In this prospective study, 93 intensive care unit (ICU)-acquired infections seen in 131 ICU patients were evaluated. Infection rates were found to be 70.9 in 100 patients and 56.2 in 1,000 patient-days. Pneumonia (35.4%) and bloodstream infections (18.2%) were the most common infections; Staphylococcus aureus (30.9%) and Acinetobacter spp. (26.8%) were the most frequently isolated microorganisms. The results of multivariate logistic regression analyses estimating the risk factors for ICU-acquired infections were as follows: length of stay in ICU (>7 days) (odds ratio [OR]: 7.02; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.80-17.56), respiratory failure as a primary cause of admission (OR: 3.7; 95% Cl: 1.41-9.70), sedative medication (OR: 3.34; 95% CI: 1.27-8.79) and operation (before or after admission to ICU) (OR: 2.56; 95% CI: 1.06-6.18). In logistic regression analyses, age (>60 years) (OR: 3.65; 95% CI: 1.48-9.0), APACHE II score >15 (OR: 4.67; 95% CI: 1.92-11.31), intubation (OR: 3.60; 95% CI: 1.05-12.39) and central venous catheterization (OR: 7.85; 95% CI: 1.61-38.32) were found to be significant risk factors for mortality. The difference in mortality rates between patients with ICU-acquired infection and uninfected patients was not statistically significant (mortality rates: 42.3 and 45.6%, respectively). A high incidence of nosocomial infections was found, and the risk factors for ICU-acquired infections and mortality were determined.


Because storytelling is practiced mainly in the family and synagogue, it too has become a perpetuator of ethnic and family identity. --Tamar Alexander THe SYMBIOTIC relationship between folklore and literature continues to be of interest for both folklorists and literary critics. Axel Olrik's epic laws, Vladimir Propp's plot elements, and Antti Arne and Stith Thompson's talc types and motifs are not only found in legends, magic tales, and the fabliaux, but similar elements are also parts of novels, short stories, and even film. One particular culture that for centuries has woven the lore of the storyteller between the pages of the written text is that of the Jews. As Raphael Patai remarks in his engaging study, On Jewish Folklore: The Jews were throughout their long history a literate people, who developed at an early date the habit of committing to writing whatever they regarded as important in their oral traditions. As a result, the history of Jewish folklore is characterized, in each epoch, by a continuous process of lifting out considerable bodies of folklore from the stream of oral tradition and freezing them in writing. (38) It thus seems plausible to assert that upon close examination of Jewish texts, both the folklorist and the literary scholar would need to recognize the importance that both the oral and written traditions have had on the creation and preservation of Jewish culture and identity. Patai notes that each epoch exhibits the inclusion of oral tradition into written works. The nineteenth century, in particular, was marked by an increase of literature written by European Jews. The Age of Enlightenment had mildly improved conditions for Jews in most areas of western Europe. Napoleon, seen by many as the liberator of the Jews, opened the doors to education, employment, and military service among other filings to European Jews, who had been oppressed for centuries. It should be noted, however, that a number of Jewish intellectuals later found Napoleon's policies problematic. The exiled German-Jewish poet and journalist, Heinrich Heine, who had earlier seen Napoleon in a positive light, denounced him on numerous occasions. Meir Goldschmidt, perhaps Denmark's most widely read Jewish author, also discredited Napoleon's actions in his first novel, En Jode (1845/1852). (1) As if to enlighten his readership on Napoleon's later betrayal of the Jews, Goldschmidt juxtaposes the French commander with the Jew Eleazar. The Bendixen family sits together during the Sabbath exchanging stories. Philip, Jacob's father, has just finished recounting the engrossing tale of the legend of the Lemberger Rabbi and his creation of the Golem. (2) Jacob is intrigued and frightened by this fantastic tale, but his father assures his son that "den troende Jode behover Inter at frygte" (29) [the devout Jew need not be afraid of anything] (26). The discussion then turns to historical events. Philip criticizes Napoleon for encouraging rabbis to reform the Jewish religion and attributes the decimation of the entire French army in Russia by the harsh winter to this betrayal. He continues, Saalonge han var Tyrk iblandt Tyrkere, Jode blandt Joderne og Kristen blandt de Kristne saalonge gik det ham godt, og Herren var med ham i Slagene ... lad os se, hvor lenge han holder ud endnu, nu da Zions Gud har vendt sig fra ham. (29) (As long as he was Turk among Turks, Jew among Jews, and Christian among Christians, he prospered and the Lord was with him in battles ... [but] let's see how long he still holds out now that the God of Zion has turned away from him. [26]) Jacob insists that Napoleon was a great hero, "storre end baade Jacob og Abisai" (greater than both Joab (3) and Abisai (4)), but the father instills Jewish pride in the young boy asserting, "Nej, store var Joden Eleazar! Han var ogsaa Kriger; men han opofrede sig selv og stak Elefanten ihjel for at draebe den onde Konge, der vanhelligede Templet, skjont han selv maatte do, naar Dyret faldt" (30) [the Jew Eleazar was greater! …


Today, American trial courts are trying less and managing more private civil cases. They are also losing many private claims to other dispute resolvers. The traditional role of the trial judge as a neutral, detached, and passive adjudicator for private civil cases has given way to the trial judge who is a more active case manager, a more aggressive settlement facilitator, and an appellate-type reviewer of case decisions first made elsewhere. Unfortunately, contemporary written civil procedure laws do not reflect this new reality, increasingly reflecting only legend. New general visions of contemporary trial court decision making would help civil procedure lawmakers better formulate written procedural law guidelines for trial courts. Unfortunately, the chance for such a new perspective was not pursued in the recent proposed revisions to the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct, scheduled for ABA consideration in February, 2007. In particular, there is a need now for new written laws on trial court settlements as well as on trial court oversight of earlier private arbitrations and administrative agency adjudications.


This paper seeks to increase the understanding of the impact of award wage increases on small businesses in Australia by providing an analysis of the characteristics and performance of small award-reliant businesses and their employees. Results derived from firm level data showed that small award-reliant only businesses were less likely to experience increased productivity, profitability and remain viable over time relative to other businesses. Data on employees found that award-reliant employees in small businesses resembled award-reliant workers in larger businesses more than non-award-reliant workers in small businesses. This analysis, including the scope of the paper, could have been improved with better firm level data in the form of a Linked Employer-Employee Dataset, as data limitations prevent empirical testing of the potential impact of adjustments made to award wages on small businesses.


Abstract Graphene is a two-dimensional material with honeycomb structure. Its unique mechanical, physical electrical and optical properties makes it an important industrially and economically material in the coming years. One of the application areas for graphene is the photovoltaic industry. Studies have shown that doped graphene can change one absorbed photon of a few electrons, which in practice means an increase in efficiency of solar panels. In addition, graphene has a low coefficient of light absorption 2.3% which indicates that is an almost completely transparent material. In fact, it means that solar cells based on graphene can significantly expand the absorbed spectrum wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Graphene additionally is a material with a very high tensile strength so it can be successfully used on the silicon, flexible and organic substrates as well. So far, significant effort has been devoted to using graphene for improving the overall performance of photovoltaic devices. It has been reported that graphene can play diverse, but positive roles such as an electrode, an active layer, an interfacial layer and an electron acceptor in photovoltaic cells. Research on solar cells containing in its structure graphene however, are still at laboratory scale. This is due to both lack the ability to produce large-sized graphene and reproducibility of its parameters


Abstract In this work, we combined multi-scale geological maps of Mercury to produce a new global map where geological units are classified based on albedo, crater density and morphological relationships with other units. To create this map, we used the 250 m/pixel mosaic of images acquired by the narrow- and wide-angle cameras onboard the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft during its orbital phase. The geological mapping is supported by digital terrain model data and surface mineralogical variation from the global mosaic of MESSENGER Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer observations. This map comprises the global-scale intercrater plains, smooth plains and Odin-type units as reported in previous studies, as well as units we term bright intercrater plains, Caloris rough ejecta and dark material deposits. We mapped a portion of the Raditladi quadrangle (19–35°N, 106–133°E) at a regional scale at a resolution of 166 m/pixel. We characterized the geological context of the area and evaluated the stratigraphic relationships between the units. To obtain a representative geological section, we analysed and corrected available topographical data. The geological cross-section derived from our regional mapping suggests that volcanic emplacement of Raditladi's inner plains followed the topography of the basin after the deposition of impact-related units (i.e. melts, breccias and rim collapse) and was driven by low-viscosity flows. Hollows that appear on Raditladi's peak ring were possibly formed from low-reflectance intercrater plains materials exposed through the peak ring unit. Supplementary material: Cleaner, larger version of the global-scale geological map and a local-scale map for comparison are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18741.


A novel implementation of a membrane bioreactor (MBR) has been studied in this paper. It is utilised as combination of rotating biological contractor (RBC) and an external membrane for oily wastewater treatment. The performance of MBR was compared with the standalone RBC. The RBC used in this investigation is the same one combined with the membrane to form the MBR. Wastewater biodegradability has been evaluated by two factors: chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH). They are both compared together for different hydraulic retention times (HRTs) and petroleum pollution concentrations in RBC and MBR. The ratio of TPH to COD of molasses has been varied between 0.2 to 0.8 at two HRTs of 18 and 24 h while the temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen were kept in the range of 20–25°C, 6.5–7.5, and 2–3.5 mg/L, respectively. Optimal TPH removal efficiency (99%) observed at TPH/COD = 0.6 and HRT = 24 h in MBR. The experimental results showed that MBR had higher treatment efficiency than RBC at all ratios and HRTs.


We investigate constraints on cosmic reionization extracted from the Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. We combine the Planck CMB anisotropy data in temperature with the low-multipole polarization data to fit ΛCDM models with various parameterizations of the reionization history. We obtain a Thomson optical depth τ = 0.058 ± 0.012 for the commonly adopted instantaneous reionization model. This confirms, with data solely from CMB anisotropies, the low value suggested by combining Planck 2015 results with other data sets, and also reduces the uncertainties. We reconstruct the history of the ionization fraction using either a symmetric or an asymmetric model for the transition between the neutral and ionized phases. To determine better constraints on the duration of the reionization process, we also make use of measurements of the amplitude of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect using additional information from the high-resolution Atacama Cosmology Telescope and South Pole Telescope experiments. The average redshift at which reionization occurs is found to lie between z = 7.8 and 8.8, depending on the model of reionization adopted. Using kSZ constraints and a redshift-symmetric reionization model, we find an upper limit to the width of the reionization period of Δz < 2.8. In all cases, we find that the Universe is ionized at less than the 10% level at redshifts above z ≃ 10. This suggests that an early onset of reionization is strongly disfavoured by the Planck data. We show that this result also reduces the tension between CMB-based analyses and constraints from other astrophysical sources.


This paper discusses the returns to non-cognitive skills based on results of a meta-analysis. The systematic literature review of articles published in the last decade and analysing labour market outcomes and non-cognitive skills allowed us to extract more than 300 estimates linking earnings and non-cognitive skills, most often measured by the Big Five inventory. The results of meta-analysis point to heterogeneity in the estimated signs and significance of a particular non-cognitive skill. We observe that conscientiousness and openness are two personality traits that bring higher earnings, while agreeableness and neuroticism (low emotional stability) are associated with receiving lower earnings. Some gender differences are also observed. Older and female participants seemed to benefit more from programmes targeted at developing non-cognitive skills than younger participants and men. However, there is a positive selection of female participants to enrol to programmes with better prospects (e.g. longer in duration).


ABSTRACT The activation of muscle-specific gene expression requires the coordinated action of muscle regulatory proteins and chromatin-remodeling enzymes. Microarray analysis performed in the presence or absence of a dominant-negative BRG1 ATPase demonstrated that approximately one-third of MyoD-induced genes were highly dependent on SWI/SNF enzymes. To understand the mechanism of activation, we performed chromatin immunoprecipitations analyzing the myogenin promoter. We found that H4 hyperacetylation preceded Brg1 binding in a MyoD-dependent manner but that MyoD binding occurred subsequent to H4 modification and Brg1 interaction. In the absence of functional SWI/SNF enzymes, muscle regulatory proteins did not bind to the myogenin promoter, thereby providing evidence for SWI/SNF-dependent activator binding. We observed that the homeodomain factor Pbx1, which cooperates with MyoD to stimulate myogenin expression, is constitutively bound to the myogenin promoter in a SWI/SNF-independent manner, suggesting a two-step mechanism in which MyoD initially interacts indirectly with the myogenin promoter and attracts chromatin-remodeling enzymes, which then facilitate direct binding by MyoD and other regulatory proteins.


In the fall of 1957, Journalism Review printed an article entitled "President Eisenhower and his Press Secretary," which examined "the more authoritative role" played by Eisenhower's press secretary, James C. Hagerty. After noting the able manner in which Hagerty managed the news conferences following Eisenhower's heart attack, the author of the article attempted to underscore his point by stating: So adept was Hagerty's management of the news conferences which he held ... that a national magazine did a "profile" of the press secretary to give readers more information about the President's lieutenant.(1) Thirty-four years later this statement seems out of place. But in 1957 it was indeed surprising that a national news magazine--in this case Newsweek--would profile the press secretary. The brief span of time in which the press secretary has risen from obscurity to prominence is one indication of the importance of this post. Yet relatively little systematic research has been conducted about the presidential press secretary. The goal of this article is to examine the factors which lead to the successful performance of the presidential press secretary. To measure "success" among political actors invites several problems for scholars. By what standards and from whose point of view is success measured?(2) This problem is exacerbated for those who seek to analyze presidential press secretaries, because presidents and the press may have very different ideas about what they seek in a press secretary. Consequently, one cannot simply evaluate such criteria as effectiveness at maintaining good presidential--press relations. Reporters might argue, for example, that those press secretaries who release the most information are successful. But a president like Nixon who distrusted the press and preferred to keep them uninformed would have a very different standard to judge a "successful" press secretary. One way to evaluate the performance of press secretaries is to assess the extent to which they have been considered effective by both their president and the press. Of course, these may be mutually exclusive possibilities. Nonetheless, some have succeeded by this standard. This study begins with the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower because Eisenhower's press secretary, James C. Hagerty, is considered by the press to be the standard by which press secretaries are judged. Furthermore, it was during the Eisenhower years that the White House press office began to institutionalize along the structure that it maintains today.(3) This study ends with the presidency of Jimmy Carter because Carter's press secretary, Jody Powell, operated his press office similar to Hagerty, and was similarly successful. Between the two presidencies were four other presidents served by seven different press secretaries. The varied relationships between these presidents and their press secretaries provide a fun range of examples for examination. The historical record suggests that there are four factors which contribute to the success or failure of the presidential press secretary. This article examines the role these four factors played in the performance of the press secretaries from Eisenhower through Carter. Four Crucial Factors The first factor to examine is the importance of the press secretary to the administration. This can be ascertained by asking two questions. First, is the press secretary an "insider" or an "outsider" of the administration? Analyses of presidential administrations frequently include mention of the "top" or "senior" advisers. Stephen Hess has described the staff as consisting of "Inner Staff" and "Outer Staff," with the Inner Staff constituting (among other things) "those whose opinions are sought or who are given assignments on a wide variety subjects, especially in areas in which they are not expert."(4) Reporters are very sensitive to the status of the press secretary. …


This paper seeks to analyze Millennial responses towards the Church, and their decisions to leave the Church institution or religion as a whole. Previous literature that discusses statistical findings suggests that Millennials are the least likely to attend Church, or to participate in religion. The unaffiliated group categorized as, "Nones," is on the rise within the United States and it represents the religiously unaffiliated. Unlike previous generations where those that left religion or the Church institution eventually returned after marriage and children, Millennials are predicted to be less likely to return to Church once they have gotten married and had children. Therefore, qualitative data was collected across multiple focus groups ranging from 4-10 participants per group that discussed questions on Millennials' views of the Church, religion, institutions, authenticity, and spiritual wounds. This data was analyzed and coded and can be used to provide a clearer perspective on the views Millennials hold towards these issues. For the purpose of this study, the most significant issues that were focused on within this paper are that of spiritual wounds through exclusion from the Church, Millennials' attitudes towards the Church, and the critique that the Church lacks authenticity.


The importance of responsible stewardship in managing soil is a central tenet of organic farming. Organic farmers believe that practices which stimulate biology and overall quality of soil enhance production of healthy and nutritious crops. Few involved in agriculture would argue this point. Nevertheless, disagreement exists among agriculturists about the relative importance that should be placed on organic farming for meeting global food needs in the 21 century. Organic farming proponents insist that careful management of on-farm ecological processes creates soil capable of supplying adequate amounts of nutritious food for a growing world population, with reduced need for off-farm inputs. Critics contend that organic farming can degrade soils and will contribute to the underproduction of food crops that are no more nutritious than foods grown using synthetic agrichemicals (i.e., conventional farming), if adopted on a large scale. This chapter was not written to settle the debate, but to provide a historical context for the belief that organic methods promote soil health, compare organic and conventional farming systems for impacts on soil quality and crop production, and summarize comparisons in food quality between the two farming systems. While detailed discussion of these three topics cannot occur in a single chapter, enough information is provided to give readers with limited knowledge of organic farming a better understanding of why consideration of this farming method is appropriate in a discussion about soil and its relation to human health. Although organic farming is practiced globally, space limitations restrict most of the focus in this chapter to organic farming within the USA.


Isotopic and trace element analysis of zircons can provide reliable and robust estimates of age, compositions of coexisting minerals and melts, and constraints on the genesis and protoliths of host rocks. Recent technological developments facilitate analysis of oxygen isotope ratios in zircon with high accuracy and precision by laser heating/gas-source mass-spectrometry and in situ from thin sections or grain mounts by ion microprobe/secondary ion mass-spectrometer. A large number of studies have shown that non-metamict zircons preserve their δ18O value from the time of crystallization; hence oxygen isotope ratio can be correlated with age (U-Pb) or trace element composition. The zircon δ18O record is generally preserved despite other minerals that have been reset by high-grade metamorphism or intense hydrothermal alteration. Thus the refractory nature and robust inheritance of zircon offers a potential means to sort out magmatic equilibration and reequilibration, and post-magmatic alteration, an eternal problem for igneous rocks. New processes and interpretations for igneous events have been proposed when the effects of post-magmatic exchange are fully recognized. Crustal recycling can be recognized from magmatic values of δ18O(zircon), and if source rocks are igneous and young at the time of melting, δ18O will often be the best geochemical signature.

Microanalytical techniques are increasingly useful for stable isotope analysis of silicates. Both the laser fluorination/mass-spectrometer and the ion microprobe/secondary ion mass-spectrometer offer significant advantages over conventional techniques for analysis of zircon.

### Laser fluorination

Accurate analysis of δ18O in refractory minerals such as zircon is optimized by use of a CO2 laser (λ = 10.6 μm). The best precision has been obtained when zircons are powdered before analysis. Accuracy and precision of ±0.05 to ±0.1‰ (1 standard deviation = 1sd) are reported for homogeneous samples of ~2 mg (~0.5 mm3) (Valley et al. 1994, …


Background: Polymorphism within the same species, population, and sex is an interesting problem for the evolutionary biologist, since differences in fitness between the morphs have to cancel out over evolutionary time, otherwise morphs of lower fitness would become extinct. One way this may be achieved is through the adoption of different morph-specific reproductive strategies, allowing morphs to become conditional specialists in space (co-existing) or in time (and cycle in frequency). In either case, we expect selection to be disruptive on data pooled across morphs. Question: In the annual Australian painted dragon lizard (Ctenophorus pictus; less than 10% survive to a second year), red males dominate yellow males in staged contests, and yellow males (sneakers) are superior in sperm competition trials. Here, we ask whether there is ongoing disruptive selection for red males to defend well-defined, smaller territories (dominants) and for yellow males to have larger, more loosely defined territories (sneakers). Methods: We monitored free-ranging lizards in a natural population, assigned paternity using microsatellites, and calculated selection coefficients to assess ongoing sexual directional and quadratic selection on territory size. Results and conclusions: Despite the different reproductive strategies, selection on space use in a natural population was not disruptive in either of the two years studied. Instead, there was no difference in territory size between morphs, and in one year there was ongoing directional (positive) and quadratic (stabilizing) selection on territory size applying across both morphs. Thus, divergence of male reproductive strategies in C. pictus does not seem to be related to differences in space use.


Paleoecological analyses of fossil chironomid assemblages from eight lakes of the Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada, were used to quantify the relative influence of climate, resource use, and urbanization on benthic invertebrate communities 1850–1995. Fossil analyses inferred that Qu'Appelle lakes are naturally productive but that invertebrate communities were altered by agriculture and urbanization. In western lakes, rates of community change (chord distance per 5 yr) were low and nonsignificant (P < 0.05) prior to European settlement, but increased twofold after ~1930–1940. In contrast, uniformly significant rates of community change were recorded in eastern downstream lakes only after the 1960s. In both cases, high rates of change corresponded to alterations in the balance between deep‐water (Chironomus) and littoral species (Cladotanytarsus mancus group, Tanytarsus s.lat. [s.l.]). Comparison of historical and fossil time series (~1920–1993) using variance partitioning analysis (VPA) explained up to 86.6% of past variations in chironomid community composition. Unexpectedly, climate (winter temperature) explained a significant (P , 0.05) and substantial (mean ± SD, n =5 8; 24.8 ± 21.9%) amount of community variance at all sites except Round Lake. In contrast, land‐use practices exhibited significant but less substantial (6.7 ± 6.1%, n = 8) impacts on zoobenthos of five lakes, whereas significant urban impacts (3.6 ± 7.5%, n = 8) were recorded only at two sites. Similarly, redundancy analysis showed that minimum winter or spring temperature significantly influenced the relative abundance of littoral taxa in seven lakes. Such strong effects of climate on benthic invertebrate communities contrast its weak effects on phytoplankton in these lakes and suggest that future environmental change may be expressed differentially among habitats.


Drowning is a frequent mode of death for female literary characters because of the strong symbolic relationship between female sexuality and water. Drowning has long been a punishment for sexually transgressive women in literature. In the introduction, Chapter 1, I describe the drowning paradigm and analyze drowning scenes in several pre-twentieth century works to establish the tradition which twentieth-century women writers begin to transcend. In Chapter 2, I discuss three of Kate Chopin's works which include drownings, demonstrating her transition from traditional drowning themes in At Fault and "Desiree's Baby" to the drowning in The Awakening, which prefigures the survival of protagonists in later works. I discuss one of these in Chapter 3: Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Although Janie must rely on her husband to save her from the flood, she survives, though her husband does not. In Chapter 4, I discuss two stories by Eudora Welty, "Moon Lake" and "The Wide Net." In "Moon Lake," Easter nearly drowns as a corollary to her adolescent sexual awakening. Although her resuscitation is a brutal simulation of a rape, Easter survives. "The Wide Net" is a comic story that winks at the drowning woman tradition, showing a young bride who pretends to drown in order to recapture the affections of her husband. Chapter 5 analyzes a set of works by Margaret Atwood. Lady Oracle includes another faked drowning, while "The Whirlpool Rapids" and "Walking on Water" feature a protagonist who feels invulnerable after her near-drowning. The Blind Assassin includes substantial drowning imagery. Chapter 6 discusses current trends in near-drowning fiction, focusing on the river rafting adventure stories of Pam Houston.


During a post-election TV interview that aired mid-November 2016, then President-Elect Donald Trump claimed that there are millions of so-called "criminal aliens" living in the United States: "What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate." This claim is a blatant misrepresentation of the facts. A recent report by the Migration Policy Institute suggests that just over 800,000 (or 7 percent) of the 11 million undocumented individuals in the United States have criminal records.1 Of this population, 300,000 individuals are felony offenders and 390,000 are serious misdemeanor offenders — tallies which exclude more than 93 percent of the resident undocumented population (Rosenblum 2015, 22–24). Moreover, the Congressional Research Service found that 140,000 undocumented migrants — or slightly more than 1 percent of the undocumented population — are currently serving time in prison in the United States (Kandel 2016). The facts, therefore, are closer to what Doris Meissner, former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner, argues: that the number of "criminal aliens" arrested as a percentage of all fugitive immigration cases is "modest" (Meissner et al. 2013, 102–03). The facts notwithstanding, President Trump's fictional tally is important to consider because it conveys an intent to produce at least this many people who — through discourse and policy — can be criminalized and incarcerated or deported as "criminal aliens." In this article, we critically review the literature on immigrant criminalization and trace the specific laws that first linked and then solidified the association between undocumented immigrants and criminality. To move beyond a legal, abstract context, we also draw on our quantitative and qualitative research to underscore ways immigrants experience criminalization in their family, school, and work lives. The first half of our analysis is focused on immigrant criminalization from the late 1980s through the Obama administration, with an emphasis on immigration enforcement practices first engineered in the 1990s. Most significant, we argue, are the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). The second section of our analysis explores the social impacts of immigrant criminalization, as people's experiences bring the consequences of immigrant criminalization most clearly into focus. We approach our analysis of the production of criminality of immigrants through the lens of legal violence (Menjívar and Abrego 2012), a concept designed to understand the immediate and long-term harmful effects that the immigration regime makes possible. Instead of narrowly focusing only on the physical injury of intentional acts to cause harm, this concept broadens the lens to include less visible sources of violence that reside in institutions and structures and without identifiable perpetrators or incidents to be tabulated. This violence comes from structures, laws, institutions, and practices that, similar to acts of physical violence, leave indelible marks on individuals and produce social suffering. In examining the effects of today's ramped up immigration enforcement, we turn to this concept to capture the violence that this regime produces in the lives of immigrants. Immigrant criminalization has underpinned US immigration policy over the last several decades. The year 1996, in particular, was a signal year in the process of criminalizing immigrants. Having 20 years to trace the connections, it becomes evident that the policies of 1996 used the term "criminal alien" as a strategic sleight of hand. These laws established the concept of "criminal alienhood" that has slowly but purposefully redefined what it means to be unauthorized in the United States such that criminality and unauthorized status are too often considered synonymous (Ewing, Martínez, and Rumbaut 2015). Policies that followed in the 2000s, moreover, cast an increasingly wider net which continually re-determined who could be classified as a "criminal alien," such that the term is now a mostly incoherent grab bag. Simultaneously and in contrast, the practices that produce "criminal aliens" are coherent insofar as they condition immigrant life in the United States in now predictable ways. This solidity allows us to turn in our conclusion to some thoughts about the likely future of US immigration policy and practice under President Trump.


This paper introduces a simple method to test between two general approaches to defining bank and thrift product markets. I estimate two models that endogenize market structure using data on banks and thrifts from 1,884 rural markets for the year 2000. The first model assumes that banks and thrifts are in "independent product markets," i.e., that bank profitability depends only on competition from other banks and that thrift profitability depends only on competition from other thrifts. An alternative model is then estimated assuming that banks and thrifts are "perfect strategic substitutes," i.e., that a bank's equilibrium profitability falls equally with the presence of another bank or an additional thrift (and vice-versa). A transformation of the likelihood for the "independent markets" model allows me to test it against the "perfect strategic substitutes" model using Vuong's (1989) non-nested likelihood ratio test. The hypothesis that banks and thrifts compete in independent product markets is soundly rejected against the hypothesis that banks and thrifts are perfect strategic substitutes.


Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are a class of protein that, in the native state, possess no well‐defined secondary or tertiary structure, existing instead as dynamic ensembles of conformations. They are biologically important, with approximately 20% of all eukaryotic proteins disordered, and found at the heart of many biochemical networks. To fulfil their biological roles, many IDPs need to bind to proteins and/or nucleic acids. And although unstructured in solution, IDPs typically fold into a well‐defined three‐dimensional structure upon interaction with a binding partner. The flexibility and structural diversity inherent to IDPs makes this coupled folding and binding difficult to study at atomic resolution by experiment alone, and computer simulation currently offers perhaps the best opportunity to understand this process. But simulation of coupled folding and binding is itself extremely challenging; these molecules are large and highly flexible, and their binding partners, such as DNA or cyclins, are also often large. Therefore, their study requires either simplified representations, advanced enhanced sampling schemes, or both. It is not always clear that existing simulation techniques, optimized for studying folded proteins, are well suited to IDPs. In this article, we examine the progress that has been made in the study of coupled folding and binding using molecular dynamics simulation. We summarize what has been learnt, and examine the state of the art in terms of both methodologies and models. We also consider the lessons to be learnt from advances in other areas of simulation and highlight the issues that remain of be addressed.


The paper surveys the criticisms of general equilibrium theory advanced by Sraffian authors in the last twenty-five years. It is argued that an important change undergone by general equilibrium theory, from long-period versions to neo-Walrasian versions, has made it very difficult for neoclassical theorist to grasp the importance of the critique of the conception of capital as a single factor. This conception was indispensable to neoclassical long-period equilibria, i.e. equilibria reachable through time-consuming disequilibrium. Neo-Walrasian models are argued to be unable to indicate the tendencies of economies where adjustments to equilibrium are not instantaneous. They are shown to provide no foundation for neoclassical macroeconomics; these foundations lie on the contrary in the conception of capital as a single factor. In the second part of the paper it is argued that a solid alternative to the neoclassical approach exists already: the classical approach to wages and the Keynesian approach to employment and growth.


BACKGROUND
Epidemiological studies suggest that tea intake, a major dietary source of flavonoids, may be associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD).

METHODS
We prospectively followed 17 228 subjects (mean age, 59.5 years) initially free of CVD and cancer from the College Alumni Health Study. Participants provided baseline self-reports of tea consumption (cups/day) and coronary risk factors. During a median follow-up of 15 years, there were 3372, 2615, and 757 cases of CVD, coronary heart disease (CHD), and stroke, respectively, ascertained from either self-reports or death certificates.

RESULTS
Overall, the median level of tea consumption was 1 cup/day. Compared with participants consuming no tea, the multivariate relative risks (RR) of CVD for those drinking <1, 1, 2, 3, and >/=4 cups/day were 0.99, 0.96, 0.95, 0.91, and 0.95, respectively (P, trend = 0.19). The multivariate RR were 0.97, 0.98, 0.93, 0.85, and 0.98 for CHD (P, trend = 0.25), and 1.05, 0.89, 1.00, 1.09, and 0.83 for stroke (P, trend = 0.53). There was no evidence of effect modification. Changes in tea intake were assessed in a subgroup of 7730 men, with those continuing to drink tea having a non-significant 33% reduction in the risk of stroke.

CONCLUSIONS
Tea intake, likely consumed as black tea, was not strongly associated with a reduced risk of CVD in this population of US college alumni.


Elasticity and pay-as-you-go are only two features of many cloud computing features. However, such and other key characteristics of cloud computing can only be fully enabled if there were no waste of cloud resources. This means, only the exact used amount of cloud resources should be allocated and paid for. To ensure this case, both cloud providers and cloud customers need a monitoring activity for their cloud resources. This monitoring activity should: a. enable measuring states of used, currently needed or available resources, b. enable monitoring (changing of states and recongurations) of these resources and c. ideally to predict future usage and allocations. Cloud Monitoring is not only important for providers, but also for customers. Providers need monitoring to ensure the needed amount of infrastructure, measure their client usage, and billing purposes. On the other hand, customers need monitoring to ensure paying only for the needed amount of resources that meet their needs and not more. Important aspects and indicators to take decisions in monitoring activities are delivered by pre-dened attributes called Monitored Information. These attributes and measurements provide information about states of cloud entities. Depending on their denitions, most Monitored Information have a type and related value. An example of monitored information is the virtual cpu utilization (vcpu-utilization) that could have dierent values in a time window such as 6%, 37%, or 93%. The Monitored Information are indicators of specic observed aspects of entities in clouds in a specic time. These entities could belong to dierent cloud layers such as Physical Layer (PL), Virtual Layer (VL), Logical Application Architecture Layer (LAAL), or Application Business Logic Layer (ABLL). This work is a structured literature review. The purpose of this work is to analyze dierent architectures of cloud monitoring systems and the monitored information used by these systems in dierent cloud layers. This
study consolidate the collected monitored information in a single section. The contribution of this work are the first insights about monitored information used in cloud environments.


Methods of measuring the concentration of atmospheric pollutants by laser absorption spectroscopy, such as differential absorption lidar (DIAL) and integrated long-path techniques, all rely on the validity of Beer's exponential absorption law. It is shown here that departures from this law occur if the probing laser has a bandwidth larger than the wavelength scale of structure in the absorption spectrum of the pollutant. A comprehensive experimental and theoretical treatment of the errors resulting from these departures is presented for the particular case of SO2 monitoring at ~300 nm. It is shown that the largest error occurs where the initial calibration measurement of absorption cross section is made at low pressure, in which case errors in excess of 5% in the cross section could occur for laser bandwidths >0.01 nm. Atmospheric measurements by DIAL or long-path methods are in most cases affected less, because pressure broadening smears the spectral structure, but when measuring high concentrations errors can exceed 5%.


Objective: The chemokine CXCL12, together with its specific receptor, CXCR4, have been shown to mediate invasiveness and metastatic behaviour in pancreatic cancer cells. The expression of CXC12/CXCR4 has not been previously examined in pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias (PanIN), the accepted precursor lesions to pancreatic duct cancer. Design: In this study we sought to characterise the expression of CXCL12 and CXCR4 during the progression of PanIN using both a murine model and human tissues. Results: These studies reveal that both CXCL12 and CXCR4 are expressed in PanIN and that the frequency increases during PanIN progression (0% CXCR4 expression in normal mouse and human ducts vs 100% in mouse PanIN 3 and 77% in human PanIN 3). Next we demonstrate a dose-dependent increase in the proliferation of murine PanIN cells when exposed to CXCL12. Finally, we show that expression of CXCR4 in murine PanIN cells is partially dependent on mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling and that the effect of CXCL12 on PanIN proliferation can be abrogated by an MAPK inhibitor. Conclusions: Together these results demonstrate that CXCL12/CXCR4 expression begins in the pre-invasive stages of pancreatic neoplasia, and suggest that the presence of an autocrine loop that is at least partially regulated by MAPK signalling. Further studies that define the role of CXCR4 signalling in PanIN progression will determine if CXCR4 could serve as a novel target for chemoprevention and early stage therapy in pancreatic cancer.


The magnitude 7.6 earthquake (USGS) on September 30, 2009 at 10:16 UTC close to the city of Padang in West Sumatra generated a minor tsunami. Earthquakes in this region however have the potential to generate destructive waves as it was shown in historical and recent events. Taking into account the large number of casualties due to this earthquake it is important to prepare for possible future events which might be accompanied by a tsunami. Due to the geographical setting of Padang a tsunami might have disastrous impact. An effective early warning system is crucial.The tsunami modeling group of Alfred Wegener Institute is part of the GITEWS project (German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System) and is responsible for creating a database of pre-calculated tsunami scenarios of various magnitudes and epicenter locations covering the Sunda Trench. These scenarios are calculated with the newly developed model TsunAWI. It is based on the nonlinear shallow water equations and employs the finite element method in unstructured meshes.In case of a tsunamigenic earthquake, sensor data (comprising seismometers, GPS instruments, tide gauges, buoys and ocean bottom pressure sensors) will be evaluated. The most probable scenario will be selected and used to forecast arrival times and estimated wave height along the coast. The unstructured discretisation employed in TsunAWI allows for a high resolution around the city of Padang. In this presentation we show preliminary examples of the results of the GITEWS simulation system. We evaluate our pre-computed scenarios and analyze their deficiencies. Additional simulations based on diverse source models are performed to analyze the predictability of near-field tsunamis within short time. We compare simulation results to tide gauge data from Padang harbor and find good agreement.


An efficient catalytic system for analyzing Pyrazine derivatives using an extract of onion at room temperature is discussed in this research study. A very good to excellent yields in reasonably short reaction time, high atom economy, usage of readily available starting material, operational simplicity and easy workup are the fundamental features of this protocol. The versatility our method is determined by synthesizing a large number of pyrazine derivatives with (85-96%) good yield.


Abstract Receiver functions (RFs) are derived by deconvolution of the horizontal (radial or transverse) component of ground motion from the vertical component, which segregates the PS phases. Many methods have been proposed to employ deconvolution in frequency as well as in time domain. These methods vary in their approaches to impose regularization that addresses the stability problem. Here, we present application of a new time‐domain deconvolution technique called basis pursuit deconvolution (BPD) that has recently been applied to seismic exploration data. Unlike conventional deconvolution methods, the BPD uses an L1 norm constraint on model reflectivity to impose sparsity. In addition, it uses an overcomplete wedge dictionary based on a dipole reflectivity series to define model constraints, which can achieve higher resolution than that obtained by the traditional methods. We demonstrate successful application of BPD based RF estimation from synthetic data for a crustal model with a near‐surface thin layer of thickness 5, 7, 10, and 15 km. The BPD can resolve these thin layers better with much improved signal‐to‐noise ratio than the conventional methods. Finally, we demonstrate application of the BPD receiver function (BPRF) method to a field dataset from Kutch, India, where near‐surface sedimentary layers are known to be present. The BPRFs are able to resolve reflections from these layers very well.


[1] Physical models of gravel braided rivers were used to investigate the adjustment of braiding intensity to step changes in channel-forming discharge and the mechanisms by which channel pattern adjustment and maintenance occurs. A braided channel developed at low discharge was subjected to two step increases in discharge between which the channel was given time to develop stable average braiding intensity in response to each steady discharge. Active (with visible bed material movement) and total channel networks were mapped throughout the experiment. Total braiding intensity exceeded active braiding intensity and both adjusted to a stable, average value at each discharge, indicating that channel pattern adjustment to total discharge involves both the active and the total network. Only portions of the total braided channel network developed at a given time, and it formed progressively by migration and avulsion of the (less extensive) active network. At equilibrium, the ratio of active to total braiding intensity stabilized at about 0.4. This stable value may increase with relative mobility of the bed material (stream power relative to grain size). The stable value was achieved via gradual increase of total braiding intensity while active braiding intensity adjusted very quickly to the increased flow. These adjustments are controlled by partial avulsion of the main active channel associated with changes in its sinuosity, and allocation of flow and bed load to secondary anabranches. Braided channel pattern dynamics is closely tied to, and explained by, the local dynamics and symmetry/asymmetry of bifurcations and avulsions.


The importance of predicting the fluctuations of exchange rate ratios is noticeable. In relation to markov model and grey system theory, using a single gene system cloud grey SCGM(1,1)c model to adjust the development trend of time series, its error index is randomly fluctuated. Markov chain model is appropriate to forecasting of a random dynamic system, choosing weighted markov chain to predict the error index. We applied a weighted markov SCGM(1,1)c model for predicting the U.S. Dollar /Euro, U.S. Dollar/Japan Yen, U.S. Dollar/Swiss franc and U.S. Dollar/Trade –Weighted Index. The forecasting results are reliable and show that the weighted markov SCGM(1,1)c model has high prediction precision.


In a response to the rapid development of MOOCs by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) globally, the Australian Trade Commission (Australian Trade Commission, 2012, p. 1) provided that "education systems around the world are on the brink of major transformation" and "to increase higher education participation rates, learning outcomes, graduation rates and employability, a strategic rethink of the current education model is required." In the years following this statement we have seen HEIs providing free online courses, coupled with innovative approaches to the delivery and use of open educational resources (OER), assessment practices, credentialing and teaching and learning practices. HEIs are now looking beyond the MOOC and engaging in new approaches to the delivery of education described by some commentators as "post-traditional" (Butcher & Hoosen, 2014, p. 2). New delivery models include new types of informal short courses and approaches to certification, growing openness in access to intellectual capital, and a lively diversification of teaching and learning methods. However, Australian universities are not well positioned to participate in new approaches because there are still unresolved issues of copyright. Australian copyright law is not as flexible as that of the United States and other competitor countries (Harris, 2013), and the impact of this on open educational practices (OEP) has not been widely analysed. Unlike the US, Australian copyright law does not contain exceptions which would permit even limited open publication of copyright material for educational purposes (Wyburn, 2006). Therefore to include copyright material, such as text, images and audio-visual content, in open course offerings, Australian universities must understand the limitations of existing copyright exceptions. Not only must they be able to source content which meets their needs, but they must make important decisions about how to license their own open courseware for student users and further re-use by other teachers (Butler, 2012). Australia will benefit by maximizing access to open content. Therefore, universities and individuals engaging in post-traditional delivery models in Australia need clear information and practical tools to ensure that best practice open licensing solutions are adopted that meet their needs. This showcase session will discuss some key elements of the Open Education Licensing (OEL) Project, which has been funded by the Australian Government Office of Learning and Teaching. One of the aims of the project is to empower Australian universities to understand and implement effective licensing practices for opening access to educational content. In particular, the session will explore the project's main deliverable; the OEL toolkit. The toolkit provides a practical mechanism for Australian universities to engage with copyright licensing matters within their own OEP initiatives and make business and licensing decisions around the deployment of open course material. It is also a web based online tool that will enable Australian higher education teachers, instructional designers, educational developers, policy makers and other university staff to create a body of open content which will assist to enhance learning and teaching within higher education in Australia and globally. This showcase session will engage the audience in discussion and activities at different stages of the presentation. These discussions will invite participants to critically reflect on their current learning and teaching practices and how the toolkit can be useful to them and their institutions.


The Effect of Egoscue Corrective Exercises on Chronic Knee and Hip Pain Zachary Vehrs Department of Exercise Sciences, BYU Master of Science INTRODUCTION: While strengthening and aerobic exercise have been shown to decrease chronic knee and hip pain, little is known about the effectiveness of Egoscue corrective exercises, which are intended to reduce musculoskeletal pain by bringing the body into postural alignment. PURPOSE: An experimental study to determine the acute effect following one treatment and the short-term effect after a 2 week program of Egoscue corrective exercises on knee pain, hip pain, and whole-body postural alignment. METHODS: Forty participants with chronic knee and/or hip pain (defined as pain on most days of the week for at least the previous 12 weeks) were randomly assigned and equally divided between an exercise group (n = 20) and a control group (n = 20). The exercise group completed a corrective exercise routine, as per the Egoscue Method, at least 5 d/wk for two weeks. The control group simply maintained their current lifestyle for the 2-week duration of the study. All participants kept a daily log of their average pain levels at rest and during movement using a Visual Analog Scale (VAS). Standing posture was assessed using PostureScreen Mobile® and pain and function were recorded using the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) at baseline and at the end of week 1 and 2. RESULTS: The exercise group experienced a significant decrease in pain during everyday movement as reported in daily VAS logs (p = 0.019). After controlling for age, BMI, past surgeries, arthritis status, and location of pain, there was a significant group x time interaction in WOMAC scores (p = 0.015). At week 2, WOMAC scores were significantly lower in the exercise group (p = 0.001) but not the control group (p > 0.05). Pain was not significantly different after one treatment. No significant changes in posture were observed in this study. CONCLUSION: Two weeks of corrective exercises significantly decreased knee and hip pain and improved function. Although an observable change in posture was not detected, further research is warranted to investigate the effects of Egoscue corrective exercises on posture over longer periods of time.


QMIX is a popular $Q$-learning algorithm for cooperative MARL in the centralised training and decentralised execution paradigm. In order to enable easy decentralisation, QMIX restricts the joint action $Q$-values it can represent to be a monotonic mixing of each agent's utilities. However, this restriction prevents it from representing value functions in which an agent's ordering over its actions can depend on other agents' actions. To analyse this representational limitation, we first formalise the objective QMIX optimises, which allows us to view QMIX as an operator that first computes the $Q$-learning targets and then projects them into the space representable by QMIX. This projection returns a representable $Q$-value that minimises the unweighted squared error across all joint actions. We show in particular that this projection can fail to recover the optimal policy even with access to $Q^*$, which primarily stems from the equal weighting placed on each joint action. We rectify this by introducing a weighting into the projection, in order to place more importance on the better joint actions. We propose two weighting schemes and prove that they recover the correct maximal action for any joint action $Q$-values, and therefore for $Q^*$ as well. Based on our analysis and results in the tabular setting we introduce two scalable versions of our algorithm, Centrally-Weighted (CW) QMIX and Optimistically-Weighted (OW) QMIX and demonstrate improved performance on both predator-prey and challenging multi-agent StarCraft benchmark tasks.


In patients with chronic kidney disease, erythropoietin resistance is common, costly, and has implications beyond the management of anemia because the presence of erythropoietin resistance portends mortal outcomes. Exploring the provenance of erythropoietin resistance may be facilitated by the consideration of the pathogenetic triad of iron-restricted erythropoiesis, inflammation, and bone marrow suppression. Challenging to diagnose because of difficulty in interpreting tests of iron deficiency, iron-restricted erythropoiesis should be considered in patients who require high doses of erythropoietin, have low transferrin saturation (eg, <20%-25%), and do not have very high ferritin (eg, <1,200 ng/mL); a therapeutic trial of intravenous iron may be worthwhile. Aluminum intoxication is a rare cause of iron-restricted erythropoiesis that may manifest as microcytic hypochromic anemia. A decrease in serum albumin concentration may signal the presence of inflammation, which may be manifest (such as because of a recent illness or infection) or occult; the latter include clotted synthetic angioaccess, failed renal allograft, dialysis catheter, periodontal disease, underlying malignancy, or uremia per se. Marrow hyporesponsiveness may be improved by increasing the delivered dialysis dose, using ultrapure dialysate, maintaining adequate vitamin B12 and folate stores, or by treating hyperparathyroidism. In summary, improving the outcomes of erythropoietin-resistant patients will require complete patient assessment that goes beyond considerations of iron and erythropoietin dose alone. Given that erythropoietin dose is associated with mortality, mitigating erythropoietin resistance has the potential to improve patient outcomes.


The paper deals with mutual relationship between Barcelona and Milan concerning modernist architectural and urban design. Barcelona and Milano despite their different cities morphology and urban history, have similar characteristics.
They can be easily recognized as they relates to many pieces of modern architecture constructed from the early fifties of the twentieth century, when the most significant architects of both cities entered into a friendly, intense and continuous contact. One could speak of a reciprocal fascination between architectural cultures of the two cities, especially as concerns the relationship between architectural design and urban morphology. This relationship was accomplished by means of three remarkable factors: the way a building is located in the urban space, the arrangement of the plan layout of each floor, and the aspects of the building referred to tectonic.
The second one is a recognizable only through a carefully study of plans. Nevertheless it affects the identity of the two cities as involves the people way of living.
We can identifiy typological analogies and organisational similarities in many exemplary residential buildings like Antonio Coderch's ISM house in Barcelona or several house designed by Ignazio Gardella in Milan. The most remarkable topics about housing types are related to the H model plan, and double winged plan. These types are well-known in some small Italian residential building called palazzine, usually in central Italy but they are recognizable even in several housing building in Milan.


The geometric, topological, and symplectic properties of moduli spaces (spaces of con(cid:12)gurations modulo rotations and translations) of polygonal linkages have been studied by Kapovich, Millson, and Kamiyama, et. al. One can form a polygonal linkage by taking two free linkages and identifying initial and terminal vertices. This can be generalized so that one takes three free linkages and identi(cid:12)es initial and terminal vertices. Then one obtains a linkage which contains multiple polygons, any two of which have shared edges. The geometric and topological properties of moduli spaces of these multi-polygonal linkages are studied. These spaces turn out to be compact algebraic varieties. Multi-Quadrilateral linkages whose moduli spaces are at most one dimensional are classi(cid:12)ed. The dimensions and some Euler characteristics are computed, and conditions under which these spaces are smooth manifolds are determined. Some conditions are also given for when the moduli spaces are connected and when they are disjoint unions of two moduli spaces of polygonal linkages.


The purpose of this study was to identify perceived barriers to faculty participation in distance education courses in a 4-year university. The literature review was divided into four general areas, each of which may act as a barrier to faculty participation; training, administrators, rewards/compensation, and faculty characteristics/demographics. The research population consisted of 570 faculty and 59 administrators from the eight UNT schools/colleges. Dr. Kristin Betts developed the survey instrument in 1998 for similar research conducted at the George Washington University. Analysis of the collected data revealed that there was no statistically significant relationship found between faculty characteristics and faculty participation in distance education. Faculty participants and administrators disagreed on which factors, from a list of 34 items, had motivated faculty to participate in distance education. Nonparticipants and administrators disagreed on which of the factors, if not available, would be barriers to faculty participation in distance education. Participants and nonparticipants disagreed regarding the level to which selected rewards and compensations had motivated faculty to participate, and the lack of which would inhibit faculty participation in distance education. Finally, 71% of the participants had participated or planned to participate in distance education training compared to only 33% of the nonparticipants. It is obvious that administrators and faculty do not place the same level of importance on motivational or inhibiting factors that may affect faculty participation in distance education. These results indicate that additional research should be accomplished to determine the basis for the disagreement among the three groups.


People with diabetes receive mixed messages about weight loss from magazines, newspapers, friends, family, and, yes, even health professionals. Few subjects have accumulated as much misleading and potentially dangerous folklore as the subject of obesity. A common message is that losing weight is just a matter of willpower, and if you have been losing weight and reach a plateau, it's because you've lost your willpower and are no longer following your diet. Furthermore, for people with type 2 diabetes, the message often is that weight loss is the answer to improving glucose control: "If you just lose 20 lb, you won't need insulin." What does research tell us about these issues, and what should our messages as health professionals be to people with diabetes?

Obesity is a serious worldwide problem and is associated with the risk of developing diabetes. Today, more than 1.1 billion adults worldwide are overweight, and 312 million of them are obese.1 In the past 20 years, the rates of obesity have tripled in developing countries that have adopted a Western lifestyle, with the Middle East, Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, India, and China facing the greatest increase. Consequently, the number of people with diabetes in these countries is expected to increase from 84 million in 2000 to 228 million by 2030.

Thus, preventing obesity is a high priority for the prevention of diabetes and other chronic diseases. According to some obesity researchers, it may not be possible to decrease the current numbers of overweight and obese people in the United States, but we need to try to slow or prevent the increase that has been occurring at an alarming rate.2 The hope is that slowing the rising prevalence of obesity will also slow the diabetes epidemic.

Can this be accomplished? Thus far, nothing seems to …


OBJECTIVE: The goal was to examine the current scope of otolaryngologists' practices, their geographic distribution, and the roles otolaryngologists and other specialists play in caring for patients with otolaryngic and related conditions of the head and neck. STUDY DESIGN: A large national survey and administrative claims databases were examined to develop practice profiles and compile a physician supply for otolaryngology. A focus group of otolaryngologists provided information to model future scenarios. RESULTS: The current and predicted workforce supply and demographics are at a satisfactory level and are decreasing as a proportion of the increasing population. Empiric data analysis supports the diverse nature of an otolaryngologist's practice and the unique role for otolaryngologists that is not shared by many other providers. Together with the focus group results, the study points to areas for which more background and training are warranted. CONCLUSIONS: This study represents a first step in a process to form coherent workforce recommendations for the field of otolaryngology.


The purpose of the article is to determine the role of human capital in the functioning of machine-building enterprises, based on the peculiarities of the formation of labor costs for hired workers in relation to the dynamics of capital expenditures (fixed assets) in order to increase revenue (revenues) from sales of products. The method of correlation-regression analysis has been used, which has revealed the high density of communication, to construct the equation of the dependence of labor costs and capital expenditures (fixed assets) on income (revenue) from sales of products. Using the method of analysis of the functioning environment, according to the machine-building enterprises of the region, the coefficients of covering income (revenue) from the sale of capital expenditures (fixed assets) and labor costs for hired workers, formed the ability to find the indicators of capital expenditure (fixed assets). according to given economic entities the possibility of increasing the income (revenue) from sales of products. The directions of strengthening the development of human capital, in particular, by increasing the cost of capital (fixed assets) of machine-building enterprises in the region, which will increase their profitability, are revealed.


South Africans carry an unacceptably high burden of hypertension [high blood pressure (BP)]. Up to 30% of adults are known to be hypertensive. 1 It was estimated to have caused 46 888 deaths and 390 860 disability-adjusted life years in 2000. 2 Hypertension is the most common reason for attending primary health care and also the most common diagnosis (13.1%) in South Africa. 3 High salt consumption is a key driver of hypertension, and there is strong evidence to indicate that South Africans consume up to 2-3 times the recommended daily allowance of 5 g. The sources of this dietary salt intake are split between salt from processed food and discretionary salt, which is salt that is added at home during cooking and at the table. 4 The National Department of Health recently legislated salt reduction in certain processed foods. 5 While this will reduce one source of salt in the diet, it does not deal with discretionary salt use. Global experience shows that the best means of reducing salt consumption is a combined approach of lowering salt levels in processed food, together with a parallel public education and consumer awareness campaign. Whereas other countries have attempted to reduce salt through voluntary participation from industry, South Africa is the first country to embark on the legislated route on a basket of food products. Salt Watch, an initiative established by a multisectoral coalition group, is South Africa's national salt reduction education and awareness campaign. The Heart and Stroke Foundation South Africa (HSFSA) was nominated as the implementing body of the campaign, which is supported by the National Department of Health.


While most of the literature on park management and nature conservation has focused on the negative implications for local people's livelihoods, fewer studies have empirically analysed local people's strategies in responding to these policies and renegotiating their position to continue their traditional livelihoods using their traditional knowledge and legal systems. This study contributes to the current literature on nature conservation by focusing on the impacts of nationally and internationally driven nature conservation policies on indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) and collective strategies and responses to such policies and initiatives to continue their livelihood and cultural practices. We employ a qualitative research approach, using the convivial conservation theoretical lens to analyse the data collected. We conclude that conservation policies have worsened existing livelihoods and constrained the improvement of indigenous people's livelihoods and local communities. Yet, IPLCs have devised coping mechanisms to deal with the negative effects of these conservation interventions, which include resistance to some conservation policies, agricultural intensification, and involvement in commercial activities. We argue that the convivial conservation approach may offer viable solutions to existing conflicts by promoting human and non-human coexistence, based on indigenous and local people's knowledge and practices.


Most deep latent factor models choose simple priors for simplicity, tractability or not knowing what prior to use. Recent studies show that the choice of the prior may have a profound effect on the expressiveness of the model, especially when its generative network has limited capacity. In this paper, we propose to learn a proper prior from data for adversarial autoencoders (AAEs). We introduce the notion of code generators to transform manually selected simple priors into ones that can better characterize the data distribution. Experimental results show that the proposed model can generate better image quality and learn better disentangled representations than AAEs in both supervised and unsupervised settings. Lastly, we present its ability to do cross-domain translation in a text-to-image synthesis task.


Conclusions * South Asia, with a quarter of the world's population, a demonstrated weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capability, great economic potential, and chronic instability, can no longer be regarded as peripheral to U.S. global interests. * Achieving peace and stability, particularly in and between India and Pakistan, is the overarching U.S. interest in South Asia, and we need a well-considered, long-term strategy to pursue it. * The United States needs to avoid the episodic, single-issue pattern of its past interaction with South Asia. * Sustained, broad-based engagement, based on a thorough review of U.S. interests and regional realities, will preserve and enhance U.S. interests. * A presidential visit to all the major countries of the region could signal our commitment to long-term engagement focusing on Indo-Pakistani rapprochement, good governance, economic advancement, and sane management of the region's nuclear capabilities. With President Clinton's visit to South Asia, the forthcoming transition in the White House, and Indo-Pakistani relations in near crisis, a review of U.S. policy toward that region and options for the future is warranted. We need to reevaluate what our fundamental interests in South Asia are, because they have changed significantly from what they were when these countries gained independence at mid-century and especially since the end of the Cold War. South Asia is hardly a vital U.S. interest, but it has become much more important. The unchecked Indo-Pakistani arms race poses risks of nuclear conflict and undermines nonproliferation regimes in other regions; Afghanistan and Pakistan are grappling with forms of militant Islam that have global reach; and the stability and development of the region have an important impact on U.S. interests in China, the Persian Gulf, and Central Asia. We have to honestly assess where we have been right and wrong--know the history but not be its prisoner. The days are gone when we can afford to view the subcontinent as a backwater in our global strategy. U.S. Interests in South Asia The bedrock U.S. interest in South Asia has been and will continue to be peace and stability within and between the nations of the region (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Maldives). If peace and stability prevail, the United States can make progress not only on nonproliferation, economic reform and development, trade liberalization, democracy/ governance, human rights, narcotics, terrorism, and World Trade Organization issues--indeed, on all of these issues, with enormous benefit for our vision of a prosperous, democratic South Asia integrated with the global economy. Without peace and stability, little can be accomplished on any front. South Asia Realities By focusing serially upon the Cold War, the green revolution, the quest for global and regional nonproliferation, and the importance of human rights over the last fifty years, we have had a distorted perception of the realities on the ground. The absence of an across-the-board approach has hampered the development and implementation of a coherent, successful policy in pursuit of U.S. interests. In any reconsideration of U.S.-South Asia policy--it is important that we begin with a reality check. * Tensions between the region's two largest countries, India and Pakistan, are high. Hostility over Kashmir--three wars in 52 years--holds the region hostage. Resolving Indo-Pakistani tensions is the sine qua non of long-term peace and stability. Both nations have nuclear weapons and delivery systems; neither will give them up. A confrontational approach by the rest of the world demanding renunciation of nuclear capability only aggravates the problem of achieving restraint, as demonstrated by our unsuccessful nonproliferation efforts set against the realities of internal and regional politics. …


Fitzroya cupressoides (alerce, Cupressaceae) is a large and exceptionally long‐lived conifer, endemic to a restricted area of southern Chile and neighbouring areas of Argentina. As a result of its high economic value, the species has been severely exploited for timber, and remnant populations are fragmented and often highly disturbed. The species is thought to have undergone a major range contraction during the last glaciation. In order to assess the extent of genetic variation using DNA markers within and between populations of this species, samples were obtained from throughout the natural range and analysed for random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) variation. Eight 10‐mer and three 15‐mer primers were used to produce a total of 54 polymorphic bands. Shannon's diversity estimates were calculated to provide an estimate of the degree of variation within each population. Values varied from 0.343 to 0.636 with only the lowest value differing significantly from the others (Spop= 0.547). This indicated that there is a significant degree of variation within each population, and did not provide evidence for genetic 'bottleneck' effects within the species. A pairwise distance measure calculated from the RAPD data was used as an input for principal coordinate (PCO) and amova analyses. The first three principal coordinates of RAPD distances described 8.3, 5.9 and 5.4% of the total variance, respectively, and a degree of clustering of samples according to their geographical origin was detectable. amova analysis indicated that although most of the variation (85.6%) was found within populations, a significant proportion (P < 0.002) was attributable to differences between populations. An upgma dendrogram constructed using ΦST values derived from amova produced a pattern broadly similar to that produced by the PCO, highlighting differences between three main groups of populations within Chile: those from the northern Coastal Range, the southern Coastal Range and Central Depression, and the Andes. Populations from Argentina also emerged as significantly different from those in Chile. These results are interpreted in the context of the postglacial history of the species, and their implications for the development of conservation strategies for Fitzroya are discussed.


ABSTRACT Irregular migrants and asylum seekers have died and continue to die attempting to cross the external borders of the EU without authorisation, seeking to enter the territories of its Member States. Yet, remarkably little is known about these 'border deaths'. In 2015, the Human Costs of Border Control project published the Deaths at the Borders Database for the Southern EU, an open-source 'evidence base' of individualised information about people who have died border deaths between 1990 and 2013, sourced from the death management systems of Spain, Gibraltar, Italy, Malta and Greece. It is the first database on border deaths in the EU to be based on official sources as opposed to the news media. The project involved searching 563 state-run death registry archives and deductively selecting the death certificates of persons who died border deaths. This paper describes, in detail, the making of the Deaths at the Borders Database: from the systematic, multi-sited, quantitative data collection and qualitative case studies, to the construction and final results of the Database itself.


The criteria by which the deposits of tsunamis are distiguished from other deposits, including storm surges, have been controversial for more than 10 years. The Mata Amarilla Formation of the lower Upper Cretaceous of Southern Patagonia has excellent outcrops that in its lower section, sedimentary and taphonomic characteristics suggest a tsunami origin. This paper presents details of these aspects, as well as a model of temporal stages that led to their deposition within a lagoon. The sediments are composed of alternating white sandstones and mudstones, with interbedded bioclastic accumulations in the lower section. The depositional environment was characterised by a lagoon bounded by shallow marine bars. These fine-grained sediments are sporadically interrupted by tsunami events represented by coquinas, bioclastic sands and shell pavements with allochthonous and autochthonous mollusk associations from freshwater and marine habitats. Some areas of the lagoon became exposed, thus enabling the development of vegetation on the substrate and pedogenic processes. Subsequently, a forced regression occurred when a fluvial system invaded the lagoon area, representing the beginning of the deposition of the middle section of the Mata Amarilla Formation.


Editors' Note For some time now, esteemed Readers, there has been a considerable lack of Victorian verbosity and pomposity in the realm of student publications. Such collections are often too earnest and selfaware, and as a result the once respectable name of 'Youth' in the modern literary canon has become inglorious. The only way in which to remedy this situation is with a healthy dose of Ganderax. Consider this journal to be the first stride towards a new ideal. Both the prose and poesy found betwixt these stiffened covers shall be a golden orb of inspiration for a new generation of literary sensibility. Our band of jocund wordsmiths can feel no greater pride in a success such as this. Elementary! As the Tide ebbs and flows, let this be seen as the highest watermark: the one that claims the shoreline. In the name of Literature, Dr Dog Watson, Esq. This journal article is available in Tide: http://ro.uow.edu.au/tide/vol6/iss1/1


The KPROC (KiloPROCessor) architecture is the first implementation of a parallel computer with 1024 floating-point processors on a single chip. It strictly follows the concept of an instruction systolic array. The modular organisation allows for either building large arrays of many KPROC chips or speeding up small machines with a single KPROC as a coprocessor. This paper presents concept of this parallel computer model as well as the architectural details of the processor design. It is shown that this computer model allows for efficient implementation of parallel prefix computations. A large variety of applications from different areas is presented to demonstrate how parallel prefix computations can be used as key operations for deriving efficient implementations on the KPROC.


Middle child David Alan Miller, a rising freshman in Vacaville, Iowa, has found a way to distinguish himself between his two oxygen-sucking siblings, his perfect, college-age sister, Bridgette, and his autistic younger brother, Mal: David eats. You'd never know it to look at him, but he has that bottomless adolescent-guy stomach that seemingly cannot be filled, and he has turned this trait into a competitive skill. After getting swindled out of $2000 that he sort-of-accidentally put on Mom's credit card (for an auctioned half-a-hotdog from a professional competitive eater), he needs to raise some cash before the bill comes. His big chance at covering his tracks arrives in the form of the Super Pigorino Bowl pizza chow down, with its $5000 prize. Not everyone plays fair at these galas of gluttony, though, and all of David's nauseating training and his parents' reluctant acquiescence may come to naught when he goes slice to slice with the pros. Family relationships and buddy support are authentically drawn, and the bones of the plot are sturdy; a few too many episodes revolving around David's stomach-stretching training give the tale an overstuffed feel, but the resolution is satisfying and readers will come away thoroughly entertained. Even if they take a pass on pizza and burgers for a couple of days. EB


The sediment core HH15-1255PC has been analyzed to reconstruct the climate in the Fram Strait during the last 45,000 years. The coring site is located west of Svalbard on the Vestnesa Ridge, a contourite drift with a high-resolution sedimentary record (Plaza-Faverola et al., 2015). This ridge also includes a pockmark field formed by methane seepage (Vogt et al., 1994). The core HH15-1255PC is a piston core, which was taken in the year 2015 at a water depth of 1,206 m. Onboard the magnetic susceptibility was measured and the core with its total length of 819 cm was cut into 9 sections. In the laboratory of the University of Tromsø different measurements were done on the sediment core before parts of it were analyzed with destructible methods. These methods include core description, x-ray scans, XRF-core scanner, multi-sensor core logger and distribution analyses of foraminifera species. Additionally, the oxygen/carbon isotopes were measured and five samples were used for radiocarbon dating. With the dating results, an age model was constructed by correlating the results with the core JM03-373PC2 described by Jessen et al. (2010). A debris flow deposit, which could be seen in both cores, gave an additional age mark. By comparing the density curve for planktic foraminifera with the δ18O results of the Greenland ice core, Dansgaard-Oeschger event 2 to 11 could correlated. As well, the curves for the detrital carbonate of the Deep Sea Drilling Project have been used and were compared with the 500 μm IRD fraction of the HH15-1255PC core to correlate Heinrich event 2, 3 and 4. The results were put in relation with Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events and by analyzing the foraminifera distribution, it is possible to see how the influence of different water masses was changing during those events.


Ideologies shape people's belief systems about what constitutes a good life and well-being and how to navigate between considerations of own well-being versus the well-being of others. The present study investigates ideologies in West African Ghana and North European Norway. Comparative, longitudinal analyses of ideological shifts reflected in changes in language usage in public discourse (newspapers) in the two nations revealed how currently globalized ideology (consumerism, individualism and neo-liberalism) merges with local ideologies in unique ways with regard to the balance between individualist and communal values.


A clear understanding of the main controlling factors for injection and production allocation of polymer flooding is the key to successful differential adjustment for well management in high water-cut reservoirs. Generally, sensitivity analysis or design of experiment is used to study the main controlling factors, but the number of adjustment parameters is limited and the optimal results are hard to obtain. Therefore, the paper regards the problem as an inverse problem and studies the controlling factors by combining intelligent optimization and correlation analysis. In general, the correlation between the optimal results of injection and production allocation and each controlling factor is analyzed, and the main controlling factors with the strongest correlation is selected. Results show that injection rate allocation is mainly controlled by pore volume, polymer concentration allocation is mainly controlled by pore volume and formation coefficient, production rate allocation is mainly controlled by remaining reserves and oil saturation. Case study indicates injection and production adjustment based on the main controlling factors obtains satisfactory development performance while using much less computation cost than that of the intelligent optimization method. The research results provide a good reference for well redistribution adjustment of polymer flooding in large-scale oilfields.


Child sexual abuse is an important public health issue given its magnitude and the multiple associated consequences. The diversity of profiles in child victims of sexual abuse calls for a more personalized approach to treatment. Indeed, recent studies suggest that children display a variety of symptoms and that a subgroup of sexually abused children may present a profile of complex trauma. This article first presents a review of the scientific literature that positions Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT; Cohen et al., 2017) amongst the best practices to address trauma-related symptoms following child sexual abuse; whether it is co-occurring with other forms of violence or not. Various adaptations of TF-CBT therapy are proposed by the authors (Cohen et al., 2012) to treat children facing complex trauma. These adaptations are summarized and illustrated with the presentation of a clinical case involving two siblings from the same family.


This article starts from Peter Gowan's notion of a Dollar-Wall Street Regime (DWSR) characterized by financial deregulation, the dollar as the world's currency, large international capital flows, and frequent financial crises. The author argues that the DWSR has relied on a special economic relationship between the United States and East Asia, characterized by large East Asian trade and current account surpluses with the United States and the investment of East Asian dollar holdings in U.S. capital markets. For some time both parties benefited from this relationship, but eventually it gave rise to financial crises in East Asia. Thus, Japan's financial crisis around 1990 and the 1997/98 East Asian financial crisis are both related to economic over-accumulation caused by the buildup of currency reserves through trade with the United States. Attempts at East Asian monetary integration since 1997 are viewed as a potential challenge to the DWSR. These attempts have however been blocked or rendered harmless by regional divisions as well as by U.S. resistance. While an East Asian political challenge to theDWSRis unlikely for the time being, the special U.S.-East Asian economic relationship may become substantially weakened by the growing problems of the U.S. economy.


During the last decade, China has become an active player in global political economy. China's rise has led to important structural changes: First, China is close to replace the US as the "consumer of last resort" in the world economy, thus, being able to influence states and companies in other world regions by granting or restricting access to its huge domestic market. Second, China is heavily investing in infrastructure and commodity supply chains in the Global South, thereby gaining control over important trade routes. And, third, China has become a major creditor of several governments, thus, challenging US-dominated international financial institutions such as the IMF. The paper draws on World-Systems Analysis in order to give an assessment of these developments. Even though China's influence in global political economy is likely to continue to grow, internal and external factors (China's increasing economic woes and the US counterstrategy in East Asia) might stall China's rise.


All academic journals rely on a steady stream of good quality articles in order to survive. This journal is no different and its value to readers entirely depends on the content being relevant and stimulating. My aim is that there will be something of interest to all readers in every edition. This means a balance between the academic and the practical and high-tech science and clinical wisdom. I am often struck by two observations when it comes to hospital pharmacists: the high quality of much of the research and project work on the one hand and a seeming reluctance to publish their findings on the other. Such attitudes are rarely found among the medical staff who frequently encouraged me as a junior to publish findings, often offering to help. That got me started. Many start with a poster which is their passport to attend a conference; maybe it is now time to expand that piece of work into a full article. While the journal has word limits which can seem intimidating at times, even short papers can be valuable and I can find ways to get these into print. There are real benefits to publishing your work: it will help your career and CV, you will become known for your work especially if you find an interesting niche area to investigate, and you will be a greater asset to your colleagues. In the light of this, I want to start an initiative aimed at first-time authors who want to start publishing. There will be space in this journal for those who feel that they have a suitable topic but have never published in a peer review journal before. I am willing to give support in the preparation of such papers with the aim of bringing them to a suitable standard for publication. If you would like to submit a paper as a first time author please indicate this on the original document so it can be processed differently. Of course those of you who are not novices are also welcome to submit papers or act as a coauthor with one of your team members So get writing!


In this work, aqueous pentaethylenehexamine (PEHA) was studied as a solvent for CO2 removal to produce purified bio-syngas from biomass gasification, but also as a first step towards negative carbon emissions applying carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Capture of CO2 was tested both with synthetic gas (labscale) and real syngases from the pilot-scale gasifier fed with a wide range of forest-based biomasses. The results showed that the effects of the components other than CO2 and the impurities from the real syngas on the performance of PEHA for CO2 removal are negligible. Combined with previous research results from labtesting with pure CO2 absorption, the aqueous PEHA was shown to be a promising solvent for CO2 removal from syngas. PEHA was also tested as a biomass pre-treatment agent to improve gasification behavior, however, no significant improvement could be identified during the tests performed in this study.


Focusing on European and American trial fiction since about 1880, Dark Mirror argues that although it is generally animated by a sense of injustice, this literature reflects the virtual collapse in Western culture of the idea of a universal, or natural,ethical law. From the ancient Greeks to the Victorians, that idea, though powerfully contested by the notion that justice was simply the interest of the stronger,remained vigorously alive in books as in people's minds. It thus constituted an alternative to injustice which modern literature, whether its angle is religious, social, or absurdist, rarely presents. Sterne presents the argument that the tradition of natural law can be adapted to the present condition, a hypothesis that necessitates a view of an international community in which distributive as well as punitive justice is done. Creators of literature, who have so persuasively dramatized the corruptions, cruelties, and absurdities of our time, would then eb called upon to increasingly choose to imagine justways for us to emerge from chaos. Dark Mirror is the first study that combines, comprehensively, the treatment of the historical conflict between idealistic (natural law) and realisticor cynical approaches to the idea of justice.


Dual-junction solar cells have the potential for higher conversion efficiencies than single junctions, thanks to a better utilization of the solar spectrum. However, their optimization is more complex because the monolithic interconnection makes the individual subcell electrical measurement difficult or impossible. This study presents a new technique to measure the open-circuit voltage VOC of each individual subcell of a dual-junction device with a method that circumvents the need for completely selective illumination. The method is based on the description of the total device VOC as a function of two independent variables determined by two distinct illumination spectra. Without completely selective illumination, one can measure only a limited range of this function; however, an unambiguous extension gives values corresponding to the conditions of ideal selectivity, which correspond in turn to the VOC of the individual subcells at 1-sun illumination. This method does not rely on any specific electrical or optical model of solar cell. Method is successfully tested with a simple measurement setup based on commercially available luminescence diodes and voltmeters in combination with specially prepared three-terminal dual-junction thin-film silicon solar cells.


National high courts must attempt to manage the tension between the strength of unanimity and the intellectual honesty of fragmented judgments. One obvious tool for balancing these needs is the consensual norm, which sets an informal level of institutional tolerance for publicized dissent. Here, this issue is investigated in comparative perspective using four cases: The High Court of Australia, the Supreme Court of Canada, the Law Lords division of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, and the United States Supreme Court. Theoretical expectations for the empirical manifestations of consensus in each high court give special attention to the importance of institutional opinion writing traditions on the observable patterns of consensus. The results suggest that evidence that may support the hypothesis that a consensual norm is in operation in a majority opinion court may support the absence of a consensual norm in a seriatim court. When the normal way to communicate consensus is through a concurring opinion and concurring opinions are related to dissenting opinions, this provides evidence of ambivalence about dissent, not a norm of consensus.


Based on an extensive survey of French primary sources and a discussion of the recent literature on fiscal policy in France and Europe during Louis XIV's wars, this article revisits the rationale behind the first experiment with paper money undertaken by finance minister Michel Chamillart, comparing it to other belligerents' strategies, in particular England's, to adjust their monetary regime to the challenges of funding long wars of attrition. The article shows how concerns about economic activity, coinage and the need to finance the war deficit led to a series of debasements of the French currency, the establishment of a bank in the form of a Caisse des emprunts and the introduction of mint bills, which became legal tender and caused the first experience of fiat money inflation in history. Whereas Chamillart's personal shortcomings have been recently suggested as the cause of Louis XIV's humbling in the War of the Spanish Succession, I argue on the contrary that the introduction of paper money in 1704 was key to the capacity of France to sustain its military effort, but that a succession of military defeats against a more powerful coalition led to inflation. I also argue that the introduction of paper money saved the Caisse des emprunts and its bonds which helped sustain the war effort up until the peace. By situating the use of paper money within the broader question of the exercise of power in the absolute monarchy, this article examines the formation of fiscal policy, paying attention to the ways in which government sought advice from experts. It concludes by calling for further studies on policy- and decision-making under Louis XIV.