Corresponding author: Ma. Czarlota Acelajado-Valdenor, M.D. Department of Medicine Philippine General Hospital Taft Avenue, Manila, 1000 Philippines Telephone: +632 554-8488 Email: firstname.lastname@example.com Presentation of the case This is a case of a 43-year-old male presenting with short stature and heart failure. The patient was admitted at the medicine ward of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) for dyspnea. This paper will investigate several issues: differentiating congenital from acquired hypothyroidism, the relationship between hypothyroidism and the cardiomyopathies, and the therapeutic options in patients with cardiomyopathy secondary to hypothyroidism. The patient had been born full term to a then 31-yearold Gravida 4 Para 3 (G4P3), the 4th of 9 siblings, with an apparently unremarkable delivery at home facilitated by a traditional birth attendant. He was noted to be normal at birth. The patient was allegedly at par with age both physically and mentally until eight years old when he was said to have stopped growing in height. He was brought to a private doctor, whose diagnosis was undisclosed, and he was given medications to increase height, which the patient took for only one month with no improvement. Through the years, the patient was apparently well, although still of short stature, with thick lips, coarse facial features and dry skin. He was notably slow in ambulation. He was said to have bronchial asthma at age 15 years, and since then he had been taking salbutamol tablets occasionally for bouts of dyspnea occurring one to two times annually. The patient's symptoms started in 2001 when he was reported to have sudden loss of consciousness. During this time, the patient did not have any symptoms of heart failure; no prior seizures, cyanotic episodes, chest pain, headache, or blurring of vision. He regained consciousness shortly after and was brought to a private physician, whose assessment was a "heart problem". He was prescribed unrecalled medications taken for a few months and eventually discontinued when the syncopal episode did not recur. In the next four years, the patient would develop intermittent, progressive exertional dyspnea and bipedal edema. later on this would be accompanied by generalized body weakness, anorexia, and constipation, severe enough to require regular laxative use. There was also a report of two more syncopal episodes. He was brought to another doctor in a private hospital where the assessment was still a "heart problem". The patient was again prescribed unrecalled medications and again was lost to follow-up. This time, however, symptoms were persistent. He later consulted at another local hospital, where he was admitted and managed as a case of anemia and bronchial asthma. He was discharged slightly improved after four days, only to have recurrent heart failure symptoms, prompting admission at PGH. Upon admission the patient was in mild respiratory distress, with stable vital signs and no note of fever. Pertinent physical exam findings included short stature, thick lips, nonpitting periorbital edema, dry skin, a displaced apical impulse, crackles on both lung fields, and bilateral non-pitting bipedal edema. There was also a 3 cm x 3 cm reducible umbilical hernia. However, there was no pallor, no neck vein distention, no apparent congenital malformations, no cardiac murmurs and no clubbing. There was also no note of an anterior neck mass. laboratory workup showed cardiomegaly with pulmonary congestion, thoracic dextroscoliosis, and atheromatous aorta by chest radiograph, and left ventricular hypertrophy by 12-lead electrocardiogram (12-l ECG) (Figures 1 and 2), normocytic normochromic anemia (Hgb 90 mg/dl), dyslipidemia, and pre-renal azotemia (serum creatinine 123 mmol). Electrolytes on admission showed slight hyponatremia, hypokalemia, and hypochloremia (serum Na 136, K 3.35, Cl 86). Blood gases revealed partially compensated metabolic alkalosis with mild hypoxemia. The patient was noted to be hypothyroid based on elevated serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and markedly decreased serum free thyroxine (FT4). The exact values are shown in Tables 1 and 2. Upon admission to the wards, the patient was managed as having congestive heart failure from cardiomyopathy secondary to acquired hypothyroidism. oral loop diuretics, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, betablockers, statins, and levothyroxine were started. Electrolyte correction was instituted. The sections of Endocrinology and Cardiovascular Diseases were co-managing the patient together with the General Medicine service. He soon developed respiratory failure, upon which the considerations were acute pulmonary congestion, nosocomial pneumonia, to rule out an acute coronary event. He was later _______________


Motivation: Next-generation sequencing technologies sequence viruses with ultra-deep coverage, thus promising to revolutionize our understanding of the underlying diversity of viral populations. While the sequencing coverage is high enough that even rare viral variants are sequenced, the presence of sequencing errors makes it difficult to distinguish between rare variants and sequencing errors. Results: In this article, we present a method to overcome the limitations of sequencing technologies and assemble a diverse viral population that allows for the detection of previously undiscovered rare variants. The proposed method consists of a high-fidelity sequencing protocol and an accurate viral population assembly method, referred to as Viral Genome Assembler (VGA). The proposed protocol is able to eliminate sequencing errors by using individual barcodes attached to the sequencing fragments. Highly accurate data in combination with deep coverage allow VGA to assemble rare variants. VGA uses an expectation–maximization algorithm to estimate abundances of the assembled viral variants in the population. Results on both synthetic and real datasets show that our method is able to accurately assemble an HIV viral population and detect rare variants previously undetectable due to sequencing errors. VGA outperforms state-of-the-art methods for genome-wide viral assembly. Furthermore, our method is the first viral assembly method that scales to millions of sequencing reads. Availability: Our tool VGA is freely available at http://genetics.cs.ucla.edu/vga/ Contact: email@example.com; email@example.com


[1] The open subarctic Pacific is, at present, a high nitrate low chlorophyll (HNLC) region, where nitrate is perennially abundant at the surface. Theoretically, the HNLC status of this region is subject to modification by ocean circulation and/or micronutrient supply, with implications for the effectiveness of the biological pump and hence carbon sequestration in the ocean interior. Records of biogenic detritus in sediments from throughout the subarctic Pacific indicate that export production was generally lower during glacial maxima, while nitrogen isotope measurements from the Bering Sea have shown that nitrate consumption there was more complete during the last glacial period than it is today. Here, nitrogen isotopic analyses of bulk sediments (δ15Nbulk) from three deep water sites in the open subarctic Pacific are evaluated in terms of regional nitrate isotopic composition and local relative nitrate utilization. The eastern subarctic Pacific δ15Nbulk record bears great similarity to δ15Nbulk records from the western margin of North America over the last glacial cycle, suggesting that variability in the isotopic composition of subeuphotic zone nitrate, the growth substrate, is reasonably coherent throughout the northeast Pacific and dominates at these sites. However, the two western subarctic Pacific records, which lie at the heart of the HNLC region, display a different pattern, implying that significant changes in local relative nitrate utilization overlie the regional background variability. After a novel correction intended to remove the background signal associated with denitrification in the eastern tropical North Pacific, these nitrate utilization records are correlated with a benthic oxygen isotope stack reflecting global deep ocean temperature and ice volume (r2 = 0.65). The correlation implies a strong link between global climate and subarctic Pacific nitrate utilization, with nearly complete nitrate consumption during glacial periods when export production was low.


effectiveness of ozone treatment for improving the biodegradability of recalcitrant pollutants has been proved by investigating the ozonation reaction of Methyl tert-Butyl Ether (MTBE) as a bioresistant gasoline oxygenate. Laboratory scale experiments have been carried out at room temperature by bubbling for 120 minutes ozonated air (3.4 ppm/min) into 3 liter of an alkaline (pH=11.5) aqueous solution (100 mg/L) of MTBE. The experimental results indicated that during the ozonation, complete MTBE degradation occurs in 100 minutes and after this time, ozone consumption goes on very slowly. At the end of the ozonation, after 100 minutes, the initial value of COD (256 mg O2/L) is 98 and corresponds to a relative removal of about 62%. As for MTBE solution biodegradability expressed as (BOD5) / (COD) ratio, during the first 90 minutes, its value regularly increases from lowest 0.01 up to a maximum of 0.68 that corresponds to an ozone consumption of 1.25 mg per each mg of COD initially present in the solution. The research showed that partial degradation of MTBE in the advanced oxidation processes results an increase in its biological degradation. But more oxidation results lower (BOD5) / (COD) ratio. Also the research showed that for idealization of the chemical oxidation conditions of MTBE, it needs to decrease COD to 46-68% before the biological degradation. The experimental results for determining the rate of MTBE removal due to stripping showed that about 14% of MTBE strips out after an hour of sparging with oxygen gas. The fraction of MTBE oxidized and/or striped increases to about 28% (in pH=7) and 70% (in pH=11.5) with ozonation over the same time period.


Background: Surgeon observation suggested that mastopexy alone resulted in decreased cup size. The purpose of this investigation was to assess change in cup size in women undergoing mastopexy alone. Methods: A retrospective review of a single surgeon's experience from February of 2002 to May of 2011 was completed. Patients underwent mastopexy alone (specimen weight < 150 g per side). Exclusion criteria were prior breast augmentation, implant removal at time of mastopexy, combination breast augmentation-mastopexy, and incomplete follow-up. Patients were surveyed by telephone regarding preoperative and postoperative cup size, changes in bra manufacturer, hormone status, and weight gain/loss, and data were analyzed. Results: Sixty-one patients met inclusion criteria, and 20 completed the survey. Their average age was 46.6 years (range, 35 to 76 years) and average body mass index was 22.8 kg/m2 (range, 18.2 to 26.4 kg/m2). Eighty percent (n = 16) had grade II ptosis and 20 percent (n = 4) had grade III ptosis preoperatively. Average specimen weight per breast was 57.8 g (range, 4 to 149 g). Patients reported an average decrease in cup size of 0.90 cup sizes (range, –3 to +2 cup sizes). Excluding one patient who reported an increase, an average decrease of 1.05 cup sizes (range, 0 to 3 cup sizes) was seen. No patients reported changing bra manufacturer. Conclusions: Mastopexy alone results in an average decrease in one brassiere cup size. This is important for preoperative counseling, because patients should recognize that their actual cup size is smaller than the brassiere they wear, which will be reflected postoperatively despite a relatively stable volume. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic, IV


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background. Ischemia-reperfusion injury is inevitable during intestinal transplantation (ITx) and executes a key role in the evolution towards rejection. Paneth cells (PCs) are crucial for epithelial immune defense and highly vulnerable to ischemia-reperfusion injury. We investigated the effect of ITx on PC after reperfusion (T0), during follow-up, and rejection. Moreover, we investigated whether PC loss was associated with impaired graft homeostasis. Methods. Endoscopic biopsies, collected according to center protocol and at rejection episodes, were retrospectively included (n = 28 ITx, n = 119 biopsies) Biopsies were immunohistochemically co-stained for PC (lysozyme) and apoptosis, and PC/crypt and lysozyme intensity were scored. Results. We observed a decrease in PC/crypt and lysozyme intensity in the first week after ITx (W1) compared with T0. There was a tendency towards a larger decline in PC/crypt (P = 0.08) and lysozyme intensity (P = 0.08) in W1 in patients who later developed rejection compared with patients without rejection. Follow-up biopsies showed that the PC number recovered, whereas lysozyme intensity remained reduced. This persisting innate immune defect may contribute to the well-known vulnerability of the intestine to infection. There was no clear evidence that PCs were affected throughout rejection. Conclusions. This study revealed a transient fall in PC numbers in the early post-ITx period but a permanent reduction in lysozyme intensity following ITx. Further research is needed to determine the potential clinical impact of PC impairment after ITx.


A search for a heavy resonance decaying into a top quark and a W boson in protonproton collisions at √ s = 13 TeV is presented. The data analyzed were recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb−1. The top quark is reconstructed as a single jet and the W boson, from its decay into an electron or muon and the corresponding neutrino. A top quark tagging technique based on jet clustering with a variable distance parameter and simultaneous jet grooming is used to identify jets from the collimated top quark decay. The results are interpreted in the context of two benchmark models, where the heavy resonance is either an excited bottom quark b∗ or a vector-like quark B. A statistical combination with an earlier search by the CMS Collaboration in the all-hadronic final state is performed to place upper cross section limits on these two models. The new analysis extends the lower range of resonance mass probed from 1.4 down to 0.7 TeV. For left-handed, right-handed, and vector-like couplings, b∗ masses up to 3.0, 3.0, and 3.2 TeV are excluded at 95% confidence level, respectively. The observed upper limits represent the most stringent constraints on the b∗ model to date. Submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics © 2021 CERN for the benefit of the CMS Collaboration. CC-BY-4.0 license *See Appendix A for the list of collaboration members ar X iv :2 11 1. 10 21 6v 1 [ he pex ] 1 9 N ov 2 02 1


This paper undertakes a critical review of the literature concerning mechanisms and impacts of soil-related geohazards to UK infrastructure. The country is predicted to have drier, hotter summers and wetter, warmer winters that in turn will increase the magnitude and frequency of many soil-related geohazards – predominantly due to changes in soil moisture. Probabilistic assessment will be required given the inherent uncertainty in assessing chronic soil hazards. The aim of this paper is to recommend a national framework methodology to aid the management of future risks posed by soil geohazards to UK infrastructure. The framework will help to prioritise ground investigations in high-risk areas, help to design suitable mitigation measures and encapsulate expert knowledge to interpret risk.


The National Credit Act 34 of 2005 (the 'NCA') aims at promoting responsibility in the credit market by encouraging responsible borrowing, avoidance of over-indebtedness and the fulfilment of financial obligations by consumers, and at discouraging reckless credit granting by credit providers and contractual default by consumers. Although a further aim is to address over-indebtedness by debt review, for instance, this mechanism is based on the principle of satisfaction of the consumer's responsible financial obligations in full. In a recent judgment, Ex parte Ford 2009 (3) SA 376 (WCC), the court has thus refused to grant a sequestration order following an application for voluntary surrender since the bulk of the debt was credit agreements regulated by the NCA. The fact that the debtor-applicant did not apply for debt review in terms of the NCA of 2005 before applying for voluntary surrender played a significant role in the court's decision not to grant the order. This article thus considers the impact of the debt relief remedies in the NCA on insolvency law. In particular it is an attempt to provide some answers to the question if the Insolvency Act 24 of 1936 (hereafter the 'Insolvency Act') is in conflict with the previously stated principle of the NCA, namely full satisfaction of all responsible financial obligations by an over-indebted consumer. It also considers the concepts of over-indebtedness and reckless credit and their related debt relief remedies when considering applications for voluntary surrender or compulsory sequestration in terms of the Insolvency Act.


Starting from enantiopure 3,6-dihydro-2H-1,2-oxazinessyn-1 we introduced an additional hydroxy group in a stereoselective fashion by a standard hydroboration/oxidation protocol. Under "regular" conditions substrate control was sufficient to achieve a very high degree of stereoselectivity. However, a diastereomeric product was isolated when a partially "degraded" borane reagent was used. We could synthesise this new diastereomer on purpose by addition of alcohols to the "fresh" hydroboration reagent. The level of stereoinduction increased with the steric bulk of the added alcohol: MeOH < nBuOH < iPrOH < tBuOH. After a two-step oxidation/reduction sequence, another 5-hydroxy-1,2-oxazine epimer was accessible. The obtained 5-hydroxy-1,2-oxazine diastereomers 2 were used as versatile intermediates in a series of transformations leading to several amino polyol derivatives. Complete deprotection of both diastereomers without cleavage of the N–O bond led to the novel polyhydroxylated tetrahydro-2H-1,2-oxazines 3 and epi-3. By change of the deprotection conditions the open-chain amino polyol 4 with D-iditol configuration became accessible. In an alternative sequence 5-hydroxy-1,2-oxazines were utilised to synthesise imino sugars (polyhydroxylated pyrrolidines). Samarium diiodide induced cleavage of the 1,2-oxazine N–O bond furnished 1,4-amino alcohols, which were cyclised to give the corresponding pyrrolidine derivatives after activation by mesyl chloride. This sequence either led to a 3-methoxy-substituted trihydroxylated pyrrolidine derivative or to the related fully deprotected compound.


Survey-based indicators such as the consumer confidence are widely seen as leading indicators for economic activity, especially for the future path of private consumption. Although they receive high attention in the media, their forecasting power appears to be very limited. Therefore, this paper takes a fresh look on the survey data, which serve as a basis for the consumer confidence indicator (CCI) reported by the EU Commission for the euro area and individual member states. Different pooling methods are considered to exploit the information embedded in the consumer survey. Quantitative forecasts are based on Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) and bridge equations. While the CCI does not outperform an autoregressive benchmark for the majority of countries, the new indicators increase the forecasting performance. The gains over the CCI are striking for Italy and the entire euro area (20 percent). For Germany and France the gains seem to be lower, but are nevertheless substantial (10 to 15 percent). The best performing indicator should be built upon pre-selection methods, while data-driven aggregation methods should be preferred to determine the weights of the individual ingredients.


This paper presents a semantic treatment of the modal uses of the future tense and the conditional in French and a comparison with their English translations. It is argued that the future and the conditional convey the speaker's commitment and non-commitment respectively, regardless of how information has been obtained and irrespective of whether this information has been verified or not. Commitment and non-commitment are defined as modes of enunciation depending on how the speaker treats and possibly eliminates representations other than her own representation. The modal meaning of the uses under discussion is shown to derive from a mode of mixed enunciation, which either modulates assertion in the case of commitment or suspends it in the case of noncommitment. In English, this difference is not grammaticalised in the verb system. For example, the modal must may be regarded as an equivalent for both the epistemic conditional and the modal future.


Volumes 71-84 of the Collected Works of Erasmus contain Erasmus' arguments with his numerous critics - English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, both Catholic and Protestant, - on a range of theological, educational, literary, classical, social, and philological topics. Volume 83 includes four treatises: Apology against Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples; An Appendix on the Writings of Josse Clichtove; Refutation of the Accusations of Josse Clichtove against the Suasoria of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam in Praise of Marriage; and The Reply of Erasmus to the Disputation of a Certain Phimostomus on Divorce. In these essays Erasmus discusses popular concerns such as the relations between the sexes, celibacy, marriage, divorce, and how to live a good life. Modern readers will be surprised to discover how close the problems that preoccupied Erasmus are to our own concerns today. Professor Bedouelle's introduction provides an indispensable guide to the major points of controversy between Erasmus and Lefevre, Clichtove, and Dietenberger.


The classical experimental methodology is ill-suited for the investigation of the behavioral and physiological correlates of natural social interactions. A new experimental approach combining a natural conversation between two persons with control conditions is proposed in this paper. Behavior, including gaze direction and speech, and physiology, including electrodermal activity, are recorded during a discussion between two participants through videoconferenc-ing. Control for the social aspect of the interaction is provided by the use of an artificial agent and of videoed conditions. A cover story provides spurious explanations for the purpose of the experiment and for the recordings, as well as a controlled and engaging topic of discussion. Preprocessing entails transforming raw measurements into boxcar and delta functions time series indicating when a certain behaviour or physiological event is present. The preliminary analysis presented here consists in finding statistically significant differences between experimental conditions in the temporal associations between behavioral and physiological time series. Significant results validate the experimental approach and further developments including more elaborate analysis and adaptation of the paradigm to functional MRI are discussed.


A variety of methods for images noise reduction has been developed so far. Most of them successfully remove noise but their edge preserving capabilities are weak. Therefore bilateral image filter is helpful to deal with this problem. Nevertheless, their performances depend on spatial and photometric parameters which are chosen by user. Conventionally, the geometric weight is calculated by means of distance of neighboring pixels and the photometric weight is calculated by means of color components of neighboring pixels. The range of weights is between zero and one. In this paper, geometric weights are estimated by fuzzy metrics and photometric weights are estimated by using fuzzy rule based system which does not require any predefined parameter. Experimental results of conventional, fuzzy bilateral filter and proposed approach have been included.


Laboratory-produced strong magnetic fields have attracted many fields of research, from astrophysics to material science, and magnetic fields of up to 100 Tesla (T) are now available using pulsed magnets. Recent progress in high-power laser technology has provided new possibilities to produce much higher magnetic fields of the order of kilo-Tesla by laser-driven schemes. Here we present our new approach of producing strong magnetic fields with values far exceeding all known laboratory records by using a special micro-coil and a high-power laser. As theoretically shown in [Phys. Rev. E 91, 043107 (2015)], our scheme is based on the strong solenoidal current driven by laser. A laser pulse is tightly focused on the edge of a single-turn coil with the diameter of hundreds of microns, where the light intensity reaches 1019 W/cm2 and a lot of electrons are eliminated out of the coil by the ponderomotive force of the laser light. A strong solenoidal current continues to flow in the coil during this process in order to neutralize the surface charge in the laser interaction region and generates a strong magnetic field by Biot-Savart law. The estimated peak field amplitude exceeds 10 kT, which is almost comparable to the magnetic fields near the surface of white dwarfs and neutron stars. Another unique feature of this scheme is the ability to form either parallel or anti-parallel field structure selectively by optimizing the shape of the coil. We succeeded in the first demonstration of this scheme using the LFEX laser facility at the Institute of Laser Engineering of Osaka University, and the experimental results will be discussed in the presentation. A 10-kT parallel and anti-parallel magnetic fields could have a profound impact on a wide range of scientific investigations, especially on magnetic reconnection and related particle acceleration, magnetized inertial confinement fusion (ICF) schemes, and laser interaction with high-density magnetized plasma.


DEVELOPMENT OF A DEMANUFACTURING SYSTEM MODELING AND SIMULATION TOOL by Jingling Hu This thesis develops a demanufacturing system modeling and simulation tool as an interface between simulation methods and demanufacturers. This tool can mimic the behavior of demanufacturing facility and obtain penetrable understanding of the system. By this modeling tool, one can intuitively analyze the behavior of a system and improve the operational efficiency. Detailed designs on the simulation tool including user interface, logic, and user view are presented in this thesis. The initial prototype version of the system modeling and simulation tool has been completed with fourteen modules in the developed template. Each object in the template refers to a specific demanufacturing activity and uses detailed simulation logic behind its design to perform that activity. The application to an electronic demanufacturing facility illustrates the usefulness of the interface to manage and improve the overall efficiency of facilities. This thesis also applies the simulation tool to a typical demanufacturing facility. Relevant system performance is analyzed. The comparison of different operational scenarios is made and the suggestion for better options of the system is discussed. This work is useful to assist designers in the design of efficient demanufacturing systems to tackle the environmental problems that may be caused by retired or faulty products. DEVELOPMENT OF A DEMANUFACTURING SYSTEM MODELING AND SIMULATION TOOL


We provide a setting and a general approach to fair online learning with stochastic sensitive and non-sensitive contexts. The setting is a repeated game between the Player and Nature, where at each stage both pick actions based on the contexts. Inspired by the notion of unawareness, we assume that the Player can only access the non-sensitive context before making a decision, while we discuss both cases of Nature accessing the sensitive contexts and Nature unaware of the sensitive contexts. Adapting Blackwell's approachability theory to handle the case of an unknown contexts' distribution, we provide a general necessary and sufficient condition for learning objectives to be compatible with some fairness constraints. This condition is instantiated on (group-wise) no-regret and (group-wise) calibration objectives, and on demographic parity as an additional constraint. When the objective is not compatible with the constraint, the provided framework permits to characterise the optimal trade-off between the two.


During the last years the concept of pets in society has changed, promoting the household to consider them as another member of the family. But owners find some problems during their care because they have personal occupations like work and study .One of these problems are the feeding during the absence of the master. That is why was decided to design and construct an automatic smart feeder to half breed dogs, the goal of this project is to give to the people an efficient solution that help to feed their pets. The article describes the process used for manufacturing, based on mechatronics design methodology integrating mechanical, electronic and communications components. In the article the results of the implementation of the prototype are presented with notification system by text message to the pet owner. The prototype built has a height adjustment mechanism food dish and allows the user to configure by touch interface up to three servings per day.


Collaborative industrial robot cells are becoming more and more interesting for industry through the new Industrie 4.0 initiative. In this paper we report early work on motion-based interaction with industrial robots. Human motion is tracked by a Kinect camera and translated into robot code. A group of tests subjects are asked to interact with the system and their activities are observed. Lessons learned on interaction challenges in a robot cell are reported.


Recent corporate failure has challenged the credibility of the accounting profession, leading many stakeholders to question the usefulness of financial reports for decision-making. This paper examines fluctuations in the accounting profession's authoritative influence over accounting standard setting and financial reporting. It focuses on the period following the collapse of the HIH Group in 2002, with contextual reference to earlier periods. It then outlines the submissions made by the accounting profession, actuaries and regulatory institutions to the Royal Commission Inquiry into the collapse of the HIH Group. These submissions are analysed in relation to the profession promoting functionally defined interests and offering stable compromises, the questioning of the legitimacy of accounting techniques by society and government, and the demand by other constituents that the accounting profession overcome the inequalities that arise from current accounting practice. Finally, the paper offers suggestions as to how the profession can reconstruct itself to regain its lost authority.


We probe pre-trained transformer language models for bridging inference. We first investigate individual attention heads in BERT and observe that attention heads at higher layers prominently focus on bridging relations in-comparison with the lower and middle layers, also, few specific attention heads concentrate consistently on bridging. More importantly, we consider language models as a whole in our second approach where bridging anaphora resolution is formulated as a masked token prediction task (Of-Cloze test). Our formulation produces optimistic results without any fine-tuning, which indicates that pre-trained language models substantially capture bridging inference. Our further investigation shows that the distance between anaphor-antecedent and the context provided to language models play an important role in the inference.


Observations of the first days of school in eight sixth-grade classrooms identified three different classroom environments. In supportive environments teachers expressed enthusiasm for learning, were respectful, used humor, and voiced expectations that all students would learn. In ambiguous environments teachers were inconsistent in their support and focus on learning and exercised contradictory forms of management. In nonsupportive environments teachers emphasized extrinsic reasons for learning, forewarned that learning would be difficult and that students might cheat or misbehave, and exercised authoritarian control. Teachers' patterns of motivational and organizational discourse during math classes near the end of the year were consistent with the messages they expressed at the beginning of the year. When student reports of avoidance behaviors in math from fall and spring were compared with the qualitative analyses of these environments, students in supportive classrooms reported engaging in significantly less avoidance behavior than students in ambiguous or nonsupportive environments.


Background/Aims: Metal stent insertion is a common palliative treatment for distal malignant biliary obstruction (MBO) but whether placement across the sphincter of Oddi (SO) causes more complications or shorter survival is in question. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical outcomes of percutaneous uncovered self-expandable metal stent placement above and across the SO in patients with distal MBO. Patients and Methods: We retrospectively studied 59 patients who underwent uncovered metal stent placement for distal MBO between January 2012 and March 2016. Stents were placed above the SO for 22 subjects (group A) and across the SO for 37 subjects (group B). Early cholangitis, stent occlusion, and overall survival time were compared between the two groups. Results: Clinical success was 90.9 and 86.5% for groups A and B, respectively. Early cholangitis occurred in 2 patients (9.1%) in group A and in 6 patients (16.2%) in group B (P = 0.645). Median stent patency and median survival time was 105 and 140 days for group A, 120 and 160 days for group B, respectively. The stent occlusion (31.8% in group A and 21.6% in group B, P = 0.454) and the cumulative stent patency times (P = 0.886) did not differ between the two groups. There was no significant difference in cumulative patient survival between the two groups (P = 0.810). Conclusion: Uncovered metal stent placement across the SO did not significantly affect early cholangitis, stent patency, or patient survival.


In this Letter, we present a scanner and digital micromirror device (DMD)-based ultrafast pulse shaper, i.e., S-DUPS, for programmable ultrafast pulse modulation, achieving a shaping rate of 2 MHz. To our knowledge, the S-DUPS is the fastest programmable pulse shaper reported to date. In the S-DUPS, the frequency spectrum of the input pulsed laser is first spread horizontally, and then mapped to a thin stripe on the DMD programmed with phase modulation patterns. A galvanometric scanner, synchronized with the DMD, subsequently scans the spectrum vertically on the DMD to achieve a shaping rate up to 10 s MHz. A grating pair and a cylindrical lens in front of the DMD compensate for the temporal and spatial dispersion of the system. To verify the concept, experiments were conducted with the DMD and the galvanometric scanner operated at 2 kHz and 1 kHz, respectively, achieving a 2 MHz speed for continuous group velocity dispersion tuning, as well as 2% efficiency. Up to 5% efficiency of S-DUPS can be expected with high efficiency gratings and optical components of proper coatings.


Let A be an associative ring with left minimum condition and identity. Let g(d) denote the number of nonisomorphic indecomposable ^.-modules which have composition length d, d a nonnegative integer. If, for each integer n, there exists an integer d > n, such that g(d) = oo fA is said to be of strongly unbounded module type. Assume that the center of the endomorphism ring of each simple (left) A-module is infinite. The following results concerning the structure of rings of strongly unbounded type are obtained. I. If the ideal lattice of A is infinite, then A is of strongly unbounded module type. II. If A is commutative, then A has only a finite number of (nonisomorphi c) finitely generated indecomposable modules if and only if the ideal lattice of A is distributive. Otherwise, A is of strongly unbounded module type. III. If the ideal lattice of A contains a vertex Fof order greater than three such that, for some primitive idempotent eeA, the image Ve of V is a vertex of order greater than three in the submodule lattice of Ae, then A is of strongly unbounded module type. These results are generalizations of earlier ones obtained by J. P. Jans for finite dimensional algebras over algebraically closed fields.


Ultra-High Performance Fiber-Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) can be considered, due to its high strength and improved durability, as one of the leading recent innovations in civil engineering. Material scientists have developed a very efficient, high-tech material by optimizing the concrete composition and improving the density of the cement matrix. Its structural behavior and in particular its relatively high ductility, despite the brittle behavior of the cement matrix, is influenced significantly by the crack-bridging behavior of the fibers. This behavior affects not only the tensile behavior, but also the global material behavior, i.e.: bending (tension by bending), compression (transversal tension, confinement), shear, punching, concentrated load introduction, etc. In the presented study, the tensile behavior of UHPFRC is analyzed as a basis for its structural behavior. The investigations extend from the 'micro-scale' behavior of the crack-bridging fibers in one crack to the 'macro-scale' behavior of tension members composed of UHPFRC. To obtain efficient tensile performance, the use of the UHPFRC in combination with reinforcing bars is expedient. The bond between the reinforcing bars and the UHPFRC is investigated, in order to analyze and understand the structural response of reinforced UHPFRC tension members. At each level of investigation, emphasis is placed on comprehension of the mechanical process. The influence of the fiber orientation, creep, shrinkage, and pre-stressing is discussed. Based on the studied mechanical processes, micro- and macro-scale modeling of the structural behavior is carried out. The cracking mechanisms of UHPFRC are examined in the research work. For the structural response of reinforced UHPFRC tension members, the influence of the double multi-cracking behavior is particularly relevant. First, multiple meso-cracks form controlled by the fibers and then multiple macro-cracks form controlled by the bond between the UHPFRC and the reinforcing steel. With a model based on these mechanisms, the structural response of tension members made from different types of UHPFRC can be described. Depending on the configuration of the tension member (i.e.: type of UHPFRC, reinforcement ratio, steel type, pre-stressing), five different failure regimes result for reinforced UHPFRC tension members. For practical applications the following conclusions can be drawn: Tension members composed of UHPFRC show very efficient structural behavior. The resistance of the UHPFRC supplements the steel resistance according to its strain-respective cracking state. The well distributed cracking of the UHPFRC leads to a considerable increase in the rigidity of the tension member (high tension stiffening effect). To obtain an efficient tension member with a large deformation capacity, a relatively high reinforcement ratio is necessary. Due to the associated continuous hardening behavior and significant elastic deformation, the use of high-strength reinforcing steel without a yielding plateau is favorable.


Studies of past climates show unequivocally what can happen to our atmospheric environment. From climatic history we can learn several very specific lessons. The climate can change rapidly. Major climatic changes, such as the change from glacial to non-glacial conditions, can occur in a few centuries, even though the adjustment of biota and the wasting of continental ice-sheets may take longer. Smaller changes may take only decades. Changed climatic states may persist for centuries or millennia. While the climatic excursion of this century appears to have lasted half-a-century or so, the 'little ice-age' was at least three centuries long (roughly 1550–1850 A.D.), a North American drought period lasted two centuries, and there was a monsoon failure of seven centuries. These have all been recorded in the evidence of Nature. Climatic changes may occur in different senses in different parts of the world. This paper has outlined several cases where cooling in the sub-Arctic was associated with reduced rainfall or increased frequency of failure of the monsoon, and a case in which drought in North America was concomitant with wet weather in western Europe. The climate we think of as normal is quite abnormal by the standards of the past few centuries, and the magnitude of the change since 1945 is significant by comparison with similar changes in the past. Combining the nature of the recent climatic change with the present narrow margin of world food-grain reserves, an urgent need to consider and react to the possibility of continued climatic variation is indicated.


This paper presents a new randomized algorithm for quickly finding approximate nearest neighbor matches between image patches. Our algorithm offers substantial performance improvements over the previous state of the art (20--100×), enabling its use in new interactive image editing tools, computer vision, and video applications. Previously, the cost of computing such matches for an entire image had eluded efforts to provide interactive performance. The key insight driving our algorithm is that the elements of our search domain---patches of image pixels---are correlated, and thus the search strategy takes advantage of these statistics. Our algorithm uses two principles: first, that good patch matches can be found via random sampling, and second, that natural coherence in the imagery allows us to propagate such matches quickly to surrounding areas. Our simple algorithm allows finding a single nearest neighbor match across translations only, whereas our general algorithm additionally allows matching of k-nearest neighbors, across all rotations and scales, and matching arbitrary descriptors. This one simple algorithm forms the basis for a variety of applications including image retargeting, completion, reshuffling, object detection, digital forgery detection, and video summarization.


The media coverage of President Jacob Zuma and the "problem" of his foreign and potentially threatening polygamy reveals the long-extant gendered and raced fault lines of the presumably postcolonial relationship between Britain and South Africa. The discourses in the British press that marked Zuma as a "buffoon," "barbaric," and less civilized than his "distinctly monogamous" hosts can be traced to nineteenth-century settler colonial regimes and their violent attempts at reordering the lands and peoples they sought to occupy and replace. The arrival of British settlers in the nineteenth-century colony of Natal brought them into conflict with the Zulu peoples they sought to supplant and exploit. A reading of emigrant letters, missionary pamphlets, and newspaper correspondence reveals that the persistence of the practice of isithembu (polygamy) and ilobolo (the ritual exchange of cattle upon marriage) among Zulus in the face of British attempts to control their social and political formations challenged the very heart of the settler project. As British settlers sought to create and define a "modern" sexuality predicated on a heteronormative family unit, polygamy became the flashpoint in a biopolitical battle between colonists and indigenous peoples in Natal. For settlers, polygamy failed at being properly heteronormative, instead indicating an overweening hyper-heterosexuality in Zulu men. As a result, to white observers, polygamy presented a dangerous and disruptive challenge to the gendered, raced, and sexual order they wished to construct—in short, it became queer. The destabilizing queer potential of indigenous polygamy to the settler project reveals the assumptions about sexuality, civilization, and conjugality that underwrite colonial aspiration and postimperial anxieties.


Voltage-gated calcium channels, and L-type calcium channels (LTCs) in particular, provide a key mechanism by which electrical depolarization of a neuron is translated into changes in biochemical signaling systems that alter cellular function and gene expression. Green et al. show that, beyond the acute Ca2+-dependent inhibition of LTC conductance by calmodulin, there is an additional mechanism providing a longer-term negative feedback--Ca2+-dependent internalization of the channel. The authors modified the LTC Cav1.2 with tags in an extracellular loop and on the intracellular N terminus, which allowed them to monitor the fraction of the channel protein that was present on the surface of individual cultured cortical neurons. Electrical depolarization of the neurons decreased the fraction of the channels that was present on the cell surface. Total internal reflection microscopy showed that the channels became internalized in endosomal vesicles. The authors identified a fragment of the channel that produced a dominant-negative inhibition of internalization and, assuming it might be sequestering a protein that regulated the channel, used it in a two-hybrid screen to find an unexpected interacting protein, eIF3e. The eIF3e protein gets its name from its association with the elongation initiation complex, but it also interacts with the proteasome and the COP9 signalosome, complexes that function to degrade or regulate proteins modified by ubiquitination. At least when overexpressed, eIF3e interacted with Cav1.2 in cells, and increased amounts of eIF3e were associated with immunoprecipitated Cav1.2 when cells had been depolarized. In commentary on the paper, Varela and Zamponi note that a C-terminal fragment of Cav1.2 is reported to move to the nucleus and function as a transcription factor. Might eIF3e help route the channel to a compartment where proteolytic release of the C terminus would be activated for control of gene expression? Even if this intriguing scenario does not pan out, it seems likely that alterations in the density of LTCs at the cell surface is a mechanism that will affect a range of physiological processes, from cardiac function to neuronal plasticity. E. M. Green, C. F. Barrett, G. Bultynck, S. M. Shamah, R. E. Dolmetsch, The tumor suppressor eIF3e mediates calcium-dependent internalization of the L-type calcium channel Cav1.2. Neuron 55, 615-632 (2007). [Online Journal] D. Varela, G. W. Zamponi, Use 'em and lose 'em--Activity-induced removal of calcium channels from the plasma membrane. Neuron 55, 539-541 (2007). [Online Journal]


This paper explores gender differences in overplacement in two independent and unrelated tasks. The first measures performance via Raven's Progressive Matrices test, the second in a video presentation assessed by external judges. While in the first task, we expected participants to have prior knowledge about their own experience in similar tasks, we did not expect them to have experience of the second task. Therefore, the latter seems an ideal environment in which to test overplacement given that participants had no ex-ante information with which to make performance predictions. In both cases, participants received monetary incentives depending on the accuracy of their predictions regarding their own performance compared to other participants. We analyzed overplacement – whether participants expect to outperform their actual performance compared to the entire sample – and in/out-group overplacement– whether the participants expect to outperform participants of the same and the opposite sex. Results show that there are no gender differences in any task except in Raven's Progressive Matrices for out-group overplacement.


The present study examined the influence of religious personality, as the manifestation of one's religious belief, on the inter-ethnic perceived behaviour among the different ethnic and gender backgrounds. Religious personality comprises of three major factors: pro-social behaviour, ritual behaviour and anti-social behaviour. It was hypothesized that religious personality of the youth might influence inter-ethnic perceived behaviour by enhancing mutual understanding and respect, tolerance, and appropriate behaviour to live in peace and harmony. Respondents were 563 high school students, who were randomly selected from various schools in Selangor. The Inter-ethnic Tolerance Questionnaire (IETQ) was used as a self-designed questionnaire to measure the inter-ethnic perceived behaviour and the Universal Religious Personality Inventory (URPI) (Krauss et al., 2006). The findings gathered in the present study indicated that Indian, Malay and Chinese students scored the highest levels of the pro-social behaviour, ritual behaviour and anti-social behaviour, respectively. Comparing the genders among all races, female students were found to score higher than the male students in the pro-social behaviour, but scored lower in the anti-social behaviour. The multiple regression analysis indicated that the pro-social factor was found to be a significant positive predictor of the inter-ethnic perceived behaviour.


Video frame interpolation typically involves two steps: motion estimation and pixel synthesis. Such a two-step approach heavily depends on the quality of motion estimation. This paper presents a robust video frame interpolation method that combines these two steps into a single process. Specifically, our method considers pixel synthesis for the interpolated frame as local convolution over two input frames. The convolution kernel captures both the local motion between the input frames and the coefficients for pixel synthesis. Our method employs a deep fully convolutional neural network to estimate a spatially-adaptive convolution kernel for each pixel. This deep neural network can be directly trained end to end using widely available video data without any difficult-to-obtain ground-truth data like optical flow. Our experiments show that the formulation of video interpolation as a single convolution process allows our method to gracefully handle challenges like occlusion, blur, and abrupt brightness change and enables high-quality video frame interpolation.


The Internet has offered many opportunities for interactions and participation. The current study positioned YouTube as a possible affinity space (Gee, 2003, 2004) for students to showcase their personal talents. The participants were recruited from a group of senior students in a Taiwanese university who volunteered to participate in this study. In their three-minute tutorial videos, students needed to teach the global audience something they were good at and then responded to the comments they might receive. Data were collected from students' reflective essays and transcripts of their group interviews. The data analysis process revealed that this "learning-through-participation" (Merchant, 2009, p. 110) approach was found to provide students with authentic audiences and an engaged learning opportunity (Dabrowski, 2018) for personal expression and community building. Taking the role of a YouTuber was found to be conducive to the participants' learning on technological, educational and social dimensions. Playing the role of content creators and responding to online comments also allowed students to develop a more cautious and responsible attitude towards online speech and etiquette. This paper ends with a few suggestions for continuing related research on helping students to become more capable and responsible citizens of the twenty first century. issn 1832-4215 Vol. 16, no.1 Pages 51–67 https://doi.org/10.29140/jaltcall.v16n1.259


This dissertation transforms a set of system complexity reduction problems to feature selection problems. Three systems are considered: classification based on association rules, network structure learning, and time series classification. Furthermore, two variable importance measures are proposed to reduce the feature selection bias in tree models.
Associative classifiers can achieve high accuracy, but the combination of many rules is difficult to interpret. Rule condition subset selection (RCSS) methods for associative classification are considered. RCSS aims to prune the rule conditions into a subset via feature selection. The subset then can be summarized into rule-based classifiers. Experiments show that classifiers after RCSS can substantially improve the classification interpretability without loss of accuracy.
An ensemble feature selection method is proposed to learn Markov blankets for either discrete or continuous networks (without linear, Gaussian assumptions). The method is compared to a Bayesian local structure learning algorithm and to alternative feature selection methods in the causal structure learning problem.
Feature selection is also used to enhance the interpretability of time series classification. Existing time series classification algorithms (such as nearest-neighbor with dynamic time warping measures) are accurate but difficult to interpret. This research leverages the time-ordering of the data to extract features, and generates an effective and efficient classifier referred to as a time series forest (TSF). The computational complexity of TSF is only linear in the length of time series, and interpretable features can be extracted. These features can be further reduced, and summarized for even better interpretability.
Lastly, two variable importance measures are proposed to reduce the feature selection bias in tree-based ensemble models. It is well known that bias can occur when predictor attributes have different numbers of values. Two methods are proposed to solve the bias problem. One uses an out-of-bag sampling method called OOBForest, and the other, based on the new concept of a partial permutation test, is called a pForest. Experimental results show the existing methods are not always reliable for multi-valued predictors, while the proposed methods have advantages.


The first cohort of "baby boomers" are now 65 years or older, presaging a massive wave of aging "boomers" that could degrade health care and elder care over the next quarter-century. Cost-effective, high-impact technologies for aging, disabilities and independent living are urgently needed. In this paper, we present our experience in building "assistive environments" for older adults-the Gator Tech Smart House (GTSH) project. Numerous R&D efforts similar to ours are either underway or have recently been conducted. In most of these projects, prototypes have been built to achieve independence, well being, and in general, good quality of life. But prototyping a technology is one thing; commercial proliferation and creating a vibrant industry around such technology is an altogether different proposition. From the lessons learned in the GTSH, we analyze the impediments hindering the emergence of products and services for assistive environments, and present the blueprints of an ecosystem based on requirements drawn from the lessons learned. We believe the proposed ecosystem is an important beginning to providing better conditions for an accelerated proliferation of next-generation smart homes and assistive environments.


Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of the leading social thinkers of the twentieth century, long concerned himself with the problems of moral philosophy, or "whether the good life is a genuine possibility in the present." This book consists of a course of seventeen lectures given in May-July 1963. Captured by tape recorder (which Adorno called "the fingerprint of the living mind"), these lectures present a somewhat different, and more accessible, Adorno from the one who composed the faultlessly articulated and almost forbiddingly perfect prose of the works published in his lifetime. Here we can follow Adorno's thought in the process of formation (he spoke from brief notes), endowed with the spontaneity and energy of the spoken word. The lectures focus largely on Kant, "a thinker in whose work the question of morality is most sharply contrasted with other spheres of existence." After discussing a number of the Kantian categories of moral philosophy, Adorno considers other, seemingly more immediate general problems, such as the nature of moral norms, the good life, and the relation of relativism and nihilism. In the course of the lectures, Adorno addresses a wide range of topics, including: theory and practice, ethics as bad conscience, the repressive character, the problem of freedom, dialectics in Kant and Hegel, the nature of reason, the moral law as a given, psychoanalysis, the element of the Absurd, freedom and law, the Protestant tradition of morality, Hamlet, self-determination, phenomenology, the concept of the will, the idea of humanity, The Wild Duck, and Nietzsche's critique of morality.


This study examines gender differences in risk-taking behavior among managers in a female-dominated industry. Using data from international top-level women's soccer, we provide evidence that male coaches show a lower level of risk-taking than female coaches on average. We also find a U-shaped age effect that is independent of gender, meaning that young and more mature individuals tend to take riskier decisions. Our main results therefore strongly contrast with the majority of previous studies on gender differences in risk preferences, and thereby emphasize the importance of considering the industrial environment. Underlying selection processes may play an important role. We find no correlation between the gender gap in risk-taking and female empowerment defined by national gender equality scores.


Background Cessation of community water fluoridation (CWF) appears to be occurring with increasing frequency in some regions. Our objective was to comprehensively review published research on the impact of CWF cessation on dental caries. Methods We searched 13 multidisciplinary databases. Results were synthesised qualitatively and quantitatively. Results We identified 15 instances of CWF cessation ('intervention') in 13 countries, which covered a broad time frame (1956–2003) and diverse geographical and political/economic contexts. Overall, results were mixed, but pointed more to an increase in caries postcessation than otherwise. For example, of the 9 studies with at least moderate methodological quality based on criteria we developed for this review, 5 showed an increase in caries postcessation. 3 studies did not show an increase in caries postcessation; however, important postcessation changes (eg, implementation of alternative fluoride delivery programmes) and/or large-scale social change may have contributed to those effects. Of the 3 study groupings that permitted quantitative synthesis, 2 showed statistically significant mean overall increase in caries postcessation; however, quantitative synthesis results must be interpreted cautiously. Conclusions Overall, the published research points more to an increase in dental caries post-CWF cessation than otherwise. However, the literature is highly diverse and variable in methodological quality. To build this literature, it is important to exploit research opportunities presented by CWF cessation. Remaining knowledge gaps include the impact of CWF cessation on the distribution of dental caries (ie, equitable or not) and understanding the decision-making circumstances around CWF cessation.


The present study examined the hydro-meteorological trends and their magnitudes using the Mann–Kendall, Sen9s slope, and linear regression methods in the Jhelum River basin. Maximum and minimum temperatures showed increasing trends in the basin. However, the increasing trends of maximum temperature in all seasons as well as in annual datasets were stronger and statistically more significant than minimum temperature. Precipitation showed non-significant increasing and decreasing trends spread evenly throughout the basin. However, decreasing trends dominated in the basin, except in winter, with an average annual decrease of 3.3 mm. In case of streamflow, seasonal and annual decreasing trends dominated in the basin. Summer showed stronger and significant decreasing trends at most of the hydrometric stations in the basin. An annual decrease of 8 mm was observed at Azad Pattan. These decreasing trends are most probably due to decreasing trends in precipitation and increasing trends in temperature, though other factors such as land use changes, industrialization, and urbanization can also affect the changes in streamflow. These decreasing trends in precipitation and stream flow can have some serious implications in the reduction of water availability to the Mangla reservoir, thus producing many challenges for efficient reservoir operation and management.


Experimental amyloidosis in mice can be induced by repeated injections of casein. It has now been demonstrated that casein induces strong polyclonal antibody synthesis in mouse B spleen lymphocytes. This effect is much more pronounced in spleen cells from anyloid-susceptible mice (CBA/J) than amyloid-resistant mice (A/J). It is suggested that amyloidosis can be due in some instances to a constant exposure for molecules which induce polyclonal B-cell activation.


Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and the locally connected layer are limited in capturing the importance and relations of different local receptive fields, which are often crucial for tasks such as face verification, visual question answering, and word sequence prediction. To tackle the issue, we propose a novel locally smoothed neural network (LSNN) in this paper. The main idea is to represent the weight matrix of the locally connected layer as the product of the kernel and the smoother, where the kernel is shared over different local receptive fields, and the smoother is for determining the importance and relations of different local receptive fields. Specifically, a multi-variate Gaussian function is utilized to generate the smoother, for modeling the location relations among different local receptive fields. Furthermore, the content information can also be leveraged by setting the mean and precision of the Gaussian function according to the content. Experiments on some variant of MNIST clearly show our advantages over CNN and locally connected layer.


India's land transport GHG emissions are small in international comparison, but growing exponentially. Understanding of geographically-specific determinants of GHG emissions is crucial to devise low-carbon sustainable development strategies. However, previous studies on transport patterns have been limited to socio-economic context in linear and stationary settings, and with limited spatial scope. Here, we use a machine learning tool to develop a nested typology that categorizes all 640 Indian districts according to the econometrically identified drivers of their commuting emissions. Results reveal that per capita commuting emissions significantly vary over space, after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, and are strongly influenced by built environment (e.g. urbanization, and road density), and mobility-related variables (e.g. travel distance and travel modes). The commuting emissions of districts are characterized by unique, place-specific combinations of drivers. We find that income and urbanization are dominant classifiers of commuting emissions, while we explain more fine-grained patterns with mode choice and travel distance. Surprisingly the most urbanized areas with highest population density are also associated with the highest transport GHG emissions, a result that is explained by high car ownership. This result contrasts with insights from OECD countries, where commuting emissions are associated with low-density urban sprawl. Our findings demonstrate that low-carbon commuting in India is best advanced with spatially differentiated strategies.


"Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State views modern Chinese political history from the perspective of Han officials who were tasked with governing Xinjiang. This region, inhabited by Uighurs, Kazaks, Hui, Mongols, Kirgiz, and Tajiks, is also the last significant "colony" of the former Qing empire to remain under continuous Chinese rule throughout the twentieth century. By foregrounding the responses of Chinese and other imperial elites to the growing threat of national determination across Eurasia, Justin Jacobs argues for a reconceptualization of the modern Chinese state as a "national empire." He shows how strategies for administering this region in the late Qing, Republican, and Communist eras were molded by, and shaped in response to, the rival platforms of ethnic difference characterized by Soviet and other geopolitical competitors across Inner and East Asia.This riveting narrative tracks Xinjiang political history through the Bolshevik revolution, the warlord years, Chinese civil war, and the large-scale Han immigration in the People's Republic of China, as well as the efforts of the exiled Xinjiang government in Taiwan after 1949 to claim the loyalty of Xinjiang refugees.


Measurement of the transverse resistivity was carried out in a reconnecting current sheet where the mean free path for the Coulomb collision is smaller than the thickness of the sheet. In a collisional neutral sheet without a guide field, the transverse resistivity is directly related to the reconnection rate. A remarkable agreement is found between the measured resistivity and the classical value derived by Spitzer. In his calculation the transverse resistivity for the electrons is higher than the parallel resistivity by a factor of 1.96. The measured values have verified this theory to within 30% errors.


The art of Renaissance Siena is usually viewed in the light of developments and accomplishments achieved elsewhere, but Sienese artists were part of a dynamic dialogue that was shaped by their citys internal political turmoil, diplomatic relationships with its neighbours, internal social hierarchies, and struggle for self-definition. These essays lead scholars in a new and exciting direction in the study of the art of Renaissance Siena, exploring the cultural dynamics of the city and its art in a specifically Sienese context. This volume shapes a new understanding of Sienese culture in the early modern period and defines the questions scholars will continue to ask for years to come. What emerges is a picture of Renaissance Siena as a city focused on meeting the challenges of the time while formulating changes to shape its future. Central to these changes are the citys efforts to fashion a civic identity through the visual arts.


Body-worn cameras (BWCs) are an increasingly common tool for police oversight, accountability, and transparency, yet there remains uncertainty about their impacts on policing outcomes. This paper reviews what we know about the benefits of BWCs and how those benefits compare to the costs of this new technology. We make two contributions relative to existing research. First, we update prior meta-analyses of studies of the impacts of BWCs on policing outcomes to incorporate the most recent, and largest, studies carried out to date in this literature. This additional information provides additional support for the idea that cameras may affect a number of policing outcomes that are important from a social welfare perspective, particularly police use of force. Second, we carry out a benefit-cost analysis of BWCs, as financial barriers are often cited as a key impediment to adoption by police departments. Our baseline estimate for the benefit-cost ratio of BWCs is 4.95. Perhaps as much as one-quarter of the estimated benefits accrue to government budgets directly, which suggests the possibility that this technology could, from the narrow perspective of government budgets, even pay for itself.

Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.


Abstract Post-nasal drip (PND) can be a bothersome symptom and one of the main reasons for patients visiting a general practitioner (GP), pulmonologist or ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon. It can be either a symptom, sometimes not appreciated by the examining practitioner, or an important clinical sign suggesting rhinosinusitis. This article aims to explain the aetiological factors and initial work-up of the patient with a PND and rhinosinusitis and suggest a treatment paradigm for practitioners.


The accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights raises questions about the autonomy of EU law, and about the future relationship between the EU Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. The concept of autonomy appears to confirm prevailing theories about the relationships between legal systems in Europe, ie legal and constitutional pluralism. This study challenges those theories, and proposes an alternative paradigm: the integration of laws. Its central argument is that the EU system of human rights protection is increasingly characterized by its integration with the national constitutional laws of the Member States and with the ECHR. It argues that in integrated legal systems, conflicts between supreme adjudicators can be resolved from within the law. Each of the supreme/constitutional courts needs to recognize the limits of its jurisdiction, but is also sharing jurisdiction with the others. This principle of limited and shared jurisdiction is a tool for resolving conflicts, leading away from a conception of a deep conflict of supreme judicial authority. Integrated legal systems are governed by a law of integration, which is there for all to see. The article touches upon some of the elements of that law of integration. It goes on to investigate the scope for EU law autonomy — which is in essence concerned with safeguarding the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice — in connection with accession to the ECHR. It argues that the principle of limited and shared jurisdiction should govern the relationship between the two European courts, and that it is capable of ensuring that the European Court of Human Rights does not decide matters of EU competence, or EU law generally. But the principle also means that the Court of Justice will be bound by judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.


Although several dimensions of the present euro-crisis have been analysed by students of European integration, the impact of the crisis on the political culture of EU leaders has been largely overlooked. The political culture of a nation, a social class or, in case of the EU, an elite consists of a system of beliefs, symbols, and values – the latter including conceptions of purpose – that defines the situation in which political action takes place. One of the roots of the traditional political culture of EU leaders was the Monnet strategy of fait accompli, which consisted in pushing ahead with integration without worrying about either public support or democratic legitimation. This approach was supported by the prevailing emphasis on the process of integration rather than on the concrete results of specific collective decisions. The most serious consequence of the political culture shared by most EU leaders was the tendency to disregard both feasibility constraints and the limits of collective action. Under the impact of the euro-crisis total optimism has been replaced by panic-driven austerity. The paper concludes by calling attention to the fact that there are various alternative approaches to regional (in particular, European) integration. One approach deserving particular attention in the present situation is the functional – rather than territorial – approach advocated by David Mitrany in the 1940s and by Ralph Dahrendorf in the 1970s.


PURPOSE
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provides high-quality preventive chronic care and cancer care, but few studies have documented improved patient outcomes that result from this high-quality care. We compared the survival rates of older patients with cancer in the VHA and fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare and examined whether differences in the stage at diagnosis, receipt of guideline-recommended therapies, and unmeasured characteristics explain survival differences.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
We used propensity-score methods to compare all-cause and cancer-specific survival rates for men older than age 65 years who were diagnosed or received their first course of treatment for colorectal, lung, lymphoma, or multiple myeloma in VHA hospitals from 2001 to 2004 to similar FFS-Medicare enrollees diagnosed in Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) areas in the same time frame. We examined the role of unmeasured factors by using sensitivity analyses.

RESULTS
VHA patients versus similar FFS SEER-Medicare patients had higher survival rates of colon cancer (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 0.87; 95% CI, 0.82 to 0.93) and non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC; HR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.88 to 0.95) and similar survival rates of rectal cancer (HR, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.95 to 1.16), small-cell lung cancer (HR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.93 to 1.05), diffuse large-B-cell lymphoma (HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.89 to 1.18), and multiple myeloma (HR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.83 to 1.03). The diagnosis of VHA patients at earlier stages explained much of the survival advantages for colon cancer and NSCLC. Sensitivity analyses suggested that additional adjustment for the severity of comorbid disease or performance status could have substantial effects on estimated differences.

CONCLUSION
The survival rate for older men with cancer in the VHA was better than or equivalent to the survival rate for similar FFS-Medicare beneficiaries. The VHA provision of high-quality care, particularly preventive care, can result in improved patient outcomes.


KLH-specific suppressor factors produced in vitro efficiently diminished primary and secondary responses to trinitrophenyl keyhole limpet haemocyanin (TNP-KLH) in vivo. Both IgM and IgG responses were approximately equally affected, These suppressor factors were not genetically restricted, as allogeneic suppressor factors worked as efficiently as syngeneic factors. Furthermore, xenogeneic human suppressor factors were effective in mice and suppressed the responses as efficiently as syngeneic factors. The kinetics of the response in suppressed and non-suppressed mice was the same, indicating that the magnitude of the response was affected and not merely its time course. Prior injection with suppressor factor did not cause suppression of response, while suppressor factor injected at the same time as or soon after the antigen did, suggesting that it might act at the effector stage. The mechanism of action of this unrestricted suppressor factor, and the use of mouse model for in vivo testing of human suppressor factors is discussed.


Three species of bacteria, 8 species of fungi and 3 species of VAM-fungi were isolated from the soil substrata supporting Avicennia marina which comprises the majority of mangrove vegetation along the Karachi coast. The species abundances for fungi and bacteria were greater at one site (Sandspit) supporting healthy mangrove growth with soil pH 7.8, EC 16.2mmhos/cm², TSS 2.57% and available phosphorus 0.008% than at the other site (Korangi creek) with stunted growth of mangrove where the soil samples showed pH 7.9, EC 18.8mmhos/cm², TSS 1.45% and available phosphorus 0.001%. Symbiotic association by vasicular-arbuscular mycorrhizal (VAM) fungi in the roots of mangrove plants was also observed on a small scale at Korangi creek where the substratum was undergoing microbial degradation.


We study interacting components and their compatibility with respect to synchronous and asynchronous composition. The behavior of components is formalized by I/O-transition systems. Synchronous composition is based on simultaneous execution of shared output and input actions of two components while asynchronous composition uses unbounded FIFO-buffers for message transfer. In both contexts we study compatibility notions based on the idea that any output issued by one component should be accepted as an input by the other. We distinguish between strong and weak versions of compatibility, the latter allowing the execution of internal actions before a message is accepted. We consider open systems and study conditions under which (strong/weak) synchronous compatibility is sufficient and necessary to get (strong/weak) asynchronous compatibility. We show that these conditions characterize half-duplex systems. Then we focus on the verification of weak asynchronous compatibility for possibly non half-duplex systems and provide a decidable criterion that ensures weak asynchronous compatibility. We investigate conditions under which this criterion is complete, i.e. if it is not satisfied then the asynchronous system is not weakly asynchronously compatible. Finally, we discuss deadlock-freeness and investigate relationships between deadlock-freeness in the synchronous and in the asynchronous case.


Background: Validated eczema questionnaires have been available for schoolchildren only, but the incidence of atopic dermatitis (AD) is highest during infancy. Objective: To validate a parental questionnaire to identify AD in children up to 2 years of age. Methods: Parents of 476 children answered a written questionnaire prior to an examination by a physician. Sensitivity, specificity, predictive values and test-retest reliability of the questionnaire were assessed. Results: A total of 245 (51%) girls and 231 (49%) boys, aged 1-24 months, with and without physician-diagnosed AD participated. Seventy-one children (15%) had physician-diagnosed AD. Validation of the questionnaire by comparisons with physicians' diagnoses showed a sensitivity of 0.87 (95% confidence interval, CI, 0.77-0.94) and a specificity of 0.98 (95% CI, 0.96-0.99). The positive predictive value was 0.90 (95% CI, 0.80-0.96) and the negative predictive value was 0.98 (95% CI, 0.96-0.99). Conclusion: The questionnaire identified AD in children aged 0-2 years with high accuracy.


Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is highly prevalent in Haiti and constitutes a serious public health problem. Social norms promoting power imbalance between women and men and condoning VAWG are also widespread. Changing these norms and curbing the cycle of VAWG in Haiti is an important step toward ensuring healthier, more productive, and safer communities in Haiti. This report documents the lessons learned from a review of the planning, implementation, and evaluation of community mobilization interventions concerning VAWG in Haiti, namely the SASA! program by Raising Voices and the Power to Girls program by Beyond Borders. The methods used to develop this report consist of a review of literature on VAWG prevention programs, as well as qualitative data collection with key informants in Haiti. Findings from this analysis will contribute to the broader literature on adapting, testing, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based interventions in developing countries.


Brief History ASA Philippines Foundation is a not-for-profit institution specializing in microfinance. It was conceptualized by Kamrul H. Tarafder and Ambassador Howard Q. Dee. It started operations in August 2004 with financial seed capital from the Assisi Development Foundation and the Ninoy & Cory Aquino Foundation. In 2007, PLDT Smart Foundation joined as a third benefactor. Since then, ASA Philippines has not obtained any other grant and, unlike other foundations, it pledges not to source any more grants.
A Clear Vision to be Sustainable and Incorporate CSR "In the most cost-effective and sustainable manner"….this was clearly stated in ASA Philippines' vision statement. The Foundation's management set out to achieve break-even in the shortest possible time. Businesses tend to set out 5-year management and profitability plans. The Foundation's management reasoned that since ASA Philippines is a development organization that is not required to pay full taxes to the Philippine government, then why shouldn't they aim to achieve break-even in a shorter time frame, say 3 years? In fact, ASA Philippines did achieve profitability within 3 years. What's more, it accomplished this despite setting aside a high provision for possible loan losses. The Philippines tends to experience devastating natural calamities from time to time. When the Foundation's clients are hit by these calamities, they are often unable to pay their loans on time, if at all. It was important for the Foundation to have the flexibility to respond to clients in their time of need, while at the same time maintaining continuous normal corporate operations, thus the decision to allocate conservative provisioning.
Organizational Growth As of December 2016, ASA Philippines has established 850 branches across the country and employed 5,964 fulltime staff. It is serving 1,273,136 active borrowers with a portfolio of US$180 million. Eleven years from inception, the Foundation became the 1st MFI in the country to achieve a milestone of over 1,000,000 active borrowers. ASA Philippines is now the country's largest MFI in terms of borrowers & assets. It holds the distinction of being the first MFI to establish a presence in all 82 provinces of the country. In 2016, it was named as the Philippines' most outstanding MFI.
Balancing Financial Sustainability with Achieving the Foundation's Mission For NGOs, pursuing their corporate mission while trying to attain financial sustainability is quite the challenge. Many NGOs, particularly those that deal with low-income communities, are unable to generate sufficient income and/or manage their expenses within their limited income. They are thus forced to rely on external sources of funds such as grants.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programs Since the beginning the Foundation started a CSR program albeit at a smaller scale, however, as soon as the company broke even, it increased its CSR programs. The following are some of the current CSR activities: • Disaster Relief – Typhoons, Fire, Flood, Drought, Rehabilitation Grants, Others • Health Care – Medical Missions, Cataract/Pterygium Operations, Cleft Lip/Palate Operations, Hospitalization Benefits, Death Benefits, Bloodletting Drive, Water and Sanitation Financing Program, Persons with Disability Program, Child Feeding • Education – College Scholarship Program, Out of School Youth • Livelihood – Business Development Training and Marketing Support, Employment of Relatives of Clients, Shari'ah Financing, Star Coke Program • Housing – Housing Finance • Environment – Tree Planting, Urban Gardening As of December 2016 the Foundation spent US$15,000,000 over the last 12.5 years which benefited a million individuals.
Conclusion Is it possible for an end-user development institution, particularly one that deals with low-income communities, to achieve its corporate mission without relying on grant funding? The conventional wisdom is that it probably is not possible. ASA Philippines Foundation, an institution that deals with financial services for the poor, has however proven otherwise. It was able to design an expanded, sustainable CSR program into its corporate mission while at the same time achieving financial sustainability. Today, approximately 5% of its gross income or 15% of its net income is devoted to CSR Activities.
ASA Philippines Foundation just needed seed capital to start its operations. Though it is unconventional, the Foundation has subsequently politely declined all offers of grant funding. The program it has designed is sustainable. Given the challenges associated with relying on grant funding especially during tough economic times, ASA Philippines has excised grants out of the equation. It is doable.


In a context in which HIV and AIDS is affecting many lives around the globe education has been described as the most effective social vaccine against this pandemic. Getting every child into school seems to be essential to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS. However worldwide evidence suggests that HIV and AIDS have swamped education sectors with a range of challenges especially in countries were education sectors were already weak. As a result many children are not accessing education or are leaving school before achieving basic literacy and numeracy skills. This paper is one of the background documents developed as part of SOFIE research project funded by the Joint DFID-ESRC Scheme that explores the potential role of open distance and flexible learning (ODFL) as a complement to conventional schooling in Malawi and Lesotho to overcome the barriers to education presented by HIV and AIDS. Drawing mostly on secondary data the analysis of documents reports and academic articles as well as on primary data from interviews and discussions with key informants in Malawi this paper reviews the way in which the education sector in Malawi is responding to support students access to education and achievement in the context of the AIDS epidemic. It also identifies and analyses key ODFL initiatives and structures used to address challenges in the education system. Available research evidence suggests that ODFL should be supported alongside conventional schooling because it has the potential to alleviate the huge demands that the system is facing. The evidence also recommends the design of inclusive programmes that reach out to all vulnerable children not only orphans and particularly those from the lowest socio-economic quintiles. Some good practices are discussed. (authors)


It is often assumed that daytime patterns of ecosystem carbon assimilation are mostly driven by direct physiological responses to exogenous environmental cues. Under limited environmental variability, little variation in carbon assimilation should thus be expected unless endogenous plant controls on carbon assimilation, which regulate photosynthesis in time, are active. We evaluated this assumption with eddy flux data, and we selected periods when net ecosystem exchange (NEE) was decoupled from environmental variability in seven sites from highly contrasting biomes across a 74° latitudinal gradient over a total of 36 site‐years. Under relatively constant conditions of light, temperature, and other environmental factors, significant diurnal NEE oscillations were observed at six sites, where daily NEE variation was between 20% and 90% of that under variable environmental conditions. These results are consistent with fluctuations driven by the circadian clock and other endogenous processes. Our results open a promising avenue of research for a more complete understanding of ecosystem fluxes that integrates from cellular to ecosystem processes.


This paper proposes an estimation of an augmented Tornqvist price-index - fea- turing demand shifters - which is exact for homothetic translog preferences. Contrary to previous work based on a constant elasticity of substitution across varieties, this demand system allows for changes in markups even when the number of products is large. We then propose a structural decomposition of this index in terms of changes in markups, productivity, variety and demand shocks. We illustrate our approach using sample data from ACNielsens Homescan Panel. For instance, our results are consistent with competition effects where a decrease in per-product demand trans- lates into lower markups.


Background and Objective: Thyroid cancer is the most frequent endocrine malignancy in the world and papillary carcinoma is the most frequent thyroid carcinoma. Different markers used for determination of prognosis and VEGFR is one of them. The aim of present study was to determine the expression of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Receptor (VEGFR) as a prognostic marker in papillary carcinoma. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted on 92 tissue blocks of papillary carcinoma during the period of 2009-2011 in Mostafa Khomeini Hospital, Tehran, Iran. Two tissue sections were prepared. One of them stained with Hematoxylin and Eosin and the other by immunohistochemistry to determine VEGFR expression. Also tumor size and lymph node status was determined. The data analyzed and the p-value of ≤o.o5 was considered statistically significant. Results: The mean age of patients was 39.32± 16.93 years. 40.2% of tumors showed VEGFR expression. 23.9% of patients had lymph node involvement. The average tumor size was 3.6 ± 2.2 cm. No meaningful relationship was observed between VEGFR expression and sex and age of patients and the size of tumor. However, there was a direct significant relationship between the absence of VEGFR expression and uninvolvement of lymph nodes. Conclusion: It seems that reduction in VEGFR expression in papillary carcinoma resulting in reduced numbers of involved lymph node and better prognosis. More complete studies in this field with patient follow up is recommended.


This book introduces a major poet scarcely known to scholars outside Gujarat in India: Kavi Dayarambhai (1777-1852), one of the greatest writers in the Gujarati language. His death brought to an end not only the age of the great bhakta (devotional) poets, but also that of Gujarati medieval literature as a whole. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of literature, Rachel Dwyer analyses the poet's place in the history of Indian literature, and his role in the intellectual changes that occurred in western India during the nineteenth century. She assesses the form and language of his lyrics, and the critical reception afforded his work at the time, as part of the creation of a canon of medieval poetry. The book provides a selection of Dayaram's work in Roman transliteration, accompanied by literal translations into English.


Virtual sensing is the art of measuring a quantity at a certain spatial position without having a physical sensor placed at that exact same position. In practical applications, this technique is sometimes very useful, when it is not feasible to put the sensor at the position where the physical quantity should be measured. For example, a virtual microphone could be considered in the following scenario: The sound level, preliminary school environment, should be studied at the different students head positions. In order to get statistical relevant data, the measurement has to be carried out over a period of time. However, it is not a feasible approach to use a large number of microphones hanging from the ceiling at the students head level, over a longer period of time for obvious reasons. One thoughtful solution, in such a situation is to put microphones at the walls and close to the ceiling and using the virtual technique to calculate the noise level at the students head positions based on the measure data. An advantage in such large setup is that it often requires less physical sensors than the number of virtual measurement positions and at the same time features a better validation and sanity check of the data. The most popular application areas for virtual microphones are in active noise control (ANC) or active structural acoustic control (ASAC), where the aim is to move the zone of quietness away from the physical error microphones to the desired location of maximum attenuation. However, there is an important difference between virtual sensing for active control and virtual sensing for a pure measurement situation concerning the delays introduced by virtual sensing technique. This specific thesis work deals with the calculus of all the possible paths and reflections followed by a sound wave between the source and a given destination point, by using virtual transducers in an enclosed environment where reverberation exists. The aim of this work is to determine how to calculate that impulse response in a rectangular room in which the walls have uniform reflection coefficients and there isn't any kind of furniture inside. Besides, this project specifies a simple way to make this calculus taking into account several sources and destinations.


Inbred mice show strain-specific differences in the hippocampal mossy fiber projection. These differences are most pronounced in the portion of the projection that forms synaptic connections with the basal dendrites of the CA3 pyramidal neurons [intra- and infrapyramidal mossy fiber (IIP-MF) projection]. We have previously demonstrated that the extent of the IIP-MF subfield is positively correlated with the capacity to perform a spatial radial-maze task and that an experimentally induced enlargement of the IIP-MFs, by means of postnatal thyroxine treatment, predicted the ability of adult two-way avoidance learning. In the present study, we tested whether this treatment would also influence radial-maze performance. Forty-five male mouse pups from the inbred strain DBA/2 (chosen because of scanty IIP- MF projection and poor radial-maze learning) were divided into three groups that received daily injections of either 2 micrograms L- thyroxine, an alkaline vehicle solution, or physiological saline. Treatment lasted from postnatal days 0 to 11. At the age of 3 months, these animals were tested in an eight-arm radial maze. The extent of their IIP-MF projections was measured by means of planimetry on Timm- stained sections. Thyroxine-treated animals made significantly fewer errors and had larger IIP-MF projections as compared to both control groups. Within each group, the individual variability of the IIP-MF projection was significantly and positively correlated with performance. We conclude that experimentally modified IIP-MF projections mediate processes underlying spatial working memory. It would appear that the hippocampal circuitry alterations induced by postnatal hyperthyroidism can counteract a hereditary lack of talent, albeit only partially and in selected populations.


The increasing use of artificial reproductive techniques generates very complex problems concerning parent-child juridical relations. Posthumous insemination, heterologous fertilization procedures, and surrogate motherhood raise questions as to the traditional ways in which we establish parenthood. This paper analyzes trends in comparative family law and proposes responses to the challenges presented by artificial reproductive techniques. First, it considers the juridical issues that arise from the use of donor gametes, with special attention to the question of donor anonymity. Then the paper considers basic principles that should guide law and policy in this area, and proposes conclusions as to the right to identity, the commodification of the human body, the traceability of gametes, the exploitation of women, and other matters. The paper considers same-sex marriage (with special attention to a recent Argentinian law recognizing them); and it considers the possibility of "two-mother" or "two-father" families. The complexities of the different combinations of biological parents, donors, and surrogate mothers are considered. The paper concludes by identifying the problems intrinisic to these reproductive techniques and by emphasizing the need for strong legal measures to assure the human dignity of the unborn child and the transmission of life, with special consideration to family law.


This paper considers the subspace clustering problem where the data contains irrelevant or corrupted features. We propose a method termed "robust Dantzig selector" which can successfully identify the clustering structure even with the presence of irrelevant features. The idea is simple yet powerful: we replace the inner product by its robust counterpart, which is insensitive to the irrelevant features given an upper bound of the number of irrelevant features. We establish theoretical guarantees for the algorithm to identify the correct subspace, and demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm via numerical simulations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first method developed to tackle subspace clustering with irrelevant features.


Portulaca grandiflora simultaneously utilizes both the C4 and Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) photosynthetic pathways. Our goal was to determine whether CAM developed and was functional simultaneously with the C4 pathway in cotyledons of P. grandiflora. We studied during development whether CAM would be induced with water stress by monitoring the enzyme activity, leaf structure, JO2 (rate of O2 evolution calculated by fluorescence analysis), and the changes in titratable acidity of 10 and 25 days old cotyledons. In the 10 days old cotyledons, C4 and CAM anatomy were evident within the leaf tissue. The cotyledons showed high titratable acid levels but a small CAM induction. In the 25 days old cotyledons, there was a significant acid fluctuation under 7 days of water stress. The overall enzyme activity was reduced in the 10 days old plants, while in the 25 days old plants CAM activity increased under water-stressed conditions. In addition to CAM, the research showed the presence of glycine decarboxylase in the CAM tissue. Thus, it appears both pathways develop simultaneously in the cotyledons but the CAM pathway, due to anatomical constraints, may be slower to develop than the C4 pathway. Cotyledons showed the ancestral Atriplicoid leaf anatomy, which leads to the question: Could a CAM cell be the precursor to the C4 pathway? Further study of this may lead to understanding into the evolution of C4 photosynthesis in the Portulaca.