We briefly present in this short paper a new SIze REsolved Aerosol Model (SIREAM) which simulates the evolution of atmospheric aerosol by solving the General Dynamic Equation (GDE). SIREAM segregates the aerosol size distribution into sections and solves the GDE by splitting coagulation and condensation/evaporationnucleation. A quasi-stationary sectional approach is used to describe the size distribution change due to condensation/evaporation, and a hybrid equilibrium/dynamical masstransfer method has been developed to lower the computational burden. SIREAM uses the same physical parameterizations as those used in the Modal Aerosol Model, MAM Sartelet et al.(2006). It is hosted in the modeling system POLYPHEMUS Mallet et al., 2007, but can be linked to any other three-dimensional Chemistry-Transport Model.


Vitamin E Out Familial vitamin E deficiency is caused by mutations in the α-tocopherol transfer protein (α-TTP) gene. Kono et al. (p. 1106, published online 18 April; see the Perspective by Mesmin and Antonny) studied natural mutations in α-TTP. α-TTP bound phosphatidylinositol polyphosphates (PIPs), especially PI(4,5)P2, and a disease-related missense mutation abolished PIP binding but not α-tocopherol binding. The x-ray crystal structure of the α-TTP–PIP complex suggested that PIP binding opens the lid of the α-tocopherol–binding pocket to facilitate the release of α-tocopherol. Thus, PIP binding to α-TTP at the target membrane may facilitate the release of α-tocopherol in the hydrophobic pocket of α-TTP to the lipid bilayer of the target membrane, providing a mechanism for the transfer of lipids from the lipid-transfer protein to the target membrane. Phosphatidylinositol phosphates may play a role in lipid-transfer protein–mediated vitamin E efflux from hepatocytes. [Also see Perspective by Mesmin and Antonny] α-Tocopherol (vitamin E) transfer protein (α-TTP) regulates the secretion of α-tocopherol from liver cells. Missense mutations of some arginine residues at the surface of α-TTP cause severe vitamin E deficiency in humans, but the role of these residues is unclear. Here, we found that wild-type α-TTP bound phosphatidylinositol phosphates (PIPs), whereas the arginine mutants did not. In addition, PIPs in the target membrane promoted the intermembrane transfer of α-tocopherol by α-TTP. The crystal structure of the α-TTP–PIPs complex revealed that the disease-related arginine residues interacted with phosphate groups of the PIPs and that the PIPs binding caused the lid of the α-tocopherol–binding pocket to open. Thus, PIPs have a role in promoting the release of a ligand from a lipid-transfer protein.


General relativity has passed all solar system experiments and neutron star based tests, such as binary pulsar observations, with flying colors. A more exotic arena for testing general relativity is in systems that contain one or more black holes. Black holes are the most compact objects in the Universe, providing probes of the strongest-possible gravitational fields. We are motivated to study strong-field gravity since many theories give large deviations from general relativity only at large field strengths, while recovering the weak-field behavior. In this article, we review how one can probe general relativity and various alternative theories of gravity by using electromagnetic waves from a black hole with an accretion disk, and gravitational waves from black hole binaries. We first review model-independent ways of testing gravity with electromagnetic/gravitational waves from a black hole system. We then focus on selected examples of theories that extend general relativity in rather simple ways. Some important characteristics of general relativity include (but are not limited to) (i) only tensor gravitational degrees of freedom, (ii) the graviton is massless, (iii) no quadratic or higher curvatures in the action, and (iv) the theory is four-dimensional. Altering a characteristic leads to a different extension of general relativity: (i) scalar–tensor theories, (ii) massive gravity theories, (iii) quadratic gravity, and (iv) theories with large extra dimensions. Within each theory, we describe black hole solutions, their properties, and current and projected constraints on each theory using black hole based tests of gravity. We close this review by listing some of the open problems in model-independent tests and within each specific theory.


Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) is one of the elegant trees that performs several landscaping functions. Its single trunk textured by bases of the cut leaves distinguishes it from other ornamental trees. This cylindrical textured trunk is one of the major attractive features emphasized the use of date palms as ornamental landscaping trees. Across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Date palms in public landscaping schemes have experienced deformation of their trunks. This is a function of several factors related to plantation, irrigation, and maintenance. This research to investigate and categorise the causes, types, and forms of date palm trees' trunks deformation. Prior to a field survey, a randomly conducted pilot survey to collect data from different areas where date palms are used as landscaping ornamental trees across the Dammam Metropolitan Area (DMA). It applies direct observation, measuring and analysis to develop preliminary understanding of the phenomena; and apply its outcomes on a case study of the Dammam City Seafront (DCS). The result showed that date palm trees' trunks deformation has occurred at bottom, middle, and upper parts as results of several factors; and it is as high as almost 97% among investigated trees. However, 58% of deformation symptoms processes have been noticed on bottom third of the date palm trees' trunks, near soil surface; and 27.5% of them are in the King Abdullah Seafront Park (KASP). The study proves statistically that sprinkler and bubbler irrigation systems are of major responsibility for near ground deformation of palm trees' trunks, which expands at rate of 3.5 and 3.3 CM/Year.


For a play whose dramatic interest centers entirely on the fate of a man's soul, Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is curiously devoid of an attempt to reify its most central aspect, which is the soul itself. Unlike the medieval drama, which used a combination of linguistic, bodily and material devices to emblematize soul, in Doctor Faustus, the flow of meaning is reversed, and soul—having already been inculcated by centuries of religious teaching as the defining feature of humanity, to the point that no one in the play needs to ask, "what is the thing men call soul?"—is now used by Marlowe as the signature figure of poetical discourse on the seeming immutability of personal identity in the age of reformed theology. In Faustus, soul stands for one's susceptibility to or potential for identity mutation, contrary to reigning systems of reward and punishment. The play foregrounds the way metaphorical language is used by a subject to articulate a dialectical relation between soul as a stage for the free play of the phenomenological events of an apperceptive mind, and soul as an anxiously situated, culturally conditioned identity.


In this paper, I discuss the context of a Late Roman solidus hoard found in the Casa delle Vestali on the Forum Romanum in Rome. The hoard consists of 397 solidi, Late Roman gold coins. Most of the hoard consists of uncirculated solidi struck in the name of the Western Roman emperor Procopius Anthemius (AD 467–472). By means of situating the hoard within the context of the reign of Anthemius and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the aim of this paper is to determine if the coins in the Vestal hoard can be related to other contemporary coin hoards by means of numismatic typology; this information could add to our understanding of why Anthemius' reign is considered such an unmitigated failure and why the Empire collapsed soon after his murder. In this article, the composition of the hoard is examined, and the contents are compared to other contemporary solidus hoards in the Mediterranean, Gaul, Poland and Scandinavia. I argue that this comparison shows that the Vestal hoard is not part of a larger network but that the hoard constitutes the remains of an isolated occurrence—as initially suggested by its unusual composition and location.


Chicago has been in the forefront of the country in its use of 9th-grade indicators of dropout. Catalyzed by the development of the freshman on-track indicator and research around it, Chicago school administrators, central office personnel, and external partners have developed a number of mechanisms using 9th-grade indicators to stimulate school improvement. This article describes 3 ways in which early warning indicators are useful for improving student achievement: (a) focusing conversations and efforts on actionable problems; (b) identifying students for intervention; and (c) using indicator patterns to address low performance in a strategic way. Examples from high schools in Chicago suggest that knowledge of the on-track indicator and its use in district accountability were not enough to change practice. However, the availability of data tools that make it easy to act on information about on-track rates have changed the ways in which teachers and school staff interact with each other, students, and parents regarding improving student performance. The strategies they have developed with the data tools have provided a systematic focus to their efforts, which appears to be paying off in substantially improved ninth-grade achievement.


Introduction. Part I: Programming with JavaScript. Chapter 1: Taking the Web to the Next Level. Chapter 2: Writing Your First Program. Chapter 3: Changing Program Behavior with Conditions. Chapter 4: Loops and Debugging. Chapter 5: Functions, Arrays, and Objects. Part II: Using JavaScript to Enhance Your Pages. Chapter 6: Talking to the Page. Chapter 7: Getting Valid Input. Chapter 8: Moving and Grooving. Part III: Moving Up to AJAX. Chapter 9: AJAX Essentials. Chapter 10: Improving JavaScript and AJAX with jQuery. Chapter 11: Animating jQuery. Chapter 12: Using the jQuery User Interface Toolkit. Chapter 13: Improving Usability with jQuery. Chapter 14: Working with AJAX Data. Part IV: The Part of Tens. Chapter 15: Ten Amazing jQuery Plugins. Chapter 16: Ten Great Resources. Index.


This paper shows how the extended compact genetic algorithm can be scaled using data-intensive computing techniques such as MapReduce. Two different frameworks (Hadoop and MongoDB) are used to deploy MapReduce implementations of the compact and extended compact genetic algorithms. Results show that both are good choices to deal with large-scale problems as they can scale with the number of commodity machines, as opposed to previous efforts with other techniques that either required specialized high-performance hardware or shared memory environments.


Abstract. The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull in April–May 2010 represents a "natural experiment" to study the impact of volcanic emissions on a continental scale. For the first time, quantitative data about the presence, altitude, and layering of the volcanic cloud, in conjunction with optical information, are available for most parts of Europe derived from the observations by the European Aerosol Research Lidar NETwork (EARLINET). Based on multi-wavelength Raman lidar systems, EARLINET is the only instrument worldwide that is able to provide dense time series of high-quality optical data to be used for aerosol typing and for the retrieval of particle microphysical properties as a function of altitude. In this work we show the four-dimensional (4-D) distribution of the Eyjafjallajokull volcanic cloud in the troposphere over Europe as observed by EARLINET during the entire volcanic event (15 April–26 May 2010). All optical properties directly measured (backscatter, extinction, and particle linear depolarization ratio) are stored in the EARLINET database available at http://www.earlinet.org . A specific relational database providing the volcanic mask over Europe, realized ad hoc for this specific event, has been developed and is available on request at http://www.earlinet.org . During the first days after the eruption, volcanic particles were detected over Central Europe within a wide range of altitudes, from the upper troposphere down to the local planetary boundary layer (PBL). After 19 April 2010, volcanic particles were detected over southern and south-eastern Europe. During the first half of May (5–15 May), material emitted by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano was detected over Spain and Portugal and then over the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The last observations of the event were recorded until 25 May in Central Europe and in the Eastern Mediterranean area. The 4-D distribution of volcanic aerosol layering and optical properties on European scale reported here provides an unprecedented data set for evaluating satellite data and aerosol dispersion models for this kind of volcanic events.


This paper presents an interacting multi-agent model as a new method of examining the impact of climate change on Alpine leisure tourism and ski areas in a complex interacting model network. Since tourism varies at a small scale concerning natural resources as well as offered market segments, a regional differentiated analyse of the effects of climate change on both the tourism supply side and demand side is essential. Therefore, we have developed a high-resolution simulation model to rate the tourism development under different climate and societal scenarios in the German and Austrian Upper Danube catchment. As a result, we evaluate implications on the tourism industry for the next fifty years. As the model analyses tourism development on a high level of individualisation, it fosters the finding of economically reasonable investment strategies and supports the policy makers' outward reasoning by making the decisions more objective and transparent. The effects on climate change are very different on a small spatial scale: Some larger and higher located ski resorts will operate very successful in the next decades. They will profit from the shift of guest caused by the problems that smaller and no more snow-reliable ski areas are facing.


Abstract:The official historiography of French republican education has suppressed the pedagogical contribution of the Paris Commune, which was both denied and separated from socialist education and from school projects of the labor movement that prepared it. To bury this historical sequence, a historiographic cliché presented the laws required by Jules Ferry as the (only) matrix of the creation of a republican education supposed to free children from unequal education. Yet, the first and radical republican secularization of school education came from the work of the Paris Commune, from the programmatic request submitted on April 1, 1871 to the new Parisian elected representatives by the Society «L'Éducation Nouvelle». This article presents some aspects of this republican and socialist project and argues for the rediscovery of the overall project and its major concepts («la démopédie», « l'éducation intégrale », « la méthode syndicale et « l'école-atelier »). (In French)


Abstract In an e-Health scenario, we study how the practitioners are authorized when they are requesting access to medical documents containing sensitive information. Consider the following scenario. A clinician wants to access and retrieve a patient's Electronic Health Record (EHR), and this means that the clinician must acquire sufficient access right to access this document. As the EHR is within a collection of many other patients, the clinician would need to specify some requirements (such as a keyword) which match the patient's record, as well as having a valid access right. The complication begins when we do not want the server to learn anything from this query (as the server might be outsourced to other place). To encompass this situation, we define a new cryptographic primitive called Certificate-Based Encryption with Keyword Search (CBEKS), which will be suitable in this scenario. We also specify the corresponding security models, namely computational consistency, indistinguishability against chosen keyword and ciphertext attacks, indistinguishability against keyword-guessing attacks and collusion resistance. We provide a CBEKS construction that is proven secure in the standard model with respect to the aforementioned security models. Abstract In an e-Health scenario, we study how the practitioners are authorized when they are requesting access to medical documents containing sensitive information. Consider the following scenario. A clinician wants to access and retrieve a patient's Electronic Health Record (EHR), and this means that the clinician must acquire sufficient access right to access this document. As the EHR is within a collection of many other patients, the clinician would need to specify some requirements (such as a keyword) which match the patient's record, as well as having a valid access right. The complication begins when we do not want the server to learn anything from this query (as the server might be outsourced to other place). To encompass this situation, we define a new cryptographic primitive called Certificate-Based Encryption with Keyword Search (CBEKS), which will be suitable in this scenario. We also specify the corresponding security models, namely computational consistency, indistinguishability against chosen keyword and ciphertext attacks, indistinguishability against keyword-guessing attacks and collusion resistance. We provide a CBEKS construction that is proven secure in the standard model with respect to the aforementioned security models.


Environmental protection and poverty reduction are central issues in United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Both aspects have special importance in the Andes biodiversity hot spot where high rates of deforestation overlap with high levels of poverty. Peasant households use forest land as cheap means of production to increase their agricultural area in order to maintain or increase their income. Respect to the issues mentioned above, following research questions are relevant: i) What are the opportunity costs of the farming households to conserve the native Andes forest?, a production function approach was used to calculate the profitability and determinants of agricultural production. ii) Is current agricultural production working efficiently?, a stochastic frontier analysis was used to calculate technical efficiency and its determinants in the cattle production. Futhermore, iii) What is the best conservation instrument in order to achieve cost-efficiency and poverty alleviation?, different conservation instruments fostering a forest conversion ban, including payments for ecosystem services schemes, on cost-efficiency and poverty alleviation were also tested. In order to apply economic models, a socioeconomic sample of 130 households was collected during the farming season 2008 in the area of the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Podocarpus - El Condor , south Ecuador. The most profitable land use found is extensive pasture-based cattle production (net profit 159 USD/ha/yr in average) with huge heterogeneity among households. Factors influencing the gross margin and consequently profitability in cattle production are land size, labor, input expenses, ethnicity, altitude and access to technical assistance and formal credits. The production frontier models revealed that size of pasture, labor and costs of production monotonically have increased cattle production in the sampled farms. Also, the technical inefficiency model shows that the location of the farms (lowland), ethnicity (Mestizo ethnic) and accessibility of technical assistance increased the technical efficiency of cattle farms in the study area. The average technical efficiency of about 70% was obtained from the analysis which implies a technical inefficiency level of about 30%. Of course such inefficiency could be reduced or minimized by providing technical assistance. The design of payment and contract attributes has a pronounced impact on the effectiveness as well as on the distributional impact of PES-type conservation instruments. Voluntary conservation payment instruments tend to be more cost-efficient than mandatory ones, if competitively low payments are offered. Such low offers are incompatible with poverty alleviation goals. Pronounced pro poor distributional impacts are possible, however, but the PES contracts will rather need higher payments per unit area (up to 300 USD/ha/yr) and need to be offered exclusively to the poorest households.


This thesis explores an intricate relationship between the therapists involved in a conjoint professional work of co-facilitating small group psychotherapy, as described by three separate co-therapy dyads. The practice of co-therapy has been considered to be a common approach to group psychotherapy. However, the co-therapy relationship as an important variable in and of itself appeared to have received little attention from the researchers and clinicians alike. Using a phenomenological method and an unstructured interviewing approach, this qualitative study examined the experiences of the complex relational processes and psychological dynamics encountered in the 'being-with' of the cofacilitation. Only fully qualified and highly experienced NHS-based clinicians from the professional fields of psychotherapy and group analysis took part in the study. The co-therapy relationship of each considered co-facilitating dyad had lasted for no less than one year before the research interviews. The interviewing process was distinctively organised and deeply exploratory.

The 'Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology' was being used to systematically analyse the data in the form of the transcribed interviews. The results suggested that the nature of the co-facilitating relationship could be understood in terms of: (1) the unique configuration of the co-therapy
relationship within the group matrix; (2) the unspoken communication and the absence of a more real talk about the dynamics in the relationship; (3) the unavoidable experience of being seen; (4) the interrelatedness of differences and associated conflict; (5) and finally, the presence of the implicit or unconscious forms of interacting. The psychological meanings of these five essential themes were further elucidated and critically discussed. The clinical and training implications, including the contribution to the importance of the therapeutic relationship within the wider field of psychological therapy, were given consideration. The study reviewed its limitations and offered suggestions for future research.


This short piece looks at the growing phenomenon of intra-state secession movements. From California, where plans have been floated to split the state into two, five, or six pieces, to more traditional secessionist movements in Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington, to plans to separate upstate New York and downstate Illinois from the large metropolitan areas that dominate state politics, various states are facing internal separatist movements. The paper looks at the sources of the dissatisfaction driving these movements, and suggests a number of solutions to address that dissatisfaction without amending the Constitution or adding stars to the flag.


Metal–organic frameworks, MOFs, are a class of crystalline porous metal–organic hybrid materials which have originally been developed for applications in gas storage and separation. Here, we demonstrate that due to the enormous chemical flexibility of these molecular materials, they also provide an excellent basis for the development of photoresist materials. In particular, we used an epitaxial process with automated systems to grow either homogeneous or patterned SURMOFs (surface-anchored MOFs) of the type [Zn2(N3BPDC)2(Dabco)] on different solid substrates. The huge flexibility of the MOF chemistry allowed for different variants of photolithography based on the post-synthesis modification (PSM) of the MOF materials. Here, two particular and popular PSM-strategies were employed, the azide–alkyne click reaction and thiol–yne click chemistry. The azide–alkyne click reaction was initiated by the photoreduction of CuII to the active CuI catalyst, whereas the thiol–yne click chemistry was induced directly by UV light. Furthermore, heteroepitaxial growth of multilayer systems (Cu-N3BPDC+Cu-BPDC+Cu-N3BPDC+Cu-BPDC+Cu-N3BPDC+Cu-BPDC) was also used to control the localization of subsequent PSM. The results demonstrated that the patterned functionalization of MOF thin film is not limited to the two dimensions of the mounting surface but is indeed possible in 3D.


Pranking can be understood as challenging a normative social order. One environment where pranking occurs is in institutional interaction. The present study examines a sample of pranking calls to telephone helplines for children and young people. Some cases had been posted on YouTube by the person doing the pranking; others were from a sub-collection of possible pranks, extracted from a larger corpus of Australian children's counselling helpline calls. Drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis we aim to understand the inferential and sequential resources involved in pranking within telephone-mediated counselling services for children and youth. Our analysis shows pranksters know the norms of counselling helplines by their practices employed for subverting them. YouTube pranksters exploit next turns of talk to retrospectively cast what the counsellor has just said as a possible challenge to the perception of the call as a normal counselling one. One practice evident in both sources was the setting up of provocative traps to break a linguistic taboo. This detailed study of pranking in interaction provides documentary evidence of its idiosyncratic yet patterned local accomplishment in telephone-mediated counselling services aimed at children and youth.


RATIONALE
Oxidants are believed to play a major role in the development of emphysema.

OBJECTIVES
This study aimed to determine if the expression of human copper-zinc superoxide dismutase (CuZnSOD) within the lungs of mice protects against the development of emphysema.

METHODS
Transgenic CuZnSOD and littermate mice were exposed to cigarette smoke (6 h/d, 5 d/wk, for 1 yr) and compared with nonexposed mice. A second group was treated with intratracheal elastase to induce emphysema.

MEASUREMENTS
Lung inflammation was measured by cell counts and myeloperoxidase levels. Oxidative damage was assessed by immunofluorescence for 3-nitrotyrosine and 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine and lipid peroxidation levels. The development of emphysema was determined by measuring the mean linear intercept (Lm).

MAIN RESULTS
Smoke exposure caused a fourfold increase in neutrophilic inflammation and doubled lung myeloperoxidase activity. This inflammatory response did not occur in the smoke-exposed CuZnSOD mice. Similarly, CuZnSOD expression prevented the 58% increase in lung lipid peroxidation products that occurred after smoke exposure. Most important, CuZnSOD prevented the onset of emphysema in both the smoke-induced model (Lm, 68 exposed control vs. 58 exposed transgenic; p < 0.04) and elastase-generated model (Lm, 80 exposed control vs. 63 exposed transgenic; p < 0.03). These results demonstrate for the first time that antioxidants can prevent smoke-induced inflammation and can counteract the proteolytic cascade that leads to emphysema formation in two separate animal models of the disease.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings indicate that strategies aimed at enhancing or supplementing lung antioxidants could be effective for the prevention and treatment of this disease.


URPOSE THE global economic crisis caused by an improperly regulated financial sector giving way to excessive risk-taking behaviour has led to a worldwide crises, and widespread slow down and loss of jobs. The situation in East Asia is somewhat different from that in the western world in that finance bubbles had already been burst in the 1997 crisis and lessons learned from that. Nevertheless, developing East Asia is still dependent on western markets as destinations for exports as domestic markets remain insufficiently developed to absorb production of goods and services. In this situation, states such as Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia look to examples from elsewhere in the region concerning the means of transforming themselves from being part of the factory age, which limits growth at the upward end of the middle income range, into the higher income range of economies. Examples include the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and even to some extent Malaysia. This raises the question of the extent to which the examples of those other states, in which labour market management has passed further along a familiar trajectory, offer practical examples that can be applied in the developing states that follow behind them. Issues of relevance in this case include wage and compensation issues, management of unions and the freedom of speech, association and collective bargaining, as well as the interaction between the education system and the labour market.


Many ice rises are situated in a drawn-out ice-shelf belt boardering the Dronning Maud Land coast. The defined catchment area and high accumulation rates of ice rises appear suited for new ice-core climate records focusing on the last 2000 and 40000 years. The internal stratigraphy of ice rises is imprinted by the flow history of their surrounding, which, if combined with ice-flow models, enables the deduction of past flow patterns and changes thereof. The focus of this study is set on Halvfarryggen ice dome which is characterized by using remote sensing techniques in combination with on-site radar and GPS measurements. Airborne and ground-based radar surveys image bedrock
topography and internal layering in the vicinity of the dome, which is located
near a triple junction where three ice divides merge. The surface topography is
determined by a combination of different remote-sensing techniques resulting in
an elevation model with a grid spacing of 100 m x 100 m and a standard
deviation along ground control points of 11 m. The internal layering as seen via radar
bends upwards beneath the divides, indicating the operation of
the Raymond effect. The upward-bending increases in amplitude with larger depths
down to the lower third of the ice column, where the isochrone arch develops
into a double bump in some radargrams. We visualize the three dimensional
characteristics in internal layering in a 15-20 km radius around the dome.
Accumulation estimates from internal layers near the surface vary from 400-1670
kg/(m2a) with an asymmetry caused by preferred wind directions and changing
surface slope. We use the derived datasets as input for a two dimensional full Stokes, anisotropic
ice-flow model to predict the age--depth relationship and compare the modelled
isochrones with the radar layer architecture. In the vicinity of the dome we
estimate 13 ka old ice at 90% of the total ice thickness.


Neoblasts are an abundant, heterogeneous population of adult stem cells (ASCs) that facilitate the maintenance of planarian tissues and organs, providing a powerful system to study ASC self-renewal and differentiation dynamics. It is unknown how the collective output of neoblasts transit through differentiation pathways to produce specific cell types. The planarian epidermis is a simple tissue that undergoes rapid turnover. We found that as epidermal progeny differentiate, they progress through multiple spatiotemporal transition states with distinct gene expression profiles. We also identified a conserved early growth response family transcription factor, egr-5, that is essential for epidermal differentiation. Disruption of epidermal integrity by egr-5 RNAi triggers a global stress response that induces the proliferation of neoblasts and the concomitant expansion of not only epidermal, but also multiple progenitor cell populations. Our results further establish the planarian epidermis as a novel paradigm to uncover the molecular mechanisms regulating ASC specification in vivo. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10501.001


Experirnental data and theoretical calculation on the heat transfer performance of extended surface submerged: in shallow air fluidized beds ~ less than 150 mm, are presented. Energy t;ransferrence from the bed material was effected by water cooled tubes passing through the fins. The extended surface tested was either manufactured from square or radial copper fins silver soldered to a circular basic tube or commercially supplied, being of the crimped or extruded helical fin type. Performances are compared, for a wide range of geometric variables, bed configurations and fluidized materials, with plain and oval tubes operating under similar experimental conditions. A statistical analysis of all results, using a regression technique, has shown the relative importance of each significant variable. The bed to surface heat transfer coefficients are higher than those reported in earlier published work using finned tubes in much deeper beds and the heat transfer to the whole of the extended surface is at least as good as that previously reported for un-finned tubes. The improved performance is attributed partly to the absence of large bubbles in shallow beds and it is suggested that the improved circulation of the solids when constrained in the narrow passages between adjacent fins may be a contributory factor. Flow visualisation studies between a perspex extended surface and a fluidized bed using air at ambient temperatures, have demonstrated the effect of too small a fin spacing. Fin material and the bonding to the basic tube are more important in the optimisation of performance than in conventional convective applications because of the very much larger heat fluxes involved. A theoretical model of heat flow for a radial fin surface, provides data concerning the maximum heat transfer and minimum metal required to fulfil a given heat exchange duty. Results plotted in a series of charts aim at assisting the designer of shalJow fluidized beds.


NEURAL DEDIFFERENTIATION IN RELATION TO RISK FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE Nathan C. Hantke, B.A. Marquette University, 2010 Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research indicates that as an individual's age increases, the task-related spatial extent of neural activation increases. This decrease in neural specificity, or dedifferentiation, is often demonstrated by older adults during challenging cognitive tasks. Cognitively intact individuals at-risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD), as deemed by having an apolipoprotein-E e4 allele or a family history of AD, demonstrate increased fMRI activation as compared to individuals at lower risk. Using a low effort, high accuracy eventrelated semantic memory task involving the presentation of famous and non-famous names, we examined spatial neural specificity through a measure of dedifferentiation using fMRI. In particular, the goal was to look at degree of dedifferentiation between older healthy subjects with or without risk factors for AD. Our results indicated that while there was not a significant difference between the two groups on the total amount of neural dedifferentiation, there was a significant interaction between stimulus type and risk group. Individuals at-risk for AD displayed greater dedifferentiation for non-famous names yet greater differentiation (i.e., less dedifferentiation) for famous names as compared to the low-risk group. These findings may reflect disturbances in memory formation for individuals at-risk for AD.


The history of modern painting is conventionally told following a trajectory from European artists like Manet, Cezanne through Picasso and artistic styles ranging from expressionism, surrealism, cubism, and other avant-garde movements and stylistic trends on to abstract expressionism. Art historians all over the world share this conventional narrative, although it is the uneasy confluence of several Western master narratives that largely exclude the artistic production evolving in processes of modernization elsewhere in the world. Consequently, painters fostering a modernist idiom for example in China, India, South-America or even Eastern Europe appeared - and still appear until today – if at all - as agents of a "belated modernity." At best they are credited with the pursuit of an "alternative modernism," which still harkens back to the Euro-American centre as its main reference point. More often, they are dismissed in art critical and historical accounts as derivative in their attempt to emulate this centre. I argue that in the age of economic, media and cultural globalization after the end of the Cold War, there still exists no critical approach to modernist painting that is effectively free of the Eurocentric and universalist master narrative of western modernism, even though a strongly multicultural art-critical, art historical and curatorial literature has developed that intends to look beyond western Europe and North America. It seems crucial to continue to engage the main trajectory and the entire institutional, critical, and historiographic apparatus that supports it, as outmoded and ideologically limited as they may seem, because they still underwrite the conditions under which modernist practices can appear as history. This paper collects and examines the approaches that are currently in use, in order to further conversation on the subject.


In evaluating the effectiveness of R&D subsidies, the literature so far has completely neglected the possibility of misappropriation of public funds. This paper contributes to the literature by evaluating the causal effect of R&D subsidies on R&D expenditures when monitoring is weak and misappropriation takes place due to moral hazard behavior. Our analysis is based on Chinese firm-level data for the period 2001-2011. Misappropriation is a major concern as we calculate that 42% of grantees misused R&D subsidies, corresponding to 53% of the total amount of R&D subsidies. In a setting with one-sided noncompliance to funding contract rules, we differentiate between the intention-to-treat (ITT) effect and the complier average causal effect (CACE). The ITT shows how effective the R&D policy was in practice when misappropriation exists. The CACE, in contrast, depicts how effective the policy could have been without misappropriation and thus is a measure for the efficacy of the R&D subsidy policy. Combining entropy balancing and IV methods to estimate both ITT and CACE, the ITT results show mild partial crowding out of R&D expenditures. Most strikingly, however, the CACE turns out to be more than twice as large as the ITT and confirms additionality of R&D subsidies. Thus, misappropriation of R&D subsidies considerably undermines the efficacy of Chinese R&D programs.


Individuals with antisocial behavior place a great physical and economic burden on society. Deficits in emotional processing have been recognized as a fundamental cause of antisocial behavior. Emerging evidence also highlights a significant contribution of attention allocation deficits to such behavior. A comprehensive literature search identified 12 studies that were eligible for inclusion in the meta-analysis, which compared 291 individuals with antisocial problems and 247 controls. Signed Differential Mapping revealed that compared with controls, gray matter volume (GMV) in subjects with antisocial behavior was reduced in the right lentiform nucleus (P < 0.0001), left insula (P = 0.0002) and left frontopolar cortex (FPC) (P = 0.0006), and was increased in the right fusiform gyrus (P < 0.0001), right inferior parietal lobule (P = 0.0003), right superior parietal lobule (P = 0.0004), right cingulate gyrus (P = 0.0004) and the right postcentral gyrus (P = 0.0004). Given the well-known contributions of limbic and paralimbic areas to emotional processing, the observed reductions in GMV in these regions might represent neural correlates of disturbance in emotional processing underlying antisocial behavior. Previous studies have suggested an FPC role in attention allocation during emotional processing. Therefore, GMV deviations in this area may constitute a neural basis of deficits in attention allocation linked with antisocial behavior.


The classification of cultivated plants should meet two approaches namely the botanical (classifying based on essential systematic plant characters) and the practical approach (clustering based on the analysis of commercial properties). This study analyzed taxonomy of mango cultivars grown in Indonesia based on morphology and agronomy characters. It obtained 84 recognizable cultivars.They are grouped into eigth main cultivar-groups (e.g. Berem, Madu, Gedong, Golek, Bapang, Arumanis, Kepodang, and Kebo) and eigthteen cultivar-groups. The 'Lalijiwo' cultivars synonym with 'Thaber', 'Tabar', 'Gurih' whereas 'Arummanis' synonim with 'Gadung'. Meanwhile, the cultivar 'Kates277' which is a member of Golek cultivar main group is homonim with the cultivar 'Kates' in Arummanis cultivars main group. Furthermore, the cultivar Nanas93 (one of Madu main group cultivar) that different with the cultivar 'Nanas71' which is categorized as member of Bapang main cultivar group.


From the basics to the forefront of modern research, this book presents all aspects of probability theory, statistics and data analysis from a Bayesian perspective for physicists and engineers. The book presents the roots, applications and numerical implementation of probability theory, and covers advanced topics such as maximum entropy distributions, stochastic processes, parameter estimation, model selection, hypothesis testing and experimental design. In addition, it explores state-of-the art numerical techniques required to solve demanding real-world problems. The book is ideal for students and researchers in physical sciences and engineering.


e15584 Background: An angiostatic approach was used to assess the impact of anti-inflammatory therapy in combination with metronomic low-dose chemotherapy.

METHODS
A randomized multi-institutional phase II trial was designed to select metronomic chemotherapy (arm A: capecitabine 1 g orally twice daily for 14 days with one week break until tumor progression) or combined anti-inflammatory/angiostatic treatment (arm B: capecitabine as mentioned above plus etoricoxib 60 mg orally, day 1+, and pioglitazone 60 mg orally, day 1+) for further evaluation. Patients with refractory or progressive disease following any first-line therapy except capecitabine or frail were eligible. According to the one stage design, a sample size of 64 patients was calculated for the primary objective, improvement of response rate.

RESULTS
As similar response rates were observed (arm A/B 15/14%) after the accrual of 42 patients, the study was closed (n=20 (A), n=22 (B); median age 69 years (range 46 to 86ys); frail A/B n=9/11). Median progression- free survival for arm A/B was 3.0/2.9 months (P=0.878), and overall survival 5.0/6.1 months (P=0.778). In both treatment arms a significant decline of serum C-reactive protein (CRP) levels was observed within the first 4 to 6 weeks on treatment, A/B P= 0.01/0.04, respectively. CRP response > 50% from baseline was associated with a significantly improved overall survival in arm A/B (3.1 versus 11.0 months, P= 0.023/ 3.3 versus 7.1 months, P= 0.078) indicating an impact of inflammation-control on survival. WHO grade 3 (no grade 4) toxicities were reported in arm A/B in 20% and 23%, respectively, mostly due to hand-foot-syndrome.

CONCLUSIONS
Metronomic low- dose chemotherapy in gastric cancer may induce anti-inflammatory response, but the chosen additional anti-inflammatory approach neither has impact on tumor-associated inflammation nor on response or survival rate. In a historical comparison, CRP-responder have similar outcome as patients treated with combination chemotherapy in first-line. No significant financial relationships to disclose.


This paper formalizes in a fully-rational model the popular idea that politicians perceive an electoral cost in adopting costly reforms with future benefits and reconciles it with the evidence that reformist governments are not punished by voters. To do so, it proposes a model of elections where political ability is ex-ante unknown and investment in reforms is unobservable. On the one hand, elections improve accountability and allow to keep well-performing incumbents. On the other, politicians make too little reforms in an attempt to signal high ability and increase their reappointment probability. Although in a rational expectation equilibrium voters cannot be fooled and hence reelection does not depend on reforms, the strategy of underinvesting in reforms is nonetheless sustained by out-of-equilibrium beliefs. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, uncertainty makes reforms more politically viable and may, under some conditions, increase social welfare. The model is then used to study how political rewards can be set so as to maximize social welfare and the desirability of imposing a one-term limit to governments. The predictions of this theory are consistent with a number of empirical regularities on the determinants of reforms and reelection. They are also consistent with a new stylized fact documented in this paper: economic uncertainty is associated to more reforms in a panel of 20 OECD countries.


The implementation of international banking standards in Vietnam has been the subject of contestation between reformist and conservative factions within the governing political party. In any given period, the speed of implementation has been affected by which of these factions dominates regulatory decision-making. The adoption and implementation of Basel standards in Vietnam has gone through three distinctive periods: from 1999–2006, the reformist faction pursued international regulations in order to discipline state-owned banks and improve the functioning of the financial sector. From 2006–13, the central bank (SBV) formally adopted Basel II but a domestic banking crisis effectively halted implementation. More recently there has been a return to pro-Basel preferences. However, interventionist financial policies, high implementation costs, the low internationalization level of the banking sector, and the lack of competent technocrats inside both the SBV and domestic private banks have all contributed to a high level of regulatory forbearance.


Over the last year, exchanges that were initiated by the ZEW's SEEK-conference on 'regulating sovereign debt restructuring in the eurozone' resulted in vivid discussions on more feasible sovereign debt restructurings in the euro area. This policy report, edited by Frederik Eidam and Friedrich Heinemann, summarizes these discussions by collecting several contributions on different aspects of the topic. Founded in different perspectives, contributors sometimes provide different conclusions, or highlight different choice options and their underlying trade-offs. However, common to all authors is the aim to increase the resilience of the European Monetary Union and to contribute on the debate on the European reform agenda.


Nausea is a complex sensation that results from the interaction of certain fixed biological factors, such as gender, with changeable psychological factors, such as anxiety. This is the first book to provide a complete, in-depth explanation of what we know about nausea, along with the latest research results on its causes and treatment. As it is the product of long-term collaboration between scientists from the three main approaches to studying and treating nausea-psychology, gastroenterology and physiology-the information this book provides in both comprehensive and well integrated.


This report presents a generalization of tensor-product B-spline surfaces. The new scheme permits knots whose endpoints lie in the interior of the domain rectangle of a surface. This allows local refinement of the knot structure for approximation purposes as well as modeling surfaces with local tangent or curvature discontinuities. The surfaces are represented in terms of B-spline basis functions, ensuring affine invariance, local control, the convex hull property, and evaluation by de Boor's algorithm. A dimension formula for a class of generalized tensor-product spline spaces is developed.


This report is part of a series of publications on the status and development of the North-American Information Systems (IS) field and Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI), its counterpart in German speaking countries. Information systems in businesses and organizations are the main subject of research in IS and WI. Hence, both disciplines are applied fields of research. Thus, the valuation of research results and graduates by business practice are vital indicators for the disciplines' status and success. Between 1991 and 2001 a plethora of articles were published in leading Information Systems (IS) journals and conference proceedings addressing the issue of relevance of IS research and teaching. This research report provides a comprehensive conten analysis of this relevance debate in the North-American Information Systems field. The perceptions, opinions, and recommendations of the contributors are presented structured according to statements of valuation, perception, explanation, and recommendation. The reconstruction of the main IS relevance debate indicates that all debate participants agree that relevance to practice plays a vital role for the IS discipline, but that the field largely lacks relevance in terms of research as well as in terms of teaching. The lack of relevance is, for example, illustrated by the general perception that research results rarely impact practice and that IT/IS professionals usually do not read academic IS journals. In order to analyse if the debate has lead to any changes in terms of practice relevance of the IS field the most recent literature and studies available on IS relevance are evaluated. Analysis results indicate that no significant changes took place. But various IS researchers still report on problems in terms of acceptance and perception of IS degree programs and research. Based on the perspectives of experienced researchers from WI and other European IS communities the concluding remarks of this report attempt to explain the apparent lack of change in the North-American IS field and provide suggestions for improving the current status of the IS field in terms of relevance.


Modern look of youth social policy in the Russian Federation began to take shape in the 90s, when, due to socio-political and administrative reorganization of the society, the state recognized the need to support young people. Youth is one of the most vulnerable social groups. In this article, it is described on methods and systems analysis techniques, summarizing the results accomplished. The key aspects of youth social policy at the federal and regional levels are also presented. It is proved that the youth is now at risk requiring care of the state. Despite more than 20 years of history of formation, youth social policy is just beginning to take shape and to go beyond the boundaries of the federal legislation. The targeted youth programs of social policy are certainly significant, but require not only testing, but also the introduction by the state of the Russian Federation.


Information technology (IT) has for a long time been viewed as a success factor for police investigations. But also criminals are becoming extensive users of IT. Hence, many modern crimes are of a nature where footprints needed for police investigations are both analogue and digital. We argue that modern criminals act as hybrids, i.e. they are using IT as natural components in their criminal activities. In this paper we depart from the idea that the modern criminal acts as a hybrid and analyze the effect this perspective has on modern police work. The result is that the crime arena should be seen as a hybrid arena, where the criminals and the police both should take the role as hybrids. Today however, there is a division among the police officers that hinders this development on the part of the police. Some police officers are collecting digital footprints while others are collecting analogue footprints. This division of the arena forces the police officers to extensive communication and gives the criminals a bit of an advantage as they move more freely.


The music for The Crown of India was written by Edward Elgar in 1912 to accompany an 'Imperial Masque' with a libretto by Henry Hamilton. The impresario Sir Oswald Stoll had commissioned Elgar to compose the Masque music for the lavish celebration of the coronation of King George V as Emperor of India as part of a larger entertainment in the Coliseum Theatre in St. Martin's Lane. The Masque was part of an ample music-hall programme, involving shows as different as mime, pantomime and music. Elgar's 'Imperial Masque' was meant to be an assertion of the British Empire, bringing to the London stage the crucial political happenings behind all the pageantry of the Delhi Durbar for the crowning of George V as Emperor of India in December 1911. This event had marked the climax of the only royal tour of India undertaken by a reigning King-Emperor and had caused much public excitement in England. The Durbar ceremony itself was an adaptation of a court ritual of the Mogul Empire, an event where the ruling princes used to meet to discuss politics and legislative changes. To listen to works such as Elgar's The Crown of India (Opus 66), it is necessary to acknowledge that at the beginning of the 20th century the British nation believed in the Empire and in its concept.


In this paper we present a practical solution with performance guarantees to the problem of dimensionality reduction for very large scale sparse matrices. We show applications of our approach to computing the Principle Component Analysis (PCA) of any $n\times d$ matrix, using one pass over the stream of its rows. Our solution uses coresets: a scaled subset of the $n$ rows that approximates their sum of squared distances to \emph{every} $k$-dimensional \emph{affine} subspace. An open theoretical problem has been to compute such a coreset that is independent of both $n$ and $d$. An open practical problem has been to compute a non-trivial approximation to the PCA of very large but sparse databases such as the Wikipedia document-term matrix in a reasonable time. We answer both of these questions affirmatively. Our main technical result is a new framework for deterministic coreset constructions based on a reduction to the problem of counting items in a stream.


Hyperhomocysteneinemia (HHcy) is common in the general population and is a risk factor for atherosclerosis by mechanisms that are still elusive. A hypomethylated status of epigenetically relevant targets may contribute to the vascular toxicity associated with HHcy. Ketogenic diets (KD) are diets with a severely restricted amount of carbohydrates that are being widely used, mainly for weight-loss purposes. However, studies associating nutritional ketosis and HHcy are lacking. This pilot study investigates the effects of mild HHcy induced by nutritional manipulation of the methionine metabolism in the absence of dietary carbohydrates on disease progression and specific epigenetic changes in the apolipoprotein-E deficient (apoE–/–) mouse model. ApoE–/– mice were either fed a KD, a diet with the same macronutrient composition but low in methyl donors (low methyl KD, LMKD), or control diet. After 4, 8 or 12 weeks plasma was collected for the quantification of: (1) nutritional ketosis, (i.e., the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate using a colorimetric assay); (2) homocysteine by HPLC; (3) the methylating potential S-adenosylmethionine to S-adenosylhomocysteine ratio (AdoHcy/AdoMet) by LC-MS/MS; and (4) the inflammatory cytokine monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP1) by ELISA. After 12 weeks, aortas were collected to assess: (1) the vascular AdoHcy/AdoMet ratio; (2) the volume of atherosclerotic lesions by high-field magnetic resonance imaging (14T-MRI); and (3) the content of specific epigenetic tags (H3K27me3 and H3K27ac) by immunofluorescence. The results confirmed the presence of nutritional ketosis in KD and LMKD mice but not in the control mice. As expected, mild HHcy was only detected in the LMKD-fed mice. Significantly decreased MCP1 plasma levels and plaque burden were observed in control mice versus the other two groups, together with an increased content of one of the investigated epigenetic tags (H3K27me3) but not of the other (H3K27ac). Moreover, we are unable to detect any significant differences at the p < 0.05 level for MCP1 plasma levels, vascular AdoMet:AdoHcy ratio levels, plaque burden, and specific epigenetic content between the latter two groups. Nevertheless, the systemic methylating index was significantly decreased in LMKD mice versus the other two groups, reinforcing the possibility that the levels of accumulated homocysteine were insufficient to affect vascular transmethylation reactions. Further studies addressing nutritional ketosis in the presence of mild HHcy should use a higher number of animals and are warranted to confirm these preliminary observations.


During the calendar years 1998-2002, 147 clear 8nm diameter particle formation events have been identified at the SMEAR I station in Varrio, northern Finland. The events have been classified in detail according to the particle formation rate, growth rate, event starting time, different trace gas concentrations and pre-existing particle concentrations as well as various meteorological conditions. The frequency of particle formation and growth events was highest during the spring months between March and May, suggesting that increasing biological activity might produce the precursor gases for particle formation. The apparent 8nm particle formation rates were around 0.1 /cm 3 s, and they were uncorrelated with growth rates that varied between 0.5 and 10nm/h. The air masses with clearly elevated sulphur dioxide concentrations (above 1.6ppb) came, as expected, from the direction of the Nikel and Monschegorsk smelters. Only 15 formation events can be explained by the pollution plume from these sources.


We present results from our recent research into carbon-fibre composite (CFC) mirror fabrication for optical and infra-red applications. In particular this research is aimed towards the next generation of extremely large telescopes to offer an alternative to thin glass shell adaptive secondary mirrors. We address the issues involved with CFC mirror production, in particular the accuracy of the form replication process, a suitable surface for polishing to optical quality, no fibre print-through, environmental stability (shape change due to thermal and moisture variations), material uniformity and lifetime. We have performed experiments into the effectiveness of cold electroplating thick nickel coatings to totally encapsulate the CFC base substrate; the manufacturing procedure and properties of the Ni-CFC mirror are described here.


An ever-increasing need to find creative approaches and mission models to engage with Muslim neighbors exists. Studies have shown that musical performance can evoke transformative moments that enhance communication and restore broken relationships. In this article, I explore the intersection of music, peacebuilding, and interfaith dialogue in light of Muslim-Christian relations. I ask how music contributes to peacebuilding among peoples of differing faiths by investigating the roles music plays in promoting peace and living with the other in sustainable ways. I suggest a theoretical framework of transformative music communication and practices of interfaith dialogue as bridges in Muslim-Christian relations.


Positron emission tomography (PET) is widely applied in central nervous system (CNS) drug development for assessment of target engagement in vivo. As the majority of PET investigations have addressed drug interaction at a single binding site, findings of multitarget engagement have been less frequently reported and have often been inconsistent with results obtained in vitro. AZD3676 [N,N-dimethyl-7-(4-(2-(pyridin-2-yl)ethyl)piperazin-1-yl) benzofuran-2-carboxamide] is a novel combined serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine) 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptor antagonist that was developed for the treatment of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease. Here, we evaluated the properties of AZD3676 as a CNS drug by combining in vitro and ex vivo radioligand binding techniques, behavioral pharmacology in rodents, and PET imaging in nonhuman primates. Target engagement in the nonhuman primate brain was assessed in PET studies by determination of drug-induced occupancy using receptor-selective radioligands. AZD3676 showed preclinical properties consistent with CNS drug potential, including nanomolar receptor affinity and efficacy in rodent models of learning and memory. In PET studies of the monkey brain, AZD3676 inhibited radioligand binding in a dose-dependent manner with similar affinity at both receptors. The equally high affinity at 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptors as determined in vivo was not predicted from corresponding estimates obtained in vitro, suggesting more than 10-fold selectivity for 5-HT1A versus 5-HT1B receptors. These findings support the further integrated use of PET for confirmation of multitarget occupancy of CNS drugs. Importantly, earlier introduction of PET studies in nonhuman primates may reduce future development costs and the requirement for animal experiments in preclinical CNS drug development programs.


Video on demand (VOD) is becoming one of the most important services for many network operators. VOD needs a huge bandwidth to deliver data in a real-time network. Ethernet passive optical networks (EPONs) provide a low-cost and high-speed solution for multimedia services such as VOD. In this paper, we propose a scalable architecture based on an EPON, using single copy broadcast in the downstream direction and a special caching mechanism responsible for VOD requests, to improve VOD services. Our architecture consists of an optical network unit (ONU) with an associated storage unit and optical line terminal (OLT) components. We set a "broadcast" logical link identifier in the video packets so that all of the ONUs can accept them. Therefore, when the movie is sent from the OLT to the ONUs after it is requested by the user, each ONU accepts the movie packet and saves it in its own storage. In this architecture, the OLT just needs to send each video to the ONUs once, and the attached storage is responsible for future requests. With this architecture, at least 60% of VOD traffic can be saved in the feeder fiber. Simulation results show that our architecture can improve the overall quality of service in terms of packet loss, mean packet delays, jitter, and system throughput.


Cytostatic drugs are a broad group of chemotherapy compounds mainly applied for tumor, skin diseases and infections treatments. Anticancer pharmaceutics are exhibited carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic activity and have been recognized as low biodegradable so their concentration would increase in the environment. Effective removal of pharmaceuticals in municipal wastewater treatment plants plays a critical role in preventing them from getting into the aquatic environment. Presented work focuses on the photocatalytic removal of poor biodegradable actual micropollutant Imatinib (IMA) from aqueous solution. The 2.5 wt. % multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) modified TiO2 nanocomposite was synthesized by two methods: sol-gel (s-g) and hydrothermal (hyd). The anatase as a photocatalysts' structure was confirmed by using Xday diffraction technique. Photoluminescence and UV-vis tests were used for investigation of photocatalysts optical properties. The scanning electron microscopy techniques used for morphology investigation showed the various location of MWCNTs in composites depending of synthesis method applied. Good photocatalytic properties of both 2.5% MWCNTs/TiO2 for imatinib degradation under UVA, and artificial solar light irradiation was showed. Imatinib was also removed and mineralized under visible light irradiation by 2.5% MWCNTs/TiO2(s-g). The study showed that MWCNTs contributed in increasing photocatalytic activity of TiO2 in solar and/or visible light due to retardation of electron-hole recombination and visible light absorption by modification of band-gap and/or sensitization.


Objective: The objective was to study the antidiabetic properties of ethanolic extract of the leaves of Solanum trilobatum (EEST) in streptozocin (STZ)-induced diabetics in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Materials and Methods: EEST was prepared by using hot percolation method and the extract was used for antidiabetic screening. The SD rats were divided into six groups each of six animals, namely normal control, diabetic control, glibenclamide and EEST-treated groups at 125, 250, and 500 mg/kg. Except normal control animals, all the other animals were induced diabetes with intraperitoneal injection of STZ (55 mg/kg). The control and diabetic animals were treated with respective assigned treatment once daily for 21 consecutive days. The blood glucose was monitored at regular intervals and biochemical parameters such as aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, urea, and creatinine were measured with terminal sample. At the end of the study, the animals were sacrificed; lung, heart, stomach, liver, and kidney were harvested and absolute organ weight was measured. Results: The rats administrated with the extracts at dose of 500 mg/kg body weight (BW)/day showed significant antidiabetic activity and this effect was comparable with that of glibenclamide. The diabetic control animals showed significant increased levels of total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), HDL ratio, very-low-density lipoprotein, and glibenclamide, and EEST prevented STZ-induced cholesterol impairments. EEST did not show any significant antidiabetic effect at 125 and 250 mg/kg BW/day treated rats. Conclusion: EEST showed significant antidiabetic activity at 500 mg/kg and prevented STZ-induced metabolic changes in experimental animals. EEST did not show any antidiabetic activity in diabetic animals treated with 125 and 250 mg/kg of EEST.


Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide provides an extensive collection of extracts from the texts of major intellectuals, politicians, and writers within some of the most important ideological traditions in modern politics, which are interspersed with editorial commentaries. These offer a general historical introduction to each thinker and the particular text, highlight key thematic features of the passages and alert the reader to significant overlaps and points of difference between different authors within and across different ideological traditions. This is the first volume to provide such an extensive range of texts and to cover both established and newer political ideologies. The volume illustrates the complex evolution of ideological traditions in various national settings and highlights how these developed through rival interpretations of some of the key concepts of modern political discourse.


A K-Band frequency doubler using InGaP HBT is developed, which features high fundamental frequency rejection, flat conversion loss over wide bandwidth, and high saturation output power. To obtain a balanced signal, a compact on-chip lumped rat-race hybrid is implemented. The circuit exhibits a measured conversion loss of 4 dB over the output frequencies from 14 to 22 GHz. The fundamental frequency suppression is better than 20 dB and the second harmonic saturation output power is higher than 7.3 dBm with a miniature chip size of 1 mm 1 mm. Index Terms — MMIC, Doubler, HBT.


The Dutch Inspectorate for Education established that the quality of elementary students' writing is below the desired level, and that the teaching of writing must be improved. The aim of this PhD research was therefore to improve writing education in upper elementary grades by developing an effective teaching program for writing, including professional development for teachers, and tools for the assessment of writing. Building on the findings of previous research, we developed and tested Tekster [Texter], a strategy-focused comprehensive program for teaching writing in grade 4 to 6. Tekster combines several evidence-based practices, such as strategy instruction, goal setting, text structure instruction and observational learning into one general approach to address both the focus and mode of writing instruction. Tekster was developed in close collaboration with elementary teachers. The effectiveness of Tekster was tested in two large-scale intervention studies with 144 teachers and 2766 students from 52 schools. Students' writing performance was assessed with multiple tasks in multiple genres in order to draw inferences about students' underlying writing proficiency. The quality of their texts was rated by multiple raters using a benchmark rating scale. To ensure that the intervention was implemented with fidelity, teachers were provided with a manual and training. In the first study students' writing performance improved significantly after following the Tekster program, with an effect size of 0.40, while generalizing over students, teachers, and tasks. The improvement was established in all grades and maintained two months after the intervention. In the second study, in which we added a professional development program, the effect size was even higher, i.e., 0.55. This study specifically showed that teachers became more positive and felt more efficacious about the teaching of writing after working with the program. They were highly satisfied with Tekster and the professional development activities. Moreover, it was shown that teachers were able to transfer their newly acquired knowledge and skills to colleagues. In two subsequent studies we specifically investigated the effectiveness of the writing strategy. This strategy divides the writing process into a prewriting, writing, and post-writing phase. We found that explicitly teaching students a writing strategy enhanced their metacognitive knowledge about writing and promoted the use of prewriting activities, which improved the quality of their texts. Further, we examined whether teachers are able to adequately provide feedback to texts of varying quality. Results show that the type and amount of feedback depends more on the style of the teacher than on the actual performance of the student, and that additional training for teachers is necessary to optimize the effectiveness of feedback. Therefore feedback formed a substantial part of the professional development program of Tekster. To summarize, this PhD research demonstrates that a comprehensive writing program, such as Tekster, is a promising approach to improve writing education in elementary grades. The program appeared to be effective for students and teachers. All in all, this research provides valuable clues on how the gap between research and classroom practice can be bridged to improve writing education.


Models of political participation have begun to incorporate actors who possess "social preferences". However, these models have failed to take into account the potentially incongruent political goals of different social preference types. These goals are likely to play an important role in shaping political behavior. To examine the effect of distinct social preferences on political activity we conducted an experiment in which participants played five rounds of a modified dictator game (Andreoni and Miller 2002). We used the decisions in these games to determine their preference type and mapped these types to reported political activity. Our results show that subjects who were most interested in increasing total welfare in the dictator game were more likely to participate in politics than subjects with selfish preferences, whereas subjects most interested in reducing the difference between their own well-being and the well-being of others were no more likely to participate than subjects with selfish preferences.


The potency of SO2 is highest when it is in a free or unbound state. High concentrations of SO2 binders in wine may greatly diminish the efficacy of SO2. The decreased preservative efficacy of bound SO2 requires increased SO2 additions to wine for adequate preservation action. However, additional sulfite concentrations may increase the risk of adverse health reactions for sensitive consumers and may also exceed legal limits for SO2 in wines. Hence, this work investigated important SO2 binding compounds throughout vinification and developed strategies for their control to increase the preservative efficacy of SO2 and limit total additions to wine. Comprehensive analysis of SO2 binding compounds at practical concentrations was achieved through the development of a novel UHPLC method that used the metal chelator, EDTA, to limit oxidation reactions during sample preparation. This method greatly improved existing protocols limited by complex sampling procedures and long HPLC analysis times. A survey of 237 wines from across NYS showed clear differences in the SO2 binder profiles between different wine types. Red wines were typically higher in αketoglutaric acid and galacturonic acid, whereas, white wines were higher in acetaldehyde, pyruvic acid and glucose. Major regulating factors for acetaldehyde production during alcoholic fermentation were SO2 addition prior to inoculation, fermentation temperature and grape must type. With the exception of galacturonic acid, the concentrations of acetaldehyde, pyruvic acid and α-ketoglutaric acid decreased following inoculation with O. oeni. Overall bound SO2 levels were decreased by 22% during MLF and an additional 53% one week later. During MLF, acetaldehyde bound SO2 increased mean O. oeni lag times in a dose dependant manner. Metabolism of bound SO2 by O. oeni resulted in concomitant increases in free SO2 concentrations, which never rose about 8.0 mg l. Malic acid was depleted by O. oeni, despite the presence of acetaldehyde bound SO2. Findings suggest that significant reductions in SO2 binders can be achieved by both yeast and bacterial metabolism during vinification. However, O. oeni growth may be limited by the presence of excessive bound SO2 concentrations. To decrease acetaldehyde levels during cellaring, oxygen ingress should be completely restricted.


The classifier system proposed in this work combines the dissimilarity spaces produced by a set of Siamese neural networks (SNNs) designed using four different backbones with different clustering techniques for training SVMs for automated animal audio classification. The system is evaluated on two animal audio datasets: one for cat and another for bird vocalizations. The proposed approach uses clustering methods to determine a set of centroids (in both a supervised and unsupervised fashion) from the spectrograms in the dataset. Such centroids are exploited to generate the dissimilarity space through the Siamese networks. In addition to feeding the SNNs with spectrograms, experiments process the spectrograms using the heterogeneous auto-similarities of characteristics. Once the similarity spaces are computed, each pattern is "projected" into the space to obtain a vector space representation; this descriptor is then coupled to a support vector machine (SVM) to classify a spectrogram by its dissimilarity vector. Results demonstrate that the proposed approach performs competitively (without ad-hoc optimization of the clustering methods) on both animal vocalization datasets. To further demonstrate the power of the proposed system, the best standalone approach is also evaluated on the challenging Dataset for Environmental Sound Classification (ESC50) dataset.


This research focuses on the design and implementation of two novel controllers within rooftop photovoltaic (PV) inverters. The main objective of the first control scheme is to eliminate the voltage violation (induced voltage rise due to reverse power flow) and to maintain the voltages within acceptable bounds, at essentially no extra investment cost to the PV owner. The second controller can significantly reduce real energy losses in the distribution feeder and reactive energy demand at the substation. Besides, reducing reactive demand at substation leads to loss reduction of substation transformer and transmission network. It can also relieve congestion in transmission network and improve the voltage stability. A significant advantage of the proposed controllers is that they do not require communication or cooperation with other PV inverters. The control objectives are attained by exploiting the inherent reactive power capability of the inverters and the dispatch of their reactive power is calculated in an autonomous fashion. In this context, important theoretical aspects of control design are investigated and a general framework for stability analysis of these types of systems is established. In addition, this work reports on the development of a distribution test feeder with smart-grid functionality. The test feeder is based on an actual distribution feeder. Case studies involving simulations of real (the developed feeder) and realistic distribution feeders with hundreds of households and their appliances modeled in high detail are performed to study the impacts of the proposed controllers on the distribution system. It is shown that implementation of these controllers could have a significant beneficial impact upon the efficiency and operation of the power grid.


This study demonstrates how The Lais of Marie de France (12 c.) by Marie de France, The Mirror of Simple Souls (14 c.) by Marguerite Porete, and Christine de Pizan's The Book of City of Ladies (15 c.) serve as the three progressive steps in the transformation of the rhetorical theory and the feminine literary voice, redefining woman from the idea of inferior entity written by men over centuries into the concept of an intellectual and virtuous female human being. The development of a strong feminine literary voice starts as de France feminizes the masculine language she borrows from masculine oral tradition to write narrative poetry, enriched with a feminine perspective. A century later, Porete assumes solely feminine language—through the voice of a female soul that she makes available to the male soul—in a theological treatise that annuls the role of the Church to attain spiritual purity during this life. Subsequently, Pizan, in the fifteenth century, writes the first directly-stated defense for womankind, applying feminist literary criticism to important paternalistic texts, assuming an exclusively feminine voice, and providing a reinterpretation of history and mythology. The first chapter of this thesis discusses the historical development of the concept of woman written by men, including a brief account of Sappho's literary merit as the last of a group of women who produced literature before the fifth century B.C.E. The next three chapters are dedicated to each of the three texts, and the final chapter explains the link between the texts, the relevance of knowing and remembering the talent and effort necessary to redefine woman in a literary world still dominated by men, and proposes options for further study in literature, psychology of education, and literary historiography.


Flooding is a fundamental distributed algorithms technique. Consider the following flooding process, for simplicity, in a synchronous message passing network: A distinguished node begins the flooding process by sending the (same) message to all its neighbours in the first round. In subsequent rounds, every node receiving the message relays a copy of the message further to all those, and only those, nodes it did not receive the message from in the previous round. However, the nodes do not remember if they've taken part in the flooding before and therefore will repeat the process every time they get a message. In other words, they execute an amnesiac flooding process with memory only of the present round. The flooding process terminates in a particular round when no edge in the network carries the message in that, and, hence, subsequent, rounds. We call this process Amnesiac Flooding (AF). In this work, the main question we address is whether AF will terminate on an arbitrary network (graph) and in what time? We show that, indeed, AF terminates on any arbitrary graph. Further, AF terminates in at most D rounds in bipartite graphs and at most 2D + 1 rounds in non-bipartite graphs - in this brief announcement, we show this for the bipartite case only. We also show that in a natural asynchronous variant of AF, an adversary can always ensure non-termination.


Extracting summary statistics from a visual scene requires little effort. However, it is unclear how fast this process can occur. The present study tested whether the initial feed-forward sweep in early sensory processing is sufficient for statistic perception by interrupting reentrant processes with Object Substitution Masking (OSM). OSM typically uses a 4-dot mask surrounding the briefly presented target, which either persists after the target offset (delayed-offset) or disappears with the target offset (simultaneous-offset). If the target duration is short enough, the 4-dots in the delayed-offset condition will interrupt the reentrant process. Previous literature has primarily relied on accuracy measurements to investigate masked summary statistics, finding mixed results. To resolve this issue, we adopted the dual-process signal detection (DPSD) framework to separate out two aspects of statistical perception: a discrete high-threshold process of seeing and a continuous feeling of sensing (analytically equivalent to recollection and familiarity in recognition memory, respectively). In Experiment 1, several groups of dots were flashed on the screen for 40ms. Participants first reported whether one group of dots contained more dots than other groups, and then reported their confidence on their choice. These responses were used to construct Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) from which seeing and sensing parameters were extracted. Three conditions were included: delayed-offset, simultaneous-offset, and no mask. The delayed-offset condition led to a large drop in the seeing component, with a small decrease in sensing, compared to the simultaneous-offset condition, suggesting that reentry processes were necessary for seeing numerosity. This decrease in seeing was eliminated in Experiment 2 when stimulus duration was extended to 80ms to allow reentry processes even for the delayed-offset condition. Taken together, the present results suggest that the initial feed-forward sweep is sufficient for sensing whereas reentrant processes are necessary for seeing in statistic perception. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


This thesis explores the process of 'Sovietising' the emotions through the framework of the genre film. The reorientation of the film industry in the 1930s towards mass entertainment, I argue, saw a turn to generic formulas as a means to increase the emotional impact of cinema on its audience. Although essential to the construction of 'structures of feeling' that could help support the ideological codes of Stalinist society, genre films and the affects they solicited also exposed fissures within official discourses. Whereas previous studies have emphasised the successful amalgamation of ideology and entertainment, I find an irreconcilable tension between genre cinema's tendency to excite the senses and disturb psychical balance and Socialist Realism's aim of establishing a stable, normative value system. Employing psychoanalytic theory, I posit that this tension is manifest in individual films and the contemporary debates about them, which I show, display a pervasive anxiety over affective 'excess'. Chapter one explores the conflation of 'happiness' with the masochistic enjoyment of self sacrifice in the films promoting the cult of the leader as the builder of a new joyful life. The second chapter excavates the ideological problems of incorporating the affective devices of melodrama into the Stalinist 'drama of contemporary life'. I go on to outline how the attempt to create a distinctively 'Soviet' film comedy, the topic of chapter three, prompted thorny debates over suitable forms of Soviet laughter throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Finally, chapter four explores the tensions within the Stalinist thriller between the ideological imperative of perpetuating a paranoid world view based on firm divisions between 'us' and 'them' and the genre's demand to provoke anxiety through staging the breakdown of stable boundaries. The 'education of feeling' was a deeply precarious task, I show, with the affective responses elicited by genre cinema often proving resistant to being ideologically shaped. A contribution to the history of emotions, the thesis shows the role of affect in sustaining, as well as undermining ideological mechanisms.


Cultural anthropology, educational science and philosophy are closely connected. Can this close connection find practical application ? This essay will try to answer the question in Gramscian terms, by taking into consideration the methodological approach suggested by Gramsci, with the concept of "disinterested study", applying it the scholastic field, that is the relation of supremacy-direction to subordination that is established between teacher and learner. The starting point and laboratory is the Italian school, that is the real place in which the method of disinterested study is applied. The protagonists are the teacher (meaning anyone who is teaching), on one side, and the pupil on the other. The teacher must possess the ability to lead, while the pupil is required to study and carry out research, in addition to having the discipline and scientific accuracy necessary in order to overcome his initially subordinate situation. This new relationship between teacher and learner may allow the real and true anthropological Gramscian option to be realized: namely through the work which results from the uprooting of situation of subordination, it is possible to arrive to the progressive rooting of a situation in which critical self-awareness is undertaken, thereby arriving at full autonomy.


We report herein a case of advanced gastric cancer successfully treated with TS-1/low-dose CDDP/Lentinan combination chemotherapy. A 74-year-old male suffering from anorexia was admitted to our hospital and diagnosed as having type 2 gastric cancer metastasizing to the liver. TS-1 was orally administered at 100 mg/body/day for 28 days with a 14-day interval as one session. During the second session, because grade 1 thrombocytopenia was noted, administration of TS-1 was rescheduled to every other day. CDDP was infused at 10 mg/body/day on day 6 to 10, 13, 15, and 17. After his discharge, CDDP at 10 mg/body and Lentinan at 2 mg/body were weekly infused as ambulant patient chemotherapy. The abdominal CT scan showed reduction of hepatic tumors by 86% in three months and 97% in 16 months. Metastatic lymph nodes disappeared in 4 months. The primary tumor was reduced and flattened to a cicatrix, and endoscopic biopsy revealed no cancer cells. The tumor markers, CEA (716.9 ng/ml) and CA 19-9 (57.2 U/ml), were reduced to normal range. The therapeutic efficacy was judged as a partial response (PR), which lasted for 16 months without severe adverse effects. He maintained good quality of life. This combination chemotherapy was thought to be beneficial for patients with advanced gastric cancer.


We describe a guilt-by-association system that can be used to rank networked entities by their suspiciousness. We demonstrate the algorithm on a suite of data sets generated by a terrorist-world simulator developed to support a DoD program. Each data set consists of thousands of entities and some known links between them. The system ranks truly malicious entities highly, even if only relatively fe w are known to be malicious ex ante. When used as a tool for identifying promising data-gathering opportunities, the system focuses on gathering more information about the most suspicious entities and thereby increases the density of linkage in appropriate parts of the network. We assess performance under conditions of noisy prior knowledge of maliciousness. Although the levels of performance reported here would not support direct action on all data sets, the res ults do recommend the consideration of network-scoring techniques as a new source of evidence for decision making. For example, the system can operate on networks far larger and more complex than could be processed by a human analyst. This is a follow-up study to a prior paper; although there is a considerable amount of overlap, here we focus on more data sets and improve the evaluation by identifying entities with high scores simply as an artifact of the data acquisition process.


ABSTRACT This paper reports a new Early Cretaceous flora discovered recently near the village of Estercuel (Teruel province, northeastern Spain). The plant bearing beds belong to the uppermost part of the Early Cretaceous succession, at the top of the fluvial deposits of the Utrillas Formation. The site has yielded a diverse assemblage of plant compressions including lycopods and ferns, various gymnosperms as well as terrestrial and aquatic angiosperms. Leaves of aquatic lycopods (Isoetites sp.) constitute a minor component of the palaeobotanical assemblage. Filicales are not very common, with Dicksoniales (Onychiopsis sp.) and a few specimens of Cladophlebis type fronds. The gymnosperms are represented by fragmented remains of long parallel veined Desmiophyllum leaves as well as a great abundance of conifer axis corresponding to the form-genus Pagiophyllum and female cones. Terrestrial angiosperms include pinnately lobed leaves of the genus Myricompia, simple leaves with spatulate lamina and some petiolate leaves both corresponding to angiosperms of uncertain affinity. Aquatic angiosperms consist of Nelumbo-like floral receptacles (Nelumbonaceae, Proteales) and Aquatifolia cf. fluitans (Nympheales). The palynological assemblage is dominated by pollen of gymnosperms (mainly Taxodiaceaepollenites hiatus, Classopollis major and Araucariacites australis). It also includes many angiosperm grains (Afropollis jardinus, Clavatipollenites spp., Dichastopollenites spp., Liliacidites doylei, Monosulcites chaloneri, Penetetrapites mollis, Pennipollis spp., Phimopollenites augathellaensis, Retimonocolpites textus, Rousea spp., Senectotetradites varireticulatus, Stellatopollis barghoornii, Striatopollis spp., Transitoripollis sp. cf. T. similis, Tricolpites spp., Tricolporoidites sp.) and records the first occurrence of tricolporate forms in the uppermost part of the Utrillas Formation. Both macroflora and microflora assemblages present taxa similar to those of the uppermost Albian Shaftesbury Formation in northwestern Alberta in Canada, the uppermost Albian Denton Shale Member of Bokchito Formation in southern Oklahoma, the lower part of the Upper Albian Dakota Formation from the mid-west of North America, and Subzone II C of the Potomac Group, eastern United States. Both macro- and microflora assemblages display boreal influence with some similar taxa to those of the Upper Albian Kome Formation in western Greenland and some taxa as Afropollis jardinus and Stellatopollis barghoornii more frequently found in the tethyan and gondwanan realms. A gondwanan affinity is also indicated by the presence of Klitzschophyllites leaves.


Purpose: The article deals with the issue of sources and changes in the structure of financing for higher education institutions (HEIs) in Poland. Design/Methodology/Approach: Revenues gained by HEIs outside the public support system and fees paid by students are referred to as the so-called third stream. As a result of global changes occurring in higher education systems, these revenues are increasingly important for the functioning of these organizations. The article, based on official statistical data, analyses the structure of revenues for the years 1995–2017 of the HEIs in Poland from operating activities, the dynamics of changes in revenues from research activities, revenues from sales of other works as well as research and development services, and revenues from separate economic activities. Findings: The analysis shows that the change in orientation of Polish HEIs towards activation of relations with the social and economic environment is clearly reflected in the changing structure and dynamics of revenues.


Strong commodity prices are driving Africa's growth, which should be about 6 % in 2007 and 2008. External vulnerability is a function of its limited integration into international trade and investment flows. Africa should mobilise external sources more strategically. In this respect, aid for trade can be import. * This Policy Insights introduces the African Economic Outlook 2007.


Background
Non-compliance with anti-epileptic drug treatment in the George area, resulting in recurrent seizures and visits to the emergency department of the George Provincial Hospital, has been identified as a social and economic problem. The aim of this study was to determine the socio-economic and medical factors, the information given to patients by healthcare workers, and the understanding of patients living with epilepsy who presented to the emergency department with seizures.

 Method
A descriptive study design was employed and the data-collection tools were a questionnaire and structured interview.

 Results
The median age of the study population was 32 years. The patients had suffered from epilepsy for a median of two years and visited a clinic for a median of seven times a year. The median education level was primary school and three quarters had no employment or government grant. The majority did not understand the disease, the side effects of the medication and why they should be on medication. In addition, it became apparent from patient reports that healthcare workers showed a lack of counselling skills, time and appropriate knowledge.

 Conclusion
There is a general lack of understanding of epilepsy by the patient. Not only were the patients uninformed, but they also showed apathy towards the management of their condition.


Genomic data is growing exponentially due to next generation sequencing technologies (NGS) and their ability to produce massive amounts of data in a short time. NGS technologies generate big genomic data that needs to be exchanged between different locations efficiently and reliably. The current network transfer protocols rely on Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) or User Data gram Protocol (UDP) protocols, ignoring data size and type. Universal application layer protocols such as HTTP are designed for wide variety of data types and are not particularly efficient for genomic data. Therefore, we present a new data-aware transfer protocol for genomic-data that increases network throughput and reduces latency, called Genomic Text Transfer Protocol (GTTP). In this paper, we design and implement a new network transfer protocol for big genomic DNA dataset that relies on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Modification to content-encoding of HTTP has been done that would transfer big genomic DNA datasets using machine-to-machine (M2M) and client(s)-server topologies. Our results show that our modification to HTTP reduces the transmitted data by 75% of original data and still be able to regenerate the data at the client side for bioinformatics analysis. Consequently, the transfer of data using GTTP is shown to be much faster (about 8 times faster than HTTP) when compared with regular HTTP.


One of the most important problems in the theory of cellular automata (CA) is determining the proportion of cells in a specific state after a given number of time iterations. We approach this problem using patterns in preimage sets that is, the set of blocks which iterate to the desired output. This allows us to construct a response curve a relationship between the proportion of cells in state 1 after niterations as a function of the initial proportion. We derive response curve formulae for many two-dimensional deterministic CA rules with L-neighbourhood. For all remaining rules, we find experimental response curves. We also use preimage sets to classify surjective rules. In the last part of the thesis, we consider a special class of one-dimensional probabilistic CA rules. We find response surface formula for these rules and experimental response surfaces for all remaining rules.


Selective encryption for video streaming was proposed for efficient multimedia content protection. However, the issues on joint optimization of video quality, content protection, and communication energy efficiency in a wireless sensor network (WSN) have not been fully addressed in the literature. In this paper, we propose a scheme to optimize the energy, distortion, and encryption performance of video streaming in WSNs. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, a channel-aware selective encryption approach is proposed to minimize the extra encryption dependency overhead at the application layer. Second, an unequal error protection (UEP)-based network resource allocation scheme is proposed to improve the communication efficiency at the lower layers. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed joint selective encryption and resource allocation scheme can improve the video transmission quality significantly with guaranteed content protection and energy efficiency.


Low levels of phosphate can disrupt bone ossification and predispose to fractures. FGF23 is one of the major determinants of phosphate homeostasis, acting to increase urinary phosphate excretion. However, the regulation of FGF23 is incompletely understood. In this issue of the JCI, Smith et al. show that the cleaved form of αKlotho, the membrane-bound form of which is an FGF23 coreceptor, serves as a novel endocrine regulator of phosphate homeostasis, capable of inducing FGF23 production in osteocytes. Commentary