Although it is known that rubella-immune individuals have T cells that proliferate in vitro in response to rubella virus (RV), the determinants that evoke this response have not been identified. This study utilized recombinant proteins that express overlapping sequences of the RV structural open reading frame to identify domains of the structural proteins that contain cell-mediated immunodominant sequences. Lysates enriched with RV fusion proteins (RecA-RV-LacZ) were prepared from Escherichia coli transformed with plasmids which contained specific RV cDNA inserts. Approximately 62% of RV-immune individuals gave RV-specific responses to one or more of the RV fusion proteins. Over 10% of immune individuals recognized the capsid sequence C1-C29. Lymphoproliferation data from studies using six overlapping synthetic peptides representing this sequence suggested that as much as 70% of the immune population may recognize this domain. An E1 sequence, E1(202)-E1(283), was recognized by 15% of the RV-immune individuals with the fusion proteins. Five synthetic peptides representing this sequence had an overall response rate of 50%. The sequence C64-C97 failed to evoke any RV-specific responses with the fusion proteins and synthetic peptides representing this sequence were used to verify that the RV fusion proteins and the criteria used to identify RV-specific responses were adequate. These peptides gave a response rate of only 6%. In general, significant responses to specific fusion proteins correlated with high responses (stimulation index > or = 4.0) to representative synthetic peptides. This study suggests that the recombinant proteins were beneficial in identifying cell-mediated immunodominant domains of the RV structural proteins which could be further characterized with synthetic peptides.


Previous work has indicated that radiation doses from deposition on human skin, hair and clothing may contribute significantly to the dose received after a major nuclear accident, such as that, which happened at Chernobyl in 1986. The available data was, however, sparse and associated with considerable variation, clearly showing a need for further investigations to verify preliminary conclusions, examine processes in greater detail and identify important factors causing the observed parameter variation. For instance, the impacts of thermophoresis, electrophoresis, skin moisture and wind speed on the deposition of contaminant aerosol were examined, and since the previous measurements had indicated that elemental iodine could be a particularly problematic contaminant, experimental work was additionally undertaken to examine the process of deposition of this species to skin. Since both clearance and percutaneous penetration of deposited contaminants could play important roles in determining doses, experimental programmes were dedicated to the identification of parameters of interest in these contexts. Also doses from contamination on different surfaces in the indoor environment have in the past traditionally been neglected, and a theoretical approach, based on measurements, was developed for accurate prediction of these doses under different conditions. Also resuspension of deposited matter and its role in dose formation, by subsequent deposition or inhalation, was investigated through experiments. Contact transfer of contaminants from an indoor surface to human skin may give yet another contribution to dose and also the relevant parameters in this direction were examined experimentally. The ultimate goal of the investigations was to enable the determination of the various contributions to dose in a contaminated indoor environment. A model methodology was developed and an example of its use was given. It was found that after a major nuclear accident, doses from indoor deposition to humans, deposition on indoor surfaces and inhalation in the indoor environment would all be important to consider.


Background Orofacial infections when treated by dental practitioners are not routinely sampled for culture and susceptibility testing. Consequently, antimicrobial resistant rates amongst the causative bacteria are unknown, hindering efforts to appropriately manage these infections and undertake surveillance of resistant rates. As part of the Cardiff health board leadership in patient safety quality improvement programme a multidisciplinary group was tasked with the aim of improving sampling practices. Methods Dental professionals' limited knowledge regarding the role of diagnostic support and an associated lack of confidence in sampling procedures was addressed by the creation and distribution of training aids. Sampling and transportation kits were developed and transport routes identified enabling dentists within the community setting to send samples to the specialist microbiology services based at Cardiff University Dental Hospital [UDH]. All significant anaerobes were identified and antibiotic susceptibility testing undertaken via agar dilution through referral of isolates to the UK Anaerobic Reference Unit. Results A 10% increase was seen in the proportion of pus aspirates being received in comparison to pus swabs. For the first time, pus aspirate samples have been received from community dental clinics. A vast diversity of anaerob species and susceptibility profiles have been identified. Increasing rates of resistance amongst Prevotella species to amoxicillin and clindamycin is of concern. Conclusion This project has shown that through educational interventions and support the barriers to the sampling of orofacial infections can be overcome. The ultimate aim is for all dentists in Wales to have access to diagnostic support.


This article examines word order in negative clauses in Breton across two generations separated by a gap in language transmission. It might be expected that the V2 constraint in Breton matrix clauses would be subject to change in light of immense influence from French and this transmission gap. An examination of original fieldwork data indicates that there is little change between the older (65+) and younger (children/adults aged 20–30) speakers, but that there is variation among younger speakers currently in Breton-medium education. All speakers use the expected V2 in utterances with a pronominal subject. With lexical subjects, it seems that the key factor is the amount of Breton input children receive. Children in bilingual schooling with no additional Breton input use exclusively SVO order, whereas children in immersion schooling or with further Breton input pattern with older speakers and young adults using V2 with complex verbs, and both SVO and V2 with simple verbs. The implications of this for the continued maintenance of the V2 constraint in Breton are discussed, and the overriding factor is argued to be the continuation of Breton input as children grow older.


It is only in the last few years that multichannel television has really made inroads in Italy. This article assesses the nature and extent of change that has taken place in Italian television in the move from a handful of terrestrial channels to hundreds of digital channels. It considers emerging trends in terms of ownership, revenue models, programming and consumption. It is argued that Italian television has undergone substantial change in recent years, the rise of News Corporation's Sky Italia and the growing centrality of pay-TV to the economics of the industry being the main novelties. However, there are also important elements of continuity. Mediaset and RAI's established terrestrial channels remain the only truly mass-audience media in Italy. Judging from current viewing patterns and in light of regulatory conditions and economic considerations, they are likely to remain so even in the all-digital scenario of the near future. In the longer term, however, fundamental change may also occur at this level, the analysis pointing in particular to the risk for public broadcaster RAI to become increasingly marginal in future, given the political and economic constraints it currently faces.


Even the most cursory browse through any slang dictionary will immediately reveal that rhyming slang is a highly productive category of word-formation in contemporary British and Australian English. However, because of the inextricable difficulty in tracking what is essentially an oral (and often improvisational) phenomenon, dictionaries have typically overlooked rhyming slang items whose use is restricted to specific geographical areas, especially in Ireland and Scotland. Conceived as a sequel and companion piece to a previous study on Scottish rhyming slang by this author (Lillo 2004b), this article examines the way rhyming slang has thrived in Scotland over the past few years, thereby providing interesting insights into its role in the articulation of Scottish identity and its spread and growth around the anglophone world. While Scottish rhyming slang shows largely the same morphological characteristics as other rhyming slangs, its home-grown flavour is apparent in a significant proportion of its repertoire, which serves as a real marker of national identity and pride among Scots. The final section of the article presents a glossary of Scottish rhyming slang made up for the most part of previously unrecorded items collected by the author.


We evaluate two variants of a school-based, intensive learning camp for pupils who are assessed 'not ready' for further education after compulsory school, using a stratified cluster randomized trial involving 15,559 pupils in 264 schools in Denmark. Next to training pupils in Danish and mathematics, the main variant targets non-cognitive skills, while the alternative variant instead uses this time for more training in Danish and math. In the short-run, in the academic areas that are targeted in the camp, we find small positive effects in math and weak evidence for positive effects in Danish. Yet, we find no evidence of lasting effects and we do not find short-run effects on non-targeted areas in math and Danish or on non-cognitive skills. Further, we find no evidence that training of non-cognitive skills affects academic outcomes. These results provide a perspective on recent evidence regarding the effects of training non-cognitive skills in schools - by running such an intervention with older pupils and in a comparatively high-resource school system.


In order to provide a detailed vertical velocity field in southernmost Longitudinal Valley where shows a complex three-fault system at the plate suture between Philippine Sea plate and Eurasia, we conducted leveling and GPS measurements, compiled data from previous surveys and combined them into a single data set. We compiled precise leveling results from 1984 to 2009, include 5 E-W trending and one N-S trending routes. We calculated the GPS vertical component from 10 continuous stations and from 89 campaign-mode stations from 1995 to 2010. The interseismic vertical rates are estimated by removing the co- and post-seismic effects of major large regional and nearby earthquakes. A stable continuous station S104 in the study area was adopted as the common reference station. We finally establish a map of the interseismic vertical velocity field. The interseismic vertical deformation was mainly accommodated by creeping/thrusting along two east-dipping strands of the three-fault system: the Luyeh and Lichi faults. The most dominant uplift of 30 mm yr^(-1) occurs at the hanging wall of the Lichi fault on the western Coastal Range. However the rate diminishes away from the fault in the hanging wall. The Quaternary tablelands inside of the Longitudinal Valley reveals uplift with a rate of 5 - 10 mm yr^(-1). Outside of the tablelands, the rest of the Longitudinal Valley flat area indicates substantial subsidence of -10 to -20 mm yr^(-1). Finally, it appears that the west-dipping blind fault under the eastern side of the Central Range does not play a significant role on interseismic deformation with subsidence rate of -5 to -10 mm yr^(-1).


We had in the present thesis the unique possibility to use, in a socio-economically relatively homogenous population, high quality registry information on a population-based birth cohort (84 039 births during the period 1999-2005) in Scania (Skane), the most Southern county of Sweden. The aim of the thesis was to investigate whether exposure to air pollution, in an area of low-levels exposures, during different periods of the pregnancy was associated with birth outcomes, pregnancy complications and risk of the child to develop type I diabetes (T1D). For all outcomes air pollution was assessed as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and traffic exposure. For T1D we also assessed the association with exposures to ozone.
We did not find any consistent associations between air pollution and birth outcomes, whereas an increased prevalence of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia with increasing NOx exposure was observed. We did also find that the risk of developing T1D increased if the mother had lived in areas of elevated levels of NOx during third trimester or ozone during second trimester. Our studies suggest that air pollution during pregnancy might be a health risk for mother and child, even at levels below current air quality guidelines.


In the United States, intellectual property (IP) law is intended to encourage the production of new creative works and inventions. Copyright and patent laws do this by providing qualifying authors and inventors with a bundle of exclusive rights relating to the use and development of their creations. Importantly, however, these fields differ greatly in the ways that they determine whether some new creation is sufficiently innovative to merit legal protection. Copyright law sets the creativity bar especially low for new works of authorship, whereas patent law demands that a putative inventor prove that her creation is highly innovative. Relatively little research has focused on whether the different IP thresholds affect the incentives and behavior of creators.Legal scholarship on the effects of differing IP thresholds on creators has generally relied on standard economic assumptions about the way that people respond to incentives. Creators are assumed to be rational and to respond to increased incentives by producing more and better creations. According to this reasoning, because patent law requires more creativity as a precondition to the conferral of IP rights compared to what copyright law requires, creators subject to the patent regime will be encouraged to be more creative than those subject to the copyright regime.Recent research in the social sciences, however, suggests that the connection between incentives and behavior — particularly with regard to creativity — is not always so straightforward. Although some research indicates that providing incentives to act creatively has the expected effect of increasing creativity, other research suggests that offering certain types of incentives can undermine creative behavior. For example, monetary incentives to perform creative tasks may dampen creativity. Moreover, and importantly for our purposes, increasing the magnitude of an incentive to be creative may not always lead to more or better behavior. Once creativity incentives are sufficiently salient or intense, there is a risk that people will be overly focused on achieving the incentive and "choke."In the series of experiments reported in this Article, we extend the research on the effects of incentives for creativity into the realm of intellectual property. Specifically, we test whether the existence of a creativity threshold that conditions entry into a prize lottery on meeting certain performance standards affects how creative people are. The experiments reported here involve various creativity tasks in which subjects are randomly assigned to conditions that are intended to model the different creativity thresholds employed by copyright and patent law. Doing so allows us to test whether the existence and nature of a threshold increases, decreases, or does not affect subjects' creativity.This research contributes to the growing debates about whether copyright law's creativity threshold is set too low and should be increased and whether patent law's creativity threshold is appropriately set. More broadly, this research adds to the growing literature in law, psychology, economics, and management on the effects of incentives on behavior.


ing and Indexing Services The Journal is indexed by Biological Abstracts (Thomson Reuters), BIOSIS Previews (Thomson Reuters), Science Citation Index Expanded (Thomson Reuters), SCOPUS (Elsevier). Open Access and Copyright All articles published by Journal of Diabetes Investigation are fully open access: immediately freely available to read, download and share. All Journal of Diabetes Investigation articles accepted from 24 September 2013 are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Articles accepted before this date were published under the agreement as stated in the fi nal article. Copyright on any Journal of Diabetes Investigation article accepted after 24 September 2013, the date on which Journal of Diabetes Investigation became an open access journal, is retained by the author(s). Authors grant to Journal of Diabetes Investigation and Wiley a license to publish the article and for Wiley to identify itself as the original publisher. Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identifi ed. Use by commercial ''for-profi t'' organisations (not applicable to CC BY 4.0 licensed articles) Use of Wiley Open Access articles for commercial, promotional, or marketing purposes requires further explicit permission from Wiley and will be subject to a fee. Requests to reproduce material from this journal content are being handled through the Rightslink® online service. • Locate the article you wish to reproduce on Wiley Online Library (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com) • Navigate to the abstract page • Click on the 'Request Permissions' link, under the 'ARTICLE TOOLS' menu • Follow the online instructions and select your requirements from the drop down options and click on 'quick price' to get a quote • Create a RightsLink® account to complete your transaction (and pay, where applicable) • Read and accept our Terms & Conditions and Download your license • For any technical queries please contact customercare@copyright. com • For further information and to view a Rightslink® demo please visit www.wiley.com and select Rights & Permissions. • Print reprints of Wiley Open Access articles can be purchased from firstname.lastname@example.com. Disclaimer The Publisher and Editors cannot be held responsible for errors or any consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal; the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily refl ect those of the Publisher and Editors, neither does the publication of advertisements constitute any endorsements by the Publisher and Editors of the products advertised. Wiley Open Access articles posted to repositories or websites are without warranty from Wiley of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantability, fi tness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. To the fullest extent permitted by law Wiley disclaims all liability for any loss or damage arising out of, or in connection, with the use of or inability to use the content. jdi_6_1_issue_info.indd 2 12/29/2014 10:58:40 AM


BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT OF ABSOLUTE PITCH (AP) ability over the better part of the last century has strongly suggested that a variety of proficiency levels exists and can only be more comprehensively described with the use of rigorous testing providing precise and unbiased reaction times for all responses. This study describes the design, implementation and validation of a computerized test of absolute pitch and resulting data for 51 musicians, 27 of whom self-reported as AP possessors. The test was sensitive to previously reported differences in accuracy and timing for C major diatonic versus non-diatonic notes and showed a range of performance, from perfect to random, including a substantial number of intermediate levels of proficiency. We discuss the implications of detecting such a distribution of behavior as well as the effect of test design and scoring strategies on that distribution.


Recent years in scholarly literature appears quite new and modern term - "smart public governance". Usually, this term is used in the context of smart city, e-governance and good governance conceptions. However, it is clear, that in public governance literature this concept is not enough analyzed and still there is no clear agreement how we can define, what smart public governance really is. The aim of this article is to analyze the concept of smart public governance in different theoretical conceptions contexts and to identify the main elements of this concept. The aim of the article is met by analyzing the latest scientific literature on public administration and discussing the concept of good governance developed by international organizations. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.13.3.8294


Pain management for older adults residing in nursing homes continues to present multifaceted challenges to health care practitioners and researchers. This study, which focuses on improvement in pain assessment and management, is a secondary analysis of data from a larger study, which used an intervention simultaneously directed at all levels of staff with change in quality measure (QM)/quality indicator (QI) scores to determine improvement in resident outcomes. We anticipated that focused improvement efforts in resident care regarding pain management would be reflected by correspondingly lower QM/QI scores over time. Findings of increased QM/QI scores may be positive in that they may point to increased attention by staff regarding pain management for residents.


Since the creation of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), health became a strategic driver in regional politics in South America in two ways: by redefining trans-border practices through health policies and institutions within the region; and by projecting (regional) health policies through global interventions. The paper explores these dynamics in relation to UNASUR's policies towards access to medicine, inclusion, and demands for better governance at the World Health Organisation. It argues that regional organisations like UANSUR are significant actors in on-going attempts to address and mitigate trans-border social harms, contributing with innovative regulatory frameworks and different mechanisms of socialisation and engagement that can significant impact national policy making and management in health. But it is also argued that the significance of regional health governance as promoted by UNASUR has to be seen not only as a framework for the promotion of 'regulatory regionalism' (Hameiri and Jayasuriya 2009) in public health, but also for 'regional health diplomacy' brokering new norms and revising the terms of global health governance. This analysis hopes to contribute directly to the literature in IPE and regionalism by offering a more nuanced discussion about the links between regionalism and social policy, and new forms of regional diplomacy beyond traditional goals of trade and financial markets expansion.


Bisphenol A [BPA, 2,2-bis(4-hydoxyphenyl)propane], an industrial chemical used in the production of polycarbonate, epoxide resin, and polyarylate, is considered to be an endocrine-disrupting chemical. BPA may be present in some hollow-fiber dialyzers used in hemodialysis. In this study, we tested the amounts of BPA eluted from various hollow fibers. Furthermore, we measured the BPA concentration in the sera of 22 renal disease predialysis patients, as well as 15 patients who were receiving hemodialysis, to see if there is BPA accumulation in these patients. The elution test of BPA showed that a much larger amount of BPA was eluted from polysulfone (PS), and polyester-polymeralloy hollow fibers. Among renal disease patients who had not undergone hemodialysis, the serum BPA concentration increased as the renal function deteriorated, showing a significant negative association. In a crossover test between PS and cellulose (Ce) dialyzers, the predialysis serum BPA concentration of PS dialyzer users decreased after changing to a Ce dialyzer, and the serum BPA increased again after switching back to PS dialyzers. In patients who were using PS dialyzers, the BPA level significantly increased after a dialysis session. However, in the Ce dialyzer users, the BPA level decreased. Since accumulation of BPA could affect the endocrine or metabolic system of the human body, it is important to perform further investigations on dialysis patients.


Data sharing has never been easier with the advances of cloud computing, and an accurate analysis on the shared data provides an array of benefits to both the society and individuals. Data sharing with a large number of participants must take into account several issues, including efficiency, data integrity and privacy of data owner. Ring signature is a promising candidate to construct an anonymous and authentic data sharing system. It allows a data owner to anonymously authenticate his data which can be put into the cloud for storage or analysis purpose. Yet the costly certificate verification in the traditional public key infrastructure (PKI) setting becomes a bottleneck for this solution to be scalable. Identity-based (ID-based) ring signature, which eliminates the process of certificate verification, can be used instead. In this paper, we further enhance the security of ID-based ring signature by providing forward security: If a secret key of any user has been compromised, all previous generated signatures that include this user still remain valid. This property is especially important to any large scale data sharing system, as it is impossible to ask all data owners to reauthenticate their data even if a secret key of one single user has been compromised. We provide a concrete and efficient instantiation of our scheme, prove its security and provide an implementation to show its practicality.


This research investigated the feasibility of adaptive reuse of vacant industrial buildings in Southwestern, Ontario. Adaptive reuse is a conversion strategy that has recently been utilized in cities faced with a decline in industry. The cities experiencing a labour shift away from manufacturing now have dilapidated vacant or underutilized industrial buildings cross their urban landscape. Adaptive reuse is the process of reusing an existing building, with or without changes to the structure, for a new purpose. Southwestern, Ontario is a region that has struggled to rebound from the economic shift, and the 2008/2009 recession. The region is located southwest of Toronto, bordering Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair. This study, through case study analysis, explored the characteristics that are important in hindering or facilitating the feasibility of adaptive reuse of existing vacant industrial buildings. The case studies demonstrate that location, market characteristics, legislation, council support, and financial implications are the most important factors in assessing the feasibility of adaptive reuse. This research, and the recommendations provided, may aid municipalities and counties in encouraging and working with developers to revitalise their vacant industrial buildings.

Key words: adaptive reuse, brownfield redevelopment, Southwestern Ontario


Marine algae represent an important source of novel natural products. While their bioactive potential has been studied to some extent, limited information is available on marine algae from the Red Sea. This study aimed at the broad discovery of new bioactivities from a collection of twelve macroalgal species from the Central Red Sea. We used imaging-based High-Content Screening (HCS) with a diverse spectrum of cellular markers for detailed cytological profiling of fractionated algal extracts. The cytological profiles for 3 out of 60 algal fractions clustered closely to reference inhibitors and showed strong inhibitory activities on the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase in a single-enzyme biochemical assay, validating the suggested biological target. Subsequent chemical profiling of the active fractions of two brown algal species by ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS) revealed possible candidate molecules. A database query of these molecules led us to groups of compounds with structural similarities, which are suggested to be responsible for the observed activity. Our work demonstrates the versatility and power of cytological profiling for the bioprospecting of unknown biological resources and highlights Red Sea algae as a source of bioactives that may serve as a starting point for further studies.


The EU's Lisbon Strategy, adopted in 2000, set ambitious goals, a roadmap for achieving them and quantitative targets for 2010. Despite the view in some quarters just a few years ago that the Nordic countries were neither sustainable nor competitive, these countries have subsequently risen to become some of Europe's most consistent performers in the efforts to reach the Lisbon targets. The intention of this book is to document how good governance has been developed in the Nordic countries. It proposes some relevant lessons for European decision-makers while highlighting individual features of the countries in the Nordic region.


This paper is to investigate the effect of research and development on total factor productivity at the level of manufacturing sector of Iran during 2001-2007. We have used translog production function. The result indicate that research and development has a positive and insignificant impact on productivity. We find that the production function is not a cob-douglas one and also the return of scale in manufacturing sector of Iran is increasing. This insignificant relationship can be explained by the gap of R&D expenditure ratio between Iran and other countries. According to the little R&D expenditure impact on productivity in manufacturing sector, Policymakers must pay more attention on R&D activities in Iran.


Chlorophyllide a: Fact or Artifact Resolution of the Chlorophyllide a Problem in the Routine Measurement of planktonic Chlorophyll a Chlorophyll a serves as the routine proxy for most estimates of phytoplankton biomass in limnology and oceanography. It is well known that enzymatic chlorophyllase activity breaks chlorophyll a into the degradation product chlorophyllide a ( chlide a). This degradation could result in potentially large underestimates of the true chlorophyll a concentration when the analysis is made by modern chromatographic methods. The goal of this project was to determine proper protocol in the methodological elimination of artifactual chlorophyllide a formed during extraction of chlorophyll pigments through the application of a microwave-assisted solvent extraction technique. This study aimed to answer the question: Is chlorophyllide a a fact or artifact? Previous literature has suggested that chromatographically analyzed chlorophyllide a might be either an artifact of the extraction process or an in situ indicator of senescent, physiologically compromised phytoplankton due to environmental stressors. This study addresses this decades-old problem for chlorophyll analysis. The microwave technique described inhibits chlorophyllase enzymatic activity, preventing the artifactual production of chlorophyllide a. The heat of the microwave technique not only denatures the chlorophllyase enzyme activity, but also evaporates filter-retained water (known to promote enzyme activity in solvents such as acetone and methanol). This technique results in a sizeable increase in the yield of extracted chlorophyll a that was up to four times greater than the routine protocol of cold temperature solvent-soak technique using 90% acetone. Microwave-assisted extraction methodology consistently yielded higher concentrations of total chlorophyll a-like pigments than commonly employed solvent-soak technique used in long term sampling programs such as JGOFS, HOTS and BATS. The result of this study provides a method that 1) eliminates artifactual chlorophyllide a production and 2) increases the extraction yield of photosynthetic pigments in phytoplankton, including both chlorophylls and carotenoids. This new technique may have significant implications for estimates of oceanic primary production.


It has always been of greatest importance to control the temperature distribution in the products throughout the hot strip rolling process including the final coiling operation. A computational model of the latter has been developed and validated, which is presented in this paper. Furthermore, the influences of the different parameters on the transient thermal distribution are evaluated. The formulated model as accounts for two-dimensional heat conduction is assuming axi-symmetric conditions. Temperature dependent properties are accounted for results in a nonlinear heat conduction problem that is solved by use of the Finite Element Method (FEM). The calculations have been validated by two full scale measurement campaigns and show a good agreement with measurements.


A major concern with plea bargains is that innocent defendants will be induced to plead guilty. This paper argues that the law can address this concern by providing prosecutors with incentives to select cases in which the probability of guilt is high. By restricting the permissible sentence reduction in a plea bargain the law can preclude plea bargains in cases where the probability of conviction is low (L cases). The prosecutor will therefore be forced to – (1) select fewer L cases and proceed to trial with these cases; or (2) select more cases with a higher probability of conviction (H cases) that can be concluded via a less-costly plea bargain. As long as the probability of conviction is positively correlated with the probability of guilt, this selection-of-cases effect implies a reduced number of innocent defendants that accept plea bargains. We argue that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines in fact achieve, albeit inadvertently, this socially desirable selection effect. We further argue that more limited discretion in sentencing facilitates the selection-ofcases effect. In this respect, the Federal Guidelines are superior to some of the statelevel guidelines that leave considerable room for discretion in sentencing.


In a sixteen year-old adolescent boy, the after-effect in adolescence enables us to analyze a dysharmony in evolution that is masked by neurotic defenses. Treatment allows for satisfying symbolization, until a subjectal disorder and delusive episode occur, leading us to hypothesize the existence of a childhood proximity pathology – both incestuous and symbiotic, involving the maternal object – which has hitherto been only indirectly discernible in a feeling of emptiness and evasiveness in love relationships.


Data and Dynamics Driven Approaches for Modelling and Forecasting the Red Sea Chlorophyll Denis Dreano Phytoplankton is at the basis of the marine food chain and therefore play a fundamental role in the ocean ecosystem. However, the large-scale phytoplankton dynamics of the Red Sea are not well understood yet, mainly due to the lack of historical in situ measurements. As a result, our knowledge in this area relies mostly on remotelysensed observations and large-scale numerical marine ecosystem models. Models are very useful to identify the mechanisms driving the variations in chlorophyll concentration and have practical applications for fisheries operation and harmful algae blooms monitoring. Modelling approaches can be divided between physicsdriven (dynamical) approaches, and data-driven (statistical) approaches. Dynamical models are based on a set of differential equations representing the transfer of energy and matter between different subsets of the biota, whereas statistical models identify relationships between variables based on statistical relations within the available data. The goal of this thesis is to develop, implement and test novel dynamical and statistical modelling approaches for studying and forecasting the variability of chlorophyll concentration in the Red Sea. These new models are evaluated in term of their ability to efficiently forecast and explain the regional chlorophyll variability. We also propose innovative synergistic strategies to combine dataand physics-driven approaches to further enhance chlorophyll forecasting capabilities and efficiency.


We studied the binary carbide systems Li2C2 and CaC2 at high pressure using an evolutionary and ab initio random structure search methodology for crystal structure prediction. At ambient pressure Li2C2 and CaC2 represent salt-like acetylides consisting of C2(2-) dumbbell anions. The systems develop into semimetals (P3m1-Li2C2) and metals (Cmcm-Li2C2, Cmcm-CaC2, and Immm-CaC2) with polymeric anions (chains, layers, strands) at moderate pressures (below 20 GPa). Cmcm-CaC2 is energetically closely competing with the ground state structure. Polyanionic forms of carbon stabilized by electrostatic interactions with surrounding cations add a new feature to carbon chemistry. Semimetallic P3m1-Li2C2 displays an electronic structure close to that of graphene. The π* band, however, is hybridized with Li-sp states and changed into a bonding valence band. Metallic forms are predicted to be superconductors. Calculated critical temperatures may exceed 10 K for equilibrium volume structures.


New byte-addressable non-volatile memory (BNVM) technologies such as phase change memory (PCM) enable the construction of systems with large persistent memories, improving reliability and potentially reducing power consumption. However, BNVM technologies only support a limited number of lifetime writes per cell and consume most of their power when flipping a bit's state during a write; thus, PCM controllers only rewrite a cell's contents when the cell's value has changed. Prior research has assumed that reducing the number of words written is a good proxy for reducing the number of bits modified, but a recent study has suggested that this assumption may not be valid. Our research confirms that approaches with the fewest writes often have more bit flips than those optimized to reduce bit flipping. To test the effectiveness of bit flip reduction, we built a framework that uses the number of bits flipped over time as the measure of "goodness" and modified a cycle-accurate simulator to count bits flipped during program execution. We implemented several modifications to common data structures designed to reduce power consumption and increase memory lifetime by reducing the number of bits modified by operations on several data structures: linked lists, hash tables, and red-black trees. We were able to reduce the number of bits flipped by up to 3.56× over standard implementations of the same data structures with negligible overhead. We measured the number of bits flipped by memory allocation and stack frame saves and found that careful data placement in the stack can reduce bit flips significantly. These changes require no hardware modifications and neither significantly reduce performance nor increase code complexity, making them attractive for designing systems optimized for BNVM.


Context. Solar wind charge-changing reactions are of paramount importance to the physico-chemistry of the atmosphere of a comet. The ESA/Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P) provides a unique opportunity to study charge-changing processes in situ.
Aims. To understand the role of these reactions in the evolution of the solar wind plasma and interpret the complex in situ measurements made by Rosetta, numerical or analytical models are necessary.
Methods. We used an extended analytical formalism describing solar wind charge-changing processes at comets along solar wind streamlines. The model is driven by solar wind ion measurements from the Rosetta Plasma Consortium-Ion Composition Analyser (RPC-ICA) and neutral density observations from the Rosetta Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis-Comet Pressure Sensor (ROSINA-COPS), as well as by charge-changing cross sections of hydrogen and helium particles in a water gas.
Results. A mission-wide overview of charge-changing efficiencies at comet 67P is presented. Electron capture cross sections dominate and favor the production of He and H energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), with fluxes expected to rival those of H+ and He2+ ions.
Conclusions. Neutral outgassing rates are retrieved from local RPC-ICA flux measurements and match ROSINA estimates very well throughout the mission. From the model, we find that solar wind charge exchange is unable to fully explain the magnitude of the sharp drop in solar wind ion fluxes observed by Rosetta for heliocentric distances below 2.5 AU. This is likely because the model does not take the relative ion dynamics into account and to a lesser extent because it ignores the formation of bow-shock-like structures upstream of the nucleus. This work also shows that the ionization by solar extreme-ultraviolet radiation and energetic electrons dominates the source of cometary ions, although solar wind contributions may be significant during isolated events.


An analysis of ethnohistorical sources, modem pollen rain, fossil pollen, contemporary
vegetation patterns and.thedistribution of Aboriginal sites enabled a moc;tel of Holocene
vegetation change in northeastern Tasmania to be developed. The influential
hypotheses of fire stick farming and ecological drift are shown to be generally resiliant
and worthwhile but in need of adjustment to account for local and regional variations in
environmental and cultural practices. A more recent theory in which Aborigines were
forced out of southwestern Tasmania at about 12,000 BP by expanding Holocene
forests is re-evaluated in the light of evidence which suggests that forests may have
developed earlier than previously thought and that Aborigines, forests and fire in
Tasmania have had a long co-existence.
A study of all available Tasmanian ethnohistorical sources pertaining to Aboriginal
burning of vegetation revealed a pattern of Aboriginal land use from ca. 1 n3 - 1830
which was more complex than previously thought. In northeastern Tasmania, fire was
used in a fashion corresponding to the position of sites along an altitudinal gradient from
sea level to 1,500m.
A close reading of the available information reveals that present day ecologists and
archaeologists often use ethnohistorical references concerning fire in an uncritical
manner. A number of crucial historical incidents in which European mariners sighted
devastating fires and dense clouds of smoke are reinterpreted as defensive responses
by Aborigines to the presence of Europeans, rather than a normal modus operandi.
These sources cannot therefore be taken to indicate a traditional use of fire.
Historical sources suggest that Aboriginal life in Tasmania revolved around a complete
familiarity with forests. Previous research has highlighted the importance of coastlines for
settlement, and that forests, especially wet forests, were inimical to Aboriginal settlement
objectives. The analysis emphasises that Aboriginal fire regimes differed across the state
according to social perogatives as well as to environmental determinants.
Archaeological surveys and limited excavations were conducted in order to date the
commencement of Aboriginal site formation in coastal, inland and mountainous
environments. It was discovered that coastal sites in the northeast date to the last 3,000
years of the Holocene. Sites which are located on the margins of lunette fringed lagoons
and shallow freshwater lagoons date from about 6,000 years BP to ca. 8,500 BP. In the
highlands of the northeast, rockshelters are dated to 1,600 years BP.
Prior to an investigation of fossil pollen to determine vegetation changes over the same range of times, Tauber pollen traps were placed in a selection of representative
vegetation communities in the northeast. The results of this study were used to form
analogues against which fossil pollen assemblages were compared. In this way it was
possible to reconstruct past vegetation associations with a degree of precision not
available by the analysis of fossil pollen alone.
Analyses from a coastal lagoon, an inland marsh, two highland bogs and sediment from
an Aboriginal site revealed patterns of vegetation change which drew attention to the
effects of Aboriginal burning on the landscape.
A 10,500 year old pollen sequence from the coastal lagoon suggested that the
vegetation had changed from a pre-Holocene Poaceae dominated steppe complex, to a
Eucalyptus forest, and finally to an Allocasuarina dominated coastal heathland. The
final change to heathland occurred at 6,500 years BP. This date is synchronous with the
stabilization of sea levels, increases in inorganic input into lagoon sediments, major
peaks in Typha spp. pollen and the commencement of Aboriginal occupation on lagoon
margins. The present day structure of the vegetation is likely to have resulted from a
complex interaction between environmental variables and the burning of forests and
heathlands by Aborigines.
Eucalyptus forests surrounding a small closed basin at 80 m altitude in the hinterland
have existed virtually unchanged for 4,000 years. Further evidence suggests that these
forests may have been extant for at least 13,000 years. Increases in regional wet forest
and rainforest pollen taxa point to a change in climate at about 3,500 BP which allowed
an expansion of wet forest communities. This is supported by increases in local spore
percentages which show that the hydrology of the basin changed to allow the
development of a Sphagnum bog. The humid phase is thought to have continued for a
maximum of about 1,000 years, after which time drier climates prevailed. It is possible that
decreases in temperature rather than increases in precipitation were responsible for the
perturbation. Throughout the 4,000 year long sequence, high levels of carbonized
particles indicates that burning by Aborigines was continuous.
Pollen from a short core obtained from a highland bog surrounded by wet eucalypt and
rainforest communities, showed a transition from grassland or grassy woodland to wet
forest at about 3,000 BP. It is thought that burning of local forests by Aborigines altered
the local hydrology sufficiently to create a mire at about 5,500 years BP. Continued
burning maintained an open grassy formation for 2,000 years. The abandonment of the
site by Aborigines as a place for frequent burning led to the development of forests in
which wet forest taxa predominated and where fires were less frequent but more intense.
Sediment from a highland buttongrass moor adjacent to a 1,600 year old Aboriginal site
was analysed for pollen. The sequence displays little vegetation change since the onset
of organic accumulation 1,600 years ago. Synchrony between the two dates provides
the first direct palaeoecological evidence that Aboriginal burning practices were involved
in the creation and maintainence of buttongrass moorlands in Tasmania.
The pollen and archaeological evidence, in combination with the analysis of
ethnohistorical sources demonstrate that forests and Aborigines have a long history of
coexistence. Aboriginal fires had major effects on delicately poised coastal ecosystems
and lesser effects on inland lowland forests. In elevated locations with high rainfall and
fertile soil, fire was employed to produce small treeless patches. Burning on poorly
drained infertile sites is thought to have initiated hydrological changes which resulted in
the creation of limited areas of sedgeland.


Objective We studied the psychometric properties of the 12-item short version of the Berger HIV stigma scale and assessed the correlates of HIV-related stigma among adults living with HIV on the Kenyan coast. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Comprehensive Care and Research Centre in the Kilifi County Hospital. Participants Adults living with HIV on combination antiretroviral therapy were recruited and interviewed between February and April 2018 (n=450). Main outcome measures HIV-related stigma. Results 450 participants with a median age of 43 years (IQR=36–50) took part in the study. Of these, 356 (79.1%) were female. Scale reliability and validity were high (alpha=0.80, test–retest reliability intraclass correlation coefficient=0.92). Using confirmatory factor analysis, we observed that the 12-item short version of the HIV stigma scale had a good fit for its hypothesised model (Comparative Fit Index=0.966, Tucker Lewis Index=0.955, root mean square error of approximation=0.044). Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis indicated measurement invariance across gender and age groups as ΔCFI was ≤0.01. Multivariate linear regression established that being female (β=2.001, 95% CI: 0.21 to 3.80, p=0.029), HIV status non-disclosure (β=4.237, 95% CI: 1.27 to 7.20, p=0.005) and co-occurrence of depressive and anxiety symptoms (β=6.670, 95% CI: 3.40 to 9.94, p<0.001) were significant predictors of perceived HIV-related stigma and that these variables accounted for 10.2% of the explained variability in HIV-related stigma among adults living with HIV from Kilifi. Conclusions Our results indicate that the 12-item short version of the HIV stigma scale is a valid and reliable measure of HIV stigma in Kenya. Furthermore, our study indicates that interventions aimed at reducing stigma need to take into account gender to address the specific needs of women, people who have not disclosed their HIV status, and those exhibiting symptoms of depression and anxiety, thereby improving their quality of life.


Hyperspectral sensors collect hundreds of narrow and contiguously spaced spectral bands of data. Such sensors provide fully registered high resolution spatial and spectral images that are invaluable in discriminating between man-made objects and natural clutter backgrounds. The price paid for this high resolution data is extremely large data sets, several hundred of Mbytes for a single scene, that make storage and transmission difficult, thus requiring fast onboard processing techniques to reduce the data being transmitted. Attempts to apply traditional maximum likelihood detection techniques for in-flight processing of these massive amounts of hyperspectral data suffer from two limitations: first, they neglect the spatial correlation of the clutter by treating it as spatially white noise; second, their computational cost renders them prohibitive without significant data reduction like by grouping the spectral bands into clusters, with a consequent loss of spectral resolution. This paper presents a maximum likelihood detector that successfully confronts both problems: rather than ignoring the spatial and spectral correlations, our detector exploits them to its advantage; and it is computationally expedient, its complexity increasing only linearly with the number of spectral bands available. Our approach is based on a Gauss-Markov random field (GMRF) modeling of the clutter, which has the advantage of providing a direct parameterization of the inverse of the clutter covariance, the quantity of interest in the test statistic. We discuss in detail two alternative GMRF detectors: one based on a binary hypothesis approach, and the other on a "single" hypothesis formulation. We analyze extensively with real hyperspectral imagery data (HYDICE and SEBASS) the performance of the detectors, comparing them to a benchmark detector, the RX-algorithm. Our results show that the GMRF "single" hypothesis detector outperforms significantly in computational cost the RX-algorithm, while delivering noticeable detection performance improvement.


With Ohio considering passing the nation's second ban on abortions motivated by Down Syndrome, the relationship between abortion and disability law has taken on new importance. Disability based bans raise unique legal, moral, and political difficulties for those supporting legal abortion. The core commitments supporting legal abortion—including sex equality—stand in some tension with justifying abortion in the case of a fetal defect or disability.

Given the problems with disability-based bans, it may seem that there is no urgent need to resolve these tensions. Disability-based statutes likely create an impermissible undue burden under Planned Parenthood of Southeastern v. Casey and seem impossible to enforce. However, historical analysis shows that the bans under consideration may transform the abortion debate even if they are never enforced.

First, this history explains the puzzling lack of discussion of disability in abortion politics, illuminating the political payoff of disability-based justifications used by activists otherwise committed to equal treatment. Second, this history makes clear the perils that a disability-based ban creates for supporters of legal abortion. Raising the salience of "selective" abortion may allow pro-lifers to win over ambivalent voters and legislators who are concerned about disability discrimination. Moreover, the arguments made prominent by such a law can easily justify other restrictions that might fare better in the courts, including limitations on access to noninvasive prenatal genetic diagnosis and prohibitions on abortion after the twentieth week of pregnancy.

To avoid the danger illuminated by the history studied here, prochoice attorneys and legislators should push for laws that actually reduce the odds of disability-based abortion. Ironically, parents who might not otherwise choose to terminate a pregnancy in the case of disability do so because they feel they have no choice, particularly given the bleak outcomes faced by many disabled adults confronting both poverty and unemployment. Reproductive justice should include a commitment to adequate funding for the programs on which disabled adults and children depend, as well as the removal of perverse legal incentives that discourage disabled Americans from taking steps that would make employment more realistic. Guaranteeing meaningful choices inevitably involves the removal of the discrimination and tangible obstacles that make abortion more common in cases of fetal defect or disability.


Background: Non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, are the major causes of premature illness and deaths worldwide. The increasing number of people who develop diabetes is due to several modern societal factors, such as increased life expectancy, population growth, urbanization, obesity and lack of physical activity. South Asians, in general, are known to have an increased predisposition for type 2 diabetes (T2D) and tend to be younger and less obese at the time of diagnosis. Nepal has had a rapid increase in the prevalence of diabetes over the last 20 years, especially in urban areas. The prevalence of obesity, which is considered a key risk factor for T2D, is also increasing in Nepal. Data from several studies from rural Nepal demonstrate great discrepancy in the prevalence rates of diabetes and pre-diabetes, and considering the rate of urbanization and life style changes in these areas, accurate and updated prevalence rates are needed.Objective: This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of diabetes, pre-diabetes, obesity and some cardiovascular risk factors, among the female population in rural districts of the Kavre region in Nepal.Method: The study was primarily conducted in the outreach centers of Dhulikhel Hospital, Kathmandu University Hospital. We used a cross-sectional study design. Inclusion criteria were married women above the age of 15. Pregnant women were excluded. Weight, height, waist circumference and blood pressure were measured, questionnaires were filled in and blood samples were collected. Diabetes was categorized by the HbA1c-criteria of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) whereas overweight and obesity was categorized by the criteria of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF)and the World Health Organization (WHO). Statistical analyses of the data were done in SPSS version 20.0.Results: Altogether 590 women between the ages of 17 and 86 were included in the study. The mean age of the participants was 43.3 years. The prevalence of diabetes and pre-diabetes in the study population was 14.9 % and 38.0 %, respectively. Mean HbA1c was 5.8 %. Most of the women (95.6%) with HbA1c levels indicating diabetes were undiagnosed, and 83.2 % had never heard about diabetes. The prevalence of diabetes increased with age.Mean body mass index (BMI) was 22.6 kg/m². 42.2 % of women were found to be overweight, whereas 22.2 % were obese. 24.9 % were found to have central obesity with a waist circumference (WC) > 80 cm. There was no significant association between the BMI and the prevalence of diabetes, or between the WC and the prevalence of diabetes.Mean systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were 112.3 and 73.6 mmHg. The prevalence of systolic and diastolic hypertension was 7.5 % and 2.4 %, respectively, increasing with age. SBP and DBP were significantly higher in diabetic and pre-diabetic women. We did not find any association between SBP and BMI.26.1 % of the participants reported smoking regularly. No association was found between smoking and the prevalence of diabetes or between smoking and hypertension.Conclusion The prevalence of diabetes and pre-diabetes in rural Nepal was higher than expected. Currently, Nepal has little capacity for the initiation of preventive actions, but dedicates most of their resourcesto curing disease. Hopefully, disclosure on this information may contribute to more focus on early diagnosis and treatment of non-communicable diseases, thereby reducing the risk for long-term complications and early deaths.


Workflow management systems (WfMS) are used to automate and facilitate business processes of an enterprise. To simplify the administration, it is a common practice in many WfMS solutions to allocate a role to perform each activity of the process and then assign one or more users to each role. Typically, access control for WfMS is role-based with a support of constraints on users and roles. However, merely using role and constraints concepts can hardly satisfy modern access control requirements of a contemporary enterprise. Permissions should not solely depend on common static and dynamic principles, but they must be influenced by the context in which the access is requested. In this paper, we focus on the definition and enforcement of the context-sensitive constraints for workflow systems. We extended the common role-based constraints listed in literature with context-sensitive information and workflow specific components. Also, we propose a mechanism for enforcing such constraints within WfMS.


Many existing methods on review spam detection considering text content merely utilize simple text features such as content similarity. We explore a novel idea of exploiting text generality for improving spam detection. Besides, apart from the task of review spam detection, although there have also been some works on identifying the review spammers (users) and the manipulated offerings (items), no previous works have attempted to solve these three tasks in a unified model. We have proposed a unified probabilistic graphical model to detect the suspicious review spams, the review spammers and the manipulated offerings in an unsupervised manner. Experimental results on three review corpora including Amazon, Yelp and Trip Advisor have demonstrated the superiority of our proposed model compared with the state-of-the-art models.


Surface stoichiometry is a sensitive parameter affecting the decay dynamics of photogenerated hole–electron pairs of QDs. However, the effect of this manipulation on artificial photocatalytic H2 evolution is unclear. Here, we report that surface stoichiometry manipulation is a facile and feasible approach for enhancing H2 photogeneration of QDs. In the absence of an external cocatalyst, a decrease in the surface Se ratio of CdSe QDs from ∼16.7% to ∼4.9% gives a more than 10-fold increase in solar H2 evolution. Taking Ni(II) as an external cocatalyst, CdSe QDs with a surface Se ratio of ∼4.9% can produce ∼1600 ± 151 μmol H2 gas during 27 h of visible-light irradiation, giving a total turnover number of (1.24 ± 0.12) × 105 on CdSe QDs and an apparent quantum yield of 10.1%, which is about 8 times that of CdSe QDs with a surface Se ratio of ∼16.7% under the same conditions. Mechanistic insights obtained by a combination of steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopic techniques indicate that surface stoichiometry exerts a significant influence on the exciton kinetics of CdSe QDs: a higher ratio of surface Se would increase the possibility of exciton recombination through hole trapping, thus depressing the performance of solar H2 evolution.


Given the distinctive characteristics of Japanese mathematics lessons found by the international studies and the subsequent focus of the attention to Lesson Study originated in Japan in education community, the author discusses the relationships between the scientific studies and endeavour for the improvement of teaching and learning from an insider's perspective. Reflecting on how mathematics educators have been struggling with studying the complex phenomena called "lesson" in the Japanese context, it is argued that orchestrating the scientific goal of building theories and the goal of improving teaching and learning of mathematics is the key to a synergy between research and the more practical knowledge of the craft of teaching.


This paper evaluates the effect of smoking bans in public places on the exposure to tobacco smoke of non-smokers and contrasts it with the effect of excise taxes. Exploiting data on cotinine - a metabolite of nicotine - as well as state and time variation in anti-smoking policies across US states, we show that smoking bans in public places can perversely increase the exposure of non-smokers to tobacco smoke by displacing smokers to private places where they contaminate non-smokers, and in particular young children. In contrast, we find that higher taxes are an efficient way to decrease exposure to tobacco smoke, especially for those most exposed. We supplement this analysis by showing that bans have little effect on smoking cessation, and present evidence of displacement from public places using data on time use.


Both transforming growth factor beta (TGF beta) and macrophage inflammatory protein 1 alpha (MIP-1 alpha) have been shown to be multifunctional regulators of hematopoiesis that can either inhibit or enhance the growth of hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPC). We report here the spectrum of activities of these two cytokines on different hematopoietic progenitor and stem cell populations, and whether these effects are direct or indirect. MIP-1 alpha enhances interleukin-3 (IL- 3)/and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM- CSF)/induced colony formation of normal bone marrow progenitor cells (BMC) and lineage-negative (Lin-) progenitors, but has no effect on G- CSF or CSF-1/induced colony formation. Similarly, TGF beta enhances GM- CSF/induced colony formation of normal BMC and Lin- progenitors. In contrast, TGF beta inhibits IL-3/ and CSF-1/induced colony formation of Lin- progenitors. The effects of MIP-1 alpha and TGF beta on the growth of Lin- progenitors were direct and correlate with colony formation in soft agar. Separation of the Lin- cells into Thy-1 and Thy-1lo subsets showed that the growth of Thy-1lo Lin- cells is directly inhibited by MIP-1 alpha and TGF beta regardless of the cytokine used to stimulate growth (IL-3), GM-CSF, or CSF-1). In contrast, two other stem cell populations (0% to 15% Hoechst 33342/Rhodamine 123 [Ho/Rh123] and Lin- Sca-1+ cells) were markedly inhibited by TGF beta and unaffected by MIP- 1 alpha. Furthermore, MIP-1 alpha has no effect on high proliferative potential colony-forming cells 1 or 2 (HPP-CFC/1 or /2) colony formation in vitro, whereas TGF beta inhibits both HPP-CFC/1 and HPP- CFC/2. Thus, MIP-1 alpha and TGF beta are direct bidirectional regulators of HPC growth, whose effects are dependent on other growth factors present as well as the maturational state of the HPC assayed. The spectrum of their inhibitory and enhancing activities shows overlapping yet distinct effects.


The aim of the article is to analyse and comprehend the interplay of institutional logics in the realisation of Stockholm's House of Culture, Kulturhuset, hereby beginning to answer the question of what role cultural logics play in cultural development projects. Based on an in-depth case study of the process leading up to the creation of Kulturhuset, the article explores the interplay of a politico-bureaucratic logic and a cultural–professional logic governing the evolution of the project. Following a Scandinavian tradition of interpretative studies of complex development projects, the making of Kulturhuset is framed as an extraordinary project involving a complicated development process. The process dynamics are explored and analysed through the lens of institutional complexity. The article's main contribution lies in its highlighting the interplay of – and nuancing the relation between – institutional logics. It also serves as a reminder of the power of bureaucratic ordering in urban development projects.


The world is regularly confronted in the media with dramatic images of African boat migrants. Seemingly desperate, these Africans, most of them males, are willing to risk a perilous journey at sea, hoping for a better life in Europe. And, even worse, hundreds more are believed to die each year, swallowed up anonymously by the choppy waters off Africa's coast. This book focuses on fishermen who have played a pivotal role in boat migration from Senegal to Spain's Canary Islands, advancing various reasons for the fishermen's prominent role. Besides their long history of migration, their proven experience with navigating, their family's push and investment, their perceptions and ideologies about Europe, there is also their growing marginalization as a result of the deepening crisis in the Senegalese fishing sector and the inadequate policies of the Senegalese government that prevents them from having any bright prospects of improving their standards of living. The book provides insights into the meaning of boat migration, and on the effects of success or failure on the migrants and their families. It goes beyond the usual economic explanations to convincingly situate boat migration within the long-standing West African culture of migration, and highlight the significance of sociocultural and political factors. Among the findings are the perception of migration as status enhancing and a rite de passage in the Senegalese fishing communities, and the profound roles of the extended family, social networks and, above all, religion, especially the widespread influence of the marabout. The importance of information and communication technologies in sustaining transnational networks is equally highlighted. [Book abstract].


In this paper, the combustion noise of a compression ignition (CI) diesel engine operating with biodiesels has been investigated experimentally. It aims to explore an effective method for combustion process monitoring and fuel quality evaluation through analysing the characteristics of the engine combustion noise. The experiments were conducted on a four-cylinder, four-stroke, direct injection and turbocharged diesel engine fuelled with biodiesels (B50 and B100) and normal pure diesel, and operating under different loads and speeds. The signals of cylinder head vibration, engine noise and in-cylinder pressure were measured during the tests. A coherent power spectrum analysis method was used to investigate the vibration and noise signals that related to the combustion process. The results shown that the noise components at the frequency band of 2 -3 kHz are closely related to the combustion process. Subsequently, the Wigner-Ville distribution is employed to present the energy distribution of engine noise in the time-frequency domain. Then a band-pass filter based on fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) is developed to extract the main component of the combustion noise for feature extraction. The results show that the sound pressure levels (SPLs) of the extracted combustion noise of the test diesel engine fuelled with biodiesels are higher than that fuelled with diesel. This is also identical to the variation of in-cylinder pressure. The results demonstrate that the features of the extracted combustion noise can indicate the combustion characteristics and provide useful information for monitoring the combustion process and evaluating the fuel quality of diesel engines.


A phytoparasite, Striga hennonthica (Del.) Benth., infests millions of hectares of cultivated fields of cereal crops in sub-Saharan Africa. Yield losses are often 70 but can be as high as 100% and farmers often abandon infested fields and move to new areas. The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of nitrogen on S. hennonthica infestation and the subsequent grain yield and agronomic traits of tolerant and susceptible maize hybrids (Zea mays L.). Two tolerant and two susceptible hybrids were grown under six levels of N (0-150 kg ha -1 ), with and without Striga seed infestation. The trials were conducted for 3 yr at Mokwa, Nigeria. Each plant was infested with approximately 3000 germinable Striga seeds, and the density of Striga that emerged, Striga damage on the host plant, plant height, stalk lodging, and grain yield were measured. Striga infestation (emergence and host damage), maize grain yield, and plant height were significantly affected by N rates. Two tolerant hybrids showed significantly lower Striga emergence and host plant damage symptoms than the susceptible hybrids (P < 0.001). Interactions between infested and uninfested plots and hybrid (tolerant vs. susceptible) for grain yields and stalk lodging were significant (P < 0.001). Striga infestation reduced grain yields of two susceptible hybrids by 49%, and of two tolerant hybrids by 24%. The two tolerant hybrids produced on average 87% greater grain yields than the two susceptible hybrids under low N rates (0-60 kg ha -1 ) and 51% greater yields under high N (90-150 kg ha -1 ). Among the plant traits measured, Striga damage score had the highest correlation with grain yield (r = -0.60**).


Drawing from Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer (2006), this article offers suggestions for reading ethnographies in a new way: with an eye toward learning how they were written and what literary feats they accomplished. In a time of blurred genres, the line between fiction and nonfiction has become increasingly indistinct and it is no longer so clear where ethnography is to be positioned. It is therefore important to reassess the possibilities and limits of ethnography as a literary genre if we are to understand the idiosyncrasies of its "art."


The Cambrian-Ordovician Mount Windsor volcanic belt in northern Australia is host to stratiform lenses of massive ferruginous chert that are spatially associated with volcanogenic massive sulfide occurrences, in particular the Thalanga zinc-lead-copper-silver deposit. The rocks are composed principally of Fe2O3 and SiO2, with very low concentrations of alkalic elements, and lithogenous elements such as Al, Zr, and Ti; they are interpreted as nearly pure chemical sediments. Textural evidence is documented of the integral role of filamentous bacteria (and/or fungi) in depositing iron from hydrothermal fluids, and of the inorganic precipitation of silica-iron-oxyhydroxide gels that subsequently matured to subcrystalline and crystalline silica forms. At least three distinct iron-accumulating microbial forms are distinguished: networks of septate filaments, nonseptate filament networks, and extremely coarse branching filaments that do not reconnect. Values for δ34S in disseminated pyrite are up to 50‰ lighter than those of contemporaneous Cambrian seawater, suggesting postdepositional colonization of some ironstones by sulfur-reducing bacteria. The site not only preserves the textural interplay of biological and inorganic depositional processes in exhalites, but also extends the oldest known instance of microbial mediation in vent-proximal hydrothermal iron precipitation to at least 500 Ma.


Blue emitting phosphorescent materials with high efficiency and high stability are a key requirement for the wider adoption of organic light emitting devices (OLEDs). In order to achieve triplet derived emission at the higher energy region of the electromagnetic spectrum, a series of neutral, monocyclometalated gold(iii) complexes with trifluoromethyl and trifluoromethoxy functionalized 2-phenylpyridine (ppy) derivatives, 2-anilinopyridine (apy), 2-benzoylpyridine (bpy) and 2-benzylpyridine (bepy), as the cyclometalating framework and diaryl or monoaryl alkyne as ancillary ligands have been designed and synthesized. Extensive photophysical and chemical characterization by various nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques, elemental analysis and single crystal X-ray diffraction studies of selected compounds was carried out to confirm the structural and the chemical identity of the complexes. The emission wavelength maxima of the complexes appear in the blue/sky blue region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Detailed photophysical investigations revealed that the different emission properties of the complexes are predominantly dictated by the electronic properties of the cyclometalating ligand. The interesting photoluminescence properties along with the facile synthetic access makes this a promising concept to obtain highly suitable blue emitting gold(iii) complexes.


The Lr19 translocation is preferentially transmitted to the progeny of a heterozygote due to the actions of at least two genes, Sd1 and Sd2 (new designation). However, only Sd2 occurs in the recombinant, Lr19-149, and often causes self-elimination of the recombined translocated segment in heterozygotes. The degree of segregation distortion is determined by the interaction of the Sd genes with polygenes (responder genes) on various wheat chromosomes. In this study suspected responder alleles derived from 'Inia 66' or 'Indis' (chromosomes 2A, 2B, 3B, 5B, 5D and 6D) appeared mostly to be partially dominant to overdominant over the 'Chinese Spring' derived alleles. A specific allele may not necessarily hafe-tfoe same effect (suppression or enhancement) in different genetic backgrounds. Responder genes may not fully compensate for the absence of a homologue in a hemizygote which may then produce effects quite different from those of the homo- and heterozygotes.


A 1979 survey of vision screening requirements in 52 Early and Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) programs revealed that 17 percent of the programs had no requirements, and 17 percent required only distance visual acuity testing. An additional 25 percent required distance vision and ocular muscle-fusion tests only, and the remaining programs required various combinations of three or more tests. Fewer than two-thirds of the programs with requirements had referral criteria for the tests. The ages at which initial testing was required also varied among the programs. The differences in requirements were not related to the demographic, socioeconomic, and other variables analyzed in this study. Programs with specific referral criteria, however, had a higher percentage of referrals for vision screening than those without such criteria. Because of the variability in vision screening standards and referral criteria observed among the programs, the authors conclude that national standards are needed.


Background: Gestures are spontaneous hand and arm movements that frequently accompany speech and play an important role in everyday communication. When communication is impaired by aphasia, gestures are affected as well. It is important to find out how people with aphasia (PWA) use gesture as an accompaniment to speech, as a compensatory modality, and during lexical retrieval. This novel study examined the use and functions of gesture in conversation and investigated parameters (i.e., conversation partner, topic, and participant factors) that could have an influence on gesture production.

Methodology: Language and conversation data of 20 PWA and 21 neurologically healthy participants (NHP) were collected. Participants took part in conversations with two conversation partners (familiar and unfamiliar) and two conversation topics (narrative and procedural). Video samples were analysed for gesture production, speech production, and word-finding difficulties (WFD).

Results: The two groups of participants produced a similar number of gestures (t (37) = -1.060, p = .296). Gesture type was not examined statistically but showed some marginal differences between groups. Unfamiliar conversation partners elicited significantly more gestures than familiar conversation partners (F (1, 37) = 24.358, p < .001). Additionally, participants produced significantly more gestures in procedural than in narrative topics (F (1, 37) =44.807, p < .001). While all participants experienced a similar number of WFD, there was a difference between PWA and NHP regarding gesture production and resolution of WFD: NHP resolved the majority of all WFD, independent of a co-occurring gesture. Nevertheless, for PWA and NHP, there was a significant relationship between gesture production and the resolution of the WFD (X2 (1) = 12.356, p < .01 for PWA and X2 (1) = 40.657, p < .01 for NHP), indicating that WFD that occurred with gestures were more likely to be resolved than WFD that occurred without gesture production. Participants used gestures with different functions, such as facilitative gestures to resolve WFD or augmentative gestures to supplement speech. For PWA, different participant factures, such as fluency of speech (rs (17) = .487, p = .035), lexical production skills (rs (17) = .584, p = .009), and cognition (rs (17) = .582, p = .009) were linked to gesture production.

Conclusions: These findings shed light on gesture processing and the different functions gestures can serve within conversation. Furthermore, they highlight the importance of pragmatic influence, such as conversation topic and conversation partner on the production of gestures. The significant relationships between participant factors and gesture production in aphasia extend the understanding of relevant skills needed to successfully employ gestures in conversation. Next to language skills, such as speech fluency and lexical retrieval, cognitive skills affected gesture production as well.


Purpose: To assess mid- to long-term clinical results of stent-graft repair in patients with type B aortic dissection. Methods: Retrospective analysis was done on 72 patients (47 men; mean age 55±12 years) who were diagnosed with chronic type B aortic dissection and underwent stent-graft repair from June 1994 to December 2007. Two types of stent-grafts were employed. Prior to 2000, a custom-designed stent-graft composed of self-expanding Z-type stainless steel stents covered with woven polytetrafluoroethylene material was used. Thereafter, a separate-type (modular) manufactured stent-graft was used, consisting of proximal and distal nitinol stents with an unsupported Dacron tube graft in between; the unsupported graft was stented after deployment. Results: Procedural success (completion of the stent-graft deployment at the target area without device failure) was obtained in 97% (70/72). The 2 failures were due to stent migration and tortuous anatomy, respectively. There were persistent type I endoleaks in 6 cases for a clinical success (entry tear exclusion) of 88% (64/72). There was no immediate postprocedural mortality or paraplegia. There was unintended partial left subclavian artery occlusion in 1 case, as well as postprocedural transient renal failure in 1 patient and 2 access-site pseudoaneurysms. Median follow-up was 43 months (range 5–97, mean 64.4±38.8) in 61 patients (3 patients lost to follow-up). Five patients died, 1 of probable aortic rupture in the setting of residual type I endoleak. Overall clinical success (no death, conversion, or endoleak) was achieved in 84% (47/56); of these, 35 (74%) showed complete resolution of the thoracic false lumen, while the other 12 (26%) had a decrease in false lumen diameter. Conclusions: Intermediate to long-term results of stent-graft implantation in patients with chronic type B aortic dissection seem acceptable and may justify the use of this minimally invasive approach as first line therapy in these patients.


A carbonaceous aerosol plume associated with wildfires in British Columbia in August 2017 reached the stratosphere a few days following the fires onset. The Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) sensor onboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite observed the spatial and temporal evolution of the plume for about 6 weeks. EPIC's near‐hourly observations of the Earth's sunlit disk allowed for monitoring the smoke plume several times per day. High ultraviolet aerosol index values pointed to the presence of an aerosol layer in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, confirmed with Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) lidar observations. EPIC aerosol optical depth retrievals and CALIOP information on layer height were used to estimate the stratospheric portion of the aerosol mass, reaching a maximum of 268 ± 86 Kt 3 days after the onset of the wildfires. About 10% of this aerosol mass reached the stratosphere on 13 August, whereas the remaining 90% did so over the following 2 days. Observed daytime and inferred nighttime rates of stratospheric aerosol mass increase showed a more rapid daytime increase, consistent with variability in diurnal insolation, suggesting that solar radiation driven processes may have contributed to the observed stratospheric aerosol mass increase. Global modeling results support the possible role of diabatic aerosol self‐lofting. Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite Limb Profiler (OMPS‐LP) aerosol retrievals showed the spread of stratospheric aerosols in the Northern Hemisphere, reaching peak concentration between October 2017 and January 2018, when about half the Northern Hemisphere experienced a detectable enhancement of stratospheric aerosols with respect to preinjection conditions. The lifetime and aerosol mass of this smoke event were comparable to those of a moderate volcanic eruption.


Abstract This technical note presents the results of an experimental study of the role of water in sodium leak noise spectrum formation and at various water/steam leak rates of <1.0 g/s. The conditions and ranges for the existence of bubbling and jetting modes in water/steam outflow into circulating sodium through an injector device were determined to simulate a defect in the wall of the heat-transmitting tube of a sodium-water steam generator (SG). Based on experimental leak noise data, the simple dependency of the acoustic signal level on the leak rate of a microleak and small leaks at different frequency bands was presented for the principal analysis to develop an acoustic leak detection methodology for a KALIMER-600, 600-MW(thermal) reactor (K-600) SG, with the operational experiences for noise analysis and measurements of the Bystry neutron (fast neutron) reactor BN-600. Finally, the methodology was tested with the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) acoustic leak detection system using sodium-water reaction signals of the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering and background noise of the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) superheater for methodology development of KAERI, and it was able to detect a leak rate of under 1 g/s and a signal-to-background noise ratio of −22 dB, using this system and methodology.


The rigorous magneto-optical response coefficients of the oblique-incidence Faraday and Kerr effects in anisotropic monolayer graphene interfaced with bulk media in general are presented for the first time, to the author's knowledge. The dependencies of magneto-optical rotation angle and ellipticity on the incident angle, incident polarization, and refractive indices of interfaced media are numerically analyzed and characteristic features are discussed in detail. It is shown that the Kerr effect has the substantially same off-diagonal response coefficient as the Faraday effect, in contrast with the case of conventional media. It is found that supergiant Kerr rotation angles of ∼±90° are produced in the graphene with a transparent substrate when illuminated with p-polarized light in the vicinity of the substrate's Brewster angle.


Abstract Confronted with an increasingly competitive market in the European Union and the credible threat of a new entrant in the form of liquefied natural gas imports from the United States, Gazprom's traditional export strategy is open to question. The company must decide whether it should launch a price war in order passively to adapt to impending competition and its role as a 'residual supplier' to the EU gas market, or whether it should take advantage of the current price uncertainty. This article explores the scope for long-term strategic action by Gazprom other than simply engaging in a price war. It is argued that Gazprom could forge a position as a key player in the EU gas market capable of playing the same role as Saudi Arabia does in the global oil market.


The author explains his conclusion that the Supreme Court, as a matter of conscience, considers racial discrimination to be good for America. That conclusion, he argues, offers the only plausible account of the Court's repeated insistence on displacing populist efforts to promote racial equality with the Court's own, more-regressive, version of expedient racial politics. Although the Court has had what is at best a checkered history when called upon to adjudicate claims of racial injustice, until now, the contemporary Court might arguably have been accorded the benefit of the doubt. But after its five-to-four ruling in the 2007 Resegregation case, the need to acknowledge the influence of intentional discrimination on the Court's racial decisions seems inescapable. In part I of this article the author discusses the Resegregation case (parents involved in Community Schools v. Seatle School District No. 1) and describes how difficult it is to view that case as anything other than a deliberately disingenuous distortion of Brown v. Board of Education. In part II he describes Krugman's account of the ways in which movement conservatism has enlisted tacit appeals to white racial prejudice as a strategy for prompting white middle-class citizens to vote in ways that are consistent with the interests of the rich rather than the interests of the middle class. Part III describes the author's view of the interaction between movement conservatism and Supreme Court constitutional hegemony, arguing that this interaction creates a judicial plutocracy that can use race to advance the political agenda of the wealthy. The article concludes by expressing the hope that the Supreme Court so overplayed its hand in the Resegregation case that the Court will no longer be able to pass off its conservative racial agenda as the product of detached constitutional exposition. However, the author states that he offers this conclusion with a healthy dose of pessimism, rather than the sense of pragmatic anticipation.


Queueing network models have been widely applied as tools allowing the estimation of performance measures and the behavioural description of systems such as communication, production and software architecture networks. Queueing network models with finite capacity queues, where blocking may arise, allow a more realistic description of the system under study. In this talk we will present an approximation method developed to analyze open finite capacity queueing networks with blocking after service. The method decomposes the network into single queues that are analysed using revised arrival and service rates. Unlike pre-existing methods it preserves both the network topology and its configuration (number of queues and their capacity). It also explicitly models the blocking phase. Its comparison with other methods will be presented. Preliminary results concerning its application on a large scale case study will also be discussed.


Despite the increased transparency, connectivity, and search abilities that characterize the digital marketplace, the digital revolution has not always yielded the bargain prices that many consumers expected. What is going on? Some researchers suggest that one factor may be coordination between the algorithms used by suppliers to determine trade terms. Simple coordination-facilitating algorithms are already available off the shelf, and such coordination is only likely to become more commonplace in the near future. This is not surprising. If algorithms offer a legal way to overcome obstacles to profit-boosting coordination, and create a jointly profitable status quo in the market, why should suppliers not use them? In light of these developments, seeking solutions – both regulatory and market-driven – is timely and essential. While current research has largely focused on the concerns raised by algorithmic-facilitated coordination, this article takes the next step, asking to what extent current laws can be fitted to effectively deal with this phenomenon.
To meet this challenge, this article advances in three stages. The first part analyzes the effects of algorithms on the ability of competitors to coordinate their conduct. While this issue has been addressed by other researchers, this article seeks to contribute to the analysis by systematically charting the technological abilities of algorithms that may affect coordination in the digital ecosystem in which they operate. Special emphasis is placed on the fact that the algorithms is a "recipe for action", which can be directly or indirectly observed by competitors. The second part explores the promises as well as the limits of market solutions. In particular, it considers the use of algorithms by consumers and off-the-grid transactions to counteract some of the effects of algorithmic-facilitated coordination by suppliers. The shortcomings of such market solutions lead to the third part, which focuses on the ability of existing legal tools to deal effectively with algorithmic-facilitated coordination, while not harming the efficiencies they bring about. The analysis explores three interconnected questions that stand at the basis of designing a welfare-enhancing policy: What exactly do we wish to prohibit, and can we spell this out clearly for market participants? What types of conduct are captured under the existing antitrust laws? And is there justification for widening the regulatory net beyond its current prohibitions in light of the changing nature of the marketplace? In particular, the article explores the application of the concepts of plus factors and facilitating practices to algorithms. The analysis refutes the Federal Trade Commission's acting Chairwoman's claim that current laws are sufficient to deal with algorithmic-facilitated coordination.


Drosophila protect themselves against bacterial and fungal infection by secreting antimicrobial peptides from the fat body, the insect equivalent of the liver. One mechanism required for initiating this in response to Gram-positive bacteria and fungi is provided by the Toll pathway, which is activated via binding of a proteolytically cleaved form of its ligand Späetzle. Using mutagenesis screening, Ligoxygakis et al. identified mutants for a serine protease gene named persephone, which suppressed the Toll-dependent antifungal response. Unlike other activators of the Toll pathway, persephone has no inherent microbial recognition domain, which suggests that it depends on an upstream fungal receptor to initiate its cleavage of Späetzle. P. Ligoxygakis, N. Pelte, J. A. Hoffmann, J.-M. Reichhart, Activation of Drosophila Toll during fungal infection by a blood serine protease. Science 296, 114-116 (2002). [Abstract] [Full Text]


BACKGROUND Liver cirrhosis is frequently accompanied by insufficient portal vein inflow (IPVF) with large portosystemic shunts. However, pediatric cases often manifested IPVF without any apparent major portosystemic shunts. Although IPVF is a very critical issue, the intraoperative assessment has not been well established. In this study, we reviewed the intraoperative approach and the outcome of the IPVF cases at our department. MATERIAL AND METHODS Eighty-three living donor liver transplantations (LDLT) were performed from 1996 to 2014. The IPVF occurred in 5 cases and necessitated some additional assessments and intraoperative PV flow modulations. We retrospectively reviewed the operative records and analyzed the risk factors and the outcome of the IPVF. RESULTS All 5 IPVF cases were biliary atresia and the mean age at LDLT was 0.74±0.19 years old. The mean recipient PV diameter was 4.3±0.8 mm and the donor IMV patch grafts were applied. To increase the PV inflow, the collaterals around the spleen were ligated in all cases. Intraoperative portal venography was performed in 1 case for selective shunt vessel ligation. In 1 case, the graft was removed and returned to the back table to prevent graft loss during the IPVF. As a result, the final PVF/GV increased to 66.4±20.0 ml/min/100 g. CONCLUSIONS IPVF is a very critical problem. Intraoperative portal venography is helpful and collateral veins ligation is crucial. In some cases, returning the graft to the back table during the PV inflow modulation can prevent graft loss.


The entropy coding of context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) has been utilized in the H.265/ HEVC for higher coding efficiency. But the related complexity also causes a bottleneck for its low-delay applications, owing to the employment of inter-symbol dependency in CABAC. In this paper, a fast bit-rate estimation method is proposed to skip the actual entropy coding of CABAC in mode decision to meet the requirement of low-delay implementations. The presented scheme firstly parses the characteristics of syntax elements and then guided by the principle of CABAC, an efficient scheme is derived following. It is very beneficial for reducing the computational complexity and saving the encoding time in H.265/HEVC mode decision. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed fast algorithm can reduce the CABAC encoding time by 68% in average with negligible degradation in the rate-distortion performance. Efficient CABAC Bit Estimation for H.265/HEVC RateDistortion Optimization


Extracted from text ... Introduction
Mozambique goes to the polls for general and
presidential elections later this year; however,
no date has been set. President Joaquim
Chissano has declared in public that he will
not stand for a third term of office. Armando
Guebuza, executive secretary of the ruling
Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) party
and a successful businessman and influential
party member, has been nominated as his
party's presidential candidate. Chissano will
remain as leader of the party.
Guebuza is expected to come up against
opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama of the
Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo)
party. Experts are reluctant to predict an outcome ..


From 2003 to 2005 we carried out surveys in Burkina Faso to investigate the status of primate taxa. In the south-west near the border with Côte d'Ivoire we discovered sooty mangabey Cercocebus atys, a primate species that had not been previously reported in the country. This population is the subspecies C. a. lunulatus, the white-naped mangabey, one of the 25 most threatened primate taxa. As the subspecies occurs in a gallery forest that is next to a wildlife safari hunting area, we recommend that hunting is prohibited near these forests. The recent creation of the Warigué protected area, linking the Comoé-Léraba Reserved Forest and Partial Wildlife Reserve in Burkina Faso where we observed the subspecies, with the Comoé National Park in Côte d'Ivoire, could make an important contribution to the survival of this, the northernmost population, of the subspecies.


Loss of hand function after stroke is a major cause of long-term disability. Hand function can be partitioned into strength and independent control of fingers (individuation). Here we developed a novel paradigm, which independently quantifies these two aspects of hand function, to track hand recovery in 54 patients with hemiparesis over the first year after their stroke. Most recovery of both strength and individuation occurred in the first three months after stroke. Improvement in strength and individuation were tightly correlated up to a strength level of approximately 60% of the unaffected side. Beyond this threshold, further gains in strength were not accompanied by improvements in individuation. Any observed improvements in individuation beyond the 60% threshold were attributable instead to a second independent stable factor. Lesion analysis revealed that damage to the hand area in motor cortex and the corticospinal tract (CST) correlated more with individuation than with strength. CST involvement correlated with individuation even after factoring out the strength-individuation correlation. The most parsimonious explanation for these behavioral and lesion-based findings is that most strength recovery, along with some individuation, can be attributed to descending systems other than the CST, whereas further recovery of individuation is CST dependent.