This study examines the first group of largely preliterate refugees resettled in Tasmania after the 1975 Communist takeover of Laos. Hill tribe people, the Tasmanian Hmong left Laos and spent years in Thai refugee camps. This thesis examines the possible reasons for their secondary migration to various locations in Queensland. Their departure from Tasmania raised questions about why this apparently well-settled community left the island. For example, many people assumed it was because of Tasmania's cool climate.

The thesis creates a context in which to examine the Hmong's motivation to leave the island state, with reference to theories of migration, diaspora and globalisation. Oral histories draw out the stories of individual Hmong, their involvement in the Secret War in Indo-China, the escape from Laos, life in Thai refugee camps, their resettlement in Tasmania and subsequent departure for Queensland. Hmong informants include those remaining in Tasmania, those who left for Queensland and those who later returned to Tasmania. These interviews are balanced with voices of professionals and volunteers involved in settlement of the Hmong. Participant observation and itinerant ethnography have been employed, making use of everyday opportunities to collect information from which to develop ideas and to explain the secondary migration of the Hmong. This 'history from below', places value on the stories of ordinary people as a valuable resource.

The research concludes that, in addition to the desire to create a mega-community of Hmong in Queensland — in an attempt to counter loss of tradition and culture, and build Hmong cohesiveness — secondary migration was influenced by a desire for family reunification and a strong economic motive. It demonstrates that secondary migration is typical of many refugee communities. In particular, the secondary migrations observed in diasporic Hmong communities have parallels with migrations of Hmong from China and with traditional movements in Laos, where swidden agriculture requires establishment of new villages when depleted soil or sickness affects settlements.

The research is important because there has been little recorded about the Hmong community in Tasmania, nor about other Australian Hmong communities. Since the once vibrant Hobart community is now a remnant population, it is important to place on record its story as part of recent social history. In examining a refugee community such as the Hmong, this thesis offers an investigation of the circumstances of becoming refugees, an analysis of settlement experiences and an exploration into the context and reasons for secondary migration. In addition, it provides an entry into comparative research on other refugee communities, which has relevance for those who work with refugees and are interested in their demographics.


[Gly(4)]deltorphin (Tyr-D-Ala-Phe-Gly-Val-Val-Gly-NH(2)) is a nonselective analogue of the opioid heptapeptides isolated from Phyllomedusa amphibian skin. Its nonselective nature allows for simultaneous characterization of the effects of sequence modification on both delta (delta) and mu (mu) receptor binding. The N-terminal regions of opioid peptides are considered to be responsible for receptor recognition, and the tyrosine at position one is relatively intolerant to alteration. In order to further investigate the role of the phenolic hydroxyl group in receptor interaction, a series of peptides was synthesized in which the position-one tyrosine residue was replaced with analogues of varying electronic, steric, and acid/base character, including ring-substituted tyrosines, para-substituted phenylalanines, and other nonaromatic and heterocyclic amino acids. The effects of these replacements on delta and mu receptor affinities were measured and then analyzed through quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) calculations. Results support a dual hydrogen bond donor/acceptor role for the Tyr(1) hydroxyl moiety, with less acidic hydroxyl groups exhibiting stronger binding to opioid receptors. In addition, steric bulk in the Tyr(1) position independently strengthens mu and possibly delta binding, presumably by either a ligand conformational effect or enhanced van der Waals interactions with a 'loose' receptor site. The pK(a) effect is stronger on delta than on mu binding, generating an increase in delta selectivity with increasing residue-one pK(a).


On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense. While other states in the European Union have developed various forms of de facto decriminalization — whereby substances perceived to be less serious (such as cannabis) rarely lead to criminal prosecution — Portugal remains the only EU member state with a law explicitly declaring drugs to be "decriminalized." Because more than seven years have now elapsed since enactment of Portugal's decriminalization system, there are ample data enabling its effects to be assessed. Notably, decriminalization has become increasingly popular in Portugal since 2001. Except for some far-right politicians, very few domestic political factions are agitating for a repeal of the 2001 law. And while there is a widespread perception that bureaucratic changes need to be made to Portugal's decriminalization framework to make it more efficient and effective, there is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for "drug tourists" — has occurred. The political consensus in favor of decriminalization is unsurprising in light of the relevant empirical data. Those data indicate that decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal, which, in numerous categories, are now among the lowest in the EU, particularly when compared with states with stringent criminalization regimes. Although postdecriminalization usage rates have remained roughly the same or even decreased slightly when compared with other EU states, drug-related pathologies — such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage — have decreased dramatically. Drug policy experts attribute those positive trends to the enhanced ability of the Portuguese government to offer treatment programs to its citizens — enhancements made possible, for numerous reasons, by decriminalization. This report will begin with an examination of the Portuguese decriminalization framework as set forth in law and in terms of how it functions in practice. Also examined is the political climate in Portugal both pre- and postdecriminalization with regard to drug policy, and the impetus that led that nation to adopt decriminalization. The report then assesses Portuguese drug policy in the context of the EU's approach to drugs. The varying legal frameworks, as well as the overall trend toward liberalization, are examined to enable a meaningful comparative assessment between Portuguese data and data from other EU states. The report also sets forth the data concerning drug-related trends in Portugal both pre- and postdecriminalization. The effects of decriminalization in Portugal are examined both in absolute terms and in comparisons with other states that continue to criminalize drugs, particularly within the EU. The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world.


Although there is growing research interest in populist radical right (PRR) parties in Western Europe, little attention has been paid to the case of Spain – a country where these parties are almost non-existent or irrelevant from an electoral and political point of view. In a nutshell, we maintain that in contemporary Spain there is real demand for PRR parties, but three supply-side factors are impeding their electoral breakthrough and persistence: the cleavage structure of the country, the strategy of competition of the mainstream right and the electoral system. At the same time, we postulate that at least in the case of Spain the Great Recession has not improved the electoral odds of the PRR as such but rather facilitated the emergence of leftist populist forces.


The varying presentations of the rules for nicht and kein found in intermediate grammar books for students in North America and DaF-learners in Germany highlight the difficulty in finding sources that are both reliable and consistent as well as easily applicable. This thesis seeks to compare the explanations found in A.E. Hammer's German Grammar and Usage (revised by Martin Durrell), Helbig/Buscha's Deutsche Grammatik, and Hall/Scheiner's Ubungsgrammatik, comparing all three to the basis of their information, Duden: die Grammatik. In order to assess how and where these sources converge and diverge, the analysis compares the intended use of each book, followed by the underlying concepts and terms, and then finally the rules for negation. The final two chapters attempt to answer two important questions that arise from comparing these sources. First, do beginner level textbooks prepare students with sufficient declarative grammar knowledge to understand and apply negation rules successfully? An analysis of Kontakte's approach to teaching grammar, most specifically how to use nicht and kein, seeks to answer the first question. Secondly, could authors use a different approach for explaining this difficult grammar topic? Professor Hardarik Bluhdorn's approach, as presented in his course Negation: Syntax, Prosodie und Semantik at the Universitat Mannheim during the Fall semester of 2007, serves as an example of new research. His different approach might help non-native speakers of German learn how to use nicht and kein correctly. The analysis reaches three main conclusions. First of all, the rules differ primarily in the amount of detail used, as well as in the inconsistent use of common terminology across the sources. Secondly, beginner's level textbooks do not provide students with sufficient information about general grammar or negation to help them transition to using explanations found in intermediate grammar books. In order to understand the rules of nicht and kein, these students must first work through the background material methodically. Finally, intermediate learners could not rely on Professor Bluhdorn's approach, as it focuses on the scope of nicht, not on the correct placement of nicht in order to negate an entire sentence. Appendix B provides a chart comparing the rules found in each source.


Satellite-derived spectral indices such as the relativized burn ratio (RBR) allow fire severity maps to be produced in a relatively straightforward manner across multiple fires and broad spatial extents. These indices often have strong relationships with field-based measurements of fire severity, thereby justifying their widespread use in management and science. However, satellite-derived spectral indices have been criticized because their non-standardized units render them difficult to interpret relative to on-the-ground fire effects. In this study, we built a Random Forest model describing a field-based measure of fire severity, the composite burn index (CBI), as a function of multiple spectral indices, a variable representing spatial variability in climate, and latitude. CBI data primarily representing forested vegetation from 263 fires (8075 plots) across the United States and Canada were used to build the model. Overall, the model performed well, with a cross-validated R2 of 0.72, though there was spatial variability in model performance. The model we produced allows for the direct mapping of CBI, which is more interpretable compared to spectral indices. Moreover, because the model and all spectral explanatory variables were produced in Google Earth Engine, predicting and mapping of CBI can realistically be undertaken on hundreds to thousands of fires. We provide all necessary code to execute the model and produce maps of CBI in Earth Engine. This study and its products will be extremely useful to managers and scientists in North America who wish to map fire effects over large landscapes or regions.


Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria, which have been used to treat bacterial infections in people for decades. They are also now being used as FDA approved preservatives as a means to prevent the growth of spoiling bacteria in many ready-to-eat foods. Bacteriophages tend to infect a very narrow range of bacterial hosts, some only a single sub-strain. When used for therapeutics or food treatment however, it is desirable to use phages that are promiscuous in their host range. This has led to attempts to broaden the host range of the most useful phages. By passaging phages in co-cultures of their natural host with increasing ratios of a target-host, we were able to expand the host range of two phages specific to Clostridium sporogenes. This adaptation was performed in both the presence and absence of a mutagen. Of twenty-eight total mutants, six were sufficiently stable to persist in target-host culture alone. Of these six, four were chosen for further analysis of their infective activity in their natural and target hosts. Most phage populations that resulted from each passage of each co-culture infection lost infective activity against their initial host and also failed to show infecting activity in the target-host. On the other hand, there were several phage populations that demonstrated a gain of activity against one or v both hosts. In some cases the gained infectivity exceeded the infective activity that was measured for the starting host at the beginning of the project. Though mutations causing hostexpansion events in phages seem to occur randomly, there was a notable increase in the number of successful mutations in the presence of a mutagen as opposed to without.


Management of life-cycle costs is an approach that leads to sustainable development and effective use of company's resources. By using the life-cycle cost method analysis LCC creates a foundation for complex evaluation of costs of a product from its conceptions to the end of its life-cycle. In the introduction, we present a general scheme of a life-cycle cost analysis and calculation of costs. The analytical part includes a description of two types of analysed equipment mulchersAHWI FM 600 profi and Seppi m_ Midifrost dt 250. Specific relevant criteria were identified that can be used to evaluate life-cycle costs (LCC) of the above-mentioned equipment. Further, we outlined results of data collection and primary evaluation of this data. The goal is to create a platform for economic evaluation of increase in life-cycle of analysed initial and adjusted equipment based on specifically proposed methods.


THE CARDINAL FEATURE OF Alzheimer disease is the ex- tracellular deposition of proteinaceous amyloid-β fibrils as senile plaques. Amyloid-β plays an essential role in disease diagnosis and is also thought by many to be a key mediator of disease pathogenesis. As such, there are tremen- dous efforts underway to understand mechanisms of amyloid deposition. In this context, it is notable that the actual term amyloid, represents a historical misnomer (being derived from amylose, i.e., starch) and since this realization, the contribution of carbohydrates in disease pathogenesis has largely been ig- nored. However, recently, two emerging lines of evidence indicate not only that the interaction of carbohydrates with amyloid is a key event in disease pathogenesis but also that therapeutic efforts targeted towards such pathways may prove therapeutically efficacious. First, just over a decade ago, we and others discovered that oxidative glycation, similar if not identical to that found in diabetes, was an early and chronic contributor to the disease. Second, we very recently found evidence for the presence of chitin-like polysaccharides in association with amyloid deposits in the diseased brain. Both carbohydrate- associated changes likely contribute to the physiochemical properties of amy- loid (and other disease-related proteins such as tau) and, as such, to the insolu- bility and protease-resistance of amyloid. In fact, taken together, the findings indicate an emerging and important role for carbohydrates in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease.


Many scholars have argued that practicing medicine requires sophisticated rhetorical prowess (Loftus 2012; Pender 2005; Segal 2005, 2007). Although rhetorical theory can explain how novices learn to argue like experts, much work in the subfield of medical learning only implicitly draws on rhetorical notions (e.g., Barton & Eggly 2009; Heritage & Maynard 2006). This study examines conversations between faculty physician preceptors and resident physician trainees in an internal medicine clinic to consider the role of persuasion in teaching novices to argue like experts. Using Aristotelian topoi, I reveal how the common lines of argument underlying medical teaching and learning help novice and expert physicians explain concepts, elicit interpretations, and initiate deliberation. As they synthesize and rationalize medical information, they use antecedent-and-consequence, possible-and-impossible, authority, and testimonial topoi. This study of professional enculturation elucidates a rarely examined area of medical communication, potentially enabling preceptors to teach their tacit reasoning more explicitly to residents.


In many applications, single–phase sine–wave inverters are operated with low–pass filters at the output to deliver a low–distortion sinusoidal voltage to the load. In such cases, it is essential that the output be as close to a sinusoid as possible. However, conventional bridge–type inverters, which must be operated with some dead time, suffer from dead–time distortion problems. This effect distorts the output voltage–waveform from its sinusoidal nature to one having significant amounts of low–frequency harmonics. In such cases, dead–time distortion is minimised by employing some suitable algorithm. This paper presents one such algorithm, predictive in nature, for minimising dead–time distortion in the output voltage of a sinusoidal Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) with L–C filter at the output. The algorithm operates by sensing only the load–current. Performance of this algorithm is verified for a single–phase full–bridge inverter, first by simulations and then via experiments, employing Digital Signal Processors (DSP) based inverter. It achieves THD values lesser than 3% for a wide range of load magnitudes and power–factors.


Bose-Einstein condensation is a state of matter for which massive bosons develop a macroscopic occupation of the ground state. After the theoretical discovery by Bose and Einstein, it took approximately 70 years to be experimentally realized using Rubidium-87 atoms. Ever since, many different species have been shown to Bose condense. The key in these experiments is cooling down atoms temperatures below 200 nK, while maintaining a large density. Despite all these species, it was thought that photons could not Bose condense. This changed in 2010 when the first Bose-Einstein condensate of photons (phBEC) was achieved. In a table top experiment photons are confined to a dye-filled microcavity where under the right conditions a thermalized photon gas is achieved. Using our setup, we quantitatively show from both the spectral and spatial distribution of photons in the microcavity that a macroscopic occupation of the ground state is achieved, i.e. a condensate of photons. The achievement of phBEC in a dye-filled microcavity has led to a renewed interest in the density distribution of the ideal Bose gas in a two-dimensional harmonic oscillator. We present measurements of the radial profile of photons inside the microcavity below and above the critical point for phBEC with a large signal-to-noise ratio. We obtain good agreement with theoretical profiles obtained using exact summation of eigenstates. An interesting open question is, whether the photons in the condensate are interacting or non-interacting and as a consequence, whether the condensate is also a superfluid or only forms a macroscopically occupied ground state, as predicted by Einstein. When increasing the photon density, we observe an increase in the radius of the condensate which we attribute to effective repulsive interactions. For several dye concentrations we accurately determine the radius of the condensate as a function of the number of condensate photons, and derive from the measurements an effective interaction strength. In many systems ranging from condensed matter physics and particle physics to cosmology, phase transitions and spontaneous symmetry breaking play a crucial role. The information of a polarized condensate from an unpolarized thermal cloud constitutes a directly observable prototype of spontaneous symmetry breaking. For every single-shot of the pump laser, we determine the Stokes parameters of the photons inside the microcavity which fully characterizes the polarization state of the sample. By varying experimental parameters, we investigate if the polarization is randomly chosen from shot-to-shot of the experiment. The dye-filled microcavity is a beautiful tool to achieve phBEC. However, it cannot provide the periodic potential required to achieve quantum phase transitions, such as the Mott insulator that have been so successfully exploited in the field of ultra-cold atoms. We use a local density approach to simulate large-area photonic crystal cavities. Clever interplay with both the electronic and photonic bandgap of these cavities has the potential of achieving phBEC in a periodic potential. We show that when the hole radius varies quadratically as a function of position, the eigenmodes of the photonic crystal can be described by the corresponding eigenmodes of the quantum harmonic oscillator.


Mandrakes from the Holy Land, by Aharon Megged, translated by Sondra Silverston. New Milford, CT: The Toby Press, 2005. 205 pp. $22.95. Aharon Megged's recently translated novel, Mandrakes from the Holy Land, at once elegantly wrought and erudite, offers an unusual portrait of Palestine in the early years of the twentieth century. His protagonist, Beatrice Campbell-Bennett, is a disconsolate member of the English social elite whose unfashionable spiritual yearnings and unrequited love for Vanessa Stephen, Virginia Woolf's less famous sister, impel her to embark for Turkish-ruled Palestine in 1906, where she intends to paint the flowers of the Bible. Beatrice conceives of her spiritual and artistic pilgrimage as a return to the roots of Christianity and an escape from the repressive morality of Edwardian England. The novel's conceit is that we learn of the fictional Beatrice's adventures in the Holy Land, and of her earlier experiences as a participant in bohemian London's Bloomsbury Group, through a series of letters she writes to Vanessa Stephen and through passages from her private diary. These writings have been surreptitiously collected and commented upon, in turn, by Dr. P. D. Morrison, a paragon of Victorian pedantry sent by Beatrice's family to investigate her apparent mental breakdown and refusal to return to England. The perspective afforded by Beatrice's intimate letters and her diary allows Megged to describe pre-state Palestine and the establishment of Jewish settlements there-an enterprise in which the author himself played a role after his emigration from Poland as a child in 1926-from the perspective of a religious and ideological outsider. Megged also devotes considerable energies to examining the aesthetic and philosophical challenge to Victorianism posed by the Bloomsbury Group's zealous iconoclasm. That stance is made to seem superficial or even hypocritical when juxtaposed against Beatrice's earnest Christian spirituality and her passion (presumably also Megged's) for the classics of Christian art: she makes reference to Dante (but not explicitly to his Beatrice), Giotto, Titian, El Greco, Milton, Bach, and others. Megged's depiction of Beatrice as simultaneously attracted to European Christian iconography and the utopian political impulse of the Palestinian Jewish yishuv is a daring stroke of artistic creativity. It is also a subversive one. A fat woman (Beatrice repeatedly alludes to her ample body shape) who is a devout Christian pilgrim and a repressed lesbian counts as a pronounced antihero in Israeli fiction and hardly a typical champion of the Zionist credo, as Stanley Nash has pointed out.1 Beatrice's ideological commitments are surprising in another way as well. Her rejection of Bloomsbury bohemianism would be utterly puzzling, particularly given the group's notable tolerance of homosexuality, were it not that she has another, more complicated, aesthetic agenda. Her declared artistic ideals hark back to the work of the British religious painter William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), co-founder in 1849 of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Hunt, who visited Palestine tour times to paint biblical scenes in a style that came to be known as "religious realism," was influenced by the concept of typological symbolism put forward by the critic John Ruskin (1819-1900). In essence, Hunt's ideas promoted a style at once realistic and symbolically prefigurative, so that a solitary goat on the shore of the Dead Sea in his 1856 painting The Scapegoat was meant convey the desolation of the landscape realistically while symbolizing the suffering of Christ. Beatrice likewise says she will paint the Palestinian flowers, including the purportedly aphrodisiac mandrake flower, "as holy flowers, flowers of the soul" (p. 36), but her paintings and sketches are also intended to be botanically accurate. Megged's preoccupation with aesthetics may be merely a matter of attention to historical verisimilitude, but it is not hard to imagine that he is slyly encouraging his readers to adopt an analogous aesthetic attitude. …


Big data has affected American life and business in a variety of ways — inspiring both technological development and industrial change. However, the legal protection for a legal person's right to his or her own personal information has not matched the growth in the collection and aggregation of data. These legal shortcomings are exacerbated when third party privacy interests are at stake in litigation. Judicial orders to compel sensitive data are expressly permitted even under the few privacy statutes that may control data transfers. Historically, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure favor generous disclosure of information. But as litigation becomes more technical and data collection and transfer costs are decreasing, this Article argues that the judiciary must take an invigorated role in discovery — in particular when ill protected, third party privacy interests are at stake.

First this Article explores the existing legal support for informational privacy rights in constitutions, statutes, and tort. As explained, the legal protections that exist are slim. This Article employs a novel theoretical model to illustrate that the current law is particularly ill suited to protect third party privacy rights in discovery because the law does not penalize parties for acquiescence to overreaching discovery requests. Therefore, with the current legal backdrop, to protect informational privacy rights, the judge's role as the discovery gatekeeper is imperative. To emphasize the need for a privacy sensitive judiciary, the Article examines an ongoing litigation Morgan Hill Concerned Parents Assn v California Department of Education, where the otherwise FERPA-protected school records of an estimated ten million students were ordered to be disclosed—including addresses, social security numbers, birthdates, disciplinary records and test scores.

This Article proposes a historically based, three step framework to protect the privacy interest of litigants and effected third parties. The time is ripe for renewed judicial focus on privacy interests in the courts, a recent amendment to the Federal Rules' was made precisely to encourage litigants and the court to limit the size and scope of civil discovery. In addition to discovery reforms, this Article proposes changes to the law to incentivize collectors of data to either decrease collection of sensitive data or increase investment in privacy protections.


Background: In developed countries, awareness of cervical cancer screening is well documented. In contrast, in Oman as a developing country, public responses regarding cervical screening are unclear. This study aimed to assess the level of awareness about cervical cancer and Papanicolau (Pap) smear testing and to establish any correlations between knowledge and demographic factors among Omani women. Methods: In this cross-sectional survey, participants were divided into three groups: patients who attended the Outpatient Gynecology Department in Sultan Qaboos University Hospital (SQUH), Oman, female staff from SQUH, College of Medicine and College of Nursing at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) and graduating female students at SQU. Data collection was through interview-based and online self-administered questionnaires. Cumulative scoring was used for data analysis. Results: There were 204 outpatients, 133 staff and 157 students. Outpatients (79.4%), staff (97.7%) and students (75.2%) had heard of cervical cancer. Nevertheless, their specific knowledge, regarding signs and symptoms, risk factors and Pap smear, was low at 38.7%, 35.3% and 7.6% among outpatients, staff and students, respectively. Some 39.9% of the married outpatients had adequate overall knowledge as compared to none of the single women. Educational level was found to be significantly associated with outpatient knowledge with the highest awareness levels among postgraduates and medical university graduates (61.5%). Conclusion: Specific knowledge of cervical cancer, its risk factors and cervical Pap smear is generally poor among Omani women. This lack of knowledge may be one of the contributing factors for the high incidence of cervical cancer in Oman relative to that in developed countries.


Abstract We discuss a variational model, given by a weighted sum of perimeter, bending and Riesz interaction energies, that could be considered as a toy model for charged elastic drops. The different contributions have competing preferences for strongly localized and maximally dispersed structures. We investigate the energy landscape in dependence of the size of the 'charge', that is, the weight of the Riesz interaction energy. In the two-dimensional case, we first prove that for simply connected sets of small elastica energy, the elastica deficit controls the isoperimetric deficit. Building on this result, we show that for small charge the only minimizers of the full variational model are either balls or centred annuli. We complement these statements by a non-existence result for large charge. In three dimensions, we prove area and diameter bounds for configurations with small Willmore energy and show that balls are the unique minimizers of our variational model for sufficiently small charge.


Abstract B. thuringiensis is a gram-positive bacterium which produces, during sporulation, crystalline inclusions containing one or more delta-endotoxins. The latter are selectively toxic against a wide variety of insects, including important pests. Formulations based on B. thuringiensis have been used safely in developed countries as bioinsecticides for agriculture, forestry and disease vector control. This kind of bioinsecticides occupies the first place in the biopesticides world market and is essential for crop protection. The importance of such bioinsecticides and the emergence of new insect resistance cases, promoted worldwide isolation and screening programmes of new strains with particularly high insecticidal activities. This project aims to develop an integrated approach that will explore activities of new B. thuringiensis isolates from Qatar and the Gulf region, an unexplored region, by performing an important programme of B. thuringiensis strains isolation from Qatar, screening using modern molecular techniques, gene investigation and bioassays. The screening of 151 B. thuringiensis strains isolated from Qatar, allowed the evidence of strains having different crystal forms. In fact, these strains produce parasporal crystals that have pyramidal, bipyramidal, cubical, spherical and amorphous forms. These results demonstrate the heterogeneity and the fact that they produce different bioinsecticides acting on different insect families. Among these B. thuringiensis strains, only 58 strains produce bipyramidal crystals (38 %). Similar results were obtained in the laboratory by Al-Zahra Attar and Sara Zakzouk who have screened respectively 199 and 87 other strains and obtained about the same ratio of bipyramidal crystal producing strains. The latter plasmid DNAs were analyzed showing different plasmid patterns. These results demonstrate that the bipyramidal crystal producing strains belong to different families. By PCR and electrophoresis of the amplified DNA fragments, we could predict the nature of the delta-endotoxin coding genes and the delta-endotoxin insecticidal activities. All the studied strain has protease activities except one that is protease minus. Such is very rare among Bacillus thuringiensis strains, but exists in Qatar. This strain is of high industrial value, since preventing proteolysis of delta-endotoxin and secreted active proteins and enzymes and could be considered as a suitable host for stable heterologous gene expression and protein secretion.


In line with the increased popularity of process modelling, a plethora of process modelling techniques has been proposed over time. Yet, only a few have been widely accepted by practitioner communities. This in turn leads to the question of the drivers of continued acceptance (continuance) of process modelling techniques. While researchers have extensively studied continuance and acceptance of information systems, to date, there appears to be no study that has investigated the issue of process modelling technique continuance. This paper addresses this gap by identifying from prior research theories that purport to explain the formation of an intention to continue using a process modelling technique and integrating them in a hybrid research model. We subject the theoretical model to an empirical test with process modellers. The resulting model provides an in-depth understanding of a process modeller's continuance decision.


The paper presents the basis of a project recently funded by FORMAS, Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning. Although there is consensus among planners and politicians that dense and compact cities are better for the environment than sprawling urban landscapes, much of what is currently being built is characterised by low urban density, 'sprawl'. Generally researchers agree that 'sprawl' in industrialised countries is driven by rising average income and decreasing transport costs. Urban households can afford to demand larger dwelling units as well as daily travel long dis-tances. Individual decisions are aggregated into a force that governs the development towards 'sprawl'. The aim of the project is to analyse how urban environments can offer desired qualities, by studying households' actual use and valuation of opportunities for work, service, leisure ac-tivities, culture and education within areas of different urban density. The contribution of the study will be a deeper understanding of what urban density means in the daily life of house-holds. The study will employ theories and concepts from planning research and environmental psy-chology. Urban density is a key concept. Range and variety of urban functions are then impor-tant additions to measurement of physical densities. Another key concept is 'affordance'. 'Affordance' is here a quality or asset within a specific environment, which can be perceived and used by an individual for carrying out a certain activity. The main study is a survey covering around 2000 households within the Stockholm area. Four areas will be chosen, and around 500 households in each, admitting control for socio-economic subgroups. Study areas will be selected to illustrate different urban densities and structure, from inner city to garden suburb. The survey will cover blocks of questions con-cerning the most important affordances inherent in the actual environment of the household, such as place of work, shops, schools and social networks. The questions will be constructed to grade perceived, potential, shaped and utilised affordances in their environment. The concept of 'affordance' will be tested as a tool for structured comparisons between urban areas regarding different aspects of density. The availability of affordances in different urban structures will be described and relationships between density, in all its aspects, and life styles can be tested.


This article deals with the principal problems in the historiography of Russian annals. A.A. Shakhmatov was the leading scholar in this field at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and his methodology remained at the centre of academic discussions for the entire century. K. Lachmann had been a leading figure in textual criticism prior to Shakhmatov. This article is the first attempt at a sustained comparison of the work of Lachmann and Shakhmatov.


IMPORTANCE
Understanding the impact of endometriosis symptoms on patients' activities of daily living (ADLs) is a priority to establish effective and personalized intervention programs.

OBJECTIVE
To explore limitations in ADLs and instrumental ADLs (IADLs) and their association with pelvic pain (PP), chronic fatigue, and pain-catastrophizing thoughts among women with endometriosis.

DESIGN
Cross-sectional study.

SETTING
Spain.

PARTICIPANTS
Two hundred thirty women with endometriosis. Outcomes and Measures: Information regarding performance of ADLs (Barthel Index) and IADLs (Lawton-Brody questionnaire), PP intensity (Numeric Rating Scale), chronic fatigue (Piper Fatigue Scale), and pain-catastrophizing thoughts (Pain Catastrophizing Scale) was gathered. Multivariate regression analyses were created, and mediating effects of fatigue and pain-catastrophizing thoughts on the association between PP and ADL and IADL limitations were assessed.

RESULTS
The prevalence of limitations in at least one ADL and one IADL was 22.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] [17.2, 28.1]) and 39.1% (95% CI [32.8, 45.5]), respectively. Limitations in bowel continence, housework, shopping, and meal preparation were reported most frequently. Women reporting severe PP showed higher risk for ADL (odds ratio [OR] = 3.33, 95% CI [1.10, 10.10]) and IADL (OR = 7.99, 95% CI [2.86, 22.34]) limitations. Chronic fatigue and pain-catastrophizing thoughts were also positively related to ADL-IADL limitations, showing a mediating effect on the association between PP and ADL-IADL limitations.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
This study reveals the widespread presence of difficulties in ADL-IADL performance among women with endometriosis, with some symptoms underlying these difficulties in occupational performance. This study points to the need for cost-effective occupational therapy interventions for affected women. What This Article Adds: This research shows that the occupational performance of women with endometriosis is frequently impaired; therefore, the effectiveness of occupational therapy interventions should be addressed in the near future.


The materials a product is made of play a major role in the user's product experiences. In design research nowadays more attention is given to these qualities of materials, besides the ongoing research on technical aspects of materials. How product designers take decisions about materials is one of the topics of research in this field. Decisions on materials play a role in different design methodologies. In some methodologies these decisions are related to experience aspects such as product personality. In others, decisions on materials are related to elements such as shape, manufacturing, function and use. However, there is no model that integrates all these elements of design. In this article we reviewed design methodology to make an integrated model on how design considerations interact and on how the elements of design causally relate. These models show the complexity of designing when including users' experiences, but help to understand the relations between decisions in designing such as materials and product personality decisions.


Additive Manufacturing allows for the personalized production of medical models, surgical guides and implants. While the potential for AM in medicine is well known, the implementation of AM in clinical settings remains a challenge since it involves multiple independent parties, technologies and software tools. Recent advances in digitalization allow for more cohesive processes in the AM workflow. We review possible workflow implementations involving state-of-the-art printing technologies and materials, highlighting communication and legal issues.


History Space is an innovative phone app that unlocks the colourful stories behind some of the key attractions on Northern Ireland's tourist trail.Using the latest mobile technologies including augmented reality and geo-location, the History Space app provides visitors to Mussenden and Downhill with new forms of interpretive content that will engage and immerse them in the history of the Earl Bishop's estate in innovative and exciting ways.The app features a series of imaginative gesture-controlled games – which give further insight the Earl Bishop's colourful character - the Midnight Philanderer, Racing the Bishops' Clergymen, Fishing in the Black Glen Lough and Playing the Downhill Harp – with the Earl-Bishop as narrator. History Space: Downhill Demesne is available for download from the iTunes Store.


Although Willebrord Snellius was one of the most eminent scientists of the Dutch Golden Age, never before had a substantial volume been devoted to his life and work. Liesbeth de Wreede's thesis fills this lacuna. It gives an overview of Snellius's life and work and analyses a number of case studies in depth. The focus is in particular on Snellius's development of the style of humanist mathematics and its roots, and his predilection for 'exactness', that is, a clear demarcation of allowable concepts in geometry. In the biographical part of the thesis, De Wreede discusses Snellius's life and work, and the backgrounds necessary to understand his mathematical oeuvre: Leiden University, humanist scholarship as it was practised there, mathematical practice in the rest of the Dutch Republic, the ideas of Petrus Ramus, and life and work of Willebrord's father Rudolph. Snellius (1580-1626) taught courses at the university, and was a scientific adviser for his colleagues and the government of the Dutch Republic. Moreover, he published many works, both his own books as editions and translations of works of others, all except one written in Latin. He covered almost the complete domain of the mathematical sciences: geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, navigation, surveying and optics. The first two case chapters discuss cases from mixed mathematics. The first of these is devoted to the way in which Snellius calculated the length of the circumference of the earth more precisely than his predecessors, as explained in his 'Eratosthenes Batavus'. The second discusses the patronage relationships between Landgrave Maurice of Hessen, and Rudolph and Willebrord Snellius. This study is largely based on hitherto unknown letters. The content of Willebrord Snellius's astronomical works, both dedicated to Maurice of Hessen, is related to the patronage relationship. The next three chapters discuss topics from pure mathematics. The first of these introduces the 'Fundamenta Arithmetica et Geometrica', Snellius's translation of a book by Ludolph van Ceulen. This translation is a rich source for Snellius's thoughts about acceptable mathematics, because he reacted to Van Ceulen's approach in his translations and his own commentaries, thus making the book into a dialogue between a representative of the practitioners' and one of the academic tradition. The dedicatory letter is analysed extensively, because it gives Snellius's opinion on the issue of the use of numbers in geometry, an important problem in the period, in a nutshell. The next chapter discusses Snellius's contributions to the solution of the triangle division problem, a popular geometrical problem in his period. In the last case chapter, Snellius's criticism on the traditional formulation and proof of Heron's Theorem (relating the area of a triangle to the lengths of its sides) is central. He protested against the four-dimensional magnitude that was present in the traditional approach, because such an entity could not exist in geometry. Snellius's study of the cyclic quadrilateral also receives attention. In the final chapter, all results of the previous chapters are used to sketch a complete image of Snellius's mathematics and Snellius as a mathematician.


The red spider mite (Tetranchus cinnabarinus Boisduval) is one of the main pests in the world and the risk of invasion posed by this mite is becoming more and more serious with regard to increasing areas of planting cassava in China. It is urgent to analyze the potential geography distribution of T. cinnabarinus among cassava in China. The environmental suitability of T. cinnabarinus in China was studied in this paper using Maxent and ArcGIS, based on the biological data and known distribution of T. cinnabarinus. The results showed that there were 4 levels of suitability assessment of T. cinnabarinus in China. The prediction showed T. cinnabarinus mainly distributed in South China, especially in Hainan, Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. The potential geographic distribution of T. cinnabarinus in China defined in this paper constructed the theory basis and technical support for scientifically forming of control measures for T. cinnabarinus in China.


Ventricular tachyarrhythmias (VA) remain a major cause of sudden cardiac death (SCD) and can present as a first manifestation of coronary artery disease (CAD) or in patients with known CAD. In the population with known CAD, therapies for the prevention of SCD include medication, implantable devices, and catheter ablation. As the latter two represent invasive interventions carrying their own substantial risk, therapeutic decisions should be based on accurate risk assessment for the prediction of VA.

One of the major shortcomings of the current guidelines for device-based therapy in the primary prevention of SCD in CAD is the notion that the decision for an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantation is based on two simple criteria, that is, a cutoff for a left ventricular (LV)- ejection fraction (EF) ≤35% and an assessment of the clinical severity of heart failure (NYHA Class).1 With this background, it appears evident that a crude measure of LV-EF and a subjective estimation of the NYHA class alone cannot satisfy the complexity behind the far-reaching decision for a drastic and expensive treatment strategy with multiple consequences for the patient. Up to 9.5% of all patients will suffer from at least one complication after cardiac electronic device implantation such as psychological stigmatisation as device carrier, periprocedural complications, device-related endocarditis often requiring lead extraction and long-term antibiotic treatment and last but not least inappropriate shocks, all associated with an important morbidity and mortality.2 The fact that not more than about one third of the patients who receive an ICD benefit from an appropriate shock while the large majority does not require …


Motivated by applications in neuroimaging analysis, we propose a new regression model, Sparse TensOr REsponse regression (STORE), with a tensor response and a vector predictor. STORE embeds two key sparse structures: element-wise sparsity and low-rankness. It can handle both a non-symmetric and a symmetric tensor response, and thus is applicable to both structural and functional neuroimaging data. We formulate the parameter estimation as a non-convex optimization problem, and develop an efficient alternating updating algorithm. We establish a non-asymptotic estimation error bound for the actual estimator obtained from the proposed algorithm. This error bound reveals an interesting interaction between the computational efficiency and the statistical rate of convergence. When the distribution of the error tensor is Gaussian, we further obtain a fast estimation error rate which allows the tensor dimension to grow exponentially with the sample size. We illustrate the efficacy of our model through intensive simulations and an analysis of the Autism spectrum disorder neuroimaging data.


We describe an optimization-based methodology that Western Digital implemented to support its site-qualification decisions; that is, which sites(s) are qualified to produce each of its products. Qualifying a product at a site commonly takes several months and hundreds of hours of engineering effort. These decisions are especially challenging because Western Digital Silicon Operations offers thousands of products; and demands more than a month or two into the future are very uncertain, as they are with many electronic products. Therefore, because shortages result in lost sales, the company must consider both expected demand and demand uncertainty. We solve the problem as a mixed-integer stochastic program with multiple stages of recourse, using a linear programming solver for the recourse stages and a greedy heuristic to determine the site qualifications. Western Digital deployed the model starting in the first quarter of 2015 and established a quarterly process for making site-qualification decisions. The...


G. PORTER ELLIOTT* It really is a ludicrous situation. When I open a Virgin Megastore in New York I am welcomed with open arms, just as Tower Records is in London. But try to operate an air service between New York and Boston, using US aircraft and US crew, and governments scream that I am mad.n -Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic Airways I. INTRODUCTION Air transport may well be the quintessential transnational industry. Every year more than one billion passengers world-wide travel by plane,2 generating billions of dollars in revenue.3 Increasingly, these planes cross international borders, taking tourists and businesspersons to their destinations abroad.4 Under customary international law,5 as well as by treaty,6 nations historically have reserved, as part of their sovereignty, exclusive rights to the skies above them. In an increasingly interdependent world, however, countries are steadily opening their skies to foreign airlines in exchange for reciprocal, if not equilateral, air rights.7 At the same time, countries are cognizant of the adverse effect that opening their skies to foreign airlines may have on national carriers. This occurs especially when third-country airlines potentially enjoy competitive advantages based on favorable domestic laws governing air transport.8 Accordingly, the mission of every country with an airline capable and desirous of handling transnational services is to facilitate its airlines' access to foreign markets,9 while simultaneously protecting its own market from an influx of foreign carriers.10 Meanwhile, with the growing global trend towards international air transport and deregulation,ll airlines are more eager to form alliances, particularly with foreign counterparts, to increase the efficiency of their international operations.12 This is particularly true with respect to U.S. and European carriers, who view cooperation as a means to link networks through "hub and spoke" operations,13 allowing them to achieve important economies of scale.14 Such alliances inevitably raise antitrust issues, especially considering that the airline industry is dominated by a relatively small number of market participants.15 In addition to being subjected to scrutiny by the competition authorities of both the United Statesls and the European state at issue, such transatlantic airline alliances ultimately may need to satisfy European Community (E.C. or Community) competition rules.17 A conflict often arises between the desire of governments to open foreign markets to their airlines and the realization that proposed airline alliances approved to meet this objective may infringe antitrust laws.ls In the case of Europe and the United States, the result is an often bitter struggle over air transport rights,lg the enforcement of antitrust law, and the protection of national airlines. This battle over the transatlantic skies is being waged by the governments of the European countries-acting independentlyand by the United States.20 The results of the battle are reflected in the bilateral agreements negotiated between the United States and some of these governments, in which the United States has, thus far, enjoyed the upper hand.21 The European Commission (Commission), desperately seeking a role to play, hovers somewhere in the clouds for the time being.22 Although both the United States and many European governments have openly denounced the Commission's recent assertions of competence in external air transport matters,23 it is probably only a matter of time before the Commission begins negotiating on behalf of the Member States in this area.24 Adding to the existing turbulence, the Community has recently awarded cabotage rights to the airlines of its Member States,25 a final measure in completing the liberalization of the European aviation sector.26 As of April 1, 1997, Member State carriers are permitted to provide commercial routes between two points situated exclusively within another Member State. …


Objectives:Few reports address the relationship between hemodynamic variables and the cardiogenic shock outcome in critically ill patients. The present study aimed to investigate the association between hemodynamic variables and early cardiogenic shock mortality in critically ill patients. Design:Retrospective, single-center cohort study. Setting:Tertiary academic hospital's 36-bed multidisciplinary intensive care. Patients:Initial presentation with cardiogenic shock. Measurements and Main Results:The authors retrospectively analyzed medical information and the hemodynamic variables (recorded during the first 24 hr following admission to the ICU) of patients with cardiogenic shock. For all the patients, the Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, cardiac index, cardiac power index, and continuous hemodynamic values following the first 24 hours of admission were reviewed. Mortality within 28 days was the primary endpoint. All the variables were then compared with survival and nonsurvival status and those variables with a significant association in the univariate analysis were entered into a multivariate logistic regression model. Seventy-one patients were included. Among them, 26 (37%) died within 28 days after ICU admission and were classified as "nonsurvivors." The minimum value for diastolic arterial blood pressure during the first 24 hours was independently associated with the 28-day mortality in the univariate and multivariate analyses model. This model performed better than the model using the Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, even when assessing the effect of inotrope and vasoactive treatments at 24, 48, and 72 hours. Conclusions:In the first 24 hours of an ICU admission, the minimum diastolic arterial blood pressure was a hemodynamic variable that was independently associated with 28-day mortality in cardiogenic shock patients.


Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages, by Jonathan Elukin. Princeton University Press, 2007. 193 pp. $24.95. With Living Together, Living Apart, Jonathan Elukin sets out to address one of the most important yet least studied conundrums in the field of Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages. "How," Elukin asks, "did Jewish communities continue to survive in Europe despite facing what seemed to be endless persecution, violence, and expulsion?" (p. 1). Arguing that the focus has for too long been on Jewish suffering at the hands of R. I. Moore's "persecuting society," Elukin sets out to restore the balance, providing a survey of Jewish-Christian relations at their most peaceful and settled. In the first three chapters, Elukin searches medieval Europe from late antiquity through the thirteenth century for examples of Christian-Jewish coexistence. Chapter One, covering late antiquity through the early Middle Ages, compares the fate of Jews in 5th-century Minorca, Gregory of Tour's account of Met ovingian Gaul, Gregot y the Gteat's impressions of Italy at the turn of the 7th century, and the legislation of Visigothic Spain. Chapter Two explores how the development of separate religious and secular identities in the Carolingian empire acted as a buffer between Church-sanctioned violence and the everyday lives of Jews, before exploring the development of a fierce local loyalty that trumped religious difference after the breakup of a united Catolingian power. A quick look north, at the close relationship between Jews and some German rulers, concludes the chapter. Chapters Three and Four explore the High Middle Ages. The former focuses on the cultural and intellectual integration made possible by the Hebraism that swept through academic Europe during the twelfth -century renaissance, as well as the increasingly accessible experience of conversion, while the latter explores the social connections that led Christians to shelter their Jewish neighbors during times of crisis. Elukin writes for a non-specialist authence - the book is a response to questions from his undergraduate classrooms - and the work provides a good general survey of exactly how Europe's Jews survived, and indeed thrived, in between violent pogroms and persecutions. In the final two chapters, Elukin takes a more thematic approach to his subject, reassessing the impact of "violence" and "expulsion" on the attitude and outlook of Europe's medieval Jews. Elukin seeks to downplay the severity of both. The anti-Jewish polemic, including tales of ritual murder and blood libel, long held up as prime examples of medieval anti-Judaism, he claims, "probably circulated only among a literate clerical elite" (p. …


Outcome in patients with abdominal abscesses treated at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, between 1973 and 1978 (group 1) was compared with that in patients treated between 1981 and 1986 (group 2). Mortality was less in group 2 patients (21% vs 39% in group 1). The decrease in mortality in group 2 was accompanied by a greater percentage of successful predrainage localization (74% vs 55% in group 1), successful initial drainage (76% vs 55% in group 1), and decreased predrainage organ failure (23% vs 52% in group 1). Because failure of initial drainage and predrainage organ failure were associated with increased mortality, improvement in both of these criteria contributed substantially to the lower mortality in group 2 patients. There were no differences in mortality, in initial success in drainage, or in length of hospital stay when 29 group 2 patients who underwent percutaneous drainage were compared with 37 patients who underwent surgical drainage. Mortality (22% vs 21%) and initial success (78% vs 72%) were similar for patients who underwent surgical and percutaneous drainage, respectively. We conclude that initial success in localization and drainage of the abscess is more important than whether drainage is surgical or percutaneous.


Millions of tons of hazardous wastes have been produced in the United States in the last 60 years which have been dispersed into the air, into water, and on and under the ground. Using new population-level data that follows cohorts of children born in the state of Florida between 1994 and 2002, this paper examines the short and long-term effects of prenatal exposure to environmental toxicants on children living within two miles of a Superfund site, toxic waste sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as being particularly severe. We compare siblings living within two miles from a Superfund site at birth where at least one sibling was conceived before or during cleanup of the site, and the other(s) was conceived after the site cleanup was completed using a family fixed effects model. Children conceived to mothers living within 2 miles of a Superfund site before it was cleaned are 7.4 percentage points more likely to repeat a grade, have 0.06 of a standard deviation lower test scores, and are 6.6 percentage points more likely to be suspended from school than their siblings who were conceived after the site was cleaned. Children conceived to mothers living within one mile of a Superfund site before it was cleaned are 10 percentage points more likely to be diagnosed with a cognitive disability than their later born siblings as well. These results tend to be larger and are more statistically significant than the estimated effects of proximity to a Superfund site on birth outcomes. This study suggests that the cleanup of severe toxic waste sites has significant positive effects on a variety of long-term cognitive and developmental outcomes for children.


Background: The treatment for cancer is often complex, involving many disciplines and therapies, which makes it difficult for Australians living in rural and remote areas to access the full range of care required within their local community. Aim: The Cancer Service Networks National Demonstration Program (CanNET) is a Commonwealth initiative which aimed to improve access to cancer care by linking regional and metropolitan cancer services. Method: Up to $7 million was made available across seven jurisdictions over a two year period from 2007 to 2009. This funding was to assist the development of sustainable links between cancer specialists and other leading health professionals in metropolitan cancer services and their colleagues in rural and regional centres. Each jurisdiction also made a contribution to the development of the cancer service networks. The cancer service network model is underpinned by: active consumer involvement; the development of agreed referral pathways; a multidisciplinary approach to cancer control; involvement of primary care and allied health professionals; championing of evidence-based practice; access to continuing professional development and training; and integration of rural and regional cancer services into a broad practice network. Results: Despite having commenced from a different stage in the evolution of these reforms, each jurisdiction has made significant progress towards the establishment of a cancer service network. Achievements include national collaboration on the development of a Directory of Services focusing on identifying Initial Cancer Multidisciplinary Assessment Teams using an agreed template and the use of standardised mini audit tools to assess the degree to which patients receive evidence based cancer care. A national evaluation framework and tools to measure the impact and outcome on consumers, health professionals and the health care system have been developed. A collaboration strategy to facilitate sharing of knowledge and development of common resources across the networks was also implemented. A consumer survey exploring people's experiences with and perceptions of cancer care delivery is being conducted across five jurisdictions. Conclusion: CanNET is an approach that enables formal linkages to be developed so that health professionals can work in a co-ordinated and safe manner. Cancer service networks offer the opportunity to improve outcomes by providing agreed standards that accord with best available evidence and to ensure that more people have access to quality treatment and care closer to home where practicable.


Introduction: Leprosy is an ancient deforming disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae, which is still poorly understood and often feared by the general public and even by some in the health care professions. Fortunately, the outlook for patients has dramatically improved over the last three decades with the introduction of multi-drug treatment and management strategies that have somewhat diminished the stigma of this diagnosis. Here we report a case of leprosy of larynx. Case Report: A 45-year-old Afghan man who had presented with cough,dyspnea and hoarseness since many years ago was referred to our clinic due to worsening complaints. Because of the demonstration of acid fast bacilli in the smear of his sputum,diagnosis of tuberculosis was made and anti-tuberculosis treatment was initiated. However, he developed fever and his symptoms worsened,which led to his admission. On examination, there was a tender erythematous nodule in the right supraclavicular region, loss of eyebrows and eyelashes,and disseminated hyper-and-hypo pigmented cutaneous lesions on the abdomen, thorax and back. Chest x-ray was normal. In order to rule out laryngeal tuberculosis, laryngoscopy was done and granulomatous lesions were seen. Laryngeal and skin biopsy was performed. Both specimens revealed numerous acid fast bacilli, macrophages and foamy cells which were suggestive of lepromatous leprosy. Treatment was started based on multibacillary regime of WHO multidrug therapy. Conclusion: In conclusion, this report highlights the importance of systemic involvement in lepromatous leprosy, especially when the initial presentation is laryngitis or respiratory symptoms. Laryngeal leprosy may be mistaken with tuberculosis or laryngitis due to respiratory problems and the existence of acid fast bacilli in respiratory secretions.


'This is an important book. We are entering a new era. Mainstream politics has become decadent. We need to think afresh. This book helps that complicated process.' - The Rt Hon Clare Short MP This wide-ranging, multidisciplinary collection of original papers explores the link between globalisation, citizenship and the war on terror. Ideas from sociology, criminology, political science and development studies are incorporated into the contributors' examination of the nature of globalisation and the war on terror. Using theoretical frameworks, analysing current issues and reflecting on existing literature and past events, they illustrate how the processes of globalisation and the war on terror are shaping and defining citizenship both globally and within nation states. © Maurice Mullard and Bankole A. Cole 2007. All rights reserved.


We present a new approximate inference algorithm for Deep Boltzmann Machines (DBM's), a generative model with many layers of hidden variables. The algorithm learns a separate "recognition" model that is used to quickly initialize, in a single bottom-up pass, the values of the latent variables in all hidden layers. We show that using such a recognition model, followed by a combined top-down and bottom-up pass, it is possible to efficiently learn a good generative model of high-dimensional highly-structured sensory input. We show that the additional computations required by incorporating a top-down feedback plays a critical role in the performance of a DBM, both as a generative and discriminative model. Moreover, inference is only at most three times slower compared to the approximate inference in a Deep Belief Network (DBN), making large-scale learning of DBM's practical. Finally, we demonstrate that the DBM's trained using the proposed approximate inference algorithm perform well compared to DBN's and SVM's on the MNIST handwritten digit, OCR English letters, and NORB visual object recognition tasks.


Background & Aim : Stress management is one of the effective methods on health and job satisfaction of Health staff. Stress management through group therapy on health and job satisfaction of staff has been less investigated. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of stress management group therapy on nurses' job satisfaction and general health. Methods : This is a quasi-experimental study which conducted on 20 nurses of 9-Day hospital in Torbat Heydariyeh city. At first, two standard questionnaires of general health (Goldberg and Hillier) and job satisfaction (Linz) were completed by both intervention and control groups. The intervention group participated in 8 sessions of stress management group therapy and the control group received no intervention. After the end of the last session of group therapy, two questionnaires were completed by both groups again. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent and paired T-test using SPSS software version 20. Results: The mean and standard deviation of participants' age was 38±7.50. Before the study, two groups were not significantly different in terms of background. At the beginning of the study, job satisfaction and general health scores of intervention and control groups were not different (p>0.05). There was no significant difference between job satisfaction and general health in control group, before and after the study. However, there was a significant difference between two mentioned variables in the intervention group (p<0/05). Stress management group therapy increased job satisfaction and general health of nurses. Conclusion : Based on the results, it is recommended that stress management techniques should be applied to increase job satisfaction and general health among nurses.


The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is continuing the process of engaging stakeholders on issues associated with possible changes to the radiation protection regulations contained in 10 CFR Part 20, and other parts of the NRC regulations, to increase alignment with international recommendations. The Commission is particularly seeking to explore implications, as appropriate and where scientifically justified, of greater alignment with ICRP Publication 103. Other information from national and international sources is also being considered. Given that the NRC regulations provide adequate protection, the discussion has been focusing on discerning the benefits and burdens associated with revising the radiation protection regulatory framework. The NRC staff provided the Commission with recommendations in April, 2012, SECY-12-006, and the Commission provided direction to the NRC staff in December, 2012, SRM-SECY-12-0064. Issues of particular interest within the medical community include the use of updated scientific methodologies and terminology, the occupational dose limits including the limits for the lens of the eye, ALARA and alternative approaches to deal with individual protection at or near the current dose limit, use of SI units, and reporting requirements.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Participants will become familiar with key radiation protection regulation and guidance changes that are under consideration. 2. Participants will provide feedback on proposed approaches to presenters. 3. Participants will be prepared to facilitate engagement of their facility and colleagues in the ongoing dialogue about changes.


Social contacts are a key transmission channel of infectious diseases spread by the respiratory or close-contact route, such as COVID-19. There is no evidence, however, on the question of whether the nature and the organisation of work affect the spread of COVID-19 in different countries. I have developed a methodology to measure country-specific levels of occupational exposure to contagion driven by social contacts. I combined six indicators based on Occupation Information Network (O*NET) and the European Working Condition Survey (EWCS) data. I then applied them to 26 European countries, and found substantial cross-country differences in levels of exposure to contagion in comparable occupations. The resulting country-level measures of levels of exposure to contagion (excluding health professions) predict the growth in COVID-19 cases, and the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the early stage of pandemic (up to four weeks after the 100th case). The relationship between levels of occupational exposure to contagion and the spread of COVID-19 is particularly strong for workers aged 45-64. I found that 20-25% of the cross-country variance in numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths can be attributed to cross-country differences in levels of occupational exposure to contagion in European countries. My findings are robust to controlling for the stringency of containment policies, such as lockdowns and school closures. They are also driven by country-specific patterns of social contacts at work, rather than by occupational structures. Thus, I conclude that measuring workplace interactions may help to predict the next waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.


Summary
Reliance on subsistence agriculture means the impact of stresses and shocks (such as droughts or floods) are felt keenly by rural poor people, who depend directly on food system outcomes for their survival, with profound implications for the security of their livelihoods and welfare. However, such stresses and shocks will not necessarily lead to negative impacts, as risks and uncertainties, often associated with seasonality, are embedded in the practice of agriculture and there is considerable experience of coping and risk management strategies among people working in this sector. With climate change, the magnitude and frequency of stresses and shocks is changing and approaches such as social protection, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) will be needed to bolster local resilience and supplement people's experience.

This study examines the opportunities for linking social protection, CCA and DRR in the context of agriculture and rural growth, exploring whether linking these three approaches together will help enhance resilience to shocks and stresses in agriculture-dependent rural communities. The study does this by (i) reviewing conceptual and policy-related similarities and differences between the three disciplines, by (ii) collecting evidence from case studies where climate change-resilient social protection approaches have been trialled and by (iii) developing an adaptive social protection framework that highlight opportunities better coordination.

This paper suggests social protection and DRR measures designed to limit damages from shocks and stresses may not be sufficient in the longer term. For social protection to be resilient to climate change impacts, it will need to consider how reducing dependence on climate sensitive livelihood activities can be part of adaptive strategies. Similarly, CCA and DRR cannot effectively address the root causes of poverty and vulnerability without taking a differentiated view of poverty, something that further integration with social protection can help with.


Optimal control problems for partial differential equations of evolution, mostly of parabolic type, are considered. The means of control are a nonhomogeneous boundary condition or forcing term. A hierarchical control problem is shown to be equivalent to two coupled linear least-squares problems and is solved using numerical methods involving the Singular Value Decomposition. This is an effective computational approach for linear, timeinvariant equations if the dimension of the discrete problem is not too large. Sufficient conditions for convergence of the solution of the discrete control problem to the solution of the original problem are given in the case of a linear state equation and a quadratic objective function. The essential condition is a convergence condition on the derived, discrete adjoint equation. A spectral preconditioner is introduced, applicable to iterative solutions of control problems for a parabolic evolution equation involving a diagonalizable operator. Condition number estimates for the preconditioned problem are proven, and numerical experiments verify the effectiveness of the preconditioner. To overcome controllability difficulties for systems acted upon by pointwise sources, the strategy of allowing the location of the controller to move with time is investigated. In particular, the case when the controller is given a sinusoidally-shaped path is studied, analytically and numerically. The feasibility of the optima.I-control approach for flow-control problems is demonstrated by numerical experiments for an unsteady two-dimensional channel flow modeled by the Navier-Stokes equations for a viscous, incompressible fluid. The Reynolds number is high enough for nonlinear effects to be important. The vorticity level in the domain is successfully damped by suction and blowing at a part of the boundary. A quasi-Newton algorithm solves the associated minimization problem. To obtain an accurate expression for the gradient of the objective function, the adjoint equation is derived in the fully discrete case. A memory-saving device allows memory requirements to be traded against some extra computations. This avoids the need of simultaneous storage of the solution at all time steps.


Transcribed from 78 rpm recordings and preserved here long after many of the records have disappeared, this collection of nearly three hundred songs from more than one hundred singers celebrates the diversity of feeling and form that defines the blues. Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Memphis Minnie, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters are represented with their lesser-known contemporaries--Barefoot Bill, Barbecue Bob, Bumble Bee Slim, and Black Ivory King. This complete anthology also features lyrics by Blind Blake, Victoria Spivey, Blind Willie Johnson, "Funny Paper" Smith, Texas Alexander, Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Ma Yancey, King Solomon Hill, Skip James, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Son House, Willie Brown, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Sleepy John Estes, Rev. Gary Davis, Roosevelt Sykes, Peetie Wheatstraw, Sonny Boy Williamson, Kokomo Arnold, Tampa Red, Howlin'Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Charlie Patton, and more than 100 others. Dozens of illustrations are included.


This research project focuses on the development and validation of test methods to evaluate the potential oxidation of sulphide-bearing aggregates, which can cause severe damage when used in concrete. The mechanism of damage is believed to consist of two parts: (a) the oxidation of sulphide minerals, which results in the formation of ferric hydroxide, and (b) the formation of sulphuric acid, which reacts with calcium hydroxide in concrete leading to an internal sulphate attack. Both parts produce a volume increase, damaging the concrete. A simple, quick and economical test method was developed and used to test thirty-one aggregates with different sulphur content. This test involves soaking the aggregate in an oxidizing agent at room temperature, washing the aggregate on a specific sieve, and drying it at 80°C. The soaking and drying cycle is repeated and the disintegration of the aggregates is measured as % mass loss. The composition of the oxidizing solution was evaluated, and the assessment of the aggregate was related to the presence of iron and sulphur ions in the solution after the test. The aggregate oxidation test developed here is anticipated to be adopted as a screening test method by North American standards due to its simplicity and applicability to a wide range of aggregates. The expansion of recently developed mortar bar samples containing a limited number of aggregates proves that the test can show expansion in aggregates with sulphide as well as high silica content; however, the high-silica aggregate did not show significant expansion in the second stage of the test, unlike the sulphide-bearing aggregates. The test was examined for its ability to evaluate the effects of supplementary cementing materials (SCM`s) on mitigating the damage in mortars containing sulphide-bearing aggregates. The results revealed that extended exposure to the oxidizing agent caused damage in the bar due to reasons other than the oxidation of sulphide phases when SCM with high reactive alumina is used. In addition, the results revealed that silica fume and low-calcium fly ash were effective in mitigating the damage, however, the efficacy of SCM`s is mainly linked to their ability to reduce the penetration of oxidizing agents into the mortar bars. These results need to be validated using field investigations. Concrete samples were tested under different conditions in an attempt to replicate the damage mechanisms in concrete samples under lab conditions. Some of the testing regimes showed promising results and are recommended for future studies.


The traditional black press is typically conceptualized as legacy print publications that are produced by and for African Americans and that advocate for the race. Yet in the current digital environment, black-targeted websites that primarily produce entertainment news and sites that target African-American readers but are owned by white media companies create ambiguity. While research has been conducted on how mainstream publications have adapted to the digital landscape, this paper examines how that adaptation has occurred among black press outlets. This study investigates how producers and consumers of black news content online are troubling previous definitions of the black press. By examining how black news publishers of print and online content conceptualize their publications and how they are situated in the new media age, I am able to elucidate the affect that the changing digital landscape has on understandings of the black press.


The current article presents the results of a study which developed an Italian adaptation of Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Moorman, and Fetter's (1990) questionnaire, measuring organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) by referring to the following dimensions: Altruism, Conscientiousness, Sportsmanship, Courtesy, and Civic Virtue. The original questionnaire was translated into Italian and modified in order to allow people to report how often the various citizenship behaviors come into play in their working environment. A group of 1066 participants (50.3% men) took part in the study. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses showed that only three of the factors (Altruism, Conscientiousness, and Civic Virtue) fit the data well. Results and applications are discussed.


As digital communication technologies have evolved over the past few decades, the convergence of network structure and accessibility with hardware and software advances has allowed individuals to interact in various, even contradictory, ways. They can explore, hide, reach out, evaluate, connect, negotiate, exchange, and coordinate to a greater degree than ever before. Furthermore, this has translated to an ever-increasing number of users interacting with information in unprecedented ways and, due to device portability, in totally new physical locations. Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare update each other simultaneously across application platforms with near-real time photos and impressions of places; mobile exercise applications allow users to track their own movements as well as view where others in their geographic vicinity went running; Yelp users can read selective reviews from social network friends and strangers in their community on a specific restaurant; and Facebook friends can see what their peers bought, listened to, and read - from anywhere they are able to access the Internet. Most of these apps update across platforms enabling both maximum reach across a user's social group as well as a highly selective direction of information to a subset of their social network. Just as the rapidly evolving landscape of connectivity and communications technology is transforming the individual's experience of the social sphere, what it means to participate in civic life is also changing, both in how people do it and how it is measured. Civic engagement includes all the ways in which individuals attend to the concerns of public life, how one learns about and participates in all of the issues and contexts beyond one's immediate private or intimate sphere. New technologies and corresponding social practices, from social media to mobile reporting, are providing different ways to record, share, and amplify that attentiveness. Media objects or tools that impact civic life can be understood within two broad types: those designed specifically with the purpose of community engagement in mind (for instance, a digital game for local planning or an app to give feedback to city council) or generic tools that are subsequently appropriated for engaging a community (such as Twitter or Facebook's role in the Arab Spring or London riots). Moreover, these tools can mediate any number of relationships between or among citizens, local organizations, or government institutions. Digitally mediated civic engagement runs the gamut of phenomena from organizing physical protests using social media (e.g., Occupy), to using digital tools to hack institutions (e.g., Anonymous), to using city-produced mobile applications to access and coproduce government services, to using digital platforms for deliberating. Rather than try to identify what civic media tools look like in the midst of such an array of possibilities (by focusing on in depth examples or case studies), going forward we will instead focus on how digital tools expand the context of civic life and motivations for engagement, and what participating in civic life looks like in a digital era. We present this literature review as a means of exploring the intersection of theories of human behavior with the motivations for and benefits of engaging in civic life. We bring together literature from behavioral economics, sociology, psychology and communication studies to reveal how civic actors, institutions, and decision-making processes have been traditionally understood, and how emerging media tools and practices are forcing their reconsideration.


Anyone who develops software for a living needs a proven way to produce it better, faster, and cheaper. The Productive Programmer offers critical timesaving and productivity tools that you can adopt right away, no matter what platform you use. Master developer Neal Ford not only offers advice on the mechanics of productivity-how to work smarter, spurn interruptions, get the most out your computer, and avoid repetition-he also details valuable practices that will help you elude common traps, improve your code, and become more valuable to your team. You'll learn to: Write the test before you write the codeManage the lifecycle of your objects fastidiouslyBuild only what you need now, not what you might need laterApply ancient philosophies to software developmentQuestion authority, rather than blindly adhere to standardsMake hard things easier and impossible things possible through meta-programmingBe sure all code within a method is at the same level of abstractionPick the right editor and assemble the best tools for the job This isn't theory, but the fruits of Ford's real-world experience as an Application Architect at the global IT consultancy ThoughtWorks. Whether you're a beginner or a pro with years of experience, you'll improve your work and your career with the simple and straightforward principles in The Productive Programmer.


Dzine's fusion of commerce, kustom kulture craft and high art have made him an international sensation in locations as various as the Venice Biennale-where he famously customized an 18-foot boat into a blinged-out multimedia installation-and Chicago, where he first made a name for himself as a teenage graffiti artist. In September 2011, Dzine launched two kustom nail art salons in New York: one in the lobby window of the New Museum, at which various local nail artists offered free nail designs to visitors; and the other at Salon 94 Freemans gallery, where a kustom chandelier, four jewel-encrusted paintings, a gold-leaf hutch and flamboyant, wearable nail sculptures were exhibited alongside a nail salon with a part-time manicurist. Produced in the "Get Nailed at the New Museum" and "Imperial Nail Salon"-these events were huge hits, coinciding as they did with kustom nail art's massive international popularity, and led to the publication of this luxurious volume, which celebrates and contextualizes the kustom nail movement. "Nailed" looks at the history of nail design and adornment across cultures, documenting contemporary nail art with specially commissioned photography of the phenomenon from across the globe. With an introduction by "Paper" cofounder Kim Hastreiter and contributions by Luis Gispert, Yone, Jamel Shabazz and Fab 5 Freddy, "Nailed" includes overviews of Dzine's "Get Nailed at the New Museum" and "Imperial Nail Salon" projects.Chicago-based artist Carlos Rolon (born 1970), aka Dzine, is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation award for Painting and Sculpture. His work has been included in exhibitions and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; the Museo del Barrio, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Bass Museum of Art, Miami.


The Current Employment Statistics State and Area (CESSA) program produces monthly industry employment estimates for subnational areas based on a survey of about 634,000 nonfarm worksites. Before estimates are published, they go through several screening procedures at the micro (individual report) and macro (estimation cell) level. CESSA adapted a process based on the Fay-Herriot model for extreme outlier detection at the macro level. The standardized difference between the sample-based estimate (Y1) and the synthetic part (Y2) of the model are used to identify significant deviations as candidates for macro editing. In those cases where the standardized difference exceeds a given threshold and analysts cannot find economic reasons to support the extreme movement, the modeled estimate is used to replace the direct sample-based estimate. This paper examines the process that CESSA uses to identify extreme macro outliers and its application to employment estimates at the state and area level. The effect of this procedure on error variance and bias when adjusting extreme estimates at different standardized cut-off levels is explored in an empirical study.


It has been nearly ten years since the Supreme Court's seminal decision in United States v. Booker, in which the Court invalidated the mandatory application of the United States Sentencing Guidelines. In the cases that followed, the Court addressed subsidiary issues regarding the application of the Guidelines and the scope of appellate review. However, despite — or perhaps because of — these opinions, there is little consensus regarding the status and extent of appellate review, as well as the discretion afforded sentencing courts. More troubling, what consensus there is seems to permit judges to impose any sentence they wish, as long as the appropriate sentencing procedures are followed. As a result, we are in danger of returning to "the shameful lack of parity, which the Guidelines sought to remedy."The Sentencing Reform Act and the Sentencing Guidelines were designed to reduce disparity in sentencing and to reign in what one commentator described as a "lawless system." However, the Guidelines as ultimately conceived drastically limited the sentencing judge's ability to impose a sentence that was appropriate for the conduct and culpability of the defendant, creating a different kind of sentencing disparity. The current, post-Booker system provides more guidance than the pre-Guidelines system, but permits sentencing judges to disregard the Guidelines and develop their own sentencing policy. As a result, rather than having a system that allows for sentences to be tailored to individual defendants, the current system allows sentences to be imposed based on the penal philosophy of individual judges. This will inevitably lead to unwarranted sentencing disparity. This article traces the recent history of criminal sentencing and, relying on the influential works of John Rawls and H.L.A. Hart on theories of punishment, argues for a better system that allows for both guidance to sentencing judges and appropriately individualized sentencing. My recommendation, although equally applicable to any federal sentence, will be examined through the lens of tax sentencing.This paper was presented at Villanova Law Review's Norman J. Shachoy Symposium on U.S. Tax Administration, Sept. 27, 2013.


The article provides a description of Australian approaches to 'merit' and an overview of the other symposium articles on the application of merit in China and Taiwan. The term 'merit' is commonly used in Australia, China, and Taiwan as an important attribute of good government service, but it means different things in different countries, reflecting both different institutional arrangements and differences in culture.

Australia's current application of the merit principle is described in some detail. The principle and its application have been subject to debate throughout the last century and continue today. The debates reflect social attitudes at the time and developments in the role of government and the skills government requires, and changes in the Australian labour market. Key debates include the role of women, treatment of ex-servicemen, importance of graduate recruitment, equal employment opportunity, and staff perceptions of fairness and the application of merit in employment decisions.

China has a long tradition of autocracy and a long history of competitive examinations for joining government service. It faces the challenge of whether it is possible to embrace a merit principle where politics and administration are not distinguished. Merit is also applied within a culture that gives considerable emphasis to personal relations (guanxi).

Taiwan also draws on China's long experience with examinations. A key challenge now is whether it gives too much emphasis to equality and fair access to public sector employment opportunities and too little to the skills and experience different government agencies require. These different approaches and different challenges reflect differences in the three countries relating in particular to the role of government, the relationship between politics and administration and culture.


The purpose of this paper is to simulate and analyze the spectral characteristics of the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) to obtain narrow bandwidth and minimization side lobes in reflectivity. Fiber Bragg grating has made a big revolution in telecommunication systems. The existence of fiber Bragg grating is needed when an optical fiber amplifier and filter are used. They can be used as band reject filter or band pass filter for optical devices. The model equations of the cascaded uniform fiber Bragg grating and different cascaded apodization functions such as, Hamming apodized fiber Bragg grating, Barthan apodized fiber Bragg grating, Nuttal apodized fiber Bragg grating, Sinc apodized fiber Bragg grating and Proposed apodized fiber Bragg grating are numerically handled and processed via specially cast software to achieve maximum Reflectivity, narrow bandwidth without side lobes.


This paper submits the results of the acoustic cruise made in the austral summer of 2016. The survey delivers the bottom bathymetry, the geographic distribution of krill concentrations, and the presence of fish shoals in 1,500 nautical miles over the shelf and the continental slope (100–500 m), around Elephant Island and South Orkney Islands. Krill concentrations are described, as well as those of mackerel icefish (Champsocephalus gunnari), the latter representing the most abundant fish species in the research, besides other finfish species in the area. The mackerel iceflsh was found between 160 and 449 m depth, associated to steep bottom, showing demersal characteristics during the day and semi-pelagic overnight. During the darkness hours, the mean determined depth in the schools was 207.1 ± 62.6 m around Elephant Island and 219.4 ± 55.8 m in South Orkney Islands.


In reasoning about time and duration, researchers often use Allen's interval algebra. This algebra describes possible relations between 1-D intervals. An interval can precede the other one, follow the other one, start the other one, etc. This algebra describes the relationship between different intervals in terms of words from natural language. To give a natural language description of 2D images, it is desirable to develop a similar approach for describing the relationship between 2-D objects in a picture. In their recent papers, J. Keller and his collaborators proposed a new approach based on a simulation of a "force" between these objects. In this paper, we show that their force formula is theoretically optimal.


Sub-Antarctic islands share many similarities in their history of human interaction and impacts before the mid-twentieth century. Large impacts on land were associated with marine exploitation industries of sealing and whaling. Their onshore activities involved considerable construction and pollution in many accessible landing bays, inevitably destroying large areas of coastal terrestrial habitat. Considerable transfer of nutrients to terrestrial environments will have been associated with scavengers utilising large carrion supplies. Attempted establishment of agricultural industries, particularly the introduction of grazing mammals, took place on several islands and, although rarely proving economically viable, often resulted in the long-term creation of feral populations. These were accompanied by introductions of other alien vertebrates, plants and invertebrates to most sub-Antarctic islands, although precise records of introduction events, or subsequent biological studies in this period, largely do not exist. Thus, exploitation industries in this region inevitably led to considerable alterations and impacts to terrestrial ecosystems almost from the outset of human contact with the islands. In the absence of baseline ecological and biodiversity studies, the true magnitude of many of these impacts is difficult to assess, although their legacy continues to the present day. Indeed, the almost complete removal of fur seals may have allowed coastal vegetation to become more extensive and lush than hitherto, paradoxically now regarded as "typical" and threatened by recovery of seal populations.