Title of Document: THE EFFECTS OF CONSTRUCTS OF MOTIVATION THAT AFFIRM AND UNDERMINE READING ACHIEVEMENT INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL ON MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS' READING ACHIEVEMENT Cassandra Shular Coddington, Ph.D., 2009 Directed By: Professor Allan Wigfield, Department of Human Development The purpose of this study was to examine whether motivation for reading was multidimensional in two respects. First, central constructs were drawn f om three major theories of motivation. Second, versions of each construct were formulated that we re expected to correlate positively with achievement (affirming); and ver sions of each construct were formulated that were expected to correlate negatively wi th achievement (undermining). The goal of the study was to determine whether these reading motiva tion constructs were relatively independent and whether the multiple motivations c ontributed to predicting achievement. Constructs of motivation were derived from Self-Determination Theory (Dec i, Vallerand, Pelletier, & Ryan, 1991), Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977, 2001) and Social Goals (Wentzel, 2002, 2004). Constructs of motivation that affirm reading achievement and constructs of motivation that undermine reading achievement were bot h examined. These constructs included, intrinsic motivation, avoidance, self-effica cy, perceived difficulty, prosocial interactions, and antisocial interactions. T hi study also investigated student motivations for reading for two including the Gates-MacGini tie Reading Comprehension test, a measure of inferencing ability, a motivati on questionnaire for school reading, and a motivation questionnaire for outside school reading. Reading/Language Arts grades were also obtained for all students. Four obje ctives were addressed through the results of six research questions. Factor analyses re sults upported the discussion of motivation as a multidimensional construct. Three factors emerge d when examining the three constructs of motivation that affirm achievement and the three constructs of motivation that undermine achievement. In addition, factor analyses result supported the perspective that undermining motivations are uniquely predictive of achievement and not simply negatively valenced affirming motivations. Two factors emerged when analyzing the affirming and undermining reasons, school and outside school. Participants were 247 seventh grade students from two middle schools in a midAtlantic state. Students completed four measures, constructs of motivation in the oretical pairs. Regression analyses indicated that undermining motivations are predict ive of achievement even when affirming motivations have been taken into account statis tically. Some differences in these results for the school and outside school constructs are discussed. Significance of the findings was discussed in terms of the theoret ical importance of the simultaneous functioning of multiple motivations for reading among adolescent students. THE EFFECTS OF CONSTRUCTS OF MOTIVATION THAT AFFIRM AND UNDERMINE READING ACHIEVEMENT INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF SCHOL ON MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS' READING ACHIEVEMENT


Inflation modeling is a very important tool for conducting an efficient monetary policy. This doctoral thesis reviewed inflation models, in particular the Phillips curve models of inflation dynamics. We focused on a well known and widely used model, the so-called three equation new Keynesian model which is a system of equations consisting of a new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC), an investment and saving (IS) curve and an interest rate rule.

We gave a detailed derivation of these equations. The interest rate rule used in this model is normally determined by using a Lagrangian method to solve an optimal control problem constrained by a standard discrete time NKPC which describes the inflation dynamics and an IS curve that represents the output gaps dynamics. In contrast to the real world, this method assumes that the policy makers intervene continuously. This means that the costs resulting from the change in the interest rates are ignored. We showed also that there are approximation errors made, when one log-linearizes non linear equations, by doing the derivation of the standard discrete time NKPC.

We agreed with other researchers as mentioned in this thesis, that errors which result from ignoring such log-linear approximation errors and the costs of altering interest rates by determining interest rate rule, can lead to a suboptimal interest rate rule and hence to non-optimal paths of output gaps and inflation rate.

To overcome such a problem, we proposed a stochastic optimal impulse control method. We formulated the problem as a stochastic optimal impulse control problem by considering the costs of change in interest rates and the approximation error terms. In order to formulate this problem, we first transform the standard discrete time NKPC and the IS curve into their high-frequency versions and hence into their continuous time versions where error terms are described by a zero mean Gaussian white noise with a finite and constant variance. After formulating this problem, we use the quasi-variational inequality approach to solve analytically a special case of the central bank problem, where an inflation rate is supposed to be on target and a central bank has to optimally control output gap dynamics. This method gives an optimal control band in which output gap process has to be maintained and an optimal control strategy, which includes the optimal size of intervention and optimal intervention time, that can be used to keep the process into the optimal control band.

Finally, using a numerical example, we examined the impact of some model parameters on optimal control strategy. The results show that an increase in the output gap volatility as well as in the fixed and proportional costs of the change in interest rate lead to an increase in the width of the optimal control band. In this case, the optimal intervention requires the central bank to wait longer before undertaking another control action.


As part of the Boston Earned Income Tax Credit Coalition's free tax preparation service offered at the Boston Roxbury Resource Center between January and April 2013, 945 low-to-moderate income individuals were asked about payroll tax changes, financial planning, and their personal characteristics. Using these survey responses, the authors calculated how these individuals planned to respond to the payroll tax hike and their tax refund. The results show that their marginal propensity to consume (MPC) out of the tax refund is 30 percentage points lower than their spending reaction to the tax hike. Specifically, for every dollar less of income due to the payroll tax increase, consumption declines by 90 cents, while for each additional dollar of income from a tax refund, consumption increases by 60 cents. This asymmetric response is persistent across race, gender, and proxies of financial constraints such as credit scores, credit utilization, and so on. The lack of observable explanations for individuals' asymmetric behavior could be the result of the tax changes themselves being different in terms of their timing and method of delivery.


Body and Emotion is a study of the relationship between culture and emotional distress, an examination of the cultural forces that influence, make sense of, and heal severe pain and malaise. In order to investigate this relationship, Robert R. Desjarlais served as an apprentice healer among the Yolmo Sherpa, a Tibetan Buddhist people who reside in the Helambu region of north-central Nepal.


Widespread agreement that poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon, encompassing deprivations along multiple dimensions, clashes with often vociferous disagreement about how best to measure these deprivations. Drawing on the recent literature, this short note proposes three methodological alternatives to the false dichotomy between scalar indices of multidimensional poverty, on the one hand, and a "dashboard" approach that looks only at marginal distributions, on the other. These alternatives include simple Venn diagrams of the overlap of deprivations across dimensions, multivariate stochastic dominance analysis, and the analysis of copula functions, which capture the extent of interdependency across dimensions. Examples from the literature on both developing and developed countries are provided.


In 2018, the National Cancer Institute and NRG Oncology partnered for the first time to host a joint workshop on systemic radiopharmaceutical therapy (RPT) to specifically address dosimetry issues and strategies for future clinical trials. The workshop focused on current dosimetric approaches for clinical trials, strategies under development that would optimize dose reporting, and future desired or optimized approaches for novel emerging radionuclides and carriers in development. In this article, we review the main approaches that are applied clinically to calculate the absorbed dose. These include absorbed doses calculated over a variety of spatial scales, including whole body, organ, suborgan, and voxel, the last 3 of which are achievable within the MIRD schema (S value) and can be calculated with analytic methods or Monte Carlo methods, the latter in most circumstances. This article will also contrast currently available methods and tools with those used in the past, to propose a pathway whereby dosimetry helps the field by optimizing the biologic effect of the treatment and trial design in the drug approval process to reduce financial and logistical costs. We also briefly discuss the dosimetric equivalent of biomarkers to help bring a precision medicine approach to RPT implementation when merited by evidence collected during early-phase trial investigations. Advances in the methodology and related tools have made dosimetry the optimum biomarker for RPT.


In October 1999, the British government enacted the Working Families' Tax Credit, a generous tax credit aimed at encouraging work among low-income families with children. This paper uses longitudinal data collected between 1991 and 2001 to evaluate the effect of this reform on single mothers. We identify this impact by comparing changes in behavior of lone mothers to changes for single women without children. Our results show that the financial incentives of the reform had powerful effects on a wide range of lone mothers' decisions. The reform led to a substantial increase in employment rates of about 7 percentage points, which was driven by both higher rates at which lone mothers remained in the labor force and higher rates at which they entered it. Women's responses were highly heterogeneous, with larger effects for mothers with one pre-school aged child, and virtually no effect for mothers with multiple older children. The reform also led to significant reductions in single mothers' subsequent fertility and in the rate at which they married. Our findings suggest that the generous childcare tax credit component of the reform played a key role in explaining the estimated employment responses. Finally, we find relatively large behavioral effects in anticipation of the actual reform, which emphasizes the importance of allowing for such effects in future evaluation research.


To improve the welfare of the rural poor and keep them in the countryside, the government has been spending 40% of the value of agricultural GDP on agricultural support services. But can investment make smallholder agriculture prosperous in such adverse conditions? This paper derives an answer by applying a two-output six-input stochastic translog distance function, with inefficiency effects and biased technical change to panel data for the 18 districts and the commercial sector, from 1979 to 1996. This model demonstrates that herds are the most important input, followed by draft power, land and seeds. Multilateral indices for technical change, technical efficiency and total factor productivity (TFP) show that the technology level of the commercial sector is more than six times that of traditional agriculture and that the gap has been increasing, due to technological regression in traditional agriculture and modest progress in the commercial sector. Since the levels of efficiency are similar, the same pattern is repeated by the TFP indices. This result highlights the policy dilemma of the trade-off between efficiency and equity objectives.


Hyper-heuristics are search algorithms which operate on a set of heuristics with the goal of solving a wide range of optimisation problems. It has been observed that different heuristics perform differently between different optimisation problems. A hyper-heuristic combines a set of predefined heuristics, and applies a machine learning technique to predict which heuristic is the most suitable to apply at a given point in time while solving a given problem. A variety of machine learning techniques have been proposed in the literature. Most of the existing machine learning techniques are reinforcement learning mechanisms interacting with the search environment with the goal of adapting the selection of heuristics during the search process. The literature on the theoretical foundation of reinforcement learning hyper-heuristics is almost nonexisting. This work provides theoretical analyses of reinforcement learning hyper-heuristics. The goal is to shed light on the learning capabilities and limitations of reinforcement learning hyper-heuristics. This improves our understanding of these hyper-heuristics, and aid the design of better reinforcement learning hyper-heuristics. It is revealed that the commonly used additive reinforcement learning mechanism, under a mild assumption, chooses asymptotically heuristics uniformly at random. This thesis also proposes the problem of identifying the most suitable heuristic with a given error probability. We show a general lower bound on the time that "every" reinforcement learning hyper-heuristic needs to identify the most suitable heuristic with a given error probability. The results reveal a general limitation to learning achieved by this computational approach. Following our theoretical analysis, different reusable and easyto-implement reinforcement learning hyper-heuristics are proposed in this thesis. The proposed hyper-heuristics are evaluated on well-known combinatorial optimisation problems. One of the proposed reinforcement learning hyper-heuristics outperformed a state-of-the-art algorithm on several benchmark problems of the well-known CHeSC 2011.


This is a co-authored journal article which examines contemporary feminine painting practice across race, gender and national idenitity. The authors are Majella Clancy and Louise Wallace. The research imperative is the result of Clancy's PhD studies. I am the second supervisor for Clancy's PhD. Clancy is the lead author of this article. I had a consultancy role and also revised and re-wrote sections from Clancy's drafts. The journal 'Women's Studies; An Interdisciplinary Journal' is peer reviewed and provides a forum for the presentation of scholarship and criticism about women in the fields of literature, history, art, sociology, law, political science, economics, anthropology and the sciences. It is published internationally (online and in print) by Routledge and the editor is Wendy Martin, Claremont Graduate University, California. The article focuses on 3 female painters: the Irish mixed-media artist Majella Clancy, the African-American painter Ellen Gallagher and the Pakistani born, American based painter Shahzia Sikander. The journal article may therefore be placed within the field occupied by feminist art historians such as Professor Griselda Pollock and feminist social geographers such as Professor Catherine Nash. The article uses feminist methodologies and re-examines themes from my V.C.R.S. funded doctoral thesis (2007) in its examination of aesthetic modernism and its failure to articulate those voices which do not fit the binarist framework of the art historical canon. The article suggests that the three female painters unravel modernist histories through the language of paint. In the recent book 'Contemporary Painting in Context' (Museum Tusculanum Press 2010) the cultural theorist Anne Ring Petersen argues that 'painters have begun to explore the possibilities of broadening the definition of what constitutes "space" in relation to painting'. Ring Peterson refers to a physical expansion that addresses three-dimensional, or installation painting. The articles seeks to address two-dimensional space in contemporary women's painting. In particular it explores the possibility of a differing spatial order within paint that is constructed at the intersection of cultural and sexual difference.


Zincovit tablet is a nutritional supplement used to improve general wellbeing of an individual. A study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of different formulations of Zincovit tablets on sodium selenite induced age related cataract. A total of 48 rat pups of either sex were used which were divided into 8 groups of 6 rats each On 7th post-natal day a single dose of sodium selenite (20 μM/kg) was administered s.c. to all the groups except for the normal control group (group l). The rat pups were given two formulations of Zincovit tablets (40, 80 and 160mg/kg), one day prior to the administration of selenite and continued till day 20. Eye was examined daily to check cataract formation. On day 21st the rat pups were sacrificed lens were separated for estimation of Glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity, Superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, Catalase, Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) activity, Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) level, Aldose reductase (AR) level and Sorbitol dehydrogenase (SDH).Significant reduction in glutathione peroxidase, Adenosine triphosphate level in all selenite treated group compared to control group. Treatment with Zincovit tablet at different doses was not able to completely reverse the selenite induced reduction in glutathione peroxidase. Almost 50% of rats did not develop cataract in Zincovit tablet with vitamin A and grape seed treated group. Zincovit tablet (vitamin A: 5000 IU without grape seed extract) was better in delaying the onset of cataract when compared to other groups.


Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) has two states of infection, latent and lytic. During the latent state the viral genome remains stable in cells as episomes and replicates with cellular DNA. During the lytic cycle the viral DNA becomes amplified and packaged in newly formed virions. An unsolved problem is whether newly replicated EBV DNA produced upon lytic cycle activation is associated with histones, and if so, whether these histones are acetylated. This question has biological significance as knowing the chromatin structure of genes is important in determining their function and expression profile. Our hypothesis is that newly synthesized EBV lytic DNA is associated with histones and the histone tails are selectively acetylated. To investigate our hypothesis we performed chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) in HH514-16 cells, a Burkitt's Lymphoma cell line, during latent and lytic replication. We used quantitative PCR (qPCR) to detect the relative concentration of DNA among the different samples. We tested three different variables: type of inducing agent, duration of treatment, and different regulatory regions in the genome of Epstein-Barr Virus. We found that in cells induced into the lytic cycle with Trichostatin A (TSA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi), association of newly replicated EBV DNA with acetylated histone 3 (H3) increased ~ 6-10 fold. This increase in association was greatest 72 hrs after treatment. Furthermore, activation of lytic viral replication in HH514-16 cells using a different inducing agent, Azacytidine (AZC), which is known to function as a DNA methyltransferase inhibitor, increased binding of H3 with viral DNA ~8 fold. However, unlike TSA, AZC increased the acetylation state of histones bound to newly synthesized viral DNA only ~ 2 fold. Changing the regulatory region of the EBV genome analyzed in qPCR did not affect our results. Our results suggest that newly replicated viral DNA is associated with histones, a fraction of which are acetylated. The degree of acetylation likely depends on the agent used to induce the lytic cycle. H3 is highly acetylated when an HDACi is used and less acetylated when AZC is used. Our study provides new insight on the epigenetic profile of newly replicated viral DNA during the lytic cycle. It remains to be determined whether histones are packaged together with viral genomes into virions and whether the chromatin state of virion DNA affects gene expression after the virus enters uninfected cells.


The Guantanamo prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind behind the deadly USS Cole bombing, highlights an unresolved issue in military commissions: whether the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution applies to bar hearsay statements of unavailable witnesses. While al-Nashiri's counsel recently moved for the military judge to take judicial notice that the Confrontation Clause applies, it is worth considering that the question may be framed differently. Rather than ask whether the Confrontation Clause applies in a military commission, we may ask whether a "testimonial statement" — the only kind of hearsay evidence that triggers the Confrontation Clause — is a concept consistent with wartime tribunals. This Article proposes that a testimonial statement is a uniquely civilian concept, situating military commissions outside the scope of the Confrontation Clause. The military commission trying al-Nashiri nonetheless preserves the constitutional value of reliability while offering different procedural protections than are offered in federal courts, such as admitting hearsay statements from witnesses made unavailable by war.


Observations of macroscopic quantum coherence in driven systems, e.g. polariton condensates, have strongly stimulated experimental as well as theoretical efforts during the last decade. We address the question of whether a driven quantum condensate is a superfluid, allowing for the effects of disorder and its nonequilibrium nature. We predict that for spatial dimensions d<4 the superfluid stiffness vanishes once the condensate exceeds a critical size, and treat in detail the case d=2. Thus a nonequilibrium condensate is not a superfluid in the thermodynamic limit, even for weak disorder, although superfluid behavior would persist in small systems.


A primary feature of most structured finance transactions is the initial transfer of the assets being financed. The time, effort, and expenses of an asset transfer may be an impediment to the execution of a successful transaction. For decades, auto lease transactions have mitigated this impediment through the use of titling trusts, which allow for the transfer of the beneficial and economic ownership of an asset without the necessity of transferring legal title. Auto lease titling trusts have gained broad acceptance in the structured finance markets, including supporting securitizations receiving the highest structured finance credit ratings. Recently, structured finance transactions involving real estate have begun to adopt the use of the titling trust to achieve the same viability, scalability, and efficiency found in auto lease transactions. Key Findings • The time, effort, and expense associated with transferring real estate can be a barrier to including real estate in structured finance transactions. • Real estate titling trusts can streamline the transfer process required to include real estate in structured finance transactions. • Although there are some challenges associated with real estate titling trusts, they are gaining acceptance in the market and at some point soon will be as widely accepted as auto lease titling trusts in structured finance transactions. TOPIC: Fixed income and structured finance


Background and Objectives: Pre-requisite programs (PRPs) are "primary conditions and requirements essential for HACCP operations, which are crucial in food safety programs". The present study was conducted to evaluate the impact of implementation of PRPs on the microbial parameters of pasteurized milk (according to the National Standard of Iran). Effectiveness of HACCP operation requirements and efficiency of Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) were also evaluated in control of the above-mentioned microbial parameters. Materials and Methods: According to the approved checklist of the Vice-chancellor in Food and Drug affairs, PRPs of 26 factories were evaluated from March 2014 to March 2015 in two-month intervals, and their total and component scores were obtained along with the microbial parameters of pasteurized milk. Generalized Estimating Equations (GEEs) were used to determine the significance of total score and the impact of its components on controlling microbial hazards. Results: There was a reverse significant relation between the total scores of the PRPs and microbial hygiene indices (total and coliform count) which approves the effectiveness of operating the programs in controlling the mentioned microorganisms. Efficiency of each pre-requisite program was different in controlling the microbial parameters. Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) had a prominent effect on controlling of the index microorganisms of hygienic operations. Overall, the results showed a little probability of contamination with E. coli in the pasteurized milk samples of Fars Province for which the statistical analysis was ignored. Conclusions: The exact operation of PRPs resulted in reduction of microbial parameters in a way that increasing the total score of PRPs led to decrease in microbial parameters of total count (TC), coliforms, molds and yeasts. The findings further suggest the application of this checklist in evaluation and prediction of microbial parameters.


We use the Southern secession movement of 1860-1861 to study how elites in democracy enact their preferred policies. Most states used specially convened conventions to determine whether or not to secede from the Union. We argue that although the delegates of these conventions were popularly elected, the electoral rules favored slaveholders. Using an original dataset of representation in each convention, we first demonstrate that slave-intensive districts were systematically overrepresented. Slaveholders were also spatially concentrated and could thereby obtain local pluralities in favor of secession more easily. As a result of these electoral biases, less than 10% of the electorate was sufficient to elect a majority of delegates in four of the six original Confederate states. We also show how delegates representing slave-intensive counties were more likely to support secession. These factors explain the disproportionate influence of slaveholders during the crisis and why secessionists strategically chose conventions over statewide referenda.


One of the major concern for CMOS technology is the increase in power dissipation as the technology node lowers down to deep submicron region. Magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) working on Spin transfer torque (STT) switching mechanism is recognized as one of the most promising spintronic device for post CMOS era due to its non-volatility, high speed, high endurance, CMOS compatibility and mainly the low power dissipation which can offer the solutions for the problems posed by existing CMOS technology. We have proposed a novel logic-in-memory (LIM) architecture of magnetic arithmetic logic unit (P-MALU) based on hybrid STT-MTJ/CMOS circuits. Simulation results reveal that there is significant reduction in the total power dissipation and transistor count of arithmetic unit by 28.44% and 29.16% compared to double pass transistor logic based clocked CMOS ALU design (DPTL-C2MOS-ALU), while 58.87% and 45.16% to modified magnetic arithmetic logic unit (M-MALU) respectively. Reduction in average power dissipation for logical unit is 37.61% and 52.55% along with 47.22% and 42.42% fewer transistors than DPTL-C2MOS-ALU and M-MALU design respectively. Monte-Carlo(MC) simulation is then performed by incorporating process and mismatch variations for CMOS and extracted parameters of MTJ, to study the behavior of DPTL-C2MOS-ALU, M-MALU and P-MALU designs in terms of power dissipation. All the simulation results reveal that the P-MALU is superior than other two ALU designs in terms of power dissipation, delay and device count. Further, the P-MALU circuit is extended for 4-bits arithmetic operations. Electrical simulations are performed to verify the functionality of the design for higher bit operations which demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed design in VLSI circuits.


Volume 1 of A Grammar and Dictionary of Indus Kohistani contains around 8.000 lemmata, many of which are supplemented with parallels from adjacent dialects, from other Dardic, from Nuristani, Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dravidian and Munda languages, and from Burushaski. The lemmata have been, wherever possible, provided with information about their origin, and they are connected by numerous cross-references. Since Indus Kohistani is a pitch accent language with complicated rules governing the behaviour of the two pitch accents in compounding, derivation, and inflexion, the lemmata are not only marked with their appropriate pitch accents, but the behaviour of the accents (change of value, shift) is illustrated with a large number of inflected forms and cross-references. And since Indus Kohistani has a rich (and frequently irregular) inner and outer conjugation, most verbs are provided with many finite and participle forms. In addition, the dictionary contains two indexes (English - Indus Kohistani and Old Indo-Aryan - Indus Kohistani), and lists with place and clan names, names of the months, etc.


Automation plays a major role in today's world. Power loom is the most important industry for the economic development. To modernize the existing technology with power loom machines, an autonomous monitoring system is newly developed. The main goal of the project is to monitor the power loom unit in an autonomous manner. So, the monitoring of the production in the power loom industry is done automatically. By developing the web and mobile application for power loom to store the database and to analyze the production through bar graph option in it. The database of production in power loom is stored in cloud and separate user id is given for customers to maintain the database in the mobile and web application. The analysis can also be done by using the bar graph option present in it to get the idea about the previous productions. The web application which also has machine parameters such as voltage and current which is sensed from the motor, power and efficiency of a particular machine. By using this web application, we can improve the total production and we can reduce the power consumption of the loom.


The proliferation of cameras and personal devices results in a wide variability of imaging conditions, producing large intra-class variations and a significant performance drop when images from heterogeneous environments are compared. However, many applications require to deal with data from different sources regularly, thus needing to overcome these interoperability problems. Here, we employ fusion of several comparators to improve periocular performance when images from different smartphones are compared. We use a probabilistic fusion framework based on linear logistic regression, in which fused scores tend to be log-likelihood ratios, obtaining a reduction in cross-sensor EER of up to 40% due to the fusion. Our framework also provides an elegant and simple solution to handle signals from different devices, since same-sensor and cross-sensor score distributions are aligned and mapped to a common probabilistic domain. This allows the use of Bayes thresholds for optimal decision making, eliminating the need of sensor-specific thresholds, which is essential in operational conditions because the threshold setting critically determines the accuracy of the authentication process in many applications.


Denmark has an extraordinarily large and well-preserved collection of archaeological skin garments found in peat bogs, dated to approximately 920 BC – AD 775. These objects provide not only the possibility to study prehistoric skin costume and technologies, but also to investigate the animal species used for the production of skin garments. Until recently, species identification of archaeological skin was primarily performed by light and scanning electron microscopy or the analysis of ancient DNA. However, the efficacy of these methods can be limited due to the harsh, mostly acidic environment of peat bogs leading to morphological and molecular degradation within the samples. We compared species assignment results of twelve archaeological skin samples from Danish bogs using Mass Spectrometry (MS)-based peptide sequencing, against results obtained using light and scanning electron microscopy. While it was difficult to obtain reliable results using microscopy, MS enabled the identification of several species-diagnostic peptides, mostly from collagen and keratins, allowing confident species discrimination even among taxonomically close organisms, such as sheep and goat. Unlike previous MS-based methods, mostly relying on peptide fingerprinting, the shotgun sequencing approach we describe aims to identify the complete extracted ancient proteome, without preselected specific targets. As an example, we report the identification, in one of the samples, of two peptides uniquely assigned to bovine foetal haemoglobin, indicating the production of skin from a calf slaughtered within the first months of its life. We conclude that MS-based peptide sequencing is a reliable method for species identification of samples from bogs. The mass spectrometry proteomics data were deposited in the ProteomeXchange Consortium with the dataset identifier PXD001029.


This paper presents the design of plastic injection mould for producing a plastic product.
The plastic part was designed into two different types of product, but in the same usage
function. One part is using clip function and another part is using tick function. In the
computer-aided design (CAD), two plastic parts were drawn in 3 dimension (3D) view by
using Pro-Engineer (Pro-E) parametric software. In the computer-aided manufacturing
(CAM), Pro-Manufacturing from Pro-E parametric software was used to develop the
machining program. For mould design, the product was designed into two changeable
inserts to produce two different types of plastic product in one mould base. Before
proceeding to injection machine and mould design, this part was analysed and simulated
by using Mold Flow or Part Advisor software. From the analysis and simulation we can
define the most suitable injection location, material temperature and pressure for
injection. The predicted weld lines and air trap were also found and analysed.


Professor Dragich Pearson examines the no-citation rules of the federal courts of appeals in light of the purpose and operation of the doctrine of precedent. The article concludes that no-citation rules are fundamentally incompatible with the rule of precedent. The rules also cannot be justified on grounds of economy or efficiency. The courts of appeals cannot legitimately declare decisions to be "non-precedential," and must not continue to forbid their citation.


Scale-out server workloads benefit from many-core processor organizations that enable high throughput thanks to abundant request-level parallelism. A key characteristic of these workloads is the large instruction footprint that exceeds the capacity of private caches. While a shared last-level cache (LLC) can capture the instruction working set, it necessitates a low-latency interconnect fabric to minimize the core stall time on instruction fetches serviced by the LLC. Many-core processors with a mesh interconnect sacrifice performance on scale-out workloads due to NOC-induced delays. Low-diameter topologies can overcome the performance limitations of meshes through rich inter-node connectivity, but at a high area expense. To address the drawbacks of existing designs, this work introduces NOC-Out -- a many-core processor organization that affords low LLC access delays at a small area cost. NOC-Out is tuned to accommodate the bilateral core-to-cache access pattern, characterized by minimal coherence activity and lack of inter-core communication, that is dominant in scale-out workloads. Optimizing for the bilateral access pattern, NOC-Out segregates cores and LLC banks into distinct network regions and reduces costly network connectivity by eliminating the majority of inter-core links. NOC-Out further simplifies the interconnect through the use of low-complexity tree-based topologies. A detailed evaluation targeting a 64-core CMP and a set of scale-out workloads reveals that NOC-Out improves system performance by 17% and reduces network area by 28% over a tiled mesh-based design. Compared to a design with a richly-connected flattened butterfly topology, NOC-Out reduces network area by 9x while matching the performance.


The Earth's plasmasphere is an inner part of the magneteosphere. It is located just outside the upper ionosphere located in Earth's atmosphere. It is a region of dense, cold plasma that surrounds the Earth. Although plasma is found throughout the magnetosphere, the plasmasphere usually contains the coldest plasma. Here's how it works: The upper reaches of our planet's atmosphere are exposed to ultraviolet light from the Sun, and they are ionized with electrons that are freed from neutral atmospheric particles. The results are electrically charged negative and positive particles. The negative particles are electrons, and the positive particles are now called ions (formerly atoms and molecules). If the density of these particles is low enough, this electrically charged gas behaves differently than it would if it were neutral. Now this gas is called plasma. The atmospheric gas density becomes low enough to support the conditions for a plasma around earth at about 90 kilometers above Earth's surface. The electrons in plasma gain more energy, and they are very low in mass. They move along Earth's magnetic field lines and their increased energy is enough to escape Earth's gravity. Because electrons are very light, they don't have to gain too much kinetic energy from the Sun's ultraviolet light before gravity loses its grip on them. Gravity is not all that holds them back, however. As more and more electrons begin to escape outward, they leave behind a growing net positive electric charge in the ionosphere and create a growing net negative electric charge above the ionosphere; an electric field begins to develop (the Pannekoek-Rosseland E-field). Thus, these different interacting charges result in a positively charged ionosphere and negatively charged region of space above it. Very quickly this resulting electric field opposed upward movement of the electrons out of the ionosphere. The electrons still have this increased energy, however, so the electric field doesn't just go away. Instead the ions react to the electric field and are attracted to it. They begin to move upward out of the ionosphere too. Since all this happens on a small scale, it simply looks like the electrons and ions move out of the ionosphere together. Ultimately the effect is that the lighter ions of hydrogen, helium and oxygen are able to escape from the ionosphere. For a planet like Earth with a strong planetary magnetic field, these outward moving particles remain trapped near the planet unless other processes further draw them away and into interplanetary space. As is always the case with nature, there is much more story to tell about this "upwardly mobile" plasma and these other processes. Over only a short time period of hours and days this escaping plasma can, in some places, build up in concentration until an equilibrium is reached where as much plasma flows inward into the ionosphere as flows outward. This "donut shaped" region of cold (about 1 electron volt in energy) plasma encircling the planet is called the plasmasphere. Because of space weather storms (kind of a generic phrase for those other processes) this cold and dense plasmaspheric plasma can actually end up all over the place. Generally, that region of space where plasma from the ionosphere has the time to build up to become identified as the plasmasphere rotates or nearly rotates with the Earth. That region shrinks in size with increased space weather activity and expands or refills during times of inactivity. As it shrinks with increasing activity, some of the plasmasphere is drawn away from its main body (plasmaspheric erosion) in the sunward direction toward the boundary in space between that region dominated by Earth's magnetic field and the much larger region dominated by the Sun's magnetic field. The region dominated by Earth's magnetic field is called the magnetosphere. The larger Sun dominated region is called the heliosphere.


In a time when academic theology often neglects the lived practices of the Christian community, this volume seeks to bring balance to the situation by showing the dynamic link between the task of theology and the practices of the Christian life. The work of thirteen first-rate theologians from several cultural and Christian perspectives, these informed and informative essays explore the relationship between Christian theology and practice in the daily lives of believers, in the ministry of Christian communities, and as a needed focus within Christian education. Contributors: " Dorothy C. BassNancy BedfordGilbert BondSarah Coakley Craig DykstraReinhard HutterL. Gregory JonesSerene JonesAmy Plantinga PauwChristine PohlKathryn TannerMiroslav VolfTammy Williams""


A national working group, convened by the Directorate Nutrition in the Department of Health, recently revised the set of South African food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs). The objective of this technical review paper is to motivate and support the FBDG "Make starchy foods part of most meals". The wording of this FBDG has not changed substantially from the original, but international scientific developments in carbohydrate nutrition necessitated a new look at the importance of this guideline. A brief review of the classification, definition and terminology used to describe the different types of dietary carbohydrates as advised by a Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and World Health Organization consultation is followed by a discussion of the beneficial physiological and metabolic health effects of dietary carbohydrates. The review further warns against the practice of a low-carbohydrate diet and shows that, although carbohydrate intake may still be high in some South Africans, there is an unfortunate pattern of decreased intake of total carbohydrates and increased intake of added sugar as part of the nutrition transition. The implications of existing nutrient intake data on South Africans and the proven beneficial effects of minimally processed starchy foods (additional micronutrients and dietary fibre to the total diet) support the recommendation that South Africans should eat starchy foods in the form of minimally processed or whole grains, legumes and root vegetables, rather than as refined starches and sugars. It is recommended that this FBDG should not be implemented and promoted in isolation. Consumers should be informed about food that contributes starch to the diet, and to eat this food as part of a varied diet.


ABSTRACTPM2.5 samples were collected for August 13–22 (non-harvest period, NHP) and for October 21–31 (harvest period, HP) in 2014 from an agricultural region of Eastern China. The samples were subsequently analysed to determine mass concentrations and fractions of elements, water-soluble ions and carbon components. Online datasets (SO2, NO2, O3, CO, PM10 and PM2.5) and meteorological conditions were synchronously monitored. The average mass concentrations of PM2.5 during the HP and NHP were respectively 108.3 and 62.6 µg m–3. Compared with the mass concentrations of organic carbon (OC), Cl–, NO3– and K+ during the NHP, those during the HP were significantly increased. Moreover, the mass fractions of OC, elemental carbon (EC), Cl– and K+ during the HP were respectively 1.6, 1.3, 3.2 and 1.3 times of those during the NHP. SO42–, NO3–, and OC were the major chemical components in PM2.5 during the HP, indicating that biomass burning and secondary transformation may be two major sources of PM2.5 during the HP. The K+/Cl– value in PM2.5 during the HP was lower than 1, indicating that maize straws were the crop residues in the study area. Although the sulphur and nitrogen oxidation ratios during the HP were lower than during the NHP, the effects of the secondary transformation on particles cannot be ignored during the HP. Biomass burning yielded a 58% OC concentration during the HP.


Impairment of hippocampal adult neurogenesis in aging or degenerating brain is a well-known phenomenon caused by the shortage of brain stem cell pool, alterations in the local microenvironment within the neurogenic niches, or deregulation of stem cell development. Environmental enrichment (EE) has been proposed as a potent tool to restore brain functions, to prevent aging-associated neurodegeneration, and to cure neuronal deficits seen in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. Here, we report our data on the effects of environmental enrichment on hippocampal neurogenesis in vivo and neurosphere-forming capacity of hippocampal stem/progenitor cells in vitro. Two models – Alzheimer's type of neurodegeneration and physiological brain aging – were chosen for the comparative analysis of EE effects. We found that environmental enrichment greatly affects the expression of markers specific for stem cells, progenitor cells and differentiated neurons (Pax6, Ngn2, NeuroD1, NeuN) in the hippocampus of young adult rats or rats with Alzheimer's disease (AD) model but less efficiently in aged animals. Application of time-lag mathematical model for the analysis of impedance traces obtained in real-time monitoring of cell proliferation in vitro revealed that EE could restore neurosphere-forming capacity of hippocampal stem/progenitor cells more efficiently in young adult animals (fourfold greater in the control group comparing to the AD model group) but not in the aged rats (no positive effect of environmental enrichment at all). In accordance with the results obtained in vivo, EE was almost ineffective in the recovery of hippocampal neurogenic reserve in vitro in aged, but not in amyloid-treated or young adult, rats. Therefore, EE-based neuroprotective strategies effective in Aβ-affected brain could not be directly extrapolated to aged brain.


Revered within American history and society, baseball has captivated many historians and scholars in their attempts to understand the underpinnings of professional baseball as a sport and source of commerce within the United States. As sport in America has become increasingly popular, and many resources are dedicated to increasing the growth of these enterprises, officials within Major League Baseball (MLB) have dedicated time and resources to identify factors leading to fan satisfaction. (1) Dave Winfield contends baseball has lost its public appeal and luster over the past thirty years and the game is slowly becoming a sport of the past. (2) On the surface, it would seem that Winfield's assessment is inaccurate, as MLB has reported record-breaking season attendance figures and increased media visibility (e.g. MLB.com and MLB Extra Innings). (3) However, issues such as drug use, inflated player contracts, limited national visibility of teams across the United States due to media contracts, and the lack of revenue sharing may dilute professional baseball's positive image for its fans. (4) These factors may have undermined baseball fans' positive perception of the sport, as other professional enterprises, such as NASCAR and The Bull Riding Circuit, have gained popularity among the general public. (5) These unconstructive factors encourage baseball scholars to look at the current status of professional baseball in attempts to uncover positive attributes such as the globalization of professional baseball to many countries outside of the United States. Further, officials within MLB should focus on player development and explore the changes in ethnic participation in attempts to increase a diverse fan base. One such area that has been neglected by baseball scholars is the significant increase in the number of Latino baseball players within MLB. (6) This particular ethnic group has become more visible on MLB rosters and within the media, thus, creating potential interest in existing and future baseball fans. (7) As such, it is timely to identify the effects of this particular group of players on fans' overall satisfaction with MLB. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore fans' perception of Latino baseball players and the relationship between a fan's perception of Latino major leaguers and fans' overall satisfaction with MLB. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Commercial sports are not isolated from the common business practices of the general economic market. Similar to other profit-seeking organizations, commercialized sport organizations focus their concerns on minimizing costs and increasing revenues to sustain large profits. One strategy that has been employed to accomplish this goal is the utilization of globalization tactics. This general business practice has also accounted for many labor strikes and union movements within MLB. (8) Similar to other professional leagues, MLB has encountered many changes over the past decade as it has grown the sport's global reach. In their quest to attract more consumers, Bud Selig and other MLB executives have focused on increasing baseball's popularity around the globe, and this global expansion has resulted in an increased diversity in player talent. MLB has invested many resources in developing foreign player talent, as well as developing international leagues. (9) Baseball academies built in the Dominican Republic, Japan, and Australia offer substantial evidence of MLB's attempts to develop cross-national player talent. In fact, by the 1990s nearly every major-league organization--as well as professional teams from Japan--had a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. The introduction of these academies has resulted in the percentage of Dominican players in major leagues rising from 6 to 12 percent in the last fifteen years. Additionally, the percentage of Venezuelan ballplayers has tripled since the 1950s. As a result of these globalization efforts, the participation of Latino baseball players within MLB has increased significantly. …


We propose a general and scalable approximate sampling strategy for probabilistic models with discrete variables. Our approach uses gradients of the likelihood function with respect to its discrete inputs to propose updates in a Metropolis-Hastings sampler. We show empirically that this approach outperforms generic samplers in a number of difficult settings including Ising models, Potts models, restricted Boltzmann machines, and factorial hidden Markov models. We also demonstrate the use of our improved sampler for training deep energy-based models on high dimensional discrete data. This approach outperforms variational auto-encoders and existing energy-based models. Finally, we give bounds showing that our approach is near-optimal in the class of samplers which propose local updates.


Abstract. The fourth complete skull of the marine crocodilian Machimosaurus von Meyer, 1837 is hereby described together with an associated complete mandible and disarticulated postcranial elements from the Kimmeridgian of Neuffen, Germany. Although the genus has been described fairly recently on the basis of two nearly complete skulls, their state of preservation did not allow a thorough examination of the entire skull anatomy. Here, we add new information with the description of nicely preserved cranial and mandibular elements of a single individual attributable to Machimosaurus hugii von Meyer, 1837. The diagnosis is updated for the genus and for the species M. hugii and challenges the validity of the second species M. mosae (Lienard, 1876). Moreover, previous assumption that Steneosaurus obtusidens Andrews, 1913 is a junior synonym of Machimosaurus hugii is not supported by our observations. Notably, M. hugii differs from S. obtusidens by a lower tooth count, the morphology of the dentition, the shape of the supratemporal fenestrae and the absence of an antorbital fenestra. Comparative anatomy and a phylogenetic analysis show that Machimosaurus is more closely related to the genus Steneosaurus than to Teleosaurus cadomensis (Lamouroux, 1820). doi: 10.1002/mmng.201300009


Environmental tools such as environmental impact assessment (EIA) and environmental management systems (EMS) can be applied to ensure that major projects are constructed and operated using an approach that enables effective environmental protection. Previous research has shown that these tools are frequently applied in isolation at different stages of the project life cycle. The extent of EIA/EMS integration amongst nine of the biggest UK waste management companies was investigated through semi-structured interviews with environmental staff and thematic analysis of their responses. The research found that partial integration of EIA and EMS is widespread. Companies recognised a range of potential benefits to more closely integrating their processes such as system efficiencies, data availability and recognition from the regulator. However, significant barriers to further integration were identified in the form of cost, company structure and the size of the organisation. In a context where the regulation of the waste industry is increasingly aligned towards a risk-based approach, there is a new opportunity to use EIA outputs in an enhanced EMS. More generally, companies should seek to maintain continuity of personnel across the project life cycle and structure their environmental functions so that EIA and EMS staff can work more closely. This would help ensure that the greatest benefit is derived from both tools.


Background: There are few illnesses as disruptive as motor neurone disease, a fatal neurodegenerative condition, where diagnosis introduces a clinical narrative of inevitable decline through progressive immobilisation into death. Recent evidence suggests that bereaved motor neurone disease family caregivers are more likely to be at moderate or high risk of complicated grief. Methods: Qualitative data from an anonymous national survey of bereaved motor neurone disease caregivers (n = 393) was examined through thematic analysis to explore the experiences of people who are at low, moderate, and high risk of complicated grief. Up to 40% responded to three open-ended questions: How caregivers viewed their coping strategies; the advice they had for others and what had been positive about their experience. Results: Ten themes informed the narratives of illness and loss. All three groups shared similar experiences but differed in their capacity to address them. The low-risk group seemed to recognise the uncertainty of life and that meaning needed to be created by them. For the moderate-risk group, while motor neurone disease was a major disruption, they could with support, regroup and plan in different ways. The high-risk group did not have many resources, external or internal. They felt let down when professionals did not have answers and could not see or did not know how to change their ways of responding to this unwanted situation. Conclusion: The differences in these three profiles and their narratives of loss should alert health and community service providers to identify and address the caregivers' support needs early and throughout the caregiving journey. Motor Neurone Disease Associations are involved throughout the illness journey and need to invest in a continuum of care incorporating end-of-life care and bereavement support. Community grief literacy and enhancement of social networks are keys to improved support from families and friends that can enable the focus to be on feelings of empowerment rather than abandonment.


Long-term care (LTC) in the new EU member states, which used to belong to the former socialist countries, is not yet a legally separated sector of social security. However, the ageing dynamics are more intensive in these states than in the old EU member states. This paper analyses the process of creating an LTC sector in the context of institutional reforms of social protection systems during the transition period. The authors explain LTC's position straddling the health and social sectors, the underdevelopment of formal LTC, and the current policies regarding the risk of LTC dependency. The paper is based mainly on the analysis of information provided by country experts in the ANCIEN project.


Childhood IQ has been used to predict later life outcomes across disciplines in epidemiology, education, and psychology. Most often only a single childhood IQ test is available or is used for these purposes in the belief that IQ is stable across the life course. The primary aim of this study was to examine the longitudinal stability of individuals' IQ test scores derived from school-age tests. The secondary aim was to investigate the association of the pre-adult scores with later life intelligence scores. The longitudinal pre-adult IQ scores of 42 high socioeconomic status Guatemalans born 1941–1953 were analysed and showed low stability of longitudinal test scores. Fluctuations of >1SD were found for 59.5% of the sample. The same participants, aged 64–76 years, were re-assessed and average pre-adult IQ explained 12% of variance in the older age intelligence score. The reasons behind the longitudinal instability in test scores reported in this study remains unknown but the results suggest single point measurements of intelligence before adulthood should be regarded with some caution.


This paper develops a framework to assess the scope of collaboration among countries that are pursuing low-carbon green growth. Much of the policy studies in the area of low-carbon green growth have focused on individual countries or a group of countries. Little attention is given to how countries can work together to pursue the lowcarbon green growth agenda. Developing Asia has been witnessing rapid growth in economic activities, both at the sub-regional level and Asia-Pacific wide. There is therefore much scope for market-based and other forms of regional cooperation to augment domestic actions. For example, there are other pressing development needs and resource constraints at the national level that limit the scale or ambition of policies. Regional cooperation can help to overcome those constraints by providing additional resources for incremental costs, technical assistance, and policy support. This paper examines several critical areas such as technology, finance, and capacity building, where regional cooperation will have a significantly greater payoff than will actions by any country alone. The paper concludes with concrete policy actions to realise the regional cooperation potential in developing Asia.


The hymenopteran family Ichneumonidae compriises one of the largest single animal families. With around 2,300 British species, almost 10% of British insect species are ichneumonids. They can be found everywhere and studying them is very rewarding, but it is not without its difficulties. This book provides an extensively illustrated key for the identification of the 35 subfamilies of Ichneumonidae known to occur in Britain and Ireland (plus Brachycyrtinae, not yet found here). This is supported by chapters for each subfamily giving a comprehensive review of current knowledge on systematics, biology and host relations together with notes on useful recognition features and references to the most relevant species-level identification literature concerning the British Isels. Included in each British and Irish subfamily account is a folio of photographs covering all recognside tribes.


The gas vacuoles which occur in various prokaryotic organisms can be estimated quantitatively by the change in light scattering which takes place when they are destroyed by pressure. The gradual disappearance of gas vacuoles under rising pressure is explained by the intrinsic variation in critical collapse pressure of their constituent gas vesicles. These collapse instantaneously at pressures exceeding their critical pressure, but withstand repeated and prolonged application of pressures below this value. Gas vesicle membranes are freely permeable to gases, and as a consequence the vacuole gas is at atmospheric pressure in aerated suspensions. Increasing or decreasing the pressure of gas in the gas vacuoles brings about a corresponding change in the pressure required to collapse them, indicating that the vacuole gas helps to support the structure. Pressures in excess of the vacuole gas pressure are borne by the membrane itself. The pressure required to collapse gas vacuoles present in blue-green algae is increased if the cells are suspended in a hypertonic sucrose solution, because this removes the cell turgor pressure acting on them. This observation, which confirms the classical theory on the osmotic relationships of plant cells, provides the first reliable method of estimating turgor pressures in prokaryotic organisms. Cell turgor pressure was found to be higher in a blue-green alga than in a purple sulphur bacterium investigated; no cell turgor could be detected in a halobacterium which grows in saturated brines, suggesting that the salt concentration must be the same inside and outside the cell. The gas vesicles in these organisms seemed to be adapted to withstand the pressures they were likely to encounter, those of the alga being the strongest, and those of the halobacterium the weakest. Even so, the range of turgor pressure overlapped the critical pressure range of the gas vesicles in the alga and purple sulphur bacterium so that turgor pressure alone may effect their collapse under certain circumstances. With the alga this seems to happen in conditions promoting photosynthesis, providing the organism with a means of regulating its buoyancy. It is suggested that the width of a gas vesicle is important in determining its strength, and that this explains the differences in size and shape of the gas vesicles which have evolved in the three organisms. Interfacial tension could in theory exert considerable pressures on the highly curved surface of a gas vesicle but this effect would be minimized if its outer surface were of a hydrophilic nature. Several observations have been made which support this idea. Pressures generated by centrifugation will collapse isolated gas vesicles and must be considered when using this technique to purify them. Sufficient pressure to collapse gas vesicles can also be developed in small columns by the massive negative accelerations developed in collisions. This phenomenon, which may have application in engineering fields, must also be reckoned with in handling these pressure-sensitive structures. It is concluded that even though the gas vesicle membrane must tear during its collapse, the gas it contains diffuses away rather than escaping as a bubble.


The diagnosis of mental illness is becoming more prevalent in the United States. With the increased identification, it is imperative that health care professionals are astute in identifying mental health conditions and behaviors associated with those conditions. The most common use of pro re nata (PRN) or "as needed" psychoactive medications in the inpatient psychiatric setting is for the reduction of behaviors associated with anxiety, agitation, and aggression. The administration of PRN medication rests solely on the nursing staff and their ability to use autonomous clinical decision-making to distinguish between different behaviors associated with those conditions prior to the administration of PRN medication. For the past 30 years, research has recognized the lack of national standards, assessment criteria, and ethical practices when administrating PRN medications in the acute inpatient setting. The purpose of this study was to identify nurses' knowledge of signs and symptoms of anxiety or agitation in the acute care setting. The model used to guide this research is the Synergy Model of Patient Care. The design for this research study was a descriptive design using a case study approach. This study was conducted at a nonprofit, general medical-surgical community hospital in Rhode Island specializing in rehabilitation and psychiatric services. The target sample consisted of all registered nurses working on three study units. Two case studies, each portraying a patient experiencing symptoms or behaviors of anxiety and agitation were used to measure nurses' knowledge of signs and symptoms of anxiety and agitation. A total of 17 RNs (N=17) participated in this research project. This research implied that there were gaps in clinical knowledge and variations in practice when nurses were asked to recognize symptoms of anxiety or behaviors associated with agitation.


The Baranof Fan is one of three large deep-sea fans in the Gulf of Alaska, and is a key component in understanding large-scale erosion and sedimentation patterns for southeast Alaska and western Canada. We integrate new and existing seismic reflection profiles to provide new constraints on the Baranof Fan area, geometry, volume, and channel development. We estimate the fan's area and total sediment volume to be ∼323,000 km 2 and ∼301,000 km 3 , respectively, making it among the largest deep-sea fans in the world. We show that the Baranof Fan consists of channel-levee deposits from at least three distinct aggradational channel systems: the currently active Horizon and Mukluk channels, and the waning system we call the Baranof channel. The oldest sedimentary deposits are in the northern fan, and the youngest deposits at the fan's southern extent; in addition, the channels seem to avulse southward consistently through time. We suggest that Baranof Fan sediment is sourced from the Coast Mountains in southeastern Alaska, transported offshore most recently via fjord to glacial sea valley conduits. Because of the translation of the Pacific plate northwest past sediment sources on the North American plate along the Queen Charlotte strike-slip fault, we suggest that new channel formation, channel beheadings, and southward-migrating channel avulsions have been influenced by regional tectonics. Using a simplified tectonic reconstruction assuming a constant Pacific plate motion of 4.4 cm/yr, we estimate that Baranof Fan deposition initiated ca. 7 Ma.


Human society had a long history of suffering from cognitive biases leading to social prejudices and mass injustice. The prevalent existence of cognitive biases in large volumes of historical data can pose a threat of being manifested as unethical and seemingly inhumane predictions as outputs of AI systems trained on such data. To alleviate this problem, we propose a bias-aware multi-objective learning framework that given a set of identity attributes (e.g. gender, ethnicity etc.) and a subset of sensitive categories of the possible classes of prediction outputs, learns to reduce the frequency of predicting certain combinations of them, e.g. predicting stereotypes such as 'most blacks use abusive language', or 'fear is a virtue of women'. Our experiments conducted on an emotion prediction task with balanced class priors shows that a set of baseline bias-agnostic models exhibit cognitive biases with respect to gender, such as women are prone to be afraid whereas men are more prone to be angry. In contrast, our proposed bias-aware multi-objective learning methodology is shown to reduce such biases in the predictid emotions.


The potential for improving the performance of machine tools is considerable. However, for this to be achieved without tool failure or product damage, the process must be sufficiently well understood to enable real-time monitoring and control to be applied. A unique sophisticated measurement platform has been developed and applied to two different machining centres, particularly for high-speed machining up to 24 000 rpm. Characterization and on-line monitoring of the dynamic behaviour of the machining processes has been carried out using both contact-based methods (accelerometer, force sensor) and non-contact methods (laser Doppler vibrometry and magnetic shaker) and numerical simulation (finite element based modal analysis). The platform was applied both pre-process and on-line for studying an aluminium testpiece based on a thin-walled aerospace component. Stability lobe diagrams for this specific machine/component combination were generated allowing selection of optimal process parameters giving stable cutting and metal removal rates some 8–10 times higher than those possible in unstable machining. Based on dynamic characterization and monitoring, a concept for an adaptive control with constraints based machine tool controller has been developed. The developed platform can be applied in manifold machining situations. It offers a reliable way of achieving significant process improvement.


We develop and analyze wavelet based adaptive schemes for nonlinear variational problems. We derive estimates for convergence rates and corresponding work counts that turn out to be asymptotically optimal. Our approach is based on a new paradigm that has been put forward recently for a class of linear problems. The original problem is transformed first into an equivalent one which is well posed in the Euclidean metric $\ell_2$. Then conceptually one seeks iteration schemes for the infinite dimensional problem that exhibits at least a fixed error reduction per step. This iteration is then realized approximately through an adaptive application of the involved operators with suitable dynamically updated accuracy tolerances. The main conceptual ingredients center around nonlinear tree approximation and the sparse evaluation of nonlinear mappings of wavelet expansions. We prove asymptotically optimal complexity for adaptive realizations of first order iterations and of Newton's method.


The adult mammalian heart is one of the least regenerative organs, and therefore injury to this organ system results in a significant health and economic burden globally. Although it has been shown that a low level of cardiomyocyte turnover does occur in adult mammals, it is not sufficient to induce functional recovery in the damaged heart. In contrast, some vertebrate species (including zebrafish and urodele amphibians) and immature mammals are capable of full cardiac regeneration through proliferation of pre-existing cardiomyocytes. Despite these findings, little is known about what distinguishes proliferative cardiomyocytes from terminally-differentiated non-proliferative cardiomyocytes. Interestingly, across vertebrate species there is a strong correlation between oxidative metabolism and proliferative capacity of cardiomyocytes. For example, cardiomyocytes in zebrafish and mammalian fetuses are less oxygenated compared to postnatal mammals. Our prior work showed that there is a drastic metabolic transition from glycolysis to mitochondrial respiration immediately after birth in postnatal mammalian cardiomyocytes. Our further studies indicated that this steep rise in mitochondrial energy production in the postnatal cardiomyocytes induces an increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and oxidative DNA damage, which in turn directly triggers cell cycle arrest. These results raised an important question: how are cardiomyocytes that contribute to myocyte turnover in the adult heart protected from oxidative stress? We postulated that proliferative cardiomyocytes in the adult hearts are hypoxic and thus protected from oxidative DNA damage. To test our hypothesis, we traced the lineage of hypoxic cardiomyocytes in the adult heart with Cre-loxp based genetic lineage tracing system utilizing the protein stabilization of Hif-1, a master regulator of cellular hypoxia response. With this system, we identified a rare cardiomyocyte population with preserved embryonic/neonatal features which contributed to cardiomyocyte renewal. Based on these findings, we reasoned that systemic hypoxemia may decrease mitochondrial metabolism, and thereby activate cell cycle re-entry in terminally differentiated adult cardiomyocytes. We exposed adult mice to severe hypoxia (7% atmospheric oxygen) for 2 weeks. After exposure, mitochondrial metabolism and oxidative DNA damage were both markedly reduced in adult cardiomyocytes. Remarkably, we observed the activation of cardiomyocyte cell cycle re-entry in the adult heart. Furthermore, the exposure of mice to 7% oxygen for 2 weeks after myocardial injury by permanent ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery was sufficient to induce a significant recovery of systolic cardiac function. Our data suggest that hypoxia and targeting hypoxia signaling can be novel therapeutic directions to treat cardiac injury and diseases.


This thesis is a study of Joyce Cary?s Mister Johnson. Through the analysis on the main character, the writer intends to finds out whether the setting has any significant role in motivating Johnson to have the ambition to be like a white man and how the main character?s ambition to be a white man leads him into his tragedy. She intends to show that the setting in the novel has great influence in motivating Johnson to have the ambition to be like a white man and prove that Johnson?s ambition is the main factor that lead him into his tragedy. She expects that through this study, the things readers realize that ambition is capable to drive people to destruction. The discussion of his ambition begins with a description of his environment which results on his character and ends with the process of his tragedy. The thesis writer will analyze how the main character, Johnson has an ambition to be like a white man through setting. She also will discuss the impact of his ambition on the main character. In analysing the topic the thesis writer uses library research, consist of critics?s opinion, the definition of ambition and tragedy and also some data about the novel and the author, and literary approach concerning characterization and setting. From the whole analysis through the `main character?s environment and characters, the writer finds out that Johnson is influenced by his environment to posses the ambition to be like a white man which brings him into his tragedy. He is so obssesed to fullfil his ambition, so he tends to do anything. The impact of his ambition, he is trying to pursue his ambition through crime, until he meets his tragedy. Thereafter, as a result of his own ambition, he falls into his tragedy. Then, from the analysis above, the thesis writer concludes that people should be able to control their ambition in the right way, because if they are not able to control their ambition, they will encounter destruction.


We present a multiinstrumented approach for the analysis of the Arctic ionosphere during the 19 February 2014 highly complex, multiphase geomagnetic storm, which had the largest impact on the disturbance storm‐time index that year. The geomagnetic storm was the result of two powerful Earth‐directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs). It produced a strong long lasting negative storm phase over Greenland with a dominant energy input in the polar cap. We employed global navigation satellite system (GNSS) networks, geomagnetic observatories, and a specific ionosonde station in Greenland. We complemented the approach with spaceborne measurements in order to map the state and variability of the Arctic ionosphere. In situ observations from the Canadian CASSIOPE (CAScade, Smallsat and IOnospheric Polar Explorer) satellite's ion mass spectrometer were used to derive ion flow data from the polar cap topside ionosphere during the event. Our research specifically found that (1) thermospheric O/N2 measurements demonstrated significantly lower values over the Greenland sector than prior to the storm time. (2) An increased ion flow in the topside ionosphere was observed during the negative storm phase. (3) Negative storm phase was a direct consequence of energy input into the polar cap. (4) Polar patch formation was significantly decreased during the negative storm phase. This paper addresses the physical processes that can be responsible for this ionospheric storm development in the northern high latitudes. We conclude that ionospheric heating due to the CME's energy input caused changes in the polar atmosphere resulting in Ne upwelling, which was the major factor in high‐latitude ionosphere dynamics for this storm.


Since 2006 there has been universal acceptance in both developing and industrialized societies that HIV treatment and related services, including more effective programs, be available to all citizens. However, as a result of the worldwide recession and shifting health priorities, progress toward these goals has stalled. While the epidemic continues to grow (approximately 34 million globally, with 2.7 million new cases in 2010), fewer resources are dedicated to treatment and prevention than previously, and clinical staffs, especially nurses are challenged by more patient care responsibilities. This paper focuses on the relationships of HIV/AIDS care, coping strategies and work environmental stress for nurses working in an African country (Botswana) with a significant epidemic. Data for this study was obtained through questionnaires completed by a sample of 201 nurses working in different types of health facilities in rural and urban areas of Botswana. Results show that 65% of the nurses frequently provided care to clients with HIV/AIDS. Only 35% of the nurses provided care to clients with HIV/AIDS infrequently. Those caregivers who often worked with patients infected with HIV reported significantly (p<.05) more "role demand", "job control" and "shift work" stress and said that their coping strategies were more likely to include taking food supplements. Implications for professional "burn out" among HIV/AIDS caregivers in developing societies are discussed together with strategies for more effective allocations of health care personnel.


Background In children with asthma, web-based monitoring and inflammation-driven therapy may lead to improved asthma control and reduction in medications. However, the cost-effectiveness of these monitoring strategies is yet unknown. Objective We assessed the cost-effectiveness of web-based monthly monitoring and of 4-monthly monitoring of FENO as compared with standard care. Methods An economic evaluation was performed alongside a randomised controlled multicentre trial with a 1-year follow-up. Two hundred and seventy-two children with asthma, aged 4–18 years, were randomised to one of three strategies. In standard care, treatment was adapted according to Asthma Control Test (ACT) at 4-monthly visits, in the web-based strategy also according to web-ACT at 1 month intervals, and in the FENO-based strategy according to ACT and FENO at 4-monthly visits. Outcome measures were patient utilities, healthcare costs, societal costs and incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained. Results No statistically significant differences were found in QALYs and costs between the three strategies. The web-based strategy had 77% chance of being most cost-effective from a healthcare perspective at a willingness to pay a generally accepted €40 000/QALY. The FENO-based strategy had 83% chance of being most cost-effective at €40 000/QALY from a societal perspective. Conclusions Economically, web-based monitoring was preferred from a healthcare perspective, while the FENO-based strategy was preferred from a societal perspective, although in QALYs and costs no statistically significant changes were found as compared with standard care. As clinical outcomes also favoured the web-based and FENO-based strategies, these strategies may be useful additions to standard care. Trial registration number Netherlands Trial Register (NTR1995).


We present the case of a patient of Macedonian origin with unilateral renal agenesis and ureterovesical junction obstruction in combination with further abnormalities including midface hypoplasia, scoliosis as well as camptodactyly of one toe. Whole-exome sequencing analysis revealed compound heterozygous variants in the FAT4 gene. Recessive variants in FAT4 are a known cause of van Maldergem syndrome (VMS) in which congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract are a less characteristic but common feature. The initial presentation of our patient was not clinically recognizable. However, in view of the molecular findings, the most likely diagnosis is a mild manifestation of VMS. Only very few publications have reported patients with VMS and mutations in FAT4 to date. With this case, we hope to provide further insight into the phenotypic variability of this syndrome.


Youth involved in Extension activities were portrayed on film as early as 1913. This paper provides a summary of the earliest motion pictures in which 4-H and 4-H members were a part. From the more than 400 early Extension films made by USDA, 22 4-H films were located and described. Hollywood films, with 4-H themes, were found. Reflections on film preservation and availability are addressed as well as the role of film and other media in the early twentieth century.


Previous authors have described nesting habitat of the northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) throughout its range, but few have compared structural or compositional differences of vegetation between nest sites and random non-use sites, and successful and non-successful nests. From 1996-1998, we compared cover and structure of 85 plant species from 80 nest sites of northern bobwhite in western Oklahoma. Nest sites were consistently associated with greater structural complexity than what was available at random. Bobwhites selected nest sites with a greater coverage of grass (ca. 50%) and woody (ca. 20-30%) vegetation with a relatively low percentage of bare ground, presumably because these attributes maximize their chance for successful reproduction by providing protection against weather and predators. Successful nests were more concealed during 1996 and 1997 (12.37 and 10.74% visibility, respectively) than non-successful nest sites (21.6 and 27.65% visibility), but levels of concealment did not differ during 1998. We found no significant differences in vegetation composition or structure between successful and non-successful nest sites. DOI:10.2458/azu_jrm_v54i3_townsend


Anita Farah Nassar has been affiliated with the Lebanese American University (LAU) since 1965, and throughout those 37 years, she has served LAU diligently. After graduating from the Beirut College for Women (currently LAU) in 1969 with a Bachelor degree, she worked at the nursery school then later joined the Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World (IWSAW) as Program Coordinator and was later promoted to Program Officer. She also received her Masters degree from this same institution after it became a full-fledged university. She currently serves as the Assistant Director of IWSAW. Given that this issue of Al-Raida investigates the role of higher education in empowering Arab women, here is what Nassar had to say about her university years.


In early modern lyric poetry, the male poet or lover often appears not as powerful and masterly but rather as broken, abject, and feminine. Catherine Bates examines the cultural and literary strategies behind this representation and uncovers radically alternative models of masculinity in the lyric tradition of the Renaissance. Focusing on Sidney, Ralegh, Shakespeare, and Donne, she offers astute new readings of a wide range of texts – a sonnet sequence, a blazon, an elegy, a complaint, and an epistle. She shows how existing critical approaches have too much invested in the figure of the authoritative male writer to be able to do justice to the truly radical nature of these alternative masculinities. Taking direction from recent psychoanalytic theories of gender formation, Bates develops critical strategies that make it possible to understand and appreciate what is genuinely revolutionary about these texts and about the English Renaissance lyric tradition at large.


Introductions: In the current scenario where intimidation and manhandling to health personnel and vandalism in the hospital is high, sense of insecurity among the newer lot of surgeons and methods they incorporate to combat the possible threat from the patients or their peers has not been validated properly yet. Methods: A preformed questionnaire with ten yes or no answers was circulated manually or via emails among the surgical residents and surgeons of less than 5 year experience. More number of 'yes' answers was considered as high level of sense of insecurity. Results: Majority (n= 45, 90%) of respondents had 5 or more than 5 'yes' answers in the questionnaire and median 'yes' answer in the questionnaire was 8, indicating high level of insecurity among the respondents. All respondents (100%) expect themselves to be intimidated or sued in their career and 60 percent of respondents admit themselves ordering more tests than required to be on the 'safe' side. Conclusions: This study has showed both sense of insecurity and subjective prevalence of defensive medicine among the newer lot of surgeons are high. Keywords : defensive medicine, litigation, medical malpractice


A growing number of studies show how media frames can affect the formation of public opinion. To disentangle these effects, scholars must consider their underlying psychological processes or mediators. However, to date, there is no satisfactory account of the mediators of framing effects, and the explanatory power of different established mediators has not been addressed. Based on an experimental study (n = 1,537), this article presents a mediation analysis of a news framing effect on opinion, testing for two significant mediation processes: belief importance and belief content change. Results show that framing is mediated by both belief importance and belief content change, with belief content being the more prominent mediator. The extent to which each process takes effect depends on an individual's level of political knowledge. Knowledgeable individuals are affected to a greater extent via both belief content and belief importance change. The implications for future framing effects research are discussed.


Adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms into the clinical realm will depend on their inherent trustworthiness, which is built not only by robust validation studies but is also deeply linked to the explainability and interpretability of the algorithms. Most validation studies for medical imaging AI report performance of algorithms on study level labels and lay little emphasis on measuring the accuracy of explanations generated by these algorithms in the form of heat maps or bounding boxes, especially in true positive cases. We propose a new metric, Explainability Failure Ratio (EFR), derived from Clinical Explainability Failure (CEF) to address this gap in AI evaluation. We define an Explainability Failure as a case where the classification generated by an AI algorithm matches with study level ground truth but the explanation output generated by the algorithm is inadequate to explain the algorithms output. We measured EFR for two algorithms that automatically detect consolidation on chest X rays to determine the applicability of the metric and observed a lower EFR for the model that had lower sensitivity for identifying consolidation on chest X rays, implying that trustworthiness of a model should be determined not only by routine statistical metrics but also by novel clinically oriented models.


M-commerce has shown up as e-commerce in mobile and wireless communication, and now deals with on-line banking, stock trading, auctions, transactions, and mobile media. M-commerce applications are implemented with, for example, Java technology that supports a client-and-server model and cross-platform mobile applications. They are attractive, but, need a large heap space, which may slow down the execution, lead to poor interactive response, and sometimes cause "out of memory" failure. We propose a Java computation mechanism with heap de/compression modules that reduce memory demand and allow client applications and embedded devices to take the advantage of compression techniques. Results show the impact in space and time efficiency of the proposed mechanism. The space efficiency is 1.80 to 2.50 and the speed is competitive with that of original Java technology. We believe that the proposed mechanism provides a good runtime environment for mobile/wireless computing.


Background
Genomic aberrations have been identified in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), but molecular predictors of resistance to abiraterone acetate/prednisone (AA/P) treatment are not known.

Patients and methods
In a prospective clinical trial, mCRPC patients underwent whole-exome sequencing (n = 82) and RNA sequencing (n = 75) of metastatic biopsies before initiating AA/P with the objective of identifying genomic alterations associated with resistance to AA/P. Primary resistance was determined at 12 weeks of treatment using criteria for progression that included serum prostate-specific antigen measurement, bone and computerized tomography imaging and symptom assessments. Acquired resistance was determined using the end point of time to treatment change (TTTC), defined as time from enrollment until change in treatment from progressive disease. Associations of genomic and transcriptomic alterations with primary resistance were determined using logistic regression, Fisher's exact test, single and multivariate analyses. Cox regression models were utilized for determining association of genomic and transcriptomic alterations with TTTC.

Results
At 12 weeks, 32 patients in the cohort had progressed (nonresponders). Median study follow-up was 32.1 months by which time 58 patients had switched treatments due to progression. Median TTTC was 10.1 months (interquartile range: 4.4-24.1). Genes in the Wnt/β-catenin pathway were more frequently mutated and negative regulators of Wnt/β-catenin signaling were more frequently deleted or displayed reduced mRNA expression in nonresponders. Additionally, mRNA expression of cell cycle regulatory genes was increased in nonresponders. In multivariate models, increased cell cycle proliferation scores (≥ 50) were associated with shorter TTTC (hazard ratio = 2.11, 95% confidence interval: 1.17-3.80; P = 0.01).

Conclusions
Wnt/β-catenin pathway activation and increased cell cycle progression scores can serve as molecular markers for predicting resistance to AA/P therapy.


The spatial pattern of established seedlings yields valuable information about variation in fecundity, dispersal, and spatial structure of distributed recruits, but separating maternal and paternal contributions in monoecious species has been hampered by the "2 parent" problem. It is now possible to determine the maternal parentage of established recruits with genetic assay of maternally derived tissues of the seed or fruit, but the DNA of weathered maternal tissues often yields unreliable genotypes, reducing the practical range of such assay. We develop a mixed assay of seedling and seed (pericarp) tissues and illustrate it with distributed recruits of California valley oak (Quercus lobata Née). Detailed analysis indicates correct maternal assignment rates of canopy patch recruits of 56% (seedling assay only) versus 94% (mixed assay). For open patch recruits, maternal assignment rates were less than 50% (seedling assay only) versus 91% (mixed assay). The strategy of choice is to use seedling genotypes to identify a small set of credible parental candidates and then deploy 3-4 well-chosen pericarp/endocarp loci to reduce that list to a single obvious maternal candidate. The increase in the number of recruits available for subsequent analysis is pronounced, increasing precision and statistical power for subsequent inference.


Two reform movements transformed American criminal law in the four decades that began in the late 1960s. Their origins and effects were starkly different, and their conflict meant that, on core choices about the basis for criminal liability, one movement had to win and the other lose. The first movement was the wave of criminal code reform inspired by the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code (MPC), first published in 1962. The MPC movement sought to increase the role of culpability as a prerequisite for liability by presumptively requiring proof of mens rea for every element of criminal offenses — a policy that rejected longstanding use of strict liability for significant offense elements. The second, which could be called the tough-on-crime movement, became the more significant. This was the transformation of American criminal-justice policy that expanded criminal offenses, enforcement and sentences, resulting in a national incarceration rate that quintupled and became by far the world's highest. This Article identifies the twenty-four states that codified the MPC's culpability rules and then recounts an extensive survey of the case law in those states to assess the reforms' effect on judicial interpretation of mens rea requirements. It finds that legislative codifications of presumptions for mens rea have had surprisingly little effect on courts that define mens rea requirements when interpreting criminal statutes. It describes the recurrent rationales courts use to impose strict-liability elements in a wide range of crimes notwithstanding statutes that direct presumptions to the contrary. It then offers an explanation for this outcome — a substantial failure of the MPC-inspired revision of criminal codes — that emphasizes the continuing normative appeal of strict liability, the influence of instrumental rationales for punishment, and the limits of the judicial role in an era in which the legislative and executive branches are vastly expanding the reach and severity of criminal punishment.


In recent months, the legal status of fantasy sports has undergone intense scrutiny, with the attorneys general of many states contending that certain formats of "daily fantasy sports" violate state gambling laws. In an effort to save the burgeoning "daily fantasy sports" industry, legislators in these states have proposed bills to affirmatively legalize and regulate "daily fantasy sports." However, these bills often fail to adequately address the underlying consumer protection concerns pertaining to the industry. This article analyzes how U.S. states currently regulate the fantasy sports marketplace, and proposes a framework for future state laws to effectively regulate both traditional fantasy sports and "daily fantasy sports." Part I of this article explores the history of fantasy sports contests in the United States – analyzing separately the origins of traditional fantasy sports and "daily fantasy sports." Part II applies state gambling laws to the fantasy sports marketplace, analyzing past court decisions, gaming commission rulings, and attorneys general opinions. Part III analyzes current state laws that specifically regulate the behavior of companies in the fantasy sports industry. Part IV discusses recent bills proposed by state legislators in the 2015 and 2016 sessions that seek to affirmatively legalize and regulate fantasy sports. Finally, Part V proposes a comprehensive framework that would allow for states to effectively regulate both traditional fantasy sports and "daily fantasy sports" in a meaningful way, in conjunction with existing state gambling laws.


Immutable vectors are a convenient data structure for functional programming and part of the standard library of modern languages like Clojure and Scala. The common implementation is based on wide trees with a fixed number of children per node, which allows fast indexed lookup and update operations. In this paper we extend the vector data type with a new underlying data structure, Relaxed Radix Balanced Trees (RRB-Trees), and show how this structure allows immutable vector concatenation, insert-at and splits in O(log N) time while maintaining the index, update and iteration speeds of the original vector data structure.


Lung cancer remains one of the deadliest types of cancer, causing approximately 160,000 deaths per year in the US alone. Because of its poor detection techniques and highly invasive abilities, conventional treatments -such as radiation and chemotherapyfail to improve long-term survival of patients. At the moment, the 5-year survival rate for all stages of lung cancer is only 16%. Recent breakthroughs in cancer research establish immunotherapy, which involves the stimulation of the immune system to target and attack cancer cells, as a highly promising alternative treatment against this deadly disease. However, the efficiency of this treatment varies on each subset of cancer. A more efficient therapeutic strategy should include the targeting of immunosuppressive factors along with key proteins that are responsible for lung tumor growth. A possible target is the Retinoblastoma protein (Rb). This well-known tumor suppressor regulates a diverse set of cellular processes such as cell cycle progression and cell adhesion. Inactivation of Rb results in uncontrolled cell proliferation, which is a major driving force behind tumorigenesis. Recent findings suggest a new role for Rb in regulating immune system function. To further characterize this emerging role of Rb in immune function, the protein expression of PD-L1, PD1, OX-40, OX40L, B7-H3 and B7-H4 was analyzed via immunoblotting in Rbactivated and Rb-inactivated lung cancer cell lines. Our hypothesis is that Rb will affect the expression of these immunosuppressive factors in tumor cells. Preliminary results show that PDL1 and OX-40 expression is correlated to Rb active status, while PD1 and OX40L are expressed when Rb is inactivated.


The first (to our knowledge) integrated optical ring resonators to be fabricated using silver ion-exchanged waveguides are reported. Both circular and racetrack shaped resonators have been made, both types being capable of high finesse (>15) and efficiency (>90%). The circular resonators are much more difficult to make, however, requiring a double-diffusion process and precise control of the ion-exchange. For this reason, the racetrack resonators have been the more successful and have behaved exactly as expected from the previous work on losses and directional couplers.