The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of trisomies 18 and 13 in Europe and the prevalence of associated anomalies. Twenty‐five population‐based registries in 16 European countries provided data from 2000–2011. Cases included live births, fetal deaths (20+ weeks' gestation), and terminations of pregnancy for fetal anomaly (TOPFAs). The prevalence of associated anomalies was reported in live births. The prevalence of trisomy 18 and trisomy 13 were 4.8 (95%CI: 4.7–5.0) and 1.9 (95%CI: 1.8–2.0) per 10,000 total births. Seventy three percent of cases with trisomy 18 or trisomy 13 resulted in a TOPFA. Amongst 468 live born babies with trisomy 18, 80% (76–83%) had a cardiac anomaly, 21% (17–25%) had a nervous system anomaly, 8% (6–11%) had esophageal atresia and 10% (8–13%) had an orofacial cleft. Amongst 240 Live born babies with trisomy 13, 57% (51–64%) had a cardiac anomaly, 39% (33–46%) had a nervous system anomaly, 30% (24–36%) had an eye anomaly, 44% (37–50%) had polydactyly and 45% (39–52%) had an orofacial cleft. For babies with trisomy 18 boys were less likely to have a cardiac anomaly compared with girls (OR = 0.48 (0.30–0.77) and with trisomy 13 were less likely to have a nervous system anomaly [OR = 0.46 (0.27–0.77)]. Babies with trisomy 18 or trisomy 13 do have a high proportion of associated anomalies with the distribution of anomalies being different in boys and girls. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Background Global food consumption patterns have dramatically changed in recent years. One common consumption pattern that is shared by many countries is the increasing expenditure on food away from home (FAFH). Convenience and accessibility seems to be the two major reasons why consumers seek for fast food. It is easy to get fast foods anywhere, everywhere and anytime. Consumption of fast-food in the world is becoming an increasingly important component of the food market as more of the working class chooses to dine out rather than prepare meals at home. Despite the importance of the fast-food sector, limited attempts have been made to study the consumption and expenditure behavior of consumers of fast-food. Fast food consumption is increasing among kids, who might lead to many health conditions, one of them is obesity. The nutritional content of kid's meal in Qatar has often been overlooked. The objectives of this study are to assess nutritional value of kid's meal offered by some international fast food restaurants in Qatar and to determine density of international fast food restaurant offering kid's meal by municipality. Methods 6 international fast food restaurants that offer kid's meals were randomly selected. The selected restaurants were McDonald's, Burger king, KFC, Hardee's, Papa john's, and DQ Grill & Chill. We assessed the number of branches of the restaurants using phone applications zomato and talabat. These applications allow the user to know the location and the numbers of branches in different municipalities. We used also the official restaurants websites to collect data of the nutrient content of kids' meals offered by the 6-international restaurant in Qatar. Also, we used GPS to make sure of the location and the number of these restaurant. All the restaurant offered 4 combinations of kid's meals except Papa John's offered 4 meals. We selected from each restaurant chain 25% of the total branches available in Qatar. During our visit, we asked for nutrition fact of meals offered for kid's. Only McDonald's provide nutrition fact with meals. For other restaurants, we got the information from their official websites or management department. We calculated the density by dividing the number of international fast food over the total number of aged 1-9 years old multiplying by 1000. SPSS version 23 windows was used to analyze the data. We compared the differences in calories, fat, carbohydrate, protein, fiber and sodium content in kid's meals using the one-way ANOVA (at p < 0.005). Results McDonald»s has the highest number of outlets which represent 41 out of 133 international fast food outlets offering kids meals and the DQ grill and chill had the lowest number of outlet which represent 5 out of 133. The average nutrients content of 23 kid»s meal offered by international fast food restaurants in Qatar was 653.30 ± 31.5 calories for calories contents, 21.61 ± 10.24 g for protein content, 28.32 ± 9.07 g for fat content, 84.57 ± 19.22 g for CHO content, 4.40 ± 2.79 g for fiber content and 968 ± 372.31 mg for sodium content. The percentage of covering the RDA calories recommendation of children aged 1-9 years old by 23 kid»s meals offered by six international fast food in Qatar was 47.8 ± 0.02% for calories, 134.6 ± 0.13% for protein, 58.9 ± 0.04% for fat, 63.6 ± 0.03% for CHO, 20.2 ± 0.03% for fiber and 91.4 ± 0.08% for sodium. In general, international fast food kid's meals are rich in carbohydrates, fat, protein, sodium and low in fiber. Conclusion Nowadays children are eating foods prepared outside the home more frequently than ever, improving the nutritional quality of food items offered at fast-food restaurants can contribute to important gains in population health. In this study, we found that fast food meals are nutritionally inadequate and its regular consumption is associated with excess intake of calories, fat, sodium, protein, carbohydrate, and low fiber intake.


Background Guidelines recommend that clinicians identify individuals at high cardiometabolic risk and support weight loss in those with overweight or obesity. However, we lack individual level data quantifying the benefits of weight change for individuals to guide consultations in primary care. Aim To examine how weight change affects cardiometabolic risk factors, and to facilitate shared decision making between patients and clinicians regarding weight loss. Design and setting Observational analysis using data from two trials of referral of individuals with overweight or obesity in primary care to community weight-loss groups. Method Linear mixed effects regression modelling examining the association between weight change and change in systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), fasting glucose, glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), and lipid profile across multiple timepoints (baseline to 24 months). Subgroup analyses examined changes in individuals with hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidaemia. Results In total, 2041 participants had a mean (standard deviation) age of 50 (SD 13.5) years, mean baseline weight of 90.6 (14.8) kg and mean body mass index (BMI) of 32.7 (SD 4.1) kg/m2. Mean (SD) weight change was −4.3 (SD 6.0) kg. All outcome measures showed statistically significant improvements. Each 1 kg weight loss was associated with 0.4 mmHg reduction in SBP and 0.3 mmHg reduction in DBP, or 0.5 mmHg and 0.4 mmHg/kg respectively in people with hypertension. Each 1 kg weight loss was associated with 0.2 mmol/mol reduction in HbA1c, or 0.6 mmol/mol in people with diabetes. Effects on plasma lipids were negligible. Conclusion Weight loss achieved through referral to community weight-loss programmes, which are commonly accessible in primary care, can lead to clinically relevant reductions in BP and glucose regulation, especially in those at highest risk.


Does adoption of minor children by openly lesbian or gay adults serve the best interests of children? Although forbidden in some jurisdictions,' such adoptions have taken place in other parts of the country. Considerable public controversy continues to surround adoptions by lesbian and gay parents.2 In this article, I begin with a description of two actual adoptions which illustrate the difference between stranger adoptions, in which the biological parent's rights are terminated, and second parent or co-parent adoptions, in which a second person becomes a legal parent without terminating the legal or biological parent's rights. In this way, I hope to point out some of the needs that these adoptions satisfy. I then provide a brief outline of the legal status of lesbian and gay adoption in different jurisdictions and give an overview of evidence from social science research about the development of children with lesbian and gay parents. I conclude that there is no factual basis for claims that the adoption of children by lesbian and gay parents is harmful to children. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe, based on research findings, that children of lesbian and gay parents develop as successfully as do children of heterosexual parents. For this reason, and in view of the needs of children who are involved, I argue that for purposes of adoption proceedings, sexual orientation of prospective parents should be considered irrelevant.


The prevention of credit card fraud is an important application for prediction techniques. One major obstacle for using neural network training techniques is the high necessary diagnostic quality: Since only one financial transaction of a thousand is invalid no prediction success less than 99.9% is acceptable. Due to these credit card transaction proportions complete new concepts had to be developed and tested on real credit card data. This paper shows how advanced data mining techniques and neural network algorithm can be combined successfully to obtain a high fraud coverage combined with a low false alarm rate.


Few game studies scholars will regret that the infelicitous ludology vs. narratology debate has been left behind. However, one misconception concerning the nature of literary theory continues to haunt game studies. If Gonzalo Frasca (correctly) observes that "Ludologists Love Stories, Too" (2003), I wish to point out that his conciliatory gesture seriously threatens to distort the concerns of literary theorists in ways that make their reflections on human sense-making indeed seem of very limited use to game studies scholars. If we truly want to know in what respects game studies can profit from literary theory without jeoparidizing the strategies of distinction a still emergent field such as game studies needs to position itself vis-à-vis dominant theoretical paradigms--and which Espen J. Aarseth calls for in his editorial to the first issue of Game Studies (2001)--we need to be aware of two things. First, narratologists make up only a fraction of the literary-theoretical community. And the narratologists most often cited by game studies scholars usually practice a structuralist version of narratology that has come under sustained critical scrutiny since the late 1960s. Second, not all literary scholars are concerned with narrative. Of course, they often study narrative texts such as novels and short stories, but they also study plays, poems, and other non-narrative texts. More importantly, even when they do study narrative texts, literary scholars--be they narratologists or not--are not always interested in the forms and functions of stories.This essay argues that game studies can profit from reflections on issues other than narrative by a literary theorist whose work has been unduly reduced to those concerns. In Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (1997), Aarseth refers to the work of Wolfgang Iser as one influential model of literary communication that does not help explain the specific forms and functions of nonlinear, multicursal computer games. More specifically, Aarseth argues that Iser's notion of Leerstellen (blanks) cannot account for the kinds of openings cybertexts offer their users. Yet the later work of Iser is a much more promising avenue of exploration for ludologists. Iser's The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (1993) develops what is arguably the most sustained theory of fictionality available today. While honed in the study of literary texts, Iser's theory can tell us much about the cultural work of fiction in a variety of media without leveling the distinctions between different cultural practices. As such, Iser's later work does not provide yet another framework for reading games as stories but challenges games studies scholars to rethink some of their central concepts, in particular 'play,' 'simulation,' and 'immersion.' Moreover, it invites us to ask whether the rhetoric of distinction that much game studies scholarship still employs to stake out its claims has outlived its usefulness, serving less as an effective defense mechanism than as an obstacle to cross-disciplinary fertilization.


Malaysian teachers are constantly challenged with many new technologies that are believed to enable them to perform their job better. In 2013, they have been given access to an online learning space known as the FROG VLE. However, initial evidence has shown poor adoption of the e-learning. As schools are becoming increasingly disconnected from the societies of which they are a part, teachers withdrawing into their old familiar landscapes of teaching and learning can no longer be accepted. Being the implementers in the classrooms, their perceptions' towards any innovation are important if the innovation is to be taken up seriously and to be implemented. Measures to improve present condition in order to sustain and increase e-learning uptake, can only be carried out if we know the situations and conditions teachers are in. A qualitative approach was used to identify the views and experiences of 60 secondary school teachers towards the implementation and continued use of VLEs in three secondary schools in Malaysia. This is to obtain a more nuanced explanation for the perceptions teachers' have towards e-learning. Data was collected using an open-ended questionnaire. The results among others highlight the benefits as perceived by the teachers, the main barriers they faced and suggestions to better improve the implementation. Implications for teacher preparation, staff development efforts and education reform are proposed to overcome the challenges faced.


Abstract Background This study examines the effects and associated factors of respite care, which was legislated as a community service for adults with an intellectual disability (ID) in Taiwan in 1997. Method A total of 116 family carers who live with an adult with ID and have utilised the respite care program were surveyed using standardised measures. Results The results suggest that the most notable effects of respite care include improvement in the carers' social support and life satisfaction, and relief of psychological stress and overall burden of care. The factors associated with these effects include the way the participants have used the respite care and the users' individual characteristics. Conclusions How families used the respite care, whether the carers practised a religion, and where the families resided, were the most significant factors in determining the effectiveness of the respite. Suggestions are made for making access to information about the program more widely available, and for extending the availability and duration of the service.


OBJECTIVE
Myositis-specific autoantibodies (MSAs), which characterize certain forms of inflammatory myopathy, are useful in the diagnosis and prediction of prognosis in DM/PM. Anti-transcriptional intermediary factor 1-α (TIF1-α) antibodies were recently reported to be associated with cancer-associated DM in conjunction with anti-TIF1-γ antibodies. This study aimed to identify a subset of DM patients who have anti-TIF1-α antibodies by using biotinylated recombinant proteins and to clarify the clinical and other serological features of DM patients with these antibodies.

METHODS
Sera from 202 Japanese patients with CTDs, including 108 with DM and 20 healthy controls, were screened for anti-TIF1-α antibodies by our novel ELISAs. Positive sera were further examined by immunoprecipitation and also investigated for the detection of anti-TIF1-γ and anti-Mi-2 antibodies.

RESULTS
Sera from 12 patients with DM were confirmed to be positive for anti-TIF1-α antibodies. None of the patients with other CTDs and none of the healthy controls had the antibodies. Seven anti-TIF1-α-positive patients simultaneously had anti-TIF1-γ antibodies and the other five had anti-Mi-2 antibodies, both of which are well known to be MSAs. These double-positive patients with anti-TIF1-α and anti-γ antibodies included three JDM and two cancer-associated adult DM patients, whereas all the double-positive patients with anti-TIF1-α and anti-Mi-2 antibodies were classical adult DM.

CONCLUSION
Although MSAs have been regarded as mutually exclusive, anti-Mi-2 antibody-positive patients simultaneously have anti-TIF1-α antibodies. Anti-Mi-2 antibody-positive patients are associated with classical DM without cancer even with the simultaneous presence of anti-TIF1-α antibodies.


Synthesizing face sketches with both common and specific information from photos has been recently attracting considerable attentions in digital entertainment. However, the existing approaches either make the strict similarity assumption on face sketches and photos, leading to lose some identity-specific information, or learn the direct mapping relationship from face photos to sketches by the simple neural network, resulting in the lack of some common information. In this paper, we propose a novel face sketch synthesis based on the Markov random neural fields including two structures. In the first structure, we utilize the neural network to learn the non-linear photo-sketch relationship and obtain the identity-specific information of the test photo, such as glasses, hairpins and hairstyles. In the second structure, we choose the nearest neighbors of the test photo patch and the sketch pixel synthesized in the first structure from the training data which ensure the common information of Miss or Mr Average. Experimental results on the Chinese University of Hong Kong face sketch database illustrate that our proposed framework can preserve the common structure and capture the characteristic features. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, our method achieves better results in terms of both quantitative and qualitative experimental evaluations.


This article suggests a change of perspective on philosophy's engagement with its past. It argues that rather than the putative purport of giving life to the past philosopher's work, philosophical engagement with the past gives life to one's own. Drawing on the neo-pragmatist thesis of Robert Brandom, it suggests looking to what philosophers do when they attribute meaning to concepts and considering their engagement with the past as appropriation in consequence. By scrutinizing Robert Pippin's opposing thesis of philosophical engagement with the past as dialogue, and carefully examining Brandom's, the article suggests an account for appropriation that shows it to be non-dialogical, and hence unable to yield the fruits associated with this conception, but also insightful and rich with other philosophical values. Brandom and John McDowell's dispute over the interpretation of Wilfrid Sellars provides an illustration of the proposed perspective and of those values.


Background: There is concern about medium to long-term adverse outcomes following acute COVID-19, but little relevant evidence exists. We aimed to investigate whether risks of hospital admission and death, overall and by specific cause, are raised following discharge from a COVID-19 hospitalisation. Methods and Findings: Working on behalf of NHS-England, we used linked primary care and hospital data in OpenSAFELY to compare risks of hospital admission and death, overall and by specific cause, between people discharged from COVID-19 hospitalisation (February-December 2020), and (i) demographically-matched controls from the 2019 general population; (ii) people discharged from influenza hospitalisation in 2017-19. We used Cox regression adjusted for personal and clinical characteristics. 24,673 post-discharge COVID-19 patients, 123,362 general population controls, and 16,058 influenza controls were followed for [≤]315 days. Overall risk of hospitalisation or death (30968 events) was higher in the COVID-19 group than general population controls (adjusted-HR 2.23, 2.14-2.31) but similar to the influenza group (adjusted-HR 0.94, 0.91-0.98). All-cause mortality (7439 events) was highest in the COVID-19 group (adjusted-HR 4.97, 4.58-5.40 vs general population controls and 1.73, 1.60-1.87 vs influenza controls). Risks for cause-specific outcomes were higher in COVID-19 survivors than general population controls, and largely comparable between COVID-19 and influenza patients. However, COVID-19 patients were more likely than influenza patients to be readmitted/die due to their initial infection/other lower respiratory tract infection (adjusted-HR 1.37, 1.22-1.54), and to experience mental health or cognitive-related admission/death (adjusted-HR 1.36, 1.01-2.83); in particular, COVID-19 survivors with pre-existing dementia had higher risk of dementia death. One limitation of our study is that reasons for hospitalisation/death may have been misclassified in some cases due to inconsistent use of codes. Conclusions: People discharged from a COVID-19 hospital admission had markedly higher risks for rehospitalisation and death than the general population, suggesting a substantial extra burden on healthcare. Most risks were similar to those observed after influenza hospitalisations; but COVID-19 patients had higher risks of all-cause mortality, readmissions/death due to the initial infection, and dementia death, highlighting the importance of post-discharge monitoring.


Over the past decade there has been an increased interest in the wide variety of issues involved in the care of individuals with dementia. One particular area of research is the effect of music on those with dementia, commonly studied through the perspectives of neuroscience and (the more applied) music therapy. There is, however, a black box common to both these fields: music is seen as an input and its effect as a simple output. In treating the human (brain) as merely an object to stimulate with music or sound, the socio-cultural context of musical interaction is omitted from the analysis. This article discusses the employment of mixed research methods adapted specifically to explore the use of music in dementia care and to open this black box. In particular, this article explores the use of ethnographic participant observations and semi-structured interviews with individuals with dementia, their families/carers and (volunteer) staff of Singing for the Brain (SFTB) in a British town. The article concludes with a discussion of the preliminary themes generated by this mixed-methods approach (such as the importance of 'relationships'), and the importance of examining music as a 'catalyst' in building relationships. Although the issues examined in this article are specific to dementia, similar sensitive issues may be found in research on health and other creative (therapeutic) activities for people with dementia.


We present a compact TW-class OPCPA system operating at 800 nm. Broadband seed pulses are generated and pre-amplified to 25 μJ in a white light continuum seeded femtosecond NOPA. Amplification of the seed pulses to 35 mJ at a repetition rate of 10 Hz and compression to 9 fs is demonstrated.


Facilitating or instigating change in agricultural industries is often moderated by the nature of the changes proposed. Simple change, such as the substitution of an existing technology with a new, improved technology, often occurs regularly and with relatively little resistance because of the limited impacts on other aspects of the system. However, complex change, such as major changes to agricultural systems and their various elements, is most times very difficult to implement and does not occur often because of the complexity of the interactions and thus the limited understanding of the potential social, financial, cultural and biophysical outcomes necessary for system change. Agricultural scientists are often agents of change within their respective commodity industries and the nature of the problems being confronted is increasingly complex, such as climate change adaptation or increasing pest and disease issues. Our experience with the recent Fusarium wilt tropical race 4 (TR4) incursion in Australia's major production region has highlighted the role that an actual or perceived crisis can play as a driver of change, even for complex problems. In this paper, we discuss what is happening in north Queensland since the arrival of TR4 in March 2015 in the context of agroecology and what further can happen. We describe on-farm implementation of significant biosecurity measures, soil erosion control, remote sensing technologies, renewed interest in cultivar diversity and instilling a positive attitude that the disease incursion is manageable, all of which are promoting innovative sustainable production systems.


The study was conducted to compare the individual growth curves models and to detect individual differences in the growth rate by a performing multilevel analysis. The data set used for this purpose consisted of live weight records of 52 crossbred lambs from birth to 182 days of age. There were 670 observations in level-1 units which were the repeated measurements over time, and there were 52 observations in level-2 units which were lambs. In the study, parameter estimation of timeindependent covariate factors, such as gender, birth type and birth weight, was performed by using five different models within the framework of multilevel modeling. LRT, AIC and BIC were used for the selection of the best model. The "Conditional Quadratic Growth Model-B" provided the best fit to the data set. The multilevel analysis indicated that linear and quadratic growth in lambs was significant. According to the results of the study, individual growth curves can be investigated using multilevel modeling in animal studies which is an important parameter of the individual growth rate.


If game theory was objective, rational, abstract; gamer theory is subjective, intuitive, particular. If game theory starts with the self-contained agent, like a prisoner in a cell, looking out at the world; gamer theory wonders how the agency of the gamer comes into being as something distinct in the first place. The rise of the computer game as an emergent cultural form calls for an approach to cultural theory that might emerge organically out of the experience of game play. In an era in which many aspects of everyday life seem increasingly game-like, one might well ask what relation computer games have to this agon of the everyday. Perhaps computer games present the ethos of the digital world in its pure form, as a place where the "playing field" really is level, where the rules really seem to be fair. Perhaps the computer game is the almost-utopian double to a world made over as a gamespace.


This book examines the current revolution in plant breeding which could make it possible to support the world's growing population. While presenting a general guide to genetic principles, the author reviews the available methods for improving plant species, from basic breeding practices that have served in the domestication of wild plants, to the latest techniques of tissue culture and genetic engineering. The book considers the central issues facing farmers and plant breeders today: how to improve the quality and yield of crops; how to increase resistance to drought and disease; and the possible introduction of less familiar, more versatile crops such as cassava and the cowpea. Improvement here does not simply mean increased yield; it is a matter of strategy as much as of biology. In different places and for different purposes it may mean working for a higher protein content and greater palatability or altering the life cycle of the crop to suit local physical and economic conditions.


In most cases, coverage under our nation's employment laws boils down to the question of whether or not the individuals in question are "employees" and whether or not the entity in question is an "employer." Significantly, however, in a growing number of cases, where employer status is found in the absence of a direct relationship to a statutory employer. This Article refers to these entities as quasi-employers because they are not employers in the traditional sense, yet they are subject to the dictates of employment law legislation. This Article reviews the following theories of quasi-employer responsibility: the Sibley Interference Theory, the Spirt Delegation Theory, the Joint Employer Theory, and the Single Employer Theory. This Article also reviews the issue of individual supervisory liability as employers under the major employment statutes. Individuals are not normally thought of as employers, but they sometimes have a great deal of influence over the terms and conditions of employees' employment. Therefore, this Article considers them to be a type of quasi-employer.To analyze the definitional status of employers and quasi-employers, it is necessary to examine the definitional status of employees. Significantly, however, the legal definition of employee is in a complete state of disarray. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the definition of employer is also often unclear. Nevertheless, a significant body of law supports treating quasi-employers as employers. Unfortunately, there has not been much scholarship focusing on employer status and virtually no academic commentary on the status of quasi-employers.As with employee status: a clear definition of employer is necessary so that both employees and employers know what their rights and responsibilities are. The consequences of not knowing who one's employer is can be fatal to any litigation. It is also important to outline clear criteria because future generations will be looking to established case law to determine employer status in work environments that may look very different from today's work environments.This Article seeks to bringing about certainty to, in Justice Rutledge's words, "the borderland" between what is an employer-employee relationship and what is not.


Abstract RNA-binding proteins are key actors of post-transcriptional networks. Almost exclusively studied in the light of their interactions with RNA ligands and the associated functional events, they are still poorly understood as evolutionary units. In this review, we discuss the FinO/ProQ family of bacterial RNA chaperones, how they evolve and spread across bacterial populations and what properties and opportunities they provide to their host cells. We reflect on major conserved and divergent themes within the family, trying to understand how the same ancestral RNA-binding fold, augmented with additional structural elements, could yield either highly specialised proteins or, on the contrary, globally acting regulatory hubs with a pervasive impact on gene expression. We also consider dominant convergent evolutionary trends that shaped their RNA chaperone activity and recurrently implicated the FinO/ProQ-like proteins in bacterial DNA metabolism, translation and virulence. Finally, we offer a new perspective in which FinO/ProQ-family regulators emerge as active evolutionary players with both negative and positive roles, significantly impacting the evolutionary modes and trajectories of their bacterial hosts.


The rise of connectivity, digitalization, robotics, and artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing our society and shaping its future development. During this technological and societal revolution, security has been persistently neglected, yet a hacked robot can act as an insider threat in organizations, industries, public spaces, and private homes. In this paper, we perform a structured security assessment of Pepper, a commercial humanoid robot. Our analysis, composed by an automated and a manual part, points out a relevant number of security flaws that can be used to take over and command the robot. Furthermore, we suggest how these issues could be fixed, thus, avoided in the future. The very final aim of this work is to push the rise of the security level of IoT products before they are sold on the public market.


We design and build a system that enables clients to verify the outputs of programs executed by untrusted servers. A server provides a succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge proof (also known as a zk-SNARK), which the client verifies to ascertain correct execution. The system has two components: a cryptographic proof system for verifying satisfiability of arithmetic circuits, and a circuit generator to translate program executions to such circuits. Our design of both components improves in functionality and efficiency over previous work, as follows. Our circuit generator is the first to be universal: it does not need to know the program, but only a bound on its running time. It is also the first to support programs expressed as code for a von Neumann RISC random-access memory architecture, where programs may use just-in-time compilation and selfmodifying code. Moreover, the dependence on program size is additive (instead of multiplicative as in prior works), allowing efficient verification of large programs. The cryptographic proof system significantly improves proving and verification times, using a new pairing-based cryptographic library tailored to the protocol. We evaluated our system for programs with up to 10,000 instructions, running for up to 32,000 machine steps, each of which can arbitrarily access random-access memory; and demonstrated it executing programs that use just-in-time compilation. Our proofs are 230 bytes long at 80 bits of security, or 288 bytes long at 128 bits of security. Typical verification time is 5 ms, regardless of the original program's running time.


Abstract. Calving is a major mechanism of ice discharge of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, and a change in calving front position affects the entire stress regime of marine terminating glaciers. The representation of calving front dynamics in a 2-D or 3-D ice sheet model remains non-trivial. Here, we present the theoretical and technical framework for a level-set method, an implicit boundary tracking scheme, which we implement into the Ice Sheet System Model (ISSM). This scheme allows us to study the dynamic response of a drainage basin to user-defined calving rates. We apply the method to Jakobshavn Isbrae, a major marine terminating outlet glacier of the West Greenland Ice Sheet. The model robustly reproduces the high sensitivity of the glacier to calving, and we find that enhanced calving triggers significant acceleration of the ice stream. Upstream acceleration is sustained through a combination of mechanisms. However, both lateral stress and ice influx stabilize the ice stream. This study provides new insights into the ongoing changes occurring at Jakobshavn Isbrae and emphasizes that the incorporation of moving boundaries and dynamic lateral effects, not captured in flow-line models, is key for realistic model projections of sea level rise on centennial timescales.


Twenty years ago, all South Africans – for the first time – had the privilege to vote on an equal basis for the political party to govern the country in the years to come. It was an extraordinary and a momentous phase in the country's history – a historical milestone indeed. Mr Mandela referred to this occasion as a small miracle. This was undeniably so if one considers that colonial, apartheid, racial and cultural legacies have immensely contributed to divisions, distrust, violence and killings among people of all races and colour. To digestibly capture relics of these memories of reality in a single historical documentary accessible to the ordinary man through the Internet and other media, the producing of Miracle Rising® was and is welcomed in the public domain. To what extent educators of History in South Africa have responded to this documentary since 2012, and have considered using it in History classes, is not known. However, this paper intends to focus on its theoretical and practical value for teaching History that should be embraced in every History class. Teaching Miracle Rising® provides for opportunities to address a very difficult yet jubilant phase in the history of a country so long aspiring for equality and peace. The process leading to South Africa becoming democratic can be regarded as a sensitive topic to teach because of the racist, politically violent and culturally intolerant undertones that occurred decades before the April 1994 election. A maturity with regard to teaching, comprehensive knowledge, as well as an efficient application of teaching skills and assessment techniques will be pivotal in overcoming the moments of sensitivity, especially those captured in Miracle Rising®.


The growth in the fields of advertising and public relations education at American universities has been dramatic. Last year, 12,068 degrees were awarded in advertising, public relations, or combined advertising/public relations programs while nearly 40,000 students were enrolled in these degree programs. For over 30 years, the reporting of the status of advertising education has been an ongoing enterprise, reported in various forms. The two most noted ones are: The annual Becker/Kosicki reports in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, which measures the status of accredited and other mass communication programs, and Where shall 1 go to study advertising and public relations? (Ross 1965; Ross & Hileman 1966-1983; Ross 19841990; Ross & Johnson 1991-1992; Ross & Johnson 1993-1999), which measures advertising, public relations, and combined advertising/public relations programs both within accredited and other schools of mass communication and extneds beyond that to include such degee programs as those in schools of business, speech, etc. Maintinaing accurate historical records of the status of advertising, publc relations and combined advertising/ public relations education programs serves amny purposes. Each year the results are used by students, career and guidance counselors, and college professors to identify where programsn exist, the largest programs and largest faculties in terms of degrees granted, enrollment, faculty, etc. In aggregate they constitute the status of the advertising education enterprise at individual points in time. Ross has published two volumes, Advertising aeducation (1965), which was the basis for the directory beginning, and The Status of Advertising Education (1991), an update of the 1965 report. The volumes report on the history and trends of advertising education, institutions offering advertising programs, curricula of undergraduate and graduate programs, and aggregate totals of graduates, students and faculty are investigated in total and by established regions. The purpose of this research is to investigate data reported in Where shall I go to study advertising? over the last five years and measure growth and decline of degrees granted, level of those degrees (B.A., M.A., Ph.D.), and changes in enrollment and faculty. Historical perspective The use of historical data for analysis is grounded in academic literature. Historical analysis gives understanding of the environment of an institution at points of time. Driven by the axiom that those who do not follow history are doomed to repeat it, historical analysis also provides insight and, frequently, predictive capability to researchers. Obviously, the methodology has its benefits and limitations. Data from Where shall I go to study advertising and public relations? is essentially an archive. Wimmer and Dominick (1997) point out that a data archive provides research data for measures not otherwise available or used for a specific purpose at the time of the research. Industry data can report on current situations for an immediately applied use, while in an archive form it provides retrospective data with which one can plot the growth and decline - and frequently predict the future status - of an industry or product category. Becker (1981) defines secondary analysis as the reuse of social science data after they have been put aside by the researcher who gather them. Benefits of the historical perspective suggest the data may help answer questions not originally posed by the researchers. Limitations of this approach include a lack of knowledge about the types of research questions which were investigated, how the data were collected, and the rigor of the sampling procedures or research design used. Literature review There are many archives from which such data can be found. Universities annually report to their state governing boards, and national figures are also available from federal resources. …


Temporal point processes have been widely applied to model event sequence data generated by online users. In this paper, we consider the problem of how to design the optimal control policy for point processes, such that the stochastic system driven by the point process is steered to a target state. In particular, we exploit the key insight to view the stochastic optimal control problem from the perspective of optimal measure and variational inference. We further propose a convex optimization framework and an efficient algorithm to update the policy adaptively to the current system state. Experiments on synthetic and real-world data show that our algorithm can steer the user activities much more accurately and efficiently than other stochastic control methods.


The sodium channels SNS/PN3 and NaN/SNS2 are regulated by the neurotrophic factors—nerve growth factor (NGF) and glial‐derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), and may play an important role in the development of pain after nerve injury or inflammation. These key molecules have been studied in an amputated causalgic finger and control tissues by immunohistochemistry. There was a marked increase in the number and intensity of SNS/PN3‐immunoreactive nerve terminals in the affected finger, while GDNF‐immunoreactivity was not observed, in contrast to controls. No differences were observed for NGF, trk A, NT‐3 or NaN/SNS2‐immunoreactivity. While further studies are required, these findings suggest that accumulation of SNS/PN3 and/or loss of GDNF may contribute to pain in causalgia, and that selective blockers of SNS/PN3 and/or rhGDNF may provide effective novel treatments.


A significant proportion of Schistosoma mansoni schistosomula die soon after penetration of mammalian host skin. This study was conducted to further define the host cellular response which occurs in the skin and which may contribute to early schistosomulum death in the resistant CDF rat and the more susceptible BALB/c mouse. In primary abdominal skin exposures of both hosts the initial 6-hour response is marked edema and epidermal cell disruption in the schistosomulum penetration tracts accompanied by migration of neutrophils to surround the parasites and into damaged areas of the epidermis and dermis. Challenge exposures in previously infected hosts result in more intense exudative inflammation than is observed in initial exposures with the additional infiltration of eosinophils into the dermis and epidermis. Mast cells are numerous and are occasionally observed degranulating. By 24 hours following either initial or challenge exposures the infiltration of granulocytes is more intense. Focal areas of neutrophils, eosinophils, and necrotic cells are frequent in the epidermis. Postcapillary venules contain large numbers of granulocytes. The vascular endothelium is frequently vacuolated and occasionally exhibits focal degeneration. Rat hosts show responses which are qualitatively similar to those in mouse hosts but quantitatively more intense. Smaller numbers of eosinophils were observed in the immune mouse at 24 hours than have been reported in previous studies. This may be attributable to differences in strain, in the time course of response in abdominal as compared with ear skin, or in the levels of immunity in the animals used.


The Integrated Project (WATCH- WATer and global CHange), funded under the EU FP6, will bring together the hydrological, water resources and climate communities to analyse, quantify and predict the components of the current and future global water cycles and related water resources states, evaluate their uncertainties and clarify the overall vulnerability of global water resources related to the main societal and economic sectors. WATCH project will:

(1)analyse and describe the current global water cycle, especially causal chains leading to observable changes in extremes (droughts and floods)
(2)evaluate how the global water cycle and its extremes respond to future drivers of global change (including greenhouse gas release and land cover change)
(3)evaluate feedbacks in the coupled system as they affect the global water cycle
(4)evaluate the uncertainties in the predictions of coupled climate-hydrological- land-use models using a combination of model ensembles and observations
(5)develop an enhanced (modelling) framework to assess the future vulnerability of water as a resource, and in relation to water/climate related vulnerabilities and risks of the major water related sectors, such as agriculture, nature and utilities (energy, industry and drinking water sector)
(6)provide comprehensive quantitative and qualitative assessments and predictions of the vulnerability of the water resources and water-/climate-related vulnerabilities and risks for the 21st century
(7)collaborate intensively with the key leading research groups on water cycle and water resources in USA and Japan
(8)collaborate intensively in dissemination of its scientific results with major research programmes worldwide (WCRP, IGBP)
(9)collaborate intensively in dissemination of its practical and applied results with major water resources and water management platforms and professional organisations worldwide (WWC, IWA) and at a scale of 5 selected river basins in Europe


Studies of gene expression using fusions to lacZ demonstrated that the Bacillus subtilis dacB gene, encoding penicillin-binding protein 5*, is in an operon with two downstream genes, spmA and spmB. Mutations affecting any one of these three genes resulted in the production of spores with reduced heat resistance. The cortex peptidoglycan in dacB mutant spores had more peptide side chains, a higher degree of peptide cross-linking, and possibly less muramic acid lactam than that of wild-type spores. These cortex structure parameters were normal in spmA and spmB mutant spores, but these spores did not attain normal spore core dehydration. This defect in spore core dehydration was exaggerated by the additional loss of dacB expression. However, loss of dacB alone did not alter the spore core water content. Spores produced by spmA and spmB mutants germinated faster than did those of the wild type. Spores produced by dacB mutants germinated normally but were delayed in spore outgrowth. Electron microscopy revealed a drastically altered appearance of the cortex in dacB mutants and a minor alteration in an spmA mutant. Measurements of electron micrographs indicate that the ratio of the spore protoplast volume to the sporoplast (protoplast-plus-cortex) volume was increased in dacB and spmA mutants. These results are consistent with spore core water content being the major determinant of spore heat resistance. The idea that loosely cross-linked, flexible cortex peptidoglycan has a mechanical activity involved in achieving spore core dehydration is not consistent with normal core dehydration in spores lacking only dacB.


© 2016 IChemE. With the emergence of a 'Hydrogen Economy', fuel cell (FC) deployment in small enclosures will become common place. However, hydrogen's wide flammable range (4-74%) poses a significant safety concern. Without adequate ventilation, a hydrogen gas leak from a FC could create flammable mixtures in the enclosure, and hence the potential for an explosion. Traditionally, a mechanical ventilation system would be employed in an enclosure to ensure that the hydrogen gas is removed and prevent a flammable concentration forming. However, in many applications (e.g. low power and remote installations) mechanical ventilation is undesirable, since it would drain the FC output and its operation would be vulnerable to any power failures that may occur. In such situations, it is therefore desirable to be able to employ a passive ventilation system to remove the hydrogen gas from the FC enclosure. Passive ventilation relies upon buoyancy driven flow, with the size, shape and position of ventilation openings critical for producing predictable flows and maintaining low gas concentrations. Determining the relationship between gas leak rate, ventilation configuration and internal concentration of buoyant gas will help to inform and optimise FC enclosure safety design. An experimental and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study was therefore carried out to investigate helium gas dispersion (employed as a safe analogue for hydrogen gas) in a 0.191 m 3 ventilated enclosure. The helium gas was released from a centrally positioned, vertical, 4mm diameter nozzle at low flow rates (1-5 L/min), to simulate a hydrogen leak from a fuel cell (FC) in a small enclosure. A single narrow horizontal vent was created at the top of one vertical face. The helium leak rate was varied and observations of dispersal behaviour and gas concentration made. Similarly positioned vents were introduced on the remaining vertical faces and further observations made. Ventilation flow rates were found to increase as the number of vents increased, and became more effective at keeping helium concentrations below 4% v/v, across the range of leak rates investigated. A cross-flow passive ventilation scheme using opposing lower and upper matched vents provided comparative data. The cross-flow arrangement provided effective displacement ventilation and performed best. The more challenging, high-level vent arrangements provided mixing/exchange ventilation, which became more effective with increasing number of vents. The CFD model was found to be able to replicate the experimental flow behaviour observed, but with variance in concentration levels produced.


Background Mindfulness-based approaches for adults are effective at enhancing mental health, but few controlled trials have evaluated their effectiveness among young people. Aims To assess the acceptability and efficacy of a schools-based universal mindfulness intervention to enhance mental health and well-being. Method A total of 522 young people aged 12–16 in 12 secondary schools either participated in the Mindfulness in Schools Programme (intervention) or took part in the usual school curriculum (control). Results Rates of acceptability were high. Relative to the controls, and after adjusting for baseline imbalances, children who participated in the intervention reported fewer depressive symptoms post-treatment (P = 0.004) and at follow-up (P = 0.005) and lower stress (P = 0.05) and greater well-being (P = 0.05) at follow-up. The degree to which students in the intervention group practised the mindfulness skills was associated with better well-being (P<0.001) and less stress (P = 0.03) at 3-month follow-up. Conclusions The findings provide promising evidence of the programme's acceptability and efficacy.


The aim of this research is to determine the students physical fitness level by using Eurofit test battery. The research subjects are students (female) from the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport, Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava. The applied tests to the subjects are from the EUROFIT test battery. It is observed that not all fitness components have been improved in the same way. The best effect was obtained for the following components: balance test (Flamingo), static muscular strength (handgrip test), dynamic strength (sit ups), speed segmental (plate tapping) where progress was over 7%. A good progress was recorded for: running speed (10x5m shuttle run), strength endurance (bent arm hang), cardio-respiratory endurance (20m endurance shuttle run), lower limb explosive strength (standing long jump). To attract youth for practicing regular physical activity it is needed to find attractive sports or activities and motivate them to develop their physical fitness.


The main objective involved with this paper consists of presenting the results obtained from the application of artificial neural networks and statistical tools in the automatic identification and classification process of faults in electric power distribution systems. The developed techniques to treat the proposed problem have used, in an integrated way, several approaches that can contribute to the successful detection process of faults, aiming that it is carried out in a reliable and safe way. The compilations of the results obtained from practical experiments accomplished in a pilot radial distribution feeder have demonstrated that the developed techniques provide accurate results, identifying and classifying efficiently the several occurrences of faults observed in the feeder.


Wikipedia is often considered as an example of 'collaborative knowledge'. Researchers have contested the value of Wikipedia content on various accounts. Some have disputed the ability of anonymous amateurs to produce quality information, while others have contested Wikipedia's claim to accuracy and neutrality. Even if these concerns about Wikipedia as an encyclopaedic genre are relevant, they misguidedly focus on human agents only. Wikipedia's advance is not only enabled by its human resources, but is equally defined by the technological tools and managerial dynamics that structure and maintain its content. This article analyses the sociotechnical system — the intricate collaboration between human users and automated content agents — that defines Wikipedia as a knowledge instrument.


Title of Document: INHIBITION OF LAMINAR PREMIXED FLAMES BY HALON 1301 ALTERNATIVES John L. Pagliaro, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Directed By: Associate Professor Peter Sunderland Department of Fire Protection Engineering Halon 1301 (CF3Br) has been banned (by the Montreal Protocol) because of its ozone depleting potential. Even though a critical-use exemption of CF3Br has been granted for commercial aircraft cargo bay applications, the European Union is requiring replacement in new aircraft by 2018 and in existing aircraft by 2040. As a result of the expected phase-out, the FAA tested three alternatives (C2HF5, C3H2F3Br, and C6F12O) in a cargo bay simulator, and under certain conditions, apparent combustion enhancement was observed (even though the agents showed promise in standard tests). To understand the enhancement, experiments and numerical analysis are performed to: 1) test the concepts developed via previous numerical simulations and analysis of the FAA tests, 2) reproduce the phenomena observed in the complex full-scale FAA experiments in laboratory-scale experiments which might serve as a screening tool, 3) provide preliminary validation of recently developed kinetic mechanisms (which are used to understand the phenomena), and 4) examine the performance of potential replacements that were not tested by the FAA. Two spherically expanding flame experiments were built to measure laminar burning velocity, peak pressure rise, and flame response to stretch. For each experiment, developments included designing the chamber, creating the operating procedure, setting up the necessary data acquisition and operation controls, and developing data reduction and post-processing routines. Numerical modeling with detailed kinetics was performed to interpret experimental results and to validate kinetic mechanisms. The most significant findings of this study include the enhancement of lean CH4-air flames by the proposed alternative agents, the potential of HCFC-123 as a halon replacement, and excellent agreement between burning velocity predictions (with detailed chemical mechanisms) and measurements for hydrocarbon-air flames inhibited by CF3Br, C2HF5, C3H2F3Br, C6F12O, and C2HF3Cl2. INHIBITION OF LAMINAR PREMIXED FLAMES BY HALON 1301 ALTERNATIVES


Wilson's essay examines The Great Gatsby's depiction, displacement, and appropriation of the urban tabloid journalism of its day. By offering a direct look at the rhetorical forms and visual cues of the tabloids surrounding F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel-and in particular the "intermedial" strategies that were designed to mobilize readers to engage news stories and insert themselves in such tales-this essay argues that Fitzgerald's reenvisioning of tabloid culture permeates both his aesthetic technique and Nick Carraway's attempts to provide an account of the scandalous "death car" crime at the heart of the book. Rather than competing with the novel's modernist form, mass culture therefore helps to constitute it: suffusing Fitzgerald's account of popular reading, shaping the text's experimental use of background and foreground, and ultimately complicating the portrait of Jay Gatsby's criminality. In the end, these tabloid shadows allow us to challenge the recent revisionist arguments about the corporate and Fordist character of Gatsby's gangsterhood, and to reassess Fitzgerald's contribution to the form of vernacular modernism we now call American noir.


On December 9, 2014, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its long-awaited Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program, which The New York Times described as "a portrait of depravity that is hard to comprehend and even harder to stomach." The Times had reported four years earlier that a number of Department of Justice (DoJ) emails were determined to be missing during the Office of Professional Responsibility's investigation of the Bush Administration memoranda providing legal justification for "enhanced interrogations," the so-called "torture memos." What follows is an imaginary exchange of emails between two young lawyers during their tenure at the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2002. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.


A technique for making superconducting joints between wires made of dissimilar superconducting metals has been devised. The technique is especially suitable for fabrication of superconducting circuits needed to support persistent electric currents in electromagnets in diverse cryogenic applications. Examples of such electromagnets include those in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems and in superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs). Sometimes, it is desirable to fabricate different parts of a persistent-current-supporting superconducting loop from different metals. For example, a sensory coil in a SQUID might be made of Pb, a Pb/Sn alloy, or a Cu wire plated with Pb/Sn, while the connections to the sensory coil might be made via Nb or Nb/Ti wires. Conventional wire-bonding techniques, including resistance spot welding and pressed contact, are not workable because of large differences between the hardnesses and melting temperatures of the different metals. The present technique is not subject to this limitation. The present technique involves the use (1) of a cheap, miniature, easy-to-operate, capacitor-discharging welding apparatus that has an Nb or Nb/Ti tip and operates with a continuous local flow of gaseous helium and (2) preparation of a joint in a special spark-discharge welding geometry. In a typical application, a piece of Nb foil about 25 m thick is rolled to form a tube, into which is inserted a wire that one seeks to weld to the tube (see figure). The tube can be slightly crimped for mechanical stability. Then a spark weld is made by use of the aforementioned apparatus with energy and time settings chosen to melt a small section of the niobium foil. The energy setting corresponds to the setting of a voltage to which the capacitor is charged. In an experiment, the technique was used to weld an Nb foil to a copper wire coated with a Pb/Sn soft solder, which is superconducting. The joint was evaluated as part of a persistent-current circuit having an inductance of 1 mH. A current was induced in a loop, and no attenuation of the current after a time interval 1,000 s was discernible in a measurement having a fractional accuracy of 10(exp -4): This observation supports the conclusion that the weld had an electrical resistance <10(exp -10) omega.


The morphology, swimming kinematics and prey selection of hydromedusae have been shown to be closely related to hydromedusan foraging mode. In order to confirm this link, we examined the in situ foraging behavior of hydromedusae by video-recording and quantifying the in situ swimming activity and tentacle-extension behavior of 8 co-occurring hydromedusae from the waters surrounding Friday Harbor, Washington. The cruising-predatory medusae Aequorea victoria, Mitrocoma cellularia, Phialidium grega- rium, and Eutonina indicans spent a greater proportion of their time swimming (on average from 74.1 to 92.1%) than the ambush-predatory medusae Aglantha digitale, Sarsia sp., Leuckartiara sp., and Stomotoca atra (on average from 19.5 to 47.0%). In addition, the cruising-predatory medusae were observed with their tentacles extended almost continuously, regardless of whether they were swimming or drifting. In contrast, the ambush-predatory medusae drifted with their tentacles extended but contracted their tentacles when swim- ming. These patterns indicate that cruising-predatory me- dusae can feed while either swimming or drifting, whereas the ambush-predatory medusae feed while drifting but not while swimming. Thus, swimming plays a distinctly different role within the behavioral repertoire of each of these medu- san foraging modes. Furthermore, the swimming activity and tentacle-extension behavior we observed were consistent with strategies that optimized feeding by each of the predator


Arabidopsis thaliana DELLA proteins have a tissue-specific response to iron deficiency. Iron deficiency stunts plant growth. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the transcription factor FIT heterodimerizes with bHLH38 or bHLH39 to promote the expression of genes involved in iron acquisition. The hormone gibberellic acid (GA) promotes growth by causing the degradation of nuclear DELLA proteins, which repress growth by controlling the activity of several bHLH family transcription factors. Wild et al. found that Arabidopsis mutants lacking all five DELLA homologs showed less root growth inhibition in response to iron deficiency than did wild-type plants. Iron deficiency reduced the amount of GA produced by Arabidopsis seedlings and caused the accumulation of the DELLA protein RGA in the root meristem. All five Arabidopsis DELLAs interacted with FIT, bHLH38, and bHLH39 in yeast two-hybrid assays and when coexpressed in Nicotania benthamania. RGA interacted with the DNA binding domain of FIT, reduced DNA binding by FIT-bHLH38 and FIT-bHLH39 heterodimers, and reduced FIT-dependent expression of a reporter gene. Although iron deficiency stabilized RGA in the root meristem, iron-deficient growth conditions reduced the abundance of RGA and increased the abundance of FIT in root epidermal cells, which are the cells that mediate iron uptake. Ectopic expression of a mutant form of the DELLA protein GAI—which is not degraded in response to GA signaling—in the root epidermis reduced the expression of FIT target genes in response to iron deficiency and reduced iron accumulation but had no effect on root elongation in response to iron deficiency. Although the mechanism by which iron deficiency destabilized RGA in the root epidermis was not determined, these results demonstrate cell-specific differences in the response of DELLAs to iron deficiency. Commentary by von Wirén and Bennett addresses why the inhibition of root elongation may be important for the response to iron deficiency and how these findings may be applied to enhance the micronutrient content of food crops. M. Wild, J.-M. Davière, T. Regnault, L. Sakvarelidze-Achard, E. Carrera, I. L. Diaz, A. Cayrel, G. Dubeaux, G. Vert, P. Achard, Tissue-specific regulation of gibberellin signaling fine-tunes Arabidopsis iron-deficiency responses. Dev. Cell 37, 190–200 (2016). [PubMed] N. von Wirén, M. J. Bennett, Crosstalk between gibberellin signaling and iron uptake in plants: An Achilles' heel for modern cereal varieties? Dev. Cell 37, 110–111 (2016). [PubMed]


During building design there is a growing need to reduce energy usage whilst maintaining the comfort of the occupants. The latter is referred to as 'thermal comfort' and can be measured by the extent that the internal tem-perature of the building does not exceed a specified comfort level. Traditionally these two measures of building per-formance are seen as a trade off. Moreover, energy efficient building design is a complex process involving a large number of design variables each of which differentially affect both energy usage and thermal comfort. There is a vast search space to be traversed to find an optimal set of potentially good designs. This coupled with computationally ex-pensive building performance simulation software leads to a problem which is potentially intractable. In the past the authors have used the Interactive Visualisation Clustered Genetic Algorithms (IVCGA) to address some of the com-plexities of multi-disciplinary building design problems. The aim of this paper is to apply the IVCGA to allow the build-ing designer (physicist) to: Firstly discover a set of potential design solutions which meet the design objectives of mini-mal energy usage and maximal thermal comfort individually; Secondly discover a set of potential design solutions which are common to all objectives (mutually inclusive region); Thirdly present a means to understand the impact that particular design variables have upon each objective.


Activation of the mitochondrial unfolded protein response protects against hypoxia-induced injury. Mitochondria mediate cellular responses to hypoxia through redox and calcium signaling mechanisms. Activation of the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (mtUPR) is important for protecting organisms from the effects of aging. Kaufman et al. found that the mtUPR also protects organisms from the damaging effects of hypoxia. When Caenorhabditis elegans were exposed to sublethal hypoxia for 12 hours, mitochondria in intestinal cells adopted an abnormal morphology and most became depolarized, aggregates of misfolded proteins accumulated in the mitochondria of various cell types, and the mtUPR was induced. Experimental induction of the mtUPR before a 20-hour exposure to hypoxia improved the survival of wild-type worms in a manner that depended on the transcription factor ATFS-1, which activates the expression of nuclear genes involved in the mtUPR. Worms homozygous for alleles of atfs-1 that cause constitutive nuclear localization were also protected from hypoxia-induced death. Surprisingly, activation of the mtUPR after hypoxia exposure also protected animals from hypoxia-induced lethality. The protective effect of the mtUPR was not cell autonomous because inducing the mtUPR specifically in the intestine or in neurons rescued hypoxia-induced pharyngeal paralysis. (Pharyngeal pumping requires only pharyngeal myocytes, not intestinal cells or neurons.) At the cellular level, inducing the mtUPR either before or after hypoxia exposure restored mitochondrial morphology and reduced the number of mitochondria that contained protein aggregates. These results identify mitochondrial misfolding as an early event in hypoxia and establish the importance of the mtUPR in mitigating hypoxia-induced injury at both the organismal and cellular levels. D. M. Kaufman, C. M. Crowder. Mitochondrial proteostatic collapse leads to hypoxic injury. Curr Biol. 25, 2171–2176 (2015). [PubMed]


This paper presents EIT-based fabric sensors that aim to provide a pressure mapping using the current carrying and voltage sensing electrodes attached to the boundary of the fabric patch. Pressure-induced shape change over the sensor area makes a change in the conductivity distribution which can be conveyed to the change of boundary current-voltage data. This boundary data is obtained through electrode measurements in EIT system. The corresponding inverse problem is to reconstruct the pressure and deformation map from the relationship between the applied current and the measured voltage on the fabric boundary. Taking advantage of EIT in providing dynamical images of conductivity changes due to pressure induced shape change, the pressure map can be estimated. In this paper, the EIT-based fabric sensor was presented for circular and rectangular sensor geometry. A stretch sensitive fabric was used in circular sensor with 16 electrodes and a pressure sensitive fabric was used in a rectangular sensor with 32 electrodes. A preliminary human test was carried out with the rectangular sensor for foot pressure mapping showing promising results.


BACKGROUND & AIMS
The MutY human homologue (MYH) gene is a member of the base-excision repair pathway involved in the repair of oxidative DNA damage. The objective of this study was to determine colorectal cancer (CRC) risk associated with mutations in the MYH gene.

METHODS
A total of 3811 CRC cases and 2802 controls collected from a multisite CRC registry were screened for 9 germline MYH mutations; subjects with any mutation underwent screening of the entire MYH gene. Logistic regression was used to estimate age- and sex-adjusted odds ratios (AOR). Clinicopathologic and epidemiologic data were reviewed to describe the phenotype associated with MYH mutation status and assess for potential confounding and effect modification.

RESULTS
Twenty-seven cases and 1 control subject carried homozygous or compound heterozygous MYH mutations (AOR, 18.1; 95% confidence interval, 2.5-132.7). CRC cases with homozygous/compound heterozygous mutations were younger at diagnosis (P=.01), had a higher proportion of right-sided (P=.01), synchronous cancers (P<.01), and personal history of adenomatous polyps (P=.003). Heterozygous MYH mutations were identified in 87 CRC cases and 43 controls; carriers were at increased risk of CRC (AOR, 1.48; 95% confidence interval, 1.02-2.16). There was a higher prevalence of low-frequency microsatellite instability (MSI) in tumors from heterozygous and homozygous/compound heterozygous MYH mutation carriers (P=.02); MSI status modified the CRC risk associated with heterozygous MYH mutations (P interaction<.001).

CONCLUSIONS
Homozygous/compound heterozygous MYH mutations account for less than 1% of CRC cases. Heterozygous carriers are at increased risk of CRC. Further studies are needed to understand the possible interaction between the base excision repair and low-frequency MSI pathways.


1,3-Diynes are frequently found as an important structural motif in natural products, pharmaceuticals and bioactive compounds, electronic and optical materials and supramolecular molecules. Copper and palladium complexes are widely used to prepare 1,3-diynes by homocoupling of terminal alkynes; albeit the potential of nickel complexes towards the same is essentially unexplored. Although a detailed study on the reported nickel-acetylene chemistry has not been carried out, a generalized mechanism featuring a nickel(II)/nickel(0) catalytic cycle has been proposed. In the present work, a detailed mechanistic aspect of the nickel-mediated homocoupling reaction of terminal alkynes is investigated through the isolation and/or characterization of key intermediates from both the stoichiometric and the catalytic reactions. A nickel(II) complex [Ni(L-N4Me2)(MeCN)2](ClO4)2 (1) containing a tetradentate N,N′-dimethyl-2,11-diaza[3.3](2,6)pyridinophane (L-N4Me2) as ligand was used as catalyst for homocoupling of terminal alkynes by employing oxygen as oxidant at room temperature. A series of dinuclear nickel(I) complexes bridged by a 1,3-diyne ligand have been isolated from stoichiometric reaction between [Ni(L-N4Me2)(MeCN)2](ClO4)2 (1) and lithium acetylides. The dinuclear nickel(I)-diyne complexes [{Ni(L-N4Me2)}2(RC4R)](ClO4)2 (2) were well characterized by X-ray crystal structures, various spectroscopic methods, SQUID and DFT calculation. The complexes not only represent as a key intermediate in aforesaid catalytic reaction, but also describe the first structurally characterized dinuclear nickel(I)-diyne complexes. In addition, radical trapping and low temperature UV-Vis-NIR experiments in the formation of the dinuclear nickel(I)-diyne confirm that the reactions occurring during the reduction of nickel(II) to nickel(I) and C-C bond formation of 1,3-diyne follow non-radical concerted mechanism. Furthermore, spectroscopic investigation on the reactivity of the dinuclear nickel(I)-diyne complex towards molecular oxygen confirmed the formation of a mononuclear nickel(I)-diyne species [Ni(L-N4Me2)(RC4R)]+ (4) and a mononuclear nickel(III)-peroxo species [Ni(L-N4Me2)(O2)]+ (5) which were converted to free 1,3-diyne and an unstable dinuclear nickel(II) species [{Ni(L-N4Me2)}2(O2)]2+ (6). A mononuclear nickel(I)-alkyne complex [Ni(L-N4Me2)(PhC2Ph)](ClO4).MeOH (3) and the mononuclear nickel(III)-peroxo species [Ni(L-N4Me2)(O2)]+ (5) were isolated/generated and characterized to confirm the formulation of aforementioned mononuclear nickel(I)-diyne and mononuclear nickel(III)-peroxo species. Spectroscopic experiments on the catalytic reaction mixture also confirm the presence of aforesaid intermediates. Results of both stoichiometric and catalytic reactions suggested an intriguing mechanism involving nickel(II)/nickel(I)/nickel(III) oxidation states in contrast to the reported nickel(II)/nickel(0) catalytic cycle. These findings are expected to open a new paradigm towards nickel-catalyzed organic transformations.


For the last few decades, we have obtained tremendous insight into underlying microscopic mechanisms of degrading quasi-brittle materials from persistent and near-saintly efforts in laboratories, and at the same time we have seen unprecedented evolution in computational technology such as massively parallel computers. Thus, time is ripe to embark on a novel approach to settle unanswered questions, especially for the earthquake engineering community, by harmoniously combining the microphysics mechanisms with advanced parallel computing technology. To begin with, it should be stressed that we placed a great deal of emphasis on preserving clear meaning and physical counterparts of all the microscopic material models proposed herein, since it is directly tied to the belief that by doing so, the more physical mechanisms we incorporate, the better prediction we can obtain. We departed from reviewing representative microscopic analysis methodologies, selecting out "fixed-type" multidirectional smeared crack model as the base framework for nonlinear quasi-brittle materials, since it is widely believed to best retain the physical nature of actual cracks. Microscopic stress functions are proposed by integrating well-received existing models to update normal stresses on the crack surfaces (three orthogonal surfaces are allowed to initiate herein) under cyclic loading. Unlike the normal stress update, special attention had to be paid to the shear stress update on the crack surfaces, due primarily to the well-known pathological nature of the fixed-type smeared crack model–spurious large stress transfer over the open crack under nonproportional loading. In hopes of exploiting physical mechanism to resolve this deleterious nature of the fixed crack model, a tribology-inspired three-dimensional (3d) interlocking mechanism has been proposed. Following the main trend of tribology (i.e., the science and engineering of interacting surfaces), we introduced the base fabric of solid particle-soft matrix to explain realistic interlocking over rough crack surfaces, and the adopted Gaussian distribution feeds random particle sizes to the entire domain. Validation against a well-documented rough crack experiment reveals promising accuracy of the proposed 3d interlocking model. A consumed energy-based damage model has been proposed for the weak correlation between the normal and shear stresses on the crack surfaces, and also for describing the nature of irrecoverable damage. Since the evaluation of the consumed energy is directly linked to the microscopic deformation, which can be efficiently tracked on the crack surfaces, the proposed damage model is believed to provide a more physical interpretation than existing damage mechanics, which fundamentally stem from mathematical derivation with few physical counterparts. Another novel point of the present work lies in the topological transition-based "smart" steel bar model, notably with evolving compressive buckling length. We presented a systematic framework of information flow between the key ingredients of composite materials (i.e., steel bar and its surrounding concrete elements). The smart steel model suggested can incorporate smooth transition during reversal loading, tensile rupture, early buckling after reversal from excessive tensile loading, and even compressive buckling. Especially, the buckling length is made to evolve according to the damage states of the surrounding elements of each bar, while all other dominant models leave the length unchanged. What lies behind all the aforementioned novel attempts is, of course, the problem-optimized parallel platform. In fact, the parallel computing in our field has been restricted to monotonic shock or blast loading with explicit algorithm which is characteristically feasible to be parallelized. In the present study, efficient parallelization strategies for the highly demanding implicit nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) program for real-scale reinforced concrete (RC) structures under cyclic loading are proposed. Quantitative comparison of state-of-the-art parallel strategies, in terms of factorization, had been carried out, leading to the problem-optimized solver, which is successfully embracing the penalty method and banded nature. Particularly, the penalty method employed imparts considerable smoothness to the global response, which yields a practical superiority of the parallel triangular system solver over other advanced solvers such as parallel preconditioned conjugate gradient method. Other salient issues on parallelization are also addressed. The parallel platform established offers unprecedented access to simulations of real-scale structures, giving new understanding about the physics-based mechanisms adopted and probabilistic randomness at the entire system level. Particularly, the platform enables bold simulations of real-scale RC structures exposed to cyclic loading–H-shaped wall system and 4-story T-shaped wall system. The simulations show the desired capability of accurate prediction of global force-displacement responses, postpeak softening behavior, and compressive buckling of longitudinal steel bars. It is fascinating to see that intrinsic randomness of the 3d interlocking model appears to cause "localized" damage of the real-scale structures, which is consistent with reported observations in different fields such as granular media. Equipped with accuracy, stability and scalability as demonstrated so far, the parallel platform is believed to serve as a fertile ground for the introducing of further physical mechanisms into various research fields as well as the earthquake engineering community. In the near future, it can be further expanded to run in concert with reliable FEA programs such as FRAME3d or OPENSEES. Following the central notion of "multiscale" analysis technique, actual infrastructures exposed to extreme natural hazard can be successfully tackled by this next generation analysis tool–the harmonious union of the parallel platform and a general FEA program. At the same time, any type of experiments can be easily conducted by this "virtual laboratory."


–  The purpose of the present investigation was to evaluate the effects of type I collagen sponge on the healing of bone defects. In this study, six adult male rabbits were used. After the induction of general anesthesia with intraperitoneal kethamine, the anterior surfaces of tibias of the rabbits were surgically exposed, and two holes with 4 mm in diameter were prepared on each tibia for the investigation. Only one hole in each tibia was filled with type I collagen, the other unfilled hole was used as control. During the study, radiopacity changes in the radiographs of the tibias of the rabbits were evaluated. The animals were killed on the 28th day, and histologic sections of the tibias were prepared. On the 28th day, it was histopathologically observed that collagen cavities were filled with new bone. In addition, it was determined that there was an increase in radiopacity of the defect areas from 14 to 28 days in both groups, and there were statistically a significant difference between control and collagen groups (P = 0.0001). In this study, consequently, it was determined that type I collagen sponge in the experimental cavities provides a more rapid regeneration of bone defects compared with non-filled cavities.


The provision of very high data rates in a ubiquitous manner throughout the service area is a great challenge for 4G and beyond-4G wireless networks. Towards that end, the deployment of fixed relays by the operators has become an accepted radio access network concept in various standardization activities including LTE-A and 802.16j. It is envisaged that next-generation networks will comprise a plethora of wireless relay stations. Worthy of mention is the plug-and-play type of relay known as nomadic relay. We devise novel radio resource management (RRM) schemes to facilitate the operation of fixed relay stations (FRSs) and nomadic relay stations (NRSs) in OFDMA-based multicellular networks. Two schemes of different decentralization levels are devised and classified as distributed and semi-centralized. A novel user-based dynamic routing or link selection that significantly reduces the feedback overhead is employed. We develop methods by which the NRSs act autonomously to acquire radio resources without relying on a central entity. NRS operation is the same in the two schemes and can be extended to any other OFDMA-based RRM scheme. Through the asynchronous opportunistic medium access of the NRSs, smart and opportunistic intra-cell channel reuse is attained. This is different from the static intra-cell reuse patterns often adopted in literature. Furthermore, we introduce a method to enable the cooperation between an NRS and a serving FRS to assist a troubled wireless terminal (WT). We thus establish the concept of nomadic relay-augmented fixed relay networks. To the extent of our knowledge of the literature, no other work has undertaken this task so far.


In the last two decades architectural glass has made an enormous leap from a secondary material to a material that combines structural and cladding roles. The structural role is a new and problematic one. In contrast to most other engineering materials the strength of glass is not a material parameter but a parameter dependent on processing quality and damage to the glass surface. There is also no real agreement on how strong glass is. There is a concept Euronorm for structural glass that has values for the characteristic strength for annealed, heat-strengthened, fully tempered and chemically toughened glass. There is however no real agreement on the validity of these values for design of glass beams or columns. To provide an independent set of values a statistically significant series of four-point bending tests on glass were conducted using both lying and standing positions resulting in a set of values for the characteristic strength.


Purpose: The objective of this study was to evaluate systematic and random errors associated with HDR brachytherapytreatment delivery of partial breast irradiation with a MammoSite Balloon. The impact of these errors on the actual delivered dose was studied. Method and Materials: The effect of respiratory motion, balloon contrast concentration and intra‐observer variability on accuracy of applicator delineation were investigated. Additionally, the consequence of variability of target delineation and dose matrix voxel size was considered in relationship to target coverage. Lastly, an analysis of 15 patients treated with the MammoSite was performed to simulate the effect of allowed source position uncertainty for each fraction. Results: Respiratory motion resulted in an under‐estimation of the balloon volume of 8% and 18% for computed tomography and cone‐beam computed tomography, respectively. The coverage was assessed based on the volume of the target receiving 95% of the prescribed dose (V95). On average, balloon volume underestimation combined with the daily ±1.0mm source position uncertainty degraded the coverage from an initial 96.3% to 91.7% over the course of 10 fractions. Additionally, a 3mm difference between the true tip of the applicator and its delineated position resulted in a decrease in coverage from 96.3% to 92.6% and from 98.7% to 79.3%, for a small and a large balloon, respectively. Conclusion: Current treatment protocols require that 90% of the target volume receives 90% of the prescription dose. Our findings suggest that significantly higher dosimetric coverage goals are necessary to compensate for the identified errors inherent in balloon based brachytherapydose delivery. This will insure that the expected degradation of the actual dose delivered from the planned dose, as a consequence of random and systematic uncertainties, does not fall below an acceptable threshold.


In large corporations in Japan, much of the clerical work is carried out by young women known as 'office ladies' (OLs) or 'flowers of the workplace' Largely nameless, OLs serve tea to the men and type and file their reports. They are exempt from the traditional lifetime employment and have few opportunities for promotion. In this engaging ethnography, Yuko Ogasawara exposes the ways that these women resist men's power, and why the men, despite their exclusive command of authority, often subject themselves to the women's control. Ogasawara, a Japanese sociologist trained in the United States, skillfully mines perceptive participant-observation analyses and numerous interviews to outline the tensions and humiliations of OL work. She details the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that OLs who are frustrated by demeaning, dead-end jobs thwart their managers and subvert the power structure to their advantage. Using gossip, outright work refusal, and public gift-giving as manipulative strategies, they can ultimately make or break the careers of the men. This intimate and absorbing analysis illustrates how the relationships between women and work, and women and men, are far more complex than the previous literature has shown.


The following paper discusses ›history of knowledge‹ as a new approach in the field of historical research, and especially cultural history. First of all, employing Foucault's notion of ›les saviors‹, the paper shows that the concept of ›knowledge‹ enables us to conceive knowledge as always circulating back and forth, without hierarchies, between different societal spheres and institutions, through media, between scientists and the so called public. Secondly, the paper proposes to use ›knowledge‹ as a vantage point for the historical gaze into the field of modern history. It therefore asks the question whether it is sound to promote ›knowledge‹ to a rank comparable in importance to the concept ›society‹ for social history, or ›nation‹ for political history. Since the very idea of ›the‹ society has lost a lot of its influence in the last two decades, my paper investigates the possibility that the new ›history of knowledge‹ can become an heir to the already rather ›old school‹ social history approach.


This article first discusses the history and ideology of fairy tales. As Walter Benjamin said in his essay "The Storyteller", rumors and information were spread verbally, from person to person. So were fairy tales. Through storytelling, the history and experience is spread from generation to generation. So that audience, especially children, gather to listen to the folks and stories about things "long long ago", sharing the memories and experience of the storytellers. Based on this idea, the article further analyses the utopian function of fairy tales, which depict the feasibility of utopian alternatives by means of fantastic images. Because in the name of fairy tales, anything is possible. Apart from hope and wish, there was dissatisfaction in fairy tales. Ernst Bloch placed special emphasis on dissatisfaction as a condition which ignites the utopian drive, so that it remains a powerful cultural force among the audience, urges them to resist, to change the unreasonable things in the world. At last, it comes to the ethical use of fairy tales with children. Many scholars, like Bruno Bettelheim and Julius E. Heuscher, have done some psychiatric and psychological research on the meaning and usefulness of fairy tales. Different from those, this article mainly talks about the literary education in fairy tales, how the words, characters and plots play a role in education.


Measuring the current state of the U.S. economy in real time is an important but challenging task for monetary policymakers. The most comprehensive measure of the state of the economy?real gross domestic product?is available at a relatively low frequency (quarterly) and with a significant delay (one month). To obtain more timely assessments of the state of the economy, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has developed a GDP tracking model that combines new econometric methods with two conventional approaches to estimating GDP. {{p}} Taeyoung Doh and Jaeheung Bae review the Kansas City Fed model?s underlying details and illustrate its performance by comparing the model?s tracking estimates to those from other real-time tracking models. Their results suggest the Kansas City Fed model provides a useful tool for policymakers by combining estimates and forecasts from factor and accounting-based models.


Crescentic glomerulonephritis (GN) in a renal biopsy is a widely accepted "critical diagnosis" in Anatomic Pathology practice. Prompt biopsy evaluation and notification of the referring physician is essential to facilitate rapid therapeutic intervention. The differential diagnostic categories of crescentic GN include pauci-immune GN, anti-glomerular basement membrane (GBM) nephritis and immune complex-mediated GN, distinguished from one another by immunofluorescence and electron microscopic study of the renal biopsy. Immune complex-mediated GN is characterized by abundant glomerular deposits and encompasses several diseases including but not limited to lupus nephritis, cryoglobulinemic GN and immunoglobulin A nephropathy. Pauci-immune GN, with paucity of deposits, correlates closely with antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody disease due to the identifiable circulating pathogenic antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody in most patients. Recent studies have identified other antibodies in pauci-immune GN and implicated infectious organisms in triggering autoimmunity in a susceptible host by molecular mimicry of host antigens. Anti-GBM nephritis is a rare but potentially life-threatening autoimmune disease with circulating antibodies against GBM epitopes in &agr;3 chain of type IV collagen. It is characterized by a linear immunoglobulin G deposition along GBM on immunofluorescence microscopy. Environmental triggers including infections and solvent exposure seem to change the tertiary structure of the type IV collagen &agr;345 hexamer in GBM, expose neoepitopes, and initiate autoimmunity. Even in light of advances in understanding of pathophysiology and serologic testing, renal biopsy remains the mainstay of diagnosis of crescentic GN.


Education is seen as a powerful tool by which men and women are liberated from their natural state whether that described as ignorance, poverty, disease, selfishness, fear, corruption, injustice, enslavement, moral bankruptcy, or some other undesirable conditions and therefore freedom is the goal of education.  Since attaining her political independence in 1963, Kenya has continued to invest heavily in education with the hope that this would help to transform the country into a modern progressive state. Kenya, fifty years after independence she is still bedeviled by corruption, bad governance, negative ethnicity and impunity.  Although Kenyans have acquired literacy, academic knowledge and skills, education has not translated into the kind of thinking, mental attitudes and behaviour that is necessary for transforming society. This paper will explore the liberating and transforming power of education at the level of the individual and the society. It will then go on to demonstrate that only the right or intellectual learning at the expense of values and character education is responsible for our educational failure in Kenya.


Spectral analysis of rock samples by short wavelength infrared (SWIR) analysis, using the portable infrared mineral analyzer (PIMA) spectrometer, is a relatively new field method with applications in mineral exploration. The technique allows rapid field-based identification of hydrothermal alteration minerals and delineation of alteration zones. Variations in mineral composition, crystallinity, and relative abundance may also be determined. Phyllosilicates, including white mica and chlorite, are particularly amenable to short wavelength infrared analysis. These are prominent alteration minerals in the felsic volcanic rocks in the Mount Read Volcanics, Tasmania, and the Mount Windsor subprovince, North Queensland. They have regional distributions as diagenetic and metamorphic products and exist locally in alteration zones associated with volcanic-hosted sulfide deposits.

A geochemical and spectral investigation of white micas in the least altered rocks in the Mount Read Volcanics has shown considerable background compositional variations. The white micas range from phengite to moderately sodic muscovite and SWIR spectral measurements provide reliable estimates of their compositions. Chlorites also have a broad compositional range in these rocks. However, SWIR spectral analysis has proven to be unreliable in determining chlorite composition in samples where chlorite exists in low proportions relative to white mica or in mixed assemblages with epidote.

White micas in footwall alteration zones of the Rosebery stratiform Zn + Pb deposit (Tasmania) are variably phengitic, similar to those in regional background volcanics. A unit of relatively unaltered volcaniclastic sandstone in the Rosebery hanging-wall sequence contains anomalous sodic muscovite in proximity to ore lenses. White micas associated with the disseminated to massive pyritic Cu + Au deposits at Western Tharsis (Tasmania) and Highway-Reward (North Queensland) range in composition from phengite to slightly sodic muscovite. In these symmetrically zoned alteration systems, white micas grade in composition from phengite, in peripheral zones, to slightly sodic muscovite, in proximal zones near ore. In all three cases, the white mica compositional variation is a vector to ore that is effectively measured by SWIR spectrometry, with particular application in prospect-scale exploration.

Chlorite compositions at Rosebery are not strictly spatially related to ore but tend to be most magnesian in zones of high chlorite abundance. In the outer alteration zone at Western Tharsis, there is a faint proximal trend to iron-rich chlorites. However, it does not represent a well-defined vector to ore in either case.

Attempts at quantitative estimation of the relative abundance of white mica and chlorite in mixed samples, by spectral analysis, have produced results that are imprecise in comparison to geochemically derived estimates. The data scatter relates to the low proportions of chlorite in the majority of the samples analyzed, resulting in weak chlorite absorptions. Better results may be obtainable, in specific alteration or lithostratigraphic domains, by use of customized spectral unmixing software.

This investigation has shown that PIMA-based SWIR spectrometry is a potent field method of mapping compositional variations in white micas that represent empirical vectors to at least some types of volcanic-hosted sulfide deposits. It has also highlighted its effectiveness in field identification of megascopically difficult or indeterminate alteration minerals, such as pyrophyllite, zunyite, and topaz, which may have genetic implications and exploration significance.


Digitalis-like immunoreactive substances (DLISs) have been shown to cross-react with anti-digoxin antibodies. We previously reported that eplerenone, the structure of which is similar to that of digoxin, interfered with digoxin measurements in a fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA), microparticle enzyme immunoassay (MEIA), and affinity column-mediated immunoassay (ACMIA), and also that the extent of interference was different in each assay. Digoxin has a narrow therapeutic window; therefore, it is important to measure its serum concentrations without interference by clinically co-administered drugs. In this study, we performed two additional types of assays (enzyme multiplied immunoassay technique (EMIT) and chemiluminescent immunoassay (CLIA)) to clarify cross-reactivity between eplerenone and anti-digoxin antibodies. Furthermore, we used EMIT and CLIA to measure apparent digoxin concentrations in mixed solutions of eplerenone (1-100 μg/mL) and digoxin (1-3 ng/mL). Eplerenone was not detected as digoxin by EMIT and CLIA in cross-reaction tests. Furthermore, the apparent concentration of digoxin when co-administered with eplerenone was not significantly affected in EMIT and CLIA. These results suggest that EMIT and CLIA may be able to accurately measure serum digoxin concentrations in patients adjunctively receiving eplerenone.