In this book, Jasper Neel s sure-to-be-controversial resituating of Aristotle centers around three questions that have been constants in his twenty-two years of teaching experience: What does it mean to teach writing? What should one know "before "teaching writing? And, if there is such a thing as "research in the teaching of writing," what is it? Believing that all composition teachers are situated politically and socially, both as part of the institution in which they teach and as beings with lived histories, Neel examines his own life and the life of composition studies as a discipline in the context of Aristotle. Neel first situates the "Rhetoric "as a political document; he then situates the "Rhetoric "in the Aristotelian system and describes how professional discourse came to know itself through Aristotle s way of studying the world; finally, he examines the operation of the "Rhetoric "inside itself before arguing the need to turn to Aristotle s notion of sophistry as a way of negating his system. By pointing out the connections among Aristotelian rhetoric, the contemporary university, and the contemporary writing teacher, Neel shows that Aristotle s frightening social theories are as alive today as are Aristotelian notions of discourse. Neel explains that by their very nature teachers must speak with a professional voice. It is through showing how to "hear" one s professional voice that Neel explores the notion of professional discourse that originates with Aristotle. In maintaining that one must pay a high price in order to speak through Aristotle s theory or to assume the role of "professional," he argues that no neutral ground exists either for pedagogy or for the analysis of pedagogy. Neel concludes this discussion by proposing that Aristotelian sophistry is both an antidote to Aristotelian racism, sexism, and bigotry and a way of allowing Aristotelian categories of discourse to remain useful. Finally, as an Aristotelian, a teacher, and a writer, Neel responds both to Aristotle and to professionalism by rethinking the influence of the past and reviving the voice of Aristotelian sophistry."


The aim of this study was to determine the major categories of English language teacher educators' pedagogical knowledge base. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 5 teachers, teacher educators, and university professors (15 participants in total). The results of data analysis indicated that teacher educators' pedagogical knowledge encompasses eight macro categories; namely, knowledge of language and related disciplines, knowledge of ELT theories, skills, and techniques, knowledge of context and social relations, knowledge of class, time, and learning management, knowledge of research and professional development, knowledge of practicum, knowledge of teachers and their assessment, and knowledge of reflective and critical teaching. Among these categories, the first four ones are shared by language teachers, while the rest belong to the domain of teacher educators. The findings also revealed no significant statistical difference among the categories proposed by the three groups of the participants. The results are discussed and suggestions are provided for future research.


THE POLISH BOOK MARKET 2015. A FROZEN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONThe aim of the paper is to assess the impact of electronic books on the Polish book market, including publishers' off ering and organisation of work. The main method of obtaining information used by the author was in-depth interviews based on a structured scenario. The interviews were conducted with representatives of fifteen companies from various segments of the market offering electronic publications. The author attempted to established the moment of each publisher's entry into the e-publication market, type of the publisher, ways of distributing the files, the production process, attitude of the publisher to digital publications. An analysis of the information obtained has demonstrated considerable differences in the speed of adoption of new book formats by the various segments of the market. The strongest turn to digital content concerns educational and specialist literature. Publishers of fiction and books for children have reached a state which satisfies readers. They are reluctant to experiment further with digital content because of the high cost of its production and low profits, and in the case of children's literature — because of the belief of some adult customers that e-publications are not books. However, there is evidence to suggest that publishers deliberately do not support the development of the e-publication market and even hamper it, e.g. by failing to provide information about non-printed book formats on their websites. Yet it should be acknowledged that in recent years everyone has acquired at least basic knowledge of the opportunities created by e-publications and limitations of their production and distribution. Publishers' employees have acquired basic competences, contacts with technology companies and file distributors have been established. The publishers are now waiting for further developments.


At the global scale, conceptions of hunter-gatherer economies have changed considerably over time and these changes were strongly affected by larger trends in Western history, philosophy, science, and culture. Seen as either "savage" or "noble" at the dawn of the Enlightenment, hunter-gatherers have been regarded as everything from holdovers from a basal level of human development, to affluent, ecologically-informed foragers, and ultimately to this: an extremely diverse economic orientation entailing the fullest scope of human behavioral diversity. The only thing linking studies of hunter-gatherers over time is consequently simply the definition of the term: people whose economic mode of production centers on wild resources. When hunter-gatherers are considered outside the general realm of their shared subsistence economies, it is clear that their behavioral diversity rivals or exceeds that of other economic orientations. Hunter-gatherer behaviors range in a multivariate continuum from: a focus on mainly large fauna to broad, wild plant-based diets similar to those of agriculturalists; from extremely mobile to sedentary; from relying on simple, generalized technologies to very specialized ones; from egalitarian sharing economies to privatized competitive ones; and from nuclear family or band-level to centralized and hierarchical decision-making. It is clear, however, that hunting and gathering modes of production had to have preceded and thus given rise to agricultural ones. What research into the development of human economies shows is that transitions from one type of hunting and gathering to another, or alternatively to agricultural modes of production, can take many different evolutionary pathways. The important thing to recognize is that behaviors which were essential to the development of agriculture—landscape modification, intensive labor practices, the division of labor and the production, storage, and redistribution of surplus—were present in a range of hunter-gatherer societies beginning at least as early as the Late Pleistocene in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Whether these behaviors eventually led to the development of agriculture depended in part on the development of a less variable and CO2-rich climatic regime and atmosphere during the Holocene, but also a change in the social relations of production to allow for hoarding privatized resources. In the 20th and 21st centuries, ethnographic and archaeological research shows that modern and ancient peoples adopt or even revert to hunting and gathering after having engaged in agricultural or industrial pursuits when conditions allow and that macroeconomic perspectives often mask considerable intragroup diversity in economic decision making: the pursuits and goals of women versus men and young versus old within groups are often quite different or even at odds with one another, but often articulate to form cohesive and adaptive economic wholes. The future of hunter-gatherer research will be tested by the continued decline in traditional hunting and gathering but will also benefit from observation of people who revert to or supplement their income with wild resources. It will also draw heavily from archaeology, which holds considerable potential to document and explain the full range of human behavioral diversity, hunter-gatherer or otherwise, over the longest of timeframes and the broadest geographic scope.


This article explores the use of evidentials, or markers of source of information in witness depositions from England in the period 1680–1710. By comparing the results with those from a previous study on the Salem witch trials (Grund 2012), I point to significant similarities in the linguistic forms and deployment of markers signaling sensory evidence, inference, assumption, and quotatives (i.e. information based on what other people have said). I also demonstrate the importance of considering the socio-historical and situational context in the interpretation of the evidentials: the legal setting and concerns such as appearing reliable and credible or not providing potentially questionable evidence probably significantly influenced deponents' choices of evidential strategies.


Plans to build a lunar base are presently being studied with a number of considerations. One of the most important considerations is qualifying the presence of water on the Moon. The existence of water on the Moon implies that future lunar settlements may be able to use this resource to produce things such as drinking water and rocket fuel. Due to the very high cost of transporting these materials to the Moon, in situ production could save billions of dollars in operating costs of the lunar base. Scientists have suggested that the polar regions of the Moon may contain some amounts of water ice in the regolith. Six possible mission scenarios are suggested which would allow lunar polar soil samples to be collected for analysis. The options presented are: remote sensing satellite, two unmanned robotic lunar coring missions (one is a sample return and one is a data return only), two combined manned and robotic polar coring missions, and one fully manned core retrieval mission. One of the combined manned and robotic missions has been singled out for detailed analysis. This mission proposes sending at least three unmanned robotic landers to the lunar pole to take core samples as deep as 15 meters. Upon successful completion of the coring operations, a manned mission would be sent to retrieve the samples and perform extensive experiments of the polar region. Man's first step in returning to the Moon is recommended to investigate the issue of lunar polar water. The potential benefits of lunar water more than warrant sending either astronauts, robots or both to the Moon before any permanent facility is constructed.


Using the 2005-2014 waves of the American Community Survey –a period characterized by the rapid expansion of interior immigration enforcement initiatives across the United States, we evaluate the impact of a tougher policy environment on undocumented immigrants' fertility. We find that a one standard deviation increases in enforcement lowers childbearing among likely undocumented women by 5 percent. The effect emanates from police-based measures linked to increased deportations, which may raise uncertainty about the future of the family unit and its resources. Understanding these impacts is important given the critical contributions of immigrants and their offspring to diversity, the economy and the sustainability of the welfare state.


Bisphenol A (BPA) has been widely used in many industrial and consumer products and is known as an endocrine‐disrupting chemical. To find the underlying genetic basis and molecular mechanisms of BPA‐associated neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs), this chapter addressed the toxicogenomics of BPA with publicly accessed Comparative Toxicogenomics Database. The present results indicated that the key cellular components (CC) of the nervous system such as neuron, synapse, dendrite and axon are common in CC annotation; the commonly found molecular functions are neurotransmitter receptor or transducer binding or activity; and the main common biological processes include syn‐ aptic signalling, cognition, learning or memory, behaviour, the development of nervous system and brain. Neuroactive ligand‐receptor interaction, dopaminergic, glutamatergic and serotonergic synapses, monoamine transport and synaptic vesicle pathway were the common pathways. Simultaneously, the BPA‐disease may share the common pathways with drug addictions such as cocaine addiction. Unique pathways might also contribute to the BPA action in different NDs such as one carbon metabolism and detoxification of oxidative stress in Down syndrome. Although GO and pathway results indicate some common annotations, the predicted PPI molecular function clusters are quite different for each ND. In addition, some of the NDs share the same transcription factors (TFs) and miRNAs, which indicate these disorders have the similar expression profiles. Finally, chemicals having comparable interacting genes to BPA should be considered.


The number of organic shops in Bengaluru has increased remarkably in the last few years, with millets being the main products drawing consumers. Yet, organic shops are only attracting middle-class consumers. We observed and interviewed 104 customers in five organic shops in Bengaluru to find out why this is the case. In this article, we follow practice theory to discuss the reported consumption patterns. We show that consumers, influenced by commercials and the advice of medical and nutritional professionals, legitimize their consumption of organic foods as an investment in their future health. We show that the customers of organic shops legitimize their consumption practice with affective engagements; thereby, performing symbolic boundaries that distinguish them from other social classes. This distinction manifests itself in the consumption of millets, which contributes to the change of the meaning of this food from a life-sustaining staple to a lifestyle superfood. In this article, we take a critical look at the role of organic retailers and how they reproduce class-based consumption practices in India.


Bed bugs (Cimex lectularius
L.) are globally important human ectoparasites. Their management necessitates the use of multiple control
techniques. Plant-derived essential oils are extracts from aromatic plants that
represent one of the alternative control measures for bed bug control, in
addition to mechanical options and synthetic pesticides. However, there is
limited information available on the efficacy and toxicology of plant essential
oils against bed bugs. This project was designed with the aim to provide
in-depth information on efficacy, toxicology and mode-of-action of essential
oils and their insecticidal constituents in bed bugs. Initially, I evaluated topical
and fumigant toxicity of fifteen essential oil components against adult male
bed bugs of the Harlan strain (an insecticide susceptible strain). Neurological
effects of the six most toxicologically active compounds were also determined.
In both topical and fumigant bioassays, carvacrol and thymol were the most
active compounds. Spontaneous electrical activity measurements of the bed bug
nervous system demonstrated neuroinhibitory effects of carvacrol, thymol and
eugenol, whereas linalool and bifenthrin (a pyrethroid class insecticide) produced
excitatory effects. Further, I evaluated the efficacy and neurological impacts of
a mixture of three neuroinhibitory compounds; carvacrol, eugenol and thymol in
1:1:1 ratio against adult male bed bugs of the Harlan strain. This mixture of
monoterpenoids as well as the mixture of synthetic insecticides exhibited a
synergistic affect in topical bioassays. In electrophysiology experiments, the
monoterpenoid mixture led to higher neuroinhibitory effects, whereas a mixture
of synthetic insecticides caused higher neuroexcitatory effects in comparison
to single compounds.

In the next objective of my
dissertation, I compared the efficacy of five plant essential oils (thyme,
oregano, clove, geranium and coriander), their major components (thymol,
carvacrol, eugenol, geraniol and linalool) and EcoRaider®
(commercial product) between pyrethroid susceptible (Harlan) and field
collected (Knoxville) bed bug populations. Initially, I found that the
Knoxville strain was 72,893 and 291,626 fold resistant to topically applied
deltamethrin (a pyrethroid class insecticide) compared to the susceptible
Harlan strain at the LD25 and LD50 lethal dose levels,
respectively. Synergist bioassays and detoxification enzyme assays showed that
the Knoxville strain possesses significantly higher activity of cytochrome P450
and esterase enzymes. Further, Sanger sequencing revealed the presence of the
L925I mutation in the voltage gated sodium channel gene. The Knoxville strain,
however, did not show any resistance to plant essential oils, their major components
or EcoRaider® in topical bioassays (resistance ratios of ~ 1). In the
final objective, I evaluated the efficacy of binary mixtures of above-mentioned
essential oils or their major components or EcoRaider® with deltamethrin
in susceptible and resistant bed bugs. In topical application bioassays, binary
mixtures of essential oils or their major components or EcoRaider® and
deltamethrin at the LD25 dose caused a synergistic increase in
toxicity in resistant bed bugs. Further, I studied the inhibitory effects of
major essential oil components on detoxification enzyme activities (cytochrome P450s,
esterases and glutathione transferases). Detoxification enzyme assays conducted
using protein extracts from bed bugs pre-treated with essential oil constituents
showed that these compounds significantly inhibited cytochrome P450 activity in
the resistant strain, but esterase and glutathione transferase activity were
unaffected. No inhibition of detoxification enzyme activities was observed in
the Harlan strain bed bugs pre-treated with essential oil constituents.

In conclusion, my dissertation
research has created the foundation for utilization of natural products for bed
bug management by (i) describing the efficacy of plant essential oils and their
components against bed bugs, (ii) discovering synergistic interactions between essential
oil components at the nervous system level, (iii) determining susceptibility of
deltamethrin-resistant bed bugs to plant essential oils and their constituents and
(iv) identifying synergistic effects of essential oils or their components on
toxicity of pyrethroid insecticides and underlying mechanisms of this synergistic interaction.


Controlled synthesis of various nanostructures of polypyrrole (PPy) and their thermoelectric performances have been reported. First, the controlled synthesis and morphological characterization of PPy nanostructures are systematically studied by adjusting the experimental parameters. The effects of oxidant type, oxidant concentration, polymerization period as well as reaction medium are examined. Then, the thermoelectric performances of the as-obtained PPy nanostructures are measured in detail. Finally, the level of doping is calculated by X-ray photoelectron spectra. The relation between PPy nanostructures and their thermoelectric performances has been discussed. The present study will benefit the development of novel organic thermoelectric materials by a morphological design strategy, will deepen our understanding towards structure–thermoelectric function relationship, and will be helpful for the future application of organic polymer thermoelectric materials.


The paper proposes a presentation of a pedagogical methodology for the understanding of place and site in contemporary network conditions. A number of seminar sessions were held on London, to introduce the city to fifth year Architectural students enrolled in a course entitled "Territories of the Contemporary City", that took place at the Paris - Malaquais School of Architecture in 2001. As an instrument, the material was prepared on CD-ROM, allowing consultation away from the classroom. It consists of three distinct parts that introduce the current condition of the city, the tools of reference (cartography, imagery, legislation), discusses key initiatives and proposals, while opening the potential links between the different elements of the study. Chronologically, the first part is ludic in character allowing sequential and aleatory navigation, the second is a collaborative case study around a report produced by a partner University (UNL), while the final part presents the documents which constitute the substrate for urban regeneration activity in the United Kingdom. They are exemplified by projects on the Waterfront of Liverpool, in Manchester and the Thames Gateway London, described as " Europe's largest and most ambitious regeneration initiative. Extending from Tower Bridge eastwards to Thurrock and Bexley, the area has a powerful strategic location offering outstanding development opportunities for new jobs and homes, as well as environmental improvements" (Thames Gateway London Partnership presentation). The English texts are summarised in French and appear in distinct windows or screens, allowing annotation from discussion and persisting between the parts as an aide-memoir. The work has as an objective to identify the relevant systems and phenomena involved in urban practices, whether of a professional nature, or belonging to the urban experience. At the same time, at stake is understanding how respectively complex systems exemplified by the potential of networks, may be at once consistent and coherent, as well as defining their relationships (transformations, pluralism, proximity, simultaneity, autonomy, dependencies, associations...)


OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to analyse an association between nailfold capillary abnormalities and the presence and severity of erectile dysfunction (ED) in men with SSc.

METHODS
A cross-sectional analysis of the prospective European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) Scleroderma Trial and Research database was performed. Men with SSc were included if they had undergone nailfold capillaroscopy and simultaneous ED assessment with the 5-item International Index for Erectile Function (IIEF-5).

RESULTS
Eighty-six men met the inclusion criteria. Eight men (9.3%) had not had sexual intercourse and could not be assigned an IIEF-5 score. Sixty-nine of the 78 men (88.5%) with an IIEF-5 score had nailfold capillary abnormalities, of whom 54 (78.3%) suffered from ED. Nine men (11.5%) had no nailfold capillary abnormalities, of whom six (66.7%) had ED (P = 0.44). ED was more frequent in older men (P = 0.002) and in men with diffuse disease (P = 0.06). Men with abnormal capillaroscopy had a higher median EULAR disease activity than men without (P = 0.02), a lower diffusing capacity of the lung (P = 0.001) and a higher modified Rodnan skin score (P = 0.04), but mean IIEF-5 scores did not differ [15.7 (S.D. 6.2) vs 15.7 (S.D. 6.3)]. IIEF-5 scores did not differ between men with early (n = 12), active (n = 27) or late (n = 27) patterns (IIEF-5 scores of 17.9, 16.3 and 14.7, respectively). There were no differences in the prevalence of early, active and late capillaroscopy patterns between men with or without ED.

CONCLUSION
Neither the presence or absence of abnormal capillaroscopy findings nor the subdivision into early, active and late patterns is associated with coexistent ED in SSc.


This paper is based on the idea that wave mechanics is primarily suitable for giving an indirect description of nature. The world to which the equations of the, theory here proposed are directly applicable is an unnatural one, containing sources and sinks of matter which give to its radiational laws a symmetry lacking in nature. The theory may be regarded as consisting of two postulates. The first (which may, if desired, be regarded as a definition) specifies the character and properties of an unnatural assembly of systems, each consisting of an electron in a static potential field U. It states that, of the energy radiated in an elementary solid angle of standard magnitude, the part which will pass through an analyzer which transmits the component of electric field in a given direction (perpendicular to the line of observation) is determined by applying the usual Schrödinger interpretations (of density, current and material energy) to a Schrödinger equation perturbed by a term which is a certain constant multiplied by the electric field, in that direction, acting on the electron, due to the potential field U. (For comparison with classical radiation theory, it will be noted that the perturbation term vanishes in any region in which, from the classical standpoint, the electron is not accelerated, in that direction, by the field U). In the process of specifying the radiation from the assembly, the Schrödinger interpretations will have specified also the nature and magnitude of the sources and sinks of electrons (each in a field U). Their presence is due, mathematically speaking, to the multiplying constant mentioned above being a complex quantity. From these results the properties of a natural assembly are specified by means of the second postulate, which states that when the sources and sinks are removed, any process which in their absence is meaningless or physically inconceivable will cease, and all other processes will remain unaffected. The calculation is readily extended to include the effect of an external field of radiation. The theory requires no representation of radiation other than the Maxwellian wave, and will be free from the difficulties encountered in other theories.


This study explores the capabilities of methods for in-situ synthesis of titanium aluminides using the Direct Metal Deposition process. This allows for the functional grading of components which will be required for next generation aerospace components. The feasibility of three techniques are explored here; firstly, a new process of powder preparation for Additive Manufacturing, satelliting, in which a larger parent powder is coated with a smaller powder fraction. Here, Al parent particles are satellited with fine TiO2 to produce an intermetallic matrix composite with Al2O3 particulates. The satelliting procedure is shown to increase capability and mixing of in situ synthesis. Secondly, combined wire and single powder feeding is explored through the use of Ti wire and Al powder to create Ti-50Al (at%). Finally, a combination of wire and loose mixed powders is explored to produce the commercially deployed Ti-48Al-2Cr-2Nb (at%) alloy. The simultaneous wire and powder delivery is designed to overcome issues encountered when processing with single powder or wire feedstocks, whilst allowing for on-the-fly changes in elemental composition required for functional grading. Characterisation of the deposits produced, through OM, SEM, and EDX, reveal the influence of key processing parameters and provides a meaningful basis for comparison between the techniques. Results show that it is possible to produce 2 + two-phase microstructures consistent with previous studies which have relied upon more expensive and harder to obtain pre-alloyed feedstocks. This represents a move forward in manufacturability for an emergent


Lightweight drones have emerged recently as a remote sensing survey tool of choice for ecologists, conservation practitioners and environmental scientists. In published work, there are plentiful details on the parameters and settings used for successful data capture, but in contrast there is a dearth of information describing the operational complexity of drone deployment. Information about the practices of flying in the field, whilst currently lacking, would be useful for others embarking on new drone-based investigations. As a group of drone-piloting scientists, we have operated lightweight drones for research in over 25 projects, in over 10 countries, and in polar, desert, coastal and tropical ecosystems, with many hundreds of hours of flying experience between us. The pur-pose of this paper was to document the lesser-reported methodological pitfalls of drone deployments so that other scientists can understand the spectrum of considerations that need to be accounted for prior to, and during drone survey flights. Herein, we describe the most common challenges encountered, along-side mitigation and remediation actions that increase the chances of safe and successful data capture. Challenges are grouped into the following categories: (i) pre-flight planning, (ii) flight operations, (iii) weather, (iv) redundancy, (v) data quality, (vi) batteries. We also discuss the importance of scientists undertaking ethical assessment of their drone practices, to identify and mitigate potential conflicts associated with drone use in particular areas. By sharing our experience, our intention is that the paper will assist those embarking on new drone deployments, increasing the efficacy of acquiring high-quality data from this new proximal aerial viewpoint.


The characterisation of the activation domains started three decades ago with Gcn4 and Gal4 activators. The amorphous character of the activation domains strongly hindered their definition. Moreover, during the attempts to localise the Gal4 activation domain, the artificial peptides, an unintended consequence of cloning, were responsible for artificial transcriptional activity of the several Gal4 constructs. These artefacts produced enormous experimental bias and misconception. The presence of inhibitory domains in some Gal4 constructs made the misperception even worse. Previously, we reported that the nine amino acid transactivation domain, 9aaTAD, is the exclusive activation domain in the Gal4 protein. The activation domain 9aaTAD could be identified in Gal4 paralogs Oaf1, Pip2, Pdr1, Pdr3 and other activators p53, E2A and MLL. Surprisingly, the activation domain 9aaTAD was reported as misconception for Gal4 activator. Here we demonstrated that small region of 10 amino acids adjacent to the Gal4 activation domain 9aaTAD is an inhibitory domain, which the authors included in their constructs. Moreover, we identified Gal4 region, which was able to the reverse the inhibitory effect. The 9aaTAD re-activation domain was localized to the 13 amino acid long region. In this report we clarified the numerous confusions and rebutted supposed 9aaTAD misconception. Summary The activation domain 9aaTAD has decisive function in Gal4 activation. Gal4 activation domain 9aaTAD could be inhibited by adjacent region of 10 amino acids. The inhibited Gal4 activation domain 9aaTAD could be reactivated by 13 amino acid long Gal4 region. The activation domains 9aaTAD could be identified by our 9aaTAD prediction algorithm, especially in the Gal4 family.


Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs) play an important economic role in many countries. In Kenya, for example the SME sector contributed over 50percent of new jobs created in 2005 but despite their significance, SMEs are faced with the threat of failure with past statistics indicating that three out five fail within the first few months. This study sought to understand how SMEs manage the challenges they face. These challenges seem to change (evolve) according to different macro and micro conditions. This study employed stratified random sampling to collect data from 198 businesses using interviews and questionnaires. The data was analysed descriptively and presented through figures, tables and percentages. The findings indicate that SMEs face the following challenges; competition among themselves and from large firms, lack of access to credit, cheap imports, insecurity and debt collection. Credit constraint seems to be easing up when compared to previous researches. Relevant training or education is positively related to business success. The SMEs have the following strategies to overcome the challenges; fair pricing, discounts and special offers, offering a variety of services and products, superior customer service and continuously improving quality of service delivery. The research concludes that business success is a consequence of embracing a mix of strategies.


In the present research, a series of magnetic chitosan based composites with the general formula of NixMn1−xFe2O4/CS were synthesized from spinel-type transition metal ferrites [NixMn1−xFe2O4 (where x= 0, 0.2, 0.5 and 1.0)] and chitosan (CS) as a polymer. The structure and composition of the synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX). The adsorption activity of the synthesized magnetic chitosan based composites was evaluated for the removal of Congo red (CR) dye from aqueous solution. Furthermore, the influence of the Mn content on adsorption capacity of the synthesized magnetic chitosan based composites were studied. The results of adsorption kinetic of CR dye using spinel-type transition metals NixMn1−xFe2O4 and NixMn1−xFe2O4/CS followed pseudo- second order model. The results indicated that 74% of CR dye solution were removed via adsorption using Ni0.5Mn0.5Fe2O4/CS after 180 min. The adsorption performance show that the chitosan based composites can be more efficient than spinel-type transition metals for removal of CR dye. Moreover, the magnetic chitosan based composites can be quickly separated from the aqueous solution by an external magnet after adsorption process.


Background and Objectives Animal models are essential for development of new therapeutics to test their effectiveness and to control for side effects. Targeted therapies with biologics reveal differences in responsiveness and suggest substantial differences in the molecular pathomechanisms of human as well as murine arthritis. In order to characterise such differences, we started a pilot investigation based on published transcriptomes to develop bioinformatic strategies of interspecies gene expression comparison. Materials and Methods A GEO repository search for compatible data sets on arthritis in human and mouse revealed the Affymetrix based transcriptomes of synovial fibroblasts from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and osteoarthritis (OA) patients (GEO-accession: GSE13837) and mouse BALBc wt (GSE17160) with similar stimulation (TNF-alpha) and time point after stimulation (12 hours). MAS5 algorithms of signal extraction and pairwise comparison were performed. The BioRetis database was used for group comparisons, candidate gene selection and data sharing. Differentially expressed genes were exported for interspecies comparison in a filemaker database. Affymetrix annotation files were used for mapping of orthologous genes. Results The number of differentially expressed genes induced by TNF in synovial fibroblast from RA, OA and BALBc were 1584, 1476 and 503 respectively. Comparison of genes overexpressed in RA and OA revealed up to 70% (1034 genes) overlap. Murine and human response was similar for 197 genes in all three groups, 45 only between BALBc and RA and 24 only between BALBc and OA. Ranking the genes by dominance in change call and/or fold change, 7 genes were overlapping between the top 10 of both human cells, OA and RA, and 13 out of the top 20. All overlapping genes in human revealed a high correlation (R = 0.795). In contrast, overlap between RA and BALBc SFbl responses revealed only 4 genes out of the top 10 and 5 out of the top 20 in each and a weaker correlation (0.392). Pathway tools including IPA may identify TNF as one potential upstream regulator. However, the reference list of expected gene candidates for scoring in IPA seemed to be about 2.5 fold longer in human and to include less than 60% of the murine reference candidates. Conclusions Interspecies comparison in this defined experiment revealed first insight in common responses but also demonstrates that differences can be observed even in most dominant candidate genes. Therefore, systematic investigations are needed to provide a reliable basis for comparative mapping of the molecular pathomechanisms in mouse models and human disease. Acknowledgement BTCure IMI grant agreement no. 115142


Bioprospecting, or the search for useful biochemical compounds and genes in nature, has been the focus of international negotiations for more than a decade, yet the debate on the terms for access to genetic resources, traditional Knowledge and benefit to sharing is far from settled. This book examines the optimal property rights structures and institutional mechanisms for regulating bioprospecting for drug research. Focusing on the economics of contracts, it shows that the rights exchanged are complementary at each stage of drug discovery and the development of genetic resources.


This paper presents a series of experiments in which two mobile robots develop a shared lexicon of which the meaning is grounded in the real world. The experiments investigate the impact of non-verbal communication on lexicon formation. Non-verbal communication is used to establish joint attention or to evaluate feedback. The experiments implement adaptive language games in which two agents try to communicate some real world object. When the agents fail, they can adapt their memory in order to improve performance on future occasions. As the experimental results show, the quality of the evolved lexicon is better when feedback is used rather than joint attention.


Provides the basic education in the XSLT processing model that developers have requested The growth of XML content management applications is boosting the demand for XSLT and XPath skills. This beginning Wrox book provides a firm foundation in the XSLT processing model, giving developers an important skillset. If, like many developers, you've had trouble grasping the XSLT processing model, you'll appreciate how this book focuses specifically on what you need to know. XSLT examples address the often-requested processing steps for typical XML document and data vocabularies. You will see exactly how XSLT relies on XPath, and how the processing model differs from most programming languages. A case study demonstrates how to build a static Web site using XSLT 2.0 elements and XPath 2.0 functions. Explains XSLT and XPath, covering both version 1.0 and 2.0 Covers using templates, control and branching, variable and parameters, sorting and grouping, and using modular stylesheets Also examines strings, dates, and numbers; working with multiple documents and text; generating identifiers; and testing and documentation All topics contain incremental code examples Addresses the much-requested processing steps for typical XML document and data vocabularies, including how the processing model differs from most programming languages Beginning XSLT and XPath: Transforming XML Documents and Data is the essential guide you need to thoroughly understand the important XSLT processing model. Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.


A heuristic method for parsing Swedish text, heuristic schema parsing, is described and implemented. Focusing on main clause (primary) analysis, a collection of licensing techniques for removing non-primary verb candidates is employed, leaving e.g. the primary verbs, particles and conjunctions (bounded key constituents) that delimit the content of the fields in Diderichsen's sentence schema. Hereby, the subsequent identification of constituents which do not have an upper bound on their length (subject, object/predicatives and adverbials) can be identified relying to a lesser on extent explicit pattern matching, and more on different heuristic rules. For phrase type identification and delimitation of these constituents, when adjacent to each other, a novel chunking technique, rank-based chunking, is applied. Following this, a series of further rules merge chunks into larger ones, aiming at a final number of nominal chunks compatible with the valency information of the main verb. The aim is to identify full nominal and adverbial constituents, including post-modifiers. The implementation uses the Stockholm Umeå Corpus 2.0, a corpus which is balanced for different genres in published Swedish text. SUC's tagset is also used unmodified in part-ofspeech tagging which enables the program to deal with input text. The functional parsing, which includes no explicit language-defining grammar component is carried out technically using an object-based representation of clause structure. Although output formats and types of evaluations of correctness are very different in parsers for Swedish text, it is claimed that the manual approach presented can provide high accuracy, which can be improved given more time for development. The thesis work also includes two prototype applications, both requiring high accuracy of the sort of functional syntactic analysis described here. The first one is an implementation of automatic syntactic fronting in the area of text editing for Swedish, where the user is presented with a syntactically analyzed copy of her writing, from which paraphrases easily can be generated. The second application is in the field of natural language query systems and produces questions with answers from an arbitrary declarative input text. This prototype incorporates a text database from Swedish Wikipedia, and investigates primarily generation of WH-questions formed via fronting of unbounded primary constituents. The questions are generated as a text is opened and thus permits users to only ask the available ones, thus aiming at a high precision value.


The largest body of water at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is Quitobaquito springs and pond, home to the Quitobaquito desert pupfish (Cyprinodon eremus). The fish was listed as endangered in 1986, along with identification of its critical habitat. The cultural significance of the Quitobaquito area dates to approximately 11,000 B.P. (before present). The natural resource significance is elevated by the existence of other endemic species. The Monument has primarily managed the area for its natural resource significance and critical habitat improvement for decades. Today, a major inventory and monitoring program exists for the pupfish and for water quality and quantity. Location of the area next to the international border and easy access makes the pupfish and its habitat vulnerable to a number of potential threats such as introduction of exotic species, chemical contamination, human use of the area, and water use for agricultural, domestic, and development purposes in Mexico. Although there is no immediate threat to the Quitobaquito springs or pupfish from groundwater use in Mexico, the potential does exist should water levels drop significantly. There are a number of intranational and international laws and policies that support protection of the Quitobaquito pupfish, and the pupfish in the Sonoyta River, which lies within the Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve in Mexico (Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument's sister park).


Permission-role assignments (PRA) is one important process in Role-based access control (RBAC) which has been proven to be a flexible and useful access model for information sharing in distributed collaborative environments. However, problems may arise during the procedures of PRA. Conflicting permissions may assign to one role, and as a result, the role with the permissions can derive unexpected access capabilities. This paper aims to analyze the problems during the procedures of permission-role assignments in distributed collaborative environments and to develop authorization allocation algorithms to address the problems within permission-role assignments. The algorithms are extended to the case of PRA with the mobility of permission-role relationship. Finally, comparisons with other related work are discussed to demonstrate the effective work of the paper.


This paper presents first a formal development methodology that enables the validation of formal specifications as well as program codes wrt client's requirements. The methodology is based on the two languages framework: it advocates the joint use of a model-oriented specification and a logical language. Second, the paper describes development guidelines for system design within the proposed methodology. Guidelines, specific to each kind of system, can be defined. They enable the specifier to add progressively the complexity into the system desing. Two development processes are proposed: the first one leads to a traditional client/server desing; the second one enables to integrate fault-tolerance in the design. Both development processes have been applied on an example and produced a Java program.


In recent decades, the world of fashion and textile design has become increasingly close and reliant on one another. Fashion designers understand that the future of their profession lies to a great extent of the individual's ideas and meaning, not only depends on forms and materials. High-fashion has been referred to as "idea fashion", and idea makers have been labeled as "fashion conceptualists" whose work is epitomized by innovation and experimentation. Conceptual fashion design can also defined as a fashion help in "finding yourself, in presenting the authentic nature of your internal and external self. Not reflection on the observation and evaluation of others, but instead personal sensation and enjoyment, and fashion as a medium to achieve this.Although designers have intrinsic talents that may not be bound by rigid rules, a systematic framework should be helpful to provide a more effective and efficient design process. The existing models of creative processes of other design disciplines to tend to illustrate the diversity of the process and provide a broad description of the design process, but no specific framework has been proposed for conceptual fashion design. As there is an obvious knowledge gap between the subjects of conceptual fashion design, this study seeks to identify the dimensions of creative success within this specific domain. A thorough understanding of the dimensions of creativity theories and, creative processes in different design disciplines will help to develop a rich background to the study of creative activities within the domain of conceptual fashion design. The present research attempts on 1) explore the identification of the innovative conceptual fashion design and its creative system, 2) develop a theoretical framework of design process that presents a series of creative actions and 3) develop a model of design process that is generic to both textile design and fashion design, by rationally integrating professional knowledge from different design domains into a systematic conceptual framework. Completed with regard to detailed investigation on design process of conceptual fashion design, these raise my interests on the investigation of the design process of developing conceptual fashion design and the creative thinking within the mind of conceptual designers. Finally, this study documented and tracked the emergence and development of conceptual fashion, exposing interdisciplinary practice at the edges of the fashion discipline.


A new genus and species of the subfamily Limnophilinae of the tipuloid family Limoniidae from Australia, Minipteryx robusta gen. nov. sp. nov., is described and illustrated. It is a rather large micropterous crane fly. Its affinities to existing genera remain unclear. The unique male was collected in late austral autumn at a small creek in alpine vegetation (elevation 1638 m a.s.l.) of Kosciuszko National Park, New South Wales. A review is provided on the Australian Tipuloidea with reduced wings. theischinGer, Gunther. 2015. Minipteryx robusta—a new genus and species of micropterous Limnophilinae (Insecta: Diptera: Tipuloidea: Limoniidae) from Australia. Records of the Australian Museum 67(6): 201–206.


Abstract We report on the phenology of the sporophytes of Octoblepharum albidum Hedw. (Calymperaceae), a moss growing in a seasonal ecosystem between the semi-deciduous Atlantic Forest and neotropical savanna areas of Brazil. We examined 100 sporophyte-bearing plants in ten different populations every two weeks between March/2014 and April/2015. This is the first analysis of phenological data of bryophytes using a circular presentation to interpret cyclical phenomena. Sporophyte development events in O. albidum were clearly seasonal, with the frequencies of all phenophases being related principally to rainfall. The three early stages of sporophyte development (immature to post-meiotic sporangium) occurred predominantly during the dry season, contrasting with sporangia dehiscence, which occurred mainly during the rainy season. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the reproductive biology of bryophytes in tropical ecosystems, particularly those in seasonal habitats. We also highlight the consequences of misinterpreting some of the phenophases in mosses, and how revised concepts of these phases improved phenological interpretations.


The topic of artificial intelligence (AI) is seen frequently in popular media, academic journals, and corporate statements. However, real estate is an industry notoriously slow to adopt new technologies, and with new proptech (property technology) just beginning to open eyes to a whole new approach to investing, it is not yet clear where AI will have the most impact. Companies in the proptech space are beginning to use a variety of AI and machine learning (ML) techniques to enhance insights, productivity, and accuracy. The specific applications of these advancements and their transformative potential are explored in this article through in-depth conversations with technology investors, entrepreneurs, tech industry experts, and real estate professionals and are presented along with research on the latest literature and data on the companies and types of applications in this space. The current applications of AI and ML in real estate are broad and have important implications for how investors and other real estate professionals can incorporate technologies and new strategies into their decision making and operations. TOPICS: Real estate, big data/machine learning, statistical methods Key Findings • AI and machine learning (ML) are starting to have an impact on the real estate market, so it affects all investors. • There are over 100 real estate technology companies and counting that currently use AI or ML. • With the new troves of data becoming available and the tools to analyze it, we can and should expect a shift in how investors understand real estate and how buildings are developed.


In SW-France, irrigation and water supply generally use direct pumping in rivers. The upstream flow is regulated through a dam. The management of these hydraulic systems is geared to satisfying water demands white complying wilh the downstream flow orders and saving water as much as possible * Such a management can be optimized thanks to the exisling simulation software as well as methods of automatics ; the former leads to a correct modelisation of the hydraulic system operation. It becomes therefore possible to get a better knowledge of its overall dynamics and to understand interactions between inflow, withdrawals and various perturbations. Once such an understanding achieved, technics of automatics help to determine the optimum orders to be carried out at the dam, as well as to detect the perturbations and react to them. Testing and improving regulation can be done through the simulation tools.


The paper proves the feasibility of using the ultrafiltration combined with reverse osmosis to desalt sea water in Bohai Bay over four-month pilot running. The results show that the influent quality is not influenced by the UF effluent quality and the optimum operational parameters are the flux 62.5 L/m2·h, the quality of UF permeate was excellent, with turbidity measured below 0.13 NTU and 94% of the SDI15 below 3.0. The ultrafiltration membrane could feed water into the reverse osmosis systems sequentially and steadily, and the salt rejection of reverse osmosis membrane was above 99.1% and stable during the experimental time. Therefore, this method can be used to provide clean materials for multipurpose development of the seawater due to being simple process and low-cost investment.


We investigate the interplay of domain formation and adhesion in mixed-lipid membranes. Giant unilamellar vesicles consisting of two- and three-component lipid mixtures are studied using confocal fluorescence microscopy. Upon driving the system towards the demixing transition, phase separation is invariably found to occur first in regions where membranes adhere to one another, despite identical lipid headgroups and negligible curvature effects. We propose a simple generic mechanism based on the suppression of thermal shape fluctuations to explain these observations. Our findings suggest novel possibilities by which biomembranes can create and utilize lateral lipid heterogeneities.


This presentation comes from the Regulatory Change: Its Impact on the Investment Industry conference held in Barbican, London, on May 1, 1986.


Modern applications face new challenges in managing today's highly distributed and heterogeneous environment. For example, they must stitch together code that crosses smartphones, tablets, personal devices, and cloud services, connected by variable wide-area networks, such as WiFi and 4G. This paper describes Sapphire, a distributed programming platform that simplifies the programming of today's mobile/cloud applications. Sapphire's key design feature is its distributed runtime system, which supports a flexible and extensible deployment layer for solving complex distributed systems tasks, such as fault-tolerance, code-offloading, and caching. Rather than writing distributed systems code, programmers choose deployment managers that extend Sapphire's kernel to meet their applications' deployment requirements. In this way, each application runs on an underlying platform that is customized for its own distribution needs.


Although memory allocation is a subject of active research in computer science, little is known about how the brain allocates information within neural circuits. There is an extensive literature on how specific types of memory engage different parts of the brain, and how neurons in these regions process and store information. Until recently, however, the mechanisms that determine how specific cells and synapses within a neural circuit (and not their neighbors) are recruited during learning have received little attention. Recent findings suggest that memory allocation is not random, but rather specific mechanisms regulate where information is stored within a neural circuit. New methods that allow tagging, imaging, activation, and inactivation of neurons in behaving animals promise to revolutionize studies of brain circuits, including memory allocation. Results from these studies are likely to have a considerable impact on computer science, as well as on the understanding of memory and its disorders.


Marine snakes represent the most speciose group of marine reptiles and are a significant component of reef and coastal ecosystems in tropical oceans. Research on this group has historically been challenging due to the difficulty in capturing, handling, and keeping these animals for field- and lab-based research. Inexplicable declines in marine snake populations across global hotspots have highlighted the lack of basic information on this group and elevated multiple species as conservation priorities. With the increased interest in research on marine snakes, we conducted a systematic survey of experts to identify twenty key questions that can direct future research. These questions are framed across a wide array of scientific fields to produce much-needed information relevant to the conservation and management of marine snakes.


Title of Document: FROM SOCIAL CHOICE TO SYSTEM CHOICE: A PROBLEM FOR LEWIS'S BEST SYSTEM ANALYSIS Sungwon Woo, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Directed By: Assistant Professor Aidan Lyon Department of Philosophy One of the most important results in social choice theory is Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem (1951/1963), according to which there cannot exist any rational procedure of aggregating individual preferences into a social preference. In this dissertation, I argue that the analogue of Arrow's theorem threatens David Lewis's Best System Account (BSA) of laws of nature, as the BSA invokes the procedure of aggregating different system-choice criteria into a resultant choice of the best system. First, I examine the formal conditions of Arrow's impossibility theorem and its theory-choice variant. In the domain of theory choice, statistical model selection methods make different theory-choice standards commensurable. This inter-standard comparability may open up an escape route from the Arrovian impossibility for theory choice. Conducting a rigorous examination of those statistical methods, in particular, Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), I show that these methods assume the existence of true status of nature, and that their inter-standard comparability serves as an epistemic constraint. I then argue that there is a formal analogy between social choice and system choice for the BSA and the Arrovian impossibility threatens the BSA. After rejecting various possible attempts to escape from the Arrovian impossibility for the BSA, I propose the variants of the BSA implemented with AIC and BIC as an attempt to make a case for inter-criterial comparability in system choice. I argue that, however, the proposed variants will inevitably fail to pick the best system. The failure is explained by the results in my investigation of the statistical methods. Finally, I suggest different ways in which the BSA might be able to escape from the Arrovian impossibility: a nonharmful dictatorship, a threshold-prior criterion, and the statistical method called Minimum Description Length Principle. I close the dissertation by suggesting that the BSA might have to give up the notion of 'balancing' in its analysis of laws of nature in order to avoid the Arrovian result in a way that is consistent with the Humean perspective on laws of nature. FROM SOCIAL CHOICE TO SYSTEM CHOICE: A PROBLEM FOR LEWIS'S BEST SYSTEM ANALYSIS


This study describes business developments in the Macau-Zhuhai-Hengqin border region from an entrepreneurship perspective. The purpose is to understand the nature and extent of cross-border entrepreneurship in this border region.

We first review literature about entrepreneurship in cross border regions and develop a conceptual framework. Then, as background, we discuss the relationship between entrepreneurship and regional development. Given the significant impact of tourism in Macau and Hengqin, we also review literature about tourism development from an innovation perspective.

Next, we provide an overview of the Macau-Zhuhai-Hengqin border region that includes key socio-economic indicators. After we present a series of case studies about firms doing business in the Macau-Zhuhai border region that are located in the Zhuhai Macau Cross Border Industrial Park and the Hengqin Innovalley Park. Last, we develop a documentary analysis of business sectors emerging in Hengqin that have participation of companies from Macau.

The results indicate that entrepreneurship in the Macau-Zhuhai-Hengqin border region has gained a new impetus after the creation of the Hengqin New Area. Public and private organizations from Macau have taken advantage of the opportunities available. The governments of Macau and Zhuhai play leading roles not only at policy level but also in launching key strategic projects. Several policies aim at attracting talents and entrepreneurship based on knowledge, innovation and technology. As of 2019, the investment of Macau companies in Hengqin is estimated in RMB 11.6 billion in traditional Chinese medicine, living and health services, and multipurpose complexes.

The Macau-Hengqin cross border innovation system is still in early stage of development. Key policies have been developed and the first series of investment projects are about to be completed in 2020. The main challenges for developing this cross border system will be the development of new interorganizational systems to have positive impact on knowledge creation, cluster-based development, cross-border partnerships, business networks, and institutions.


There are several statistical methods for time-to-event analysis, among which is the Cox proportional hazards model that is most commonly used. However, when the absolute change in risk, instead of the risk ratio, is of primary interest or when the proportional hazard assumption for the Cox proportional hazards model is violated, an additive hazard regression model may be more appropriate. In this paper, we give an overview of this approach and then apply a semiparametric as well as a nonparametric additive model to a data set from a study of the natural history of human papillomavirus (HPV) in HIV-positive and HIV-negative women. The results from the semiparametric model indicated on average an additional 14 oncogenic HPV infections per 100 woman-years related to CD4 count < 200 relative to HIV-negative women, and those from the nonparametric additive model showed an additional 40 oncogenic HPV infections per 100 women over 5 years of followup, while the estimated hazard ratio in the Cox model was 3.82. Although the Cox model can provide a better understanding of the exposure disease association, the additive model is often more useful for public health planning and intervention.


The task of visual question generation (VQG) aims to generate human-like neural questions from an image and potentially other side information (e.g., answer type or the answer itself). Existing works often suffer from the severe one image to many questions mapping problem, which generates uninformative and non-referential questions. Recent work has demonstrated that by leveraging double visual and answer hints, a model can faithfully generate much better quality questions. However, visual hints are not available naturally. Despite they proposed a simple rule-based similarity matching method to obtain candidate visual hints, they could be very noisy practically and thus restrict the quality of generated questions. In this paper, we present a novel learning approach for double-hints based VQG, which can be cast as a weakly supervised learning problem with noises. The key rationale is that the salient visual regions of interest can be viewed as a constraint to improve the generation procedure for producing high-quality questions. As a result, given the predicted salient visual regions of interest, we can focus on estimating the probability of being ground-truth questions, which in turn implicitly measures the quality of predicted visual hints. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets show that our proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches by a large margin on a variety of metrics, including both automatic machine metrics and human evaluation.


continuing and expanding research on the treatment of this condition, which is at present responsible for considerable personal distress and social disruption. In view of the large numbers of women between the menarche and the menopause who suffer from PMS any significant reduction in its overall incidence will be welcome and we hope that family doctors will be encouraged to treat PMS by these new approaches. Further help and support from specialised clinics in teaching hospitals and other centres will be required for some time yet, but we hope soon to publish further observations on the clinical presentation of PMS which will minimise this need.


Extracted from text ... T
Leadership:
a closer look before engaging a coach
60 Management Today September 2006
Dr Stuart Allen has a doctorate in
organisational leadership and is a
leadership development facilitator for
the Centre for Applied Leadership
Excellence (CALE). CALE is a centre of
excellence focused on developing leaders
to lead rather than just know about
leadership. CALE operates on a nonprofit
basis, complementing its range of
corporate training and development
services with a strong social focus
through providing sponsored leadership
training to non-profit and NGO leaders.
The growth in the popularity of coaching
in the last decade has been considerable.
As ..


Is there any public discourse left, or has advertising, with its aggressive sales techniques, usurped the role of democratic, civil debate? Beginning in the 1960s, there was a proliferation of social, political, and corporate advertising in affluent, developed nations that spoke to the .public good. on everything from milk to family values. Surveying over 10,000 advertisements from the past 40 years, .Endless Propaganda. underscores the presence of advertising rhetoric, even in the context of apparently non-partisan collective health issues such as cancer. The public sphere, argues Paul Rutherford, has been transformed into a huge marketplace of goods and signs. Civil advocacy has become a special art of authority that subjects politics, social behaviour, and public morals to the philosophy and discipline of marketing. Without suggesting that there is one simple way to understand the transformation that democracy has undergone because of this phenomenon, the author introduces and applies the cultural theories of several important philosophers: Habermas, Gramsci, Foucault, Ricoeur, and Baudrillard. The reader is thus given the necessary tools to critically examine the examples at hand and many others that exist beyond the pages of this study.


Abstract National ecosystem assessments form an essential knowledge base for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services. We analyze eight European (sub-)national ecosystem assessments (Portugal, United Kingdom, Spain, Norway, Flanders, Netherlands, Finland, and Germany) and compare their objectives, political context, methods, and operationalization. We observed remarkable differences in breadth of the assessment, methods employed, variety of services considered, policy mandates, and funding mechanisms. Biodiversity and ecosystem services are mainly assessed independently, with biodiversity conceptualized as underpinning services, as a source of conflict with services, or as a service in itself. Recommendations derived from our analysis for future ecosystem assessments include the needs to improve the common evidence base, to advance the mapping of services, to consider international flows of services, and to connect more strongly to policy questions. Although the context specificity of national ecosystem assessments is acknowledged as important, a greater harmonization across assessments could help to better inform common European policies and future pan-regional assessments.


In this work we propose an innovative approach to particle tracking based on CMOS Active Pixel Sensors layers, monolithically integrated in an all-in-one chip featuring multiple, stacked, fully functional detector layers capable to provide momentum measurement (particle impact point and direction) within a single detector. This will results in a very low material detector, thus dramatically reducing multiple scattering issues. To this purpose, we rely on the capabilities of the CMOS vertical scale integration (3D IC) technology. A first chip prototype has been fabricated within a multi-project run using a 130 nm CMOS Chartered/Tezzaron technology, featuring two layers bonded face-to-face. Tests have been carried out on full 3D structures, providing the functionalities of both tiers. To this purpose, laser scans have been carried out using highly focussed spot size obtaining coincidence responses of the two layers. Tests have been made as well with X-ray sources in order to calibrate the response of the sensor. Encouraging results have been found, fostering the suitability of both the adopted 3D-IC vertical scale fabrication technology and the proposed approach for particle tracking applications.


Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets (GSPNs) [28] are a well-known modelling formalism to compute dependability and performance of distributed systems. GSPNs are translated to Continuous Time Markov Chains (CTMCs) [34] for their analysis, which means they can not support non-determinism. Conflicts and confusion are resolved by specifying priorities and weights for each transition, which is not desirable in all cases. We define a more expressive and general Non-Deterministic GSPN (ND-GSPN). ND-GSPNs support the weights and priorities and additionally introduce the use of non-determinism. This means conflicts between transitions do not necessarily have to be resolved any more. ND-GSPNs also include reset, weighted inhibitor and probabilistic arcs. Probabilistic arcs make it is possible to define probability more local, because they make the result of a transition probabilistically distributed. We express the ND-GSPN in terms of the more general Markov Automaton (MA) [13]. An MA combines probability, exponentially distributed leave rates and non-determinism and is therefore suited to express the semantics of ND-GSPNs. The Petri Net Markup Language (PNML) [45] is an ISO/IEC 15909 standard, which can be used to specify Petri Nets. We define how the PNML for ND-GSPNs should look like. MAs can be specified in the Markov Automaton Process Algebra (MAPA) [41], which is used as input for the tool SCOOP [40]. SCOOP automatically reduces its models and can export the state space directly to a model-checker. The IMCA [2] model-checker can be used to check an MA for time-bounded reachability, unbounded reachability, expected time and long run averages. We implemented the translation from ND-GSPNs in PNML to MAPA in the tool GEMMA. This means we can specify an ND-GSPN in PNML and translate it to MAPA. SCOOP can then reduce this MAPA model and generate the MA, which can be checked with the IMCA model-checker.


Aim: The main objective of the present investigation was to formulate and characterize an oral pulsatile drug delivery system of flurbiprofen, for time dependent release, based on chronomodulated approach for the management of rheumatoid arthritis. Settings and Design: The drug delivery system was designed to deliver the drug with a lag time to release the drug when it could be most needful to patients of rheumatoid arthritis. Materials and Methods: Rapid release core tablets of flurbiprofen were prepared by wet granulation method with explotab as superdisintegrant. Then the press coated pulsatile tablets were formulated using different grades of hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) E5, E15, and E50 in varying ratios. Pulsatile tablets were evaluated for pre- and post-compressional parameters. Then the tablets were optimized based on in vitro dissolution studies and lag time for drug release. Statistical Analysis used: One sample t-test was computed to compare the mean lag time obtained with different formulations with a standard of 6 h (360 min) as required time lag between administration of the dosage and drug release. Results: Core tablet formulated with explotab 4% showed 76.18 ± 0.27% release in 10 min it was suitable for formulating into pulsatile release tablets. The formulation containing HPMC E50 at 1:2 ratio of core to coat has shown lag time of 6 h; thus, it was optimized and compiled with chronotherapeutic objective of rheumatoid arthritis. Conclusions: Pulsatile tablets of flurbiprofen were successfully formulated which provided a desirable lag time followed by desirable drug release.


RF MEMS switches have been fabricated. These switches are in the forms of cantilevers and bridges supported by silicon nitride beams. Two critical issues in the fabrication have been identified, which are topography of contact electrodes and stress induced bending of switch beams. Techniques have been developed to produce better planarised substrate and to realise controllable stress induced bending. These techniques are also applicable to fabrication of other microactuators based on silicon nitride beams.


Until the end of the XX century, citizenship was the expression of the membership to a territorial political system, the nation-state. In this sense, citizenship and borders were mutually related. The article aims at illustrating how, in the global age, with the crisis of the political form of the nation-state, the multiplication of cultural worlds and political memberships, the dissemination of borders (which renders more complex and less neat the once clear distinction between the inside and the outside, the included and the excluded), citizenship undergoes a progressive de-territorialization. Within this process a tension emerges between the formal status of citizenship, its institutional frame, and the «acts of citizenship», and the claims of subjects that are excluded or included in a differential, partial way.


Working in pairs, students use an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to screen sera for
antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Sera that test "positive" in the ELISA are
subsequently evaluated by Western blotting to determine whether the patient's infection status is
positive, negative, or indeterminate according to criteria set by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC). Because surrogate antigens and antibodies are used in this exercise, there is
no risk of infection for students or teaching personnel. The students are provided with Western blot
strips to which simulated antigens have already been applied, thus eliminating safety concerns
associated with gel electrophoresis, such as exposure to acrylamide and the possibility of
electrical shock. The banding patterns on the strips are generated using a multi-channel manifold
device rather than an electrophoretic cell so that results are highly uniform, reproducible, and
simple to interpret.


Spectral correlation theory for cyclostationary time-series signals has been studied for decades. Explicit formulas of spectral correlation function for various types of analog-modulated and digital-modulated signals are already derived. In this paper, we investigate and exploit the cyclostationarity characteristics for two kinds of multicarrier modulated (MCM) signals: conventional OFDM and filter bank based multicarrier (FBMC) signals. The spectral correlation characterization of MCM signal can be described by a special linear periodic time-variant (LPTV) system. Using this LPTV description, we have derived the explicit theoretical formulas of nonconjugate and conjugate cyclic autocorrelation function (CAF) and spectral correlation function (SCF) for OFDM and FBMC signals. According to theoretical spectral analysis, Cyclostationary Signatures (CS) are artificially embedded into MCM signal and a low-complexity signature detector is, therefore, presented for detecting MCM signal. Theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of this CS detector compared to traditionary energy detector.


BACKGROUND
Numerous studies have produced social distance rankings to identify differences in the intensity of stigma associated with various general medical and mental health conditions. All of these studies, however, treat "mental illness" as a single homogeneous condition, when in reality different diagnoses of mental illness may elicit different levels of stigma.

AIMS OF THE STUDY
Within our samples, we aim to: (i) determine if there are significant differences in the intensity of stigma associated with different mental/behavior disorders; (ii) compare the intensity of stigma associated with mental/behavior disorders vs. physical/sensory disorders; and (iii) analyze the effect of familiarity with a person who has a mental/behavior disorder on the stigma associated with that disorder.

METHODS
College students in the U.S. (n=213) and Republic of Korea (n=354) completed a survey of community attitudes toward persons with disabilities. Students were asked to rank 22 health conditions, including 10 mental/behavior disorders, according to the level of acceptance most usually accorded to persons with that condition in their society. Students also indicated, for each condition, whether they had close contact with a person who had that condition.

RESULTS
Students in both countries indicated a lower mean level of acceptance for the group of mental/behavior disorders than for the group of physical or sensory disorders. Nevertheless, there were significant differences in the acceptability of different types of mental/behavior disorders, with schizophrenia and substance use disorders eliciting the most negative attitudes in both samples. Familiarity is correlated with greater acceptance for most, but not all, mental/behavior disorders.

DISCUSSION
Mental illness-related stigma imposes costs on society in the form of productivity losses and increased rates of dependency. Reducing these costs requires an understanding of the negative stereotypes that are the source of stigma, and an appreciation of differences in the nature and intensity of stigma associated with different mental disorders. Limitations of the study include: lack of generalizability of the results; terminology which may have generated negative associations for some survey items; possibility of missing variables or data measured with error.

IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH POLICIES
The findings with respect to familiarity underscore the importance of inclusive policies to combat mental illness-related stigma. Anti-stigma policies must, however, account for differences in attitudes toward different diagnoses of mental illness. Strategies that may be effective in reducing stigma for some disorders may be counterproductive for others.

IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
Many social distance studies rely on non-random samples, limiting generalizability of the results. Future research may be able to exploit web-based survey methods to obtain larger, more representative samples. Studies should include multiple diagnoses of mental/behavior disorders, instead of a single category of mental illness, and explore the ways in which familiarity affects intensity of stigma for different mental disorders.


The nonlinear switching characteristics of fused fiber directional couplers were studied experimentally. By using femtosecond laser pulses with pulse width of 100 fs and wavelength of about 1550 nm from a system of Ti:sapphire laser and optical parametric amplifier (OPA), the nonlinear switching properties of a null coupler and a 100% coupler were measured. The experimental results were coincident with the simulations based on nonlinear propagation equations in fiber by using super-mode theory. Nonlinear loss in fiber was also measured to get the injected power at the coupler. After deducting the nonlinear loss and input efficiency, the nonlinear switching critical peak powers for a 100% and a null fused couplers were calculated to be 9410 and 9440 W, respectively. The nonlinear loss parameter P_(N) in an expression of ?_(NL)=?P/P_(N) was obtained to be P_(N)=0.23 W.


Abstract An idealized energy-balance model for a closed circulation is first presented to illustrate the coupling between the net tropospheric radiative cooling, the surface fluxes and the mean subsidence away from the precipitation zones. Then a one-dimensional diagnostic model and a radiation model with boundary layer clouds are combined to explore this coupling for a specific region using mean sounding data over the tropical Pacific. The radiatively driven subsidence rate at the top of the convective boundary layer is approximately 35 mb day−1 (0.04 Pa s−1 and is largely independent of boundary layer cloud fraction. The sensitivity of the corresponding convective heat flux profiles to the mass divergence profile and cloud fraction within the boundary layer is explored. Reasonable assumptions give realistic surface sensible and latent heat fluxes for this region of approximately 10 and 130 W m−1. The paper illustrates the important background climatic control of the radiation field on the tropical surfa...


A family with site-specific colon cancer and discrete adenomatous colon polyps in certain members has provided a prototype for the study and clinical management of hereditary cancer. Analysis of this kindred showed an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance, early onset of cancer with predilection for the right colon, and frequent extraprimary cancers of the colon. Knowledge of these phenomena are critical to the management of this hereditary cancer syndrome. On our recommendation, two brothers of the family who were treated for colon cancer by hemicolectomy underwent prophylactic total colectomy. The resected colon from one of these patients had an occult adenocarcinoma in a villoglandular polyp.


Estimation of mechanical structure damage can greatly benefit from the knowledge that the damage accumulates irreversibly over time. This paper formulates a problem of estimation of a pixel-wise monotonic increasing (or decreasing) time series of images from noisy blurred image data. Our formulation includes temporal monotonicity constraints and a spatial regularization penalty. We cast the estimation problem as a large-scale quadratic programming (QP) optimization and describe an efficient interior-point method for solving this problem. The method exploits the special structure of the QP and scales well to problems with more than a million of decision variables and constraints. The proposed estimation approach performs well for simulated data. We demonstrate an application of the approach to diagnostic images obtained in structural health monitoring experiments and show that it provides a good estimate of the damage accumulation trend while suppressing spatial and temporal noises.


IntroductionMulti-morbidity is a widely recognised but poorly understood global issue that appears to be increasing in prevalence, according to the UK's Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) report in 2018. Disease clustering, their determinants and consequences are poorly researched. Better understanding would help drive prevention and improved clinical care, services and patient outcomes.
Objectives and ApproachDevelopment of two comprehensive population-wide e-cohorts, derived utilising data linkage techniques and including multi-sourced anonymised routine health and demographic data held within the SAIL Databank. The objective is to characterise multi-morbidity and its clustering, determinants and outcomes and compare methods using a) prospective cohort design using multiple data sources in Wales and b) retrospective cohort design to examine household level and environment clustering using GP data in demographically diverse populations (Wales and North East London).
The prospective e-cohort focuses on adults living in Wales on 1 st January 2000 and followed up to 2020, including data from the NHS population register, deaths, inpatients, outpatients, Emergency Department, GP, disease registries, laboratory data, and population surveys with QoL measures. This e-cohort will be harmonised with other sites across the UK. The retrospective e-cohort is designed to harmonise with a North East London e-cohort, including all individuals living in Wales on 24 th April 2018 and registered with a GP.
Results2.8 and 2.2 million individuals have been included in the prospective and retrospective cohorts respectively, with 43.6 million person years of follow up. Established comorbidity indices and published phenotypes from libraries are being applied to the data to create initial prevalence and incidence estimates for further analysis. Important clusters will be determined by associations with mortality and excess healthcare utilisation.
Conclusion/ImplicationsBuilding the e-cohorts has involved multiple disciplines across organisations. Multi-morbidity prevalence estimates and study designs will be compared prior to statistical analyses and machine learning methods to evaluate clustering and determinants.


A hybrid neural network approach is presented to estimate radio propagation characteristics and multiuser interference and to evaluate their combined impact on throughput, latency and information loss in third-generation (3G) wireless networks. The latter three performance parameters influence the quality of service (QoS) for multimedia services under consideration for 3G networks. These networks, based on a hierarchical architecture of overlaying macrocells on top of micro- and picocells, are planned to operate in mobile urban and indoor environments with service demands emanating from circuit-switched, packet-switched and satellite-based traffic sources. Candidate radio interfaces for these networks employ a form of wideband CDMA in 5-MHz and wider-bandwidth channels, with possible asynchronous operation of the mobile subscribers. The proposed neural network (NN) architecture allocates network resources to optimize QoS metrics. Parameters of the radio propagation channel are estimated, followed by control of an adaptive antenna array at the base station to minimize interference, and then joint multiuser detection is performed at the base station receiver. These adaptive processing stages are implemented as a sequence of NN techniques that provide their estimates as inputs to a final- stage Kohonen self-organizing feature map (SOFM). The SOFM optimizes the allocation of available network resources to satisfy QoS requirements for variable-rate voice, data and video services. As the first stage of the sequence, a modified feed-forward multilayer perceptron NN is trained on the pilot signals of the mobile subscribers to estimate the parameters of shadowing, multipath fading and delays on the uplinks. A recurrent NN (RNN) forms the second stage to control base stations' adaptive antenna arrays to minimize intra-cell interference. The third stage is based on a Hopfield NN (HNN), modified to detect multiple users on the uplink radio channels to mitigate multiaccess interference, control carrier-sense multiple-access (CSMA) protocols, and refine call handoff procedures. In the final stage, the Kohonen SOFM, operating in a hybrid continuous and discrete space, adaptively allocates the resources of antenna-based cell sectorization, activity monitoring, variable-rate coding, power control, handoff and caller admission to meet user demands for various multimedia services at minimum QoS levels. The performance of the NN cascade is evaluated through simulation of a candidate 3G wireless network using W-CDMA parameters in a small-cell environment. The simulated network consists of a representative number of cells. Mobile users with typical movement patterns are assumed. QoS requirements for different classes of multimedia services are considered. The proposed method is shown to provide relatively low probability of new call blocking and handoff dropping, while maintaining efficient use of the network's radio resources.


It is impossible to underestimate the influence of Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) on twentieth-century ballet history. But it may be easy at times to underestimate his uncanny ability as an impresario to bring together artists from diverse backgrounds and aesthetic and unite them with a common goal of artistic excellence. Established in 1909, the Ballets Russes made an extraordinary impact on Parisian life and monopolized the audiences' attention for almost two decades. More than simply being a ballet company, it promoted and facilitated the interaction of some of the most avant-garde artists of the time. During their twenty-year run (the company disbanded in 1929 after Diaghilev's death), the Ballets Russes collaborated closely with dancers, choreographers and visual artists that included George Balanchine (1904-1983), Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950), Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978), Mikhail Fokine (1880-1942), Leonide Massine (1896-1979), Leon Bakst (1866-1944), Georges Braque (1882-1963), and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Some of the musicians who either lent their scores to be choreographed or created music particularly for the Ballets Russes included Maurice Ravel (Daphnis & Chloe), Claude Debussy (Jeux), Richard Strauss (Josephslegende), Erik Satie (Parade), Manuel de Falla, Sergei Prokofiev, Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, and, of course, Igor Stravinsky. The latter's groundbreaking collaboration with Diaghilev led to three landmark works, all inspired by the composer's native Russia: Firebird, Petrushka, and the notorious Rite of Spring. THE WORLD OF ART By the time Diaghilev realized his interest in the arts at the dawn of the twentieth century, the world of the romantic ballet had virtually been dead for years. At its zenith, it was represented by works such as La Sylphide and Giselle, made popular in Europe in the 1830s and 1840s mainly thanks to the superhuman accomplishments by ballerinas like Marie Taglioni (the "first Sylphide"), whose graceful ballons and ethereal dancing on pointe (a novelty at the time) ideally embodied the concepts of the otherworldly and the supernatural. The geography of European ballet history in the later part of the nineteenth century makes for a fascinating read. In spite of the immense popularity that it enjoyed in France until the middle of the nineteenth century, the formulaic and predictable aspects of ballet that once made it popular, now failed to sustain the public's taste for the exotic and the extravagant (which, interestingly enough, both ballet and opera shared). Around that time, Marius Petipa (1818-1910), the greatest choreographer of the time, had moved to Russia, where he established the standard for classical ballet with a series of legendary creations that included Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. In 1869, he was appointed chief ballet master in St. Petersburg and was single-handedly responsible for defining classical ballet, as well as for putting the Russian Imperial ballet at the forefront of European ballet in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Ironically, France would regain its former ballet glory through the opposite trajectory, this time via Russia with the help of the Ballets Russes. (1) Diaghilev was neither a dancer, nor a choreographer, nor a composer, nor did he aspire to become the great impresario of a Russian ballet company that would take the Parisian audiences by storm and that would have a tremendous impact on twentieth-century ballet history. It was rather through Mir iskusstva (The World of Art), the group and art journal he founded in 1898, that his artistic aspirations became manifest. With the help of artists who shared his symbolist aesthetic, such as Alexandre Benois (1870-1960) and Leon Bakst, he put on art exhibitions in St. Petersburg and Paris, and soon it became apparent that his goals would be better served with him as the intellectual force behind the talent and aspirations of young artists he would help promote. …


The purpose of this study was to identify and assess direct costs of distance education at the institutional level within the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) in accordance with the System-level mission of reducing barriers to higher education within North Carolina. Through a quantitative analysis of distance education expenditures, this study provides insight into the cost of each of these expenditures to individual institutions and to the NCCCS as a whole. Data provided in this study were used to develop a model through which community college administrators may assess the cost of distance education at their respective institutions in a clear and consistent fashion. Data were collected through a survey of the population, which included chief financial officers and directors of distance education at the fifty-eight community colleges in North Carolina. The survey instrument consisted of electronic, paper, and phone surveys which collected data on thirty-seven research questions and elicited data on personnel, equipment, and support services costs. Responses were received from forty-four institutions. Results of the study indicated that medium-sized institutions spent more on distance education per full-time equivalent student than their small or large-sized counterparts. Additionally, urban institutions had higher expenditures on distance education than rural institutions. Finally, distance education programs typically costs $878.44 more per full-time equivalent student than was generated.


China's industrial sector dominates the country's total energy consumption, and improving energy efficiency in that sector is crucial to help China reach its energy and carbon dioxide emissions reduction goals. There are many energy efficiency policies in China, but the motivation and willingness of enterprises to improve energy efficiency has weakened. This article first identifies barriers that enterprises face to be self‐motivated to implement energy efficiency measures and then categorizes these barriers into four categories: awareness, information, technical capacity, and financial availability. It then reviews international policies and programs to improve energy efficiency, and evaluates how these policies have helped to address the barriers identified. We found that policies and programs in energy efficiency and carbon reduction need to go hand in hand to incentivize companies, and that those policies and programs send clearer signals and help change enterprises' decisions when they are persistent but dynamic. Our specific policy recommendations to China fall under three key categories: identification of energy efficiency potential, workforce development, and market channels for energy efficiency financing.


Beginning with the new worlds of the Renaissance and the Reformation, this book traces the growth of liberal doctrine through the advent of the French Revolution. It shows the relationship of liberalism to the emerging economic system of capitalism, and the impact of this relationship upon science, philosophy, and literature. Laski explains how the same causes which produced the socially active aspect of liberalism also inspired the growth of socialism. The contributions of men like Machiavelli, Locke, and Voltaire, the influence of the voyages of discovery, and the effect of the Puritan Rebellion are among the special topics discussed. The Rise of European Liberalism is a historical survey of the development of liberal thought, from its earliest whispers in early Protestantism to its significance in the "Red Decade" of the 1930s. Laski argues that liberalism as a philosophy came into existence with the rise of capitalism and thus functions primarily as an ideological defense of private property in a business civilization. Hence, liberalism's progressive side is doomed to defeat because, throughout its history, the bourgeois nature of the ideology has always prevailed. In the new introduction, John Stanley traces the history and influences of Laski's thought and provides a detailed analysis of Laski's work. The essay provides a coherent study in itself of why Laski is better remembered than widely read. The Rise of European Liberalism is a classic text that deserves rediscovery for historians, philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists of the present day.


Anxiety disorders in childhood are common, disabling and run a chronic course. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) effective but is expensive and trained therapists are scarce. Guided self-help treatments may be a means of widening access to treatment. This study aimed to examine the feasibility of guided CBT self-help for childhood anxiety disorders in Primary Care, specifically in terms of therapist adherence, patient and therapist satisfaction and clinical gain.
Participants were children aged 5-12 years referred to two Primary Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (PCAMHSs) in Oxfordshire, UK, who met diagnostic criteria for a primary anxiety disorder. Of the 52 eligible children, 41 anxious children were assessed for anxiety severity and interference before and after receiving CBT self-help, delivered via the parent (total therapy time= 5 hours) by Primary Mental Health Workers (PMHWs). Therapy sessions were rated for treatment adherence and patients and PMHWs completed satisfaction questionnaires after treatment completion. Over 80% of therapy sessions were rated at a high level of treatment adherence. Parents and PMHWs reported high satisfaction with the treatment. 61% of the children assessed no longer met criteria for their primary anxiety disorder diagnosis following treatment, and 76% were rated as 'much'/'very much' improved on the Clinician's Global Impression-Improvement scale. There were significant reductions on parent and child report measures of anxiety symptoms, interference, and depression. Preliminary exploration indicated that parental anxiety was associated with child treatment outcome. The findings suggest that guided CBT self-help represents a promising treatment for childhood anxiety in primary care.


The topics of self-esteem and social inclusion have been subject to much research in educational psychology, with positive correlation often being found to exist between the two. However, very little research has been conducted into the efficacy of guided imagery - a person-centred cognitive therapeutic technique – on enhancing either self-esteem or social inclusion, particularly in school-age populations. Identifying the gap in existing literature, this study therefore assessed the extent to which a five-session guided imagery intervention was associated with increases in both self-esteem (as measured by the Lawrence Self-Esteem Questionnaire; Lawrence, 1982) and social inclusion (as measured by the Social Inclusion Survey; Frederickson & Graham, 1999, and the Peer Problems and Prosocial Behaviour subscales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire; Goodman, 1997). This quantitative data was supplemented by a limited collection of qualitative questionnaire data, which was analysed using content analysis. Both forms of data were collected from 46 Year 4 and 5 pupils from three mainstream primary schools, who had been randomly allocated either to experimental groups or waiting list control groups. Qualitative data was also collected from the four members of school staff who had been trained in facilitating the intervention. Data analysis indicated that the guided imagery intervention had few salient effects on self-esteem or social inclusion as measured by the instruments used, but there was some qualitative evidence of increased self-esteem and social inclusion of participants in the experimental condition. The results of this study are discussed in the context of existing literature, and implications for future research and practice are explored.