This thesis examines the new system of bankruptcy law in the People's Republic of China.

A major issue of the thesis is the analysis of the possible links and side effects of the upcoming bankruptcy law on intellectual property rights in China.

The fact that the People's Republic of China is one of the fastest growing economies with the intention of becoming accepted as a market economy has various influences upon the political decisions and legal developments in China and the rest of the world.

All changes of the legal environment in China aim at increasing the faith of foreign investors and the growth of foreign investment in China. China continuously allows foreigners to invest in more and more business areas and there is a wide variety of different types of investment in China.

On the one hand, companies have the possibility to invest their capital. On the other hand, companies have the option to invest their technical knowledge. Technical knowledge is of particular interest to Chinese partners. Because of this strong interest, western companies are in great danger of losing their intellectual property.

The Chinese legal system meanwhile offers western companies a range of different corporate forms. The corporate forms Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise and joint venture in particular are very attractive to foreign investors. Due to the large variety of corporate forms, this thesis focuses on the involvement of foreign investors in a joint venture.

Usually, western companies choose to invest intellectual property in the form of a joint venture. This generates a special need for the foreign company to receive a guarantee for their property. Foreign companies fear that a third party might use their intellectual property and, in order to reduce this risk, they have to be very careful as to how they invest their intellectual property in China.

The new bankruptcy law can create a new form of this well-known threat to foreign companies who invest in the People's Republic of China. The aim of this thesis is to identify some of these new risks and to attempt to find solutions to help foreign investors reduce potential risks for their investments.

Globalisation and international investors are currently focusing on the Chinese market. In order to understand the contemporary situation in China, it is important to understand Chinese history and culture. Taking this into account, this thesis summarises the historical and cultural aspects in the initial chapters.


Social media platforms like Facebook are the new neighborhood pubs. Citizens often use these new public forums to talk about their anger and lack of faith in politics. Consequently, political parties' online management of negative user expressions has become increasingly important to build and maintain good relationships with citizens. To explore and identify negative user expressions and how political parties react to them, this article analyzes the Facebook pages of seven political parties during the 2013 Austrian national election campaign. Overall, almost half of the 2,584 analyzed user comments on the parties' official Facebook pages contain a negative expression. Half of these negative expressions are personal or organizational appeals—statements on a party or politician's qualification for the job or personal characteristics. Mostly users' negative comments on Facebook address the party as an organization. Nevertheless, the political parties do not react to these.


Chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) is a significant burden for chronic pain sufferers, their medical and allied health treatment providers, and the U.S. medical system. The U.S. military has seen a significant increase in CMP with increased injuries stemming from military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and advances in care for CMP are sorely needed. Poor chronic pain treatment in the military has led to high levels of costly health care utilization with related costs estimated in billions of dollars. The functional occupational restoration treatment (FORT) trial, funded by the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (Department of Defense), was the first formal, randomized trial of a novel interdisciplinary management program for CMP among active duty service members. Excellent clinical outcomes at posttreatment and long-term follow-up have been reported elsewhere. This paper examined patterns of health care utilization among FORT study participants for a period of 1 year before and after the study intervention or yoked, 3-week control period. We examined the military's Armed Forces Health Longitudinal Technology Application, which went online in 2004, to identify costly health visits and procedures consumed by study completers. We then compared utilization rates between those who received the interdisciplinary FORT treatment and those who were randomized to treatment as usual. Our analyses revealed significant between-group differences at posttreatment (controlling for pretreatment intervention use), with FORT participants receiving significantly fewer procedures including emergency department intervention, injections, and radio frequency nerve ablations. This paper precedes a follow-up study of mediating factors for health care utilization after interdisciplinary treatment.


Vaccination, one of the most effective strategies to prevent infectious diseases, is the administration of antigenic materials to stimulate an individual's immune system to develop adaptive immunity to a specific pathogen. Though it is so advantageous for diseases control and prevention, vaccines still have some limitations. Nanotechnology is an approach to prepare a novel biomedicine vaccine with the vaccine consumption and side effects significantly decreased. Regulation is the most important criterion for the development of nanovaccines. All marketing products have to meet the requirement of regulation. The fast-track designation potentially aids in the development and expe‐ dites the review of nanovaccines that show promises in an unmet medical need. Here, some successful nanovaccine products are introduced—Inflexal® V, Epaxal®, Gardasil TM, and Cervarix TM have been widely used for the clinical applications, which are delivered either in the form of virosomes or virus-like particles. Vaccines based on nanotechnolo‐ gy may overcome their original disadvantages and lead to the development of painless, safer, and more effective products.


We treat the Canterbury (Christchurch) earthquake sequence as a potential source of new risk information to home buyers in New Zealand. We compare pre- and post-earthquake sales of properties in two other urban areas of the country (one with high and one with low seismicity) to estimate how the pricing of earthquake-related risks changed following the Canterbury earthquakes. Specifically, we test for changes in risk premia associated with soil liquefaction potential, previously a largely ignored hazard, and changes in premia for house construction types (such as brick) that previously were well-known to be less safe in an earthquake. By exploiting two types of risk (one previously ignored and one well-recognised by households) across two areas with differing seismic risks, pre- and post-earthquake, we use a difference-in-difference-in-difference approach to test hypotheses about how people respond to a new clearly defined risk that is important only in certain circumstances. We find no evidence that the price of known construction risk changed in either seismic area and no evidence of a change in the price of liquefaction risk in the low seismic area following the Canterbury earthquakes. However, we do find strong evidence that a liquefaction risk discount emerged in the high seismic area immediately after the Canterbury earthquakes. These findings are all in accord with rational responses to risk following the earthquakes. However, the liquefaction risk discount in the high seismic area dissipated after two years and had disappeared entirely within three years of the earthquakes. This finding is similar to those identified in a limited number of previous empirical studies on responses to natural hazard events. While we cannot rule out entirely that this time-varying risk premium is a rational response to risk (e.g. because of changing expectations around insurable versus non-insurable risks), we find it more plausible that these changing risk discounts reflect behavioural responses to risk as indicated in the cognitive dissonance literature.


Advanced memories are designed using smaller geometries and lower voltages. This enables larger levels of integration and reduced power consumption, but makes memories more prone to suffer multibit soft errors. In this scenario, scrubbing is a fundamental technique to avoid the accumulation of errors, which would lead to a failure of the system. Scrubbing is usually implemented in advanced memories. However, when the percentage of multibit soft errors is significant, the scrubbing sequence (the order in which the memory is scrubbed) becomes important for the reliability of the system. In this paper, a new procedure to perform scrubbing is presented, which offers a significant improvement in the reliability. In the presence of multiple cell upsets, the mean time to failure could be doubled with respect to the traditional approach.


From Summary: "The low-speed stalling characteristics of a large number of airfoil sections have been correlated with Reynolds number and a single airfoil ordinate near the leading edge as the correlation parameters. The correlation is appropriate only to airfoils without high-lift devices in flows of very low turbulence and with aerodynamically smooth surfaces."


In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph. "When the first vague drumbeats of a new musical idiom rumbled out of the dark corners of the South, Mencken's 'Sahara of the Bozart' was no more. In the rhythms of jazz the cacophony that is the modern industrial city found its artistic spokesman. At first this errant child of music was forced to take refuge in the dance halls and smoky dubs like a yelling, mewing. newborn child, and it was several years before the jazz artists were able to attract the serious attention of the cultural custodians of American society, and not merely its outraged gendarmes." Cover Page Footnote Appeared in the issue: Volume 3, 1958. This prose is available in The Angle: http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/angle/vol1958/iss1/11


This paper shows the process of the virtual production development of the mechanical connection between the top leaf of a dual composite leaf spring system to a shackle using finite element methods. The commercial FEA package MSC/MARC has been used for the analysis. In the original design the joint was based on a closed eye-end. Full scale testing results showed that this configuration achieved the vertical proof load of 150 kN and 1 million cycles of fatigue load. However, a problem with delamination occurred at the interface between the fibres going around the eye and the main leaf body. To overcome this problem, a second design was tried using transverse bandages of woven glass fibre reinforced tape to wrap the section that is prone to delaminate. In this case, the maximum interlaminar shear stress was reduced by a certain amount but it was still higher than the material's shear strength. Based on the fact that, even with delamination, the top leaf spring still sustained the maximum static and fatigue loads required, the third design was proposed with an open eye-end, eliminating altogether the interface where the maximum shear stress occurs. The maximum shear stress predicted by FEA is reduced significantly and a safety factor of around 2 has been obtained. Thus, a successful and safe design has been achieved.


The effects of the addition of 15% of different addictives (coffee hulls, cocoa meal and cassava meal) to green elephant grass forage, in natural matter basis (weight/weight), at the ensilage moment on the consumption of nutrients and the performance of twenty Santa Ines sheep under feedlot system were evaluated. The animals had 5.0 months of age, initial weight of 22.27 ± 3.24 kg and final weight of 28.6 ± 3.78 kg. The treatments were: T1 = elephant grass ensiled without addictive; T2 = elephant grass ensiled with 15% coffee hulls; T3 = elephant grass ensiled with 15% cocoa meal; T4 = elephant grass ensiled with 15% cassava meal. The use of the addictives coffee hulls, cocoa meal and cassava meal in elephant grass ensilage increased the dry matter intake. The greatest crude protein intakes were observed with silage containing cocoa meal and cassava meal. Neutral detergent fiber intakes were similar, and the total digestible nutrients intake was higher in silage containing cassava bran. The feed conversion rate of the animals was not affected by the inclusion of addictives in ensilage. Diet containing elephant grass ensiled with cassava meal showed higher weight gain along the period and per day, however, no difference was observed in the feed conversion rate. The addition of cassava meal in ensilage of elephant grass provided weight gain of 140.5 g/day in Santa Ines sheep.


China has a large deficit of females, and public policies have sought to reduce the son preference that is widely believed to cause this. Recently a study has suggested that up to 75 percent of this deficit is attributable to hepatitis B infection, indicating that immunization programs should form the first plank of policy interventions. However, a large medical dataset from Taiwan (China) shows that hepatitis B infection raises women's probability of having a son by only 0.25 percent. And demographic data from China show that the only group of women who have elevated probabilities of bearing a son are those who have already borne daughters. This pattern makes it difficult to see how any biological factor can explain a largepart of the imbalance in China's sex ratios at birth -- unless it can be shown that it somehow selectively affects those who have borne girls, or causes them to first bear girls and then boys. The Taiwanese data suggest that this is not the case with hepatitis B, since its impact is unaffected by the sex composition of previous births. The data support the cultural, rather than the biological, explanation for the"missing women."


As design problems are inherently indeterminate or wicked, we have to rely on various strategies when practicing design. In this paper, we propose a material strategy that emphasizes the expressional potential of computers. We argue how computers, in principle, can be understood as a material for design and how they can be part of a formgiving practice. We embark on the beginning of establishing a practical understanding of the computer as a material by articulating a number of material properties of computers. Two of these properties, computed causality and connectability, are given shape through material samples of a computational composite. The composite is in the form of a copper tile of which the computer controls the thermodynamic behavior. The material strategy proposed here which produced dramatic results is still in its infancy, but by adopting a material understanding of computers and beginning to embody the space of opportunities it unfolds, we take the first steps towards a new way of designing computational objects and architectures.


"FUNGUTOPIA is the design of a social and ecological utopia based on urban mushroom cultivation". The Project FUNGUTOPIA is a design | research in process. The workshop will work with and about the material of fungal mycelium. We will learn how to cultivate oyster mushrooms with simple kitchen tools and let them grow in self-build forms. To understand how to work with the living material of fungi, we will discuss their properties and characteristics and the potential of mushrooms as building material, recyclers, food and medicine. Apart from the hands-on-approach the workshops goal is also to discuss questions about "design in process": How is our understanding of design changing when we start thinking about lifecycles of creation, use and decay? How can we take the material serious as agency in the design process? How could we truly co-design with the "other" – be it human or non-human?


'Meyer' zoysiagrass (Zoysiajaponica Steud.) is a popular turfgrass species for transition zone golf course fairways and tees because it is generally winter hardy while providing an excellent playing surface with minimal chemical and irrigation inputs. However, its functionality declines readily on many of the shaded areas on these courses. Reduced irradiance causes excessive shoot elongation, reduced tillering, and weak plants that are poorly suited to tolerate or recover from traffic and divoting. Trinexapac-ethyl (TE) effectively reduces gibberellic acid (GA) biosynthesis and subsequent shoot cell elongation. The objective of this study was to determine if monthly applications of TE would reduce shoot elongation of Meyer' zoysiagrass and improve stand persistence under two levels of shade. Shade structures were constructed in the field that continuously restricted 77% and 89% irradiance. A mature stand of Meyer' was treated with all combinations of three levels of shade (0%, 77%, and 89%) and three levels of monthly TE application [0, 48 g.ha -1 a.i. (0.5x), and 96 g.ha -1 a.i. (1×)] in 1998 and 1999. In full sun, the 0.5x-rate reduced clipping production by 17% to 20% over a four-week period and the lx-rate by 30% to 37%. Monthly application of TE at the 1×-rate increased 'Meyer' tiller density in full sun and under 77% shade. Both rates of TE consistently reduced shoot growth under shade relative to the shaded control. Only the monthly applications at the 1×-rate consistently delayed loss of quality under 77% shade. The zoysiagrass persisted very poorly under 89% shade whether treated or not with TE and plots were mostly dead at the end of the experiment. Our results indicate TE can be an effective management practice to increase 'Meyer' zoysiagrass persistence in shaded environments. Chemical name used: 4-cyclopropyl-α-hydroxy-methylene-3,5-dioxocyclohexanecarboxylic acid ethyl ester (trinexapac-ethyl).


From the Publisher:
Quickly master architectural programming concepts, skills, and techniques
In the essential discipline of architectural programming, the ideas of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and history find their focus in the realities of site conditions, budgets, and functionality. Author Edith Cherry vividly demonstrates in this inspiring tutorial that the programming process not only helps architects avoid the endless design revisions occurring in most projects, but that it is also the key to designing for optimal form and function.
Programming for Design lets you rapidly acquire the knowledge and skills needed to successfully program a moderate-size space. Rather than simply describe basic principles and practices, this straightforward guide helps you master architectural programming by actually doing it.
Professor Cherry identifies the central issues involved and describes the skills needed to work with clients to identify problems to be solved by a design effort. Emphasizing designing for people, she offers proven strategies and techniques for goal setting, information gathering and analysis, concept development, program synthesis, and communicating with clients.
The book is also devoted to practical applications. The author walks you step-by-step through a project of your own choosing, providing numerous examples and four case studies within each step that vividly illustrate how to effectively gather, process, and communicate information.
Programming for Design features more than 200 supporting illustrations, diagrams, and sidebars appearing throughout the text, reproducing pithy sayings by such far-flung figures as Plato and Yogi Berra, Einstein andLao Tzu, that help relate the programming process to other disciplines.


Secure multi-party computation (MPC) enables a set of mutually distrusting parties to cooperatively compute, using a cryptographic protocol, a function over their private data. This paper presents WYS*, a new domain-specific language (DSL) implementation for writing MPCs. WYS* is a Verified, Domain-Specific Integrated Language Extension (VDSILE), a new kind of embedded DSL hosted in F*, a full-featured, verification-oriented programming language. WYS* source programs are essentially F* programs written against an MPC library, meaning that programmers can use F*'s logic to verify the correctness and security properties of their programs. To reason about the distributed semantics of these programs, we formalize a deep embedding of WYS*, also in F*. We mechanize the necessary metatheory to prove that the properties verified for the WYS* source programs carry over to the distributed, multi-party semantics. Finally, we use F*'s extraction mechanism to extract an interpreter that we have proved matches this semantics, yielding a verified implementation. WYS* is the first DSL to enable formal verification of source MPC programs, and also the first MPC DSL to provide a verified implementation. With WYS* we have implemented several MPC protocols, including private set intersection, joint median, and an MPC-based card dealing application, and have verified their security and correctness.


: Microservices is an emerging software architectural style that is meant to deal with many of the limitations of contemporary monolith applications. In the recent years, this architectural style has become the preferred choice for building large and complex heterogeneous software systems. Many companies identify microservices as a means to build competitive advantage. Main reason for this is the flexibility that the microservice approach provides in terms of developing software intensive systems. Companies that incorporate microservices claim to be able to respond much faster to changing business environment. Microservices have both technical and cultural aspects. They provide a great flexibility in selecting the proper technologies. On the other hand, they result in a culture shift in each organization. Developers tend to become more productive and reduce the total number or defects. This paper makes an overview of the microservices architectural style for developing software intensive systems and analyzes the key aspects that result in improving the business performance. It discusses the main characteristics of microservices and provides guidelines on how to apply them in real business scenarios.


5. A. Ellis. Rejoinder: Elegant and Inelegant RET, in A. Ellis and J. Whiteley, eds. Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Rational-Emotive Therapy. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1979. 6. G. M. Edelman. The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness. New York: Basic Books, 1989. 7. A. T. Beck. Cognitive Therapy, Behavior Therapy, Psychoanalysis, and Pharmacotherapy: A Cognitive Continuum, in M. Mahoney and A. Freeman, eds. Cognition and Psychotherapy. New York: Plenum Press, 1985. (Originally published in 1983.) Introduction and Philosophy of Science ALBERT ELLIS'S THEORY of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) shares many basic ideas with general semantics theory.(1) Several of Ellis's books have appeared in E-Prime (2), a writing and speaking methodology developed by David Bourland and used by some general semanticists. This paper explores the relationship of Ellis's theory of psychotherapy and personality to a particular theory of brain function, Gerald Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS). (3) Philosophically, this inquiry is an exercise in "interfield theory," whose relevance to cognitive science has been cogently outlined by William Bechtel. (4) Such an interfield theory aims at a "mechanistic explanation" of emotional disturbance, in addition to purely "functional" analysis. Rather than attempting the "reduction" of psychology to neuroscience, however, interfield theory seeks to "bridge boundaries," rather than "break boundaries," between the two theories. Such an approach seeks to examine the same phenomena at different levels of organization, and also to examine emotional events at the same level from two different points of view. It should be emphasized that this exercise in "interfield theory" must base itself on the very same assumptions which underly the two parent theories. Every scientific theory must remain underdetermined, to some degree or another, by the available empirical evidence, and RET and TNGS both have plenty of competition within their own respective fields. But since both theories deal at some level with the same phenomena, it should be instructive to demonstrate how these two particular theories could explain the same events. It is likely that different "interfield" programs might also relate alternative theories from each of the two fields. Specifically, I want to explore more precisely the distinction between Ellis's "elegant" and "inelegant" forms of RET practice. (5) In addition, because RET has frequently claimed a biological basis for the human propensity for "irrational beliefs," I explore this physiology in the present article. Finally, I seek to clarify the relationship between RET and psychopharmacology. Ever since Egyptian surgeons cracked open the brain 5000 years ago, humans have tried to imagine mechanical models of the brain's functioning. These machine analogs have usually compared the brain's processes to man-made devices of the modeler's own particular historical period -- e.g., pipe organs, steam engines, telephone switchboards, digital computers, computer networks, etc. Instructionism and Selectionism in Biology Edelman has chosen as his own analog the humoral, antibody-mediated immune system. This example requires Edelman to remain scrupulously selectionist in all aspects of the theory. At this point, let us look briefly at the differences between instructionism and selectionism in biology. The distinction goes back to the nineteenth century debate between "Lamarckian" and "Darwinian" explanations of evolution. The "instructionist," or "Lamarckian" paradigm suggested that the individual organism gets "instructed," or molded by its environment. In other words, the individual organism adapts to its environment by acquiring more adaptive characteristics, and then passes on those acquired adaptations to its progeny. On the other hand, the "Darwinian," or "selectionist" paradigm hypothesizes that adaptive characteristics already exist among variant individuals within a biological population. …


Over the past fifteen years countries in Latin America made tremendous progress in strengthening their economies and improving living standards. Although output fell temporarily during the global financial crisis, most economies staged a rapid recovery. However, economic activity across the region has been cooling off and the region is facing a more challenging period ahead. This book argues that Latin America can rise to the challenge, and policymakers in the region are already implementing reforms in education, energy, and other sectors. More is needed, and more is possible, in Latin America's quest to continue to improve living standards.


A novel approach to controlling deep ocean oil spills, pioneered in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, is now being challenged as ineffective. During the spill, emergency responders injected more than 2 million liters of toxic oil dispersants directly into the plume of hot oil billowing from near the sea floor. Proponents say the strategy helped dissipate the oil before it reached the surface, reducing damage to coastal shorelines. But new research suggests the dispersant might have made little difference. The heated debate comes as governments and the energy industry are preparing to use deep-sea dispersants again if a similar disaster happens.


Summary Meristem culture was done for developing an effi cient protocol of production of eggplant clones. Shoot tips of 30-35 days old fi eld grown eggplants were used for meristem isolation. Th ree cultivars viz. 'Islampuri', 'Khatkhatia' and 'Katabegun' were used in the present investigation as explants source. Surface sterilization of shoot tips was found to be the best in 0.1% HgCl2 solution for 3 minutes. For primary establishment of isolated apical meristem in MS liquid medium containing 2.0 mg l -1 BAP was found the best in cv Islampuri. BAP was also proved to be best for the primary establishment of isolated apical meristem in all the cultivars. Subsequent development of meristem derived shoot was achieved in MS semisolid medium containing either 2.0 mg l-1 BAP and 1.0 mg l -1 NAA or 1.0 mg l -1 BAP. For root development from meristem derived shoots, 1.0 mg l-1 IBA was found most responsive in cv. 'Islampuri' and 'Khatkhatia'. Aft er transplantation, the in vitro plants showed normal growth.


Construction site utilization planning has implications for project safety, construction efficiency, scheduling, and budgetary performance of a project. An important aspect not identified in past research efforts are the current practices for site utilization plan development currently used by the construction industry. Therefore, the objectives of this research were to: 1) determine the best practices for site utilization planning; 2) develop a procedure that outlines the site utilization planning process; and 3) show how current Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology can be harnessed for site utilization plan development. The main method for data collection was a survey. A total of 241 responses were received. From the survey, 13 best practices were identified with each focusing on an important aspect of the site planning process. From the best practices, a procedure describing the site utilization process was developed. The procedure incorporates important aspects associated with project constraint identification, plan necessity, data acquisition, plan development, communication, implementation and enforcement, monitoring and evaluating, and documentation. Finally, an elusive three dimensional site utilization plan was created using BIM.


The morphology of the acromion, its relation to the coracoid process and the supraglenoid tubercle is important in the determination of the dimension of the subacromial space, considering that the variations of these structures can promote pathologies such as impingement syndrome of the subacromial space. There is little information on the different dimensions and forms of the acromion. We studied in 36 scapulae at the museum of the Anatomy Unit, Universidad de La Frontera, the following parameters: length, denseness, width, anterior projection, distance acromiocoracoid and acromion supraglenoid. According to this form, the type was qualified in acromion type I (plane) type II (curved) and type III (hooked). The averages of the variable length, anterior projection were statistically significant in the acromion of the right side. In relation to its classification 8% was type I, 50% type II, and 42% type III. The anatomically obtained information will allow health professionals to access new morphometric information regarding the acromion and use it as a base for future pathology investigation of the upper arm.


Title of dissertation: EFFECTS OF OPTICAL ILLUMINATION ON SUPERCONDUCTING QUANTUM DEVICES Rangga P. Budoyo, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Frederick Wellstood Department of Physics I report measurements of two different types of superconducting devices illuminated by 780 nm light, one of the wavelengths needed in a proposed atomsuperconductor hybrid quantum system. I illuminated a thin-film Al lumped-element resonator and observed the resonator quality factor and resonance frequency as a function of illumination intensity, microwave power, and temperature. The resonator was mounted in a 3d aluminum cavity. The variation in optically-induced loss due to microwave power was similar to the behavior expected for loss from a distribution of two-level systems. Although this behavior may suggest the presence of optically activated two-level systems, I found that the loss is better explained by the presence of nonequilibrium quasiparticles generated by the illumination and excited by the microwave drive. I described a model of the system where optical absorption creates an effective source of phonons and solved the coupled quasiparticle-phonon rate equations. I found good agreement between the simulation and the measured resonator quality factor and frequency shift as a function of temperature, microwave power, and optical illumination. I fabricated a transmon qubit and studied the qubit transition frequency and relaxation time as a function of illumination intensity and temperature. The qubit was mounted in a 3d aluminum cavity and coupled to the cavity forming a JaynesCummings system. Qubit relaxation showed non-exponential behavior that I fit to a quasiparticle fluctuation model with two characteristic times. The transition frequency and both characteristic times decreased with increasing illumination intensity. For comparison, I described a nonequilibrium quasiparticle model for the expected frequency shift and relaxation time due to quasiparticle tunneling through the Josephson junction. While the quasiparticle simulation predicted the general qualitative behavior of the frequency shift and relaxation time, there were some significant discrepancies with the data. This suggests the model needs to be extended, for example by including a different gap in the two superconductor layers forming the junction, and by taking into account other possible sources of loss and decoherence. EFFECTS OF OPTICAL ILLUMINATION ON SUPERCONDUCTING QUANTUM DEVICES


Efficient human motor control is characterized by an extensive use of joint impedance modulation, which is achieved by co-contracting antagonistic muscles in a way that is beneficial to the specific task. While there is much experimental evidence available that the nervous system employs such strategies, no generally-valid computational model of impedance control derived from first principles has been proposed so far. Here we develop a new impedance control model for antagonistic limb systems which is based on a minimization of uncertainties in the internal model predictions. In contrast to previously proposed models, our framework predicts a wide range of impedance control patterns, during stationary and adaptive tasks. This indicates that many well-known impedance control phenomena naturally emerge from the first principles of a stochastic optimization process that minimizes for internal model prediction uncertainties, along with energy and accuracy demands. The insights from this computational model could be used to interpret existing experimental impedance control data from the viewpoint of optimality or could even govern the design of future experiments based on principles of internal model uncertainty.


This paper provides descriptions of two new species of Calcigorgia gorgonians collected from the Sea of Okhotsk between 1973 and 2008. The new species are Calcigorgia herba sp. nov. and С. lukini sp. nov., belonging to the deep-water coral fauna of the temperate Northern Pacific. The taxonomy structure of the genus is reviewed and a comparative table is provided for all known species of Calcigorgia. The following taxonomic changes are made: the diagnosis of the genus was corrected from that given in Matsumoto et al. (2019); synonymization of C. simushiri Dautova, 2018 with C. spiculifera Broch, 1935 and inclusion of additional specimens in C. japonica Dautova, 2007 (both performed by Matsumoto et al. 2019) are assumed erroneous. The finding of previously undescribed species emphasizes the need for further surveys, particularly in deeper waters, to improve knowledge of the Octocorallia fauna in Far East seas. The distribution of Calcigorgia (Octocorallia, Acanthogorgiidae) is reviewed and presented based on field and collection studies published since 1935 as well as miscellaneous data from previous literature.


An experiment investigates the impact of fan identification on the cognitive and emotional processing of sports-related news media. Two coaches were featured; one conceptualized as negatively valenced the other positively. Participants completed a fan identification scale before stimuli presentation. While watching the press conferences, heart rate, skin conductance, and corrugator muscle activity were recorded as indices of cognitive resource allocation, emotional arousal, and aversive motivation activation respectively. Self-report measures were collected after each stimulus. Results show that highly identified fans process sports-related news content differently than moderate fans, allocating more cognitive resources and exhibiting greater aversive reactions to the negatively valenced coach. Comparisons between the self-report and psychophysiology data suggest that the latter may be less susceptible to social desirability response bias when emotional reaction to sports messages are concerned.


We revisit in this paper the strongly nonlinear long wave model for large amplitude internal waves in two-layer flows with a free surface proposed by Choi and Camassa [1] and Barros et al. [2]. Its solitary-wave solutions were the object of the work by Barros and Gavrilyuk [3], who proved that such solutions are governed by a Hamiltonian system with two degrees of freedom. A detailed analysis of the critical points of the system is presented here, leading to some new results. It is shown that conjugate states for the long wave model are the same as those predicted by the fully nonlinear Euler equations. Some emphasis will be given to the baroclinic mode, where interfacial waves are known to change polarity according to different values of density and depth ratios. A critical depth ratio separates these two regimes and its analytical expression is derived directly from the model. In addition, we prove that such waves cannot exist throughout the whole range of speeds.


New editions of the successful series of teaching plans to help non-specialist primary teachers to implement the physical education curriculum. Each book contains photocopiable lesson plans, with additional teacher notes, to help teach imaginitively and effectively. Each book covers the National Curriculum requirements for each year, covering games, gymnastic activities and dance in clearly labelled sections. A specially designed music CD is sold separately to accompany the series and delivers musical accompaniment to the dance sections of each book. Leapfrogs are packed with invaluable information on how to teach PE, its value and importance to the school curriculum, in addition to necessary subject knowledge, teaching strategies, progression and achievement, and assessment. New material in the new editions: How to structure a first lesson with a new class; Using 'themes' in PE (including body parts/body shapes/space/partner work/sequences); and Progressing gymnastic activities. The introductory material has been revised, examining the importance of PE in improving the health and wellbeing of children. Also now includes a CD of all lessons in PDF format for ease of use." These lesson plans are a godsend for those of us with no specialism in PE in the primary school. Each covers a whole year from Foundation Stage to Year 6." The Teacher 'Any teacher following Jim Hall's advice on lesson planning will be ensuring that their pupils have a high quality of experience in physical education which should mean instilling in them a love of sport and physical activity for life.' Kate Hoey MP


The potential contributions that National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) can make in post-conflict settings has drawn increased attention from academics and practitioners alike. For some, NHRIs can assume positive roles assisting not only in the protection and promotion of human rights but also in peacebuilding and transitional justice processes. Conversely, scholars identify a spectrum of potential obstacles that may hinder the translation of this potential into practice. Others assess that NHRIs can even hamper efforts to transition from conflict to peace. Existing literature identifies a number of factors that determine the contributions that NHRIs can make in conflict-affected settings. These include the institutional design of an NHRI, the degree of autonomy from the government, and the level of expertise needed to navigate the post-conflict landscape. This article considers a number of mechanisms and avenues available that could help NHRIs to navigate post-conflict transitions. Specifically, the article examines the potential impact of peace agreements that include provisions on NHRIs; post-conflict guidelines developed for NHRIs operating in conflict-affected settings; and various accountability-based mechanisms that monitor NHRIs and post-conflict governments on an ongoing basis. After considering how these options could support the positive contributions that NHRIs make to peace, the article will argue that more questions than answers arise. By identifying these uncertainties, however, the discussion helps illuminate important gaps in the literature, pointing to the need for a more comprehensive and integrated research agenda on NHRIs in post-conflict contexts.


Organizations play an important role in the development of the modern society since managers have become aware that financial profit highly depends on community involvement. The active participation of organizations in community life implies to adapt global strategies to local issues or to promote local issues at a global level. Actually this is the essence of glocalization. The means by which organizations can achieve these glocal objectives is CSR campaigns.  CSR represents an instrument used to solve diverse issues, such as: human rights, environment and climate change, education, support for vulnerable groups, sustainable development, or establishment of moral capitalism. Within the context of the ever-rising internet access of all audiences, CSR campaigns have become more visible and have capitalized on the advantages of collective intelligence, internet users' participation and their user generated contents. The purpose of our study is to provide an insight into (1) the prominence of Romanian organizations which are the most socially responsible, (2) the domains in which Romanian organizations have invested; (3) the salience of CSR 1.0 and CSR 2.0 tools used in the promotion of CSR campaigns in Romania.


These essays on representative Jewish and Irish writers are true to the form's definition as an attempt or experiment rather than a credo. Wohlgelernter defines the author's "excited imagination" by thoroughgoing analysis of the work's constituent parts. He gives particular emphasis to the author's own words and expressions, those verbal inventions that linger in the mind long after the act of reading or criticism. He finds a passionate love of words and language forging a powerful link between Jewish and Irish literature, rooted as they are in similar historical experience. Both literatures engage the human struggle with life and death, virtue and weakness, success and failure, dreams and nightmares, all under the constant surveillance of tradition. Wohlgelernter divides his book into four general categories: the Holocaust, Jewish-American writers, Irish writers, and memoirs and autobiography. His chapters on Holocaust literature engage a range of literary perspectives that combine memoir, journalism, fiction, and philosophical reflection in the writings of Ladislas Fuks, Lucy Dawidowicz, Sabine Reichel, and Primo Levi. Chapters on postwar Jewish writers including Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, and Philip Roth explore the ambivalences of assimilation with its encroachments of a provincial past and dissatisfactions with mainstream culture. Wohlgelernter notes how all yoke street raciness and high cultural mandarin in a distinctive contribution to American prose style. A similar richness of language and preoccupation with the political and cultural claims of the past characterize the chapters on the great short story writer Frank O'Connor, the playwright Brendan Behan, and the Irish-American journalist and novelist Pete Hamill. The last decades of the twentieth century have seen a prolific outpouring of autobiographical writing, and in the concluding section of the book the author treats representative examples that amplify or reflect on the personal and historical themes encountered in Jewish and Irish fiction: assimilation, personal ambition, intermarriage, and political allegiance. Among the writers treated here are Norman Podhoretz, Calvin Trillin, James McBride, Ari Goldman, and Howard Shack. Wohlgelernter's emphasis on the timeless, recurring themes of literature is matched by a lucidity of style and soundness of method that yield what is central to all criticism, namely insight. Jewish Writers/Irish Writers will be of interest to literary scholars, Jewish studies specialists, and cultural historians.


During the last 20 years studies of various mammals and birds
have shown that social organization is highly variable between and
within species, and that such variation can frequently be explained
on the basis of variation in food habits and food dispersion. This
study is an attempt to discover the major ecological pressures
affecting social organization and reproductive fitness of Arctic
foxes in Iceland.
Foxes were both studied at an individual level, by monitoring
movements of radio-tagged foxes and observation of fox behaviour in
demarcated study areas, and at the population level, by analysis of
available foxhunting records, as well as material and information
provided by foxhunters.
The most common form of social organization was found to be a
breeding pair, while social groups of 3-4 individuals also occur,
particularly in coastal habitat, which is more productive and
spatially more heterogenous with respect to food dispersion, than
inland habitat.
The Arctic foxes were found to occupy well defined, but fairly
flexible group territories, whose borders were advertised by
olfactory, auditory and visual signals. In one coastal region, three
such territories ranged in size from 8.6 km2 to 18.5 km2, while
there was an indication that territories were larger in inland
habitats.
In coastal habitats, foxes feed mainly on oceanic prey and do not
show cycles in abundance. In inland habitat, foxes show a functional
response to the 10 year population cycle of ptarmigan (Lagopus
mutus), their main prey in winter. Litter sizes remain stable,
however, due to little interannual variation in the foxes' summer
diet, which consists mostly of migrant birds.
Mean litter size at birth is 5-3 ± 1.7 S.D. and mortality from
factors other than foxhunting is about 15% up to the age of weaning.
Annual mortality in adults is about 50%, mostly due to foxhunting.
Most vixens breed already as yearlings, while dog-foxes are more
likely to show delayed breeding.
In inland habitats there is balanced polymorphism with regard to
colour morph, but in coastal habitats blue foxes have an overall
selective advantage. Inland foxes are smaller than coastal foxes.
Both size and colour affect reproductive fitness.


The National Curricular Directives for undergraduates in the health area were approved in 2002, in an attempt to break the biomedical paradigm with regards to the production of knowledge and professions. With the purpose of adapting to those directives, the Physiotherapy course at the State University of Londrina reformulated its curriculum and, included among the alterations, it expanded the class hours and restructured the Collective Health discipline. The purpose of this study was to analyze whether the Collective Health content of the new curriculum covers the formation of abilities under the curricular directives, as well as evaluating student perceptions with regards to their formation for working with basic health care. Accordingly, a documentary analysis of the content of interviews given by graduating students in the last semester of their courses was carried out. It was ascertained that the content analyzed covers essential aspects of social sciences and humanities in health, and that the apprenticeship in basic health care was what most provided experience in team work. Despite assessing the Collective Health classes positively, the students suggested that the theoretical discussions be more articulated to the apprenticeship, because, accordingly, there would be greater opportunities for learning the work of physiotherapy in the basic health care arena more effectively.


Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the sixth most common cancer and third leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. HCC is also is a tumor with a distinct ability to invade and grow within the hepatic vasculature. Approximately 20% of patients with HCC have macrovascular invasion (MVI) at the time of diagnosis. MVI is associated with dismal prognosis, with median survival ranging from 2 to 5 months. Current staging systems designate MVI as advanced disease. Recent advances in multimodal approaches, including systemic therapies, radiation therapy, liver-directed therapies, and surgical approaches, in the treatment of HCC with MVI have rendered this disease process more treatable with improved outcomes and are discussed here.


The advent of the Smart Grid brings new network management challenges and opportunities. Multiple IEEE network technologies, including 802.11, 802.15.4 and P1901 can all support Smart Grid applications in Home Area Networks (HANs). Utilities need visibility into the HAN to ensure the network is operational and able to support critical applications such as Demand Response and Electric Vehicle Charging. This paper describes a set of network performance metrics that are consistent among the most prevalent HAN network technologies. These metrics enable higher layer network monitoring and management entities to support the HAN as part of the overall Smart Grid network.


INTRODUCTION
The National Institutes of Health provided grants to the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and 14 other allopathic academic health centers for the development of curricula in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). A key component of the curriculum evaluation for OHSU was provided by a survey assessing attitudes toward CAM and selected personality characteristics of entering students in chiropractic, naturopathic, Oriental, and allopathic medicine in the Pacific Northwest and Upper Midwest.

METHODS
A survey containing a variety of assessments of attitudes toward CAM and the personality traits of adventurousness and tolerance to ambiguity was administered to students entering four Portland, Oregon doctoral-level health professional schools and an allopathic medical school in the Upper Midwest (University of Nebraska College of Medicine) during the 2004-2005 academic year.

RESULTS
Students of naturopathy (n = 63) and Oriental Medicine (n = 71) were the most "CAM positive," adventurous and tolerant of ambiguity, and Midwestern allopathic medical students (n = 58) the least. In general, chiropractic students (n = 89) and allopathic medical students from the Pacific Northwest (n = 95) were intermediate in CAM attitudes between these two groups (all p < 0.05). Female students were more "CAM positive" in all schools compared to male students.

CONCLUSIONS
Students have high levels of interest in CAM upon entrance to their schools. Health professional discipline, geographic location, personality qualities, and gender appear to influence CAM attitudes in entering students.


Social life in man and animal is considered as a means used by individuals to gain satisfactions. Sexual reproduction, social perpetuation and the exercise of power are all major goals. In man and animal the forms of marriage and sexual pairing are analyzed through the Darwinian theory of sexual selection as it encompasses aesthetic preferences. It seems to the authors that the behaviors of man and animals are better understood if they are considered as subjects of desires.


This article takes data from the Huddersfield Examiner (HE) and the Yorkshire
Evening Post (YEP) and critically analyzes discourse features of the
November 1995 drought as reported in these papers. It suggests that this kind
of discourse generates new linguistic categories, which exist between the
generalized patterns of language (langue) and the differentiated experience
of language in context (parole). Whilst the langue-parole distinction is no
longer seen as absolute, if it is seen as a gradable concept it could capture the
tension between stability and change characterizing actual linguistic experience
of discourse participants. The value of textual analysis is discussed and
the article asks how far texts can be described as (re)producing ideologies
in a particular context. The research reported here is based on a small, discrete
corpus of news texts and concludes that the data in question produce a
meaning for the word water that differs from its meaning over larger bodies of
data, and yet which maps closely onto the meaning of the word commodity.
The general ideological outlook encompassing this view of water as productlike
and passive, rather than a natural resource with its own agency, is
considered as an 'explanatory' mechanism linking this news 'story' with a
dominant capitalist ideology.


This thesis is a study into the foundational elements of the theologies of John Macquarrie and (in comparison and contrast) Karl Rahner, in respect of their differing concepts of the Self-Revelation of God, in the context of their particular validations of the authenticity of the religious pluralism of World Religions.

Both Theologians are, in essence, ontological and anthropocentric in respect of their methodology and largely concerned with the immanence of God in the beings of creation (principally human beings). The contrast arises in respect of the particular method of theological development. Macquarrie's concern is with the phenomenology of Holy Being as present and manifest in the particular existential symbols of divergent cultures, whereas Rahner's concern is wholly epistemological in respect of the 'universal logos'; and therefore his development is along metaphysical lines.

The basis of Macquarrie's religious pluralism lies in a synthesis of ontological unity and cultural diversity; symbolic and psychological. Holy Being (God) reveals itself to different cultural groups through the essential, existential symbols of the particular cultures. The principle of unity is the universality of Being and the admissible principle of diversity appears in terms of the different symbols. The different symbols themselves, then, including the hermeneutic in respect of them, results necessarily in religious pluralism. The basis of Rahner's religious pluralism lies in his understanding that the human constitution includes a pre-concept of all being, including the Being of God; and a supernatural element whereby all men are necessarily epistemically oriented towards God. As with Thomas Aquinas knowledge and Being are equated therefore Rahner's whole theology is grounded in a universal epistemology of both an ordinary and a supra-ordinary nature. These factors give rise to Rahner's doctrine of 'Anonymous Christianity' through which all men are implicit Christians, and other religions are, to some degree, perversions of Christianity.


Chytridiomycosis has been identified as one of the major forces driving global amphibian declines. Between 1988 and 1994, five Atelopus species endemic to the Venezuelan Andes disappeared. We examined histological samples of Andean Atelopus species available in Venezuelan museum collections for the presence of the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. When infection was detected, sympatric species were examined to investigate the occurrence of the pathogen and how widespread it was. Infection with B. dendrobatidis is reported for the first time in Atelopus carbonerensis, A. mucubajiensis and A. sorianoi, Mannophryne cordilleriana and an undescribed Leptodactylus species. The spatio-temporal patterns of prevalence of this pathogen in Atelopus individuals, with all infections concentrated in one year but spread over distant locations, suggest that synchronized epidemic outbreaks occurred in populations of these Atelopus species in the years prior to their disappearances. Local climate data indicate that one of the most severe dry seasons recorded in the region since 1970 coincided with these epidemic events. The climatic-linked epidemic hypothesis seems a plausible explanation for the coincidence between the observed amphibian declines, the chytridiomycosis outbreaks,and the droughts recorded in that area.


After providing an overview of the state-of-the-art in power distribution design and modeling, this paper focuses on return path discontinuities (RPDs) for I/O signaling. After briefly describing their importance in the context of simultaneous switching noise, a specific case of RPD based on via discontinuities is discussed in detail in the context of both the frequency- and time-domain waveforms using a test vehicle. The modeling of RPD in practical packages and printed circuit boards is addressed along with substrate coupling due to nonideal reference planes. Finally, a high-impedance power distribution scheme for I/O signaling is presented that can potentially solve a number of RPD-related problems, followed by future challenges.


This project will be an emergency preparedness manual to assist the Second Harvest Food Bank in preparing for disaster. By interviewing key individuals of the Food Bank, I will determine the baseline knowledge of these individuals. Through research, a literature review, and contacting local agencies I was able to determine the benefits of disaster preparedness as well as what worked in previous disasters including the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989. This emergency preparedness manual empowers Second Harvest staff to better prepare themselves and their network of relief agencies. Furthermore disaster mitigation strategies demonstrates disaster preparedness as a priority to better serve the needs of the community.


Public procurement, one of the largest areas of public spending worldwide, gives public officials wide discretion. It is therefore unsurprising that it is also one of the government functions most often vulnerable to corruption. While there have been many qualitative accounts of high-level corruption in public contracting, it is only recently that quantitative indicators have become available. By making use of big data generated by governments on contracts, companies, and individuals, it is possible to develop a new generation of quantitative indicators which can be used to guide policy intervention and support control of corruption.


In the nineteenth century, fantasy could be relegated to children's books, and within these books to places like Wonderland, enclosed by and subordinate to Reality. But with the increasing relativism and subjectivism of the twentieth century, fantasy has entered the mainstream, in works by Joyce, Kafka, Borges, Nabokov: if there can be no truly objective account of reality, if all accounts are subjective, then dreamland and invented worlds necessarily inform our versions of reality. Thomas Pynchon is one of these fantasy-realists whose work is shaped by such a conviction. And Gravity's Rainbow in particular describes a land where fantasy increasingly interpenetrates reality. The novel moves from a relatively discrete and discreet indulgence in fantasy, like Lord Blatherard Osmo's fantasy of the Giant Adenoid, to the realm of the postwar Zone, where fantasy has broken the constraints of logic and flowers everywhere, indistinguishable from so-called reality.


Geological mapping in the Cheticamp granitoid belt in combination with petrographic and geochemical studies and U–Pb (zircon) dating by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry have resulted in major reinterpretation of the geology in the western part of the Ganderian Aspy terrane of Cape Breton Island. Nine new U–Pb (zircon) ages show that the former "Cheticamp pluton" consists of 10 separate plutons of five different ages: late Neoproterozoic (ca. 567 Ma), Cambrian–Ordovician (490–482 Ma), Ordovician–Silurian (442–440 Ma), mid-Silurian (ca. 428 Ma), and late Devonian (366 Ma). The three late Neoproterozoic granodioritic to monzogranitic plutons are older than the adjacent metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks of the Jumping Brook Metamorphic Suite, whereas the tonalitic to quartz dioritic Cambrian–Ordovician plutons intruded those metamorphic rocks. Petrographic characteristics and approximately 100 whole-rock chemical analyses show that with the exception of the mid-Silurian Grand Falaise alkali-feldspar granite, which has A-type within-plate characteristics, the plutonic units have calc-alkaline affinity and were emplaced in a volcanic-arc tectonic setting. These results are evidence that fragments of a long history of episodic subduction-related magmatism and terrane collision are preserved in this small part of Ganderia. Eight new Sm–Nd isotopic analyses are consistent with the Ganderian affinity of the Cheticamp plutonic belt. The ca. 490–482 Ma plutons are the first direct evidence in Cape Breton Island for the Penobscottian event recognized in the Exploits Subzone of central Newfoundland and in New Brunswick. However, the structural relationship of the Cheticamp plutonic belt to the rest of the Aspy and Bras d'Or terranes remains enigmatic, as is the apparent absence of effects of Devonian deformation and metamorphism in the older plutonic units.


A core objective of collective insolvency regimes is to preserve value in the insolvent estate. This value is then to be distributed in accordance with the appropriate statutory scheme. Value might be lost for any of a variety of reasons, including, in particular, (i) misuse of corporate assets by those with influence over the distressed company, and (ii) precipitate individualistic enforcement action by particular claimants, which dismembers the corporate estate and thus destroys synergetic values. The statutory liquidation regime attempts to counter this, in order not simply to benefit those with claims against the company, but also with a view to protecting the public at large from (among other things) abuse of the corporate form. It does so by (i) disabling certain types of dealings with the company's assets, (ii) arming the liquidator with investigative and recuperative tools, and (iii) empowering him to carry out synergy-preserving disposals of the company's property. While liquidation has long (though far from perfectly) performed all these essential functions, the virtual abolition of administrative receivership by the Enterprise Act 2002 had promised to energise the third of these in particular. Unfortunately, however, the ability of the liquidation system to perform any of these functions is threatened by the lingering effects of a recent judgment of the House of Lords, and by some of the commentary this judgment has attracted. Their Lordships' decision has been used to contend that secured claimants 'stand outside' liquidation, in the sense that they are not entitled to participate in the winding-up process. It has further been contended that this remains true even though the actual effect of the judgment has been legislatively reversed. The extent to which these propositions, if true, undermine the core functions of liquidation may not have been fully appreciated by those seeking, even in the face of Parliamentary disapproval, to shore up their Lordships' decision. This paper undertakes a fresh analysis of the liquidation process. On the basis of this analysis, it is argued that the proposition that secured claimants 'stand outside' liquidation in the relevant sense (i) is a product of a misunderstanding of the dual duality in the nature of liquidation proceedings, in that, in principle, they serve both public and private functions, and, they further the interests of both secured and unsecured creditors; (ii) overlooks, both, the ways in which secured creditors benefit from liquidation, and the ways in which unsecured creditors have a real interest in the proper administration of their debtor's encumbered assets; (iii) mistakes the secured creditor's choice in usually being able to gain immunity from the liquidation process, for a compulsion for it to stand exiled from this process; (iv) is incorrect as a matter of the history and practice of this institution; and (v) is rendered unsustainable by the statutory text. It is concluded that secured creditors have never 'stood outside' liquidation, and that this is a fortiori given that the judgment allegedly confirming their exile has been overturned by the Legislature.The definitive version of this paper was published at (2008) 71 Modern Law Review 699-733, and is available at http://www.wileyinterscience.com. This version contains some material (particularly in Section 5.1) not included in the published paper.


Restoration of oyster reefs in coastal ecosystems may enhance fish and fisheries by providing valuable refuge and foraging habitat, but understanding the effects of restoration requires an improved understanding of fish habitat use and trophic dynamics, coupled with longterm (>5 yr) monitoring of restored habitats. We evaluated the relationship between large (3−5 ha) restored subtidal oyster reefs and mobile estuarine fishes in the Lynnhaven River System (LRS), Virginia, more than 8 yr following reef construction. We compared the (1) diversity, (2) abundance, (3) size, (4) stomach fullness, (5) diet composition, and (6) daily consumption rate of fishes collected from restored oyster reefs with those from an area of unstructured, unrestored bottom, via experimental gill nets. We sampled monthly from April to October 2016 and conducted 24 h sampling in July and September 2016. Community composition was similar between habitats, dominated by spot Leiostomus xanthurus, Atlantic menhaden Brevoortia tyrannus, silver perch Bairdiella chrysoura, and Atlantic croaker Micropogonias undulatus. Abundance in reef habitat was significantly reduced relative to unstructured bottom, but the mean length of fishes collected from reefs was significantly greater than that of unstructured bottom. In addition, the estimated consumption rate of silver perch foraging in reef habitat significantly exceeded that of silver perch foraging in unstructured bottom. Nearly a decade post-restoration, restored reefs in the LRS are used by a similar assemblage as unrestored areas, but the manner of use differs by species and size. Considering a broad range of responses is necessary to evaluate the impacts of oyster restoration on mobile fishes.


This project represents an in depth study into the inter-relationships between the seismic
shear wave velocity of uncemented sands and their liquefaction potential. This was
achieved by combining the concepts of steady / critical state soil mechanics with the
measurement of shear wave velocity. In the laboratory this was facilitated with the use of
a modified triwdal cell, allowing both the shear wave velocity behaviour and liquefaction
susceptibility of a particular sand to be quantified. Use of this equipment illustrated that
for a specific sand, acritical shear wave velocity Iine'may be defined, dividing sand
states of potentially contractive or dilative behaviour. Further, these studies also show
that a shear wave velocity derived state inde)ý V, may be statistically correlated with
other more conventional indices of sand consolidation state.
The results of the laboratory study are then applied to a real field situation, the Fraser
River Delta, located in earthquake prone south-westem British Columbia. Currently,
many of the sub-aerial sediments have been identified as being potentially liquefiable.
Offshore, the difficulties associated Wth sampling seabed sediments in-situ have limited
past attempts to quantify liquefaction potential. Laboratory shear wave data, based upon
laboratory analysis of sediment samples from the Fraser Delta and in-situ shear wave
velocity field data, have been used in an attempt to quantify the risk of liquefaction for
part of the offshore delta, namely Roberts Bank. The data presented in this study, based
upon both conventional and proposed shear wave methods of analysis, suggest that
there is a significant risk of liquefaction on the offshore Fraser Delta, particularly around
Roberts Bank.


We investigate stochastic combinatorial multi-armed bandit with semi-bandit feedback (CMAB). In CMAB, the question of the existence of an efficient policy with an optimal asymptotic regret (up to a factor poly-logarithmic with the action size) is still open for many families of distributions, including mutually independent outcomes, and more generally the multivariate sub-Gaussian family. We propose to answer the above question for these two families by analyzing variants of the Combinatorial Thompson Sampling policy (CTS). For mutually independent outcomes in $[0,1]$, we propose a tight analysis of CTS using Beta priors. We then look at the more general setting of multivariate sub-Gaussian outcomes and propose a tight analysis of CTS using Gaussian priors. This last result gives us an alternative to the Efficient Sampling for Combinatorial Bandit policy (ESCB), which, although optimal, is not computationally efficient.


This book by a scientist whose background is in cellular and molecular biology examines the fearsome disease that strikes one in eight women in the United States. Although women are more likely to die of heart disease or of lung cancer, a diagnosis of breast cancer is the medical pronouncement that a woman is most likely to fear. It kills more than 40,000 Americans annually. Why are some women more vulnerable than others? The interplay between genetics and environment is suspected. Thus this book for general readers will help them understand the genetic bases of both sporadic and inherited breast cancers. Although only five to ten percent of breast cancer patients have inherited mutations in these genes, all women need to understand the genetic implications of the disease. In clear, concise language Barbara T. Zimmerman guides the reader through the complexities, discussing in detail the genes that are known to increase susceptibility and the ways they are passed on. Examining the general biology of breast cancer, Zimmerman describes how sporadic and inherited forms of the disease arise and how the location of the tumors can affect the body. She discusses genetic mutations and their roles in the development of tumors and tells how these potentially cancer-inducing genes were discovered. Covered too are the issues of risk, prevention, screening, diagnosis, therapy, and genetic testing and counseling. Zimmerman concludes with a comprehensive analysis of current research and with an emphasis on how a woman's understanding of inherited breast cancer can help doctors seeking to design better methods for prevention and therapy. A useful list of resources for further information about the genetic causes of breast cancer is included. Barbara T. Zimmerman did her graduate work in experimental pathology and her post-doctoral research in the cellular and molecular processes of disease. Widely published, she is the manager of the Denver-based firm Biomedical Communication and Consulting.


Background: Recently, intracavitary electrocardiogram technology has been applied to peripherally inserted central catheter placement and demonstrates many potential advantages. However, the tip positioning accuracy of intracavitary electrocardiogram technology compared to conventional X-ray method is unknown. Objective: We did a meta-analysis to compare the tip positioning accuracy between intracavitary electrocardiogram technology and conventional X-ray method. Data sources: We searched several databases, including Cochrane Library, PubMed, Web of science, and Embase. Additional studies were identified through hand searches of bibliographies and Internet searches. All human studies published in full text, abstract, or poster form were eligible for inclusion. Search terms included peripherally inserted central catheter, PICC, intracavitary electrocardiogram, IC-ECG, EKG, ECG, and catheter tip location. Study eligibility criteria: Only randomized controlled trials of using intracavitary electrocardiogram technology versus X-ray method for peripherally inserted central catheter placement were included. All studies included adult patients aged at least 18 years. Study appraisal and synthesis methods: Independent extraction of articles by two authors using predefined data fields, including study quality indicators. Of the 178 citations identified, 5 studies that included 1672 patients met the eligibility criteria. It was found that statistical heterogeneity existed among the various studies (I2 = 16%, p < 0.00001); therefore, the fixed effect model was used in the meta-analysis (p < 0.05). The meta-analysis compared the tip positioning accuracy between intracavitary electrocardiogram technology and X-ray method and showed that intracavitary electrocardiogram technology had a better positioning accuracy (odds ratio: 2.88, 95% confidence interval: 2.15–3.87, p < 0.0001). Limitations: Only five randomized trial met inclusion criteria, and the lack of an incomplete search led to the publication bias seen in these results. Conclusion: The intracavitary electrocardiogram method had a more favorable positioning accuracy versus traditional X-ray method for peripherally inserted central catheter placement in adult patients. The intracavitary electrocardiogram can be a promising technique to guide tip positioning of peripherally inserted central catheter.


Markov logic networks (MLNs) combine logic and probability by attaching weights to first-order clauses, and viewing these as templates for features of Markov networks. Learning MLN structure from a relational database involves learning the clauses and weights. The state-of-the-art MLN structure learners all involve some element of greedily generating candidate clauses, and are susceptible to local optima. To address this problem, we present an approach that directly utilizes the data in constructing candidates. A relational database can be viewed as a hypergraph with constants as nodes and relations as hyperedges. We find paths of true ground atoms in the hypergraph that are connected via their arguments. To make this tractable (there are exponentially many paths in the hypergraph), we lift the hypergraph by jointly clustering the constants to form higherlevel concepts, and find paths in it. We variabilize the ground atoms in each path, and use them to form clauses, which are evaluated using a pseudo-likelihood measure. In our experiments on three real-world datasets, we find that our algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches.


Test anxiety is a phenomenon that was identified through research in the domains of education and psychology during the 1950s – 1960s. As test anxiety and its effects have been identified and addressed in nursing programs, the same treatment modalities have been applied without evidence that nursing students experience test anxiety in the same manner as other students. The purpose of this study was to describe test anxiety as experienced by BSN nursing students using the sequential explanatory mixed methods design in an effort to gain insight into the anxiety experience of nursing students. A sample of 73 junior and senior nursing students was surveyed about their test anxiety experience. Survey results support that the test anxiety experience of nursing students is similar to other students based upon symptoms exhibited during testing (physical symptoms 71%, behavioral symptoms 62%, and cognitive symptoms 81%). High stakes testing was identified by 98% (n=72) of the students as the major trigger of test anxiety. All surveyed students (n=73) reported experiencing some level of test anxiety. From the survey's sample population, a subset of BSN students (n=7) volunteered and completed individual interpretive phenomenology meetings. The Parse Phenomenological Hermeneutic Research Method was used for data analysis. Reoccurring themes extrapolated from the research included: navigating a nursing program is not intuitive, consistency and organization within a nursing program is necessary to decrease student anxiety, and the volume of information in a nursing course contributes to test anxiety. This study concludes that the test anxiety experience in BSN nursing students presents identifiable triggers and characteristics that affect program retention and progression.


The decreased demand for new vehicles will put pressure on the economy of the Czech Republic, a country deeply integrated into global value chains, as part of global vehicle production. The aim of this research was to define an appropriate industrial policy for the Czech Republic that will ensure that the country maintains its competitive position in the global market. A constrained optimization model was built, based on input–output analysis, to determine the optimal value-added structure and the intersectoral structure of the Czech economy for the country to retain its exporting character. The optimization problem was solved by using a particle swarm optimization algorithm. The results suggest that the optimal industrial policy plan for the country is the structural transformation of production, mainly targeting the development of technologically advanced sectors of manufacturing (such as: chemicals and chemical products; basic pharmaceutical products; computer, electronic, and optical products; electrical equipment; and machinery and equipment). The suggested restructuring process increased the domestic value-added in gross exports as a share of total exports by 6.77%, creating optimal production capabilities for the economy. The Czech Republic appears to have the potential for the implementation of an industrial policy, avoiding the increasingly vulnerable motor-vehicle sector.


The Islamic school of law, or madhhab, is a concept on which a substantial amount has been written but of which there is still little understanding, and even less consensus. This collection of selected papers from the [I] International Conference on Islamic Legal Studies, held in May 2000 at the Harvard Law School, offers building blocks toward the entire edifice of understanding the complex development of the madhhab, a development that even in the contemporary dissolution of madhhab lines and grouping continues to fascinate. As scholars look to the construction of a new Islamic legal history, these essays inform on the background to madhhab formation, on inter-madhhab polemics and the drive toward legal authority, on madhhab perpetuation and anti-madhhab tendencies, on the constitutional role of the madhhab, on the madhhab's legislative and adjudicative mechanisms, and on the significance of the madhhab in comparative terms. This volume is of value to anyone interested in the nature of Islamic law.


This study argues that information holds the key to decision-making and change processes, and hence technology adoption among smallholders. To determine the levels of technology adoption among smallholders and factors associated with it, a total of 787 smallholders, key informant smallholders and field officers from selected areas in Peninsular Malaysia were interviewed in groups using the focus group discussion technique. Generally, technology adoption level among rubber smallholders was relatively low. Several factors accounted for this finding, among them were: smallholders attitudes towards new technology, financial constraints, physicallimitations (uneconomic holding size and accessibility of holdings), labour shortage, inappropriate technology, land ownership and weakness in extension service and communication support system. These factors were found not to act singly but in various combinations which compounded the problem of information flow decision making and change among smallholders in technology adoption. The constraints faced by the smallholders form negative forces that act against the adoption of recommended practices. Some of these barriers can be overcome or minimized with ule provision and implementation of a systematic flow of information from research to extension and from extension LO smallholders. Information from research to extension should cover 'principle', 'how-to' information, besides relevant circumferential and human resource development information. Information from extension to smallholders should focus mainly on 'how-to' and benefits to be accrued from adopting a


Digital libraries and historical archives are increasingly employing visualization systems to facilitate the information retrieval and knowledge extraction tasks of their users. Typically, each organization employs a single visualization system, which may not suit best the needs of certain user groups, specific tasks, or properties of document collections to be visualized. In this paper, we present a context-based adaptive visualization environment, which embeds a set of visualization methods into a visualization library, from which the most appropriate one is selected for presenting information to the user. Methods are selected by examining parameters related to the user profile, system configuration and the set of data to be visualized, and employing a set of rules to assess the suitability of each method. The presented environment additionally monitors user behavior and preferences to adapt the visualization method selection criteria


Most governments have laws to prevent cartels and ensure competition, but most governments do not apply the logic of competition policy to their own activities. This book sets out the benefits that follow when governments promote tax competition. The book begins with a primer on international taxation and then shows why the arguments used by government to justify the prevention of tax competition are fallacious. The book demonstrates the enormous benefits that come from tax competition and outlines the current threats to tax competition from the EU and the OECD. This monograph is an essential read for all with an interest in tax policy as well as for anybody who is concerned about cartels of powerful governments undermining economic freedom and prosperity through the use of anti-competitive tax policies.


Abstract
Biomedical information systems demand cooperative interfaces that maximize the flow of information between machine and user. Within the framework of the PENGUIN project—an object-oriented architecture for expert database systems—, we describe the use of hypertext tools for designing sophisticated interfaces to the relational-database component of PENGUIN. The interface designer employs HyperCard to construct a visual representation of the underlying database that requires the user to recognize rather than to recall the appropriate command name. We show that the resulting direct-manipulation style of interaction facilitates greatly information retrieval and presentation.


We present novel techniques for neuro-symbolic concurrent stochastic games, a recently proposed modelling formalism to represent a set of probabilistic agents operating in a continuous-space environment using a combination of neural network based perception mechanisms and traditional symbolic methods. To date, only zero-sum variants of the model were studied, which is too restrictive when agents have distinct objectives. We formalise notions of equilibria for these models and present algorithms to synthesise them. Focusing on the finite-horizon setting, and (global) social welfare subgame-perfect optimality, we consider two distinct types: Nash equilibria and correlated equilibria. We first show that an exact solution based on backward induction may yield arbitrarily bad equilibria. We then propose an approximation algorithm called frozen subgame improvement, which proceeds through iterative solution of nonlinear programs. We develop a prototype implementation and demonstrate the benefits of our approach on two case studies: an automated car-parking system and an aircraft collision avoidance system.


Population celebrates its seventieth anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, we have chosen to republish four articles from 1946, one in each of our 2016 issues. Each one is accompanied by an introductory commentary that highlights the topicality, or obsolescence, of the research topic covered and, from a twenty-first century perspective, looks at how the issues discussed have evolved over time (see Foreword in 1-2016). Following on from the article by Alfred Sauvy entitled "Assessment of French immigration needs" (1-1946), with an introduction by François Héran and published in Population 1-2016, the second issue featured an article by Paul Vincent on "Population ageing, pensions and immigration" (2-1946), commented by Didier Blanchet. This latest issue of the journal will present an article by a historical demographer, Jean Meuvret, on "Subsistence crises and the demography of France under the Ancien Régime" (4-1946), analysed by Christine Théré and Isabelle Séguy. The series will be rounded off by an article by Jean Bourgeois on "Marriage, a seasonal custom. Contribution to a sociological study of nuptiality in France" (4-1946) commented by Arnaud Regnier-Loilier and Wilfried Rault.


Insurance policy design and regulation continually grapples with moral hazard concerns. Yet these concerns rest largely on theory-based assumptions about how rational economic actors will respond to financial incentives. Advances in behavioral economics call these assumptions into question.

This Article conducts an empirical test of moral hazard in homeowners insurance markets. Eighteen states' "valued policy" laws require more generous compensation by insurers for certain total house losses. I test the moral hazard prediction that fire rates will consequently be higher in these states than in others. Using a private insurance database on the cause of loss for over four million residential insurance claims from 2002 through 2011, I find that, surprisingly, loss rates are significantly lower in valued policy states, not higher. I also use Louisiana's unexpected elimination of these laws as an additional means to assess the laws' effects. As before, fire rates are significantly higher when economic incentives appear lower.

These results are inconsistent with standard moral hazard predictions, but I demonstrate how they are consistent with a broader conceptualization of moral hazard theory. First, the results show the importance of recognizing policyholders' responsiveness to irrelevant factors that they nevertheless believe will affect their insurance payments, like housing prices, rather than the low-salience economic factors that truly determine these payments, like valued policy laws. Second, the results show how focusing exclusively on policyholder behavior misses how other actors, like insurance companies, also adjust to mitigate or even entirely eliminate moral hazard considerations.


We use graph transformation to define an adaptive component model, what allows us to carry on predictive analyses on dynamic architectures through simulations. Specifically, we build on the e-Motions definition of the Palladio component model, and then specify adaptation mechanisms as generic adaptation rules. We illustrate our approach with rules modelling the increase in the number of CPU replicas used by a component, and the distribution of works between processors, reacting, respectively, to saturated queues or response time constraints violations. We evaluate alternative scenarios by analysing their performance, and discuss on its consequences in practice.


Software developers often need to port applications written for a source platform to a target platform. In doing so, a key task is to replace an application's use of methods from the source platform API with corresponding methods from the target platform API. However, this task is challenging because developers must manually identify mappings between methods in the source and target APIs, e.g., using API documentation. We develop a novel approach to the problem of inferring mappings between the APIs of a source and target platform. Our approach is tailored to the case where the source and target platform each have independently-developed applications that implement similar functionality. We observe that in building these applications, developers exercised knowledge of the corresponding APIs. We develop a technique to systematically harvest this knowledge and infer likely mappings between the APIs of the source and target platform. The output of our approach is a ranked list of target API methods or method sequences that likely map to each source API method or method sequence. We have implemented this approach in a prototype tool called Rosetta, and have applied it to infer likely mappings between the Java2 Platform Mobile Edition and Android graphics APIs.


Despite growing interest in the gig economy among academics, policy makers and media commentators, the area is replete with different terminology, definitional constructs and contested claims about the ensuing transformation of work organisation. The aim of this positional piece is to provide a timely review and classification of crowdwork. A typology is developed to map the complexity of this emerging terrain, illuminating range and scope by critically synthesising empirical findings and issues from multidisciplinary literatures. Rather than side-tracking into debates as to what exactly constitutes crowdwork, the purpose of the typology is to highlight commonalities rather than distinctions, enabling connections across areas. The framework serves as a heuristic device for considering the broader implications for work and employment in terms of control and coordination, regulation and classification, and collective agency and representation.


Extracted from text ... Eradicating barriers to education An introduction to the Education Rights Project Faranaaz Veriava R acially skewed access to education is one of the legacies of apartheid, which included a deliberate policy of unequal financing of educational institutions and deeply entrenched patterns of discrimination. It is this legacy that impedes equal participa- tion in all spheres of life for many individuals and communities. Introducing the Education Rights Project The Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) and the Education Policy Unit (EPU) at the University of the Witwatersrand established the Education Rights Project (ERP) as a response to post-apartheid chal- lenges ..


In modern cities, service providers want to identify the regions that are hard to reach from multiple fire stations, a citizen wants to meet with friends in a restaurant close to everyone, and administrators want to find whether an area far from two bus stations needs a new one. Such tasks involve studying the dynamic accessibility of the urban structures over multiple geospatial and temporal constraints, which is an important topic in geographical sciences and urban transportation. In this paper, we present a new computational model and a visualization system that help domain users to interactively study the jointly constrained accessible regions, street segments, and Points of Interest (POIs). In particular, Urban Structure Accessibility Visualization system is built upon a new Min–Max Joint Set model, where specifically designed set operations not only represent the accessible regions but also compute the minimum and maximum access times to urban structures from the joint constraints. The computation and visualization are supported by a new graph model that accommodates the real-world dynamic traffic situation and the geographical settings of urban street segments and POIs. The visualization system allows the users to conveniently construct and manage accessible regions and visually explore the urban structures inside them.


In response to increasing fuel costs, airlines began introducing baggage fees as a new source of revenue, fees which have since been increased. In this study, an event study methodology is used to examine the impact of these announcements on airline stock prices. The results indicate that the initial announcements led to negative abnormal returns for the announcing firm and other competing airlines, as they were interpreted as a sign of industry weakness. However, the results also show that subsequent increases in baggage fees, which had been shown to positively impact the airline's financial performance, are associated with positive abnormal returns.


The objectives of this study were analysis of the secondary metabolite products from Aspergillus fumigatus and evaluation antibacterial activity. Fifteen bioactive compounds were identified in the methanolic extract of Aspergillus fumigatus. The identification of bioactive chemical compounds is based on the peak area, retention time molecular weight and molecular formula. GC-MS analysis ofAspergillus fumigatus revealed the existence of the 9-Hexadecenoic acid ,2,4-Dimethyl-5-methylthiopent-4-en-2-ol , E-11-Hexadecenoic acid , ethyl ester , D-Glucose , 6-O-α-D-galactopyranosyl- , α-D-Glucopyranoside , O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-(1.fwdarw.3)-β- , 6-Acetyl –β-d-mannose , 4H-Pyran-4-one,2,3-dihydro-3,5dihydroxy-6-methyl- , 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural , β-D-Glucopyranoside, methyl , Tetraacetyl-d-xylonic nitrile , n-Hexadecanoic acid , 9-Octadecenoic acid , (2-phenyl-1,3-dioxolan-4-yl)methyl ester , Octadecanoic acid ,9,10-Secocholesta-5,7,10(19)-triene-3,24,25-triol,(3β,5Z,7E)- and Pyrimidin-2-ol,4-(3,4dimethoxyphenyl)-6-phenyl. Gramineae poaceae was very highly antifungal activity (8.32±0.09) mm while Streptococcus faecalis has a maximum zone formation (6.92±0.24) mm against Aspergillus fumigatus.


Nuclear disarmament advocates have provided a strong moral voice for the total disarmament of nuclear weapons, but if they are to remain credible participants in the disarmament process, they must redouble their efforts to assist in the difficult technical and political obstacles that stand in the way of a world without nuclear weapons. This Note first outlines impediments to disarmament towards which advocates could helpfully direct their attention, such as: conventional force imbalances; developing "proliferation-safe" civil nuclear technologies; enforcing nonproliferation obligations; and verifying nuclear disarmament. Second, it explains how tools from behavioral economics and negotiation theory could inform a more influential disarmament advocacy. Among other things, it suggests an iterative approach to disarmament to combat loss aversion and reference dependence. To fight time discounting, this Note urges support for ex ante agreement on UN Security Council action in response to violations of the nonproliferation regime. Finally, it recommends using a fairness norm based on process rather than distribution in formal disarmament negotiations.


CONTEXT
Evidence to support antibiotic treatment for acute rhinosinusitis is limited, yet antibiotics are commonly used.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the incremental effect of amoxicillin treatment over symptomatic treatments for adults with clinically diagnosed acute rhinosinusitis.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
A randomized, placebo-controlled trial of adults with uncomplicated, acute rhinosinusitis were recruited from 10 community practices in Missouri between November 1, 2006, and May 1, 2009.

INTERVENTIONS
Ten-day course of either amoxicillin (1500 mg/d) or placebo administered in 3 doses per day. All patients received a 5- to 7-day supply of symptomatic treatments for pain, fever, cough, and nasal congestion to use as needed.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
The primary outcome was improvement in disease-specific quality of life after 3 to 4 days of treatment assessed with the Sinonasal Outcome Test-16 (minimally important difference of 0.5 units on a 0-3 scale). Secondary outcomes included the patient's retrospective assessment of change in sinus symptoms and functional status, recurrence or relapse, and satisfaction with and adverse effects of treatment. Outcomes were assessed by telephone interview at days 3, 7, 10, and 28.

RESULTS
A total of 166 adults (36% male; 78% with white race) were randomized to amoxicillin (n = 85) or placebo (n = 81); 92% concurrently used 1 or more symptomatic treatments (94% for amoxicillin group vs 90% for control group; P = .34). The mean change in Sinonasal Outcome Test-16 scores was not significantly different between groups on day 3 (decrease of 0.59 in the amoxicillin group and 0.54 in the control group; mean difference between groups of 0.03 [95% CI, -0.12 to 0.19]) and on day 10 (mean difference between groups of 0.01 [95% CI, -0.13 to 0.15]), but differed at day 7 favoring amoxicillin (mean difference between groups of 0.19 [95% CI, 0.024 to 0.35]). There was no statistically significant difference in reported symptom improvement at day 3 (37% for amoxicillin group vs 34% for control group; P = .67) or at day 10 (78% vs 80%, respectively; P = .71), whereas at day 7 more participants treated with amoxicillin reported symptom improvement (74% vs 56%, respectively; P = .02). No between-group differences were found for any other secondary outcomes. No serious adverse events occurred.

CONCLUSION
Among patients with acute rhinosinusitis, a 10-day course of amoxicillin compared with placebo did not reduce symptoms at day 3 of treatment.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00377403.