The effect of wafer-level solder bump size on solder bump shear strength and intermetallic growth as a function of time, at different storage temperatures is studied, using solder bumps of two different heights: 95 mum (SB95) and 142 mum (SB142). Smaller solder bumps (SB95) lead to a faster decrease in bump shear strength. Increasing aging temperature and time brings about an increase in the final fracture area of the solder, from a ductile to a quasi-brittle failure mode. It is observed that the smaller solder bump (SB95) exhibits a faster rate of increase in final fracture area, than the bigger bump. A linear decrease of solder bump shear strength with intermetallic thickness is established for the systems studied. Degradation of solder bump shear strength is found to be affected by the relative volume of the solder bump with respect to Ni/Au, such that a lower solder bump to Ni/Au volume ratio leads to faster shear strength degradation, due to the consumption of Cu in the bulk solder bump and the formation of brittle intermetallics. The overall intermetallic growth activation energies for the two solder bump sizes are found to be comparable, at 0.85- 0.86 eV. For this study, (Cu,Ni)6 Sn5, is initially formed, at the solder bump-to-under bump metallization (UBM) interface, followed by the formation of (Ni,Cu)3 Sn4, between the UBM and the (Cu,Ni)6 Sn5 intermetallic layer.


Acknowledging Otto Von Busch's work, "Shapeshifting can be considered a capacity or potential of sentient beings, a capability of organisms to auto-transformations, as responsive agency to their settings." Fusing textiles and photography, this paper considers the contribution a practice-based, conceptual approach to textiles can make to the exploration and visualization of the morphing of memory and, in the process, considers the transformative, "shapeshifting" powers at work within the human brain. A cluster of diagnostic descriptors (including vascular cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) provide reference points for causal factors and anticipated transformative outcomes associated with changes in brain function. This paper explores new territory with its linking of this "wearing" or "abrading" of memory to analogue photographic materiality and the understated significance of textile substrates or objects. All share varying degrees of disappearance or transformation: from the "gaps" that appear in recall; the physicality of the unravelling thread and thinning construction of the worn textile substrate; the "invisible" ubiquity of textiles: and the creased, faded, well-handled materiality of the analogue family snapshot or studio portrait (now increasingly supplanted by digital files). The repositioning and revaluing of a return to craft, to labour intensive, accumulative practices, play their part in this evolving narrative of creative practice. The paradigmatic shift can be expressed through the conjunction of image and substrate; process and outcome – constructing, re-imaging, unpicking, re-forming, transforming and revealing – a transformation that calls upon this twinning of concept and substrate, craft and process to explore the universal human concern of the morphing of memory housed within the shapeshifting repository of the human brain. Keywords: memory, memory loss, memento mori, photographs, disconnection, reconnection Shapeshifting
  Conference:
  Auckland
  University
  of
  Technology 14-‐16
  April
  2014


The UK food system, it is argued here, is not sustainable in that it is beset by vulnerabilities and lacks the resilience to overcome these. Focusing on the UK, and relying on earlier empirical data, the nature of these vulnerabilities is explained, as is their impact on the global, carbon-dependent, agro-food system. The earlier data were generated by scenarios of different food futures. These were employed as a research tool, as both their generation and their consideration involved stakeholders concerned with the supply chains for both dairy produce and wheat in the UK. The scenarios and their underpinning methodology are explained by reference to theories of systems' transitions. This article explains how scenarios of this kind can try and capture landscape pressures which might threaten the dominant paradigm and leave room for niche activity to challenge the mainstream. It will also warn, however, that the mainstream will seek to incorporate and marginalise the niche activity. The article concludes that the methodology adopted can draw out critical factors and, in the present case, tease out some early thinking about the nature of transitions towards a more sustainable and resilient system of production and consumption of food.


Guidance and tips for when travelling to libraries and archives in the US to conduct primary source research for US history


The author proposes that "there is not now, and there never has been, a dialogue between the religions of Judaism and Christianity." The first part of the book represents historical discourse through which Professor Neusner underscores that, from the very beginnings, the Judaic and Christian religious worlds scarcely intersected (with the exception of the fourth century). In the second part, Neusner spells out theological reasons underlying the "myth" of a Judeo-Christian tradition. He calls for an understanding of religions as systems so that each party can describe fully, honestly, and accurately the religion it proposes to bring into dialogue with the other. Only when both parties grasp what is meant in context can dialogue actually occur. Throughout this absorbing book, Professor Neusner summons readers to make an effort to treat as legitimate and authentic religions other than their own, and to value a religion's account of itself. Then genuine dialogue may be possible, and such dialogue is essential for world peace. Jacob Neusner is Graduate Research Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, Tampa.


Background Robust data on patient-reported outcome measures comparing treatments for clinically localized prostate cancer are lacking. We investigated the effects of active monitoring, radical prostatectomy, and radical radiotherapy with hormones on patient-reported outcomes. Methods We compared patient-reported outcomes among 1643 men in the Prostate Testing for Cancer and Treatment (ProtecT) trial who completed questionnaires before diagnosis, at 6 and 12 months after randomization, and annually thereafter. Patients completed validated measures that assessed urinary, bowel, and sexual function and specific effects on quality of life, anxiety and depression, and general health. Cancer-related quality of life was assessed at 5 years. Complete 6-year data were analyzed according to the intention-to-treat principle. Results The rate of questionnaire completion during follow-up was higher than 85% for most measures. Of the three treatments, prostatectomy had the greatest negative effect on sexual function and urinary continence, and although there was some recovery, these outcomes remained worse in the prostatectomy group than in the other groups throughout the trial. The negative effect of radiotherapy on sexual function was greatest at 6 months, but sexual function then recovered somewhat and was stable thereafter; radiotherapy had little effect on urinary continence. Sexual and urinary function declined gradually in the active-monitoring group. Bowel function was worse in the radiotherapy group at 6 months than in the other groups but then recovered somewhat, except for the increasing frequency of bloody stools; bowel function was unchanged in the other groups. Urinary voiding and nocturia were worse in the radiotherapy group at 6 months but then mostly recovered and were similar to the other groups after 12 months. Effects on quality of life mirrored the reported changes in function. No significant differences were observed among the groups in measures of anxiety, depression, or general health-related or cancer-related quality of life. Conclusions In this analysis of patient-reported outcomes after treatment for localized prostate cancer, patterns of severity, recovery, and decline in urinary, bowel, and sexual function and associated quality of life differed among the three groups. (Funded by the U.K. National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment Format: Abstract 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Author information Full text links Patient-Reported Outcomes after Monitoring, Surgery, or Radiotherapy... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27626365 1 di 2 27/10/2016 07.57


This paper argues that the notoriously problematic Late Latin stress shift in words with a light penultimate syllable before consonant-liquid clusters cannot be adequately explained by double prosody (an additional mora, projected to the syllable, but not realized by the vowel) which allows a light syllable to count as heavy before consonant-liquid clusters (Bullock 2001). Double prosody leads to questioning the very nature of syncope, is not obvious in the cases of desyllabification where it leads to a far more elaborate account, is not helpful in dealing with the stress shift from prefix to stem, and, does not prevent syncope from rendering the stress system opaque. Sharing Bullocks (2001) intuition of a relation between syncope and stress shift, an OT account is proposed which expresses that relation in a more direct and less abstract way and obviates the need for double prosody in accounting for the stress shifts.


This chapter discusses the law and policy of monetary awards—including exemplary damages and litigation cost recoveries—that go beyond the compensatory damages to which prevailing parties in patent litigation are normally entitled. Up to treble damages are authorized in the United States for knowing infringement, but attorney fees are awarded only in exceptional cases. The rest of the world tends towards the opposite: attorney fees are awarded as a matter of course, but punitive damages are generally prohibited as against public policy. In this chapter we discuss the theory, law, and policy of enhanced damages and attorney fee awards in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. While the availability of enhanced damages and fees can bring accused infringers that might otherwise "holdout" to the table, care must also be taken to ensure that it does not discourage productive learning from patents or challenges to overbroad and vague patents. Rather than endorsing any single set of doctrinal rules, we recommend further research into a number of unanswered questions about current and potential future configurations, in order to inform future policy-making.


Although mathematics education is a young discipline, it has developed rapidly over the last 40 years. During this time, the community of mathematics education re-searchers, teachers' trainers, and mathematics teachers has produced a large quan-tity of literature published in books, journals, and conference proceedings and on Internet, among other sources. Yet there is currently no taxonomy of key terms for the systematic classification of the documents in this discipline. In this article, we present the procedure by which we constructed a taxonomy for Funes, a digital repository of documents in mathematics education. We establish the conceptual framework on which the taxonomy is based, demonstrate how we tackled problems of ambiguity and synonymy in the controlled vocabularies, and describe a procedure by which the user can perform precise, relevant searches using the taxonomy.


of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor James W. Modestino. No. of pages in text. (113) With the advances in video compression and networking techniques, the last ten years have witnessed an explosive growth of video applications over the Internet. However, the service model of the current best-effort network was never engineered to handle video traffic and, as a result, video applications still suffer from varying and unpredictable network conditions, in terms of bandwidth, packet loss and delay. To address these problems, a lot of innovative techniques have been proposed and researched. Among them, scalable video coding is a promising one to cope with the dynamics of the available bandwidth and heterogeneous terminals. This work aims at improving the efficacy of scalable video transport over IP networks. In this work, we first propose an optimal interleaving scheme combined with motion-compensated fine granularity scalability video source coding and unequal loss protection schemes, under an imposed delay constraint. The network is modeled as a packet-loss channel with random delays. The motion compensation prediction, ULP allocation and the depth of the interleaver are jointly optimized based on the network status and the delay constraint. We then proceed to investigate the multiple path transport technique. A unified approach which incorporates adaptive motion compensation prediction, multiple description coding and unequal multiple path allocation, is proposed to improve both the robustness and error resilience property of the video coding and transmission system, while the delivered video quality is improved simultaneously. To analytically investigate the efficacy of error resilient transport schemes for progressively encoded sources, including unequal loss protection, best-effort and FEC transport schemes, we develop evaluation and optimization approaches for these transport schemes. In this part of the work, the network is modeled as an M/D/1/K queue, and then a comprehensive queueing analysis is provided. Armed with these results, the efficacy of these transport schemes for progressively encoded sources are investigated and compared.


This chapter considers the politics associated with measuring the success and failures of UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The first UN resolution on Women, Peace, and Security adopted by the Security Council in 2000 collected and encapsulated a range of elongated policy processes on a vast number of themes. These processes had been pushed by a substantial number of divergent actors with varying ideological visions. Given this, the resolution resonated predominately as a symbolic mechanism, rather than a roadmap for the implementation of the WPS agenda. In fact, reporting has been one of a few tools available for pushing implementation of what is otherwise a toothless document. Based on previous research, this article highlights existing points of contestation in order to analyze the 2015 report on the Global Study. It problematizes the assumed neutrality associated with measuring this contested and vague norm. This chapter argues that the limited effects of the Global Study to date should be viewed in the context of the diverging ideological positions held by vested actors who have pushed for or against implementation over the last fifteen years.


This research project set out to identify effective practices and models for working with projects that are required to comply with Enterprise Architecture (EA), and investigate the benefits and drawbacks brought about by compliance. Research methods used are canonical action research, a statistical survey study (n=293), focus groups and a structured literature review. Concrete contributions include a descriptive framework of different types of architecture (such as enterprise, domain and project architecture), best practices and an artifact and process model for projects conforming to EA (targeted at practitioners), a conceptualization of compliance (including four dimensions and compliance checks), a statistical explanatory model for EA conformance and benefits, and a typology of compliance tactics. In addition, the research has contributed to our knowledge on Enterprise Architecture and compliance in general. We will shortly elaborate on this below. The statistical study showed that most of the identified techniques are used in practice. Important compliance tactics in this respect are: knowledge exchanges, providing advice, working with a PSA, conducting compliance assessments, and having management propagate EA. Financial sanctions and disincentives proved to be barely used in practice. The results also showed that projects benefit in several ways from working with EA, namely delivering the desired quality more often, being better equipped to deal with risk and being able to manage complexity more effectively. Several of the hypothesized project benefits could not be confirmed, however, such as exceeding deadlines and budgets less often, and delivering the required functionality more frequently. EA simply did not have a significant effect on these aspects. The results also demonstrated that EA has a downright negative impact on the speed of initializing projects, probably due to EA introducing additional project complexity (e.g. getting acquainted with abstract EA prescriptions, dealing with additional stakeholders and balancing possible conflicts of interests). The results furthermore showed that several organization-wide benefits are achieved due to EA, namely accomplishing enterprise goals, gaining insight into organizational complexity, achieving integration, standardization and deduplication of related processes and systems, depicting a clear image of the future situation and providing a communicational frame of reference. Hypothesized organizational benefits not confirmed are achieving business/IT alignment and agility, controlling costs and complexity, and co-operating with other organizations effectively and efficiently. The statistical results furthermore showed that, although most techniques identified are used in practice, only three have a significant impact on achieving compliance with EA: compliance assessments, management propagation and assisting projects. Compliance of projects subsequently results in an increased ability to achieve EA-related benefits. At the organizational level, conformance has significant effects on achieving business/IT alignment, accomplishing enterprise-wide goals and integrating, standardizing and deduplicating processes and systems. At the project level, conformance is shown to have significant effects on the ability to manage project complexity, and delivering the desired quality and functionality. Interestingly, project compliance with EA has the strongest effects on organization-wide benefits, whereas projects themselves benefit to a lesser extent and in more subtle ways. In any case, the project level is shown to play an important part in achieving organization-wide goals, which is one of the key goals of EA.


We consider the problem of estimating sparse precision matrix of Gaussian copula distributions using samples with missing values in high dimensions. Existing approaches, primarily designed for Gaussian distributions, suggest using plugin estimators by disregarding the missing values. In this paper, we propose double plugin Gaussian (DoPinG) copula estimators to estimate the sparse precision matrix corresponding to non-paranormal distributions. DoPinG uses two plugin procedures and consists of three steps: (1) estimate nonparametric correlations based on observed values, including Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho; (2) estimate the nonparanormal correlation matrix; (3) plug into existing sparse precision estimators. We prove that DoPinG copula estimators consistently estimate the non-paranormal correlation matrix at a rate ofO( 1 (1 ) q logp n ), where is the probability of missing values. We provide experimental results to illustrate the effect of sample size and percentage of missing data on the model performance. Experimental results show that DoPinG is significantly better than estimators like mGlasso, which are primarily designed for Gaussian data.


More than half of the world's population lives in urban areas (UN Population Division 2018 The World's cities in 2018 (UN: New York)), which are especially vulnerable to climate extremes (Field et al 2012 Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation: Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)). Urbanization itself is known to increase surface temperatures, but its quantitative effect on extreme precipitation remains very uncertain. Using decadal convection-permitting climate simulations in four midlatitude megacities (Paris, France; New York City, USA; Tokyo, Japan; Shanghai, China), we show that urbanization can strongly increase the frequency and intensity of extreme urban precipitation. Frequency increases far more than intensity, by +16% (11%–22%) (95% confidence interval) for 1 year daily extremes, and +26% (11%–41%) for 1 year hourly extremes, downwind of city centers. Intensities of the same events increase by +5% (3.2%–6.4%) (daily extremes) and +6% (3.2%–9.8%) (hourly extremes), respectively. The intensity and frequency of extremes increases more for the rarest, most extreme events considered, and there is some indication that hourly extremes increase more than daily extremes. Our simulations also show that direct urban anthropogenic emissions of heat could be an important factor driving these changes. Urbanization is expected to continue in the future, and our results indicate that these effects should be considered in urban planning decisions to make cities more resilient to extreme precipitation.


In many developing countries new approaches are being sought by which to provide assistance for the small business and microenterprise sectors. Improved access to financial services and particularly credit is often an important part of this assistance. In the hope of avoiding the myriad problems that have faced small-farmer credit and other targeted lending programmes in the past, these newly developing programmes try to take into consideration the needs of borrowers and lenders in a microenterprise financial system. Except for a few well-discussed examples such as the several ACCION lending programmes in Latin America, the BKK in Indonesia and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, formal financial institutions do not typically provide services for microenterprises. Thus, in order to improve our understanding of the needs of borrowers and lenders in these markets, it is necessary to look at informal sources of finance.This article is the result of a study which sought to assess informal financial arrangements i...


The existence and rapid growth of chemical databases have brought into focus the utility of methods that can assist the discovery of predictive patterns in data, and communicating them in a manner designed to provoke insight. This has turned attention to machine learning techniques capable of extracting "symbolic" descriptions from data. At the cutting-edge of such techniques is Inductive Logic Programming (ILP). Given a set of observations and background knowledge encoded as a set of logical descriptions, an ILP system attempts to construct explanations for the observations. The explanations are in the same language as the observations and background knowledge - usually a subset of first-order logic. This contrasts with algorithms like decision-trees, and neural networks which employ simple propositional logic representations. This, along with the flexibility to include background knowledge - which can even include other propositional algorithms - allow a form of data analysis and decision-support that is, in principle, unmatched by first-generation methods. Bio/chemical applications of ILP have largely been concerned with determining "structure-activity" relationships (SARs). The task here is to obtain rules that predict the activity of a compound, like toxicity, from its chemical structure. The representation language adopted by ILP systems allows the development of compact, chemist-friendly "theories", and ILP systems have progressively been shown to be capable of handling 1, 2, and 3-dimensional descriptions of chemical structure. Empirical results in predicting mutagenicity and carcinogenicity suggest that structure-activity relations found by ILP systems achieve at least the same predictive power of traditional SAR techniques, with fewer limitations (like the need for alignment, pre-determination of structural features etc.) In some cases, they have found novel structural features that significantly improve the predictive capabilities of traditional 1 and 2-dimensional SAR methods. Here we summarise the progress achieved so far in the use of ILP in these areas, including ideas emerging from a recent toxicology prediction challenge which suggest that a combination of ILP and established prediction methods could provide a powerful form of relating chemical activity to structure.


Despite extensive theory and research on the geography of crime, few studies have examined the geography of commercial sex and sex trafficking through a criminological lens. As such, this study explores how social disorganization and routine activities help explain the geography of commercial sex venues, specifically illicit massage businesses (IMBs) that host commercial sex. Because IMBs have also been linked to sex trafficking, understanding which environmental contexts are conducive to their presence may also help identify sex trafficking premises. Findings from hierarchical logistic regression models indicate that both theories point to significant correlates of IMB placement in census tracts and cities, yet neither theory provides a sufficient explanation alone. Implications for future research and policy will be discussed.


Bronchial asthma (BA), atopic dermatitis (AD), and allergic rhinitis (AR) are well known atopic disorders with complex etiologies. This study was undertaken to investigate the role of filaggrin, eosinophil major basic protein (MBP) and leukotriene B4 (LTB4) in patients with BA, AD, and AR. Sera from 1,246 patients with different atopic disorders and 410 normal healthy controls were collected and were evaluated for filaggrin, MBP and LTB4 by specific sandwich ELISAs, whereas immunoglobulin E (IgE) was used as a positive control for atopic patients. Serum analysis showed that filaggrin levels were remarkably high in patients with AD and in patients with multiple (mixed) atopic disorders (p < 0.001), whereas its levels in BA and AR patients were low but much higher than in normal human sera (p < 0.01). MBP levels were also high in AR, BA and mixed atopic patients, whereas AD patients showed no increase of MBP (p > 0.05). In contrast, LTB4 level was found to be significantly low in all tested atopic patients groups as compared to the levels of LTB4 present in normal human sera (p < 0.001). In conclusion, these findings support an association between filaggrin, MBP or LTB4 and atopic disorders. Our data strongly suggest that filaggrin, MBP or LTB4 might be useful in elucidating the mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of these atopic disorders.


Flood release structures of high-head dams generate high-velocity plunging jets. These may scour the downstream rocky riverbed and even damage the dam foundation. Assessment of the scour evolution is essential to ensure the safety of the dam and appurtenant structures, as well as to guarantee the stability of its abutments.In the framework of a research project, near-prototype scaled experimental installation generating high-velocity jet impact in a plunge pool has been equipped with an artificial rock block. Pressure fluctuations over and under the block as well corresponding block movements are recorded for a jet impacting at the block upper face. The jet impact is situated along one of the block side faces, resulting in asymmetrical jet impact conditions. The analysis focuses on the reponse of the block due to the water pressures acting above the block and inside the fissures surrounding for both core and developed jets.


Fulfilling the dream as NASA prepares to send astronauts to Mars"Duggins gives you the how of the process along with the facts. Who knows what trails this book will help blaze. Read on."--Bill Nye the Science Guy(r) andexecutive director of The Planetary Society"From the Mariner probes of the 1960s to the rovers """ and """ from fanciful human travel in science fiction to realities for human exploration in the future, this book places into context the lure of the red planet and our desire to know it better."Spirit"Opportunity, """--Roger Launius, Senior Curator, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution"Mars may be the destination, but the book is really a study of the people who have taken us as far as we have come. Duggins has written a marvelous book, sure to inspire our imaginations and remind us that all space travel ultimately arises from human ingenuity."--Howard McCurdy, author of Space and the American Imagination""""Travel to and from Mars has long been a staple of science fiction. And yet the hurdles--both technological and financial--have kept human exploration of the red planet from becoming a reality. "Trailblazing Mars offers an inside look at the current efforts to fulfill this dream. "Award-winning journalist Pat Duggins examines the extreme new challenges that will be faced by astronauts on the journey there and back. They'll have to grow their own food, find their own water, and solve their own problems and emergencies without hope of rescue or re-supply. Mars travel will be more challenging and hazardous than settling the Old West--but we were not witness to the fate of the Donner Party on CNN. Can the technological hurdles be cleared? Will the public accept the very real possibility of astronaut death? Should a mission be publicly or privately funded? Is the science worth the cost? These and many other questions are answered in Duggins's exciting new book."


The field of Knowledge Management promises considerable benefits to organisations attempting to manage their intellectual resources, but what is the basis for this claim? In this paper it will be argued that unless the field of Knowledge Management (KM) first addresses the fundamentals of that which it claims to manage, it runs the risk of being discarded as just another failed management fad that promised much but delivered little. It will be argued that autopoietic theory, as developed by Maturana and Varela (1980), offers a useful epistemological basis from which KM may develop as a discipline.


In recent years, federated learning has been embraced as an approach for bringing about collaboration across large populations of learning agents. However, little is known about how collaboration protocols should take agents' incentives into account when allocating individual resources for communal learning in order to maintain such collaborations. Inspired by game theoretic notions, this paper introduces a framework for incentive-aware learning and data sharing in federated learning. Our stable and envy-free equilibria capture notions of collaboration in the presence of agents interested in meeting their learning objectives while keeping their own sample collection burden low. For example, in an envy-free equilibrium, no agent would wish to swap their sampling burden with any other agent and in a stable equilibrium, no agent would wish to unilaterally reduce their sampling burden. In addition to formalizing this framework, our contributions include characterizing the structural properties of such equilibria, proving when they exist, and showing how they can be computed. Furthermore, we compare the sample complexity of incentive-aware collaboration with that of optimal collaboration when one ignores agents' incentives.


Ozone (O3) is a major gaseous component of air pollution in urban environments. Recent epidemiological evidence suggests that O3 exposure may increase cardiovascular morbidity, but the specific biological mechanisms mediating O3associated cardiovascular effects remain to be elucidated. We designed a controlled human exposure study to address the question of whether short-term exposures to ambient levels of O3 cause acute cardiovascular responses as assessed by heart rate variability (HRV) and systemic biomarkers of inflammation and coagulability. Twenty five subjects (15 healthy and 10 asthmatic subjects) were recruited to participate in the study. The subjects were exposed to three conditions (filtered air, 100 ppb O3, and 200 ppb O3) in random order. Exposures were for 4 hours with intermittent exercise (30 min of each hour) at a minute ventilation of 20 L/kg/m2 body surface area. Exercise is used in controlled human exposure studies to simulate outdoor activity levels which involve higher ventilation rates that increase the effective dose of the pollutant. Heart rate variability was measured and blood samples were obtained immediately prior to, immediately after, and 20 h after each exposure period. Bronchoscopy to obtain bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid was performed at 20 h after exposure. We found that intermittent moderate-intensity exercise induced a pro-inflammatory systemic response characterized by increases in peripheral blood leukocyte counts, and C-reactive protein (CRP), monocyte chemotactic protein, and interleukin-6 concentrations. Exercise did not substantially alter levels of fibrinogen, angiotensin-converting enzyme, markers of coagulability, or HRV. We also found that exposure to 200 ppb O3 induced a decrease in lung function, airway injury as manifested by an increase in total BAL protein, and airway inflammation as evidenced by increases in BAL neutrophils, eosinophils, and several pro-inflammatory cytokines. Exposure to 100 ppb O3 caused no decrease in lung function and only mild airway inflammation. Despite the induction of a local lung inflammatory response at 200 ppb, there was little evidence of a systemic inflammatory response to O3, with the exception of a trend toward an increase in serum CRP at 24 h after exposure. Moreover, no evidence of a pro-coagulatory response to O3 exposure was found. Despite this lack of a systemic response, we did find that exposure to 200 ppb O3 induced a significant increase in the normalized low frequency (LF) domain of HRV at both 4 and 24 h after exposure. We also observed non-significant increases in the LF domain with 100 ppb exposure at both the 4-h and 24-h time points. The presence of an exposure-relationship when the LF data at all concentrations and time points were analyzed in a linear regression also supports the role of O3 exposure in the observed increase in LF HRV. To our knowledge this is the first controlled exposure study to find an effect on HRV with O3 alone. The results suggest that short-term exposures to O3 can have acute cardiovascular effects.


This article attempts to politically resituate Ignatiev and Garvey's conception of the 'Race Traitor' within contemporary notions of Critical Race Theory and Public Pedagogy. Race Traitor has been critiqued both by those on the academic and neo-conservative right, who accuse advocates of the project of genocide and misuse of public funds, and has a number of critics on the left who consider that the project is misguided, posturing and self-affirming for guilty whites and politically untenable. There are also post-structuralist critiques of the 'Race Traitor' position, which overstate its focus on embodiment and the post-racial as opposed to its concrete suggestions for resisting racial oppression. In this article we argue that Race Traitor must be situated within the politics of its time, which is within anarchist and Marxist politics, and that this contextualisation enables one to consider Race Traitor as a political form with resonance for contemporary Marxists, Anarchists and in struggles against racial oppression. Ignatiev and Garvey's manifesto, that 'treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity,' still has resonance amongst some anarchist groups both in the UK and North America. 'Race Traitor' has since been propagated through more recent work in Critical Race Theory by writers such as Derek Bell (an early reader of the 'Race Traitor' material), Richard Delgado and Zeus Leonardo, and we argue that Critical Race Theory provides a useful corrective to claims that a white autonomous movement can resist racial oppression. The article concludes by considering how CRT and public pedagogy may produce new political praxis for Race Traitors in the twenty-first century.


It is increasingly recognised that assessed writing at undergraduate level is a 'high stakes' activity… If there are 'problems' in writing, then the student is likely to fail' (Lillis and Scott, 2007: p.9). However, there has been relatively little work on the correlation between undergraduate students' writing and their academic attainment. This paper reports on a project which employs a layering of research methods to investigate the relationship between the written language and the academic attainment of Open University undergraduate students on a health and social care course.
The initial research process (Erling, 2009) investigated students' writing from courses in three different disciplines. This involved a combination of ethnographic investigation and textual analysis, the latter by means of the Measuring the Academic Skills of University Students (MASUS) procedure, a tool developed to explore the nature of academic writing in the 1990s at the University of Sydney's Language Centre (Bonnano and Jones, 1997). The results of the MASUS textual analysis indicated that students' use of language correlated with their attainment. The analysis also generated descriptions of some of the features of highly valued academic style.
In this paper, we report on a subsequent investigation involving a corpus-based linguistic analysis of the lexical chunks used in students' writing in one of the three disciplines (health and social care). We will compare this with an intuitive analysis of the chunks used in the same data (Adinolfi, forthcoming); this dual procedure for identifying lexical chunks in written corpora follows Leedham (2010). Preliminary analysis of the data suggests that students make more use of longer contiguous chunks as they proceed through the course.
The final stage in this research will be to compare students' use of academic-writing-related chunks, as measured by corpus tools and intuition, against the original MASUS assessments of proficiency to see how far they align. By layering methods in this way, we hope to gain deeper insights into the prestige features of academic language, while developing a range of tools to identify student texts which are not (re-) producing this valued style. The ethnographic data collected in the early stages of the project might then contribute to an understanding of why some students are more successful at producing the type of language that is valued by assessors within a particular discipline.


The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) prohibits the sale or distribution of any pesticide without prior registration and approval by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).1 EPA may deny applications for pesticide registration when "necessary to prevent unreasonable adverse effects on the environment."2 On September 10, 2015, the Ninth Circuit found EPA did not adequately research the effects of the chemical sulfoxaflor on bee populations in Pollinator Stewardship Council v. EPA.3 The court determined that EPA failed to follow its internal standard for data collection. Thus, the court vacated EPA's registration, and remanded it to the agency for further review.4 In Part I, this In Brief analyzes the standard for data collection affirmed in Pollinator Stewardship. Then, Part II explores the potential application and limitations of the Ninth Circuit's decision for future cases and agency decisions, both generally and for bees in particular. Pollinator Stewardship is a narrow victory that affirms EPA's duty to comply with its own data collection standards for pesticide regulation, but it remains unclear if this outcome will be translated to pesticides affecting other species.


Over the past decade, a sea change has occurred in the field of forestry. A vastly increased understanding of how ecological systems function has transformed the science from one focused on simplifying systems, producing wood, and managing at the stand-level to one concerned with understanding and managing complexity, providing a wide range of ecological goods and services, and managing across broad landscapes.Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is an authoritative and multidisciplinary examination of the current state of forestry and its relation to the emergent field of ecosystem management. Drawing upon the expertise of top professionals in the field, it provides an up-to-date synthesis of principles of ecosystem management and their implications for forest policy. Leading scientists, including Malcolm Hunter, Jr., Bruce G. Marcot, James K. Agee, Thomas R. Crow, Robert J. Naiman, John C. Gordon, R.W. Behan, Steven L. Yaffee, and many others examine topics that are central to the future of forestry: new understandings of ecological processes and principles, from stand structure and function to disturbance processes and the movement of organisms across landscapes challenges to long-held assumptions: the rationale for clearcutting, the wisdom of short rotations, the exclusion of fire traditional tools in light of expanded goals for forest landscapes managing at larger spatial scales, including practical information and ideas for managing large landscapes over long time periods the economic, organizational, and political issues that are critical to implementing successful ecosystem management and developing institutions to transform knowledge into action Featuring a 16-page centersection with color photographs that illustrate some of the best on-the-ground examples of ecosystem management from around the world, Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century is the definitive text on managing ecosystems. It provides a compelling case for thinking creatively beyond the bounds of traditional forest resource management, and will be essential reading for students; scientists working in state, federal, and private research institutions; public and private forest managers; staff members of environmental/conservation organizations; and policymakers.


The main objectives of sustainable construction activities are to avoid resource depletion of energy, water,and raw materials and to prevent environmental degradation caused by facilities and infrastructurethroughout their life cycle. The construction sector consumes yearly about half of all natural resourcesextracted in Europe and their transformation into building products has huge energy demands. Thereforethe focus of today's environmental policy is on the building end-of-life scenarios and material efficiency.Here waste prevention and recycling / reuse play a key role by providing huge energy, water and materialsavings. These issues are also specifically addressed in the Construction Products Regulation (CPR2011), where health and safety aspects related to use of construction products cover the entire lifecycle.Meanwhile the building sector is moving from new buildings towards maintenance and renovation. Thistrend will probably further increase by the energy conservation activities that will be required to achievethe 20-20-20 goals outlined by EC resulting in a need of renovation of a huge amount of buildings. Untiltoday hardly any construction product is designed keeping recycling/reuse in mind, the "Design for theEnvironment" -concept is one of the key steps towards increased recycling and reuse and thereby towardsminimal environmental impacts. This project has been carried out by VTT with cooperation with the Danishpartners SBi, DTU and DHI and the Swedish partners SGI and IVL.


The challenging background context for much of the discussion and cogitation in the panels and pages of this conference is the unfortunate fact that environmental protection law in virtually all its manifestations is currently faring rather poorly in the public policy arenas of national government. From the public health hazards of residual substances in consumer goods and human breast milk to the mighty troubles of human-caused climate disruption, many of the most significant structures of societal governance are locked in political and financial dysfunctions and impasses. Given the conference's goal to "explore more deeply the relationship between environmental protection and public health and how it should inform our efforts to become better stewards of the environment," this present essay carries an assignment to address the relationship between human-centric values (including public health concerns) on the one hand, and nature-centric (or "ecocentric," or "biocentric") values on the other. Should wise and fitting societal policies of the day give primacy to concerns for human health and welfare, or to the far more diffuse and intricate concerns and values represented by the natural laws and complex creatures and ecosystems coming to us from three billion years of evolving (animate/ carbon-based) life on Earth?


This research is germane to the area of on-body antennas and the characterisation of antennas in close proximity to biological matter. The ranges of frequencies discussed are currently popular for mobile communications, namely 0.9GHz to 6GHz with spot frequencies of GSM900, GSM1800 and WiFi2.5GHz. Particular attention is given to the elimination of errors in measurement. This is achieved by the characterisation of an anechoic chamber; a study of the effects of cables; a study of the interaction of surface currents and the human body; a study of tissue simulating liquid; the design of a simple body phantom; the characterisation of the on-body channel for human males in wet and dry clothing and a comparison of perturbation on antennas close to humans and a phantom.


Objective: To conduct a cross-sectional review of non-selected consecutive outpatients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as part of standard clinical care in 15 countries for an overview of the characteristics of patients with RA. Methods: The review included current disease activity using data from clinical assessment and a patient self-report questionnaire, which was translated into each language. Data on demographic, disease and treatment-related variables were collected and analysed using descriptive statistics. Variation in disease activity on DAS28 (disease activity score on 28-joint count) within and between countries was graphically analysed. A median regression model was applied to analyse differences in disease activity between countries. Results: Between January 2005 and October 2006, the QUEST-RA (Quantitative Patient Questionnaires in Standard Monitoring of Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis) project included 4363 patients from 48 sites in 15 countries; 78% were female, >90% Caucasian, mean age was 57 years and mean disease duration was 11.5 years. More than 80% of patients had been treated with methotrexate in all but three countries. Overall, patients had an active disease with a median DAS28 of 4.0, with a significant variation between countries (p<0.001). Among 42 sites with >50 patients included, low disease activity of DAS28 ⩽3.2 was found in the majority of patients in seven sites in five countries; in eight sites in five other countries, >50% of patients had high disease activity of DAS28 >5.1. Conclusions: This international multicentre cross-sectional database provides an overview of clinical status and treatments of patients with RA in standard clinical care in 2005–6 including countries that are infrequently involved in clinical research projects.


This paper contributes to the international research project 'Capturing the Gains: Economic and Social Upgrading in Global Production Networks and Trade'. Its main aim is to analyse the operations of international airlines in Africa and assess the influence of the international aviation industry on the development of tourism in selected African states. Simultaneously, through an exploration of the different ways in which international airline groups can foster the development of the tourism sector in Africa, the paper informs the general understanding of the influence of tourism on regional development. Although in general terms the paper focuses on the whole of Africa, more detailed issues are analysed on the basis of South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.


Business decisions and business logic are an important part of an organization's daily activities. In the not so near past they were modelled as integrative part of business processes, however, during the last years, they are managed as a separate entity. Still, decisions and underlying business logic often remain a black box. Therefore, the call for transparency increases. Current theory does not provide a measurable and quantitative way to measure transparency for business decisions. This paper extends the understanding of different views on transparency with regards to business decisions and underlying business logic and presents a framework including Key Transparency Indicators (KTI) to measure the transparency of business decisions and business logic. The framework is validated by means of an experiment using case study data. Results show that the framework and KTI's are useful to measure transparency. Further research will focus on further refinement of the measurements as well as further validation of the current measurements.


A recent report published by the Local Government Association (LGA), 'Children in Trouble', calls for the abolition of youth custody for 'all but violent offenders, drastically slashing the number of young people locked up by around 4000' (2006, p1). Such a move, the authors say, would represent a 65 per cent fall in the young prison population and save over £70m a year. The report was publicly welcomed by spokespersons for the charities NACRO and the Howard League for Penal Reform both of which have issued similar demands for a reduction in custody in recent months and years, alongside other campaigning organizations and a number of criminologists. The reasons cited are familiar: imprisoning young people is relatively expensive, frequently harmful to their longer term welfare and largely ineffective in terms of tackling re-offending. Whilst custody should remain the default option for children and young people who pose a serious risk to others, the majority should be subject to community based sanctions.
There is much to agree with in the LGA report and I should preface what follows by stating that nothing of what I write is intended to diminish the importance of reducing the imprisonment of children and young people. However, if this goal is to be realised, as the LGA acknowledges, then there must be viable community based alternatives in place, not least because there is a considerable constituency that doubts that this is possible or desirable. With this in mind, this article discusses the ups and downs of one form of community based work with young offenders, mentoring. In the space of about ten years, this has become an integral element of provision across the spectrum of youth justice. There are preventative mentoring schemes targeting young children designated at-risk and there are re-integrative schemes in which mentors are matched with young people whilst in custody so as to provide a form of support on release. And yet, at a point where the hundreds of new mentoring schemes established in recent years can be reasonably expected to have bedded down, with systems for referral, training, matching and so on in place, recent research, to be discussed below, has raised question marks over its effectiveness such that its transition from being 'what's promising' to 'what works' looks in doubt. Reflecting on this turn of events, the article revisits the context in and process by which mentoring grew to prominence and suggests that factors such as marketing and rebranding might have had a more important role than impartial research evidence.


Curcumin (diferuloylmethane), a yellow coloring agent extracted from turmeric is also used as a remedy for the treatment and prevention of inflammatory diseases. Acute and chronic inflammation is a major factor in the progression of obesity, type II diabetes, arthritis, pancreatitis, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases, as well as certain types of cancer. Turmeric has a long history of use in Ayurvedic medicine for the treatment of inflammatory disorders. Recent studies on the efficacy and therapeutic applicability of turmeric have suggested that the active ingredient of tumeric is curcumin. Further, compelling evidence has shown that curcumin has the ability to inhibit inflammatory cell proliferation, invasion, and angiogenesis through multiple molecular targets and mechanisms of action. Curcumin is safe, non‐toxic, and mediates its anti‐inflammatory effects through the down‐regulation of inflammatory transcription factors, cytokines, redox status, protein kinases, and enzymes that all promote inflammation. In addition, curcumin induces apoptosis through mitochondrial and receptor‐mediated pathways, as well as activation of caspase cascades. In the current study, the anti‐inflammatory effects of curcumin were evaluated relative to various chronic inflammatory diseases. Based on the available pharmacological data obtained from in vitro and in vivo research, as well as clinical trials, an opportunity exists to translate curcumin into clinics for the prevention of inflammatory diseases in the near future. © 2012 BioFactors, 39(1):69–77, 2013


The design of a real-time analyser for performing fast Fourier transforms is described. Data are gathered at regular intervals without breaks for servicing the purpose-designed Fourier computer, which is used at the maximum speed permitted by this device. Three DMA devices are used to perform input, output and service of the Fourier computer. Separation of the real and complex parts and bit reversal are carried out by unusual wiring of the DMA devices to achieve the necessary speed with relatively few components.


This paper explores the role of various types of location control in descriptions of placement events in Hungarian. It will be shown that general verb choices cannot be explained in terms of spatial relations (such as containment and support) or spatial relational changes (such as joining and separation). On the contrary, all main verb distinctions within the placement domain can be described in terms of agentive control settings between the Figure and agentive entities (e.g., the Agent, other persons). In Hungarian, only events with continuous agentive control along the motion trajectory are described as either 'putting' or 'taking', and only events where the Figure is furthermore controlled by a non-agentive entity at the Goal are described as 'putting'.


Live fibre bundles were isolated from the fast myotomal muscle of short-horned sculpin (Myoxocephalus scorpius L.) and isometric contractile properties and the forcevelocity (PV) relationship determined at 5, 10 and 15 °C. Experiments were carried out on winter- and summer-caught sculpins and on individuals acclimated for 68 weeks to either 5 or 15 °C (12 h:12 h light:dark). Maximum tetanic tension (P0) in fibres from 15 °C-acclimated fish increased from 125 kN m-2 at 5 °C to 282 kN m-2 at 15 °C (R10=2.3). For 5 °C-acclimated fish, P0 was 139 kN m-2 at 5 °C, but fell to 78 kN m-2 at 15 °C, consistent with a partial failure of excitationcontraction coupling at high temperatures. Peak force at 15 °C was increased 2.2 times following depolarisation with a high-K+ solution, but was unaffected by the addition of caffeine and/or eserine to the Ringer's solution. The results from winter- and summer-caught fish were similar to those from 5 °C- and 15 °C-acclimated sculpins respectively. In 15 °C-acclimated fish, the power output of muscle fibres calculated from the PV relationship was 55 W kg-1 at 5 °C and 206 W kg-1 at 15 °C. The PV relationship at 5 °C was significantly less curved in muscle fibres from 5 °C- than from 15 °C-acclimated fish. After normalizing the curves for P0 and Vmax, it was found that the change in curvature was sufficient to produce a 40 % increase in relative power output at 5 °C in cold-acclimated fish. The maximum contraction speed of muscle fibres at 15 °C was 2.4 times higher in 15 °C- than in 5 °C-acclimated fish. It was concluded that acclimation modifies the contractile properties of fast muscle fibres at both low and high temperatures.


With the increased adoption of the FAIR Principles, a wide range of stakeholders, from scientists to publishers, funding agencies and policy makers, are seeking ways to transparently evaluate resource FAIRness. We describe the FAIR Evaluator, a software infrastructure to register and execute tests of compliance with the recently published FAIR Metrics. The Evaluator enables digital resources to be assessed objectively and transparently. We illustrate its application to three widely used generalist repositories - Dataverse, Dryad, and Zenodo - and report their feedback. Evaluations allow communities to select relevant Metric subsets to deliver FAIRness measurements in diverse and specialized applications. Evaluations are executed in a semi-automated manner through Web Forms filled-in by a user, or through a JSON-based API. A comparison of manual vs automated evaluation reveals that automated evaluations are generally stricter, resulting in lower, though more accurate, FAIRness scores. Finally, we highlight the need for enhanced infrastructure such as standards registries, like FAIRsharing, as well as additional community involvement in domain-specific data infrastructure creation.


Abstract Recent work has shown that pre-trained language models such as BERT improve robustness to spurious correlations in the dataset. Intrigued by these results, we find that the key to their success is generalization from a small amount of counterexamples where the spurious correlations do not hold. When such minority examples are scarce, pre-trained models perform as poorly as models trained from scratch. In the case of extreme minority, we propose to use multi-task learning (MTL) to improve generalization. Our experiments on natural language inference and paraphrase identification show that MTL with the right auxiliary tasks significantly improves performance on challenging examples without hurting the in-distribution performance. Further, we show that the gain from MTL mainly comes from improved generalization from the minority examples. Our results highlight the importance of data diversity for overcoming spurious correlations.1


In this paper we introduce a new technique to texture surfaces. Our approach has the advantage that the texture does not have to be computed at each point of the surface. Rather, we precompute a small set of texture maps which we then map aperiodically onto the surface. The algorithm borrows from recent mathematical results in the area of aperiodic tilings of the plane. To demonstrate the feasibility of the method we apply it to the rendering of water surfaces and caustics.


Abstract The first observation of the beta-layering phenomenon showed that it was possible to fabricate inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets having an outer ablating shell surrounding a symmetric solid layer of DT fusion fuel. The sensitivity of fusion yield to the internal DT ice roughness is a function of many factors, one of which is the relatively low density of solid DT (0.25 g/cm3), leading to a high Atwood number for the ablator/fuel interface. This is one of the issues that has led us to consider other DT-based fuels having higher densities than pure DT but still capable of being automatically redistributed into a uniform layer by beta-layering. The two principle conditions for beta-layering redistribution, self-heating and a moderately high vapor pressure, can be found in only a few other systems. But by concentrating on hydrides of elements in the second row of the periodic chart, we can find materials which should beta-layer and which might be good candidates for fusion fuel. We exclude lithium hydride and beryllium hydride, because these materials are solids at room temperature where an automatic redistribution technique such as beta-layering would not be necessary. Therefore we begin with boron and consider the following materials: • diborane: B2(DT)3 (or B2D3T3), • methane: C(DT)2 (or CD2T2), • ammonia: N(DT)3/2 (i.e., 0.5·NDT2 + 0.5·ND2T), • water: DT0, and • hydrofluoric acid: (DT)1/2F (i.e., 0.5·kDF + 0.5·TF).


A strong Th17 inflammatory response aggravates ischemia reperfusion-induced (IR-induced) acute kidney injury (AKI), tissue fibrosis, and AKI-to-chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression. However, the underlying mechanisms of sustained Th17 activation following AKI and during AKI-to-CKD progression are unclear. In this issue of the JCI, Mehrotra et al. present compelling evidence that the store-operated calcium (Ca2+) channel Orai1 sustains Th17-driven inflammatory response after AKI and drives the AKI-to-CKD transition. Orai1 blockade significantly protected renal function from IR, attenuated high-salt-induced AKI-to-CKD progression in rats, and decreased Th17 response in rat and human T cells. Therapeutic targeting of Orai1 can potentially reduce AKI, AKI-to-CKD progression, and other Th17-driven diseases.


This article provides a quantitative analysis of th e effects of Pakistan government domestic wheat procurement, sales, and trade polici es on wheat supply, demand, prices, and overall inflation. Analysis of price multipliers i ndicates that increases in wheat procurement prices (one means of promoting domestic procurement ) have relatively small effects on the overall consumer price index. Partial equilibrium a nalysis of wheat markets suggests that fluctuations in production, rather than market mani pulation, are plausible explanations for price increases in recent years. Comparisons of do mestic and international prices suggest that promoting private sector imports is one alternative for increasing supply and stabilising market prices, particularly in years of production shortfa lls. Overall, this paper concludes that market forces play a dominant role in price determination in Pakistan, and that policies that promote the private sector wheat trade can both increase pr ic stability and reduce fiscal costs.


Supplemental Digital Content is Available in the Text. Summary: The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) has developed item banks, short forms, and computer-adaptive tests (CATs) to help standardize measurement for important patient-reported outcome domains. These tools have the potential to revolutionize outcome measurement in clinical research through greater assessment precision while reducing response burden. Perceived implementation challenges include the need for CAT software, mobile technology, and Internet access. Here, we present preliminary results examining the feasibility of using PROMIS tools within a large, multicenter clinical trials consortium. The assessment of 10 PROMIS domains was incorporated into the longitudinal data collection of 6 ongoing orthopaedic trauma clinical trials for participants being evaluated at 3, 6, and 12 months after an orthopaedic injury. Twelve-month assessments included both CAT assessments and completion of full item banks for a subset of domains. Data were collected for 1000 trauma patients at 43 trauma centers using a custom-built application which included an interface with our primary data capture system. Paper short forms were available as backup instruments and used infrequently. Six- and 12-month study assessments were conducted for 83% and 77% of patients, respectively. It was feasible to use PROMIS tools in a large multicenter, trauma orthopaedics research setting. The ability to efficiently assess a wide spectrum of domains is critically important to the successful completion of future large-scale trials. Level of Evidence: Prognostic Level II.


If housing markets exhibit slow adjustment to system shocks, then hedonic estimates of the price impact from environmental amenity trends may be time variant. This paper suggests an alternative to the cross-sectional model for estimating hedonic prices using an error correction approach that allows for endogenous environmental quality. The model is applied to data concerning an open space purchase program in Boulder, Colorado, and shows that the economic impact of an open space purchase takes several years to be fully realized. This observation questions using cross-sectional, hedonic models for evaluating willingness to pay for time-trended environmental amenities. (JEL Q24, R521)


In this work, we designed and fabricated a multifunctional nanocomposite system that consists of chitosan, raspberry-like silver nanoparticles, and graphene oxide. The room temperature atmospheric pressure microplasma (RT-APM) process provides a rapid, facile, and environmentally-friendly method for introducing silver nanoparticles into the composite system. Our composite can achieve a pH controlled single and/or dual drug release. Under pH 7.4 for methyl blue loaded on chitosan, the drug release profile features a burst release during the first 10 h, followed by a more stabilized release of 70–80% after 40–50 h. For fluorescein sodium loaded on graphene oxide, the drug release only reached 45% towards the end of 240 h. When the composite acted as a dual drug release system, the interaction of fluorescein sodium and methyl blue slowed down the methyl blue release rate. Under pH 4, both single and dual drug systems showed a much higher release rate. In addition, our composite system demonstrated strong antibacterial abilities against E. coli and S. aureus, as well as an excellent photothermal conversion effect under irradiation of near infrared lasers. The photothermal conversion efficiency can be controlled by the laser power. These unique functionalities of our nanocomposite point to its potential application in multiple areas, such as multimodal therapeutics in healthcare, water treatment, and anti-microbials, among others.


Competing nonlinear optical effects are involved in the interaction of femtosecond laser pulses with transparent dielectrics: supercontinuum generation and multiphoton-induced bulk damage. We measured the threshold energy for supercontinuum generation and bulk damage in fused silica using numerical apertures (NAs) ranging from 0.01 to 0.65. The threshold for supercontinuum generation exhibits a minimum near 0.05NA and increases quickly above 0.1 NA. For NAs greater than 0.25, we observe no supercontinuum generation. The extent of the blue broadening of the supercontinuum spectrum decreases significantly as the NA is increased from 0.01 to 0.08, showing that weak focusing is important for generating the broadest supercontinuum spectrum. Using a light-scattering technique to detect the onset of bulk damage, we confirmed bulk damage at all NAs studied. At a high NA, the damage threshold is well below the critical power for self-focusing.


The case presents the student with financial ratios for eight pairs of unidentified companies and asks them to mate the description of the company with the financial profile derived from the ratios. The primary objective of this case is to introduce students to financial ratio analysisin particular, the range of ratios and the insights each one affords. This case presumes that students have already been introduced to the definitions of various financial ratios through other readings or lectures. The structured exploration of pairs of companies within an industry affords a number of important insights into strategy and financial performance. First, the economics of individual industries account for significant variations in financial ratios because of differences in technologies, product characteristics, or competitive structures. Second, financial performance results from managerial choices: within industries, the wide variation in financial ratios is often a result of the differences in corporate strategy in marketing, operations, and finance. For those reasons, this case is a good springboard into subsequent classes, which deal with the interaction of strategy and financial performance.


Tests made of the sensory-perceptual, cognitive, and psychomotor abilities of untreated young patients with essential hypertension have revealed a pattern suggesting a slight functional impairment of the central nervous system. Reduced performance was most marked for those tasks requiring speed arid psychomotor coordination, particularly when the behaviors observed were self-initiated. Lowered scores were more evident among female hypertensives; no differences in performance by race were noted. The deficits measured by these sensitive tests do not appear to be great enough to intrude on everyday activity nor to impair work ability. Changes that may result from blood-pressure-lowering therapies will require further study. (Hypertension 4: 355–360, 1982)


The full elastic tensors of the sheet silicates muscovite, illite-smectite, kaolinite, dickite, and nacrite have been derived with first-principles calculations based on density functional theory. For muscovite, there is excellent agreement between calculated properties and experimental results. The influence of cation disorder was investigated and found to be minimal. On the other hand, stacking disorder is found to be of some relevance for kaolin minerals. The corresponding single-crystal seismic wave velocities were also derived for each phase. These revealed that kaolin minerals exhibit a distinct type of seismic anisotropy, which we relate to hydrogen bonding. The elastic properties of a shale aggregate was predicted by averaging the calculated properties of the contributing mineral phases over their orientation distributions. Calculated elastic properties display higher stiffness and lower p-wave anisotropy. The difference is likely due to the presence of oriented flattened pores in natural samples that are not taken into account in the averaging.


Bioincompatibility of peritoneal dialysis fluids (PDF) has been linked to the presence of glucose degradation products (GDP). Previous experiments have shown that short-term exposure to several GDP at concentrations found in commercially available PDF had no significant effect on human peritoneal mesothelial cells (HPMC). During continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, however, cells are continually exposed to GDP for extended periods of time. Thus, the impact of GDP on HPMC during long-term exposure was assessed. HPMC were cultured for up to 36 d in the presence of 6 identified GDP (acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, furaldehyde, glyoxal, methylglyoxal, and 5-HMF) at doses that reflect their concentrations in conventional PDF. At regular time intervals, the ability of HPMC to secrete cytokines (interleukin-6 [IL-6]) and extracellular matrix molecules (fibronectin) was evaluated. In addition, cell viability, morphology, and proliferative potential were assessed. Exposure to GDP resulted in a significant reduction in mesothelial IL-6 and fibronectin release. Approximately 80% of this decrease occurred during the first 12 d of the exposure and was paralleled by a gradual loss of cell viability and development of morphologic alterations. After 36 d of exposure, the number of cells in GDP-treated cultures was reduced by nearly 60%. However, GDP-treated cells were able to resume normal proliferation when transferred to a normal GDP-free medium. HPMC viability and function may be impaired during long-term exposure to clinically relevant concentrations of GDP, which suggests a potential role of GDP in the pathogenesis of peritoneal membrane dysfunction during chronic peritoneal dialysis.


In this thesis, we consider a pair of primary link (PU link) and a pair of cognitive link (CR link) in a fading channel. The PU link and CR link share spectrum simultaneously with different priorities, establishing the spectrum sharing network. The PU link has a higher priority to utilize spectrum with respect to the CR link. A desired quality of service (QoS) is given as a threshold on the PU link when it utilizes spectrum. The CR link utilizes spectrum only when the PU link is assured with the desired QoS or recognized as idle, not utilizing spectrum. Under this constraint, the CR link utilizes spectrum with an opportunistic power scale to assure the desired QoS on the PU link. To optimize the spectrum usage, we propose a fuzzy-based optimal power control strategy for the CR link using Mamdani fuzzy control. With the proposed control strategy, the CR link can estimate an optimal power scale for the spectrum sharing network.To illustrate the proposed fuzzy-based optimal power control strategy and its advantages, we approach the spectrum sharing network in two different propagation environments: without path loss and with path loss. In the propagation environment without path loss, we assume all channel state information (CSI) on each transmission side is available to the others, including the PU's signal-to-noise (PU's SNR) and PU's interference channel gain . These two variables are used as fuzzy antecedents to estimate a corresponding power scale. In the propagation environment with path loss, we analyze the spectrum sharing network from the geometric point of view. We assume all CSI on each side is available to the others, including the PU's SNR, PU's interference channel gain and relative distance is fixed and normalized to 1, we use PU's SNR and relative distance as fuzzy antecedents to calculate a corresponding power scale.


Aiming at getting the general requirements of the beam combine for ignition scale laser facilities, the analytical expressions including the factors affecting the combine results are derived. The physical meanings of every part are illustrated. Based on these expressions, the effects of the factors, including the beam configuration, piston error, and tip/tilt error, are studied analytically and numerically. The results show that the beam configuration cannot affect the Strehl ratio (SR) of the combined beam, but it influences the FWHM of the main peak and the ratio of the main peak and the side peak. The beam separation should be no more than 1.24 times the individual beam width for the multibeam combine, and be close to the individual beam width for the two-beam combine as much as possible. The piston error can change the characteristics of the combine beam focus, including the peak intensity, the focal spot morphology, the fractional energy contained within a certain area, and the center of mass. For the two-beam combine, a piston error less than 2π/5 rad is suitable, and for the multibeam combine, the standard deviation of the piston error should be no more than 2π/10 rad. The tip/tilt error has a great influence on the combined results. It affects the superposition degree of the focal spots of the combined elements directly. A requirement of 0.5~1 μrad for the standard deviation of the tip/tilt error is adequate.


It is important to be able to predict the potential spread of water borne diseases when building dams or redirecting rivers. This study was designed to test whether the use of a growing degree day (GDD) climate model and remotely sensed data (RS) within a geographic information system (GIS), could be used to predict both the distribution and severity of Schistosoma haematobium . Growing degree days are defined as the number of degrees centigrade over the minimum temperature required for development. The base temperature and the number of GDD required to complete one generation varies for each species. A monthly climate surface grid containing the high and low temperature, rainfall, potential evapotranspiration (PET), and the ratio of rain to PET was used to calculate the total number of GDD provisional on suitable moisture content in the soil. The latitude and longitude for known snail locations were used to create a point file. A 5km buffer was made around each point. Mean values were extracted from buffer areas for Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data on maximum land surface temperature (Tmax) and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). The values for Tmax ranged from 15-28 and the NDVI values were 130-157. A map query found all areas that meet both criteria and produced a model surface showing the potential distribution of the vectors for this disease. Results indicate that the GDD and AVHRR models can be used together to define both the distribution range and relative risk of S.haematobium in anticipated water development projects and for control program planning and better allocation of health resources in endemic vs. non-endemic areas.


Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from bone marrow and they can differentiate in a variety of cell types, including osteoblasts, adipocytes, chondrocytes, myoblasts, hepatocytes, and neural cells. For this reason they provide a promising role for developing cell-based therapy for degenerative diseases. Understanding the mechanisms behind MSC cell fate determination is not easy, because the molecular processes that drive differentiation are complex and poorly understood. So, also if in the last years many improvements have been done, some problems still remain. We planned to investigate on differentiation of MSC and in particular we wanted to focus our activities towards osteoblast differentiation; at this aim, we silenced specific mRNAs using a mouse shRNA library present in our institute, composed of at least two silencing constructs for each transcript, in a 96-well-plates-based screening strategy. In the first part of this study we set up the components and the experimental conditions to perform the screening. After, we proceeded with the screening and we were able to screen a part of the library. With this methodology we identified genes that are possible candidates to have a role in osteoblast differentiation. First of all, we made a Gene Ontology classification of these candidates using bioinfomatic tools and we identified genes involved in different processes and having different functions. Among the candidate genes, a big part is represented by genes whose function is still unknown, some of which represent putative novel transcription factors that we named ObI- (Osteoblast inducer-). In this study we focused our experiments on the first of these genes that we identified, ObI-1. We also considered genes whose function is known and that are involved in different processes but with a non described role in osteogenic differentiation. Among these genes we focused our attention on Serine racemase, which role in osteogenic differentiation was already suggested, but not largely demonstrated. For both the candidates that we treated in this study we carried out experiments to confirm the impairment in osteogenic differentiation as effects of their silencing and we made expression analyses in tissues and in our cells. Furthermore, as regards ObI-1 candidate, we performed a more deeply analysis due to characterization of his function.


A new exhibition from Warakurna artists in Australia's Western Desert opens at the South Australian Museum this Friday, 29 August 2014. Warakurna: All the Stories Got into our Minds and Eyes, is a collection of paintings which was produced at Warakurna, a community at the foot of the Rawlinson Ranges in Western Australia, 300 kilometres west of Uluru (Ayers Rock). The works are the product of a thriving art centre in the heart of the Ngaanyatjarra Lands. Western Desert people were among the last groups of Aboriginal people in Australia to have contact with Europeans. Warakurna lay in the middle of the flight path of missiles launched from Woomera in the South Australian desert in the 1960s. While traditional Western Desert art is renowned for sharing ancient stories, Warakurna: All the Stories Got into our Minds and Eyes is a new art movement that blends modern and traditional painting styles to explore events such as the coming of explorers, prospectors and missionaries, building roads, missile testing and their return to their homeland. South Australian Museum Director Brian Oldman said, "The exhibition introduces us to a significant Australian Aboriginal community and events that have shaped its development. Through an emerging style of art from Warakurna, we are able to learn the stories of the region and how its people feel about their interactions with European culture." Warakurna: All the Stories Got into our Minds and Eyes will be showcased at the South Australian Museum from Friday 29 August and will run until Sunday 30 November.


Stable gastric pentadecapeptide BPC 157 (BPC 157, as an antiulcer agent in clinical trials for inflammatory bowel disease; PLD‐116, PL 14736, Pliva, no toxicity reported) alone (without carrier) ameliorates healing of tendon and bone, respectively, as well as other tissues. Thereby, we focus on Achilles tendon‐to‐bone healing: tendon to bone could not be healed spontaneously, but it was recovered by this peptide. After the rat's Achilles tendon was sharply transected from calcaneal bone, agents [BPC 157 (10 µg, 10 ng, 10 pg), 6α‐methylprednisolone (1 mg), 0.9% NaCl (5 mL)] were given alone or in combination [/kg body weight (b.w.) intraperitoneally, once time daily, first 30‐min after surgery, last 24 h before analysis]. Tested at days 1, 4, 7, 10, 14, and 21 after Achilles detachment, BPC 157 improves healing functionally [Achilles functional index (AFI) values substantially increased], biomechanically (load to failure, stiffness, and Young elasticity modulus significantly increased), macro/microscopically, immunohistochemistry (better organization of collagen fibers, and advanced vascular appearance, more collagen type I). 6α‐Methylprednisolone consistently aggravates the healing, while BPC 157 substantially reduces 6α‐methylprednisolone healing aggravation. Thus, direct tendon‐to‐bone healing using stabile nontoxic peptide BPC 157 without a carrier might successfully exchange the present reconstructive surgical methods. © 2006 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res


Websites like MapQuest and Google Maps have transformed the way we think about maps. But these services do more than offer driving directionsthey provide APIs that web developers can use to build highly customized map-based applications. In Map Scripting 101, author Adam DuVander delivers 73 immediately useful scripts that will show you how to create interactive maps and mashups. You'll build tools like a local concert tracker, a real-time weather map, a Twitter friend-finder, an annotated map of Central Park, and much more. And because the book is based on the cross-platform Mapstraction JavaScript library, everything you create will be able to use nearly any mapping service, including OpenStreetMap, MapQuest, Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. You'll also learn how to: Create, embed, and manipulate basic maps by setting zoom levels and map boundariesShow, hide, and filter location markers and info-bubblesCustomize your maps for visitors based on their locationUse common data formats like GPS XML, Google Earth's KML, and GeoRSSCreate graphical overlays on maps to better analyze data and trendsUse freely available geodata from websites like Yelp and Upcomingand public domain geodata from the US government Map Scripting 101 is perfect for any web developer getting started with map scripting, whether you want to track earthquakes around the world, or just mark the best coffee shops in Dubuque.


ABSTRACT This article analyses the relationship between compatibility and innovation in markets with network effects using a model of competition with endogenous R&D, commercialization and compatibility. Compatibility is a mutual decision between firms and demand is partially dependent on overall consumption across compatible networks. Incumbent acquisition of an innovation or profit from entry provides entrepreneurs with an incentive for developing technological improvements and entrepreneurs receive greater returns if larger incumbents offer compatibility with their installed base. But for sufficiently weak network effects a large incumbent increases demand for its own product by denying compatibility to rivals. As a result, a credible threat of incompatibility reduces the entrepreneur's reserve to sell an innovation, but can also increase offers from smaller incumbents to acquire the innovation if it also avoids an incompatibility response from a larger incumbent. In response, entrepreneurs adjust their research effort in order to target a favourable compatibility regime that maximizes profit from entry or offers to acquire the innovation from incumbents. This leads to a complex relationship between the strength of network effects, innovation incentives, the entrepreneur's ambition for improvement and potentially disrupting the compatibility regime.


Chronic exercise has been reported to improve cognitive function. However, whether and how different types of exercise affect various learning and memory tasks remain uncertain. To address this issue, male BALB/c mice were trained for 4 weeks under two different exercise protocols: moderate treadmill running or voluntary wheel running. After exercise training, their spatial memory and aversive memory were evaluated by a Morris water maze and by one‐trial passive avoidance (PA), respectively. Levels of neural plasticity‐related proteins, i.e. brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), tropomyosin‐related kinase B (TrkB) and synaptotagmin I (Syt I), in hippocampus and amygdala were determined by ELISA or immunoblotting. Finally, the functional roles of these proteins in the basolateral amygdala were verified by locally blocking them with K252a (a TrkB kinase inhibitor), or lentivirus expressing Syt I shRNA. We found that (1) although both moderate treadmill running and wheel running improved the Morris water maze performance, only the former improved PA performance; (2) likewise, both exercise protocols upregulated the BDNF–TrkB pathway and Syt I in the hippocampus, whereas only treadmill exercise upregulated their expression levels in the amygdala; (3) local injection of K252a abolished the treadmill exercise‐facilitated PA performance and upregulation of amygdalar TrkB and Syt I; and (4) local administration of Syt I shRNA abolished the treadmill exercise‐facilitated PA performance and upregulation of amygdalar Syt I. Therefore, our results support the notion that different forms of exercise induce neuroplasticity changes in different brain regions, and thus exert diverse effects on various forms of learning and memory.


This work grew out of a need to try to understand my often experienced sense of being misunderstood, misrepresented and marginalised. A prerequisite to helping others in mental health nursing is arguably some requirement to understand one's self. But who is the self? In this thesis I use an autoethnographic approach to examine how the self, multiple selves and identity formation is socially constructed. Social constructionism contends that categories of knowledge and reality are actively created by social relationships and interactions. As an autobiographical genre of writing, this evocative autoethnography has been written in the first person displaying my multiple layers, connecting my selves to the cultures I inhabit. As a reflexive methodology it offers the researcher a means of critically exploring the social forces and discursive practices that have shaped his own cultures. In addition I discuss the contrast between traditional guidelines and protocol driven ethics with more progressive relational ethics. Central to relational ethics is the question 'What should I do now?' rather than the statement 'This is what you should do now.' I continue by arguing that we use stories as 'equipment for living', as tools to understand, negotiate and make sense of the many different situations we encounter. In recent years, as part of the 'narrative turn' in the social sciences, a growing number of scholars have suggested that we live in a world shaped by these stories. I discuss connections between the cultures people occupy and how an individual's reflexivity can keep them stuck or liberated and emancipated with regard to their personal narratives. Whilst the text is not intentionally instructional, storytelling can be instructive. By showing my vulnerabilities the work is a prism for the reader to reflect on their narratives and the cultures they inhabit.


The phosphate-regulating gene with homologies to endopeptidases on the X chromosome (PHEX) is a member of the neutral endopeptidase family, which is expressed predominantly on the plasma membranes of mature osteoblasts and osteocytes. Although it is known that the loss of PHEX function results in X-linked hypophosphatemic rickets, characterized by abnormal bone matrix mineralization and renal phosphate wasting, little is known about how PHEX is regulated. We therefore sought to determine whether the murine PHEX gene is regulated by glucocorticoids (GCs), which are known to influence phosphate homeostasis and bone metabolism. Northern blot analysis revealed increased PHEX mRNA expression in GC-treated suckling mice (1.5-fold) and in rat osteogenic sarcoma (UMR-106) cells (2.5-fold). An increase was also seen in PHEX promoter activity in transiently transfected UMR-106 cells with GC treatment. Analysis of nested promoter deletions revealed that an atypical GC response element was located between -337 and -315 bp. Mutational analysis and electrophoretic mobility shift assays further identified -326 to -321 bp as a site involved in GC regulation. Supershift analyses and electrophoretic mobility shift assay competition studies indicated that the core binding factor alpha1-subunit transcription factor is able to bind to this region and may therefore play a role in the GC response of the murine PHEX gene.


Abstract Despite strong optimism that the enthronement of democratic rule in Nigeria in 1999 would avert or contain ethnic and religious conflicts, the country has witnessed high level ethnic and religious violence with devastating consequences. This paper examines ethnic and religious conflicts in Nigeria in terms of its causes and impacts from 1999 to date. It argues that the weakness of the state has impacted significantly on the management of ethnic and religious conflicts in view of the fact that the state has increasingly become less responsive to the security needs of its citizens. The paper contends further that the challenge of managing ethnic and religious conflicts in Nigeria lies squarely in rebuilding state capacity for the effective and efficient management of diversities along ethnic and religious fault-lines. In the final analysis, the paper provides some recommendations in terms of how to fast-track efforts towards peace, security and stability in the Nigerian state. Key Words: Nigeria, State, Ethnic, Religion, Conflict, Pluralism. When ethnic and religious leaders preach reconciliation without having unequivocally committed themselves to struggle on the side of the oppressed for justice, they are caught straddling a pseudo-neutrality made of nothing but thin air (Wink, 1997:22) [emphasis added]. Introduction Nigeria is clearly a prototype state in accommodating ethnic and religious fault-lines. With a population of 140 million and over 250 ethno-linguistic groups, it is the only country with a population of half Christians and half Muslims (Paden, 2008:6). Since 1999, violent conflicts have become a method of collective action by the diverse ethnic and religious groups in Nigeria. In the last ten years, the loss of human lives and the destruction of properties is immense and the cost is beyond measurement. The incentive for ethnic and religious groups to approach the courts in cases of disputes is dependent on the remedies available, in terms of access to courts, the cost of judicial actions, and delay in getting court judgments and individuals' confidence in the judiciary as an impartial arbiter. Where legal institutions are weak or there is open complicity between the judges and a particular group against another group, the latter may turn to informal means of seeking redress. Thus conflict rather than co-operation or bargaining has emerged as a 'rational', though incredible method of interactions between or amongst ethnic and religious groups in Nigeria. It is also the case, however, that failure to build adequate state capacity - to help put in place or resuscitate effective public institutions for law and order and the provision of social services - can also doom peace-building efforts in Nigeria. Some of the ethno-religious conflicts that have captured national and international attention in the last ten years (1999 to 2009) in Nigeria include; the Tiv vs Jukun, Jukun vs Kuteb, Chamba vs Kuteb in Tararba State, Ogoni vs Andon in Rivers State, the Sharia crisis in Kaduna State, the Tiv vs other ethnic groups in Azara of Nasarawa State in 2001, the Hausa/Fulani vs the Anaguta, Afizere and Berom in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State in 2001, the Tarok vs Hausa/Fulani in Wase Local Government Area in 2004, the Goemai vs the Hausa/Fulani in Shendam Local government Area of Plateau State in 2002, the religious violence of Maidiguri, Borno State in 2005, the Quan vs Pan in Quan'Pan Local Government Area of Plateau State in 2006, the Hausa/Fulani vs the Anaguta, Afizere and Berom in Jos North Local Government Area of Plateau State in 2008, and the 'Boko Haram' violence that engulfed Borno, Yobe, Bauchi and Kano states in July, 2009 respectively. Ethnic and Religious Conflicts in Nigeria from 1999 to 2008: An Overview of some of the Causes While the roots of ethnic and religious conflicts have been linked to colonialism and the cold war (Machava, 2008:2), other scholars argue that ethnic and religious conflicts are rooted in bad governance, politicization of ethnic and religious identities, the competition and conflict for political power by the ethnic and religious communities respectively (Anarfi, 2004; Conversi, 1999). …


Microsatellites are important genetic markers and have been broadly employed in many genetic studies. Currently, polymorphisms in microsatellites are often detected by an automated system of capillary electrophoresis with fluorescent dyes. In this situation, different dye combinations may cause pull-up/bleed-through problems, which introduce noise signals from one dye channel into another, causing genotyping errors. Here, we report the detection of such a problem at two microsatellite loci that used the HEX dye. Using three datasets, we tested for noise effects in four allele-scoring programmes: Genemapper, Genemarker, Gelquest and Fragman. We found that, because some allele sizes were identical or close to the size of one of the internal size standards, all four programmes gave allele size calling errors due to wrongly identifying pull-up signals as the internal size standard. In addition, because allele miscalling in this study was caused by the fluorescent dye that the microsatellites used introducing noise of the same colour as the internal size standard used, the pull-up correction function in Genemapper, Genemarker and Fragman failed to deal with this. Considering that pull-up peak scoring errors can occur with any dye colour, the phenomenon is not limited to the current HEX dye. Using different software and visual scoring of each result will allow accurate sizing of microsatellite alleles.


Family Medicine became a registered specialty in 2007. A consensus was reached on the core competencies that were needed for a family physician (FP). These competencies were encapsulated in the 5 unit standards that are exit outcomes for FPs. The re-engineering of primary health care (PHC) and the introduction of the National Health Insurance by the South African Department of Health has created the opportunity for the FP to work in district clinical specialist teams (DCSTs) and the district health system. The FP is expected to work with ward based teams as a health advocate to ensure essential messages dealing with areas of maternal health are addressed in the municipal ward. Community interventions in dealing with obstetric haemorrhage have to be provided by working with community health workers. Women and their families need to be given advice on the need for ante natal care, delivering in health facility and dealing with haemorrhage if delivery occurs unexpectedly. Clinical guidelines such as the basic ante-natal care package should be correctly and consistently used for all antenatal attendees to primary health care clinics (PHC) clinic. The FP will ensure that appropriate training of professional midwives and doctors occur at PHC clinics and district hospitals (DH). Recommendations of the 5th Saving Mothers Report must be implemented and monitored in DHs. The FP is expected to audit maternal morbidity and mortality and develop quality improvement plans to ensure that outcomes are optimized. The WHO near miss approach for maternal health needs to be introduced and monitored at all DH. The roles of the FP are seen as a family medicine expert, a communicator, a collaborator, a manager, a health advocate, a scholar and a professional. Obstetrics & Gynaecology Forum • August 2013