Currency is possibly one of the main media transmitting pathogens and drug resistance due to its wide circulation in daily life. In this study, we made a comprehensive characterization of the bacterial community present on banknotes collected from different geographical regions of Hong Kong (HK) by performing in vitro characterization of the bacterial presence and resistome profile, as well as metagenomic analysis including microbial diversity, the prevalence of potential pathogens, the dissemination potential of antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs), among others. When comparing the bacterial community of HK banknotes with other HK environmental samples, including water and marine sediment, we revealed that HK banknotes cover nearly 50% of total genera found in all the environmental samples, implying that banknotes harbor diverse bacteria originated from a variety of environments. Furthermore, the banknotes have higher abundance of potential pathogenic species (~5 times more) and ARGs (~5 times more) with higher dissemination potential (~48 times more) compared with other environmental samples. These findings unveiled the capabilities of this common medium of exchange to accommodate various bacteria, and transmit pathogens and antibiotic resistance. Furthermore, the observed independence of microbiome profile from the city's topological indices led us to formulate a hypothesis that due to their high circulation banknotes may harbor a homogenized microbiome.


Considerable scholarship during the last few decades addresses the question of whether corporate laws are becoming global by converging on commonly accepted approaches. Some scholars have asserted that such convergence is occurring around the most efficient laws and institutions thereby marking the "End of History" for corporate law. This paper responds to such assertions by developing three claims not previously given due attention in the convergence literature. First, it demonstrates that the history of corporations and corporate law has been one of seemingly constant movement toward global convergence; yet, the resulting convergence is always incomplete or transitory. Next, it points out that there are other forces besides efficiency which produce convergence. This means that convergence often occurs around corporate laws and institutions which have no particular efficiency or other normative advantage or that necessarily represent stable equilibrium points. Finally, the paper asks what are the important corporate laws and institutions by which to measure the extent of convergence at any one time. It develops the answer that a stable convergence is least likely for the most important corporate law issues, which are characterized by tensions between competing policies and no easy solutions for the problems presented.


In this note, we find that market participants react to an unexpected change in the tone of Canadian monetary policy statements. When the market perceives that the Bank of Canada plans to tighten (or alternatively, loosen) the monetary policy earlier than previously expected, the Canadian dollar appreciates (or depreciates) and long-term Government of Canada bond yields increase (or decrease). The tone of a statement is particularly relevant to the market when the policy rate has been unchanged for some time.


During acute and chronic infectious diseases hosts develop complex immune responses to cope with bacterial persistence. Depending on a variety of host and microbe factors, outcomes range from peaceful co-existence to detrimental disease. Mechanisms underlying immunity to bacterial stimuli span several spatiotemporal magnitudes and the summation of these hierarchical interactions plays a decisive role in pathogenic versus tolerogenic fate for the host. This dissertation integrates diverse data from immunoinformatics analyses, experimental validation and mathematical modeling to investigate a series of hypotheses driven by computational modeling to study mucosal immunity. Two contrasting microbes, enteroaggregative Escherichia coli and Helicobacter pylori, are used to perturb gut immunity in order to discover host-centric targets for modulating the host immune system. These findings have the potential to be broadly applicable to other infectious and immune-mediated diseases and could assist in the development of antibiotic-free and host-targeted treatments that modulate tolerance to prevent disease. This work was supported in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Contract No. HHSN272201000056C to Josep Bassaganya-Riera and funds from the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.


You might find this additional info useful...This article cites 43 articles, 21 of which can be accessed free at:http://ajpcell.physiology.org/content/300/3/C397.full.html#ref-list-1 Updated information and services including high resolution figures, can be found at:http://ajpcell.physiology.org/content/300/3/C397.full.html Additional material and information about AJP - Cell Physiology can be found at:http://www.the-aps.org/publications/ajpcellThis infomation is current as of April 4, 2011.€


Cloud computing offers a scalable, low-cost, and resilient platform for critical applications. Securing these applications against attacks targeting unknown vulnerabilities is an unsolved challenge. Network anomaly detection addresses such zero-day attacks by modeling attributes of attack-free application traffic and raising alerts when new traffic deviates from this model. Content anomaly detection (CAD) is a variant of this approach that models the payloads of such traffic instead of higher level attributes. Zero-day attacks then appear as outliers to properly trained CAD sensors. In the past, CAD was unsuited to cloud environments due to the relative overhead of content inspection and the dynamic routing of content paths to geographically diverse sites. We challenge this notion and introduce new methods for efficiently aggregating content models to enable scalable CAD in dynamically-pathed environments such as the cloud. These methods eliminate the need to exchange raw content, drastically reduce network and CPU overhead, and offer varying levels of content privacy. We perform a comparative analysis of our methods using Random Forest, Logistic Regression, and Bloom Filter-based classifiers for operation in the cloud or other distributed settings such as wireless sensor networks. We find that content model aggregation offers statistically significant improvements over non-aggregate models with minimal overhead, and that distributed and non-distributed CAD have statistically indistinguishable performance. Thus, these methods enable the practical deployment of accurate CAD sensors in a distributed attack detection infrastructure.


Multiphase flow in porous media is an important process for many technical and environmental applications such as fuel cells, oil recovery, CO2 storage among others. Understanding the rules that govern these flows is essential for planning of CO2 storage sites, chemical or nuclear waste sites, predicting the viability of new oil reservoirs and preventing contamination of ground water aquifers. Natural porous samples, i.e rocks and soils, have highly heterogeneous pore space, both in geometry and wettability. This complicates experiments on such samples as there is no simple method of characterisation. While it is long known that the wettability of the substrate strongly influences the immiscible flow properties this effect, and in particular the effect of heterogeneous wettability, is poorly characterised.

In this work the first experimental investigation of the domain size of wetting heterogeneities in bead packs is presented, and the effect of these domains on immiscible fluid displacement is discussed. This was accomplished by creating bead packs which had the same overall surface coverages of oil and water wet regions, but differed in the spatial extensions of these domains.

The immiscible flow of water and oil through these samples was characterised by measuring the capillary pressure saturation curve for each type of sample. It was determined that the capillary hysteresis varied monotonically with the spatial extension of the wetting heterogeneities. To relate this measurement to the flow behaviour the invading liquid fronts were then imaged using X-ray microtomography. The front shapes were found to depend on the wetting domain sizes of the samples, with globally smooth fronts obtained for samples with small wetting heterogeneities. Both of these observations can be related to the dissipation of energy of the flow through the medium and it is found that the size of the wetting heterogeneity can control the flow properties.

The lengths scales of the heterogeneities discussed here range from sub-pore to many pores, and in this range are found to be important. However, this is not necessarily true for very small heterogeneities. Towards this goal proof of concept experiments describing how to prepare surfaces with microscopic wetting heterogeneities using polymer brushes are discussed. Polymer brush modified surfaces were also tested as a surface exhibiting stimuli-sensitive wettability.


The export of finfish from India has been rising over the past few years and in 2006-07 it contributed almost 44 per cent of the total marine products exported from the country in quantity terms. However in value terms its contribution is only 16 per cent, indicating low unit value realization of the products. This paper has analysed the export performance and has studied the revealed comparative advantage of finfish export from India for the period 2001 to 2005. The finfish exports from India have not revealed any comparative advantage among the total marine products export in the period of study. The paper has suggested reviewing of the policy of finfish export, with a shift in emphasis to export of only high-value finfish and value-added low-value finfish.


Title of Document: NONINVASIVE OPTICAL IMAGING TECHNIQUES AS A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF KAPOSI'S SARCOMA SKIN LESIONS Abby Jeanne Vogel, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor Yang Tao, Fischell Department of Bioengineering The visible inspection and palpation of skin lesions have long been used to assess the course of cutaneous disease in individuals with Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). Assessing the KS lesions requires a highly trained evaluator and evaluations made by different observers or by the same observer at different times can be inconsistent. Since lesions can grow from slow to explosively fast, and be associated with mortality and morbidity, reliable assessment of the lesions is important. Optical imaging techniques are quantitative methods that potentially offer a more objective means of assessing skin health that can supplement visual clinical observations. In this dissertation, the first paper describes using thermography and laser Doppler imaging (LDI) to monitor the temperature and vasculature, respectively, of KS lesions undergoing experimental therapy. Results showed that the median temperature elevation of lesions compared to the surrounding tissue was 1.1 oC (range -0.68 to 3.43 oC). In addition, 12 of the 16 lesions studied had increased blood perfusion as assessed by LDI (median 66 arbitrary units (AU), range -44 to 451 AU). The second paper describes the use of near-infrared (NIR) multi-spectral imaging to provide functional information about the lesions and surrounding tissue. Multi-spectral images were input to a mathematical optical skin model based on the absorption and scattering properties of skin, including the effects of melanin, blood, and oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin. Functional information about the lesions before and after treatment with experimental therapies was determined. The third paper describes Monte-Carlo simulations of tissue conducted to determine the detection limits of a typical multi-spectral imaging system. The results showed that biological information contained in a typical spectral image reflected a small volume of tissue situated vertically under each pixel from a depth less than 2-3 mm. The objects appearing on a spectral image reasonably reproduce the correct geometrical shape and size of underlying inclusions of pathological tissue. Based on the three papers included in this dissertation, these three imaging techniques were found to be objective, easy to perform, and appear to be very sensitive in quantitatively assessing KS lesion progress upon administration of


Background: Little is known about variations in social participation among individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) living in different environments. Objective: To examine the social participation of individuals with moderate-to-severe TBI across various living arrangements. Methods: One hundred and thirty-six individuals with moderate-to-severe TBI, living either in natural settings (e.g. home), intermediate settings (e.g. group homes or foster families) or structured settings (e.g. nursing home or long-term care facilities) and requiring daily assistance, were interviewed using the LIFE-H tool, which measures the level of difficulty and the assistance required to carry out life habits and resulting social participation. Participation in six categories of life habits pertaining to Activities of Daily Living and five categories pertaining to Social Roles were examined. Results: The level of difficulty and the assistance required to carry out the life habits and the overall level of social participation were associated with living arrangements. Participation scores in Activities of Daily Living varied across living arrangements while Social Roles scores did not. Conclusion: Living arrangements (such as intermediate settings) may better support social participation in individuals with TBI. There is a need to further study the issue of living arrangements as they seem to facilitate the performance of life habits, which impacts the social participation of individuals with TBI.


Social change requires new educational planning and sustainable teaching methods. Shaping an environment of care with animals as a part of the daily school life may produce such a change. In this article, we present a transdisciplinary study with the aim of exploring whether raising chickens in a classroom could promote learning, especially sustainability learning, and how. The study employs an ethnographic approach and we have analyzed the data according to interaction analysis. We collected the data in a culturally-diverse Finnish primary school class during May 2018. The data comprise field notes, videos and photographs from indoor and outdoor school activities; interviews and discussions with teachers and students; and, texts and artifacts that were made by students. The results show that having chickens in the classroom not only improved the students' learning of biology, but also enhanced many other activities. The chicken project became part of a complex learning culture that met several of the aims of the curriculum and in many ways reached beyond the aim of merely learning science. The project became a natural part of sustainability education and promoted the acquisition of knowledge and skills in relation to the ecological and social dimensions of sustainability.


Global total water vapour columns have been derived from measurements of the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment 2 (GOME-2) on MetOp. For this purpose, the Air Mass Corrected Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (AMC-DOAS) method has been adapted, having previously been applied successfully to GOME (on ERS-2) and SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY, on ENVISAT) data. Comparisons between the derived GOME-2 and SCIAMACHY water vapour columns show a good overall agreement. This gives confidence that the temporal series of water vapour columns from GOME-type instruments (GOME/ERS-2, SCIAMACHY/ENVISAT), which began in 1995, is successfully continued by the MetOp instrumentation until at least 2020. The enhanced temporal and spatial resolution of GOME-2 enables the analysis of diurnal variations in the polar regions. This is especially important because atmospheric data sources in the polar regions are generally sparse. As an exemplary application, daily water vapour total columns over the polar research station Ny Alesund (78°55'19" N/11°56'33" E) are investigated. At this latitude GOME-2 yields about six data points during daylight hours at varying local times. From these data diurnal variations of water vapour have been successfully retrieved.


We demonstrate steady-state focusing of coherent light through dynamic scattering media. The phase of an incident beam is controlled both spatially and temporally using a reflective, 1020-segment MEMS spatial light modulator, using a coordinate descent optimization technique. We achieve focal intensity enhancement of between 5 and 400 for dynamic media with speckle decorrelation time constants ranging from 0.4 seconds to 20 seconds. We show that this optimization approach combined with a fast spatial light modulator enables focusing through dynamic media. The capacity to enhance focal intensity despite transmission through dynamic scattering media could enable advancement in biological microscopy and imaging through turbid environments.


Primary health care systems are increasingly integrating interprofessional team-based approaches to care delivery. As members of these interprofessional primary health care teams, it is important for social workers to explore our experiences of integration into these newly emerging teams to help strengthen patient care. Despite the expansion of social work within primary health care settings, few studies have examined the integration of social work's role into this expanding area of the health care system. A survey was conducted with Canadian social work practitioners who were employed within Family Health Teams (FHTs), an interprofessional model of primary health care in Ontario emerging from a period of health care reform. One hundred and twenty-eight (N = 128) respondents completed the online survey. Key barriers to social work integration in FHTs included difficulties associated with a medical model environment, confusion about social work role, and organizational barriers. Facilitators for integration of social work in FHTs included adequate education and competencies, collaborative engagement, and organizational structures.


The recent history of small shop and independent retailing has been one of decline. The most desirable form of assistance is the provision of information which will increase the efficiency model of marketing mix effeciveness which may be applied in small scale retailing. A further aim is to enhance theoretical development in the marketing field. Recent changes in retailing have affected location, product range, pricing and promotion practices. Although a large number of variables representing aspects of the marketing mix may be identified, it is not possible, on the basis of currently available information, to quantify or rank them according to their effect on sales performance. In designing a suitable study a major issue is that of access to a suitable representative sample of small retailers. The publish nature of the retail activities involved facilitates the use of a novel observation approach to data collection. A cross-sectional survey research design was used focussing on a clustered random sample of greengrocers and gent's fashion outfitters in the West Midlands. Linear multiple regression was the main analytical technique. Powerful regression models were evolved for both types of retailing. For greengrocers the major influences on trade are pedestrian traffic and shelf display space. For gent's outfitters they are centrality-to-other shopping, advertising and shelf display space. The models may be utilised by retailers to determine the relative strength of marketing mix variables. The level of precision is not sufficient to permit cost benefit analysis. Comparison of the findings for the two distinct kinds of business studied suggests an overall model of marketing mix effectiveness might be based on frequency of purchase, homogeneity of the shopping environment, elasticity of demand and bulk characteristics of the good sold by a shop.


Bioreactor landfills have become a feasible alternative to the typical 'dry tomb' landfill. By recirculating leachate and/or adding additional liquid wastes, bioreactor landfills operate to rapidly degrade and transform organic wastes. The reactions within a bioreactor landfill create elevated temperatures. The intent of this study was to determine the effect of elevated temperature on the degradation of lignocellulose compounds. In order to observe the effects of temperature on lignin, small bioreactors were created in the laboratory. Several experiments were performed by the authors. Solubility of lignin based on temperature and time of thermal exposure were conducted. In addition, degradation studies were conducted based on biological treatment of lignin as well as a combination of biological and thermal treatment. Samples were collected at specified intervals to determine the amount of water soluble lignin (WSL), volatile fatty acids (VFAs), lignin monomers, and/or methane present. Lignin solubility increased as temperature rose in the thermal solubility experiments. The rate of solubility increased 15 times for office paper and 1.5 times for cardboard in the biological experiments when compared to the thermal treatment. The thermal and biological study indicates that as lignin is solubilized, it breaks down into lignin monomers, which can be converted easily by anaerobic bacteria into VFAs and subsequently, methane. These experiments indicate that temperature is crucial to the degradation of lignin compounds in a bioreactor landfill.


Abstract This study used repeated measures data to identify developmental profiles of elevated risk for ADHD (i.e., six or more inattentive and/or hyperactive-impulsive symptoms), with an interest in the age at which ADHD risk first emerged. Risk factors that were measured across the first 3 years of life were used to predict profile membership. Participants included 1,173 children who were drawn from the Family Life Project, an ongoing longitudinal study of children's development in low-income, nonmetropolitan communities. Four heuristic profiles of ADHD risk were identified. Approximately two thirds of children never exhibited elevated risk for ADHD. The remaining children were characterized by early childhood onset and persistent risk (5%), early childhood limited risk (10%), and middle childhood onset risk (19%). Pregnancy and delivery complications and harsh-intrusive caregiving behaviors operated as general risk for all ADHD profiles. Parental history of ADHD was uniquely predictive of early onset and persistent ADHD risk, and low primary caregiver education was uniquely predictive of early childhood limited ADHD risk. Results are discussed with respect to how changes to the age of onset criterion for ADHD in DSM5 may affect etiological research and the need for developmental models of ADHD that inform ADHD symptom persistence and desistance.


Abstract

Objectives – This exploratory research seeks to broadly understand the publishing behaviours and attitudes of faculty, across all disciplines, at the University of Saskatchewan in response to the growing significance of open access publishing and archiving. The objective for seeking this understanding is to discover the current and emerging needs of researchers in order to determine if scholarly communications services are in demand here and, if so, to provide an evidence-based foundation for the potential future development of such a program of services at the University Library, University of Saskatchewan.

Methods – All faculty members at the University of Saskatchewan were sent personalized email invitations to participate in a short online survey during the month of November 2012. The survey was composed of four parts: Current Research and Publishing Activities/Behaviours; Open Access Behaviours, Awareness, and Attitudes; Needs Assessment; and Demographics. Descriptive and inferential statistics were calculated.

Results – The survey elicited 291 complete responses – a 21.9% response rate. Results suggest that faculty already have a high level of support for the open access movement, and considerable awareness of it. However, there remains a lack of knowledge regarding their rights as authors, a low familiarity with tools available to support them in their scholarly communications activities, and substantial resistance to paying the article processing charges of some open access journals. Survey respondents also provided a considerable number of comments – perhaps an indication of their engagement with these issues and desire for a forum in which to discuss them. It is reasonable to speculate that those who chose not to respond to this survey likely have less interest in, and support of, open access. Hence, the scholarly communications needs of this larger group of non-respondents are conceivably even greater.

Conclusion – Faculty at the University of Saskatchewan are in considerable need of scholarly communications services. Areas of most need include: advice and guidance on authors' rights issues such as retention of copyright; more education and support with resources such as subject repositories; and additional assistance with article processing charges. The University Library could play a valuable role in increasing the research productivity and impact of faculty by aiding them in these areas.


A well known characteristic of flexible exchange rates is their volatility, with result that their movement can be closely approximated by a random walk. One of the attractions of the monetary model of the exchange rate is its ability to offer an explanation of this volatility. A major drawback is that empirical tests of the exchange rate equation arising from the monetary model very often lead to rejection of the model. The blame for this is usually attributed to the breakdown of the purchasing power parity assumption. The main purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide measures of the relative importance of the likely principal causes of the failure of the monetary model. A second objective is to test the random walk hypothesis for exchange rates. The methodology employed is new and has wide application elsewhere. It involves explicitly modelling the misspecification by time series techniques. The results, which are for the sterling-United States Dollar and Deutschemark-United States Dollar exchange rates, confirm the importance of the breakdown of the PPP assumption but they also show that misspecification of the money market is equally important. Whilst a random walk model is found to provide a very good fit, it is shown that lagged information can be used to improve the explanation of the spot exchange rate and hence the random walk hypothesis can be rejected.


Computational reflection uses software architectures that are capable of self- modification at runtime. These systems have implementations between two extremes: procedural reflection, in which unlimited self-modification is available at the expense of infinite recursion; and declarative reflection, which uses pre-defined metrics to drive the self-modification and is hence limited in scope. Biological processes also exploit the concept of reflection, where natural selection drives the process of modification. The concept of a program in computing has an analogy with an individual member of a species. The process of life is discretised into a series of autonomous systems, each of which creates modified versions of itself as offspring. This paper unifies the concept of computational reflection with biological systems via a new analysis of von Neumanns Universal Constructor. The result is a bio-reflective architecture that is capable of unconstrained self-modification without the problems of infinite recursion that exist in the computational counterparts. The new architecture is a blueprint for applications in Artificial Life studies, Evolutionary Algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence.


This paper investigates whether an emissions tax (equivalent to an emissions cap) is the best policy in the presence of incomplete regulation (leakage) or market power by analyzing an intensity standard regulating emissions per unit of output. With no other market failures, an intensity standard is indeed inferior, although combining it with a consumption tax eliminates this inferiority. For incomplete regulation, I show that under certain conditions an intensity standard can dominate any emissions tax (including the optimal emissions tax). This dominance persists even with the addition of a consumption tax, which ameliorates output distortions and can sometimes help the intensity standard attain the first best (when an emissions tax/consumption tax combination cannot). Comparing intensity standards to output-based updating shows that the latter dominates because of its additional flexibility. Finally, I show that with market power an intensity standard can dominate the optimal emissions tax. The intuition of these results is relatively straightforward. The weakness of an intensity standard is that it relies more on substitution effects than output effects to reduce emissions. With incomplete regulation or market power, this disadvantage may be helpful since leakage may offset gains from reducing output and since market power already inefficiently reduces output.


As the need to raise revenue becomes more pressing and public opposition to tax avoidance increases, the European Court of Justice has made it more difficult for the twenty-seven Member States of the European Union to prevent tax avoidance and shape fiscal policy. This article introduces the new anti-avoidance doctrine of the European Court of Justice and analyzes it from the perspective of taxpayers, Member States and the European Union legal order as a whole. This doctrine is problematic becasue it has created a legislative vacuum in Europe. No European Union institution has the authority to regulate direct taxation without the unanimous support of all twenty-seven Member States. As the European Court of Justice strikes down Member State efforts to prevent tax avoidance, no institution can step in to replace these Member State provisions. Member States are thus losing sovereignty over policy tax avoidance, but no legislative move toward an integrated approach is possible without the support of Member States. This article proposes several solutions to the problems posed by the doctrine.


Jaegwon Kim (1998a, 2005) claims that his exclusion problem follows a priori for the non-reductive physicalist given her commitment to five apparently inconsistent theses: mental causation, non-identity, supervenience, causal closure and non-overdetermination. For Kim, the combination of these theses entails that mental properties are a priori excluded as causes, forcing the non-reductive physicalist to accept either epiphenomenalism, or some form of reduction. In this thesis, I argue that Kim's exclusion problem depends on a particular conception of causation, namely sufficient production, and that when causation is understood in interventionist terms, the non-reductive physicalist can avoid the exclusion problem. I argue that Woodward's (2003, 2008a, 2011a) version of interventionism not only provides an account of mental causation that avoids the exclusion problem, but argue that it also upholds all of the minimal commitments of non-reductive physicalism, thereby providing a successful non-reductive physicalist solution to the exclusion problem. In Chapter 2, I argue that all five theses are minimal commitments of non-reductive physicalism that cannot be rejected in order to avoid the exclusion problem. Chapter 3 identifies the assumptions that I take to underlie the exclusion problem. Chapter 4 introduces and outlines the central features of Woodward's (2003) interventionism and Chapter 5 argues that Woodward's interventionist account of mental causation provides a solution to the exclusion problem. I examine two alternative interventionist accounts of mental causation that fail to provide satisfactory solutions to the exclusion problem and conclude that Woodward's account therefore provides the only satisfactory account of mental causation and solution to the exclusion problem. Chapter 6 addresses some challenges proposed by Michael Baumgartner (2009, 2010) and argues that the interventionist is able to defend her position against these objections and uphold the interventionist solution to the exclusion problem outlined in this thesis. 1 Proposed by List and Menzies (2009) and Campbell (2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010). Chapter 1, Introduction 1


Part 1 Success and rejection in economics: life among the econ, Axel Leijonhufvud the young economist's guide to professional etiquette, Daniel Hamermesh how are the mighty fallen - rejected classic articles by leading economists, Joshua Gans and George Shepherd ageing and productivity among economists, Sharon Oster and Daniel Hamermesh. Part 2 Referees and editors: facts and myths about refereeing, Daniel Hamermesh is there value added from the review process in economics? Preliminary evidence from authors, David Laband the effects of double-blind versus single-blind reviewing - experimental evidence from the "American Economic Review", Rebecca Blank favouritism versus search for good papers - empirical evidence regarding the behaviour of journal editors, David Laband and Michael Piette why referees are not paid (enough), Maxim Engers and Joshua Gans. Part 3 To co-author or not to co-author: estimates of the returns to quality and co-authorship in economic academia, Raymond Sauer trends in multi-authored papers in economics, John Hudson first author conditions, Maxim Engers et al. Part 4 The influence of economics journals: the journals of economics, George Stigler et al the scholarly journal literature of economics - a historical profile of the AER, JPE and QJE, David Laband and John Wells the relative impacts of economics journals, 1970-1990, David Laband and Michael Piette.


Particulate contamination deposited on silicon wafers is typically the dominant reason for yield loss in VLSI manufacturing. The transformation of contaminating particles into defects and then electrical faults is a very complex process which depends on the defect location, size, material, and the underlying IC topography. An efficient defect macromodeling methodology based on the rigorous two-dimensional (2-D) topography simulator METROPOLE, has been developed to allow the prediction and correlation of the critical physical parameters (material, size, and location) of contamination in the manufacturing process to device defects. The results for a large number of defect samples simulated using the above approach were compared with the data gathered from the AMD-Sunnyvale fabline. A good match was obtained indicating the accuracy for our method of developing contamination to defect propagation/growth macromodels.


Summary« Du coup » and the consequence discourse markers in a dynamic perspectiveDu coup is a French discourse marker (DM) which signals that a consequence relation obtains between two propositions. In this respect it is in the same class as the other consequence French DM, such as donc, alors, par consequent, de ce fait or aussi. Those different DM's impose different constraints on the syntactic and semantic environments where they occur. In this paper, we describe the constraints which are particular to du coup. First, we propose a global description of the consequence DM, in order to emphasize the different dimensions along which the DM's of this kind can be classified. This leads us to a first characterization of du coup. We show that, unfortunately, du coup eludes any analysis in these terms and calls for a more fine-grained description. We then show that the properties of this DM are aspectual and epistemic and we formulate a constraint which allows one to derive the aspectual properties from the epistemic ones, by resorting to the notion of omission in information states.


The video game industry has been one of the fastest-growing cultural phenomena of our times with market conditions that demand a specific skill set from its marketers. To a new generation of "indie gamers", being a game developer isn't just about design and production, a successful video game demands entrepreneurial skills and astute business acumen. The creators need to know what their customers want, how to reach those customers and how to sell to them.Video Game Marketing: A student textbook is for development students or aspiring developers who want to know how to promote and sell the results of their efforts. This book is a much-needed guide to:• the essentials of marketing strategy;• video games as products or services;• marketing research for game development;• branding video games;• marketing through game: gamification, advergames.Replete with pedagogy to aid learning such as objectives and discussion questions for each chapter, this book is all that aspiring video game developers will need to unleash the potential of their games.


The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of NADH-supplementation on the metabolic condition of isolated guinea pig ventricular cardiomyocytes using the pinacidil-primed IK(ATp) as an indicator of subsarcolemmal ATP concentration. Membrane currents were studied using the patch-clamp technique in the whole-cell recording mode at 36-37C. Under physiological conditions (4.3 mM ATP in the pipette solution, ATPj) IK(ATP) did not contribute to basal electrical activity The K(ATP) channel opener pinacidil activated IK(ATP) dependent on [ATP]i showing a significantly more pronounced activation at lower (1 mM) [ATP]j. Incubation of cardiomyocytes with 300 μg/mI NADH (4-6 h) resulted in a significantly reduced IK(ATp) activation by pinacidil compared to control cells. Equimolar amounts of the related compounds nicotinamide and NAD were not able to achieve a similar effect like NADH. These data show that incubation of guinea pig ventricular cardiomyocytes with NADH results in a decreased activation Of IK(ATp) by pinacidil compared to control myocytes indicating a higher subsarcolemmal ATP concentration due to NADH -supplementation. Measurement of adenine nucleotides by HPLC revealed a significant increase in intracellular ATP (NADH supplementation: 45.59 ± 1,88 nmol/mg protein versus control: 35.35 ± 2.57 nmol/mg protein, P < 0.000005).


Examining how and why agricultural change and development occurred in Western Europe between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries is the central task of this unique comparative, historical study. It describes the factors that account for the transformation of a poor, unproductive agricultural region to a region with much higher productivity and burgeoning industrialization. Countries examined and compared are England, the Netherlands, France, the German lands, and Sweden.What makes this volume so compelling is the extent to which the various fields of history, economics, political science, and sociology are integrated and employed. Hopcroft demonstrates that a key factor in agrarian development was the rural economic organization or "field system," which varied regionally. She also demonstrates the utility of the New Institutional Economic (NIE) approach to historical economic change, showing how field systems may be conceptualized as a product of local institutions, that is, social rules and norms of agricultural practice. Further, she uses the NIE to derive her hypothesis that the most rapid and extensive agrarian development occurred in the regions that were the least controlled by the community and manorial overlordship.Hopcroft's multidisciplinary approach to her subject will interest readers from history, economics, political science, agriculture, and comparative historical sociology. It will, moreover, be important to anyone seeking to understand the "rise of the West."Rosemary L. Hopcroft is Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Charlotte.


Managing research data has become an issue for many universities. In the Caribbean, the St Augustine Campus Libraries at the University of the West Indies are keenly aware of the need to support researchers in this regard. The objectives of this study were to identify current practices in managing research data on the campus and to determine a possible role for the Campus Libraries. A pilot study of 100 researchers on the campus was conducted. Analysis of the 65 valid responses revealed that while researchers owned data sets they had little knowledge or experience in managing such. This low level of awareness is instructive and validates a role for the Campus Libraries to play in supporting researchers on campus. The Campus Libraries need to sensitize researchers about what data planning and managing research data entail as well as provide technical assistance with actual data storage.


CONTEXT
Proper management of cervical spine injuries in men's lacrosse players depends in part upon the ability of the helmet to immobilize the head.

OBJECTIVE
To determine if properly and improperly fitted lacrosse helmets provide adequate stabilization of the head in the spine-boarded athlete.

DESIGN
Crossover study.

SETTING
Sports medicine research laboratory.

PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS
Eighteen healthy collegiate men's lacrosse players.

INTERVENTION(S)
Participants were asked to move their heads through 3 planes of motion after being secured to a spine board under 3 helmet conditions.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S)
Change in range of motion in the cervical spine was calculated for the sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes for both head-to-thorax and helmet-to-thorax range of motion in all 3 helmet conditions (properly fitted, improperly fitted, and no helmet).

RESULTS
Head-to-thorax range of motion with the properly fitted and improperly fitted helmets was greater than in the no-helmet condition (P < .0001). In the sagittal plane, range of motion was greater with the improperly fitted helmet than with the properly fitted helmet. No difference was observed in helmet-to-thorax range of motion between properly and improperly fitted helmet conditions. Head-to-thorax range of motion was greater than helmet-to-thorax range of motion in all 3 planes (P < .0001).

CONCLUSIONS
Cervical spine motion was minimized the most in the no-helmet condition, indicating that in lacrosse players, unlike football players, the helmet may need to be removed before stabilization.


ABSTRACT Type IV pili (Tfp) are expressed by many Gram-negative bacteria to promote aggregation, adhesion, internalization, twitching motility, or natural transformation. Tfp of Neisseria meningitidis, the causative agent of cerebrospinal meningitis, are involved in the colonization of human nasopharynx. After invasion of the bloodstream, Tfp allow adhesion of N. meningitidis to human endothelial cells, which leads to the opening of the blood-brain barrier and meningitis. To achieve firm adhesion, N. meningitidis induces a host cell response that results in elongation of microvilli surrounding the meningococcal colony. Here we study the role of the major pilin subunit PilE during host cell response using human dermal microvascular endothelial cells and the pharynx carcinoma-derived FaDu epithelial cell line. We first show that some PilE variants are unable to induce a host cell response. By engineering PilE mutants, we observed that the PilE C-terminus domain, which contains a disulfide bonded region (D-region), is critical for the host cell response and that hypervariable regions confer different host cell specificities. Moreover, the study of point mutants of the pilin D-region combined with structural modeling of PilE revealed that the D-region contains two independent regions involved in signaling to human dermal microvascular endothelial cells (HDMECs) or FaDu cells. Our results indicate that the diversity of the PilE D-region sequence allows the induction of the host cell response via several receptors. This suggests that Neisseria meningitidis has evolved a powerful tool to adapt easily to many niches by modifying its ability to interact with host cells. IMPORTANCE Type IV pili (Tfp) are long appendages expressed by many Gram-negative bacteria, including Neisseria meningitidis, the causative agent of cerebrospinal meningitis. These pili are involved in many aspects of pathogenesis: natural competence, aggregation, adhesion, and twitching motility. More specifically, Neisseria meningitidis, which is devoid of a secretion system to manipulate its host, has evolved its Tfp to signal to brain endothelial cells and open the blood-brain barrier. In this report, we investigate, at the molecular level, the involvement of the major pilin subunit PilE in host cell response. Our results indicate that the PilE C-terminal domain, which contains a disulfide bonded region (D-region), is critical for the host cell response and contains two independent regions involved in host cell signaling. Type IV pili (Tfp) are long appendages expressed by many Gram-negative bacteria, including Neisseria meningitidis, the causative agent of cerebrospinal meningitis. These pili are involved in many aspects of pathogenesis: natural competence, aggregation, adhesion, and twitching motility. More specifically, Neisseria meningitidis, which is devoid of a secretion system to manipulate its host, has evolved its Tfp to signal to brain endothelial cells and open the blood-brain barrier. In this report, we investigate, at the molecular level, the involvement of the major pilin subunit PilE in host cell response. Our results indicate that the PilE C-terminal domain, which contains a disulfide bonded region (D-region), is critical for the host cell response and contains two independent regions involved in host cell signaling.


This Powerpoint presentation is focused on the firms' competitive life-cycle framework, also known as the CFROI valuation model. It has evolved as a commercial research program over the past 40 years and today is widely used by institutional money managers. Slides 1-13 highlight three conceptual pillars to an integrated wealth creation framework: a systems mindset, a knowledge building process, and the firms' competitive life cycle. The life-cycle framework is especially well suited for a proposed Shareholder Value Review to improve corporate governance. Slides 14-42 focus on eleven valuation ideas that distinguish the research methodology from mainstream finance practices. For example: all variables are expressed in units of constant purchasing power; forward-looking (market derived) discount rates are dependent upon the procedures used to forecast a firm's long-term net cash receipt stream; and a model corporation (Excel spreadsheet) is critical for linking economic performance to accounting data to warranted market valuations.


It has been shown that crystals whose particle-size is small in comparison with the wave-length absorb but do not reflect within the region of selective absorption. It is suggested that within this region a powder ought to reveal an emission maximum. This suggestion is put to experimental test which shows that powder-films of quartz, barium sulphate and potassium carbonate show pronounced emission maxima. The behavior of quartz-powder is shown to be quite the inverse of that of a polished quartz plate.


In this paper, we investigate the level of crosstalk for simultaneous delivery of wired and wireless signals using optical tandem single sideband (OTSSB) transport in an optical-wireless integrated access network. Our results show that the placement of the wired data is crucial to minimize crosstalk resulting from the nonlinear optical frontend. We also propose passive interfaces for the optical-wireless integrated networks incorporating OTSSB. The performance of the interfaces is evaluated in a full-duplex experiment for simultaneous delivery of wired and wireless signals.


Little is known about the traditional coffee cultivation systems in Central Aceh, Indonesia, where coffee production is a major source of income for local Gayo people. Based on field observations and farmer interviews, 14 representative agroforestry coffee plantations of different age classes (60–70 years, 30–40 years, and 20 years) as well as seven adjacent grassland and native forest sites were selected for this study, and soil and coffee leaf samples collected for nutrient analysis. Significant differences in soil and coffee leaf parameters were found between former native forest and Sumatran pine (Pinus merkusii) forest as previous land cover indicating the importance of the land use history for today's coffee cultivation. Soil pH as well as exchangeable Na and Ca concentrations were significantly lower on coffee plantations compared to grassland and forest sites. Soil C, N, plant available P, exchangeable K, and Mg concentrations showed no consistent differences between land use groups. Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) concentrations of coffee leaves were in the sufficiency range, whereas zinc (Zn) contents were found to be consistently below the sufficiency threshold and significantly lower in coffee plantations of previous pine forest cover compared to those of previous native forest cover. While the results of this study provided insights into the nutrient status of coffee plantations in Central Aceh, the heterogeneity of site conditions, limited sampling size, and scarcity of reliable data about the land use history and initial soil conditions of sampled sites preclude more definitive conclusions about the sustainability of the studied systems.


I. INTRODUCTION A decade ago, corruption was not a proper subject for polite scholars or policymakers.1 Today, the creation of and comment on anti-corruption regimes is a growth industry.2 Anti-corruption regimes exist at the global level and in almost every region and grouping of countries.3 Anti-corruption regimes share several structural characteristics. Most approach corruption as a pan-cultural phenomenon, and therefore most simply assume a shared set of perceptions about corruption.4 Most regimes then go on to require that all parties criminalize this behavior. Scholarly commentary on these legal regimes, on the other hand, is not uniform. Some scholars applaud international coordination as necessary to combat a phenomenon that does not confine itself within borders,5 while some condemn it as morally imperialistic and an elitist intrusion into the affairs of other countries.6 Nonetheless, most legal scholarship on international corruption regimes does share at least one characteristic: it is theoretical and assumptive rather than empirical.7 International corruption regimes are legal constructs; evaluation of these constructs by legal scholars is critical. Evaluation, however, must be based on factual knowledge rather than assumption and supposition.8 The lack of empirical research, therefore, constitutes a serious gap in legal scholarship on an issue that is at the forefront of legal change in the world today. This article seeks an empirical understanding of a basic question underlying international corruption regimes: do different cultures share an understanding of corruption? The authors of this paper administered a short questionnaire to similar sets of respondents in two different countries, Bulgaria and Mongolia, and conducted follow-up sessions with the respondents.9 The authors found that the respondents had strikingly similar attitudes towards, and understandings and perceptions of, corruption. While the data does not disprove a relativist position-that determination would require a comprehensive data set incorporating the entire world-it does lend support to those who suggest a shared understanding of corruption. II. THE QUESTION The foundational question examined in this paper is whether the perceptions and understandings of people in two different countries and cultures correspond or are different. A corollary of this question is whether empirical data on understandings and perceptions of corruption casts insights into theoretical discussions of corruption, as well as into the definition of corruption. Empirical questions about the meaning of corruption are important for at least four reasons: 1) corruption is a serious issue that calls into question the efficacy of law and of social and economic systems; 2) changing international global regimes use shared meanings of corruption, which could result in the imposition of meanings of corruption on some cultures; 3) similarly, international financial organizations are attempting to deal with the issue of corruption in a systematic way; and 4) legal scholarship benefits from at least some level of empirical insight. A. Corruption Is a Serious Issue The damage engendered by corruption has been thoroughly explicated in the literature. Briefly, the literature states that corruption distorts economic decisions,10 impedes transnational commercial relationships,11 degrades bureaucratic systems,12 and severely corrodes social structures.13 One argument in favor of corruption depends on very particular circumstances: under conditions of authoritarian repression, internal corruption can facilitate the creation of channels through which goods and services reach people who do not have connections within the authoritarian regime.14 B. Changes in Global Regimes At the global level, in April 2002 the United Nations mandated the drafting of the "United Nations Convention against Corruption. …


We focus on the problem of estimating the ground plane orientation and location in monocular video sequences from a moving observer. Our only assumptions are that the 3D ego motion t and the ground plane normal n are orthogonal, and that n and t are smooth over time. We formulate the problem as a state-continuous Hidden Markov Model (HMM) where the hidden state contains t and n and may be estimated by sampling and decomposing homographies. We show that using blocked Gibbs sampling, we can infer the hidden state with high robustness towards outliers, drifting trajectories, rolling shutter and an imprecise intrinsic calibration. Since our approach does not need any initial orientation prior, it works for arbitrary camera orientations in which the ground is visible.


Tepe Yahya provides a stratigraphic sequence that stretches some 6,000 years, from the Neolithic period to the early centuries AD. As a result, the site is critical for understanding cultural processes in southeastern Iran. In this fifth volume of results of the excavations at Tepe Yahya, Peter Magee presents evidence from the Iron Age occupation of the site. Looking beyond the epigraphic and historical data and examining the insights provided by the artifactual record, Magee describes how a small settlement, located some distance from the main centers of power, came into being and was affected by the emergence of the Achaemenid imperial system, which stretched from Pakistan to Libya.


:Abstract:Abstract:Abstract: The quality attribute concerning usability is generally of significant importance to systems. The area of Human Computer Interaction, HCI, especially handles several usability aspects. This degree project emphasizes HCI in a context of, so called, Smart House. The report is divided into three main sections: theory, application, and measurement results. In the theory section we will present about the context of HCI and the content of HCI, such as HCI model and goals of HCI design. In the application section we discuss the use of mobile phones as a device to remotely control devices of smart houses, and present a system developed to support such services. In order to make the system more attractive, we decided to design it for two categories of operations, menu operation and direct-touch operation mode. Finally, we have used questionnaires for reasons of measuring user satisfaction. Through investigation and analysis of the result of this, we come to the conclusion that system usability is good.


Between 1718 and 1726, the printer Johann Kohler at Reval/Tallinn produced about seventeen fairly small books of pietist persuasion in Swedish. It has generally been assumed that these books were meant to be smuggled into Sweden and Finland where the authorities would not allow the printing of such literature. Furthermore, bibliographers have attributed some other books of that ilk, but not indicating the printer, to Kohler. The article, firstly, shows what is known about the provenance of the extant copies. This suggests that the books might not have been produced for the Swedish and Finnish markets in the first place but rather for readers in Estonia and Russia. Secondly, the article argues, primarily on typographical grounds, that the attributions are unfounded. They were probably made because collectors since the eighteenth century had cherished books suppressed by the authorities as rare books. These attributions have been repeated and added to by generations of bibliographers and scholars. The author calls for a critical reassessment of attributions, not only in the Reval case but also concerning more important centres of clandestine publishing such as Amsterdam. The article concludes with a bibliography of Kohler's books published
in Swedish, including the attributed titles.

Keywords: History of printing, history of books, bibliography, pietism


The only book of its kind on the market, this book is the companion to our Valve Selection Handbook, by the same author. Together, these two books form the most comprehensive work on piping and valves ever written for the process industries. This book covers the entire piping process, including the selection of piping materials according to the job, the application of the materials and fitting, trouble-shooting techniques for corrosion control, inspections for OSHA regulations, and even the warehousing, distributing, and ordering of materials. There are books on materials, fitting, OSHA regulations, and so on, but this is the only "one stop shopping" source for the piping engineer on piping materials. Provides a "one stop shopping" source for the piping engineer on piping materials Covers the entire piping process. Designed as an easy-to-access guide


This Special Issue on (Forced) Migration and Media is the result of two workshops organised at the University of Leicester: a workshop on (Forced) Migration and Media-research that took place on the 13th of June 2016 and a Community Impact event that was organised on the 18th of July, 2016. These workshops were a response to the topical interest for refugees' access to digital technology and the dehumanizing language used in, especially but not limited to British, media regarding migrants and/or refugees (Berry, Garcia-Blanco, & Moore, 2015). (Forced) was purposefully bracketed as the label 'refugee' has its own difficulties. The differentiation between economic and forced migrants for instance negates that reasons behind migration are often multi-causal and multi-layered. It reinforces thinking in dichotomies that homogenizes and tends to negate in-between complexities, as  is often appropriated as a governing tool to victimize, exclude and curtail the rights of human beings (Crawley & Skleparis, 2017; Lindley, 2010; Zetter, 2007). In this editorial, we reflect upon the main outcomes of the workshop we and other PhD-colleagues organised on the 13th of June, 2016, and connect them to the articles within this Special Issue.


INTRODUCTION
Increased sedentary behavior predicts greater cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and does so independently of physical activity (PA). This association is only partially explained by body mass index (BMI) and overall body fat, suggesting mechanisms besides general increased adiposity. The purpose of this study was to explore associations of self-reported leisure PA and sitting time with regional fat depositions and abdominal muscle among community-dwelling older adults.

METHODS
Participants were 539 diverse adults (mean age = 65 yr) who completed a study visit in 2001-2002. Areas of pericardial, intrathoracic, subcutaneous, visceral, and intermuscular fat, as well as abdominal muscle, were measured using computed tomography. Leisure PA and sitting hours were entered simultaneously into multivariate regression models to determine associations with muscle and fat areas.

RESULTS
After adjusting for demographics, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, triglycerides, and cholesterol, greater PA was associated with less intrathoracic, visceral, subcutaneous, and intermuscular fat (for all P < 0.05), while greater sedentary time was associated with greater pericardial and intrathoracic fat (for both P < 0.05). After further adjusting for BMI, each hour of weekly PA was associated with 1.85 cm less visceral fat (P < 0.01) but was not associated with other fat depositions. Conversely, each hour of daily sitting was associated with 2.39 cm more pericardial fat (P < 0.05) but was not associated with any other fat depositions. There were no associations with abdominal muscle area. Adjusting for common inflammatory markers had little effect. Associations between fat and PA were stronger for men.

CONCLUSIONS
Sitting and PA have distinct associations with regional fat deposition in older adults. The association between sitting and pericardial fat could partially explain the link between sitting and coronary heart disease.


This paper examines the standard model of planet formation, including pebble accretion, using numerical simulations. Planetary embryos that are large enough to become giant planets do not form beyond the ice line within a typical disk lifetime unless icy pebbles stick at higher speeds than in experiments using rocky pebbles. Systems like the solar system (small inner planets and giant outer planets) can form if icy pebbles are stickier than rocky pebbles, and if the planetesimal formation efficiency increases with pebble size, which prevents the formation of massive terrestrial planets. Growth beyond the ice line is dominated by pebble accretion. Most growth occurs early, when the surface density of the pebbles is high due to inward drift of the pebbles from the outer disk. Growth is much slower after the outer disk is depleted. The outcome is sensitive to the disk radius and turbulence level, which control the lifetime and maximum size of pebbles. The outcome is sensitive to the size of the largest planetesimals because there is a threshold mass for the onset of pebble accretion. The planetesimal formation rate is unimportant, provided that some large planetesimals form while the pebbles remain abundant. Two outcomes are seen, depending on whether pebble accretion begins while the pebbles are still abundant. Either multiple gas-giant planets form beyond the ice line, small planets form close to the star, and a Kuiper-belt-like disk of bodies is scattered outward by the giant planets; or no giants form and the bodies remain an Earth-mass or smaller.


Background: Hydatid cyst disease is still a health problem in many countries. Surgical removal is the treatment of choice for lung hydatid cysts. However, operating on bilateral lung hydatid cysts is still controversial. The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the results of surgical treatment in bilateral hydatid disease of the lung. Methods: In this retrospective study, we reviewed our experience in the surgical treatment of 22 patients with bilateral, and at least three, lung and liver hydatid cysts. These 22 patients (14 male, 8 female) with an average age of 22 years (range 5–50 years) underwent one-staged bilateral anterolateral thoracotomy. Results: Out of 316 patients with hydatid lung, 22 (5.55%) were managed surgically. In total, 48 lung cysts were removed from 22 patients who underwent one-staged bilateral anterolateral thoracotomy. The most frequent symptoms were cough, chest pain, and dyspnea. Most of the cysts (38.2%) were located in the right lower lobe. Three patients had cysts associated with hepatic hydatid cyst; they were treated through phlebotomy during thoracotomies. All cysts were evacuated with capitonnage and without lung resection. We observed some complications such as prolonged air leaks (n = 3), atelectasis (n = 2), pneumonia (n = 2), and empyema (n = 1). No further surgery was required for the management of complications. The mean hospital stay was 5 days (range 8–12 days). No deaths occurred in hospital stay. Oral albendazole was started on the 2nd postoperative day thoracotomy in the dose of 10 mg/kg and was continued for 3 months with a gap of 2 weeks after each 28 days. No recurrences occurred during the follow-up period. Conclusions: One-stage surgery is superior to a classic two-stage approach as it decreases the morbidity, hospital stay, and costs. MS is an excellent approach, but in some cases, video-assisted thoracic surgery mini-thoracotomies could be indicated. In our experience, one-staged bilateral anterolateral thoracotomy is an appropriate surgical option for bilateral pulmonary hydatid cysts because morbidity rates are minimal, and the hospital stay is acceptable for the treatment of bilateral pulmonary hydatid cysts in one-staged option.


Soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr is one of the most important oilseed plants in the world and Phythophthora root and crown rot is a significant limiting factor for its planting. In the present study the antagonistic effect of 12 Trichoderma spp. in vitro and these Trichoderma spp. in combination with Bradyrhizobium japonicum in vivo on Phytophthora sojae and soybean growth were tested. In laboratory tests the effects of Trichoderma isolates were studied in dual culture, volatile compounds and culture filtrate metabolites. The most hyphal growth inhibitions were obtained using T. virens, T. orientals and T. brevicompactum in dual culture tests and T. atroviride in volatile compounds test. The effects of Trichoderma culture filtrates on P. sojae hyphal growth were studied at six concentrations in CMA medium and the results showed that culture filtrates of all species inhibited the hyphal growth and that different concentrations had different inhibitory effects. The most inhibition was obtained by T. virens and T. brevicampactom culture filtrates. The greenhouse tests were carried out as two experiments. In the first experiment the effects of coated seeds with Trichoderma isolates and B. japonicum, alone and in combinations, on control of P. sojae and in the second experiment the effect of these two biocontrol agents on soybean growth, alone and in combinations, were assayed. In the first experiment, germination percentage, damping-off, seedling vigour index (SVI) and disease severity were measured and results showed that T. brevicompactum as alone and in combinations, was the most effective species. In the second experiment, coated seeds with Trichoderma isolates and B. japonicum, as alone and in combinations, significantly promoted the growth of treated seeds and the most effective species were T. orientals, T. brevicompactum and T. spirale. Hence, results indicate that T. brevicompactum, as the second most common species after T. harzianum in Iran, was the most successful species applied individually and in combinations with B. japonicum to act as biocontrol agent for P. sojae and was also able to promote plant growth.


The presence of illiquid assets, such as human wealth or a family owned business, complicates the problem of portfolio choice. This paper is concerned with the problem of optimal asset allocation and consumption in a continuous time model when one asset cannot be traded. This illiquid asset, which depends on an uninsurable source of risk, provides a liquid dividend. In the case of human capital we can think about this dividend as labor income. The agent is endowed with a given amount of the illiquid asset and with some liquid wealth which can be allocated in a market where there is a risky and a riskless asset. The main point of the paper is that the optimal allocations to the two liquid assets and consumption will critically depend on the endowment and characteristics of the illiquid asset, in addition to the preferences and to the liquid holdings held by the agent. We provide what we believe to be the first analytical solution to this problem when the agent has power utility of consumption and terminal wealth. We also derive the value that the agent assigns to the illiquid asset. The risk adjusted valuation procedure we develop can be used to value both liquid and illiquid assets, as well as contingent claims on those assets.


This chapter is comprised of 30 clinically based and also knowledge based questions, and answers. The corresponding answers to the questions can be found at the end of the chapter, each of which has a short explanation and at least one reference.


The ability to think critically is an essential life skill which needs to be developed in order to compete in a global environment. Current literature reveals that explicit critical instruction, and practice of critical thinking (CT) strategies helps to improve learner's performances. Hence, it is vital for instructors to have strong beliefs in critical thinking as it influences their classroom practice. The present study seeks to fill the gap between instructors' beliefs as well as practices which serves to be important in improving the educational process. The aim o f this study was to investigate how instructors perceived CT as well as their classroom instruction in teaching the skills among tertiary level learners. Further, it also investigates whether the constructs (beliefs and practices) of the instructors matched with one another. The participants of this study involved instructors from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) located in Sri Iskandar Perak. Data were collected using exploratory qualitative approach and the findings were presented in a qualitative descriptive approach through interviews as well as observations. Findings revealed that both instructors had indicated their own beliefs which reflect general concept of CT that is acceptable and relevant to their field of scope. Also, both instructors' CT instructions reflect higher-order thinking that mostly requires learners to use their thinking. It could be synthesized that what they believed about CT skills seem to match with what they practiced. Overall, instructor of graphic design (GD) had more explicit fostering of CT where learners appeared to be reaping and engaged with the skills more indepth compared to English writing class. This is due to the nature o f the field (GD) which requires CT skills in the course subject. Based on the findings, this study also provides implications for pedagogy and practice as well as recommendation for improvement of practices and future research. (


Recent advances in seismic acquisition, processing and visualization techniques image carbonate strata with unprecedented resolution. This volume documents the current state of the art in seismic imaging and interpreting of carbonate systems and captures the dynamics of the carbonate system on a large exploration scale and on a small reservoir scale. The book emphasizes the newest approaches in seismic visualization, seismic sedimentology and stratigraphy, seismic attribute analysis and their application for building improved 3-D reservoir models. Among the topics covered are the delineation of the complex histories of carbonate platform sequences from seismic data, the relationships between geometries and forming processes, the imaging of faults for improved mapping of potential fluid migration pathways, and use of seismic attributes for the extraction of rock properties in the sedimentary bodies. The book illustrates the power of integrating seismic and geological data to better predict of the architecture and heterogeneities in carbonate depositional systems. As such the book will be a useful reference for both geologists and geophysicists.


Abstract : The MJ-1 Test Stand is a gasoline engine-driven source of filtered hydraulic pressure designed to test hydraulic systems and individual hydraulic units. This report provides measured and extrapolated data defining the bioacoustic environments produced by this unit operating outdoors on a concrete apron at normal rated/loaded conditions. Near-field data are reported for 36 location in a wide variety of physical and psychoacoustic measures: overall and band sound pressure levels, C-weighted and A-weighted sound levels, preferred speech interference level, perceived noise level, and limiting times for total daily exposure of personnel with and without standard Air Force ear protectors. Far-field data measured at 36 locations are normalized to standard metorological conditions and extrapolated from 10-1600 meters to derive sets of equal-value contours for these same seven acoustic measures as functions of angle and distance from the source. Refer to Volume 1 of this handbook, 'USAF Bioenvironmental Noise Data Handbook, Vol L: Organization, Content and Application,' AMRL-TR-75-50(1) 1975, for discussion of the objective and design of the handbook, the types of data presented, measurement procedures, instrumentation, data processing, definitions of quantities, symbols, equations, applications, limitations, etc. (Author)


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Background Antibiotic over prescription for upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) in primary care exacerbates antimicrobial resistance. There is a need for effective alternatives to antibiotic prescribing. Honey is a lay remedy for URTIs, and has an emerging evidence base for its use. Honey has antimicrobial properties, and guidelines recommended honey for acute cough in children. Objectives To evaluate the effectiveness of honey for symptomatic relief in URTIs. Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis. We searched Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science, AMED, Cab abstracts, Cochrane Library, LILACS, and CINAHL with a combination of keywords and MeSH terms. Results We identified 1345 unique records, and 14 studies were included. Overall risk of bias was moderate. Compared with usual care, honey improved combined symptom score (three studies, mean difference −3.96, 95% CI −5.42 to −2.51, I2=0%), cough frequency (eight studies, standardised mean difference (SMD) −0.36, 95% CI −0.50 to −0.21, I2=0%) and cough severity (five studies, SMD −0.44, 95% CI −0.64 to −0.25, I2=20%). We combined two studies comparing honey with placebo for relieving combined symptoms (SMD −0.63, 95% CI −1.44 to 0.18, I2=91%). Conclusions Honey was superior to usual care for the improvement of symptoms of upper respiratory tract infections. It provides a widely available and cheap alternative to antibiotics. Honey could help efforts to slow the spread of antimicrobial resistance, but further high quality, placebo controlled trials are needed. PROSPERO registration No Study ID, CRD42017067582 on PROSPERO: International prospective register of systematic reviews (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/).


Tissue dehydration, including that of the brain, is a natural part of maturation. In the newborn it is accompanied by an acute salt water diuresis which is particularly pronounced in the premature infant. The decrease in cranial volume and fall in intracranial pressure to subatmospheric levels observed in premature infants after birth suggests that the brain shares in this process. Since fluid homeostasis is normally under hormonal control, the inordinate loss of fluid in the prematurely born may be attributable to a hormonal imbalance. The possibility that prolactin, a proven osmoregulatory hormone in submammalian species but not in mammals and primates, may have an important role in this process is suggested by recent evidence that prolactin regulates tissue water in fetal and newborn animals. If this hormone assists in the regulation of water and electrolyte content of the brain during the perinatal period then prolactin receptors might be expected at blood-brain and blood-CSF barriers. Our study with preterm, term and adult rabbits indicates that prolactin receptors are present and in much higher concentrations in the choroid plexus than in other tissues examined. Specific binding of prolactin to receptors on tissues normally is observed to increase with age. Since binding to the choroid plexus decreased with age it would suggest that the effect of prolactin on choroid plexus function may be more important during the perinatal than later stages of development.


Though already famous, wealthy, and squarely established as a popular chronicler of the early twentieth century, humorist Ring Lardner's foray into a serious literary career with Charles Scribner's Sons Publishing Company is best characterized as an act of authorial resistance. Rather than evolve into the "serious" author the firm had hoped for, Lardner chose to lampoon himself, authorship, publishing, and serious writers with a series of prefaces written for his Scribner's titles. In the prefaces to How to Write Short Stories (with Samples) (1924) and The Love Nest and Other Stories (1926), Lardner resisted overtures to rebrand and remarket himself by reminding the public of his strengths: satire, comedy, and manipulation. The result: pieces as textually nonsensical and arbitrary as many of his writings on the surface, yet carefully constructed to expose the underside of socio-cultural mores, the publishing industry, and the fraternity of "serious" writers he never intended to join.


Background: The present study was conducted to assess utilization pattern of various cervical cancer screening methods and their outcomes among outpatients of tertiary care hospital. Materials & Methods: 140 women age ranged 20-50 years were recruited. A questionnaire was developed and distributed among all subjects and asked to fill it and return it. Awareness and utilization and pattern of cervical screening was noted. Results: Age group 20-30 years comprised of 40, 30-40 years had 60 and 40-50 years had 40 subjects. Education level was upto primary in 65, secondary in 45 and no education in 30 subjects. 90 were married, 25 unmarried and 15 were widow. 98 had awareness and 42 had never heard about it. 55 utilized it and 85 never utilized it. The difference was significant (P< 0.05). The type of methods of screening was PAP's smear in 15, VIA in 35, VILI in 10, frequency of screening was yearly in 35, once in 20 and never in 85. Accessibility to results of screening was 25 received results of screening, 10 not received results of screening and 20 did not indicate receipt of results of screening. The difference was significant (P< 0.05). Conclusion: Authors found that there was lack of awareness and utilization of cervical screening among subjects. Most commonly used methods was visual inspection with acetic acid.


Peridotite mantle xenoliths from the Premier kimberlite pipe. South Africa, have mostly similar Os-Ir-Ru-Rh contents as primitive mantle, but they are relatively depleted in Pt and Pd. The concentrations of the IPGE and Rh remain largely constant with decreasing indices of melt extraction (e.g. Al2O3, CaO, Sc), but there is a positive correlation between Pt and Pd contents and the basaltic components. At large degrees of melt extraction, all PGE are highly depleted indicating complete consumption of the PGE host phases. These compositional patterns could suggest that Pt and Pd behave in an incompatible manner and the IPGE and Rh in a compatible manner during the initial stages of partial melting. In addition, there is some evidence that Pt and Pd may be mobile during mantle metasomatism. For example, there is a positive correlation between Pt and Pd contents and those of mobile elements such as Ba, Rb, K2O and Sr. Furthermore, those xenoliths that equilibrated at the shallowest levels (the spinel harzburgites) are most depleted in Pt and Pd, in agreement with a model of refertilization of the deeper portions of the SCLM. It has been suggested by previous workers that the refertilization of the Premier xenoliths occurred during the Bushveld magmatic event. This could be tested by collecting more PGE data from other metasomatised Kaapvaal xenoliths and comparing them to the present data.


Inverter non-linearities and machine spatial harmonics yield voltage errors that make harmonic current control and mitigation a challenging task. In this study, a method is presented that allows online identification and compensation of these effects to enable precise control and mitigation of current harmonics of interior permanent magnet synchronous machines with non-linear magnetics. The method requires no additional sensors and only fundamental machine model parameters. It can be implemented easily in the control software of existing inverter systems. Test bench measurements show excellent current harmonic mitigation capability, good dynamic performance and precise control of arbitrary current harmonics. The principle is transferable to other machine types and grid applications enabling the control and mitigation of current harmonics in a wide field of applications.


The influence of solar activity on magnetic measurements taken during the Italian repeat station surveys performed in 1999/2000 and 2009/2010 has been investigated. A method to estimate the difference between the 2000.0 and 2010.0 surveys in terms of the "residual" (i.e. not completely reduced) external contribution is proposed. This method is also based on the removal of the contribution due to the magnetic field of internal origin by means of CHAOS3 model from magnetic repeat station measurements. The origin of the observed differences is interpreted in terms of the very different level of solar activity between 2000.0 and 2010.0. Indeed, results seem to suggest that differences could be attributed to the enhanced ring current intensity during a phase of solar maximum. The investigation of the spatial patterns of these differences suggests that they could be reduced by introducing a larger number of variometer stations, especially during surveys performed under conditions of high solar activity.


During the 18th and 19th centuries, medical spending in the United States rose slowly, on average about .25% faster than gross domestic product (GDP), and varied widely between rural and urban regions. Accumulating scientific advances caused spending to accelerate by 1910. From 1930 to 1955, rapid per-capita income growth accommodated major medical expansion while keeping the health share of GDP almost constant. During the 1950s and 1960s, prosperity and investment in research, the workforce, and hospitals caused a rapid surge in spending and consolidated a truly national health system. Excess growth rates (above GDP growth) were above +5% per year from 1966 to 1970, which would have doubled the health-sector share in fifteen years had it not moderated, falling under +3% in the 1980s, +2% in 1990s, and +1.5% since 2005. The question of when national health expenditure growth can be brought into line with GDP and made sustainable for the long run is still open. A review of historical data over three centuries forces confrontation with issues regarding what to include and how long events continue to effect national health accounting and policy. Empirical analysis at a national scale over multiple decades fails to support a position that many of the commonly discussed variables (obesity, aging, mortality rates, coinsurance) do cause significant shifts in expenditure trends. What does become clear is that there are long and variable lags before macroeconomic and technological events affect spending: three to six years for business cycles and multiple decades for major recessions, scientific discoveries, and organizational change. Health-financing mechanisms, such as employer-based health insurance, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) are seen to be both cause and effect, taking years to develop and affecting spending for decades to come.


In this paper, a new approach for generating test vectors that detects faults in combinational circuits is introduced. The approach is based on automatically designing a circuit which implements the D-algorithm, an automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) algorithm, specialized for the combinational circuit. Our approach exploits fine-grain parallelism by performing the following in three clock cycles: direct backward/forward implications, conflict checking, selecting next gate to propagate fault or to justify a line, decisions on gate inputs, and loading the state of the circuit after backup. In this paper, we show the feasibility of this approach in terms of hardware cost and speed and how it compares with software-based techniques.


Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. When Ray turns up to visit his old university friends Charlie and Emily, he's given a special task: to be so much his useless self that he makes Charlie look good by comparison. But Ray has his own buried feelings to contend with. Decades earlier, he and Emily would listen to jazz when they were alone, and now, as Sarah Vaughan sings through the speakers, he struggles to control everything the sound brings with it. In Kazuo Ishiguro's hands, a snapshot of domestic realism becomes a miniature masterpiece of memory and forgetting. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.


Over the past half century, in the United States and other developed nations, children's free play with other children has declined sharply. Over the same period, anxiety, depression, suicide, feelings of helplessness, and narcissism have increased sharply in children, adolescents, and young adults. This article documents these historical changes and contends that the decline in play has contributed to the rise in the psychopathology of young people. Play functions as the major means by which children (1) develop intrinsic interests and competencies; (2) learn how to make decisions, solve problems, exert self-control, and follow rules; (3) learn to regulate their emotions; (4) make friends and learn to get along with others as equals; and (5) experience joy. Through all of these effects, play promotes mental health.


This paper provides a foundation for modeling the set of activities and their relationships by which systems are engineered, or, more broadly, by which products and services are developed. It provides background, motivations, and formal definitions for process modeling in this specialized environment. We treat the process itself as a kind of system that can be engineered. However, while product systems must be created, the process systems for developing complex products must, to a greater extent, be discovered and induced. Then, they tend to be reused, either formally as standard processes, or informally by the workforce. We distinguish and clarify several important concepts in modeling processes, including: product development versus repetitive business processes, descriptive versus prescriptive processes, activities as actions versus deliverables as interactions, standard versus deployed processes, centralized versus decentralized process modeling, "as is" versus "to be" process modeling, and multiple phases in product development. We also present a basically simple yet highly extendable and generalized framework for modeling product development processes. The framework enables building a single model to support a variety of purposes, including project planning (scheduling, budgeting, resource loading, and risk management) and control, and it provides the scaffolding for knowledge management and organizational learning, among numerous other uses. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 9: 104–128, 2006


Abstract. The combination of data obtained with different sensors (data fusion) is a powerful technique that can provide target products of the best quality in terms of precision and accuracy, as well as spatial and temporal coverage and resolution. In this paper the results are presented of the data fusion of measurements of ozone vertical profile performed by two space-borne interferometers (IASI on METOP and MIPAS on ENVISAT) using the new measurement-space-solution method. With this method both the loss of information due to interpolation and the propagation of possible biases (caused by a priori information) are avoided. The data fusion products are characterized by means of retrieval errors, information gain, averaging kernels and number of degrees of freedom. The analysis is performed both on simulated and real measurements and the results demonstrate and quantify the improvement of data fusion products with respect to measurements of a~single instrument.


Farming styles theory, as developed by Jan Douwe van der Ploeg to explain diversity in agriculture, is being considered as a possible tool to assist in targeting of extension in Australia. A farming style is a socially constructed type that reflects the worldviews and strategies of one configuration of farming practice for a particular commodity (or common combination of commodities) in a particular region. The various farming styles in a region represent a repertoire of possible worldviews and strategies. We first conducted focus groups to identify farming styles among Australian broadacre croppers. We then conducted case studies to validate these styles, and to gain further understanding of the rationale of each style. The case studies, however, failed to confirm the styles. The findings instead suggested that the styles which emerged from the focus groups were artifacts of the method. We conclude that focus group methodology legitimized the expression of stereotypical images grounded in local farming discourse and provided an avenue for reification of "mythological" styles, although the styles still provided social control over farmers' activities. Researchers should be aware that focus groups potentially allow the expression of mythology, and should reflect on the validity of data collected by this method.


The economic analysis of legal and regulatory issues need not be limited to the neoclassical economic approach. The expert contributors to this work employ a variety of heterodox legal-economic theories to address a broad range of legal issues. They demonstrate how these various approaches can lead to very different conclusions concerning the role of the law and legal intervention in a wide array of contexts. The schools of thought and methodologies represented here include institutional economics, new institutional economics, socio-economics, social economics, behavioral economics, game theory, feminist economics, Rawlsian economics, radical economics, Austrian economics, and personalist economics. The legal and regulatory issues examined include anti-trust and competition, corporate governance, the environment and natural resources, land use and property rights, unions and collective bargaining, welfare benefits, work-time regulation and standards, sexual harassment in the workplace, obligations of employers and employees to each other, crime, torts, and even the structure of government. Each contributor brings a different emphasis and provides thoughtful, sometimes provocative analysis and conclusions. Together, these heterodox insights will provide valuable supplementary reading for courses in law and economics as well as public policy and business courses at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.


The purpose of this research is to broaden the limited knowledge of the way water moves within a canal which is virtually a self-contained water course, and how the movement of water affects the distribution of pollutants.
This study is intended to enhance the relatively limited knowledge of the processes of water within a canal. As canals are increasing in popularity, an understanding of how pollution contained within the water and how pollutants accumulate and spread throughout the canal system will become more important from a health and safety perspective.
The research methods consisted of an assessment of the water quality using parameters including dissolved oxygen, nitrates, phosphates and electrical conductivity. The full range of the parameters tested is listed in the methodology. In situ testing and ex situ laboratory testing was used to determine the level of pollutants. The flow of the canal was recorded and this information was used to determine the distribution of pollutants within the canal.
The research confirmed the belief that the movement of water in the canal would be minor yet the expected conformity of the pollution distribution to the direction of the water movement was not met.
The most important and useful findings to be taken from this investigation are that the pollution level of the canal is quite low and that the movement of water has been observed and recorded, something which is not well established in the literature on canals.
The enclosed methodology used for the collection and analysis of the water and the assessment of the movement of water was followed, the equipment was used correctly thus the findings of the water quality and the water movement can easily be replicated and are trustworthy.
From this study it has been learnt that the force of the water is very weak and has little to no impact upon the distribution of pollutants in Lancaster Canal. It was also learned that the canal is contains relatively little pollution.
A limitation is that a relatively small length of the canal was tested and the test results and water movement from this area may not be represented equally across the whole course of the canal.


Hidden variables, evolving over time, appear in multiple settings, where it is valuable to recover them, typically from observed sums. Our driving application is 'network tomography', where we need to estimate the origin-destination (OD) traffic flows to determine, e.g., who is communicating with whom in a local area network. This information allows network engineers and managers to solve problems in design, routing, configuration debugging, monitoring and pricing. Unfortunately the direct measurement of the OD traffic is usually difficult, or even impossible; instead, we can easily measure the loads on every link, that is, sums of desirable OD flows.In this paper we propose i-FILTER, a method to solve this problem, which improves the state-of-the-art by (a) introducing explicit time dependence, and by (b) using realistic, non-Gaussian marginals in the statistical models for the traffic flows, as never attempted before. We give experiments on real data, where i-FILTER scales linearly with new observations and out-performs the best existing solutions, in a wide variety of settings. Specifically, on real network traffic measured at CMU, and at AT&T, i-FILTER reduced the estimation errors between 15% and 46% in all cases.


Molecules based on the 5-arylthio-5H-chromenopyridine structure have been studied for a variety of medicinal applications, including liver fibrosis. We have recently found that the C–S linkage can be cleaved with Pt(II) and Au(I), something that was not previously recognized. In this current work, we examine the structure, properties, and reactivity of 5-arylthio-5H-chromenopyridines using spectroscopy, crystallography, reactivity, density functional theory (DFT) calculations, and electrochemistry. We report the crystal structures of 5-arylthio-5H-chromenopyridines, as well as their DFT-calculated structures and electronic structures. The DFT calculations help to explain the electronic properties of these complexes, such as the observation that "soft" metals cleave the C–S bond. We find that the arylthio group is a good leaving group on these molecules due to the stability of the carbocation that is formed, and can be removed via reduction with NaBH4. Methoxy-substituted chromenopyridines were found to be viable at inhibiting liver fibrosis. These results will help inform the biological studies with these compounds to determine method of action and enhance development of new drug molecules with increased stability and activity based on the 5H-chromenopyridine scaffold.