Introduction Objective assessment of intestinal viability during surgery will allow surgeons to make informed decisions on the safety of intestinal anastomosis and to predict anastomotic related complications.1We investigated the performance of a novel dual sensor incorporating two established methods – photoplethysmography (PPG) and laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) in a 'proof of principle' study. Method Using the new probe, infrared and red PPG amplitude and LDF flux of the bowel surface were recorded by LDF and PPG simultaneously in 30 patients undergoing large bowel resection with or without anastomosis. Each patient had measurements at eight different time points: before and after colonic mobilisation, over the tumour, before and after ligation of major vascular pedicle, immediately before and after anastomosis (+/- 5 min) at distal and proximal limbs. Both laparoscopic and open resectional cases were included. The differences between the mean amplitude and flux between different measurements were analysed. Results Twenty four laparoscopic and six open bowel resection cases had a total of 121 measurements recorded using the new probe. The mean IR AC amplitude in pre-ligation was 433 (± 189) mV and the mean IR AC in post ligation was 301 (± 152) mV. A statistically significant difference (P = 0.047) was observed between pre-ligation and post-ligation for the mean infrared PPG amplitude (student's t-test). A considerable difference in mean amplitude between pre and post ligation for the red PPG was also observed (the mean amplitude for the red PPG fell by –25.6%). The amplitude of the infrared PPG increased after anastomosis by 38.2% at the proximal site and by 37.8% at the distal site. The amplitude of the red PPG also increased after anastomosis (by 6.3%) at the proximal site although the equivalent increase was not seen at the distal site. The LDF measurements did not follow the same pattern of the changes seen in PPG amplitude. Conclusion The preliminary results show that simultaneous PPG/LDF measurements from a combined sensor is feasible and provide useful information on changes in pulse volume and blood flow. Although the differences in PPG amplitude achieved statistical significance, the LDF measurements produced confounding results, perhaps explained by motion artefacts. Further refinements in design of the probe are required to improve the probe-tissue optical interface and reduce motion artefact. Disclosure of interest None Declared. Reference Urbanavičius L, Pattyn P, Van de Putte D, Venskutonis D. How to assess intestinal viability during surgery: a review of techniques. World J Gastrointest Surg. 2011;3(5):59–69


Aimed at lecturers, teachers and teacher trainers, this volume engages with current debates concerning what constitutes a Scottish text, the place of Scottish texts in an English course, the theoretical issues in teaching such texts, and the use of varieties of Scots in courses and writing. The book provides extensive and varied exemplars and guidance on writing workshops.


Background: Mahyaveh is an Iranian salted-fermented fish sauce which due to its high amount of protein has risk of histamine production. This study was carried out to determine effect of Zataria multiflora Essential Oil (EO) on histamine production in mahyaveh. Methods: Dried anchovies (Stolephorus sp.), refined-salt and mustard seed (Brassica juncea) were purchased from the local market in Bandar Abbas, Iran. Three concentrations of EO including 0.1, 1, and 2% v/w were prepared by hydro-distillation of the air-dried powdered of Z. multiflora plant for 3 h, using British-type Clevenger apparatus. Histamine was determined by Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Mean values of histamine were compared using SPSS, Inc, Chicago, IL software (v. 16.0). Results: Most of the samples showed increasing in the level of histamine when storage time was increased. At day 30, histamine level in all treatment samples containing 0.1, 1, and 2% of Z. multiflora EO were significantly lower than control group (p 0.05) with control ones except 0.1% EO group. Analysis of four sensory items including color, odor, taste, and overall acceptance indicated that there was no significant difference between mean score of control and treatment groups. Overall acceptance scores in 0, 0.1, 1, and 2% EO were 6.33, 5, 6.33, and 5, respectively. Conclusion: Z. multiflora EO could effectively serve as potential antimicrobial agent to inhibit histamine production in mahyaveh.


The largest group of birch-bark items in the collections of Estonian museums (around 190 objects) consists of "satchels" woven from strips of birch bark, and closable with a flap. (In English, there is no exact equivalent for the Estonian term märss, which denotes a container for food, woven out of birch back, and carried on the back.) These satchels were used mainly in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century in northern Estonia.The purpose of this article is to provide a brief historical overview of such items as found in Estonian areas, and also to confirm, through comparative analysis with analogues from neighbouring areas, the uniqueness of the technological solutions used to weave them. As far as we know, there is today no birch-bark weaver, who carries on the traditions of his predecessors, so we had to reconstruct the skill, starting by weaving some satchels based on those in the ethnographic collections, which also allowed us to analyze this type of object from the perspective of the requisite skills.The article offers fascinating data about birch-bark satchels, birch bark crafts in general, and heritage culture. Such knowledge is essential for those who wish to weave Estonian-style birch-bark satchels; it is also useful for stewards of the museum collections who wish to supplement their own knowledge of such items and their associated descriptions. It also provides an opportunity to reappraise the historical value of such satchels in museum collections and their importance in Estonian material heritage culture.In the course of the research, the authors developed the first typology for birch-bark satchels found in Estonian areas. As they have basically the same structure, four types were identified on the basis of the manner in which the flap is attached. The first type uses a fastening method known to be used only in Estonia, where the flap cord is tied to the base, attached to a half-loop formed from the carrying strap. The fastening method for the second type is that the flap strap is tied to a wooden, spindle-shaped peg in analogous fashion to satchels from neighbouring countries. Of the items we examined, only four used a third type of fastening, where the flap strap was tied to a loop made of bast, cord or leather strap. The fourth category I reserved for categorizing all items that had no discernible sign of how to fasten the flap. Presumably the flaps on such satchels were not secured by tying or were tied to a cord fastened to the base, which none of the extant items have.The edges of all of the birch-bark satchels from Estonian areas have a discernible cord or "lakapael" (flap strap) woven into them – this is an interesting solution which is not typically found in any neighbouring countries, where an additional bark strip is used in weaving the edge of the flap. The unusual practice of weaving in the flap strap could have been transposed from techniques involving the plaiting of bast or birch bark in plain weaves for making sandals, where it was the customary practice – especially in north-eastern and southeastern Estonia – to weave cord into the edge.


It has long been argued that a minimum wage could alleviate efficiency losses from monopsony power. In a general equilibrium framework that quantitatively replicates results from recent empirical studies, we find higher minimum wages can improve welfare, but most welfare gains stem from redistribution rather than efficiency. Our model features oligopsonistic labor markets with heterogeneous workers and firms and yields analytical expressions that characterize the mechanisms by which minimum wages can improve efficiency, and how these deteriorate at higher minimum wages. We provide a method to separate welfare gains into two channels: efficiency and redistribution. Under both channels and Utilitarian social welfare weights the optimal minimum wage is $15, but alternative weights can rationalize anything from $0 to $31. Under only the efficiency channel, the optimal minimum wage is narrowly around $8, robust to social welfare weights, and generates small welfare gains that recover only 2 percent of the efficiency losses from monopsony power.


This thesis aims to make a contribution to the study of the Greek economy by means of (i) assessing a number of macroeconomic policies adopted by successive Greek governments; (ii) assessing the present effort of Greece to join the EMU; and (iii) evaluating the trade effects caused by EU participation. Chapter 1 provides a detailed account of the main macroeconomic policies adopted by Greece during the period 1960-97. It also describes the Greek institutional environment and reports the movements of the leading economic indicators. Emphasis is placed on the post-1980 period. Chapter 3 attempts an assessment of a number of fiscal, monetary and exchange rate polices adopted by successive Greek governments based on the theoretical background and econometric methodology presented in chapter 2. We conclude that the post-1974 deterioration of the Greek macroeconomic performance is, to a large extent, explained by the fundamental change of the international economic environment and a number of sub-optimal decisions taken by the Greek authorities. We argue that the continuation of the currently applied policy mix, involving a combination of rather lose fiscal and incomes policies and a tight monetary/exchange rate policy, is questionable. Chapter 4 examines the future prospects of Greek macroeconomic policy in the light of the pursuit of EMIU participation. We suggest that if Greece is to achieve EMTU participation in the foreseeable future, it should adopt an economic strategy involving a reduction in public consumption and a number of structural adjustments. We also argue that Greece should not rush to cñn any new ERM-II arrangement without making sure that its participation involves a sustainable exchange rate, i.e. an exchange rate possibly different to the present one. Chapter 5 uses the original data sets presented in the Trade Data Appendix to examine the trade effects caused by the accession of Greece to the EU. It concludes that during the post-integration period the external trade of Greece has been reoriented towards the EU countries and that Greece lost part of her comparative advantage in those sectors in which such an advantage exists. Chapter 6 summarizes and concludes the thesis.


Marginalia is the practice of writing notes in the margins of texts as a way to capture ones' thoughts and feelings about the text during reading. It is the giving in to the impulse, based on what was read, to stop and record a comment. In this manuscript, we make the connection between marginalia and the visceral responses to text felt by one doctoral student (the second author) taking a course examining language as a "place of struggle" (hooks, 2004, p. 153). We also demonstrate how marginalia can be used as a qualitative method to document and investigate the way textual interaction facilitates learning. A found poem developed from the marginalia compiled throughout the semester is shared exemplifying the way a critical analysis of personal marginalia can facilitate awareness of transformative processes and highlighting the margins as a transformative space.


The present research aims at presenting a conceptual model for effective distance learning in higher education. Findings of this research shows that an understanding of the technological capabilities and learning theories especially constructive theory and independent learning theory and communicative and interaction theory in Distance learning is an efficient factor in the planning of effective Distance learning in higher education. Considering the theoretical foundations of the present research, in the effective distance learning model, the learner is situated at the center of learning environment. For this purpose, the learner needs to be ready for successful learning and the teacher has to be ready to design the teaching- learning activities when they initially enter the environment. In the present model, group and individual active teaching-learning approach, timely feedback, using IT and eight types of interactions have been designed with respect to theoretical foundations and current university missions. From among the issues emphasized in this model, one can refer to the Initial, Formative and Summative evaluations. In an effective distance learning environment, evaluation should be part of the learning process and the feedback resulting from it should be used to improve learning. For validating the specified features, the opinions of Distance learning experts in Payame Noor, Shiraz, Science and Technology and Amirkabir Universities have been used which verified a high percentage of the statistical sample of the above mentioned features.


Amazon tropical forests and the semiarid Northeast Brazil (NEB) region have registered very severe droughts during the last two decades, with a frequency that may have exceeded natural climate variability. Severe droughts impact the physiological response of Amazon forests, decreasing the availability to absorb atmospheric CO2, as well as biodiversity and increasing risk of fires. Droughts on this region also affect population by isolating them due to anomalous low river levels. Impacts of droughts over NEB region are related to water and energy security and subsistence agriculture. Most drought episodes over Amazonia and NEB are associated with El Niño (EN) events, anomalous warming over the Tropical North Atlantic (TNA), and even an overlapping among them. However, not all the dry episodes showed a large‐scale pattern linked to a canonical EN event or warm TNA episodes. For instance, dry episodes linked to EN events present distinct spatial patterns of precipitation anomalies depending on EN type (Central‐Pacific vs. Eastern‐Pacific EN), and NEB region experienced a severe drought in 2012 that is not attributed to EN or warm TNA events. Even in the case of the strong EN in 2015/16, some regional impacts have not been explained by EN contribution. This paper discusses the effects of CP and EP EN events, and the role of warm TNA events on tropical Walker and Hadley circulation leading to drought over Amazonia and NEB regions.


There is an increasing demand for herbal medicines, health products, pharmaceuticals. Glycyrrhiza glabra Linn is a plant used in traditional medicine across the world for its ethnopharmacological value. It is found to contain important phytoconstituents such as glycyrrhizin, glycyrrhizinic acid, glabrin A and B and isoflavones. It is effectively used as anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-diabetic, antiviral, anti-ulcer, antitussive, anti-oxidant, skin whitening, anti-diuretic agent. The present article is an effort to compile the available literature on Glycyrrhiza glabra with respect to its traditional uses, bioactive constituents and pharmacologic activities. This may be useful in discovering potential therapeutic effects and developing new formulations.


BACKGROUND
Pluripotent stem cells have been derived from a variety of sources such as from the inner cell mass of preimplantation embryos, from primordial germ cells, from teratocarcinomas and from male germ cells. The recent development of induced pluripotent stem cells demonstrates that somatic cells can be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state in vitro.

METHODS
This review summarizes our current understanding of the origins of mouse and human pluripotent cells. We pay specific attention to transcriptional and epigenetic regulation in pluripotent cells and germ cells. Furthermore, we discuss developmental aspects in the germline that seem to be of importance for the transition of germ cells towards pluripotency. This review is based on literature from the Pubmed database, using Boolean search statements with relevant keywords on the subject.

RESULTS
There are distinct molecular mechanisms involved in the generation and maintenance of the various pluripotent cell types. Furthermore, there are important similarities and differences between the different categories of pluripotent cells in terms of phenotype and epigenetic modifications. Pluripotent cell lines from various origins differ in growth characteristics, developmental potential, transcriptional activity and epigenetic regulation. Upon derivation, pluripotent stem cells generally acquire new properties, but they often also retain a 'footprint' of their tissue of origin.

CONCLUSIONS
In order to further our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying self-renewal and pluripotency, a thorough comparison between different pluripotent stem cell types is required. This will progress the use of stem cells in basic biology, drug discovery and future clinical applications.


Since cryptographic algorithms can become weak over the years, it is
necessary to evaluate their security suitability. When signing or
verifying data, or when encrypting or decrypting data, these
evaluations must be considered. This document specifies a data
structure that enables an automated analysis of the security
suitability of a given cryptographic algorithm at a given point of
time which may be in the past, at the present time or in the future.


The catalytic activity of cerium dioxide can be modified by deposition of alkaline earth oxide layers or nanoparticles or by substitutional doping of metal cations at the Ce site in ceria. In order to understand the effect of Mg oxide deposition and doping, a combination of experiment and first principles simulations is a powerful tool. In this paper, we examine the interaction of Mg with the ceria (111) surface using both angle resolved X-ray (ARXPS) and resonant (RPES) photoelectron spectroscopy measurements and density functional theory (DFT) corrected for on-site Coulomb interactions (DFT + U). With DFT + U, we also examine the interaction of Mg with the ceria (110) surface. The experiments show that upon deposition of Mg, Ce ions are reduced to Ce(3+), while Mg is oxidised. When Mg is incorporated into ceria, no reduced Ce(3+) ions are found and oxygen vacancies are present. The DFT + U simulations show that each Mg that is introduced leads to formation of two reduced Ce(3+) ions. When Mg is incorporated at a Ce site in the (111) surface, one oxygen vacancy is formed for each Mg to compensate the different valencies, so that all Ce ions are oxidised. The behaviour of Mg upon interaction with the (110) surface is the same as with the (111) surface. The combined results provide a basis for deeper insights into the catalytic behaviour of ceria-based mixed oxide catalysts.


The 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake that occurred in a mountainous region of China induced massive landslides and caused numerous casualties and property losses. Analyzing the disturbances on vegetation detected from the abnormal sudden drops of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) within a short period can be used for the purpose of rapid landslide identification. Although much research has confirmed the necessity of high-resolution satellite images in landslides identification, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometry (MODIS) products still have their usefulness for high temporal resolution, as investigated by the authors. Using MODIS MOD09Q1 NDVI products at a temporal interval of 8 days during 2008, this letter presents a method that has been developed to identify landslide distribution and evolution patterns. First, to find the optimal threshold, the MODIS NDVI time series are analyzed in a training area by an iteration searching procedure. Second, the chosen threshold is used in a larger validation area. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed method, the results are compared to interpreted landslides using SPOT5 images with a spatial resolution of 2.5 m acquired before and after the main shock. An overall 75% accuracy is achieved, and better consistency is observed for landslides extending over one MODIS pixel. The proposed method has also been applied to the Wenchuan earthquake affected areas with seismic intensity IX and greater, and the similar spatial pattern of landslides distribution is obtained when compared with results by using high-resolution images and field investigation. This technique can be applied practically for rapid landslide assessment at a relatively large region after a major earthquake or other severe disturbance events.


John Daniell is a rubgy mercenary. A brutal word for an often brutal game. In 1996, when Rugby Union turned professional, John emigrated to France where he played for a decade in top competitions. His team ricocheted between fear and ecstasy, as they battled to save the club from relegation and their careers from the scrap heap. Now he lifts the lid on the dark world of the journeyman player, where losing a home game is considered a crime, coaches and club owners will do anything to win, and agents ruthlessly manipulate players. His compelling confessions are both shocking and funny, taking you behind the scenes, onto the field and into the very heart of the scrum.


Purines can prevent the formation of aminoimidazole precursors which are accumulated by bacterial mutants genetically blocked in purine biosynthesis. If the block does not interfere with interconversions among adenine, guanine, hypoxanthine and xanthine, then any of the purines can act as a feedback inhibitor. If conversion of the other purines to adenine is prevented, then adenine becomes a specific requirement for inhibition; this indicates that feedback control operates at a level involving adenine or one of its congeners.


Alkaloids have strong anti-tumor activity. Recent studies have found that when subjected to the tumor cell cycle arrest, inhibit cell proliferation. Through literature review and abroad, will affect the alkaloids on different tumor cell cycle summarized to reveal alkaloids by blocking tumor cell anti-tumor mechanism of action, provide a theoretical basis for the future development of anti-tumor drugs and research ideas.


In this paper, we present a methodology for efficient majority/minority network synthesis of arbitrary multiout- put Boolean functions. Many emerging nanoscale technologies, such as quantum cellular automata (QCA), single electron tunneling (SET), and tunneling phase logic (TPL), are capable of implementing majority or minority logic very efficiently. The main purpose of this paper is to lay the foundation for research on the development of synthesis methodologies and tools to generate optimized majority/minority networks for these emergent technologies. Functionally correct QCA-, SET-, and TPL-based majority/ minority gates have been successfully demonstrated. However, there exists no comprehensive methodology or design automation tool for general multilevel majority/minority network synthesis. We have built the first such tool, majority logic synthesizer, on top of an existing Boolean logic synthesis tool. Experiments with 40 Microelectronics Center of North Carolina benchmarks were performed. They indicate that up to 68.0% reduction in gate count is possible when utilizing majority/minority logic, with the average reduction being 21.9%, compared to traditional logic synthesis, in which two-input and/or gates in the circuit are converted to majority/minority gates.


While nation-states often possess substantial legal powers to punish transnational crimes such as money laundering, terrorism, drug trafficking, and international corruption, they frequently lack the capacity to focus such powers on the most serious offenders and threats. Power reflects a nation-state's authority to legitimately coerce individuals or organizations in an attempt to achieve some objective desired by policymakers. The hallmarks of power are expansively-worded criminal statutes that can be applied domestically or extraterritorially and extensive regulatory powers that can be imposed with minimal judicial intervention to detain people, effect forfeitures of bank accounts, freeze assets or impose civil penalties. Capacity, meanwhile, describes the nation-state's ability to detect the most serious offenders and to effectively focus its extraordinary legal powers specifically on them. This article uses the global attack on criminal finance to highlight some of the agency problems created by the separation between power and capacity in transnational law enforcement, where the public (acting as "principal") may have trouble evaluating the work of government officials (the "agent"). "Criminal finance" refers to financial activity associated with funding or profiting from crime. The global attack on criminal finance is the most ambitious legal response to transnational crime: the conduct targeted in this attack includes both willful and also merely negligent conduct, the tools used to wage the attack include criminal penalties as well as regulation, and the predicate offenses range from drug trafficking to public corruption to terrorism. While there are principled reasons to pursue a global attack on criminal finance, in practice the attack may demonstrate a pattern of separation between state power and state capacity. (1) The offenses most likely to be punished may often be the ones that can be most easily detected, which are rarely "serious" in any defensible sense. Interest groups may oppose regulatory policies designed to enhance detection capacity. (2) Given their incentives, policymakers in developing countries may adopt new laws and regulations without changing underlying patterns of non-enforcement against criminal financial activity. (3) Some kinds of criminal financial activity - whether impelled by intrinsic objectives or a craving for profits - will remain extraordinarily difficult to deter, because of offenders' motivations and their ability to substitute among different types of transactions. (4) Executive officials often have incentives not to make the investment in creating capacity. Instead they may prefer to use their powers to create an impression of greater security, even in the absence of the capacity to impose substantial costs on the most troubling offenders, or to detect them. As with other challenges in transnational law enforcement, the global attack on criminal finance evinces a trend toward growth in state legal power - a trend as clear as the extent of capacity is opaque. I explain how the gap could be narrowed in specific and rare circumstances, such as when swing voters are disproportionately sophisticated, or when exogenous shocks dramatically improve the efficiency of investigative methods and technologies. Without these developments, the seductive scenario where the nation-state actually augments its capacity by expanding its legal powers will remain on the horizon, tantalizingly close - but perhaps relentlessly out of reach.


Although lunar studies suggest that large asteroid impact rates in the inner solar system declined to their present low levels at 3.8–3.7 Ga, recent studies in greenstone belts indicate that asteroids 20 km to 70+ km in diameter were still striking the Earth as late as 3.2 Ga at rates significantly greater than the values estimated from lunar studies. We here present geologic evidence that two of these terrestrial impacts, at 3.29 Ga and 3.23 Ga, caused heating of Earth's atmosphere, ocean-surface boiling, and evaporation of tens of meters to perhaps 100 m of seawater. Rapid ocean evaporation resulted in abrupt sea-level drops, erosion of the exposed sea floor, and precipitation of distinctive layers of laminated silica representing marine siliceous sinter. Such events would have severely affected microbial communities, especially among shallow-water and photosynthetic organisms. These large impacts profoundly affected Archean crustal development, surface environment, and biological evolution until 3.2 Ga, or even later.


This paper discusses how global financial institutions are using big data analytics within their compliance operations. A lot of previous research has focused on the strategic implications of big data, but not much research has considered how such tools are entwined with regulatory breaches and investigations in financial services. Our work covers two in-depth qualitative case studies, each addressing a distinct type of analytics. The first case focuses on analytics which manage everyday compliance breaches and so are expected by managers. The second case focuses on analytics which facilitate investigation and litigation where serious unexpected breaches may have occurred. In doing so, the study focuses on the micro/data to understand how these tools are influencing operational risks and practices. The paper draws from two bodies of literature, the social studies of information systems and finance to guide our analysis and practitioner recommendations. The cases illustrate how technologies are implicated in multijurisdictional challenges and regulatory conflicts at each end of the operational risk spectrum. We find that compliance analytics are both shaping and reporting regulatory matters yet often firms may have difficulties in recruiting individuals with relevant but diverse skill sets. The cases also underscore the increasing need for financial organizations to adopt robust information governance policies and processes to ease future remediation efforts.


Garnets from meta-granitoid high pressure rocks (Sesia Zone, Western Alps) show complex internal sub-grain textures in electron forescatter images. All investigated garnets consist of a large number of sub-grains with different shapes and sizes. Some garnets exhibit a sub-texture with very fine-grained (< 20 μm) sub-grains in their cores overgrown by palisade-like sub-grains in the rims. Sub-grain boundaries in these garnets have enabled diffusive element exchange between the garnet core and the surrounding matrix. Compositional mapping reveals zonation patterns of Mg that indicate modification of the garnet composition during prograde metamorphism. The extent of diffusional re-equilibration is dependent on sub-grain size and element diffusivities. Our samples show that XMg is strongly influenced by diffusion along the sub-grain boundaries, whereas apparently slow diffusing elements, such as Ca, Ti and Y preserve their original concentric zonation pattern. This differential re-equilibration leads to very complex chemical zonation that cannot be easily interpreted in terms of simple prograde growth zonation or of normally-applied spherical diffusion models. The observation that almost all garnets in the investigated samples exhibit a sub-grain pattern suggests this might be a common feature in high pressure/low temperature rocks.


The purpose of this thesis is to examine the commercial tobacco production of Virginia and Barbados and explore the connections between them. The economic activities, especially tobacco production, that developed altered England's New World objectives and provided a model for future English colonies in the Americas. This study utilizes colonial records, contemporary accounts, and early histories as well as a wide range of secondary studies of Virginia, Barbados, the English Empire and the Atlantic World. Early English New World explorers hoped to acquire wealth and glory similar to sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadores. After discovering that Newfoundland, modern-day North Carolina, and Virginia did not offer vast gold-filled mines or passages to the East Indies, the English shifted their New World objective from discovering precious metals or elusive Northwest passages to commercial agriculture. The Jamestown colonists adopted commercial agriculture after failing to discover ready-made wealth in the Virginia interior. Jamestown's successful commercial tobacco production, however, encouraged colonists in future endeavors, including Barbados, to immediately adopt agricultural cultivation. While Barbados eventually proved more suitable for sugar cultivation, Barbadians initially adopted tobacco. Studying Barbados' early attempts at tobacco production provides the perfect opportunity to emphasize Jamestown's influence on England's successive colonies. While various historians have studied the island's history, they have focused overwhelmingly on the island's lucrative sugar years instead of the less glamorous tobacco era. Even though Barbadians established a colony based on tobacco exports, very few primary sources exist concerning the island's initial years, and tobacco profits never rivaled those of sugar. This thesis will discuss the historiography of both Jamestown and Barbados before illustrating the connections between the two colonies' commercial tobacco cultivation.


Historically, smelters have been a major source of metals and SO2 released to the environment in Canada. The study of emissions in the environment around smelters is therefore a priority in evaluating policies in relation to sustainable development. This Special Issue is devoted to papers on various projects supported under three Canadian programmes on metals in the environment. Scientific questions addressed by these programmes include understanding how emitted metals impact the surface environment in different settings, estimating the smelter outputs of metals, distinguishing smelter-derived releases from geogenic contributions, and understanding the fate of current emissions of metals and metalloids and their accumulation during the twentieth century. The approach of the scientific team involved characterizing the spatio-temporal distribution of smelter-emitted metals in the plume and in various surficial media around selected Canadian smelters. This overview paper summarizes some of the findings discussed in the Special Issue, specifically that: (1) smelter-emitted metal-bearing solids have characteristics that allow their quantification and permit the evaluation of their contribution to the metal load of natural media; (2) delineation of smelter 'footprints' can be approached by mathematical estimation or by measurement of multi-element or isotope ratios; and (3) investigation of archival geological systems provides time series that reflect the point-source inputs.


Glucocorticoids (GCs) are the mainstay of anti-inflammatory therapy. Modulation of posttranscriptional regulation (PTR) of gene expression by GCs is a relevant yet poorly characterized mechanism of their action. The RNA-binding protein tristetraprolin (TTP) plays a central role in PTR by binding to AU-rich elements in the 3′-untranslated region of proinflammatory transcripts and accelerating their decay. We found that GCs induce TTP expression in primary and immortalized human bronchial epithelial cells. To investigate the importance of PTR and the role of TTP in GC function, we compared the effect of GC treatment on genome-wide gene expression using mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) obtained from wild-type and TTP−/− mice. We confirmed that GCs induce TTP in MEFs and observed in TTP−/− MEFs a striking loss of up to 85% of GC-mediated gene expression. Gene regulation by TNF-α was similarly affected, as was the antagonistic effect of GC on TNF-α-induced response. Inflammatory genes, including cytokines and chemokines, were among the genes whose sensitivity to GCs was affected by lack of TTP. Silencing of TTP in WT MEFs by small interfering RNA confirmed loss of GC response in selected targets. Immunoprecipitation of ribonucleoprotein complexes revealed binding of TTP to several validated transcripts. Changes in the rate of transcript degradation studied by actinomycin D were documented for only a subset of transcripts bound to TTP. These results reveal a strong and previously unrecognized contribution of PTR to the anti-inflammatory action of GCs and point at TTP as a key factor mediating this process through a complex mechanism of action.


Abstract Social science offers rich descriptions of relationships between wildland–urban interface residents and wildfire, but syntheses across different contexts might gloss over important differences. We investigate the potential extent of such differences using data collected consistently in sixty-eight Colorado communities and hierarchical modeling. We find substantial variation across responses for all considered measures, much of which occurs at the community-level. Our results show that many aspects of relationships with wildfire meaningfully differ both within and across communities. Our analysis suggests that some wildfire social science results will be relatively consistent across communities, whereas others will not, and this study contributes evidence to broader efforts for understanding which is which. As such, it provides important guidance for transferring the lessons of wildfire social science studies across contexts, and for practitioners who seek to understand the breadth of viewpoints within the communities with which they work.


We experimentally investigate the performance of IEEE 802.15.4 radio links and their failure modes in an office building, and, based on this study, propose an adaptation mechanism to conciliate application-level reliability requirements with the underlying network-level properties. The mechanism has two aspects: the spatially-adaptive aspect, implemented through adaptively selecting one or more source nodes for each application-level data connection, and the frequency-adaptive aspect, implemented through IEEE 802.15.4 channel hopping and blacklisting. Through extensive trace-based simulations and experiments in a test network, we show that the mechanism satisfies application requirements on maximal information age as long as at least one of the potential source nodes is connected to the rest of the network, at the same time showing lower energy consumption than non-adaptively using multiple source nodes.


The theory of 'objective thought' can be characterized as an essential core of the Hegelian philosophy and, at the same time, as one of its most indigestible kernels. This theory, at the intersection of foundational and epistemological problems, on the one hand, provides Hegel's solution to the problem of the relation between being and thought. On the other hand, this theory is the result of a powerful conceptual torsion carried out by Hegel on the notion of thought. This torsion consists, in a first approximation, of a strong enlargement of the scope of such a notion, articulated principally in two steps. In the first step, we have an enlargement within the finite subject, inside the mental realm.
Thought (conceived of as Denken) becomes, from a mental faculty or activity separated from the other mental activities, an active element working in an unconscious and instinctual way in the whole of the mental.
This step, naturally, requires a redefinition of thought as a faculty or activity, i.e. a redefinition of conscious and reflective thought (conceived of as Nachdenken). In the second step, the scope of the notion of thought is enlarged in order to encompass reality in all of its different spheres, natural and spiritual. Here, thought is conceived as the logicrational structure of reality. With this further step, thought evades the mental sphere in which it would be enclosed on a merely psychological account.
In this paper, I will move from the assumption that the first step, providing a first sense in which objectivity can be attributed to thought, is a necessary, though insufficient, condition for the second step, and then for the further sense of this attribution. Thus, I will attempt to provide a conceptual map of the fundamental distinctions within the notion of thought, particularly regarding the first step of this conceptual torsion.


IL-17–producing CD4+ (Th17) cells are pathogenically linked to autoimmunity and, specifically, to autoimmune kidney disease. The newly recognized immunoregulatory functions of erythropoietin (EPO) and its predominant intrarenal source suggested that EPO physiologically regulates Th17 cell differentiation, thereby serving as a barrier to development of autoimmune kidney disease. Using in vitro studies of human and murine cells and in vivo models, we show that EPO ligation of its receptor (EPO-R) on CD4+ T cells directly inhibits Th17 cell generation and promotes transdifferentiation of Th17 cells into IL17–FOXP3+CD4+ T cells. Mechanistically, EPO/EPO-R ligation abrogates upregulation of SGK1 gene expression and blocks p38 activity to prevent SGK1 phosphorylation, thereby inhibiting RORC-mediated transcription of IL17 and IL23 receptor genes. In a murine model of Th17 cell–dependent aristolochic acid–induced interstitial kidney disease associated with reduced renal EPO production, we demonstrate that transgenic EPO overexpression or recombinant EPO (rEPO) administration limits Th17 cell formation and clinical/histological disease expression. EPO/EPO-R ligations on CD4+ T cells abrogate, while absence of T cell–expressed EPO-R augments, Th17 cell induction and clinical/histological expression of pristane-induced glomerulonephritis (associated with decreased intrarenal EPO). rEPO prevents spontaneous glomerulonephritis and Th17 cell generation in MRL-lpr mice. Together, our findings indicate that EPO physiologically and therapeutically modulates Th17 cells to limit expression of Th17 cell–associated autoimmune kidney disease. Research Article Immunology Nephrology


Neospora caninum is an apicomplexan parasite first mentioned in 1984 as a causative agent of neuromuscular disease in dogs. It is closely related to Toxoplasma gondii and Hammondia heydorni, and its subsequent description in 1988 has been, and still is, accompanied by discussions on the true phylogenetical status of the genus Neospora. N. caninum exhibits features that clearly distinguish this parasite from other members of the Apicomplexa, including distinct ultrastructural properties, genetic background, antigenic composition, host cell interactions, and the definition of the dog as a final host. Most importantly, N. caninum has a particular significance as a cause of abortion in cattle. In vitro culture has been indispensable for the isolation of this parasite and for investigations on the ultrastructural, cellular, and molecular characteristics of the different stages of N. caninum. Tissue culture systems include maintenance of N. caninum tachyzoites, which represent the rapidly proliferating stage in a large number of mammalian host cells, culture of parasites in organotypic brain slice cultures as a tool to investigate cerebral infection by N. caninum, and the use of techniques to induce the stage conversion from the tachyzoite stage to the slowly proliferating and tissue cyst-forming bradyzoite stage. This review will focus on the use of these tissue culture models as well as light- and electron-microscopical techniques for studies on N. caninum tachyzoites and bradyzoites, and on the physical interactions between parasites and host cells.


OBJECTIVE: There are no standardized techniques for trials of void [TOV] after prolapse or incontinence surgery. Our aim was to describe current methods being used by attendees of the American Urogynecologic Society [AUGS] meeting.
METHOD: Surveys were distributed to AUGS attendees [October 2012] and consisted of 18 questions regarding TOV methods and 8 questions regarding respondent characteristics. Statistical analysis was performed with SAS 9.2, with hypothesis testing at 0.05 level of significance.
RESULT: Response rate was 11% [227 of 2000 surveys returned]. Majority of participants were fellowship-trained physicians working in academic settings. Most perform TOV after prolapse and incontinence surgery. 80% instill 300 mL fluid into the bladder prior to catheter removal. Median time given to void was 30 minutes. To determine post void residual volume [PVR], 35% subtract voided from instilled volume, 19% use ultrasound, 10% perform straight catheterization, and 32% report other methods. Most commonly reported PVR volumes at which catheter is replaced were 100 and 150 mL. After failed TOV, most physicians send patients home with indwelling catheters and 50% repeat TOV in 1-3 days. Fifty-seven percent prescribe prophylactic antibiotics while patients have a catheter. Providers from the South and Northeast were more likely to perform TOV compared to providers from the West and Midwest [p<0.0001].
CONCLUSION: Most respondents perform TOV after prolapse or incontinence surgery and prefer a retrograde fill method using a volume of 300 mL, with PVR 100-150mL considered satisfactory. For failed TOV, most send patients home with indwelling catheter and repeat TOV in 1-3 days.


When its all said and done, penetration testing remains the most effective way to identify security vulnerabilities in computer networks. Conducting Network Penetration and Espionage in a Global Environment provides detailed guidance on how to perform effective penetration testing of computer networksusing free, open source, and commercially available tools, including Backtrack, Metasploit, Wireshark, Nmap, Netcat, and Nessus. It also considers exploits and other programs using Python, PERL, BASH, PHP, Ruby, and Windows PowerShell.The book taps into Bruce Middletons decades of experience with computer security, including penetration testing of military networks, the White House, utilities, manufacturing facilities, CIA headquarters, the Defense Information Systems Agency, and NASA. Mr. Middleton begins with a chapter on defensive measures/privacy issues and then moves on to describe a cyber-attack on one of his labs and how he responded to the attack. Next, the book explains how to research a target without directly "touching" that target. Once youve learned all you can, the text describes how to gather even more information using a more direct approach. From there, it covers mathematical analysis, considers target exploitation, and discusses Chinese and Syrian cyber-attacks. Providing authoritative guidance on cyberforensics, reverse engineering, and penetration testing, the book categorizes testing tools according to their use within the standard penetration testing framework. For each of the above-mentioned categories, you will find basic and advanced tools and procedures to help you identify security vulnerabilities in todays networks. After reading this book, you will understand how to perform an organized and efficient penetration test. You will also learn techniques used to bypass anti-virus software and capture keystrokes of remote systems. Explaining how to put together your own penetration testing lab, the text concludes by describing how to utilize various iPhone apps to perform reconnaissance activities on wireless networks.


Following the recent development of address research in pluricentric languages (Clyne et al. 2006), the present study describes address practices in English-speaking academic settings and pursues two main objectives: (a) to provide a profile of address patterns in academic interactions in Australian English; and (b) to compare address practices in higher education across the three dominant varieties of English, namely American English, Australian English, and British English. The data on Australian English are drawn from 235 questionnaires completed by students, who reported on the address strategies adopted by students and teaching staff in classroom interactions in an Australian university. Data on American and British academic settings were retrieved from the research literature on the topic. The findings show a high degree of informality and familiarity in student-teacher relations in Australia, where reciprocal first names are the default pattern of address at all levels. By contrast, in American academia the hierarchical organization of roles and the different professional positions are foregrounded and reinforced through an asymmetrical use of titles, honorifics and first names. Finally, the British university setting displays a non-reciprocal usage of first names and titles between lecturer and students, which gradually evolves into a more generalised reciprocal use of first names, usually after extended contact and collaboration. We argue that the distinctive patterns of address observed in the three varieties of English reflect diverse social and cultural values systems at work in different speech communities.


Trace concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitromethane (CH3NO2), and 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) are detected by both one- and two-color laser photofragmentation/fragment detection (PF/FD) spectrometry using one or two lasers. The PF/FD methods studied are (1) one-laser, one-color photofragmentation of the analyte molecule at 227 or 454 nm with subsequent detection of the characteristic nitric oxide (NO) photofragment by one- or two-photon laser-induced fluorescence using its A2Σ+ –X2π (0,0) transitions near 227 nm; (2) one-laser, two-color PF/FD, where a 355 nm laser beam is used for additional analyte photofragmentation and NO is detected by both one- and two-photon LIF as in the previous case; (3) two-laser, two-color PF/FD, where the pump and probe beams are time delayed; and (4) one-laser, one-color PF/FD at 355 nm, where the 355 nm beam photofragments the target molecule and the prompt emission from electronically excited NO (A2Σ+) is monitored in the range of 200–300 nm. PF/FD excitation and emission spectra are recorded and also simulated with the use of a computer program based on a Boltzmann distribution analysis with transition probabilities, rotational energies, and rovibrational temperatures as input parameters. The effects of laser wavelength, laser pump energy, time delay between pump and probe beams, and analyte concentration on PF/FD signal are investigated and reported. Limits of detection [signal-to-noise (S/N) = 3] for the nitrocompounds range from low ppbv to ppmv for 10 s integration time and laser energies of ∼ 5 mJ and 100 μJ for the pump and probe beams, respectively. These results are presented and compared to other PF/FD methods for nitrocompound monitoring.


The European market for asset-backed securities (ABS) has all but closed for business since the start of the economic and financial crisis. ABS (see Box 1) were in fact the first financial assets hit at the onset of the crisis in 2008. The subprime mortgage meltdown caused a deterioration in the quality of collateral in the ABS market in the United States, which in turn dried up overall liquidity because ABS AAA notes were popular collateral for inter-bank lending. The lack of demand for these products, together with the Great Recession in 2009, had a considerable negative impact on the European ABS market.The post-crisis regulatory environment has further undermined the market. The practice of slicing and dicing of loans into ABS packages was blamed for starting and spreading the crisis through the global financial system. Regulation in the post-crisis context has thus been relatively unfavourable to these types of instruments, with heightened capital requirements now necessary for the issuance of new ABS products.And yet policymakers have recently underlined the need to revitalise the ABS market as a tool to improve credit market conditions in the euro area and to enhance transmission of monetary policy. In particular, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England have jointly emphasised that -"a market for prudently designed ABS has the potential to improve the efficiency of resource allocation in the economy and to allow for better risk sharing... by transforming relatively illiquid assets into more liquid securities. These can then be sold to investors thereby allowing originators to obtain funding and, potentially, transfer part of the underlying risk, while investors in such securities can diversify their portfolios... . This can lead to lower costs of capital, higher economic growth and a broader distribution of risk" (ECB and Bank of England, 2014a).In addition, consideration has started to be given to the extent to which ABS products could become the target of explicit monetary policy operations, a line of action proposed by Claeys et al (2014). The ECB has officially announced the start of preparatory work related to possible outright purchases of selected ABS1.In this paper we discuss how a revamped market for corporate loans securitised via ABS products, and how use of ABS as a monetary policy instrument, can indeed play a role in revitalising Europe's credit market.However, before using this instrument a number of issues should be addressed -First, the European ABS market has significantly contracted since the crisis. Hence it needs to be revamped through appropriate regulation if securitisation is to play a role in improving the efficiency of resource allocation in the economy.Second, even assuming that this market can expand again, the European ABS market is heterogeneous - lending criteria are different in different countries and banking institutions and the rating methodologies to assess the quality of the borrowers have to take these differences into account. One further element of differentiation is default law, which is specific to national jurisdictions in the euro area. Therefore, the pool of loans will not only be different in terms of the macro risks related to each country of origination (which is a 'positive' idiosyncratic risk, because it enables a portfolio manager to differentiate), but also in terms of the normative side, in case of default. The latter introduces uncertainties and inefficiencies in the ABS market that could create arbitrage opportunities.It is also unclear to what extent a direct purchase of these securities by the ECB might have an impact on the credit market. This will depend on, for example, the type of securities targeted in terms of the underlying assets that would be considered as eligible for inclusion (such as loans to small and medium-sized companies, car loans, leases, residential and commercial mortgages). The timing of a possible move by the ECB is also an issue; immediate action would take place in the context of relatively limited market volumes, while if the ECB waits, it might have access to a larger market, provided steps are taken in the next few months to revamp the market.We start by discussing the first of these issues – the size of the EU ABS market. We estimate how much this market could be worth if some specific measures are implemented. We then discuss the different options available to the ECB should they decide to intervene in the EU ABS market. We include a preliminary list of regulatory steps that could be taken to homogenise asset-backed securities in the euro area. We conclude with our recommended course of action.The European ABS market - evolution and current sizeThe ABS market peaked in Europe before the crisis, with a total of $1.2 trillion in new ABS issuance in 2008. By 2013, total new issuance was only $239 billion (Figure 1). Demand for these assets plummeted after 2008 because of the deterioration in the rating of the collateral behind the various types of ABS, leading to a major market price correction of ABS products.


The current volume reproduces papers presented in the Workshop which was organized in Athens, in February 2010 by the European Public Law Organization (EPLO) and the Faculty of Public Administration - National School of Political Studies and Public Administration (NSPSPA), Bucharest. The workshop entitled "Public Administration in the Balkans - from Weberian bureaucracy to New Public Management" has aimed to reveal relevant aspects on the developments of national public administrations in some Balkan states related to the traditional or actual models of the administrative organization. The organizers have proposed to approach theoretical and practical aspects focusing on Weberian bureaucracy and New Public Management (NPM). In this context, the general framework of debates was based both on specificity of public administration in the Balkan states and the European integration process, particularly the enlargement of the European Administrative Space to the Balkan area. As shown by a profound analysis in the papers, the characteristics of the public administrations are moreover diverse and get closer to the developments of the public administrations in Europe, such as the Mediterranean ones (Greece, Cyprus etc.) or those of the states in transition (Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Serbia etc.). The interactions with different intensities between Weberianism and New Public Management emphasise, generally, the characteristics of "a new Weberian state" (NWS) for the Balkan states (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004, Meneguzzo et al, 2010), revealing a higher NPM impact (Cyprus, Greece, Croatia etc.) or a lower one (Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia etc.). NWS represents a metaphor describing a model that co-opts the passive elements of NPM, but on a Weberian foundation (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004, Brown, 1978). The fact that the Balkan states belong more or less explicit to NWS triggers their position in post-NPM era, thus the state remaining an important actor, able to facilitate the public-private dialogue and to sustain the processes for enhancing the effectiveness of public services and administration. The public administration reforms in the Balkan states have targeted one or several European models of national administrations. Even if the concepts on reform comprise visible differences, the tradition, geo-political specificity, human and material resources have determined similarities and common characteristics, which could be emphasized in the development and actual status of administration in the Balkan states. At the same time, the administrative reforms have already introduced elements that enable the administrations in the Balkan states to get closer to the features of "public governance". Herewith we refer mainly to participating in decision-making, introducing the elements of "neo-corporatism" governance etc. The capacity of adaptation and openness represent a valuable feature of the Balkan administrations, most of them holding systemic connections of low intensity, thus being far away from what we call "strong administration", found especially in the European developed states. Recent studies support the above ideas, referring to "main drivers of public administration modernization", placing most Balkan states in the "very low" or "medium" area (Demmke et al., 2006). When referring to open government or ethics, the same studies place the Balkan states under the heading "very high influence". Based on the above assertions, the papers emphasize concrete issues that could be synthesized in some large categories: - Balkan public administrations between tradition and modernity; - National experiences on the impact of the administrative reforms in Balkan states; - Myth or reality in considering "a Balkan model of public administration"; - Administrative convergence and dynamics as support of the evolution towards a certain model; - Assessing relevant case studies on enforcing NPM in local governance. It is also worth to mention that the approach of the participants in the workshop has been marked by the institutional innovations and trends in European governance, the debates concerning the model and characteristics of the European administration etc. The workshop was organized within the framework of Jean Monnet project "South-Eastern European developments on the administrative convergence and enlargement of the European Administrative Space in Balkan states" with the financial support of the European Community.


Abstract: Due to the unidirectional isolation characteristics of state grid secure access platform, it is an important research problem of the full tracking of transmission line. Furthermore, it is crucial for full tracking transmission line to be succeeded to transfer the data of video monitoring network to the internal network smoothly. In this paper, we analyze the structure of the secure access platform and the characteristics of the video data transmission process and propose a new method to solve the problem of the internal and external video data exchanging, which can ensure the video data crossing through the safety access platform. We deploy an intranet server and an extranet server, moreover, the extranet server sends the UDP heartbeat packets to the intranet server to maintain the network connection via SIP port. So the video inviting command could be transferred through the secure access platform. The experimental results show that the method can solve the problem of secure platform isolation effectively, and ensure the data of video arriving monitoring at the internal network successfully.


Thermal therapy is widely known and electromagnetic (EM) energy, ultrasonic waves, and other thermal-conduction-based devices have been used as heating sources. In particular, advances in EM technology have paved the way for promising trends in thermotherapeutical applications such as oncology, physiotherapy, urology, cardiology, ophthalmology, and in other areas of medicine as well. This series of articles is generally written for oncologists, cancer researchers, medical students, biomedical researchers, clinicians, and others who have an interest in this topic. This article reviews key processes and developments in thermal therapy with emphasis on two techniques, namely, hyperthermia [including long-term low-temperature hyperthermia (40-41 degrees C for 6-72 hr), moderate-temperature hyperthermia (42-45 degrees C for 15-60 min), and thermal ablation, or high-temperature hyperthermia (> 50 degrees C for > 4-6 min)]. The article will also provide an overview of a wide range of possible mechanisms and biological effects of heat. This information will be discussed in light of what is known about the degree of temperature rise that is expected from various sources of energy. The review concludes with an evaluation of human exposure risk to EM energy or the corresponding heat, trends in equipment development, and future research directions.


The aim of this study was to compare some somatic indexes, chemical-nutritive characteristics and the contents of some metals (Pb, Cu, Cr and Zn) in the whole body and fillet from caught and reared sharpsnout seabream (Diplodus puntazzo). The fish came from three different conditions: reared in marine cages (R), captured in a natural lagoon (L) and in the Mediterranean sea (S). Thirty fish per group, divided into three weight categories (100±15.3, 200±18.7 and 300±20.4g), were used for the trial. Reared sharpsnout seabream showed higher amounts of celomatic fat (3.41%, 2.43%, 0.21%, respectively for R, L and S) and total lipid (13.86%, 11.23% and 5.06% respectively for R, L and S), and lower moisture (64.14%, 65.54%, 71.53%) and protein (17.73, 19.03 and 19.17%) than those caught in the lagoon and sea. The whole body of reared fish contained lower amounts of lead (0.70, 0.75 and 0.97mg/kg, respectively for R, L and S), copper (0.15, 0.38, 0.25mg/kg) chrome (2.19, 3.52, 3.77mg/kg) and higher zinc contents (63.47, 53.42, 47.31mg/kg) than caught fish. Fatty acids from sharpsnout seabream fillets showed a high lipid quality as confirmed also by low values of Thrombogenic index (0.36, 0.30 and 0.22, respectively for L, S, R) and Atherogenic index (0.47, 0.42 and 0.33, respectively for L, S, R). Reared sharpsnout seabream showed lower saturated fatty acid values (26.44%, 32.21%, 34.85%, respectively for R, S, L) and higher oleic acid amount (21.61%, 19.15%, 11.99%, respectively for R, L and S). The subjects captured in the sea had a higher arachidonic acid content (5.44%, 1.76%, 0.59%, respectively for S, L, R). In the weight categories, the 100g subjects, showed higher incidence of viscera (VSI: 4.32%, 3.12% and 2.92%, respectively for 100, 200 and 300g) and liver (HIS: 2.20%, 1.97%, and 1.77%, respectively for 100, 200 and 300g), higher moisture (69.49%, 67.03%, 64.69%) and lower lipid rate (7.64%, 10.18%, 12.32%).


Clinically, Chaenomeles sinensis (Thouin) Koehne (C. sinensis) has been used to treat hyperuricemia and gout. However, the exact mechanism of action is still unknown. In the present study, the ethyl acetate fraction of C. sinensis fruit extract (CSF-E) was separated. Potassium oxonate (PO)-induced hyperuricemic mice and normal mice were administered with CSF-E at 60, 120 and 180 mg kg-1, respectively for 7 days. Serum uric acid, creatinine and BUN levels, liver oxidative damage, and serum and hepatic XOD activities were primarily measured using assay kits. The evaluation of its nephroprotective effects was carried out by renal histopathological analysis. Simultaneously, renal protein levels of organic anion transporters, such as mURAT1 and mOAT1, were detected using western blotting to elucidate the possible mechanisms. The results showed that CSF-E could significantly inhibit XOD activities in both serum and liver (p < 0.05), decreasing uric acid, creatinine and BUN levels in serum, and increasing levels in the excretion of uric acid by down-regulated of mURAT1 and up-regulated mOAT1 protein expression of kidney in hyperuricemic mice. Moreover, PO-induced alterations in the levels of MDA, hepatic SOD and GSH-Px activities and renal inflammation damage in hyperuricemic mice were effectively recovered by CSF-E at 120 mg kg-1. CSF-E possessed anti-hyperuricemic and nephroprotective effects by suppressing XOD activity, improving renal function and regulating renal mURAT1 and mOAT1 protein expression, which resulted in beneficial effects on hyperuricemia and gout prevention.


The coastal forests of Oregon are among the most biologically productive regions in the world. This high level of forest productivity enabled a large timber industry to grow in the region, and supply the area with its economic and cultural base. The economy experienced a crisis during the 1980s when the logging industry began closing down mills and laying people off. One factor which contributed to the loss of jobs was the loss of old growth trees due to decades of harvesting. As loggers tried to harvest the remaining old growth trees, environmentalist organized and successfully slowed down, or halted their efforts. While the attitudes of the past may have been one of either jobs or the environments, today there are many who are trying to find a balance and integrate the two through a sustainable forest management philosophy known as eco-forestry. Two challenges to this practice are how to sustainably suppress competitive under story "brush" species, and how to manage riparian zones. This capstone addresses both of these issues. The past and present uses of brush species including, the floral and nursery industry, as food for agricultural animals, medicinal and aboriginal uses are reviewed. A survey for economic brush species in riparian zones under different forestry management practices is discussed. The findings indicate that the eco-forested site had a higher number of economic brush species then sites under different management practices, including preserved sites. The logging site which had trees harvested in its riparian zone had a different assemblage of species then either other logging or preserved sites. There was no correlation between the ground coverage of one brush species to another, but a decrease in the ground coverage of Rubus species may lead to an increase in overall biodiversity. Stream bank instability was found to be greatest in sites of industrial logging. The eco-forested sites conversely had the most stable stream banks of any site. How to manage riparian zones for economic brush species and the need for a program which certifies small, independent, sustainable, no-climax based, forestry practices are discussed. Comments Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Environmental Studies 2007. This thesis or dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/mes_capstones/19 SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES OF UNDER STORY "BRUSH" SPECIES IN SOUTHERN COASTAL OREGON Bill Vought May 2007 Master of Environmental Studies Capstone Project Department of Earth and Environmental Studies University of Pennsylvania Advisor: Dr. Frederic N. Scatena firstname.lastname@example.com


Introduction: Injury is a challenge for
Sports Medicine professionals and results
from a complex interaction between
intrinsic, extrinsic and situational variables.
The identification of potential risk factors
that may predict injury would be beneficial.
Aim: This study attempted to identify the
range of hypermobility in female university
dancers and university rugby union
players.
Methods: Eighty-two female university
students volunteered to participate in this
study. They were composed of 40 dancers
and 42 rugby players. Participants were
excluded from the study if they had
suffered an injury in the previous 30 days
which prevented them from participating
in games or training. The Beighton score1
was used to measure Joint Hypermobility
in all participants by measuring range of
motion of the 5th metacarpal joints,
thumbs, elbow, knee and lumbar spine
which provided a maximum score of 9.
Hypermobility was classified as a Beighton
score of ≥ 4. Hypermobility scores were
analysed using a independent t-test.
Results: The mean Beighton score for
dancers was 5.37 (SD +/- 1.45) and for
rugby players was 2.19 (SD +/- 2.05).
There was a significant difference between
hypermobilty scores in dancers and rugby
players (P < 0.01).
Conclusion: The prevalence of Joint
Hypermobility in female university dance
students is very high in comprasion to
female university rugby union players of a
similar age. This may have implications in terms of injury prevention.


Why are today's adults more like adolescents, in their dress and personal tastes, than ever before? Why do so many adults seem to drift and avoid responsibilities such as work and family? As the traditional family breaks down and marriage and child rearing are delayed, what makes a person an adult?Many people in the industrial West are simply not "growing up" in the traditional sense. Instead, they pursue personal, individual fulfillment and emerge from a vague and prolonged youth into a vague and insecure adulthood. The transition to adulthood is becoming more hazardous, and the destination is becoming more difficult to reach, if it is reached at all.Arrested Adulthood examines the variety of young people's responses to this new situation. James E. Cote shows us adults who allow the profit-driven industries of mass culture to provide the structure that is missing, as their lives become more individualistic and atomized. He also shows adults who resist anomie and build their world around their sense of personal connectedness to others. Finally, Cote provides a vision of a truly progressive society in which all members can develop their potentials apart from the influence of the market. In so doing, he gives us a clearer vision of what it means to be an adult and makes sense of the longest, but least understood period of the life course."


There are many reasons to doubt whether administrative interpretation was an important part of lawmaking in the early American republic. The conventional wisdom of contemporary lawyers seems to be that until the Chevron case, statutory interpretation was primarily the role of courts. The modest attention to agency statutory interpretation prior to Chevron, combined with the avalanche of post-Chevron scholarly commentary, suggests that from the founding until 1984 the law followed the pattern of Chief Justice Marshall's pronouncement in Marbury v. Madison, that saying "what the law is" was the province of the federal courts. Post-Chevron, of course, scholars have discovered not only that administrators interpret statutes, but have even argued that administrative interpretation has displaced adjudication in courts as the primary means by which federal common law is developed.Historians and scholars of American political development have focused our attention in a similar direction. Professor Theodore J. Lowi famously declared that "[t]he first century was one of government dominated by Congress and virtually self-executing laws." Equally famously, Stephen Skowronek labeled the pre-1877 national government a state of "courts and parties." If statues were specific and self-executing, as Lowi claims, administrative interpretation could hardly be of much importance. Self-executing statutes contain their own behavioral requirements and presumably, enforcement is through prosecution in the courts. Similarly, a government that is composed primarily of courts and parties is necessarily a government in which administrators play minor roles. Therefore, the interpretations of these bit players in the legal system are hardly worthy of sustained attention.But nineteenth century congressional government followed by the twentieth century emergence of an administrative state is not the whole story. In short, well before the Civil War, national administration in the United States was substantial, and statutes were never self-interpreting. Moreover, statutory interpretation was largely an administrative function at the national level because administrative action was virtually free from appellate-style judicial review. This was not a system in which administrators had Chevron or some other form of deference. It was a system in which administrators had absolute and final authority to interpret the law.In this Article, we explore two aspects of administrative interpretation in the antebellum republic. We first look at the structures and processes of administrative interpretation. Modern lawyers know where to look for agency interpretations. The Federal Register bristles with agency interpretive material, and formal opinions in agency adjudications are compiled and reported in much the same fashion as judicial opinions. Every agency is required by the Federal Register Act to publish a description of its internal organization and the processes by which it conducts business. Outsiders seeking an interpretation are generally informed about how to petition for a ruling of some sort, what types of interpretive statements an agency issues, and where the final authority to make binding pronouncements lies. The structures and processes for agency interpretation were informal and eclectic in the nineteenth century, and certainly in the antebellum period. The internal processes of departments were opaque and no single source compiled or reported administrative decisions. There was no widely available process for unifying interpretation where administrative and judicial approaches diverged. Within departments there was a constant struggle between center and periphery for interpretive authority. The role of the Attorney General in unifying administrative interpretation across departmental jurisdictions was quite uncertain, and then, as now, the position of the President as "Interpreter-in-Chief" was contested.Part I will address these structural and procedural issues. In Part II, we turn to the question of interpretive methodology. Evidence here is sketchy and conclusions must be quite tentative. Agencies, like courts, tend to address questions of methodology directly only when there is interpretive disagreement requiring an agency to explain its reasoning process. This is common today in hotly-contested adjudicatory or rulemaking proceedings. By contrast, in antebellum America, most administrative adjudication was informal and there was no required rulemaking process. In this context, interpretive methodology must be discerned mostly from the administrative practices of line agencies. Officials provided interpretations in various documentary forms but only rarely attended to the meta-question of how statutes should be interpreted. In Part III, the interpretive practices of Attorneys General are considered. Opinions of the Attorneys General tended to be somewhat more self-conscious about method, particularly as these officers began to see their opinion-writing function as quasi-judicial. We will look at both sources of methodological evidence, but the results thus far are suggestive at best. The Article then concludes with some reflections on lessons learned and mysteries yet unsolved concerning agency interpretation in antebellum America.


Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated (ANCA-associated) small vessel necrotizing vasculitis is caused by immune-mediated inflammation of the vessel wall and is diagnosed in some cases by the presence of myeloperoxidase-specific antibodies (MPO-ANCA). This multicenter study sought to determine whether differences in ANCA epitope specificity explain why, in some cases, conventional serologic assays do not correlate with disease activity, why naturally occurring anti-MPO autoantibodies can exist in disease-free individuals, and why ANCA are undetected in patients with ANCA-negative disease. Autoantibodies from human and murine samples were epitope mapped using a highly sensitive epitope excision/mass spectrometry approach. Data indicated that MPO autoantibodies from healthy individuals had epitope specificities different from those present in ANCA disease. Importantly, this methodology led to the discovery of MPO-ANCA in ANCA-negative disease that reacted against a sole linear sequence. Autoantibodies against this epitope had pathogenic properties, as demonstrated by their capacity to activate neutrophils in vitro and to induce nephritis in mice. The confounder for serological detection of these autoantibodies was the presence of a fragment of ceruloplasmin in serum, which was eliminated in purified IgG, allowing detection. These findings implicate immunodominant epitopes in the pathology of ANCA-associated vasculitis and suggest that autoantibody diversity may be common to other autoimmune diseases.


Background Risk prediction models are widely used in clinical genetic counselling. Despite their frequent use, the genetic risk models BOADICEA, BRCAPRO, IBIS and extended Claus model (eCLAUS), used to estimate BRCA1/2 mutation carrier probabilities, have never been comparatively evaluated in a large sample from central Europe. Additionally, a novel version of BOADICEA that incorporates tumour pathology information has not yet been validated. Patients and methods Using data from 7352 German families we estimated BRCA1/2 carrier probabilities under each model and compared their discrimination and calibration. The incremental value of using pathology information in BOADICEA was assessed in a subsample of 4928 pedigrees with available data on breast tumour molecular markers oestrogen receptor, progesterone receptor and human epidermal growth factor 2. Results BRCAPRO (area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC)=0.80 (95% CI 0.78 to 0.81)) and BOADICEA (AUC=0.79 (0.78–0.80)), had significantly higher diagnostic accuracy than IBIS and eCLAUS (p<0.001). The AUC increased when pathology information was used in BOADICEA: AUC=0.81 (95% CI 0.80 to 0.83, p<0.001). At carrier thresholds of 10% and 15%, the net reclassification index was +3.9% and +5.4%, respectively, when pathology was included in the model. Overall, calibration was best for BOADICEA and worst for eCLAUS. With eCLAUS, twice as many mutation carriers were predicted than observed. Conclusions Our results support the use of BRCAPRO and BOADICEA for decision making regarding genetic testing for BRCA1/2 mutations. However, model calibration has to be improved for this population. eCLAUS should not be used for estimating mutation carrier probabilities in clinical settings. Whenever possible, breast tumour molecular marker information should be taken into account.


Timber theft often experienced in KPH Madiun. Timber theft is the act of cutting trees or harvest or collect forest products in the forest without having any rights or permission from the authorities. This practice aims to identify the frequency of forest disturbance and loss of timber theft in KPH Madiun during the years 2011-2015, examines the characteristics of forest communities, and examine the handling of illegal logging in forest disturbance KPH Madiun. Data were collected primary and secondary data. Primary data were obtained by interviewing 30 respondents each village and field observation. While the secondary data obtained by collecting archives and document the incidence of illegal logging. The data was processed using descriptive analysis. Timber theft incidents during the last 5 years causing financial losses of Rp 3,160,154 000. The number of cases of timber theft each year has decreased significantly. Timber theft is influenced by characteristics of the community, among others, the easy accessibility of forests, extension of participation, as well as additional merencek livelihood. Weak laws and enforcement actors by the officers resulted in the theft of wood still in KPH Madiun. Strategic actions undertaken by KPH Madiun to handle timber theft through pre-emptive action (coaching), prevention (prevention) and repression (repression).Keywords: community characteristics, timber theft, the handling


This article states basics of the "green economy" concept and the role of transferring from industrial to ecologically responsible development of renewable power sources. The main aim of this article is to determine principle regularities that stipulate and restrict abilities of the BRICS countries to use the renewable energy sector in order to replace high-carbon consumption in economic and social sector. Basic conclusions of this work are the following: (1) The aggregate of economic, social, ecological, and energetic problems faced by the modern civilization are directly interrelated. That is why in order to preserve the environment and natural resources for future generations, it is necessary to refuse from resources of unsustainable and high-carbon areas of development, (2) the concept of green economy lies in the fact that needs of the humankind must be rationalized, above all, in the power context, through ensuring a reasonable refusal from using economically destructive carbons by replacing them with renewable power sources, (3) a lot of European countries made the power breakthrough simultaneously developing traditional and renewable energetic. However, it is impossible to make the same conclusion in relation to the BRICS countries. In the BRICS coalition only one country – China - can be acknowledged as a leader in using the renewable energy sector. However, at the same time this country is an "anti-leader" in polluting the environment, (4) at the present time economy of the BRICS countries cannot be yet acknowledged as green. However, along with this, India, China, RSA, Russia, and Brazil have a considerable natural, climatic, and geographical potential for efficient use of benefits of the renewable energy sector. In the future it will allow them to transfer from the industrial and unsustainable vector of development to ecologically responsible development.


Recent work has unveiled how average generalization frequently relies on superficial patterns in data. The consequences are brittle models with poor performance in the presence of domain shift in group distribution at test time. When the subgroups in the training data are known, we can use tools from robust optimization to tackle the problem. However, group annotation and identification are timeconsuming tasks, especially on large datasets. A recent line of research [12] is trying to solve this problem with implicit group distribution at training time, leveraging self-supervision and oversampling to improve generalization on minority groups. Following such ideas, we propose a new class-conditional variant of MixUp [21] for worst-group generalization, augmenting the training distribution with a continuous distribution of groups. Our method, called Just Mix Once (JM1), is domain-agnostic, computationally efficient, and performs on par or better than the state-of-the-art on worst-group generalization.


The Federal Reserve is a hugely powerful institution whose policies ramify with enormous effect throughout the economy. In the wake of the Great Recession, monetary policy focused on quantitative easing. Now, there is talk of normalizing monetary policy and interest rates. That conversation is important, but it is also too narrow and keeps policy locked into a failed status quo. There is need for a larger conversation regarding the entire framework for monetary policy and how central banks can contribute to shared prosperity. It is doubtful the US can achieve shared prosperity without the policy cooperation of the Fed. That makes understanding the Federal Reserve, the policy issues and institutional challenges, of critical importance.


We investigate the electrodynamic structure of a pulsar outer-magnetospheric particle accelerator and the resultant gamma-ray emission. By considering the condition for the accelerator to be self-sustained, we derive how the trans-magnetic-field thickness of the accelerator evolves with the pulsar age. It is found that the thickness is small but increases steadily if the neutron-star envelope is contaminated by sufficient light elements. For such a light element envelope, the gamma-ray luminosity of the accelerator is kept approximately constant as a function of age in the initial ten thousand years, forming the lower bound of the observed distribution of the gamma-ray luminosity of rotation-powered pulsars. If the envelope consists of only heavy elements, on the other hand, the thickness is greater but increases less rapidly than what a light element envelope has. For such a heavy element envelope, the gamma-ray luminosity decreases relatively rapidly, forming the upper bound of the observed distribution. The gamma-ray luminosity of a general pulsar resides between these two extreme cases, reflecting the envelope composition and the magnetic inclination angle with respect to the rotation axis.


In the midst of rapid technological advance, a new era in literature writing has emerged. Wider network of Internet has given the opportunities to authors to become more prolific and creative in producing their work. In the virtual space, the number of authors grows and each one of them strives to grab the readers' attention. Websites and social networking sites become the medium for authors to harness their creative mind through their writings. For writers who has envisioned becoming authors or writers who fail to establish themselves in the mainstream media, the Internet is perceived as a medium that is very easy for them to write. Nevertheless, with the impact of technological advances that covers almost all aspects of the public's life, literary work is seen as not too distant from the conventional literature. The type of written material still resembles the printed ones. In fact, the use of multimedia is not fully utilized to produce literary work, which is different from the conventional literature materials. This study aims to analyze the novel as a genre in the Internet realm for the Internet generation (Net-Gen) through the utilization of multimedia in Malay literature. Through this study, the researcher will examine the novel genre, which is available on the Internet especially the novel in the form of multimedia, while investigating issues that might arise through observation, pilot survey and interviews conducted. Views and opinions obtained from this method will be used as data to form a model, which is a multimedia novel. This model will be tested on several respondents in order to collect data, which will be used as findings. Data, which are gathered, will be analyzed and a guideline about novel in the form of multimedia is created. Results from this research will benefit the field of literature in terms of literary knowledge in the form of multimedia that is distinguished from the conventional literature. With the advent of Internet, literary work must be more creative and not limited by the conventional literature alone but possesses its own distinct sets of disciplines.


Four homes are under construction in the Tennessee Valley to showcase homes that are at least 50% energy savers as compared to homes built to local code. Schaad Companies LLC, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Barber McMurry Architects (BMA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) intend to transform new and existing buildings into affordable, durable and efficient housing. All formed a private- and federal-sector consortium herein called the Zero Energy Building Research Alliance (ZEBRA). The consortium is about to evaluate the market viability for making two pairs of homes 50 percent more energy efficient than homes of similar size and style. Achieving the goal requires the most advanced building technology, products and techniques available. The homes are located on adjacent cul-de-sacs and are unoccupied for the duration of a two-year field study, thereby eliminating the confounding issue of occupancy habits.


This chapter will provide an overview of the epidemiology, clinical features and neurocircuitry of anxiety disorders with a focus on panic disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Anxiety disorders are among the most common and disabling psychiatric illnesses. Ongoing basic, clinical and translational research aimed at understanding the neurobiology underlying the disorders is shedding new light on mechanisms of disease and opening up potential new avenues for much needed therapeutic discovery. Neurocircuitry models of fear learning in animals will be described in order to provide a translational basis of human neuroimaging and therapeutic studies in anxiety disorders. Findings from human pharmacological challenge studies and other clinical studies in panic disorder and PTSD will also be reviewed. Finally, the chapter concludes with a discussion of potential novel therapeutic strategies for anxiety disorders based on the findings from preclinical and clinical studies presented.


Computational intelligence (CI), such as evolutionary computation or swarm intelligence methods, is a set of bio-inspired algorithms that have been widely used to solve problems in areas like planning, scheduling or constraint satisfaction problems. Constrained satisfaction problems (CSP) have taken an important attention from the research community due to their applicability to real problems. Any CSP problem is usually modelled as a constrained graph where the edges represent a set of restrictions that must be verified by the variables (represented as nodes in the graph) which will define the solution of the problem. This paper studies the performance of two particular CI algorithms, ant colony optimization (ACO) and genetic algorithms (GA), when dealing with graph-constrained models in video games problems. As an application domain, the "Lemmings" video game has been selected, where a set of lemmings must reach the exit point of each level. In order to do that, each level is represented as a graph where the edges store the allowed movements inside the world. The goal of the algorithms is to assign the best skills in each position on a particular level, to guide the lemmings to reach the exit. The paper describes how the ACO and GA algorithms have been modelled and applied to the selected video game. Finally, a complete experimental comparison between both algorithms, based on the number of solutions found and the levels solved, is analysed to study the behaviour of those algorithms in the proposed domain.


Neural stem cells (NSCs) have a bright application prospect to be used to treat neurodegenerative diseases due to their capacity to give rise to the appropriate cell types when they are grafted. At present, however, the function of NSCs after transplantation is not quite ensured, whether to replace the degenerative cells or to secrete nutrient factors. On the other hand, pheochromocytoma cell line 12 (PC12) cells have been widely used for investigating Parkinsonapos;s disease (PD) since their apoptosis is similar to that of dopaminergic neuron cells. Therefore, the possible cytoprotective effects of NSCs on the apoptosis of PC12 cells induced by serum deprivation were investigated in this paper. PC12 cells were cocultured with NSCs in DMEM/F12 medium free of serum, and their morphologies, viabilities, and survival were observed with an inverted microscope and assessed with a CCK‐8 assay. In addition, the concentrations of glial derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in different medium were detected with a GDNF Elisa kit, and the mechanism of NSCapos;s protective effect on PC12 cell apoptosis induced by serum deprivation was analyzed. The results showed that ( 1 ) PC12 cell apoptosis induced by serum deprivation increased with time, and only about 44.25% PC12 cells survived after 72 h; ( 2 ) NSCs culture medium protected against PC12 cell apoptosis insignificantly; ( 3 ) NSCs' supernatant and NSCs mildly prevented PC12 cells from apoptosis; ( 4 ) the amount of GDNF secreted by NSCs increased after the coculture with the apoptotic PC12 cells induced by serum deprivation. It can be concluded that there exists clear interaction between NSCs and apoptotic PC12 cells, and that GDNF secretion from NSCs is one of the important mechanisms to prevent the apoptosis of PC12 cells.


Steady-state and frequency-domain fluorescence spectroscopy are used to study the inclusion complexation of six anilinonaphthalene sulfonates (ANSs) with silica-immobilized beta-cyclodextrin (βCD). To fit the experimental data, we compared several modified Lorentzian lifetime distribution models. However, in all cases studied, a simple unimodal Lorentzian distribution best fit the fluorescence decay kinetics. The recovered distribution shapes did not change substantially as the surface was titrated with ANS; however, subtle trends suggest that silica-immobilized βCDs in more hydrophobic environments complex first. Furthermore, the recovered distribution widths (a measure of the environmental heterogeneity) for the silica-immobilized βCD-ANS complexes are always broader than those for ANS-βCD complexes in bulk solution.


Air pollution has become a serious public health problem for many cities around the world. To find the causes of air pollution, the propagation processes of air pollutants must be studied at a large spatial scale. However, the complex and dynamic wind fields lead to highly uncertain pollutant transportation. The state-of-the-art data mining approaches cannot fully support the extensive analysis of such uncertain spatiotemporal propagation processes across multiple districts without the integration of domain knowledge. The limitation of these automated approaches motivates us to design and develop AirVis, a novel visual analytics system that assists domain experts in efficiently capturing and interpreting the uncertain propagation patterns of air pollution based on graph visualizations. Designing such a system poses three challenges: a) the extraction of propagation patterns; b) the scalability of pattern presentations; and c) the analysis of propagation processes. To address these challenges, we develop a novel pattern mining framework to model pollutant transportation and extract frequent propagation patterns efficiently from large-scale atmospheric data. Furthermore, we organize the extracted patterns hierarchically based on the minimum description length (MDL) principle and empower expert users to explore and analyze these patterns effectively on the basis of pattern topologies. We demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach through two case studies conducted with a real-world dataset and positive feedback from domain experts.


Taxing the wealthy is a hot issue among Democratic candidates for president. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is proposing an annual wealth tax on the richest households, while other candidates are proposing higher taxes on incomes, estates, capital gains, and corporations.

Calls for tax increases are animated by claims about the fairness of income and wealth distributions in the economy. Warren wants to address "runaway wealth concentration," while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says that the wealthy are not "paying their fair share of taxes."

The proposed tax increases run counter to the international trend of declining tax rates on capital income and wealth. The number of European countries with a Warren-style wealth tax has fallen from 12 in 1990 to just 3 today.

The Europeans found that imposing punitive taxes on the wealthy was counterproductive. Wealth taxes encouraged avoidance, evasion, and capital flight. In most countries, wealth taxes raised little revenue and became riddled with exemptions.

This study discusses why targeting wealth for higher taxation is misguided. Wealth is simply accumulated savings that economies need for investment. The fortunes of the richest Americans mainly consist of active business assets that generate jobs and income. Increasing taxes on wealth would not help workers, but instead would undermine productivity and wage growth.

Basic economic theory suggests that taxes on capital should be low, and that conclusion is strengthened by the realities of today's global economy. Furthermore, wealth taxes are even more distortionary than current federal taxes on capital income.

Nonetheless, taxing capital in a fair and efficient manner is a challenge. This study argues that the best approach would be a consumption-based tax system. Such a system would tax capital income but in a simpler way that does not stifle investment and economic growth.


In light of the financial meltdown that followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008, there is considerable debate in the financial community on the appropriate accounting methodology used to value financial assets. In fact, many analysts on Wall Street argue that much of the blame for the current financial and economic crisis is due to fair value accounting and the implementation of FASB 157, which regulators put into effect for financial statements released after November 15, 2007. The argument is that with assets trading in illiquid markets, financial institutions reported outsized losses by writing down the value of their security and loan holdings even if they had the intent and ability to hold the assets to maturity. The critics of FASB 157 charge that these sharp write-downs contributed to the failure of banks and forced others firms into a difficult financial situation. This study examines the issues surrounding fair value accounting and looks at the role accounting played in the financial crisis. We conclude that fair value accounting played no significant role and is the preferred accounting framework for financial institutions.