Delta-like 1 homolog (DLK1) gene encodes a transmembrane protein containing epidermal growth factor-like repeats that promotes the induction of mesenchymal cells but prevents chondrocyte, preadipocytes and osteoblast maturation and differentiation. Rs1802710 polymorphism situated in the fifth exon of DLK1, shows a significant parent-of-origin effect reflecting the known silencing of the maternally inherited copy by imprinting. In humans, a more frequent paternal transmission of the paternal allele in the rs1802710 polymorphism of DLK1 on obese children has been noticed. We aimed to study the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1802710 of the DLK1 gene and its effects on early life development. Due to the known imprinting effect surrounding the DLK1 locus, we wanted to analyze whether these changes were different depending on the parental origin of the transmitted rs1802710 variant T allele. Therefore, a longitudinal study has been done from the beginning of the pregnancy to the 12th month-old baby after birth. In order to be able to detect parent-of-origin effects, the whole trio family has been genotyped. Those families in which we were able to track the newborn rs1802710 T allele origin, were the ones selected for the complete analysis. Maternal anthropometric and metabolic variables, DLK1, MEG3 RTL1 and DIO3 gene expression, likewise newborn prenatal, perinatal and postnatal anthropometric variables were assessed to analyses differences when the the variant T allele was paternally or maternally transmitted to the newborn. DLK1 rs1802710 paternally expressed T allele was independently associated with low levels of maternal fatty acid synthase (β=0.415, p=0.024; model R2=0.142), generalized fetal growth rate increment (β = 0,268, p = 0,003; model R2 = 0.559), increased birth cranial perimeter-SDS (β=0.202, p=0.048; model R2=0.045) and with decreased ponderal index at 1st month of age (β=0.434, p=0.003; model R2=0.148). No significant differences were observed when the T allele was maternally received Those results highlight the paternal-origin effect that described in the DLK1 locus region


A model for the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) consisting of two coupled, nonlinear, first-order differential equations is analytically explored on the basis of the geometric theory of singularly perturbed dynamical systems. The value of the control parameter μ, accounting for the stimulated emission, for which the solution exhibits the phenomenon of "canard explosion" is determined depending on the rest of the SOA's parameters. Such value is represented by a power series of a small parameter e of the singularly perturbed system. An example is considered where the canard explosion is numerically evaluated for a typical set of the SOA's parameters. The importance of rigorous determination of the critical regime in the SOA for optical synchronization and photonic clocking is outlined.


The nuclear accident at Fukushima, which led to the release of radioactive fallout over densely populated areas, highlights a broader problem: What is the best way for the public to detect and monitor radiation levels in urban areas before, during, and after a major radiological event? The authors describe a system that would incorporate inexpensive radiation detectors in mobile phones equipped with the capability of continuously transmitting data to a central server. This server would correlate data from a large number of detectors carried by people moving randomly in an urban environment, locating fallout hot spots and illicit radiological sources carried by terrorists. The authors discuss both technical aspects of the system and some practical issues involved in implementing it, including cost.


This work investigates the effect of the aperture size on derived galaxy properties for which we H alpha ve spatially-resolved optical spectra. We focus on some indicators of star formation activity and dust attenuation for spiral galaxies that have been widely used in previous work on galaxy evolution. We investigated 104 spiral galaxies from the CALIFA survey for which 2D spectroscopy with complete spatial coverage is available. From the 3D cubes we derived growth curves of the most conspicuous Balmer emission lines (H alpha, H beta) for circular apertures of different radii centered at the galaxy's nucleus after removing the underlying stellar continuum. We find that the H alpha flux (f(H alpha)) growth curve follows a well-defined sequence with aperture radius that shows a low dispersion around the median value. From this analysis, we derived aperture corrections for galaxies in different magnitude and redshift intervals. Once stellar absorption is properly accounted for, the f (H alpha)/f(H beta) ratio growth curve shows a smooth decline, pointing toward the absence of differential dust attenuation as a function of radius. Aperture corrections as a function of the radius are provided in the interval [0.3, 2.5]R-50. Finally, the H alpha equivalent-width (EW(H alpha)) growth curve increases with the size of the aperture and shows a very high dispersion for small apertures. This prevents us from using reliable aperture corrections for this quantity. In addition, this result suggests that separating star-forming and quiescent galaxies based on observed EW(H alpha) through small apertures will probably result in low EW(H alpha) star-forming galaxies begin classified as quiescent.


This study quantifies the significance of southerly water vapour fluxes, associated with the Zagros Mountains barrier jet, on precipitation occurring in the Eastern Fertile Crescent region and its change due to global warming. Precipitation events are simulated using a Regional Climate Model (MM5-Noah) driven by boundary conditions from a CCSM global climate model simulation with the SRES A2 emission scenario. The precipitation events were grouped into classes based on the similarity of their water vapour fluxes. Results show a massive increase in the southerly dominated classes which are associated with the formation of a barrier jet on the western slopes of the Zagros Mountains. This increase was related to an increase in atmospheric water vapour in the southern portion of the domain rather than to an increase in the frequency of formation or wind speed of the barrier jet itself. The presence of this barrier jet becomes increasingly important to precipitation in the Eastern Fertile Crescent region as global warming progresses. Thus, low resolution models that are unable to capture this phenomena will produce questionable future projections for this region.


The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with Oakland County Health Division (OCHD), collected 140 water samples from 38 wells in Oakland County during 1998 to better understand ground-water quality. OCHD had observed temporal variations in concentrations of various constituents, so two additional sets of samples were collected to evaluate potential short-term variability related to sample collection procedures and long-term seasonal variability. Replicate samples from 28 wells were analyzed in the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) Drinking Water Laboratory to compare MDEQ's analytical results to those obtained from the USGS National Water Quality Laboratory. Several additional databases describing population, land use, water supply, soils, geology, and flows of ground water and surface water are presented in the first part of the report to assist in interpreting the waterquality data. Maps created from these databases are provided in the first portion of the report as an extension of the study-area description. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has established Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL) and Secondary Maximum Contaminant Levels (SMCL) for which samples were analyzed in this study. Water from the 38 wells sampled by the USGS did not exceed the SMCL or MCL for sulfate, fluoride, or nitrite. However, water from 26 wells exceeded the SMCL for iron, water from 12 wells exceeded the SMCL for manganese, and water from 12 wells exceeded the SMCL for dissolved solids. Water from two wells exceeded the MCL for nitrate, although nitrate concentrations in water from most wells was below the detection limit. Water from seven wells exceeded the SMCL for chloride, and water from all wells contained detectable concentrations of chloride. Water from five wells exceeded the MCL for arsenic, and most of the wells sampled contained detectable concentrations of arsenic. These five wells were identified from previous MDEQ analyses to have elevated arsenic concentrations, and were sampled to obtain additional chemistry information. Replicate samples were collected from 26 of the 38 wells for analysis at the MDEQ Drinking-Water Laboratory to compare the results with the USGS National Water Quality Laboratory. The results of the replicate analyses indicate close agreement between the laboratories, with mean differences for nitrate, chloride, and arsenic of 0.10 milligrams per liter (mg/L) as nitrogen, 6.8 mg/L, and 0.0008 mg/L, respectively between the USGS and MDEQ analyses. Potential health effects associated with ingesting nitrate, chloride, and arsenic are provided with the water-quality data, along with references for further information. INTRODUCTION In 1996, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), the University of Michigan, and nine counties in southeastern Michigan, began a Ground-Water Quality Atlas of Oakland County, Michigan


The modes formed by two coupled chiral optical Tamm states localized at the interfaces between a photonic cholesteric liquid crystal conjugated with polarization-preserving anisotropic mirrors have been analytically and numerically investigated. These modes are only excited at the diffracting polarization of incident light. As the cholesteric layer thickness decreases, the spectral splitting of the localized state frequency is predicted. The splitting value depends on the crystal layer thickness. At the nondiffracting circular polarization, the localized modes are not excited, and the system becomes similar to the Fabry–Pérot cavity containing an anisotropic helical structure.


Abstract Poetry and music have in common various ways of structuring sound. In both, one can speak of rhythm, meter, loudness (e.g., accent), and pitch. Beyond sound in the narrow sense, one can also speak of syntax in that both language and Western tonal music create expectations that are satisfied or not in a variety of ways. These material aspects of poetry and music can be the basis for exploring how poetry and music fit together in vocal music in general and in individual works. The study of poetry in these terms came to prominence in the work of Roman Jakobson and others beginning in 1960 and has more recently been taken up by Marjorie Perloff and colleagues. The study of music with words has in general not considered the materiality that they share, especially not in the analysis of individual works. Writers on music have generally placed emphasis on expression of the semantic content of texts instead, privileging texts that can be read in relation to Romantic lyric theory. This has led to the search for word painting of one kind or another that has shaped the understanding of whole periods in the history of music and that is very much with us still, though this semantic domain cannot ultimately be separated from the material aspect of language. This article analyzes Songs 1, 2, 4, and 6 of Schumann9s Dichterliebe in terms of this materiality with a view to showing how closely congruent poetry and music can be in their own terms in individual works without dwelling first on what they might be thought to express. This is to speak not at first about meaning but rather about the means by which meaning is created. Analysis of this kind in no way precludes hermeneutics. It is but one starting point and one that bears directly on the act of listening and perhaps performance.


Fusarium fujikuroi which was originally studied in Japan is a pathogen of bakanae disease of rice. The disease was recorded in almost all countries where rice is grown commercially, including Malaysia and Indonesia. A total of 79 strains of F. fujikuroi were isolated from rice plants showing typical bakanae symptoms from major granary areas in Malaysia and Indonesia. They were identified using morphological characteristics for species delimitation. The objective of this study was to investigate genetic diversity of the F. fujikuroi strains by generating nitrate nonutilizing (nit) mutants, followed by phenotyping on diagnostic media, and pairing the mutants on minimal media (MM). About 96.2% of the strains were identified as heterokaryon self-compatible (HSC) based on their ability to form a stable heterokaryon while the remaining 3.8% of the strains were classified as heterokaryon selfincompatible (HSI) based on their inability to form a heterokaryon, even after repeated attempts. Those HSC strains that paired by producing robust growth were classified in the same vegetative compatibility group (VCG). The bakanae strains of F. fujikuroi were grouped into 26 VCGs; the largest group was VCG A01 which comprised of 23 strains. Out of 26 VCGs, 12 VCGs contained more than one strain member, and 14 VCGs were represented by a single strain and were not compatible with other strains. The ratio of VCGs to strains of F. fujikuroi in these samples was 0.29. The strains of F. fujikuroi that caused bakanae disease of rice in Malaysia and Indonesia are genetically diverse based on their multiple VCGs.


Can there be such a thing as feminist pornography? Many still say no. Echoing decades of anti-pornography feminist literature, Gail Dines told the Daily Beast in 2012 that "anyone willing to feed off women's bodies and use them as raw materials to make a profit has no right to call themselves feminists." But many feminists, including those who make porn, disagree. Despite decades of efforts to suppress it, porn is reaching larger audiences than ever. Making porn more politically progressive for those who consume it and making sets safer for performers are critical issues for feminist intervention—and feminist pornographers have chosen to take on both.


This book focuses on empirical experiences related to market development, and specifically new markets with structurally different characteristics than mainstream markets. Europe, Brazil, China and the rather robust and complex African experiences are covered to provide a rich multidisciplinary and multi-level analysis of the dynamics of newly emerging markets. This book analyses newly constructed markets as nested markets. Although they are specific market segments that are nested in the wider commodity markets for food, they have a different nature, different dynamics, a different redistribution of value added, different prices and different relations between producers and consumers. Nested markets embody distinction viz-a-viz the general markets in which they are embedded. A key aspect of nested markets is that these are constructed in and through social struggles, which in turn positions this book in relation to classic and new institutional economic analyses of markets. These markets emerge as steadily growing parts of the farmer populations are dedicating their time, energy and resources to the design and production of new goods and services that differ from conventional agricultural outputs. The speed and intensity with which this is taking place, and the products and services involved, vary considerably across the world. In large parts of the South, notably Africa, farmers are 'structurally' combining farming with other activities. By contrast, in Europe and large parts of Latin America farmers have taken steps to generate new products and services which exist alongside ongoing agricultural production. This book not only discusses the economic rationales and dynamics for these markets, but also their likely futures and the threats and opportunities they face.


Inexpensive paper-based biosensors can be valuable screening tools to test for various illnesses, but it is often challenging to design them to produce a visual change that can easily be identified by untrained users. This research examines one method of compensating for the lack of distinct visual cues by developing and testing a mobile application that uses a machine learning algorithm (k-Nearest Neighbors) to analyze a picture of a sensor and determine whether it shows a positive or negative result. The machine learning algorithm was trained on a set of labeled sensor images and k-fold cross-validation was used to analyze its classification accuracy.


Parking is considered a major land use challenge in campus planning. The problem can be in terms of scarcity (few available spaces compared to demand) or management (inefficient usage of available facilities). Many studies have looked at the parking problem from the administrative and management points of view. However, it is believed that mathematical models and optimization can provide substantial solution to the parking problem. This study investigates a model for allocating car parking spaces in the university environment and improves on the constraints to address the reserved parking policy on campus. An investigation of both the exact and heuristic techniques was undergone to provide solutions to this model with a case study of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Westville Campus. The optimization model was tested with four different set of data that were generated to mimic real life situations of parking supply and demand on campus for reserved and unreserved parking spaces. These datasets consist of the number of parking lots and office buildings in the case study. The study also investigate some optimization algorithms that can be used to obtain solutions to this problem. An exact solution of the model was generated with CPLEX solver (as incorporated in AIMMS software). Further investigation of the performance of the three meta-heuristics to solve this problem was done. A comparative study of the performance of these techniques was conducted. Results obtained from the meta-heuristic algorithms indicate that the algorithms used can successfully solve the parking allocation problem and can give solutions that are near optimal. The parking allocation and fitness value for each of the meta-heuristic algorithms on the sets of data used were obtained and compared to each other and also to the ones obtained from CPLEX solver. The results suggest that PSwarm performs better and faster than the other two algorithms and gives solutions that are close to the exact solutions obtained from CPLEX solver.


Abstract Although the most complex currently available fluid-neutral Monte-Carlo plasma boundary code package, SOLPS, has been a major player in the ITER divertor design, it has not yet been systematically used for the study of kinetic phenomena such as ELM transients. This paper investigates the relevance of fluid code results for transients, in particular at the targets where kinetic effects are most manifest, by comparing power and particle fluxes at the targets from SOLPS5 time-dependent simulations of TCV Type III ELMs with those obtained from dedicated Particle-in-Cell (PiC) kinetic transport code (BIT1) simulations. Although reasonable agreement is found in terms of the absolute magnitude of total heat fluxes, the arrival of the ion pulse at the target from upstream is significantly faster in SOLPS than expected on the basis of sonic transit times (as also seen in PiC). Adjustments of kinetic heat flux limiters to render the heat fluxes more convective in SOLPS are necessary in order to correct for this discrepancy. Moreover, because SOLPS does not account for the transfer of heat from electrons to ions inside the sheath, correction terms to the electron and ion power fluxes at the targets are required in SOLPS in order to better match PiC results. However, it does not appear possible within the scope of these sensitivity studies to simultaneously achieve expected delays and ion-electron power sharing in the fluid simulations.


The cores of clusters at 0 ≲ z ≲ 1 are dominated by quiescent early-type galaxies, whereas the field is dominated by star-forming late-type galaxies. Clusters grow through the accretion of galaxies and groups from the surrounding field, which implies that galaxy properties, notably the star formation ability, are altered as they fall into overdense regions. The critical issues for understanding this evolution are how the truncation of star formation is connected to the morphological transformation and what physical mechanism is responsible for these changes. The GaLAxy Cluster Evolution Survey (GLACE) is conducting a thorough study of the variations in galaxy properties (star formation, AGN activity, and morphology) as a function of environment in a representative and well-studied sample of clusters. To address these questions, the GLACE survey is making a deep panoramic survey of emission line galaxies (ELG), mapping a set of optical lines ([O ii], [O iii], Hβ andHα/[N ii] when possible) in several galaxy clusters at z ~ 0.40, 0.63, and 0.86. Using the tunable filters (TF) of the OSIRIS instrument at the 10.4 m GTC telescope, the GLACE survey applies the technique of TF tomography: for each line, a set of images are taken through the OSIRIS TF, each image tuned at a different wavelength (equally spaced), to cover a rest frame velocity range of several thousand km s-1 centred on the mean cluster redshift, and scanned for the full TF field of view of an 8 arcmin diameter. Here we present the first results of the GLACE project, targeting the Hα/[N ii] lines in the intermediate-redshift cluster ZwCl 0024.0+1652 at z = 0.395. Two pointings have been performed that cover ~2 × rvir. We discuss the specific techniques devised to process the TF tomography observations in order to generate the catalogue of cluster Hα emitters, which contains more than 200 sources down to a star formation rate (SFR) ≲1 M⊙/yr. An ancillary broadband catalogue is constructed, allowing us to discriminate line interlopers by means of colour diagnostics. The final catalogue contains 174 unique cluster sources. The AGN population is distinguished using different diagnostics and found to be ~37% of the ELG population. The median SFR of the star-forming population is 1.4 M⊙/yr. We studied the spatial distribution of ELG and confirm the existence of two components in the redshift space. Finally, we exploited the outstanding spectral resolution of the TF, attempting to estimate the cluster mass from ELG dynamics, finding M200 = (4.1 ± 0.2) × 1014 M⊙ h-1, in agreement with previous weak-lensing estimates.


Abstract This paper presents the development of a flexible and user-friendly reactor core dynamic model of a CANadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactor for control system applications using the commercial simulation package MATLAB/SIMULINK. The reactor core is divided into 14 zones, and a set of coupled kinetics equations are developed to describe the dynamic behavior of the zones. The interaction between neighboring zones is characterized in terms of coupling coefficients, which basically describe the possibility of a neutron born in one zone causing a nuclear reaction in another zone. The model also includes the dynamics of the xenon and iodine. Nondimensionalized representations of the reactor dynamic model are derived in detail. It is demonstrated that vectorization of dynamic variables can significantly simplify the modeling and simulation process for a multizone reactor. Transient behavior of the reactor has been simulated using the developed model.


The characterization of In-grain orientation gradients by electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD) technique was studied. The study, based on finite element (FE) technique, involved the simulation of plane strain compression of the crystal grains. In regard to it, the construction of orientation distribution function (ODF) by superimposing spherical Gaussian distributions on the mean orientation of grains was also discussed.


Wind power is a renewable energy source that is today the fastest growing solution to reduce CO2 emissions in the electric energy mix. Upwind horizontal axis wind turbine with three blades has been the preferred technical choice for more than two decades. This horizontal axis concept is today widely leading the market. The current PhD thesis will cover an alternative type of wind turbine with straight blades and rotating along the vertical axis. A brief overview of the main differences between the horizontal and vertical axis concept has been made. However the main focus of this thesis is the aerodynamics of the wind turbine blades. Making aerodynamically efficient turbines starts with efficient blades. Making efficient blades requires a good understanding of the physical phenomena and effective simulations tools to model them. The specific aerodynamics for straight bladed vertical axis turbine flow are reviewed together with the standard aerodynamic simulations tools that have been used in the past by blade and rotor designer. A reasonably fast (regarding computer power) and accurate (regarding comparison with experimental results) simulation method was still lacking in the field prior to the current work. This thesis aims at designing such a method. Analytical methods can be used to model complex flow if the geometry is simple. Therefore, a conformal mapping method is derived to transform any set of section into a set of standard circles. Then analytical procedures are generalized to simulate moving multibody sections in the complex vertical flows and forces experienced by the blades. Finally the fast semi analytical aerodynamic algorithm boosted by fast multipole methods to handle high number of vortices is coupled with a simple structural model of the rotor to investigate potential aeroelastic instabilities. Together with these advanced simulation tools, a standard double multiple streamtube model has been developed and used to design several straight bladed rotor ranging from 2 kW to 20 kW.


My experience with "practical planning problems" is mainly through the process planning domain. I will describe some of the aspects of this domain that set it apart from the simulated toy-domains, and address their implications for the "typical" AI planning algorithms. The work itself is described in the references [8, 6, 7, 4, 5]. The paper is organized into three parts. In the first part, I describe the process planning domain in general terms and explain its interesting characteristics from AI planning view point. In the second part, I provide a brief overview of the NExT-COT process planning system. In the third part, I attempt to answer the questions raised in the symposium CFP in teams of our process planning work. It is possible to read Parts I and HI to get a high level picture, and then get details from Part H. "


Summary A volume change index is suggested that is derived from growth components that can be estimated from remeasured plots. The new index incorporates more information than the traditional growth over removals ratio. The new index directly indicates whether the standing volume will be increasing or decreasing if current conditions persist, whereas the ratio of growth over removals obscures the impact of mortality. The details of estimating the components of growth are discussed with regard to interpreting the new index. The effect of spatial scale on the index is explored and a variance estimator is suggested. The new index is estimated from US Department of Agriculture Forest Service annual inventory data for two example applications. The first application looks at spatial trends in the index. The second application applies the index to a mill working circle.


Semi-arid areas show climatic variability on a spatio-temporal scale. There are few studies on the long-term trends and intensity of this variability from East Africa. We used National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration re-analysis climate data (1979–2009) in this study. Rainfall exhibited a non-significant long-term trend. The climate of the area is variable (coefficient of variation-CV >35.0%) with spatio-temporal oddities in rainfall and temperature. A rise in minimum (0.9 °C), maximum (1.6 °C) and mean (1.3 °C) temperature occurred between 1979 and 2009. There were more months with climate variability indices below the threshold (<1.0) from 1979 to 1994 than between 1995 and 2009, with wetness intensity increasingly common after 2000, leading to the observed reduction in the recurrence of multi-year drought events. More extreme wet events (rainfall variability index >2.6) were experienced between 2004 and 2009 than between 1984 and 2003. We consider that the use of spatio-temporal climatic information for timely adjustment to extreme climate variability events is essential in semi-arid areas.


'no consideration, no delicacy, no tenderness, no scruples should stand in the way of a woman ...from taking the shortest cut towards securing for herself the easiest possible existence' Chance(1914) was the first of Conrad's novels to bring him popular success and it holds a unique place among his works. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, a vulnerable and abandoned young girl who is 'like a beggar,without a right to anything but compassion'. After her bankrupt father is imprisoned, she learns the harsh fact that a woman in her position 'has no resources but in herself. Her only means of action is to be what she is.' Flora's long struggle to achieve some dignity and happiness makes her Conrad's most moving female character. Reflecting the contemporary interest in the New Woman and the Suffragette question, Chance also marks the final appearance of Marlow, Conrad's most effective and wise narrator. This revised edition uses the English first edition text and has a new chronology and bibliography. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.


Harnessing the power of modern multi-GPU architectures, we present a massively parallel simulation system based on the Material Point Method (MPM) for simulating physical behaviors of materials undergoing complex topological changes, self-collision, and large deformations. Our system makes three critical contributions. First, we introduce a new particle data structure that promotes coalesced memory access patterns on the GPU and eliminates the need for complex atomic operations on the memory hierarchy when writing particle data to the grid. Second, we propose a kernel fusion approach using a new Grid-to-Particles-to-Grid (G2P2G) scheme, which efficiently reduces GPU kernel launches, improves latency, and significantly reduces the amount of global memory needed to store particle data. Finally, we introduce optimized algorithmic designs that allow for efficient sparse grids in a shared memory context, enabling us to best utilize modern multi-GPU computational platforms for hybrid Lagrangian-Eulerian computational patterns. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method with extensive benchmarks, evaluations, and dynamic simulations with elastoplasticity, granular media, and fluid dynamics. In comparisons against an open-source and heavily optimized CPU-based MPM codebase [Fang et al. 2019] on an elastic sphere colliding scene with particle counts ranging from 5 to 40 million, our GPU MPM achieves over 100x per-time-step speedup on a workstation with an Intel 8086K CPU and a single Quadro P6000 GPU, exposing exciting possibilities for future MPM simulations in computer graphics and computational science. Moreover, compared to the state-of-the-art GPU MPM method [Hu et al. 2019a], we not only achieve 2x acceleration on a single GPU but our kernel fusion strategy and Array-of-Structs-of-Array (AoSoA) data structure design also generalizes to multi-GPU systems. Our multi-GPU MPM exhibits near-perfect weak and strong scaling with 4 GPUs, enabling performant and large-scale simulations on a 10243 grid with close to 100 million particles with less than 4 minutes per frame on a single 4-GPU workstation and 134 million particles with less than 1 minute per frame on an 8-GPU workstation.


The tooth histology of a total 22 and 95 short-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) from Scottish (UK) and Galician (Spain) waters, respectively, was examined to determine whether the incidence of mineralization anomalies could be related to certain stressful conditions linked with life-history events or to exposure to anthropogenic pollutants (i.e. Polychlorinated biphenyls and Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethanes). Overall, the incidence of five categories of mineralization anomalies increased with age. Model results indicated that the presence of cemental disturbance increased with age, body length and sexual maturity in common dolphin from both areas. In addition, incidence of dentinal resorption and accessory lines increased with age and body length in Galician animals. The time course of appearance of dentinal resorption and cemental disturbance was similar to the time course of maturation suggesting a link between anomaly occurrence and the age at which the animals become sexually mature. There were two age ranges at which marker lines tended to appear: 1–2 and 6–8 years old, which coincided with the beginning of weaning and/or the age at sexual maturation, respectively, suggesting an association with these two major life-history events. Pulp stones were recorded in teeth of a few mature Galician dolphins (n = 4). No evidence was found that the presence of mineralization anomalies in dolphin teeth was significantly related to persistent organic pollutant concentrations in the blubber. Our results provide evidence that certain tooth mineralization anomalies could be interpreted as time markers associated with life-history events, potentially representing a powerful tool for long-term monitoring and modelling.


This ethnographic case study examines how southern society's views on motherhood and criminal punishment when held by correctional staff and judges influence the sentencing and treatment of female inmates who are pregnant while incarcerated. The research was conducted at a county jail in rural Tennessee. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a male and a female correctional officer, the jail administrator, the jail's nurse, a judge from the county, and three inmates. The interviews were then transcribed and analyzed for dominant themes. Nearly all the respondents held more traditional views on criminal punishment and motherhood. In addition, these views on motherhood, not the views on criminal punishment, had an impact on the sentencing of the pregnant inmates and how these inmate mothers were viewed by the staff. The inmates also appeared to internalize these views and to blame themselves for their incarceration. However, the inmates reported their prenatal care was good, so it did not appear to affect how they were treated. This study does have limitations, though, such as its small sample, the fact that housing pregnant inmates was a relatively new issue for this specific jail, and that the inmates' responses may have been influenced by the presence of a prison authority. It is also just a snapshot of this small, rural area at this time, and therefore the findings cannot be generalized to other areas. However, this research is important because it suggests that certain societal attitudes in small, rural, southern areas when held by correctional staff and judges can influence pregnant inmates' sentences and how they are viewed by the staff.


Different types of atherosclerotic plaque and varying grades of stenosis lead to different management of patients with obstructive coronary artery disease. Therefore, it is crucial to determine the presence and classify the type of coronary artery plaque, as well as to determine the presence and the degree of a stenosis. The study includes consecutively acquired coronary CT angiography (CCTA) scans of 131 patients. In these, presence and plaque type in the coronary arteries (no plaque, non-calcified, mixed, calcified) as well as presence and anatomical significance of coronary stenosis (no stenosis, non-significant, significant) were manually annotated by identifying the start and end points of the fragment of the artery affected by the plaque. To perform automatic analysis, a multi-task recurrent convolutional neural network is utilized. The network uses CCTA and coronary artery centerline as its inputs, and extracts features from the region defined along the coronary artery centerline using a 3D convolutional neural network. Subsequently, the extracted features are used by a recurrent neural network that performs two simultaneous multi-label classification tasks. In the first task, the network detects and characterizes the type of the coronary artery plaque. In the second task, the network detects and determines the anatomical significance of the coronary artery stenosis. The results demonstrate that automatic characterization of coronary artery plaque and stenosis with high accuracy and reliability is feasible. This may enable automated triage of patients to those without coronary plaque, and those with coronary plaque and stenosis in need for further cardiovascular workup.


Three 2-D Deep Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) transects, up to 6.36 km long, were obtained across the Paganica-San Demetrio Basin, bounded by the 2009 L'Aquila Mw 6.1 normal-faulting earthquake causative fault (central Italy). The investigations allowed defining for the first time the shallow subsurface basin structure. The resistivity images, and their geological interpretation, show a dissected Mesozoic-Tertiary substratum buried under continental infill of mainly Quaternary age due to the long-term activity of the Paganica-San Demetrio normal faults system (PSDFS), ruling the most recent deformational phase. Our results indicate that the basin bottom deepens up to 600 m moving to the south, with the continental infill largely exceeding the known thickness of the Quaternary sequence. The causes of this increasing thickness can be: (1) the onset of the continental deposition in the southern sector took place before the Quaternary, (2) there was an early stage of the basin development driven by different fault systems that produced a depocentre in the southern sector not related to the present-day basin shape, or (3) the fault system slip rate in the southern sector was faster than in the northern sector. We were able to gain sights into the long-term PSDFS behaviour and evolution, by comparing throw rates at different timescales and discriminating the splays that lead deformation. Some fault splays exhibit large cumulative throws (>300 m) in coincidence with large displacement of the continental deposits sequence (>100 m), thus testifying a general persistence in time of their activity as leading splays of the fault system. We evaluate the long-term (3–2.5 Myr) cumulative and Quaternary throw rates of most of the leading splays to be 0.08–0.17 mm yr−1, indicating a substantial stability of the faults activity. Among them, an individual leading fault splay extends from Paganica to San Demetrio ne' Vestini as a result of a post-Early Pleistocene linkage of two smaller splays. This 15 km long fault splay can explain the Holocene surface ruptures observed to be larger than those occurred during the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, such as revealed by palaeoseismological investigations. Finally, the architecture of the basin at depth suggests that the PSDFS can also rupture a longer structure at the surface, allowing earthquakes larger than M 6.5, besides rupturing only small sections, as it occurred in 2009.


Real-time cardiac cine MRI does not require ECG gating in the data acquisition and is more useful for patients who can not hold their breaths or have abnormal heart rhythms. However, to achieve fast image acquisition, real-time cine commonly acquires highly undersampled data, which imposes a significant challenge for MRI image reconstruction. We propose a residual convolutional RNN for real-time cardiac cine reconstruction. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work applying deep learning approach to Cartesian real-time cardiac cine reconstruction. Based on the evaluation from radiologists, our deep learning model shows superior performance than compressed sensing.


Talk to many community and midsize banks, and when the subject of automobile lending comes up, the conversations frequently shift into reverse--that is, the past tense. The bank used to make auto loans, but the captive finance companies, "moving iron" for their carmaker parents, undercut rates too far to follow. Or, the bank used to buy paper from all the dealers around here, but then those tax-protected credit unions cranked up dealer operations and left it in the dust. Or there's this response: "Sure, we make car loans; we make them to well-heeled customers buying luxury models because we really want their commercial loans or trust business." You've heard it before--maybe said something like it yourself. But there are banks out there that not only continue to finance cars and trucks, but do well at it. Some specialize, some aim at a piece of the car credit mix, and some simply built up formidable teams of managers and lenders who simply won't be beaten. The five case studies that follow show how these banks continue to succeed in an inhospitable market. Morgan Bank Ohio auto powerhouse To the casual visitor, Morgan Bank, N.A., Hudson, Ohio, looks like a typical community bank. What's not obvious is Morgan's aggressive "bank within the bank." Founded in 1990, the bank was pretty much traditional for the first half of its history. But in 1998 William "Wink" Dougherty, now president and CEO, joined the staff, and things began to change. Dougherty came to the bank with an extensive background in indirect auto lending. He started with a large-bank indirect lending operation in the 1970s, buying paper from electronics dealers, financing things like big-screen TVs. From there he moved into auto paper lending for several employers. When he arrived at Morgan, Dougherty saw the opportunity to take the bank into opportunities it hadn't exploited. "Indirect auto lending can be a profitable business, if done properly," Dougherty insists. He doesn't minimize the competition. Captive finance companies "dominate the business right now," and credit unions would seem to have advantages. But for Dougherty, those facts are a beginning, not an ending. "You have to pick and choose your strategies and put a program together that makes sense for the dealer and that makes sense for the bank," he says. Can this be done? Morgan Bank serves as proof it can. About 65% of the bank's loan portfolio consists of indirect auto paper, 70%-80% of it prime, "A" quality credit, with the rest "B" credit. (Dougherty says he doesn't feel the bank is qualified to deal with subprime.) The bank does about $7 million a month in auto paper purchases, about 60% new vehicles and 40% used. This is an incredible amount for any community bank, especially one with $126.6 million in assets. The bank works with a network of about 220 dealerships, mostly in northern Ohio. The bank does not provide floor planning nor leasing. Dougherty considers the latter too fraught with administrative details for no more gain than the bank would have from a straight loan. Increasingly the captives have the upper hand in leasing, he says, because they can work deals based on numbers that help them "move iron," while bank lessors must find their profits strictly in the lease. At Morgan, everything is about the dealer. This is key to its auto lending success. "An indirect lender is a completely different creature titan a branch lender," explains Dougherty. "Your customer at the point of sale is the dealership, not the customer whom you are approving for the loan." The dealer can find any number of different lenders to take the customer's paper, the banker continues. "So relationships are important, and hard to develop," he says. Between Dougherty and the three bankers directly managing the auto operation, there are six decades of experience with auto credit, much of it with the dealers the bank is now serving. …


Background Gastrointestinal (GI) discomfort is prevalent and known to be associated with impaired quality of life. Real-world information on factors of GI discomfort and solutions used by people is, however, limited. Social media, including online forums, have been considered a new source of information to examine the health of populations in real-life settings. Objective The aims of this retrospective infodemiology study are to identify discussion topics, characterize users, and identify perceived determinants of GI discomfort in web-based messages posted by users of French social media. Methods Messages related to GI discomfort posted between January 2003 and August 2018 were extracted from 14 French-speaking general and specialized publicly available online forums. Extracted messages were cleaned and deidentified. Relevant medical concepts were determined on the basis of the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities and vernacular terms. The identification of discussion topics was carried out by using a correlated topic model on the basis of the latent Dirichlet allocation. A nonsupervised clustering algorithm was applied to cluster forum users according to the reported symptoms of GI discomfort, discussion topics, and activity on online forums. Users' age and gender were determined by linear regression and application of a support vector machine, respectively, to characterize the identified clusters according to demographic parameters. Perceived factors of GI discomfort were classified by a combined method on the basis of syntactic analysis to identify messages with causality terms and a second topic modeling in a relevant segment of phrases. Results A total of 198,866 messages associated with GI discomfort were included in the analysis corpus after extraction and cleaning. These messages were posted by 36,989 separate web users, most of them being women younger than 40 years. Everyday life, diet, digestion, abdominal pain, impact on the quality of life, and tips to manage stress were among the most discussed topics. Segmentation of users identified 5 clusters corresponding to chronic and acute GI concerns. Diet topic was associated with each cluster, and stress was strongly associated with abdominal pain. Psychological factors, food, and allergens were perceived as the main causes of GI discomfort by web users. Conclusions GI discomfort is actively discussed by web users. This study reveals a complex relationship between food, stress, and GI discomfort. Our approach has shown that identifying web-based discussion topics associated with GI discomfort and its perceived factors is feasible and can serve as a complementary source of real-world evidence for caregivers.


This study sets out to examine inter-generational change and continuity in maternal interactive behaviour. One hundred and sixty-four Cameroonian mothers from four main towns in four provinces constituted the sample for the study. Questionnaires were the main instrument used to obtain data for the study. Through chi-square and anova analyses the following results were obtained that the higher the level of education and the younger the mother, the more they advocate for change and that the lower the level of education and the older the mothers, the less they argue for change. At varying degrees all mothers, but more so the older mothers are seen as advocates for some elements of continuity in culturally valued maternal behaviour.


This thesis explores the subject of minority language television by comparing
the cases of Wales and Brittany, and in particular the social, political and cultural
implications of the Welsh language television channel S4C.
The thesis is divided up into two interrelated parts, where the first part is an
analysis on state level of French and British media policy, particularly with regards
to their linguistic minorities. This part of the thesis deals with the historical, political
and institutional background for the provision of minority language media in Breton
and Welsh. It takes as points of reference firstly the state, and secondly the
minorities in question - the Breton and the Welsh - and shows how a certain policy
area in this case broadcasting, can become a focus for minority demands. The thesis
describes the historical and political background for the extreme difference in
provisions for minority language broadcasting in the two countries.
The second part of the thesis takes as a starting point the actual existence of
S4C - the Welsh language channel - as a minority language broadcaster, and
assesses the social political and cultural implications of this organisation. This part
of the thesis examines the minority level, and assesses the potential impact of Welsh
language broadcasting, mainly television, on Welsh society in general and the Welsh
language in particular.


In 2012, tensions flared between China and the Philippines over plans to drill for oil in the Reed Bank, a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, rekindling fears about the possibility of military conflict over the area's energy resources. This article shows that international controversy centering on the Reed Bank's hydrocarbon reserves initially emerged during the oil crisis of the 1970s, when the pursuit of energy resources transformed the islets into a hotly contested area. As in recent years, oil exploration by multinational corporations in conjunction with the Philippines catalyzed international disputes. Vigorous protests from China and other nations that lay claim to territories in the South China Sea prompted the Philippines to assert its own jurisdictional claims. The territorial dispute pushed claimants to the brink of military confrontation in the 1970s, yet armed conflict failed to materialize. By examining the initial round of tensions surrounding oil exploration at Reed Bank, this article situates the current international competition for the South China Sea's energy resources in historical perspective. Analyzing past disputes and their ultimate resolution offers insights into the dynamics of present tensions, while making it possible to critically engage with arguments predicting future "resource wars" in the South China Sea.


The purposes of this study are to investigate the relationship between antecedents and consequences of audit value added (AVA). AVA is performance of the auditors who work with dedication and commitment to quality work and usefulness for user. AVA composes three dimensions as well as audit best practice, audit continuous learning, and professional ethic awareness. The results from the questionnaire survey of 135 CPAs in Thailand. The findings identified that only two dimensions of AVA has positive relationship with all consequences as well as audit continuous learning and professional ethic awareness. Which the consequences of this study are financial information transparency, stakeholder acceptance, and audit survival. In addition, the finding shows the relationship between antecedence and audit value added are positive significant. Which the antecedence of this study are Stakeholder pressure, audit regulation change, and business environment climate. Surprisingly, have not significant the relationship between audit best practice that dimensions of audit value added and consequences. The summary of this paper not only provides theoretical and managerial contributions but also suggestions and directions of the future research are elaborate.


Aquatic life especially marine fish gave a bulk of food for mankind while fishes of the lakes and rivers are also important source for the food supply. Economically, the fishes constitute a very important group of animals. Besides being used as food, it provide byproduct of various kinds, such as fish liver is an important source of oil and has medicinal value which is used for the treatment of different diseases. Fishes also provide fish fertilizer, fish-manure and several other products of commerce.

The presence of helminth parasite up to large extent is dangerous for a fish population consequently, also causes a great loss of fisheries and the fishing industry. Parasitic infestation is greatly found in the fishes of Karachi coast.

During the present study, the marine fish Lutjanus argentimaculatus (Forsk, 1775) commonly called red snapper of the Karachi coast was studied for seasonal variation of helminthic infection and for cellular changes caused by these helminth parasites in various organs of this fish.

A total of twenty one species of endoparasites recovered, of them six trematode, eight nematodes, three acanthocephala, one cestode and three trypanorhyncha larvae.

The endoparasitic community had an overall prevalence of 74.89% with a mean intensity of 4.26. The parasite community was dominated by nematodes.

The effects of modifying factors such as season, length and sex of the hosts on the abundance of parasites were also studied. The infestation of parasites did not show any significant difference in male and female fishes.

The seasonal incidence of the total and as well as individual parasite species showed maximum prevalence during the hot (summer) seasons of the period. Presence of large variety of small fishes and other invertebrates in the stomach of this fish indicated their possibility as "carrier host" of the parasite.

Fish disease due to helminth parasite is one of the important problems in fish culture and fish farming. There are certain contagious diseases that destroy the stocks of fishes and constitute a serious danger to fish culture.

The result of histopathological changes in various organs by helminths parasite indicated the massive tissue damages in intestine, stomach and mesenteries resulting in erosions and formation of tunnels, mucous formation, dislocation of connective tissue, fibrosis, necrosis, atrophy, hypertrophy, lipodosis and mixed inflammatory response. The infected liver and spleen showed accumulation of melanomacrophase centers, cirrhosis, atrophy, haemopoitic tissue degeneration.

The risk of infection with fish-borne parasites present a potential or realized threat to the health of human consumers particularly in societies where the consumption of raw, undercooked on cold-smoked or lightly salted fish is traditional. Therefore, fish disease is one of the important problem because it has an indirect and sometimes direct effect on the productivity of fish in natural waters and on human health.

It is concluded that helminth parasites are very common in fishes of Karachi coast. More work should be carried out to study the affect of helminth parasites on various organs of different fishes.


Twilight and Harry Potter have become extremely successful multimedia franchises in large part thanks to the two series' devoted fans. Many fans not only consume these two series, they also produce stories, pictures, and videos that seem to use the characters from Twilight and Harry Potter to fulfill their own romantic fantasies. However, the tremendous popularity of fan music videos and the diverse demographics of the videos' producers and consumers challenge some of the assumptions early qualitative researchers made about fan communities. The study of fandom would be greatly advanced by a quantitative study that connects producers to their content; therefore, this study utilized a survey and a content analysis in order to illuminate the connections between fans' romantic desires and the romantic content of their music videos. FAN MUSIC VIDEOS, FAN ROMANTICISM, AND ROMANTIC CONTENT


Abstract Bridge infrastructure managers are facing multiple challenges to improve the availability and serviceability of ageing infrastructure, while the maintenance planning is constrained by budget restrictions. Many research efforts are ongoing, for the last few decades, ranging from development of bridge management system, decision support tools, optimisation models, life cycle cost analysis, etc. Since transport infrastructures are deeply embedded in society, they are not only subject to technical requirements, but are required to meet the requirements of societal and economic developments. Therefore, bridge maintenance planning should accommodate multiple performance goals which need to be quantified by various performance indicators. In this paper, an application of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) for bridge maintenance planning is illustrated with a case study of bridges from the Netherlands road network. MAUT seeks to optimise multiple objectives by suggesting a trade-off among them and finally assigns a ranking to the considered bridges. Moreover, utility functions of MAUT appropriately account for the involved uncertainty and risk attitude of infrastructure managers. The main contribution of this study is in presenting a proof-of-concept on how MAUT provides a systematic approach to improve the decision-making of maintenance planning by making use of available data, accommodating multiple performance goals, their uncertainty, and preferences of infrastructure managers.


SCOPE is adopted by thousands of developers from tens of different product teams in Microsoft Bing for daily web-scale data processing, including index building, search ranking, and advertisement display. A SCOPE job is composed of declarative SQL-like queries and imperative C# user-defined functions (UDFs), which are executed in pipeline by thousands of machines. There are tens of thousands of SCOPE jobs executed on Microsoft clusters per day, while some of them fail after a long execution time and thus waste tremendous resources. Reducing SCOPE failures would save significant resources. This paper presents a comprehensive characteristic study on 200 SCOPE failures/fixes and 50 SCOPE failures with debugging statistics from Microsoft Bing, investigating not only major failure types, failure sources, and fixes, but also current debugging practice. Our major findings include (1) most of the failures (84.5%) are caused by defects in data processing rather than defects in code logic; (2) table-level failures (22.5%) are mainly caused by programmers' mistakes and frequent data-schema changes while row-level failures (62%) are mainly caused by exceptional data; (3) 93% fixes do not change data processing logic; (4) there are 8% failures with root cause not at the failure-exposing stage, making current debugging practice insufficient in this case. Our study results provide valuable guidelines for future development of data-parallel programs. We believe that these guidelines are not limited to SCOPE, but can also be generalized to other similar data-parallel platforms.


This paper offers an in-depth data driven overview of the history and status as of 2017 of segment reporting by public entities trading in U.S. capital markets. Our analysis focuses on the perceived issues identified in the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) 2016 Invitation to Comment on FASB's Agenda – the extent of disaggregation into reportable segments, the stability of segmentation over time, the line-items disclosed, and the reconciliation of segment to consolidated totals. We document the trends in and status of segment reporting as of 2017 as another round of efforts to improve segment reporting proceeds. The paper concludes with a discussion of several unanswered questions suggested by the data.


Background:
Sound evidence supports pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) as an effective management strategy for patients with respiratory disease, in particular chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A multi-disciplinary programme, PR encompasses exercise training, education, nutritional advice, self-management and psychological support. Following PR patients often experience an increase in exercise capacity and quality of life, but a lack of referrals suggests that healthcare professionals (HCPs) are not 'selling' PR to patients. However, no evidence exists to fully substantiate this claim; a missing piece of the jigsaw.
Objectives:
1. To explore HCPs' perceptions regarding referral of COPD patients to PR in primary and secondary care settings.
2. To establish HCPs' understanding of PR.
3. To explore barriers and facilitators to referral to PR.
Methods:
Interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) was adopted to establish HCPs' perceptions of PR. Purposeful recruitment of general practitioners and practice nurses, and doctors and nurses working on general medical wards yielded a total of 27 participants. Informed consent preceded semi-structured interviews which were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim.
Findings:
Three super-ordinate themes were identified: COPD Illness Perceptions, Pulmonary Rehabilitation Beliefs, and Organisational and Referral Pathway Perceptions. Commonalities and disparities were identified between primary and secondary care and amongst the different professional groups. HCPs held COPD illness perceptions; many held stigmatising beliefs in relation to the disease, which impacted upon referral practice. Pulmonary rehabilitation beliefs highlighted HCPs' views on patient suitability and the PR programme. A lack of knowledge of PR and the referral process was evident. Organisational and referral pathway perceptions revealed barriers and facilitators to referral.
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Conclusion:
Referral to PR is as certain as spinning a wheel of fortune. Chance of referral appeared dependent upon individual HCPs, their perceptions of the programme, views of how COPD affects patients, and opinions of the referral process. All of these aspects, pieced together, could act as a predictor of referral practice. This is the first study to focus on HCPs' perceptions of PR as a management strategy for patients with COPD and as such is a valuable contribution to knowledge


David Whiffen is best known for his early work on both infrared (IR) spectroscopy and electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy. But he also made substantial and far-reaching contributions to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and other fields of study. His research encompassed a remarkably wide range of subjects while he delighted in discussing any area of physical chemistry, always in a deeply analytical manner. He combined a sharp scientific mind with an informed religious faith. Although he remained a strong practising Christian throughout his life this was a private matter within the family and many who knew him for long periods were unaware of his commitment.He was born in Esher, Surrey, into a family with strong scientific and religious traditions. His great–grandfather originated in Dorset and moved to London to found a manufacturing company of fine chemicals, Whiffen and Sons. This operated in Southall, then Battersea and next Fulham, before being acquired in 1947 by Fisons Ltd and moving to Loughborough where it was finally completely subsumed into that company. David's grandfather, Thomas J. Whiffen, and his great uncle George followed the founder into the business, and in the next generation three of his sons, Goodman, Stanley and David's father Noël Hardy Whiffen (known as Timothy), were all involved with it. Mr. Noël, as he was known in the company, was born on Christmas day 1894. He became the practical partner on the chemistry side, while Goodman was an engineer and Stanley ran the office.Another brother, Harold, became a fruit farmer, and the eldest, Thomas, roamed the world, including the upper Amazon at the start of the twentieth century; family tradition has it that he originated the World War I poster with the pointing finger that told the onlooker 'Your Country Needs You'. There were also four sisters, Jessie, Mabel, Olive and Dorothy, none of whom married but who, together with their brothers, were much involved in charitable and good works.


One of the most important minorities in the British colonial empire in Asia consisted of those of mixed European and Asian parentage and/or ancestry, or Eurasians, as they were widely known. It is perhaps surprising that despite the voluminous literature written about British colonial communities in the East, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Eurasians and their histories. A closer examination of the members of this marginalised colonial category is nevertheless crucial as they stood at the problematic boundaries of racial politics and identity, and are therefore vital to our understanding of the tensions of empire. The few existing studies of Eurasians in British Asia have tended to focus on the experiences of Eurasians either before or after the Second World War, neglecting the period of Japanese occupation as a significant epoch in the evolution of these communities. In reality, if we intend to unravel the multi-layered history of Eurasians in this region, we must examine the critical position of these colonial communities during this tumultuous period. The nuances of their intriguing wartime relationships with both the British and the Japanese also merit serious attention. With these aims in mind, this article will investigate the compelling experiences of Eurasian communities in Japanese-occupied British Asia, with an especial focus on those who were incarcerated by the Japanese in civilian internment camps in Hong Kong and Singapore.


Triphenyl phosphate (TPP) is a triester of phosphoric acid and phenol. It is commonly used as a fire-retarding agent and plasticizer for nitrocellulose and cellulose acetate. The present study was an attempt to evaluate the impact of biofield treatment on physicochemical and spectroscopic properties of TPP. The study was carried out in two groups i.e. control and treatment. The treatment group was subjected to Mr. Trivedi's biofield treatment. The control and treated samples of TPP were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), and ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy. XRD study revealed the decrease in crystallite size (6.13%) of treated TPP that might be due to presence of strains and increase in atomic displacement from their ideal lattice positions as compared to control sample. DSC thermogram of treated TPP showed the increase in melting temperature (1.5%) and latent heat of fusion (66.34%) with respect to control. TGA analysis showed the loss in weight by 66.79% in control and 47.96% in treated sample. This reduction in percent weight loss suggests the increase of thermal stability in treated sample as compared to control. FT-IR and UV spectroscopic results did not show the alteration in the wavenumber and wavelength of FT-IR and UV spectra, respectively in treated TPP with respect to control. Altogether, the XRD and DSC/TGA results suggest that biofield treatment has the impact on physical and thermal properties of treated TPP.


Old Researches were worked to find the splice losses between two single mode fibers (SMF-28/SMF-28) by using different arc fusion splicer without taking the effect of distance between them. We have conducted numerous experiments on this fiber where the fiber is cut and weld many times in order to find the fusion splice loss when the arc fusion power is fixed at (20 step) for different fusion times ( 1s , 3s , 6s , 9s ), the fusion time and fusion power were used with changing of the distance to (10um,20um,30um). another splice losses were achieved by using another arc fusion power ( 30 step,40 step,50 step ) by using the same arc fusion time and the distance between fibers as shown in fig's below , the minimum splice losses have been extracted from the different figures as below , these minimum splice losses compared with different arc fusion power and distance by using three-dimensional program ,Obviously when the distance between two fibers is increased(25-30)um, the minimum splice loss is decreased and vice versa when the distance is (10)um.


CCN family protein 2/connective tissue growth factor (CCN2/CTGF) is a unique molecule that promotes the entire endochondral ossification process and regeneration of damaged articular cartilage. Also, CCN2 has been shown to enhance the adhesion and migration of bone marrow stromal cells as well as the growth and differentiation of osteoblasts; hence, its utility in bone regeneration has been suggested. Here, we evaluated the effect of CCN2 on the regeneration of an intractable bone defect in a rat model. First, we prepared two recombinant CCN2s of different origins, and the one showing the stronger effect on osteoblasts in vitro was selected for further evaluation, based on the result of an in vitro bioassay. Next, to obtain a sustained effect, the recombinant CCN2 was incorporated into gelatin hydrogel that enabled the gradual release of the factor. Evaluation in vivo indicated that CCN2 continued to be released at least for up to 14 days after its incorporation. Application of the gelatin hydrogel-CCN2 complex, together with a collagen scaffold to the bone defect prepared in a rat femur resulted in remarkable induction of osteoblastic mineralization markers within 2 weeks. Finally, distinct enhancement of bone regeneration was observed 3 weeks after the application of the complex. These results confirm the utility of CCN2 in the regeneration of intractable bone defects in vivo when the factor is incorporated into gelatin hydrogel.


Most acoustic studies of sibilant fricatives focus on languages that have a place distinction like the English distinction between coronal alveolar /s/ and coronal post-alveolar / �/. Much less attention has been paid to languages such as Japanese, where the contrast involves tongue posture as much as position. That is, the Japanese sibilant that contrasts with /s/ is / �/, an alveolopalatal fricative that has a "palatalized" tongue shape (a bunched predorsum). This paper describes measures that can be calculated from the fricative interval alone, which we applied both to the place distinction of English and the "palatalization" or posture distinction of Japanese. The measures were further tested on Mandarin Chinese, a language that has a three-way contrast in sibilant fricatives contrasting in both tongue position and posture.


Abstract. The influence of drought on plant functioning has received considerable attention in recent years, however our understanding of the response of carbon and water coupling to drought in terrestrial ecosystems still needs to be improved. A severe soil moisture drought occurred in southern Finland in the late summer of 2006. In this study, we investigated the response of water use efficiency to summer drought in a boreal Scots pine forest (Pinus sylvestris) on the daily time scale mainly using eddy covariance flux data from the Hyytiala (southern Finland) flux site. In addition, simulation results from the JSBACH land surface model were evaluated against the observed results. Based on observed data, the ecosystem level water use efficiency (EWUE; the ratio of gross primary production, GPP, to evapotranspiration, ET) showed a decrease during the severe soil moisture drought, while the inherent water use efficiency (IWUE; a quantity defined as EWUE multiplied with mean daytime vapour pressure deficit, VPD) increased and the underlying water use efficiency (uWUE, a metric based on IWUE and a simple stomatal model, is the ratio of GPP multiplied with a square root of VPD to ET) was unchanged during the drought. The decrease in EWUE was due to the stronger decline in GPP than in ET. The increase in IWUE was because of the decreased stomatal conductance under increased VPD. The unchanged uWUE indicates that the trade-off between carbon assimilation and transpiration of the boreal Scots pine forest was not disturbed by this drought event at the site. The JSBACH simulation showed declines of both GPP and ET under the severe soil moisture drought, but to a smaller extent compared to the observed GPP and ET. Simulated GPP and ET led to a smaller decrease in EWUE but a larger increase in IWUE because of the severe soil moisture drought in comparison to observations. As in the observations, the simulated uWUE showed no changes in the drought event. The model deficiencies exist mainly due to the lack of the limiting effect of increased VPD on stomatal conductance during the low soil moisture condition. Our study provides a deeper understanding of the coupling of carbon and water cycles in the boreal Scots pine forest ecosystem and suggests possible improvements to land surface models, which play an important role in the prediction of biosphere–atmosphere feedbacks in the climate system.


ABSTRACT Due to migration, Swedish pre-schools are linguistically and culturally diverse settings where approximately one in five children is bi-/multilingual. Hence, pre-school teachers work in a diverse landscape in which they are expected to support the multilingual and multicultural development of the children. The aim of this article is to analyze the discourses of diversity in Swedish pre-school teacher training and, more specifically, how students are positioned and position themselves in relation to such discourses. The article takes its point of departure in an ethnographic four-year project that studied a group of students recruited to the pre-school teacher training by a municipality because of their migration background. The material analyzed consists of interviews and observations during the four years that the students participated in the program. Using the framework of nexus analysis, it reveals an ambivalence in attitudes in relation to diversity and in the positioning of certain students as other. Due to their historical bodies, the students are expected to add value to the pre-school teacher training program, but at the same time, they are expected to perform like everyone else in the program, reproducing a discourse of diversity as a positive asset.


This tutorial paper addresses some of the principles and provides examples of concurrent architectures and designs that have been inspired by VLSI technology. The circuit density offered by VLSI provides the means for implementing systems with very large numbers of computing elements, while its physical characteristics provide an incentive to organize systems so that the elements are relatively loosely coupled. One class of computer architectures that evolve from this reasoning include an interesting and varied class of concurrent machines that adhere to a structural model based on the repetition of regularly connected elements. The systems included under this structural model range from 1) systems that combine storage and logic at a fine grain size, and are typically aimed at computations with images or storage retrieval, to 2) systems that combine registers and arithmetic at a medium grain size to form computational or systolic arrays for signal processing and matrix computations, to 3) arrays of instruction interpreting computers that use teamwork to perform many of the same demanding computations for which we use high-performance single process computers today.


Climate change may produce a variety of responses in populations' ecological and evolutionary dynamics. At opposing limits of populations' ranges, the responses are
expected to differ. Some lag in response may be expected due to the rapidity of climate change, with the strength and type of lags varying across space. Importantly
responses may contain both ecological and evolutionary components. This thesis provides significant contribution to understanding how structure in populations and
the landscape may determine the nature of populations' responses to climate and environmental changes.

A number of models and a microcosm experiment are presented. The results show how alternate temporal and spatial population structures are developed when
individuals move in space. From defining percolation routes, patterns of gene flow or spatial selection, landscapes provide a large role in determining populations'
responses. Even without landscape structure, populations exhibit large levels of regional structure, and indeed substructure, due to localised interactions. This spatial
structure may deform during climate change, producing new characteristics of equilibrium spatial distributions. During range deformation the feedback between spatial structure and dynamics can alter populations' evolvability by changing the patterns and strength of intraspecific competition, or the maintenance of genetic variation. These changes produce dynamics that will be sensitive to individual differences in a population. Changes in populations' age and sex structure may modulate ecological and evolutionary interactions.

The research presented here highlights an increased importance of understanding populations' spatio-temporal structure and dynamics within heterogeneous
landscapes. This is especially so as ecological and evolutionary processes can converge to different degrees during climate change, depending on the landscape a
population inhabits. Prediction of populations' responses may require a greater understanding of spatial processes and how range deformation affects the evolution of
different kinds of traits. All the above areas feed into a greater understanding of the genesis and maintenance of diversity in any situation.


An in-situ deployment of smart grid technology, from meters through to access points and wider grid connectivity, was examined. The aim of the research was to determine what vulnerabilities were inherent in this deployment, and what other consideration issues may have led to further vulnerability in the system. It was determined that there were numerous vulnerabilities embedded in both hardware and software and that configuration issues further compounded these vulnerabilities. The cyber threat against critical infrastructure has been public knowledge for several years, and with increasing awareness, attention and resource being devoted to protecting critical in the structure, it is concerning that a technology with the potential to create additional attack vectors is apparently insecure.


Summary The controversial topic of synthetic dyes in food has been discussed for many years. The scrutiny and negative assessment of synthetic food dyes by the modern consumer have raised a strong interest in natural colouring alternatives. Nature is rich in colours (minerals, plants, microalgae, etc.), and pigment-producing microorganisms (fungi, yeasts, bacteria) are quite common. Among the molecules produced by microorganisms are carotenoids, melanins, flavins, quinones, and more specifically monascins, violacein or indigo. The success of any pigment produced by fermentation depends upon its acceptability on the market, regulatory approval, and the size of the capital investment required to bring the product to market. A few years ago, some expressed doubts about the successful commercialization of fermentation-derived food grade pigments because of the high capital investment requirements for fermentation facilities and the extensive and lengthy toxicity studies required by regulatory agencies. Public perception of biotechnology-derived products also had to be taken into account. Nowadays some fermentative food grade pigments are on the market: Monascus pigments, astaxanthin from Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous, Arpink Red from Penicillium oxalicum, riboflavin from Ashbya gossypii, b-carotene from Blakeslea trispora. The successful marketing of pigments derived from algae or extracted from plants, both as a food colour and a nutritional supplement, reflects the presence and importance of niche markets in which consumers are willing to pay a premium for »all natural ingredients«.


A biclique is a complete bipartite subgraph of a graph. This paper investigates the fractional biclique cover number, $bc^*(G)$, and the fractional biclique partition number, $bp^*(G)$, of a graph $G$. It is observed that $bc^*(G)$ and $bp^*(G)$ provide lower bounds on the biclique cover and partition numbers respectively, and conditions for equality are given. It is also shown that $bc^*(G)$ is a better lower bound on the Boolean rank of a binary matrix than the maximum number of isolated ones of the matrix. In addition, it is noted that $bc^*(G) \leq bp^*(G) \leq \beta^*(G)$, the fractional vertex cover number. Finally, the application of $bc^*(G)$ and $bp^*(G)$ to two different weak products is discussed.


The layout of a facility is a key factor that influences its ability to reduce throughput times, maintain low WIP levels and maximize space utilization. Traditionally, a facility planner uses, as-is, the from-to chart representation of the material flow network in the facility to design a new layout. This paper introduces the production flow analysis and simplification toolkit (PFAST) to evaluate and simplify the material flow network in any facility prior to the design of the layout. The idea for PFAST resulted from the observation that algorithms for machine and part family grouping for cell formation could be applied to layout design. The algorithms for cell formation tend to use operation sequences (or a 0-1 matrix, bipartite graph or hypergraph representation). The algorithms for facility layout primarily use the from-to chart derived from the operation sequences. Depending on the type of input data and desired results, PFAST offers a variety of algorithms to the facility planner. In this survey paper, eleven algorithms that comprise the current version of this toolkit are reviewed and demonstrated using a single data set. The paper concludes with a description of several ways in which the outputs from different algorithms in this library could be used synergistically to support facility layout.


By attaching a network of piezoelectric transducers over a metallic aircraft fuselage panel, the paper shows the changes of multi-path acousto-ultrasonic (AU) signals which pass through the aerostructure under fatigue loading. Based on the whole life-cycle of the multi-path AU signals collected from a metallic aerostructure until complete fracture, two different trend analysis approaches are presented in detail for evaluation of structural deterioration. One is based on damage indices computed from the changes of the AU signals with respect to their baseline signals in terms of extracted waveform envelopes and phases, and the other is based on principal component analysis (PCA) to reveal the hidden variation patterns of the AU signals. Consistent trends are shown to be produced by both approaches. Whilst the relationship between the complete set of the multi-path AU signals acquired and the gradual deterioration in structural integrity is found to be represented by the statistical trends of the damage indices in the first approach, it is found to generally follow an inverse U-shape trajectory in the feature space formed by the two most significant principal bases in the second approach. Furthermore, the PCA results are shown to provide a good basis to develop an AU-based traffic light system for aerostructure integrity.


Background: In 80% of patients, COVID-19 presents as mild disease1,2. 20% of cases develop severe (13%) or critical (6%) illness. More severe forms of COVID-19 present as clinical severe acute respiratory syndrome, but include a T-predominant lymphopenia3, high circulating levels of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines, accumulation of neutrophils and macrophages in lungs, and immune dysregulation including immunosuppression4. Methods: All major SARS-CoV-2 proteins were characterized using an amino acid residue variation analysis method. Results predict that most SARS-CoV-2 proteins are evolutionary constrained, with the exception of the spike (S) protein extended outer surface. Results were interpreted based on known SARS-like coronavirus virology and pathophysiology, with a focus on medical countermeasure development implications. Findings: Non-neutralizing antibodies to variable S domains may enable an alternative infection pathway via Fc receptor-mediated uptake. This may be a gating event for the immune response dysregulation observed in more severe COVID-19 disease. Prior studies involving vaccine candidates for FCoV5,6 SARS-CoV-17-10 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) 11 demonstrate vaccination-induced antibody-dependent enhancement of disease (ADE), including infection of phagocytic antigen presenting cells (APC). T effector cells are believed to play an important role in controlling coronavirus infection; pan-T depletion is present in severe COVID-19 disease3 and may be accelerated by APC infection. Sequence and structural conservation of S motifs suggests that SARS and MERS vaccine ADE risks may foreshadow SARS-CoV-2 S-based vaccine risks. Autophagy inhibitors may reduce APC infection and T-cell depletion12 13. Amino acid residue variation analysis identifies multiple constrained domains suitable as T cell vaccine targets. Evolutionary constraints on proven antiviral drug targets present in SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 may reduce risk of developing antiviral drug escape mutants. Interpretation: Safety testing of COVID-19 S protein-based B cell vaccines in animal models is strongly encouraged prior to clinical trials to reduce risk of ADE upon virus exposure.


Predicting timing of student graduation would be a valuable input for the management of a Department at a University. However, this is a difficult task if it is done manually. With the help of learning on the existing Artificial Neural Networks, it is possible to provide training with a certain configuration, in which based on experience of previous graduate data, it would be possible to predict the time grouping of a student's graduation. The input of the system is the performance index of the first, second, and third semester. Based on testing performed on 166 data, the Artificial Neural Networks that have been built were able to predict with up to 99.9% accuracy.


Chinese people can be found in most continents and history has shown that they migrate in the early days to seek better livelihoods. Of the many places they have set foot on, Malaya was one country which not only saw the marriage of Princess Hang Li Po of the Ming Dynasty to the sultan of Malacca in the 16th century but also the birth of mixed marriages between local Malays and Chinese who had come with the marriage entourage. Subsequently, others came to work as miners, actors, writers, bankers and various occupations. Malaysian Chinese are the descendants of these migrants. For some reason, literature often associate migrant Chinese with Confucian values like filial piety, respect for elders, benevolence and humility. To some extent this is probably true because Chinese children are taught these virtues through the way they should talk and behave with others. Nevertheless, times have changed. Young people today are exposed to more challenges, new cultures, new experiences and new opportunities. Directly or indirectly, these have an impact on their behaviour and how they talk. Yang Kuo-Shu (1986), Michael Harris Bond and Hwang Kwang-kuo (1986) look at various studies and models of Chinese Social Behaviour. Their findings indicate that the social behaviours of the Chinese have evolved over the years. Adding on to this is the contribution of this paper which discusses the behaviour of young male Malaysian Chinese speakers as shown through their speech. Using participant observation as an approach, spontaneous data of male children interacting with their elders were manually recorded and transcribed. Focussing on politeness, their utterances were then analysed based on the intended functions and the linguistic forms used. Analysis of data suggests that the speakers are direct and less reserved in their speech norms.


Citizenship education in Turkey has been a part of the state-centric modernization project involving the transformation of public and private lives of Turkish citizens. Although there has always been a separate course on civics, citizenship education emerges as a cross-curricular theme in the Turkish educational system which aims at creating a self-sacrificing and patriotic citizen. Besides its particularistic content, however, Turkish citizenship education also involves references to a universal conception of citizenship in line with Turkey's aspiration to be a member of the European Union. This paper presents a historical frame and breaking points for citizenship education in Turkey from its foundation to the present. It critically examines paradoxical content of the current citizenship and human rights education curriculum.


Nicotinic acid receptor agonists have previously been shown to cause acute reductions in cardiac contractility. We sought to uncover the changes in cardiac metabolism underlying these alterations in function. In nine humans, we recorded cardiac energetics and function before and after a single oral dose of nicotinic acid using cardiac MRI to demonstrate contractile function and Phosphorus‐31 (31P) magnetic resonance spectroscopy to demonstrate myocardial energetics. Nicotinic Acid 400 mg lowered ejection fraction by 4% (64 ± 8% to 60 ± 7%, P = .03), and was accompanied by a fall in phosphocreatine/ATP ratio by 0.4 (2.2 ± 0.4 to 1.8 ± 0.1, P = .04). In four groups of eight Wistar rats, we used pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) flux studies to demonstrate changes in carbohydrate metabolism induced by the nicotinic acid receptor agonist, Acipimox, using hyperpolarized Carbon‐13 (13C) magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In rats which had been starved overnight, Acipimox caused a fall in ejection fraction by 7.8% (67.5 ± 8.9 to 60 ± 3.1, P = .03) and a nearly threefold rise in flux through PDH (from 0.182 ± 0.114 to 0.486 ± 0.139, P = .002), though this rise did not match pyruvate dehydrogenase flux observed in rats fed carbohydrate rich chow (0.726 ± 0.201). In fed rats, Acipimox decreased pyruvate dehydrogenase flux (to 0.512 ± 0.13, P = .04). Concentration of plasma insulin fell by two‐thirds in fed rats administered Acipimox (from 1695 ± 891 ng/L to 550 ± 222 ng/L, P = .005) in spite of glucose concentrations remaining the same. In conclusion, we demonstrate that nicotinic acid receptor agonists impair cardiac contractility associated with a decline in cardiac energetics and show that the mechanism is likely a combination of reduced fatty acid availability and a failure to upregulate carbohydrate metabolism, essentially starving the heart of fuel.


Beginning with the assumption that the church is a liberative space where everyone, single women in particular, can experience wholeness, this thesis investigates the extent to which the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) executes pastoral ministry to single women. The hypothesis of the study is that the concept of women in the COCIN, the COCIN's pastoral training and its inability to appropriate the shepherding and facilitatory model of Jesus, have not enabled an effective pastoral ministry to single women. This thesis therefore proceeds to assess the COCIN's theology of marriage and singleness, the role of women in the COCIN, marriage and family life in Jos today, the theological education and pastors' training of the church and the execution of pastoral ministry to single women. This is to ascertain how these have impacted on the way the COCIN offers pastoral care to single women. This work is a combination of insights from social analyses, feminist cultural hermeneutics and feminist pastoral care and communal contextual pastoral care frameworks. While establishing that culture has had a strong influence on the pastoral ministry practice of the COCIN, methods were identified from the ideas generated by participants as well as relevant literature on the subject, that could be used for the execution of pastoral ministry to single women in the COCIN Regional Church Council, Gigiring, Jos. The data for the study was collected using in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation. Participants were categorised into church leaders, clergy, seminary lecturers, magistrates, adult children from divorced marriages and single,never married women and men and divorced women. The findings of the study indicate that with respect to ministry to single women, pastoral ministry in the COCIN has not been liberative, empowering and transformative. Most of the participants indicate that the lack of an effective pastoral ministry to single women is a result of inadequate preparation for dealing with gender complexities in the pastoral training of the church. Although the study has significant implications for the overall pastoral ministry of the church,the findings of this study highlight the necessity of a gender-inclusive pastoral ministry in the COCIN for single women and for the entire church. The study underscores the need for the COCIN to utilise the communal care practice characteristic of African culture for effective pastoral ministry to the different categories of people, particularly the single,never married and divorced women in its congregations.


In this paper, two new similarity measure methods based on set theory were proposed. Firstly, similarity measure of two sets based on set theory and set operation was discussed. This principle was used to spectral vectors, and two approaches were proposed. The first method was to create a spectral polygon corresponding to spectral curve, and similarity of two spectral vectors can be replaced by that of two polygons. Area of spectral polygon was used as quantification function and some effective indexes for similarity and dissimilarity were computed. The second method was to transform the original spectral vector to encoding vector according to absorption or reflectance feature bands, and similarity measure was conducted to encoding vectors. It proved that the spectral polygon-based approach was effective and can be used to hyperspectral RS image retrieval.


Clean energy has become an important topic in recent decades because of the serious global issues related to the development of energy, such as environmental contamination, and the intermittence of the traditional energy sources. Creating new battery-related energy storage facilities is an urgent subject for human beings to address and for solutions for the future. Compared with lithium-based batteries, sodium-ion batteries have become the new focal point in the competition for clean energy solutions and have more potential for commercialization due to the huge natural abundance of sodium. Nevertheless, sodium-ion batteries still exhibit some challenges, like inferior electrochemical performance caused by the bigger ionic size of Na+ ions, the detrimental volume expansion, and the low conductivity of the active materials. To solve these issues, nanocomposites have recently been applied as a new class of electrodes to enhance the electrochemical performance in sodium batteries based on advantages that include the size effect, high stability, and excellent conductivity. In this Review, the recent development of nanocomposite materials applied in sodium-ion batteries is summarized, and the existing challenges and the potential solutions are presented.

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The flow of a continuously stratified fluid into a contraction is examined, under the assumptions that the dynamic pressure and the density gradient are constant upstream (Long's model). It is shown that a solution to the equations exists if and only if the strength of the contraction does not exceed a certain critical value which depends on the internal Froude number. For the flow of a stratified fluid over a finite barrier in a channel, it is further shown that, if the barrier height exceeds this same critical value, lee-wave amplitudes increase without bound as the length of the barrier increases. The breakdown of the model, as implied by these arbitrarily large amplitudes, is discussed. The criterion is compared with available experimental results for both geometries.


This paper deals with the investigation of the Venezuelan socio-cultural reality expressed specifically in a community of the capital, located in the southwest area of the city known as the "Brisas del Paraiso" sector. The main objective of the study is to confirm the possibility of achieving the transformation of this reality through education in ethical values and Christian students. To accomplish this goal, a group of students of 1st year Bachelor of Education Unit Private "San Vicente", located in the area before indicated selected. The choice of both the type of institution and the age group studied was not done randomly, but associated with a predominantly investigative purpose: to analyze to what extent an educational program is efficient to achieve noticeable changes in the behavior of young people, and enable them to confront and transform the harsh reality. Towards this end the objectives and action plan of the thesis (Problem Statement, Reference Framework, Research Methodology and Pedagogical Proposal) focused. The conclusions allowed: a) find that actually affects the behavior of adolescents, b) that the institution should be involved in the family and social environment of the student to achieve the proposed goals, and c) it is advisable to apply an educational proposal on ethical values and Christians in any educational institution and extend the study overall.