient population with high rates of comorbidities. Overall survival was better than anticipated for a real-world registry and comparative to published literature.


While there is a long tradition of conducting research on medical communication, one may question in what way practicing physicians and courses for medical students will profit from it. The first part of our paper presents a short overview of 40 years of research, focusing on concepts of patient-centered care and shared decision-making. Pros and cons two co-existing traditions, process analysis and micro-analysis, are described. The second part of the paper presents the development of cognitive scripts in communication skills training in medical education. The differences between perspectives angles and educational perspectives are elaborated on. The third part of the paper describes the method and effects of the practical learning of new scripts for patient centeredness in the case of non-Western immigrant patients. Although education in communication skills definitely profits from research, daily practice seems to be much more complex, not in the least because of cultural differences.


The relationship between the dialogues in the first three episodes of 4 Ezra and the visions and epilogue in the closing four episodes has challenged scholars for over a century. The inconclusiveness of the dialogues (episodes 1-3) along with the apparently different emphases in the visions and epilogue (episodes 4-7) has made it difficult for scholars to agree on the actual author's position. Who does the author want the reader to agree with: Ezra, Uriel, neither, or some combination of both? This article seeks to address these problems from a fresh perspective by studying the foundational narratives appealed to and presupposed in the worldviews of Ezra and Uriel in the dialogues, and by the visions in the second half of 4 Ezra. A concluding section will explore the answers provided by the author of 4 Ezra to the two dominant problems he raises in the book (the one/ many, and many/few) and will reflect on the rhetorical force of the book, the voice of the author, and the purpose of 4 Ezra. The narrative frame and flow of 4 Ezra solidly root the author's own convictions and theology in episodes 4 through 7. The author's primary purpose for the book is to renew Israel's faith in its covenant-keeping God and motivate the people to pursue righteousness through obedience to the law in the absence of a functioning temple.


Research connecting Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is growing. The disorders share several overlapping characteristics, neurological deficits, and similar comorbid disorders. Although these disorders are typically sex-specific, the presence of externalizing and internalizing characteristics may link these disorders. These commonalities have resulted in a developing theory suggesting that a childhood ADHD diagnosis may predict adult BPD symptoms. The current study aimed to test this developing theory. The sample included 175 emerging adults (64.6% female). A demographics measure, the Barkley Adult-ADHD Rating Scale— IV (BAARS-IV), and the Personality Assessment Inventory Borderline Personality Features Subscale (PAI-BOR) were administered in an online format. The results suggested that ADHD and BPD were significantly correlated. The theory that childhood ADHD predicted BPD symptoms was not supported. Further, results suggested that sex differences did not play a significant role in the relationship between ADHD and BPD. Implications, such as consideration of combined treatment approaches, are discussed.


This overview of the Pentateuch reviews the various historical-critical attempts to read it that arise from notions about the social evolution of Israel's religion and culture. Is the Pentateuch an accumulation of folk traditions, a work of ancient historiography, a document legitimizing religious reform? The present book, in dialogue with competing views, advocates a compositional model that recognizes the social and historical diversity of the literary strata. It argues that a proto-Pentateuchal author created a comprehensive history from Genesis to Numbers that was written as a prologue to the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy to 2 Kings) in the exilic period and later expanded by a Priestly writer to make it the foundational document of the Jerusalem temple community.


This thesis explores the concept of dialogue, and of reading as a dialogue, in relation to Sarraute's novels. Its view of dialogue draws on various theories of (spoken and written) communication which see dialogue as transcending the limits of linguistic expression (Ch.l). This transcendence of language through language is epitomised by the ironic exchange, where communication succeeds in spite of the utterance which is openly recognised to be defective. Full participation in dialogue entails ironically recognising the inadequacy of one's discourse; if the subject's language constitutes his identity, then engaging in dialogue further involves acknowledging one's lack of authority as a subject. However, reading Sarraute complicates this idealistic notion of dialogue: despite her writing's formal dialogism, it not only represents but also enacts aspects of communication which oppose rather than promote consensus. The way the authorial voice inevitably reasserts an initially renounced unitary identity (something her fiction condemns), demonstrates how speaking always unifies the subject despite itself, reaffirming that authority which the aspiration to dialogue should reject (Chs.3 and4). Secondly, reading as a form of dialogue raises the question of the relationship of writing to speech: their structural identity means that spoken communication cannot offer mutual presence but always involves alienation (Ch.2). Thus Sarraute's attempt to counter the alienation of writing by simulating speech cannot succeed, and so she replays a conversational strategy of her characters to control the distant reader's response she defines him (as passive and assenting) in her address. But the mediation of writing preserves the reader from this definition, and so Sarraute finally rejects this uncontrollable other (Ch.5). However, spoken dialogue also illuminates the text-reader exchange: its reciprocity, which counters the alienation of writing, indicates how the text too can "answer" the reader by resisting his interpretation and making him revise it. Some text-reader communication is possible, for the text's language exceeds both its author's intention and its reader's interpretation, uniting them in the symbolic universe within which they define themselves (Ch.6). But their linguistic selfdefinition means that their dialogue around the text will always be oppositional as well as consensual.


The National Institute of Education (NIE) is the provider of teacher education in Singapore and is an institution within the Nanyang Technological University; NIE is simultaneously accountable to the Ministry of Education in Singapore. A Communication Skills for Teachers course (CST) was introduced for all pre-service teachers at NIE in July 2005. A catalyst for the development of this course, which focuses on speaking and writing skills, was the perception that the standard of English of Singaporean teachers had declined. Since 2010, the course has been offered as a blended course and increasingly, several aspects of course administration have also been conducted online. The two main areas of assessment for the course are an oral presentation and a written test. In order to ensure that grading is consistent, standardisation meetings for these tests are important but not always possible given the tutors' varied schedules. This paper outlines the development and implementation of online standardisation for the written assessment component of the CST course. Utilising collaborative tools for standardisation saves time and reduces the need for face-to-face meetings for this important aspect of assessment.


Research has shown that mortgage default is closely related to house prices. When house prices fall the borrower has an incentive to default. Since default incurs substantial cost to the lender, the borrower and many other market participants, as well as the society, house price is a risk in a mortgage contract. This was clearly demonstrated during the 200709 financial crisis. In this thesis I discuss some (potential) measures to manage mortgage default risk arising from low house prices. Chapter 1 is on mortgage insurance. Mortgage insurance is commonly used by lenders to transfer mortgage default risk to an insurer. After a brief introduction of the mortgage and mortgage insurance markets in US and Canada, I specify a simple mortgage insurance contract and a multiple state model for mortgage termination. The contract is then priced under the model. I explore the possibility of hedging house price risk in Chapter 2. If we assume a perfect market where house price risk can be traded exists, and a mortgage contract is a contingent claim on house prices, then the classic delta hedging is useful in hedging house price risk. In chapter 3 I discuss an innovative type of mortgage contract – property index-linked mortgage. The purpose of this contract design is to reduce the borrower's propensity to default when house price declines. In particular, when house price declines, the mortgage balance and payment are reduced. I analyze this contract from the borrower's perspective and find that such contracts are effective in reducing default incentives and as a result, the lender may also be better off due to lower deadweight default cost. The last chapter focuses on house price basis risk. House price basis risk refers to the situation where the value of an individual property appreciates differently from the index. This may lead to problems such as suboptimal hedging, underpricing and lower efficiency for financial products involving house price index. In this chapter I develop a basis risk model that can be used to simulate reasonable individual house prices for a given index.


Abstract Nature is replete with examples of layered-structure materials that are evolved through billions of years to provide high performance. Insect elytra (a portion of the exoskeleton) have evoked worldwide research attention and are believed to serve as fuselages and wings of natural aircraft. This work focuses on the relationship between structure, mechanical behavior, and failure mechanisms of the elytra. We report a failure-mode-optimization (FMO) mechanism that can explain elytra's mechanical behaviors. We show initial evidence that this mechanism makes bio-structures of low-strength materials strong and ductile that can effectively resist shear forces and crack growth. A bio-inspired design of a joint by using the FMO mechanism has been proved by experiments to have a potential to increase the interface shear strength as high as about 2.5 times. The FMO mechanism, which is based on the new concept of property-structure synergetic coupling proposed in this work, offer some thoughts to deal with the notoriously difficult problem of interface strength and to reduce catastrophic failure events.


Previous studies suggest some effects of selenium on risk of several chronic diseases, which may be mediated through a small number of selenoenzymes with antioxidant properties. In this cross-sectional analysis of 195 participants from the Seattle Barrett's Esophagus Study whowere free of esophageal cancer at the time of blood draw, we examined whether the number of the minor alleles in 26 tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of five selenoenzyme genes [i.e., glutathione peroxidase 1–4 (GPX1–4) and selenoprotein P (SEPP1)] was associated with activity of GPX1 in white blood cells and GPX3 in plasma, and concentrations of SEPP1 and markers of oxidative stress [malondialdehyde (MDA) and protein carbonyl content] in plasma. At the gene level, associations were observed between overall variation in GPX1 and GPX1 activity (P = 0.02) as well as between overall variation in GPX2 and SEPP1 concentrations (P = 0.03). By individual SNP, two variants in GPX1 (rs8179164 and rs1987628) showed a suggestive associationwithGPX1 activity (P=0.10 and 0.08, respectively) and twoGPX2 variants (rs4902346 and rs2071566)were associatedwith SEPP1 concentration (P= 0.004 and 0.002, respectively). Furthermore, two SNP in the SEPP1 gene (rs230813 and rs230819) were associated with MDA concentrations (P = 0.03 and 0.02, respectively). Overall, our study supports the hypothesis that common genetic variants in selenoenzymes affect their activity. J. Nutr. 142: 419–426, 2012.


In the paper, the parameters of free space optical links which are most dependent on the optical wavelength are discussed. The paper deals with the comparison of the atmospheric attenuation at 850 nm and 1550 nm caused by turbulence and scattering by the particles present in the atmosphere and with comparison of the optical receiver sensitivity in dependence on a bit rate for both wavelength. Presented calculations are demonstrated on the connection of avalanche and PIN photodiodes with a high-impedance amplifier using a MOSFET and with a transimpedance amplifier using a bipolar junction transistor. It is assumed that the silicon photodiodes work at a wavelength of 850 nm and the InGaAs photodiodes at 1550 nm.


Across the world, the prevalence of diabetes is increasing rapidly, and in the UK this is of particular concern in South Asian groups. Given the centrality of diabetes self-management to both policy and practice, it follows that research in this area, in particular to identify optimal ways of supporting those with diabetes in this regard, is required. However in groups whose main language is not English, such as those from South Asian communities, there are serious limitations to the research that has been carried out to date. In this chapter the difficulties of researching the views and life experiences of people with diabetes, with particular reference to issues around diabetes self-management, in those whose main language is not English, will be discussed and reflected upon.

An on-going study, the UK Asian Diabetes (UKAD) project, initially utilised self-complete measures to elicit views around self-care and knowledge of diabetes. This proved extremely challenging, in particular with regard to the authenticity or quality of the collected data. Hearing the concerns of those researchers who collected the data has led to the design and subsequent funding of a new study to investigate these issues further. This chapter will outline the UKAD study and discuss how that research experience led directly to the design of a further study to address those difficulties identified in the UKAD project.

A research team are currently developing alternative modes of data collection in groups of South Asians with diabetes. This research is led by a multidisciplinary group of academics and health care professionals and uses qualitative methods to develop new ways of collecting data in groups who can not read or write any language and whose main language does not have an agreed written form; namely Sylheti and Mirpuri. A key principle of this research is that service users are involved from the outset and play a pivotal role in the development of these data collection methods. This chapter will outline this research and will discuss the process of working in a multidisciplinary team alongside lay involvement in the project. It will debate the key issues of 'authentic' and 'valid' knowledge and consider the implications for collecting information and seeking out the views of those people from South Asian backgrounds who currently utilise health care services in the UK. The chapter will consider how 'success' is measured in research and the validity of the experiences of the 'researched' or service users, whose input into the research process is increasingly being considered as vital to the success of any project.


Early Pleistocene (Santernian: MNN 19b-c Nannofossil Zones)
coastal marine deposits related to rocky coast evolution have been
described in a wide area near Orvieto (Umbria, Central Italy). Sediments
range from boulders and blocks, to rounded pebbles and cobbles,
to sands, silts and clays. Sedimentological analysis enables
description of five main facies associations leading to identification
of sea-cliff toe, beachface, upper and lower shoreface and offshore
environments. The succession documents regressive-transgressive
cycles. Lateral facies variations due to the paleocoast morphology
have also been noted, and some sedimentation models are here proposed.
The rocky coast evolution can be interpreted in relation to a
«cliff cycle»: during transgressions, the cliff is directly exposed to
wave energy and production of boulders and blocks is promoted, as
well as the reworking and deposition of rounded to flattened cobbles
and pebbles on the beachface. At the same time, a seaward sandy
sedimentation takes place. Regressive phases, and cliff erosion itself,
cause the seaward shift of coastal systems, until the cliff becomes
confined to the backshore. During sea-level falls, only reworking of
previous deposits can occur. This model is suitable for high energy
zones near promontories, but seems inadequate to explain sedimentation
on lower energy zones (e.g.: embayments), where other factors,
as coastal slope and bay's size, play a key role in determinate
facies distribution. The main differences in facies organization occur
during regression, and specific sedimentation models are proposed.
Protected areas behind the promontories show a thin fringe of cliff
talus and «coarse clastic beachface» and a wider sand/calcarenitic
shoreface. During transgression, facies pattern resemble the high
energy zones, with a gravel beachface here broader than cliff talus
and a sharper transition to the shoreface. During regression, both
beachface gravel and upper shoreface clinostratified sand shift seaward,
above the sub-horizontal lower shoreface facies. Sheltered
bays with gravel beaches, organized on shore-parallel «facies belts»,
locally occur. The upper beachface may here persist longer during
regression, and better organization occurs in the swash zone and
foreshore, represented by alternations of «imbricate» and «infill»
zones, and «infill» and «outer frame» zones respectively. Conversely,
during transgression the «imbricate» zone is also replaced by a
«coarse clastic beachface». During both transgressive and regressive
phases, offshore silty clay sedimentation shows no modification


Search and rescue with a team of heterogeneous mobile robots in unknown and large-scale underground environments requires high-precision localization and mapping. This crucial requirement is faced with many challenges in complex and perceptually-degraded subterranean environments, as the onboard perception system is required to operate in off-nominal conditions (poor visibility due to darkness and dust, rugged and muddy terrain, and the presence of self-similar and ambiguous scenes). In a disaster response scenario and in the absence of prior information about the environment, robots must rely on noisy sensor data and perform Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) to build a 3D map of the environment and localize themselves and potential survivors. To that end, this letter reports on a multi-robot SLAM system developed by team CoSTAR in the context of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. We extend our previous work, LAMP, by incorporating a single-robot front-end interface that is adaptable to different odometry sources and lidar configurations, a scalable multi-robot front-end to support inter- and intra-robot loop closure detection for large scale environments and multi-robot teams, and a robust back-end equipped with an outlier-resilient pose graph optimization based on Graduated Non-Convexity. We provide a detailed ablation study on the multi-robot front-end and back-end, and assess the overall system performance in challenging real-world datasets collected across mines, power plants, and caves in the United States. We also release our multi-robot back-end datasets (and the corresponding ground truth), which can serve as challenging benchmarks for large-scale underground SLAM.


Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA), especially the n-3 LCPUFA metabolic products eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) play an important role as regulators in many biological processes. To date hake (Merluccius capensis) heads, a rich source of EPA and DHA, have been discarded at sea. The South African Fisheries Policy Development Committee concerned with the environmental impact of this practice has rendered it undesirable. The high prevalence of under-nutrition amongst children in South Africa can be addressed by the supplementation of their diet with this unexploited fish source. The aim of the current study was to develop a microbiologically safe and sensory acceptable sandwich spread using fish flour prepared from fish heads, as a prime ingredient. The intervention trial aimed to compare the effects of an increased dietary intake of n-3 LCPUFA, specifically DHA, on the blood fatty acid levels and absenteeism (as indicator of immune function), as well as the cognitive status, of the subjects. The microbiological content of the sandwich spread was determined after storage for 20 d at 5°C and 15 d at 25°C. Sensory evaluation was performed by consumers (n = 95; M:F = 44:51; 6 – 9 yr) to determine acceptance of the five different flavours individually incorporated into the sandwich spread to mask the fishy note and to provide different flavour options. For the intervention trial subjects (n = 351) were stratified within class group (A E) and gender and randomly assigned to two treatment categories, an experimental group (EG; n = 174) receiving 25 g sandwich spread.d (191.66 mg DHA. d) and a control group (CG; n = 177) receiving an analogous placebo. On school days (104 d), each subject received two sandwiches consisting of two slices of bread (ca. 60 g), spread with 25 g of either the placebo or the experimental spread. Blood samples were drawn at baseline and post intervention. Plasma fatty acid and red blood cell (RBC) membrane status, C-reactive protein levels, as well as vitamin and micronutrient status, were determined. Trained test administrators conducted a battery of cognitive tests. According to South African Government health standards, the sandwich spread remained microbiologically safe after storage. Male and female consumer respondents revealed a significant difference between gender preferences of the five different spread flavours (p <0.05). Significant treatment effects (p <0.05) were observed in n-3 LCPUFA status of the EG, as well as for their absenteeism from school. The two subtests of the Hopkins Verbal Learning test, Recognition and Discrimination Index, showed significant differences between the EG and CG (p <0.05) post intervention in the Grade 2 subjects. The Spelling tests also showed a significant difference between the two groups (p <0.05). In the current study a microbiologically safe and sensory acceptable sandwich spread was developed and tested during an intervention trial, and could possibly in future, provide a healthier option


Many, if not most, baby boomers appear at risk of suffering a major decline in their living standard in retirement. With federal and state government finances far too encumbered to significantly raise Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits, boomers must look to their own devices to rescue their retirements, namely, working harder and longer. However, the incentive of boomers to earn more is significantly limited by a plethora of explicit federal and state taxes and implicit taxes arising from the loss of federal and state benefits as one earns more. Of particular concern is Medicaid and Social Security's complex earnings test and clawback of disability benefits. This study measures the work disincentives confronting those age 50 to 79 from the entire array of explicit and implicit fiscal work disincentives. Specifically, the paper runs older respondents in the Federal Reserve's 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances through The Fiscal Analyzer—a software tool designed, in part, to calculate remaining lifetime marginal net tax rates. We find that working longer, say an extra five years, can raise older workers' sustainable living standards. But the impact is far smaller than suggested in the literature, in large part because of high net taxation of labor earnings. We also find that many baby boomers now face or will face high and, in very many cases, extremely high work disincentives arising from the hodgepodge design of our fiscal system. A third finding is that the marginal net tax rate associated with a significant increase in earnings, say $20,000 per year, arising from taking a full-time or part-time job (which could be a second job) can, for many elderly, be dramatically higher than that associated with earning a relatively small, say $1,000 per year, extra amount of money. This is due to the various income thresholds in our fiscal system. We also examine the elimination of all transfer program asset and income testing. This dramatically lowers marginal net tax rates facing the poor. Another key finding is the enormous dispersion in effective marginal remaining lifetime net tax rates facing seemingly identical households, that is, households with the same age and resource level. Finally, we find that traditional, current-year (i.e., static) marginal tax calculations relating this year's extra taxes to this year's extra income are woefully off target when it comes to properly measuring the elderly's disincentives to work. Our findings suggest that Uncle Sam is, indeed, inducing the elderly to retire.


One of the grand claims of neoliberalism is that the free-market world is an 'actor-free' process, in which no one is in charge. The aim of this article is to problematize this claim by examining the agency of two international institutions, the World Bank and UNESCO, and the ways in which they shape global language-education policies. In light of the latest reports released by the two institutions, the findings of this study suggest that both institutions are key players in the realm of global policies. Their differences, however, recline in their orientations, motives, and power. Whereas the World Bank is a finance institution with 'economic prosperity' as its motto, and neoliberalism as the basis of its policies, UNESCO is an intellectual institution with peace as its mantra, and universal consensus and social inclusion as the basis of its policies. The impact of such differences is notable on the type of policies each institution advocates. Whereas the World Bank's policies call for an alliance between language, education and economy as a means to eradicate poverty and achieve development, UNESCO's policies call for multiculturalism, multilingualism, and pluralism in education as a means to promote intercultural and international dialogues as a strategy to safeguard peace. The former model is currently in vogue in education sectors worldwide. Its global domination, however, cannot be explained without taking into account the financial supremacy of the World Bank, the economic dependency of many world's nations on the World Bank's long-term developmental loans, and the many conditions set by the Bank for its loan distributions, which includes, among others, the implementation of its neoliberal-driven educational and linguistic policies.