The 3rd generation of mobile systems is mainly focused on enabling multimedia
services such as video streaming, video call and conferencing. In order to achieve
this, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), is the standard that
has been developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership ect (3GPP) in Europe,
including the baseline profile of H.264/AVC in the specification. With the union of
both technologies a great improvement on video transmission over mobile networks,
and even modification of the user habits towards the use of the mobile phone is expected.
Nevertheless, video transmission has always been related to wired networks
and unfortunately the migration to wireless networks is not as easy as it seems.
In real time applications the delay is a critical constraint. Usually, transmission
protocols without delivery warranties, like the User Network Protocol (UDP) for IP
based networks, are used. This works under the assumption that in real time applications
dropped packets are preferable to delayed packets. Moreover, in UMTS the
network needs to be treated in a different way, thus the wireless channel is a prone
error channel due to its high time variance. Typically, when transmitting video, the
receiver checks whether the information packet is corrupted (by means of a checksum)
or if its temporal mark exceeds the specified delay. This approach is suboptimal, due to the fact that
perhaps the video information is not damaged and could still be used.
Instead, residual redundancy on the video stream can be used to locate the errors
in the corrupted packet, increasing the granularity of the typical upper-layer checksum
error detection. Based on this, the amount of information previous to the error
detection can be decoded as usually.
The aim of this thesis is to combine some of the more effective methods concretely, Syntax check, Watermarking and Checksum schemes have
been reformulated, combined and simulated.


As most arbitrarily shaped cloaks can be approximated by polyhedra and further divided into a series of tetrahedra, we propose in this paper a linear mapping approach to design cloaks with tetrahedron shapes ( i.e . tetrahedral cloaks). Homogeneous material properties of the cloak are straightforwardly obtained from coordinates of typical points. Consequently, most arbitrarily shaped thermal cloaks can be designed using homogeneous anisotropic materials only. We construct two polyhedral cloaks and show numerically that they successfully thermally conceal objects after a certain lapse of time. We then demonstrate that cloaks with curved boundaries can also be obtained using our approach. It is further shown how geometrical parameters affect the material properties and cloaking performances. One can flexibly tune the cloaking performances based on practical requirements and material availabilities. We analyze effectiveness of a polygonal cloak composed of an alternation of homogeneous isotropic layers, and note that cloaking deteriorates at short times. We finally sketch an approach to realize 3D homogenized thermal metamaterials.


Observations of citizen scientists have become an indispensable source in the collection of biodiversity data worldwide. In Greece, the findings of these citizen scientists, in collaboration with the Hellenic Network on Aquatic Invasive Species (ELNAIS), have resulted in compiling diverse information on marine alien species. Since 2004, the Liamis Dive Centre has recorded visual data on 12 marine alien species around Pserimos Island (Dodekanisa, Greece), thus enabling us to sequence their progression and displacement amongst other vital information. The real number of biological invasions is likely to be higher than reported here because citizen scientists do not have the scientific skills required for species identification and also due to financial constraints. Nevertheless, the high number of observers to a certain extent compensates the lack of taxonomic expertise.


For the purpose of enhancing the adsorption of natural organic matter (NOM) from water sources, commercially available powdered activated carbon (PAC) was further ground to produce PAC of micrometre-sized particles, and the effects of PAC size on adsorption of NOM were investigated. The micrometre-sized PAC (median particle diameter, 0.8 and 3.8 μm) removed NOM much better than did as-received PAC (33 μm). Only one-tenth the dose of micrometre-sized PAC had the same effect as a full dose of the as-received PAC. The micro-grinding of PAC to micrometre sizes was effective at increasing its adsorption kinetics: adsorption of NOM to the micrometre-sized PAC reached 80% of equilibrium within only 1 min of contact time. The micro-grinding of PAC was also effective at increasing its adsorption capacity for NOM and polystyrene sulfonate-MW1800, but not for the small molecule phenol. This appeared to be due to an increase in mesopore surface area probably by fracture of ink-bottle pore structures during the micro-grinding. The micro-grinding enhanced the adsorption affinity of PAC for NOM that was strongly UV 260 -absorbent but not for NOM with low UV 260 absorbance.


This article examines the treatment of racism in Hebrew literary translation. It relies on culture theorists such as Foucault, Said, Fanon and Bhabha who have analyzed the relations of a society with individuals and groups whom it regards as "others". The texts discussed have been selected because they can illustrate critical arguments made by these theorists. They include texts which are openly racist (Henryk Sienkiewicz's W pustyni i w puszczy [In Desert and Wilderness], Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Edgar Wallace's The People of the River) and others that criticize racism but fall into the trap against which they warn (Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin). The article also refers to "Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben" (in English, "The Story of the Inky Boys"), one of the stories included in Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter (The Slovenly Peter). In the latter, the Hebrew translations (rather than the German source) make use of racist stereotypes.Inspired by translation researchers who regard translation as the meeting place of a culture with "others" (Venuti, Tymoczco, Cronin), the article also makes use of the concept of norms as elaborated by Toury. In line with his theoretical approach, it is assumed that the treatment of racism in translation depends not only on the overall attitude to racism in the receiving culture but also on its translation norms.


In order to assess the frequency and profile of cirrhosis in the young, 169 consecutive patients with cirrhosis were studied. Sixty three (37%) patients of less than or equal to 35 years age were defined as young and the remaining 106 (63%) patients (greater than 35 years) as adult cirrhotics. Men predominated significantly (p less than 0.01) in the young cirrhotic group. The aetiology, the frequency of positive hepatitis B markers and initial clinical presentation were similar in the two groups. During the follow up period (30.6 +/- 29.7 months for the young and 25.8 +/- 21.7 months for the adult group), except for abdominal distension and pedal oedema which occurred significantly more often in the adult compared with the young cirrhotics, no difference was noted in the two groups. Twenty seven (39.7%) deaths (40% as a result of hepatic failure and 52% due to variceal bleeding) occurred in the young and 47 (44.3%) deaths (63.8% because of hepatic failure and 26% because of variceal bleeding) occurred in the adult cirrhotics during the follow up (difference NS). The five year survival (61.9% v 55.7%) and the probability of survival within the same Child's grade of liver disease were comparable. In both the groups, however, the probability of survival was significantly higher in Child's A compared with Child's B and C and in Child's B compared with Child's C grade of liver disease. Survival was not influenced by sex of the patient and aetiology of cirrhosis. Results of this prospective study indicate that cirrhosis is not uncommon in young adults. The aetiology, clinical presentation, natural history of the disease and the survival rates in young cirrhotics do not differ significantly from adult cirrhotics.


Oligotrophic ecosystems, previously considered to be more resilient to invasive plants, are now recognised to be highly vulnerable to invasions. In these systems, woody legumes show belowground ecosystem engineering characteristics that enable invasion, however, the underlying processes are not well understood. Using a Portuguese primary dune ecosystem as an oligotrophic model system, belowground biomass pools, turnover rates and stoichiometry of a native (Stauracanthus spectabilis) and an invasive legume (Acacia longifolia) were compared and related to changes in the foliage of the surrounding native (Corema album) vegetation.

We hypothesized that the invasive legume requires less phosphorus per unit of biomass produced and exhibits an enhanced nutrient turnover compared to the native vegetation, which could drive invasion by inducing a systemic N/P imbalance.

Compared with the native legumes, A. longifolia plants had larger canopies, higher SOM levels and lower tissue P concentrations. These attributes were strongly related to legume influence as measured by increased foliar N content and less depleted δ15N signatures in the surrounding C. album vegetation. Furthermore, higher root N concentration and increased nutrient turnover in the rhizosphere of the invader were associated with depleted foliar P in C. album.

Our results emphasize that while A. longifolia itself maintains an efficient phosphorus use in biomass production, at the same time it exerts a strong impact on the N/P balance of the native system. Moreover, this study highlights the engineering of a belowground structure of roots and rhizosphere as a crucial driver for invasion, due to its central role in nutrient turnover. These findings provide new evidence that, under nutrient-limited conditions, considering co-limitation and nutrient cycling in oligotrophic systems is essential to understand the engineering character of invasive woody legumes.


The regulation of economic activity is a question of the utmost relevance in urban planning as urbanism meants to support coexistence of citizens necessities while preserving the health of the commercial economic fabric. In this context, the model of diversity embodied by the city of Barcelona (paradigm of other European cities where commercial and leisure activities play a fundamental role in constructing the social, civic and economic values) is under discussion from the urban and political perspective. The saturation of public access activities, food retailers and tourist services -consequence of previous boosting liberal policies-is affecting the habitability and the quality of life of the residents. Using the new land-use plan of Ciutat Vella (Barcelona, Spain, 2018) as a case study, we intend to frame the regulation of public access and commercial activities in an international context, explain how this particular type of plan works and discuss the circumstances of its implementation.


ABSTRACT Dozens of well-preserved fossil burrow systems in upper Miocene sedimentary rocks of the Ogallala Group at a site in east-central Nebraska record rodent behavior and the subsurface ecology of grasslands just as the modern Great Plains was developing. These burrow systems include one to four entrance or exit tunnels, large underground nesting chambers at depths of several decimeters below ancient land surfaces, and incisor grooves on the walls. Tunnels average 89.8 mm in diameter, a value similar to the burrow diameters of multiple living North American rodents. Chambers vary in shape and typically exceed 500 mm in length; some attain 1000 mm in length. Living marmotine ground squirrels (tribe Marmotini) construct burrow systems of varying degrees of complexity, but they do not engage in shallow subsurface foraging. Extinct members of this group were the most likely excavators of the fossil burrows. In contrast, extant pocket gophers (family Geomyidae) and, presumably their fossil relatives, are obligate subterranean animals that produce linked deep and shallow burrow subsystems, the latter representing their chief foraging strategy. Our results raise issues regarding the relationships between the architecture of fossil rodent burrow systems and aspects of rodent behavior and life history, such as litter size, developmental rates, seasonal torpor, hibernation, and sociality in grasslands. An improved understanding of the burrowing behaviors of ancient rodents will highly complement the growing body of knowledge about the development of grasslands on Earth over time, but truly ichnological analyses of the burrows and burrowing behaviors of extant rodents are much needed.


A novel antimisoperation system is proposed to prevent manmade misoperations using real-time signboard image identification technology. A portable video capture device is employed to capture real-time images of the current working bay's substation signboard. These images, with the aid of image identification, are used to determine whether the operations staff has accessed a wrong bay. The framework and workflow of the system are provided, and the implementation of the signboard image border detection, character partition, and image-matching methods are also introduced in detail. The effectiveness and engineering applicability of the proposed system are demonstrated through lab results and in-field tests. The proposed system can be used in conjunction with an active five-prevention system to further improve the validity and safety of substation operations.


Abstract New shell microstructure data for the Triassic pectinid Pleuronectites reinforce shell morphological data suggesting that its family Pectinidae was derived from the superfamily Aviculopectinoidea and not from the Pernopectinidae-Entolioidesidae-Entoliidae clade. This would make the superfamily Pectinoidea, as defined by recent authors, polyphyletic. This would also imply that alivincular-alate ligaments evolved independently in the Pernopectinidae-Entolioidesidae-Entolidae and Pectinidae clades.


Storm drainage in Albuquerque, NM is a central issue in land development. To expedite municipal development while assuring public safety and preserving environmental attributes in a public arena where new information is constantly introduced requires dynamic regulation. Drainage criteria in Albuquerque have evolved from textbook computations to standards specifically developed for the region. The evolutionary process has not at all times been straightforward. To date, the process has unified a Rational Method approach for small watersheds with a modified HYMO model for large watersheds. Particular attention has been given to matching both peak rate and volume of runoff.


The Pascua-Lama high-sulfidation system, located in the El Indio-Pascua belt of Chile and Argentina, contains
over 16 million ounces (Moz) Au and 585 Moz Ag. The deposit is hosted primarily in granite rocks of Triassic age
with mineralization occurring in several discrete Miocene-age phreatomagmatic breccias and related fracture networks.
The largest of these areas is Brecha Central, which is dominated by a mineralizing assemblage of alunitepyrite-
enargite and precious metals. Several stages of hydrothermal alteration related to mineralization are recognized,
including all types of alunite-bearing advanced argillic assemblages (magmatic-hydrothermal,
steam-heated, magmatic steam, and supergene). The occurrence of alunite throughout the paragenesis of this epithermal
system is unusual and detailed radiometric, mineralogical, and stable isotope studies provide constraints
on the timing and nature of alteration and mineralization of the alunite-pyrite-enargite assemblage in the deposit.
Early (preore) alteration occurred prior to ca. 9 Ma and consists of intense silicic and advanced argillic assemblages
with peripheral argillic and widespread propylitic zones. Alunite of this stage occurs as fine intergrowths
of alunite-quartz ± kaolinite, dickite, and pyrophyllite that selectively replaced feldspars in the host rock.
Stable isotope systematics suggest a magmatic-hydrothermal origin with a dominantly magmatic fluid source.
Alunite is coeval with the main stage of Au-Ag-Cu mineralization (alunite-pyrite-enargite assemblage ore), which
has been dated at approximately 8.8 Ma. Ore-stage alunite has an isotopic signature similar to preore alunite,
and Δ34Salun-py data indicate depositional temperatures of 245° to 305°C. The δD and δ18O data exclude significant
involvement of meteoric water during mineralization and indicate that the assemblage formed from H2Sdominated
magmatic fluids. Thick steam-heated alteration zones are preserved at the highest elevations in the
deposit and probably formed from oxidation of H2S during boiling of the magmatic ore fluids. Coarsely crystalline
magmatic steam alunite (8.4 Ma) is restricted to the near-surface portion of Brecha Central. Postmineral
alunite ± jarosite were previously interpreted to be supergene crosscutting veins and overgrowths, although stable
isotope data suggest a mixed magmatic-meteoric origin for this late-stage alteration. Only late jarosite veinlets
(8.0 Ma) associated with fine-grained pseudocubic alunite have a supergene isotopic signature.
The predominance of magmatic fluids recorded throughout the paragenesis of the Pascua system is atypical
for high-sulfidation deposits, which typically involve significant meteoric water in near-surface and peripheral
alteration and, in some systems, even ore deposition. At Pascua, the strong magmatic signature of both alteration
and main-stage (alunite-pyrite-enargite assemblage) ore is attributed to limited availability of meteoric
fluids. This is in agreement with published data for the El Indio-Pascua belt, indicating an event of uplift and
subsequent pediment incision, as well as a transition from semiarid to arid climatic conditions, during the formation
of the deposit in the mid to late Miocene.


A series of novel 3-arylethynyltriazolyl ribonucleosides were synthesized and assessed for their anticancer activity on the drug-resistant pancreatic cancer cell line MiaPaCa-2. Among them, one compound exhibited potent apoptosis-inducing properties and anticancer activity against the pancreatic cancer model MiaPaCa-2 both in vitro and in vivo with no adverse effects. This compound did not inhibit DNA synthesis and therefore does not resemble the clinical drug gemcitabine. It did, however, significantly down-regulate the expression of heat shock protein 27 (Hsp27), a small molecular chaperone playing an important role in drug resistance and highly expressed in drug-resistant cancer forms, and thus represents the first small molecular anticancer lead with such a mode of action.


The Alexandrium tamarense species complex contains prominent paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxin producers that can be further discriminated either on the basis of morphological characteristics or by DNA sequence divergence. The North American clade, as defined by its LSU ribosomal DNA sequence, is the most widely distributed representative of the PSP toxin-producing A. tamarense clades. Populations of this clade cause recurrent blooms in many regions of the world. Natural populations from North America, Northern Europe and Japan exhibit notable genetic differentiation that can be detected by molecular markers with different resolution properties. Whereas molecular sequence analysis of ribosomal DNA yields only a coarse resolution pattern of regional subclades, mitochondrial DNA sequences and microsatellites, as well as Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) analysis, allow the estimation of genetic differentiation between contiguous populations. No congruence of any of the genetic markers were found between the expression of PSP toxin phenotypes or allelochemical properties that can affect grazers or competing algal species, but inter-population differences in PSP toxin profile were apparent on a broad geographical scale. The variable expression of the allelopathic phenotype within a population from Northern Europe was used to experimentally test the protective benefit of allelochemical properties on bloom formation.


Patriotism, or the devoted love of one's country, is a phenomenon that can be used in the service of the state. Often, during wartime, the militarized aspect of patriotism is stressed. The state puts out a message calling for unanimity among the population, preferably unanimity in support of state policy and may try to restrict media criticism of state policies. This has been the case during the second phase of Russia's war in Chechnya, which started in 1999), for instance, when Russian journalists have been forbidden to talk to representatives of Chechnya's rebels, who the Russian government deems "bandits" and "terrorists." For journalists to do so would be in violation of a Russian law on combating terrorism. Such censorship bolsters the hegemony of the patriotic rhetoric that the state is seeking to uphold.


Background: The present paper deals with the problems of a public transportation fleet management in public transportation operators. A management concept is proposed based on a real-time acquisition of parameters of public transportation passenger exchange. Methods: The relevant research utilised video materials documenting the processes of passenger exchange in public transportation. The proposed methodology is based on a dynamic real-time measurement of passenger streams. A characteristic feature of the measurement methodology applied is that the data is collected outside the vehicles, with a CCTV camera used per access point. Demand for the public transportation service are calculated using the image processing. Results: The derived demand characteristics allow not only an estimation of the magnitude of traffic streams in public transportation but also their qualitative description. Such an approach permits a flexible design of the transportation offer to adapt to the demand. This allows matching the timetables to the density functions describing the demand for public transportation within the space of transportation networks. In addition, based on the results of this type of research, a public transportation operator may despatch the vehicle base in a flexible way. For each run of a bus or tram fleet, basing on the registered passenger traffic streams, it is possible to rationally despatch the vehicles with suitable capacity. Conclusions: A system of this type is capable of determining the quality of work of the public transportation. With the ITS systems being introduced still more widely, the proposed methodology allows the design and implementation of dynamic timetables.


Multi-intent natural language sentence classification aims at identifying multiple user goals in a single natural language sentence (e.g., "find Beyonce's movie and music" ! find movie, find music). The main motivation of this work is to exploit the shared intents across different intent combinations rather than treating the combination as an atomic label. We propose to achieve this by (1) adding class features, and (2) adding hidden variables to identify segments belonging to each intent. Experimental results demonstrate significant gains in classification accuracy over the baseline methods across a number of training conditions (3%-8% absolute on multi-intent sentences, 2%-3% absolute on single intent sentences).


There is still much performance to be gained by out-of-order processors with wider issue widths. However, traditional methods of increasing issue width do not scale; that is, they drastically increase design complexity and power requirements. This dissertation introduces the braid, a compile-time generated entity that enables the execution core to scale to wider widths by exploiting the small fanout and short lifetime of values produced by the program. A braid captures dataflow and register usage information of the program which are known to the compiler but are not traditionally conveyed to the microarchitecture through the instruction set architecture.
Braid processing requires identification by the compiler, minor augmentations to the instruction set architecture, and support by the microarchitecture. The execution core of the braid microarchitecture consists of a number of braid execution units (BEUs). The BEU is tailored to efficiently carry out the execution of a braid in an in-order fashion. Each BEU consists of a FIFO scheduler, a busy-bit vector, two functional units, and a small internal register file.
The braid microarchitecture provides a number of opportunities for the reduction of design complexity. It reduces the port requirements of the renaming mechanism, it simplifies the steering process, it reduces the area, size, and port requirements of the register file, and it reduces the port requirements and paths of the bypass network. The complexity savings result in a design characterized by a lower power requirement, a shorter pipeline, and a higher clock frequency. On an 8-wide design, the result from executing braids is performance within 9% of a very aggressive conventional out-of-order microarchitecture with the complexity of an in-order implementation.
Three bottlenecks are identified in the braid microarchitecture and a solution is presented to address each. The limitation on braid size is addressed by dynamic merging. The underutilization of braid execution resources caused by long-latency instructions is addressed by context sharing. The poor utilization of braid execution resources caused by single-instruction braids is addressed by heterogeneous execution resources.


Cartilage fatigue may be a factor in the precocious development of degenerative changes in the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). This cross-sectional study estimated potential for cartilage fatigue via TMJ energy densities (ED) and jaw muscle duty factors (DF), which were combined to calculate mechanobehavioral scores (MBS) in women with (+) and without (–) bilateral TMJ disc displacement (DD). All subjects gave informed consent to participate and were examined using Diagnostic Criteria (DC) for Temporomandibular Disorders (TMD) and magnetic resonance (MR) and computed tomography (CT) images. Forty-seven subjects were categorized into +DD (n = 29) and –DD (n = 18) groups. Dynamic stereometry (MR images combined with jaw-tracking data) characterized individual-specific data of TMJ stress-field mechanics to determine ED (ED = W/Q mJ/mm3, where W = work done, Q = volume of cartilage) during 10 symmetrical jaw-closing cycles with a 20-N mandibular right canine load. Subjects were trained to record masseter and temporalis electromyography over 3 days and 3 nights. Root mean square electromyography/bite-force calibrations determined subject-specific masseter and temporalis muscle activities per 20-N bite-force (T20 N, µV), which defined thresholds. Muscle DF (DF = % duration of muscle activity/total recording time) were determined for a range of thresholds, and MBS (ED2 × DF) were calculated. Intergroup differences in ED, DF, and MBS were assessed via analyses of variance with Bonferroni and Tukey honest significant difference post hoc tests. Average ED for contralateral TMJs was significantly larger (P = 0.012) by 1.4-fold in +DD compared to –DD subjects. Average DF were significantly larger (all P < 0.01) for +DD compared to –DD subjects by 1.7-, 2.5-, and 1.9-fold for day, night, and overall, respectively. Daytime MBS were significantly larger (all P < 0.04) by up to 8.5-fold in +DD compared to –DD subjects. Significantly larger ED, DF, and MBS were shown in women with compared to women without bilateral TMJ DD.


Background In July 2013, the Spanish Medicines Agency published an informative note (IN) limiting the use of metoclopramide to prevent and treat nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery and suggesting a maximum duration of treatment of 5 days. Purpose To evaluate the impact of the metoclopramide IN on a general hospital. Materials and methods Prospective quasi-experimental study in different Clinical Units (CU) using the Unitary Dose Drug Dispensing System (UDDDS): Digestive/General Surgery (DGS), Vascular Surgery, Digestive, Obstetrics/Gynaecology, Haematology, Internal Medicine (IM), Nephrology, Neurology, Traumatology and Urology. During August 2013, following the IN guidance, hospital pharmacists directed a pharmaceutical intervention (PI) at physicians prescribing metoclopramide. An alarm system was created in the UDDDS module of Farmatools-Dominion to detect metoclopramide treatments in excess of 5 days. Daily, every metoclopramide prescription was reviewed by a pharmacist and physicians were alerted in accordance with the IN. Data collection: age, gender, CU, PI (reason for PI and degree of acceptance). Results 553 patients were hospitalised during the study: 96 treated with metoclopramide, mainly in DGS (59) and IM (17). 41 PIs were made. The majority of patients were female (63%) and the mean age was 64 years. 34 of the 41 PIs were made because metoclopramide was not recommended for use, while 7 were due to excessive length of treatment (surgery patients). The degree of acceptance of the PIs was 61% (19 drug interruptions and 6 changes from daily administration to only when presenting nausea or vomiting). Obstetrics/Gynaecology and Neurology were the CU with the highest degree of acceptance (100%), while IM (41%) and Surgery (20%) represented the highest number of PIs. Conclusions The degree of acceptance confirms both the importance of the involvement of pharmacists in the patient's pharmacotherapy, as well as the importance of cooperation with physicians to optimise pharmaceutical care. Furthermore, PIs were successful and considered useful to improve the use of metoclopramide, not only improving safety but also efficacy. No conflict of interest.


America has long compared its students to top-performing kids of other nations. But how do the world's education superpowers look through the eyes of an American high school student? Author Amanda Ripley follows three teenagers who chose to spend one school year living and learning in Finland, South Korea, and Poland. Through their adventures, Ripley discovers startling truths about how attitudes, parenting, and rigorous teaching have revolutionized these countries' education results. In The Smartest Kids in the World, Ripley's astonishing new insights reveal that top-performing countries have achieved greatness only in the past several decades; that the kids who live there are learning to think for themselves, partly through failing early and often; and that persistence, hard work, and resilience matter more to our children's life chances than self-esteem or sports. Ripley's investigative work seamlessly weaves narrative and research, providing in-depth analysis and gripping details that will keep you turning the pages. Written in a clear and engaging style, The Smartest Kids in the World will enliven public as well as dinner table debates over what makes for brighter and better students.


The emergence of context-aware systems has highlighted the requirement to reduce complexity in developing the systems by establishing a context middleware. The middleware aims to provide support for managing context independently from applications and enhance generality and reusability of context sources for multiple applications. In this paper we propose a novel framework for managing context in Mobile Ad Hoc Network Environment (MANET). We model contexts and situations based on the concept of situation space in Context Spaces theory and integrate the model with Dempster-Shafer rule of combination for situation reasoning. Furthermore, we incorporate reliability of information in the fusion mechanism based on discount rule to adopt uncertainty factor that may exist due to limited and uncertain evidence in the host's environment. Finally, the implementation and experimentation issues of the prototype are also discussed.


We derive the relationships that link the general elastic properties of rock masses to the geometrical properties of fracture networks, with a special emphasis to the case of frictional crack surfaces. We extend the well‐known elastic solutions for free‐slipping cracks to fractures whose plane resistance is defined by an elastic fracture (shear) stiffness ks and a stick‐slip Coulomb threshold. A complete set of analytical solutions have been derived for (i) the shear displacement in the fracture plane for stresses below the slip threshold and above, (ii) the partitioning between the resistances of the fracture plane on the one hand and of the elastic matrix on the other hand, and (iii) the stress conditions to trigger slip. All the expressions have been checked with numerical simulations. The Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio were also derived for a population of fractures. They are controlled both by the total fracture surface for fractures larger than the stiffness length lS (defined by ks and the intact matrix elastic properties) and by the percolation parameter of smaller fractures. These results were applied to power law fracture size distributions, which are likely relevant to geological cases. We show that if the fracture size exponent is in the range −3 to −4, which corresponds to a wide range of geological fracture networks, the elastic properties of the bulk rock are almost exclusively controlled by ks and the stiffness length, meaning that the fractures of size lS play a major role in the definition of the elastic properties.


BACKGROUND
Endovascular therapy for acute ischemic stroke is generally avoided when the infarction is large, but the effect of endovascular therapy with medical care as compared with medical care alone for large strokes has not been well studied.

METHODS
We conducted a multicenter, open-label, randomized clinical trial in Japan involving patients with occlusion of large cerebral vessels and sizable strokes on imaging, as indicated by an Alberta Stroke Program Early Computed Tomographic Score (ASPECTS) value of 3 to 5 (on a scale from 0 to 10, with lower values indicating larger infarction). Patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive endovascular therapy with medical care or medical care alone within 6 hours after they were last known to be well or within 24 hours if there was no early change on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery images. Alteplase (0.6 mg per kilogram of body weight) was used when appropriate in both groups. The primary outcome was a modified Rankin scale score of 0 to 3 (on a scale from 0 to 6, with higher scores indicating greater disability) at 90 days. Secondary outcomes included a shift across the range of modified Rankin scale scores toward a better outcome at 90 days and an improvement of at least 8 points in the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score (range, 0 to 42, with higher scores indicating greater deficit) at 48 hours.

RESULTS
A total of 203 patients underwent randomization; 101 patients were assigned to the endovascular-therapy group and 102 to the medical-care group. Approximately 27% of patients in each group received alteplase. The percentage of patients with a modified Rankin scale score of 0 to 3 at 90 days was 31.0% in the endovascular-therapy group and 12.7% in the medical-care group (relative risk, 2.43; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.35 to 4.37; P = 0.002). The ordinal shift across the range of modified Rankin scale scores generally favored endovascular therapy. An improvement of at least 8 points on the NIHSS score at 48 hours was observed in 31.0% of the patients in the endovascular-therapy group and 8.8% of those in the medical-care group (relative risk, 3.51; 95% CI, 1.76 to 7.00), and any intracranial hemorrhage occurred in 58.0% and 31.4%, respectively (P<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
In a trial conducted in Japan, patients with large cerebral infarctions had better functional outcomes with endovascular therapy than with medical care alone but had more intracranial hemorrhages. (Funded by Mihara Cerebrovascular Disorder Research Promotion Fund and the Japanese Society for Neuroendovascular Therapy; RESCUE-Japan LIMIT ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03702413.).


The goal of this laboratory and finite elemental stress analysis (FEA) study was to compare fracture strength of dentin post (DP) with stainless steel and glass fiber posts. Single-rooted teeth were decoronated and restored with ParaPost (PP), i-TFC (TFC), and DPs (n = 10). Resin cores were created and loaded until failure (1.0 mm/min). The data were analyzed (ANOVA, Tukey, Chi-Square tests). Three-dimensional FEA models of the posts were created and the stress distributions were calculated using Solid Works/Cosmos works structural analysis program. A significant difference was found among the groups (p < 0.001). TFC group showed the highest and the DP group showed the lowest fracture resistance (p < 0.001). PP created more stress at the root dentin and inside the post. Restoration of roots with glass fiber and DPs may reduce stresses within the core material and the remaining root. However, a fracture-resistant restoration cannot be achieved by using a DP.


Toll-like receptors (TLRs) recognize microbial pathogens to trigger an immune response. TLR3, TLR7, and TLR9 recognize various microbial nucleic acids: TLR3, double-stranded RNA; TLR7, single-stranded RNA; and TLR9, unmethylated bacterial DNA. Previously, UNC93B, an endoplasmic reticulum protein predicted to have 12 transmembrane domains, was identified in a genetic screen as essential for signaling by TLR3, TLR7, and TLR9, as well as for antigen presentation by major histocompatibility complexes. Mice carrying the mutation H412R in UNC93B are highly susceptible to infections, and mutations in the encoding gene in humans are associated with susceptibility to viral infections. Brinkmann et al. found that wild-type UNC93B and the H412R mutant exhibited different mobilities upon electrophoresis, but both were produced in similar abundance and appeared to be associated with the endoplasmic reticulum based on their sensitivities to glycosidases. Large-scale isolation of tagged UNC93B or the H412R mutant from RAW macrophages, followed by mass spectrometry of proteins that specifically coprecipitated, revealed that the wild-type protein associated with TLR3, TLR7, TLR9, and TLR13. No TLR peptides were identified in the samples of the H412R mutant. Coexpression of tagged TLR3, TLR4, or TLR9, along with tagged UNC93B, showed that UNC93B selectively interacted with TLR3 and TLR9 but not with TLR4. Chimeras in which the transmembrane domains of TLR4 were exchanged with TLR3 or TLR9 showed that the interaction between UNC93B and TLR3 and TLR7 was mediated by the transmembrane domains. (The H412R mutation is in a predicted transmembrane domain of UNC93B.) To confirm that endogenous UNC93B and TLR7 interacted, the two proteins were coprecipitated from bone marrow-derived dendritic cells. Activation of the TLRs by addition of their respective ligands did not alter the interaction with UNC93B; however, the phenotypes associated with the H412R mutation suggest that these intracellular TLRs require the interaction of UNC93B to function properly. The mechanism by which this endoplasmic reticular protein contributes to TLR signaling remains to be determined. M. M. Brinkmann, E. Spooner, K. Hoebe, B. Beutler, H. L. Ploegh, Y.-M. Kim, The interaction between the ER membrane protein UNC93B and TLR3, 7, and 9 is crucial for TLR signaling. J. Cell Biol. 177, 265-275 (2007). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs--and their innovations--have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location. The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society. The Invention of Enterprise lays out a definitive picture for all who seek an understanding of innovation's central place in our world.


Symptomatic disc herniation is the most common disc pathology and can result in substantial disability and poor quality of life. Here, we present a male patient who was diagnosed as having lumbar disc herniation at L3/L4 and L4/L5 levels with nerve root entrapment. The patient sought chiropractic treatment for severe back pain which lead to trouble walking. After 7 months of a medical/chiropractic intervention, complete pain relief and recovery of muscle weakness were achieved. At 11-month follow-up, the regression of the herniated discs was documented on MR imaging. This case presentation aims to raise a reappraisal of our knowledge of intervertebral disc herniation in regard to the natural history, the components of herniated material and possible mechanisms behind hernia regression, which holds the key to treating this problem. Through the translation of research evidence into practice, current guidelines recalibrate instructions on the diagnosis and treatment of symptomatic disc herniation.


This article examines an important wall painting fragment purportedly found in the megaron of the Late Bronze Age palace at Mycenae in 1893. Originally published in Russian in 1897, the fragment depicts a right-facing mid-size male figure with stylistic affinities to processional figures subsequently excavated on Crete and the Greek mainland. Despite its apparent iconographic and historical significance, the painting has received limited attention in Aegean literature. Below, the thrilling yet murky history of the fragment's discovery is assembled from public and private testimonies by the eminent individuals involved. Possible reconstructions of the fragment are presented, and its iconography is explored in light of current chronologies and known comparanda. It is argued that, while many details of the fragment's biography remain ambiguous, the potential value of the find as a rare representation of a processing man in a mainland palatial context is substantial.


The rampant murder of Black women and girls in the United States proves that this place is not safe for them. In fact, it is questionable whether any space currently known can be safe when antiblackness and misogynoir are interwoven into the fabric of our world. For this reason, researchers must explore the unbound landscapes Black girls create for themselves in fantastic narratives. In this article, I examine the fantasy short stories of two Black middle school girls who participated in a writing workshop to explore how they resisted spatial control by creating new worlds they had the power to construct and dismantle.


Abstract Shallow-water, lithophilic spawning fishes are among the most vulnerable to anthropogenic fluctuations in water levels. We monitored water levels and environmental conditions at the nest sites of Moxostoma robustum (Robust Red-horse) on a main-channel gravel bar in the Savannah River, GA–SC. During the course of the 2005 spawning season, over 50% of the observed nest sites were either completely dewatered or left in near zero-flow conditions for several days. This occurred on two separate occasions, once early during the spawning season and then again near its conclusion. We hypothesize the habitat preferences of spawning Robust Redhorse leave them vulnerable to water-level fluctuations, and this phenomenon may be widespread in regulated river systems.


We develop a two-scale formalism to determine global magnetic helicity spectra in systems where the local magnetic helicity has opposite signs on both sides of the equator, giving rise to cancellation with conventional methods. We verify this approach using first a synthetic one-dimensional magnetic field and then two-dimensional slices from a three-dimensional α effect-type dynamo-generated magnetic field, with forced turbulence of opposite helicity above and below the midplane of the domain. We then apply this formalism to global solar synoptic vector magnetograms. To improve the statistics, data from three consecutive Carrington rotations (2161–2163) are combined into a single map. We find that the spectral magnetic helicity representative of the northern hemisphere is negative at all wavenumbers and peaks at ≈ 0.06 Mm − 1 (scales around 100 Mm ). There is no evidence of bihelical magnetic fields that are found in three-dimensional turbulence simulations of helicity-driven α effect-type dynamos.


The identification of larval istiophorid billfishes from the western North Atlantic Ocean has long been problematic. In the present study, a molecular technique was used to positively identify 27 larval white marlin (Tetrapturus albidus), 96 larval blue marlin (Makaira nigricans), and 591
larval sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus) from the Straits of Florida and the Bahamas. Nine morphometric measurements were taken for a subset of larvae (species known), and lower
jaw pigment patterns were recorded on a grid. Canonical variates analysis (CVA) was used to reveal the extent
to which the combination of morphometric, pigment pattern, and month of capture information was diagnostic to species level. Linear regression revealed species-specific relationships between the ratio of snout length to eye orbit diameter and standard length (SL). Confidence limits about these relationships served as defining characters for sailfish >10 mm SL and for blue and white marlin >17 mm SL.
Pigment pattern analysis indicated that 40% of the preflexion blue marlin examined possessed a characteristic
lower jaw pigment pattern and that 62% of sailfish larvae were identifiable by lower jaw pigments alone. An identification key was constructed based on pigment patterns, month of capture, and relationships between SL and the ratio of snout length to eye orbit diameter. The key yielded identifications for 69.4% of 304 (blind
sample) larvae used to test it; only one of these identifications was incorrect. Of the 93 larvae that could not be identified by the key, 71 (76.3%) were correctly identified with CVA. Although identif ication of certain
larval specimens may always require molecular techniques, it is encouraging that the majority (92.4%) of istiophorid larvae examined were ultimately identifiable from external
characteristics alone.


The zwitterionic homopolymer poly[2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl-dimethyl-(3-sulfopropyl) ammonium hydroxide was coated onto the surface of commercial polyamide reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. Aqueous solutions of the polymer at different concentrations were applied to modify the polyamide membranes through an in situ surface coating procedure. After membrane modification, cross-flow filtration testing was used to test the antifouling potential of the modified membranes. The obtained data were compared with experimental data for unmodified membranes. Each test was done by cross-flow filtering tap water for 60 hours. Yeast extract was added as a nutrient source for the naturally occurring bacteria in tap water, to accelerate bacteria growth. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, contact angle, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and permeation tests were employed to characterize membrane properties. The results confirmed that modifying the membranes enhanced their antifouling properties and cleaning efficiency, the fouling resistance to bacteria improving due to the increased hydrophilicity of the membrane surface after coating. In addition, the water permeability and salt rejection improved. This in situ surface treatment approach for RO membranes could be very important for modifying membranes in their original module assemblies as it increases water production and reduces the salt content.


Modern architectures adopt large on-chip cache memory hierarchies with more than two levels. While this improves performance, it has a certain cost in area and power consumption. In this paper, we consider an emerging non volatile memory technology, namely the Spin-Transfer Torque Magnetic RAM (STT-MRAM), with a powerful cache replacement policy in order to design an efficient STT-MRAM Last-Level Cache (LLC) in terms of performance and energy. Well-known benefits of STT-MRAM are their near-zero static power and high density compared to volatile memories. Nonetheless, their high write latency may be detrimental to system performance. In order to mitigate this issue, we combine STT-MRAM with a recent cache replacement policy. The benefit of this combination is evaluated through experiments on SPEC CPU2006 benchmark suite, showing performance improvements of up to 10% and 14% compared to SRAM cache with LRU respectively on single and multicore systems. Moreover, the energy consumption is on average decreased by 20% for all platforms. the of the LLC in SRAM and STT-MRAM, exploiting to the replacement this policy w.r.t. results normalized to the reference setup. For monocore platforms, the reference is a 2MB SRAM LLC with LRU, i.e., T_sram_lru . For multicore platforms, it is a 4MB LLC with LRU, i.e., S_sram_lru


We introduce DropConnect, a generalization of Dropout (Hinton et al., 2012), for regularizing large fully-connected layers within neural networks. When training with Dropout, a randomly selected subset of activations are set to zero within each layer. DropConnect instead sets a randomly selected subset of weights within the network to zero. Each unit thus receives input from a random subset of units in the previous layer. We derive a bound on the generalization performance of both Dropout and DropConnect. We then evaluate DropConnect on a range of datasets, comparing to Dropout, and show state-of-the-art results on several image recognition benchmarks by aggregating multiple DropConnect-trained models.


A guide to finding books, articles, technical reports, patents, and other information about computer science at the Dartmouth College Library


Microwave energy has been developed recently for the extraction of organic compounds from environmental matrices after its use in inorganic chemistry for trace metal analysis. The development in microwave techniques has occurred because of a need for a rapid, safe and cheap method. Conventional techniques for the extraction of solid matrices (such as Soxhlet) are time and solvent consuming and the analysis of numerous samples in environmental studies is limited by the extraction step. This review recalls the importance of the extraction step in the analytical procedure for the analysis of organic contaminants and the principles of extraction of solid matrices (sediment, soil, air particulate matter...). The theory of microwave heating is su m- marised and the microwave ovens used in analytical chemistry are described. Then, the review attempts to summarise all the stud- ies about microwave assisted extraction for organic contaminants, on one hand in multimode microwave ovens in closed vessels and on the other hand in focused microwave ovens at atmospheric pressure. The microwave assisted extraction methods of volatile compounds are summarised. Finally, advantages of methods compared to conventional extraction are discussed.


Our lives are being transformed by large mobile "sophisticated robots" with increasingly higher levels of autonomy, intelligence, and interconnectivity among themselves. For example, driverless automobiles are likely to become commercially available within a decade. Many people who suffer physical injuries from these robots will seek legal redress for their injury, and regulatory schemes are likely to impose requirements to reduce the number and severity of injuries. This Article addresses the issue of whether the current liability and regulatory systems provide a fair, efficient method for balancing the concern for physical safety against the need to incentivize the innovation necessary to develop these robots. The Article provides context for analysis by reviewing innovation and robots' increasing size, mobility, autonomy, intelligence, and interconnections in terms of safety, particularly in terms of physical interaction with humans, and by summarizing the current legal framework for addressing personal injuries in terms of doctrine, application, and underlying policies. The Article argues that the legal system's method of addressing physical injury from robotic machines that interact closely with humans has provided an appropriate balance of innovation and liability for personal injury. It critiques claims that the system is flawed and needs fundamental change and concludes that the legal system will continue to foster the innovation of reasonably safe sophisticated robots fairly and efficiently.


Respondents of contingent valuation surveys may place a null value on the public good, for reasons that differ from a genuine indifference to the good, but that can be interpreted as a "protest": either against the interview, or the public management, or both. A good survey design can effectively reduce them, but protest votes can hardly be completely removed from the dataset, and, if there is sample selection bias, they lead to biased estimates for the wtp measure. We propose a survey design, and a sample selection model, that allows taking into account, and correcting, the possible bias due to protest votes. Since the asymptotic standard errors estimated by means of the inverse of the information matrix containing the sample selection parameter are not reliable, we use an alternative procedure based on the likelihood profile. It will be seen that sample selection models may present estimation problems because of the flatness of the likelihood function: in some cases confidence intervals around the sample selection coefficient are too wide to give evidence of presence or absence of sample selection bias. We maintain that even in these circumstances the sample selection model with the protest votes should be preferred to the model without protest votes, since it takes into account the uncertainty about the estimates of the willingness to pay for the public good.


The converging roles of men and women are among the grandest advances in society and the economy in the last century. These aspects of the grand gender convergence are figurative chapters in a history of gender roles. But what must the "last" chapter contain for there to be equality in the labor market? The answer may come as a surprise. The solution does not (necessarily) have to involve government intervention and it need not make men more responsible in the home (although that wouldn't hurt). But it must involve changes in the labor market, especially how jobs are structured and remunerated to enhance temporal flexibility. The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not have an incentive to disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours. Such change has taken off in various sectors, such as technology, science, and health, but is less apparent in the corporate, financial, and legal worlds.


ABSTRACT A shift from private motorised transport to more active transportation can, among other things, deliver significant health benefits. The main disadvantage of active transport (in particular walking) for most people compared to private motorised transport is the limited range. Public transport (PT) can complement the use of active modes and extend their range. Therefore, there might be potential to increase physical activity through an increase in PT use. This article takes a closer look at how walking relates to the use of PT by examining existing literature on the topic. It aims to study how far people walk to and from PT and what key factors influence this. Scopus, Transport Research International Documentation and Web of Science have been searched systematically for relevant articles, conference papers and books. After screening of titles and abstracts, 41 relevant publications were identified. Studies were included if they quantified the amount of walking (measured as either distance or time) that is directly related to the use of PT. Studies that quantified walking using general measures of daily physical activity or daily walking or that used stated preference designs were excluded. The PT systems considered in this paper are mass transport systems in urban areas, either road- or rail-based, with fixed schedules and stops. Demand responsive transport services, which can offer door-to-door travel, are not considered, as these systems can to a large extent eliminate the need to walk. In the identified publications, a large variety of walking distances and times have been reported, and these seem to be highly context-specific. The paper establishes the evidence for the wide range of factors that influence walking related to PT, which have been categorised as personal, PT-related, environmental, and journey-related. The different methods that have been used are discussed by critically analysing their advantages and limitations. Only a limited number of these methods used allow for an accurate assessment of the walking distances to and from PT. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research, such as a need for more accurate measurement of walking and research in different geographical areas to shed light on underlying influences of culture and climate.


Appropriate for all settings providing long-term care, adult day services, or assisted living, this fresh and humanistic approach to Alzheimer's care will encourage caregivers to rethink the disease experience and explore its possibilities instead of its limitations. Readers will reconsider the meaning of home, reshape the environment, recreate a philosophy of care, redesign care programs, and more. Thought-provoking exercises throughout the text help administrators or staff explore and implement new ways of caring that stress the importance of preserving dignity, autonomy, and the emotional health of people with Alzheimer's disease.


Most antenna measurement systems are designed to acquire and process amplitude and phase data from a transmitting or receiving antenna in order to determine the antenna pattern, gain, sidelobes and other parameters of interest. The antenna under test (AUT) is typically assumed to have fixed operating parameters, except in the case of phased arrays with beam-steering capabilities. These phased array antennas are capable of changing the antenna transmit and receive characteristics under program control and present a unique challenge for the designer of antenna measurement systems. A key requirement for phased array antenna testing is that the RF stimulus and receiver measurement interval must be coordinated with the AUT timing and control commands. Optimization of this measurement process requires the measurement system to be capable of interfacing directly with the AUT beam-steering computer (BSC) in order to coordinate the various timing and control signals. This paper will discuss a highly customizable and integrated waveform generator (WFG) subsystem used to coordinate the phased array test process. The WFG subsystem is an automated digital pattern generator that orchestrates the command and triggering interface between the NSI measurement system and a phased array beam steering computer. The WFG subsystem is controlled directly by the NSI 2000 software and allows the test designer to select and generate a sequence of up to sixteen unique synchronized timing waveforms. Test scenarios, results and data for the WFG subsystem will be presented along with plots showing the key timing characteristics of the system.


Current geomechanical applications imply non-isothermal processes of unsaturated geomaterials, in most cases following stress paths different than the classical triaxial compression often used in laboratory testing. Though the effects of temperature, suction and stress path direction (Lode's angle) on the strength of geomaterials have been investigated independently, the integrated analysis combining the three effects has not been performed yet. In this paper, we formulate a thermo-plastic constitutive model for unsaturated conditions that accounts for the Lode's angle on the strength of geomaterials. The yield surface evolves shrinking for increasing temperature, expanding for increasing suction and has its maximum strength for triaxial compression and the minimum for triaxial extension. We highlight the importance of accounting for temperature, suction and Lode's angle on the evolution of the strength through examples that can be related to geo-energy applications. Numerical results show that not considering these effects may give rise to misleading predictions of the strength of geomaterials.


PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the effectiveness of ST-36 (Zusanli) acupressure on recovery of postoperative gastrointestinal function in patients with colorectal cancer.

DESIGN
A longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial design.

SETTING
An urban medical center in Taiwan.

SAMPLE
60 patients with colorectal cancer who had undergone abdominal surgery.

METHODS
Patients were randomly assigned to two groups, the ST-36 acupressure group (n = 30) and a sham acupressure group (n = 30). Patients in the ST-36 group received an acupressure procedure in a three-minute cycle performed three times per day during the five days after surgery. Patients in the control group received routine postoperative care and sham acupressure. Generalized estimating equations (GEEs) were used to gauge longitudinal effects of the two groups of patients.

MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES
Frequency of bowel sounds, the time to first flatus passage, first liquid intake, solid intake, and defecation.

FINDINGS
Patients who received acupressure had significantly earlier flatus passage and time to liquid intake as compared to patients in the control group. Other main variables, including the first time to solid intake and defecation, did not show significant difference between the two groups. The GEE method revealed that all patients had increasing bowel sounds over time, and the experimental group had greater improvement of bowel motility than the control group within the period of 2-3 days postoperatively.

CONCLUSIONS
ST-36 acupressure was able to shorten the time to first flatus passage, oral liquid intake, and improve gastrointestinal function in patients after abdominal surgery.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
ST-36 acupressure can be integrated into postoperative adjunct nursing care to assist patients' postoperative gastrointestinal function.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSLATION
Few studies have explored the effectiveness of acupressure techniques on promoting bowel sounds. Evidence from this study suggests stimulation of the ST-36 acupressure point can increase bowel sound frequency for patients with colorectal cancer in the first three days after surgery. Application of this technique may improve a patient's comfort after surgery.


Open access to biomedical information on the internet and through other easily accessible electronic databases has created new opportunities for doctors and patients, but much of the information is subject to manipulation because the ordinary conventions of context and the reliability of provenance are constantly in question.

That was one of the major themes of "Freedom of Information," a conference held in New York's Academy of Medicine on 6 and 7 July, sponsored by BioMed Central, which publishes peer reviewed clinical research reports that are available through the internet.

"On the internet anything goes and that's all right," said George Lundberg, editor of the online medical website Medscape.com and former editor in chief of the journal of the American …


I. INTRODUCTION II. HISTORY OF CLIMATE CHANGE A. The Evolution of Climate Change Policy B. The Domestic Agenda for Combating Climate Change III. CONFRONTING ARTICLE III STANDING A. Developing Standing Jurisprudence B. The Effect of Lujan C. Should the Political Branches Decide? IV. EXAMINING THE CLEAN AIR ACT A. The Chevron Test B. An Analysis of the D.C. Circuit's Opinions in Massachusetts v. EPA 1. Judge Randolph's Majority Opinion 2. Judge Sentelle's Concurrence and Dissent 3. Judge Tatel's Dissent V. PROMOTING REGULATION THROUGH THE CLEAN AIR ACT A. Article III Standing 1. The Akins/Lujan Standard 2. Proposing New Standing Requirements for Global Warming Disputes B. Interpreting the Clean Air Act Provisions 1. Examining Congressional Intent 2. The D.C. Circuit's Mischaracterization of the Clean Air Act C. The Likely Outcome of Massachusetts v. EPA VI. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION On October 20, 1999, the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA) and a number of environmental groups petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate certain greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles and engines. (2) The organizations argued that section 202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) (3) provided the EPA Administrator with mandatory discretion to regulate GHG emissions. (4) Petitioners contended that statements made on the EPA's website and other documents concluded that the emissions they sought to control may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public welfare. (5) They also claimed that motor vehicle emissions from the GHGs could be significantly reduced by increasing the fuel economy of vehicles, eliminating tailpipe emissions altogether, or using other current and developing technologies. However, the EPA concluded that it did not possess the legal authority to regulate the GHG emissions and denied their petition. (6) In Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, (7) the D.C. Circuit addressed the issue of whether the Clean Air Act authorized the EPA Administrator to control GHG emissions of new motor vehicles and engines. A three-judge panel voted 2-1 against reviewing the EPA's decision that it lacked authority under federal law to regulate GHGs. (8) The majority held that the Administrator "properly exercised his discretion under section 202(a)(1) in denying the petition for rulemaking." (9) In an en banc hearing, the D.C. Circuit rejected a petition for rehearing. (10) Late last term, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear arguments to resolve this controversy. (11) This comment asserts that the CAA authorizes the EPA to regulate GHG emissions from new motor vehicles. The Supreme Court's decision in Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (12) held that if a statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to a specific issue, the question becomes whether the agency's action involves a permissible construction of the statute. Part II of this comment discusses the historical background of climate change policy regarding GHG emissions. Part III focuses on the various environmental law cases addressing the issue of Article III standing. Part IV analyzes the Chevron test and the three opinions by the Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency judges. Part V advances the belief that section 202(a)(1) of the CAA provides mandatory authority and predicts that the Supreme Court will decide that the petitioners possess proper standing and that the EPA is mandated under section 202(a)(1) to regulate GHG emissions. This prediction is based on the Court's jurisprudence regarding Article III standing and the Chevron doctrine, respectively. Part VI concludes that failure to control the production of GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines limits the impact of the CAA to protect the public welfare from threats to the environment. …


Large-scale Hierarchical Classification (HC) involves datasets consisting of thousands of classes and millions of training instances with high-dimensional features posing several big data challenges. Feature selection that aims to select the subset of discriminant features is an effective strategy to deal with large-scale HC problem. It speeds up the training process, reduces the prediction time and minimizes the memory requirements by compressing the total size of learned model weight vectors. Majority of the studies have also shown feature selection to be competent and successful in improving the classification accuracy by removing irrelevant features. In this work, we investigate various filter-based feature selection methods for dimensionality reduction to solve the large-scale HC problem. Our experimental evaluation on text and image datasets with varying distribution of features, classes and instances shows upto 3x order of speed-up on massive datasets and upto 45% less memory requirements for storing the weight vectors of learned model without any significant loss (improvement for some datasets) in the classification accuracy. Source Code: https://cs.gmu.edu/∼mlbio/featureselection.


During the last decade, the fields of advanced and personalized therapeutics have been constantly evolving, utilizing novel techniques such as gene editing and RNA therapeutic approaches. However, the method of delivery and tissue specificity remain the main hurdles of these approaches. Exosomes are natural carriers of functional small RNAs and proteins, representing an area of increasing interest in the field of drug delivery. It has been demonstrated that the exosome cargo, especially miRNAs, is at least partially responsible for the therapeutic effects of exosomes. Exosomes deliver their luminal content to the recipient cells and can be used as vesicles for the therapeutic delivery of RNAs and proteins. Synthetic therapeutic drugs can also be encapsulated into exosomes as they have a hydrophilic core, which makes them suitable to carry water‐soluble drugs. In addition, engineered exosomes can display a variety of surface molecules, such as peptides, to target specific cells in tissues. The exosome properties present an added advantage to the targeted delivery of therapeutics, leading to increased efficacy and minimizing the adverse side effects. Furthermore, exosomes are natural nanoparticles found in all cell types and as a result, they do not elicit an immune response when administered. Exosomes have also demonstrated decreased long‐term accumulation in tissues and organs and thus carry a low risk of systemic toxicity. This review aims to discuss all the advances in exosome therapies in ophthalmology and to give insight into the challenges that would need to be overcome before exosome therapies can be translated into clinical practice.


Sec61 forms the pore through which proteins enter the ER. On page 67, Cheng et al. show that its cytoplasmic face makes at least two contributions to translocation before the protein passage event.The predicted structure of yeast Sec61 suggests that several conserved charged residues, which are in cytoplasmic loops that link adjacent membrane-spanning domains, may interact with the ribosome during cotranslational translocation. The authors mutated many of these candidate residues within Sec61. Several of the mutations blocked cotranslational protein translocation in vivo, but the particular effect depended on which loop was mutated.

Figure

Mutations in L6 (blue) and L8 (white) define contact points (red) for cytoplasmic partners of Sec61.

Point mutations in loop 8 (L8) interfered with the binding affinity between the ribosomal large subunit and the pore. Without this contact, normally ER-localized proteins accumulated in the cytoplasm. Cytoplasmic protein accumulation was also seen when loop 6 (L6) was mutated, although the binding affinity of the L6 mutants for the ribosome was not affected, suggesting that the cytoplasmic face of Sec61 has yet another function in translocation.

This function might be to improve the efficiency of ribosome binding by signaling that a channel is unoccupied. Before transfering to the translocon, the ribosome first binds to the signal recognition particle (SRP) and its receptor (SR). The authors hypothesize that interactions between an unoccupied L6 and the SR might place the SR-SRP-ribosome intermediate near open channels and thus hasten its transfer. They are now looking for definitive evidence of L6–receptor interactions.


For the calculation of torque in brushless (BL) AC motors a local method is proposed, based on the Maxwell stress theory and the filtered contributions due to the harmonics of the magnetic vector potential in the motor air-gap. By considering the space fundamental field only, the method can efficiently estimate the average synchronous torque for a variety or motor topologies, including concentrated winding designs. For BLDC motor analysis a global method is introduced, based on the virtual work principle expressed in terms of energy components in various motor regions. The method leads to simplifications in the average torque calculation and enables the direct identification of the cogging and ripple components. The mathematical procedures have been validated against experiments and other numerical techniques.


The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of photoperiod on the temporal and spatial expression of genes involved in glucose metabolism in the brain of the seasonal mammal Phodopus sungorus (Siberian hamster). In situ hybridization was performed on brain sections obtained from male hamsters held in long photoperiod (high body weight and developed testes) or short photoperiod (reduced body weight with testicular regression). This analysis revealed upregulation in expression of genes involved in glycogen and glucose metabolism in short photoperiod and localized to the tanycyte layer of the third ventricle. On the basis of these data and a previously identified photoperiod‐dependent increase in activity of neighboring hypothalamic neurons, we hypothesized that the observed expression changes may reflect alteration in either metabolic fuel or precursor neurotransmitter supply to surrounding neurons. Gene expression analysis was performed for genes involved in lactate and glutamate transport. This analysis showed that the gene for the lactate transporter MCT2 and glutamate transporter GLAST was decreased in the tanycyte layer in short photoperiod. Expression of mRNA for glutamine synthetase, the final enzyme in the synthesis of the neuronal neurotransmitter precursor, glutamine, was also decreased in short photoperiod. These data suggest a role for tanycytes in modulating glutamate concentrations and neurotransmitter supply in the hypothalamic environment. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Background: In 2011, South Africa established ward-based outreach teams (WBOTs) comprising Community Health Workers as part of strategies to strengthen primary healthcare. The new community health workers (CHWs) lacked experience of the programme. This study aimed at assessing perceptions of community health workers on their training, teamwork and practice.Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted among CHWs in the seven regions of Tshwane health district between October and November 2015. Data were collected from 431 CHWs in eight Community Health Centres and 11 clinics using a pre-tested, self-administered questionnaire. Outcome measures were CHWs' perceptions on training, teamwork and practice regarding WBOT programme.Results: A total of 431 CHWs formed the study sample. Participants had a mean age of 36 years (SD ± 9.46). The majority (88.2%) were female. Some 77% had completed secondary school. Overall, most CHWs perceived their training (86.4%), teamwork(87.6%) and practices (67.7%) to be good (p = 0.001). The majority were able to provide efficient health care despite the challenges experienced, which were lack of equipment, walking long distances, and safety on the streets and in households with patients who had mental health problems among others. Fisher's exact test showed a significant association between training and work challenges (p = 0.006).Conclusion: The study findings showed that most CHWs had good perceptions regarding their training, teamwork and practice. Several concerns raised by CHWs suggest the need for stakeholders to ensure availability of resources for optimal functioning of CHWs.


We use the coupled cluster method (CCM) to study the zero-temperature phase diagram of a two-dimensional frustrated spin-half antiferromagnet, the so-called Union Jack model. It is defined on a square lattice such that all nearest-neighbor pairs are connected by bonds with a strength J1>0, but only half the next-nearest-neighbor pairs are connected by bonds with a strength J2≡κJ1>0. The bonds are arranged such that on the 2×2 unit cell they form the pattern of the Union Jack flag. Alternating sites on the square lattice are thus four-connected and eight-connected. We find strong evidence for a first phase transition between a Neel antiferromagnetic phase and a canted ferrimagnetic phase at a critical coupling κc1=0.66±0.02. The transition is an interesting one, at which the energy and its first derivative seem continuous, thus providing a typical scenario of a second-order transition (just as in the classical case for the model), although a weakly first-order transition cannot be excluded. By contrast, the average on-site magnetization approaches a nonzero value Mc1=0.195±0.005 on both sides of the transition, which is more typical of a first-order transition. The slope, dM/dκ, of the order parameter curve as a function of the coupling strength κ, also appears to be continuous, or very nearly so, at the critical point κc1, thereby providing further evidence of the subtle nature of the transition between the Neel and canted phases. Our CCM calculations provide strong evidence that the canted ferrimagnetic phase becomes unstable at large values of κ, and hence we have also used the CCM with a model collinear semistripe-ordered ferrimagnetic state in which alternating rows (and columns) are ferromagnetically and antiferromagnetically ordered, and in which the spins connected by J2 bonds are antiparallel to one another. We find tentative evidence, based on the relative energies of the two states, for a second zero-temperature phase transition between the canted and semistripe-ordered ferrimagnetic states at a large value of the coupling parameter around κc2≈125±5. This prediction, however, is based on an extrapolation of the CCM results for the canted state into regimes where the solutions have already become unstable and the CCM equations based on the canted state at any level of approximation beyond the lowest have no solutions. Our prediction for κc2 is hence less reliable than that for κc1. Nevertheless, if this second transition at κc2 does exist, our results clearly indicate it to be of first-order type.


Identifying pictorialism as the popular aesthetic movement in photography in postwar Vancouver, guest curator Pakasaar goes on to trace the development of Canadian photography from the 1940's to the 1960's. The author discusses the salons of various Vancouver camera clubs, as well as the activities of the National Film Board and the impact of picture magazines and fashion advertising on photographic aesthetic. The resulting exhibition assembles work by amateur and commercial photographers, with imagery that ranges from abstraction to photojournalism. Chronology, 1940-1964.


Abstract The discovery of new specimens and restudy of known collections resulted in revision of some members of the cladid crinoid family Cupressocrinitidae. "Cupressocrinites gracilis" is generically separated from Cupressocrinites whereby "Procupressocrinus" is resurrected from synonomy and assigned to the Cupressocrinitidae with C. gracilis Goldfuss, 1831 as the type species. Studies of the Sandberger collection presuppose the revision of "Abbreviatocrinites abbreviatus altus" (=A. altus n. comb.) and A. nodosus. Furthermore, the hitherto undetermined cupressocrinitids are described as Cupressocrinites ahuettensis n. sp. and Robustocrinites cataphractus n. sp. The event-controlled distribution of Robustocrinites is discussed and shows similarities to other crinoid genera within the Eifel region. Observed arm-regeneration in Robustocrinites, as well as the postmortem incurred ossicular-boring of an indeterminable organism and the skeletal-colonization by a trepostome bryozoan, are further observations of other pre- and postmortem ossicular modifications in cupressocrinitid skeletons.


The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism-Robert Saucy 2010-12-21 Debate abounds on the future of Israel and Israel's relation to the church, not only between dispensationalists and nondispensationalists, but among dispensationalists themselves. In the past that debate has sometimes been acrimonious, and proponents of the differing viewpoints have found little common ground. In recent years, however, views have been modified and developed so that the dialogue is increasingly by cooperation and a mutual exploration of diverse ideas. The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism is intended to enlighten the debate in that same irenic spirit. The book is solidly dispensational in perspective in affirming that the Old Testament prophecies are completely fulfilled in the future, that the nation of Israel has a prophetic future, and that Israel is not the church. Dr. Saucy departs from classic dispensationalism, however, in showing that (1) the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy begins in the present church age, and (2) the church is not a parenthesis in God's program but represents a continuity with the Old Testament messianic program. This modified dispensationalism seeks to satisfy many of the objections of non-dispensational approaches to eschatology while retaining the crucial elements of biblical interpretation that characterize dispensational thought.


The study of microstrip patch antennas have more advantages and better prospects. They are lighter in weight, low volume, low cost, low profile, smaller in dimension and ease of fabrication and conformity. Moreover, the microstrip patch antennas can provide dual and circular polarizations, dual-frequency operation, frequency agility, broad band-width, feedline flexibility, beam scanning omnidirectional patterning. In this paper we discuss the microstrip antenna, types of microstrip antenna, feeding techniques and their advantage and disadvantages over conventional microwave antennas.


Infectious disease is ubiquitous and potentially devastating to individual hosts and populations as a whole. Understanding host resistance is therefore a key challenge. More specifically, understanding insect-virus interactions is crucial due to the role of insects as vectors of harmful human viruses, the potential role of insect viruses in the biological control of insect pest species and the impact which viruses have on beneficial insects such as the honey bee. Despite its importance, our understanding of resistance against viruses in insects and other invertebrates is less comprehensive than our understanding of resistance to bacterial and fungal parasites.
In this thesis I investigate the resistance of the Lepidopteron host Plodia interpunctella to its natural viral parasite P. interpunctella Granulosis Virus (PiGV). I focus on two forms of antiviral resistance: (a) upregulation of an individual host's (or their offspring's) defences following previous exposure to a parasite, referred to as 'immune priming' and (b) host resistance following long term selection pressure from a parasite, referred to as 'evolved resistance'. I examine these forms of resistance from an evolutionary and ecological perspective focusing on their associated costs and specificity.
 I find evidence for immune priming to virus for the first time in an insect but highlight that this form of resistance may carry costs and be context dependent in P. interpunctella. Using a mathematical modelling approach I also show that immune priming is likely to destabilise host populations. In addition, I show that antiviral resistance in P. interpunctella resulting from long term selection pressure with PiGV is non specific and localised in the gut. Furthermore, I find that resistance may be traded-off with developmental traits but that the detection of these trade-offs is dependent on the food quality on which P. interpunctella are raised.


The proposed new spectral reflection model enhances the classical Clapper-Yule model by taking into account the fact that proportionally more incident light through a given colorant surface is reflected back onto the same colorant surface than onto other colorant surfaces. It comprises a weighted mean between a component specifying the part of the incident light that exits through the same colorant as the colorant from which it enters (Saunderson corrected Neugebauer component) and a component specifying the part of the incident light whose emerging light components exit from all colorants (Clapper-Yule component). We also propose models for taking into account ink spreading, a phenomenon that occurs when printing an ink halftone in superposition with one or several solid inks. The ink-spreading model incorporates nominal-to-effective surface coverage functions for each of the different ink superposition conditions. A system of equations yields the effective ink surface coverages of a color halftone as a weighted mean of the ink surface coverages specific to the different superposition conditions. The new spectral reflection prediction model combined with the ink-spreading model yields excellent spectral reflection predictions for clustered-dot color halftones printed on an offset press or on thermal transfer printers.


Abstract The present article analyses how various forms of business integrations, combined with technology innovation, have affected the sports broadcasting market in Norway. Interviews with representatives of Norwegian TV broadcasters and transmission companies documented that extremely fierce competition can motivate former rivals to collaborate. Even the new entrants tend to operate together with others instead of operating autonomously. Such collusion can transfer market power from the sellers to the buyers of sports rights. The interviews showed how product innovations can improve the profitability of sports broadcasting. They confirmed that integration can generate economies of scope advantages (cost reductions from the joint use of inputs), for example by using labour more efficiently within parent companies. Additionally, they also showed that economies of scope advantages can come from similarities in the distribution of goods and services, not only from similarities in the production process.


This paper presents a theory of liquidity where we explicitly model the liquidity of the security as a choice variable, which enables the manager raising the funds to screen for 'deep pocket' investors, i.e. these that have a low likelihood of a liquidity shock. By choosing the degree of illiquidity of the security, the manager can influence the type of investors the firm will attract. The benefit of liquid investors is that they reduce the manager's cost of capital for future fund raising. If inside investors have fewer information asymmetries about the quality of the manager than the outside market, more liquid investors protect the manager from having to return to the outside market, where he would face higher cost of capital due to asymmetric information problems. We test the predictions of our model in the context of the private equity industry. Consistent with the theory, we find that transfer restrictions on investors are less common in later funds organized by the same private equity firm, where information problems are presumably less severe. Contracts involving the close-knit California venture capital community - where information on the relative performance of funds are more readily ascertained - are less likely to employ many of these provisions as well. Also, private equity partnerships whose investment focus is in industries with longer investment cycles display more transfer constraints. For example, funds focusing on the pharmaceutical industry have more constraints, while those specializing in computing and Internet investments have fewer constraints. Finally, we investigate whether the identity of the investors that invest in a private equity fund is related to the transferability of the stakes. We find that transferability constraints are less prevalent when private equity funds have limited partners that are known to have few liquidity shocks, for example endowments, foundations, and other investors with long-term commitments to private equity.


This paper presents a Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme for nonlinear continuous-time systems where an economic stage cost, which is not a measure of the distance to a desired set point, is combined with a classic stabilizing stage cost. The associated control strategy leads to a closed-loop behavior that in a seamless way compromises between the convergence of the closed-loop state trajectory to a given steady-state and the minimization of the economic cost. More precisely, we derive a set of sufficient conditions under which the closed-loop state trajectory is ultimately bounded around the desired steady-state, with the size of the bound being proportional to the strength of the economic cost. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme on a simultaneous target estimation and tracking control problem.


This book is aimed at both the experienced Karate student and those just starting up to finding their way through the theoretical and historical background of Karate and in the practice of the so-called 'secret techniques'. Reading the book, it becomes easy to see Karate's relationship to other Asian Martial Arts systems. Its content includes Basic Techniques, Tuite (Lever) Techniques, Chin Na-Techniques (Hold and Control), Nage Waza (Throws), Shime Waza (Strangling Techniques) and Kyusho (weak points) Techniques. In this book, we have tried to analyze Tuite and Kyusho Techniques from a modern anatomical point of view and to this aim have put together a new type of graphic illustration. At its hub is the Karate Kata, which contains all of the techniques mentioned above and which is invaluable for daily training once the various levels of the Bunkai (application) have been understood. The depth of these levels of understanding is layered according to the Omote (obvious interpretation) for the beginner and the Chuden Techniques (middle level) for the more advanced. The hidden, or secret, techniques open themselves up to the higher Master levels, which are described as Okuden.


Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are major health threats affecting people globally; however, the burden of STIs is greatest in low-income countries. Since they are physiologically more vulnerable, women are mostly affected. The risk is increased dramatically during pregnancy leading to serious health complications that may affect the newborn. Underprivileged pregnant women attending antenatal clinics for routine checkups in displaced camps, a women's prison and several peripheral health centres were clinically and laboratory screened for trichomoniasis, chlamydial infections, gonorrhea and syphilis. A total of 426 women with an age range of 14-45 years were included. Clinical data, blood, cervical and vaginal swabs were collected. Conventional bacteriological and serological methods were applied. All attendees were HIV1/2-negative. The prevalence of Trichomonas vaginalis, Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Treponema pallidum infections was found to be 7.8%, 4.9%, 0% and 5%, respectively. Although vaginal discharge, among other symptoms, is known to be the most significant indicator for STIs, our identified positive predictive value was only 14.1%. We conclude that use of syndromic approach for diagnosing and treating attendees of antenatal settings is of low clinical value and many easily curable STIs will be overlooked. Consequently, trichomoniasis, chlamydial infection and syphilis prevailed widely among this population.


Spinal cord injuries are devastating events, and they are particularly tragic when they affect children or adolescents who have barely had an opportunity to experience life. Of the approximately 10,000 individuals who sustain spinal cord injury each year in the United States, 3% to 5% occur in individuals younger than 15 years of age and approximately 20% occur in those younger than 20 years of age (Nobunaga, Go, & Karunas, 1999). Because of the growth and development inherent in children and adolescents and the unique manifestations and complications associated with spinal cord injuries, management must be developmentally based and directed to the individual's special needs (Vogel, 1997). The many unique facets of pediatric spinal cord injuries are addressed in this article. They clearly delineate the need for care that is responsive to the dynamic changes that occur with growth and development. The multidisciplinary team, combined with a focus on family-centered care, is essential in pediatric spinal cord injuries.


This manuscript evaluates the role of cell killing, tissue disorganization, and tissue damage on the induction of lung cancer following low dose rate radiation exposures from internally deposited radioactive materials. Beagle dogs were exposed by inhalation to 90Y, 91Y, 144Ce, or 90Sr in fused clay particles. Dogs lived out their life span with complete pathology conducted at the time of death. The radiation dose per cell turnover was characterized and related to the cause of death for each animal. Large doses per cell turnover resulted in acute death from lung damage with extensive cell killing, tissue disorganization, chronic inflammatory disease, fibrosis, and pneumonitis. Dogs with lower doses per cell turnover developed a very high frequency of lung cancer. As the dose per cell turnover was further decreased, no marked tissue damage and no significant change in either life span or lung cancer frequency was observed. Radiation induced tissue damage and chronic inflammatory disease results in high cancer frequencies in the lung. At doses where a high frequency of chromosome damage and mutations would be predicted to occur there was no decrease in life span or increase in lung cancer. Such research suggests that cell killing and tissue damage and the physiological responses to that damage are important mechanisms in radiation induced lung cancer.


In 1991, the United States Supreme Court handed decided Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., rejecting the long-standing federal test for the admissibility of scientific testimony articulated in Frye v. United States. Unlike many states, however, which embraced Daubert within years – or even months – of the federal decision, Minnesota declined to make Daubert the law of the jurisdiction. In a pair of cases decided in 2000, Goeb v. Tharaldson and Sentinel Mgmt. v. Aetna Casualty & Surety, the court held that Minnesota would retain the general acceptance test. The court's rejection of Daubert can be read as an attempt to give the Minnesota trial bench and bar the best of both worlds: Frye-Mack consistency coupled with Daubert-style gatekeeping. This article examines the successes and failures of the Minnesota approach.


One of the most significant historical projects of the twenty-first century has involved the examination of important transnational circuits and interconnections. Historians have lagged behind many disciplines in accepting transnationalism as a serious form of investigation. Studying past events from a transnational perspective is important for historians. It challenges the assumption that ideologies, political cultures, economics, trade and societal organisation coincide within national boundaries and it allows us to analyse a party, group or ideology's strengths and weaknesses on a different scale and on a separate stage, thus potentially uncovering the less apparent when viewed from a single-country viewpoint.
This thesis seeks to identify and understand the role of transnationalism for the far right and fascism. Using a combination of mainly archival files, contemporary newspapers, pamphlets and periodicals, this study investigates the transnationalism of the three most important fascist movements operating in interwar Britain – the British Fascisti, the Imperial Fascist League and the British Union of Fascists. It uncovers previously unknown cross-border links and influences between British fascists and their overseas counterparts. Significantly, this is the first extensive investigation focused on the transnational British far right in the interwar period.
Chapter One is on the British Fascisti. It uncovers transnational influences that allowed continental fascism to exercise control over the movement, the impact of Italian Fascism and German Nazism on the Fascisti as well as its overseas activities. Chapter Two focuses on the Imperial Fascist League. It analyses the ways in which the Nazis and the Fascists impacted on the ideological make up of the League, and the transnational physical links and influences relating to the British movement. Chapter Three examines the British Union of Fascists. Investigated in this chapter is the relationship between the movement and Mussolini and Hitler as well as the Union's branches abroad and the organisation's imperial policy.