Objectives: Multidisciplinary cardiac care is well known to lead to improved outcomes. In this study, two different organizational models (surgeon-led and team-based units) for pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) located in a developing country setting and their early postoperative outcomes for patients with pediatric congenital heart disease were compared. Methods: A total of 246 infants and children who underwent surgery for congenital cardiac diseases were retrospectively analyzed. The correlations between the perioperative patient data of both models were analyzed and compared. The predictive factors for morbidity were calculated. Results: No significant difference was observed in the Society of Thoracic Surgeons–European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (STS-EACTS) mortality category and estimated mortality rate between groups. However, a statistically significant difference was observed in the STS-EACTS estimated postoperative length of stay and estimated major complication rate between groups. The extubation time and length of ICU stay varied significantly between groups. Conclusion: Compared with the surgeon-led model, the team-based model resulted in superior postoperative patient outcomes in terms of morbidity, shorter extubation time, and ICU length of stay. Thus, in developing countries, higher morbidity rather than mortality may be anticipated when undertaking congenital heart surgery in non-neonatal age groups without a multidisciplinary team to support the surgeon. Therefore, higher major complications can be expected when congenital heart surgery programs have to be established despite the lack of experienced staffing.


Background Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD) is estimated to rank fifth in burden of disease and third in terms of mortality by 2020 worldwide. It is characterized by chronic inflammation and non-fully reversible airflow obstruction, causing structural changes in the lungs that can be demonstrated by a post bronchodilator FEV1/FVC ratio <70%. Materials and Methods The sampling frame of the current study was the population of Tehran, the capital of Iran with the current population of nearly 8.1 million. A stratified cluster sampling strategy with proportional allocation within strata was used in this study. The target population was all Tehran residents, aged 18 to 40 in one group and over 40 in another, in the year 2013. The stratification process of the sample according to the 22 municipal districts of Tehran city has been incorporated in the sampling process. Proportional to the number of households in the 22 districts, the appropriate number of clusters is weighted according to each district. The decision about the number of clusters is based on total sample size; mean household members; and logistical facilities for subject enumeration, transport, and examination. Results The overall COPD prevalence defined by the spirometric functional criteria was 10%, higher in men 12 (11.9%) than in women 15 (8.8%); the prevalence was significantly higher in subjects aged over 55 years (P =0.001). Only 10(3.7%) of these COPD patients had already been diagnosed by a physician. Of all subjects fulfilling the criteria for COPD according to the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) guidelines (post bronchodilator FEV1/FVC<70%), 90(33.3%) had chronic productive cough, and 262(96.7%) had either long-standing cough, sputum production, recurrent wheeze, dyspnea, or attacks of shortness of breath. Conclusion Due to the small sample size at this stage of project, conclusions should be drawn with caution. In this first epidemiological report in Tehran about COPD, a moderate prevalence of the disease was determined, and a high percentage of this figure had not been diagnosed before by a physician.


P4-ATPases, also known as phospholipid flippases, are responsible for creating and maintaining transbilayer lipid asymmetry in eukaryotic cell membranes. Here, we use limited proteolysis to investigate the role of the N and C termini in ATP hydrolysis and auto-inhibition of the yeast flippase Drs2p-Cdc50p. We show that limited proteolysis of the detergent-solubilized and purified yeast flippase may result in more than 1 order of magnitude increase of its ATPase activity, which remains dependent on phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P), a regulator of this lipid flippase, and specific to a phosphatidylserine substrate. Using thrombin as the protease, Cdc50p remains intact and in complex with Drs2p, which is cleaved at two positions, namely after Arg104 and after Arg 1290, resulting in a homogeneous sample lacking 104 and 65 residues from its N and C termini, respectively. Removal of the 1291–1302-amino acid region of the C-terminal extension is critical for relieving the auto-inhibition of full-length Drs2p, whereas the 1–104 N-terminal residues have an additional but more modest significance for activity. The present results therefore reveal that trimming off appropriate regions of the terminal extensions of Drs2p can greatly increase its ATPase activity in the presence of PI4P and demonstrate that relief of such auto-inhibition remains compatible with subsequent regulation by PI4P. These experiments suggest that activation of the Drs2p-Cdc50p flippase follows a multistep mechanism, with preliminary release of a number of constraints, possibly through the binding of regulatory proteins in the trans-Golgi network, followed by full activation by PI4P.


This study describes the structural coloration of the butterfly Vanessa Atalanta wings and shows how the atomic force microscopy (AFM) can be applied to the study of wings morphology and wings surface behavior under the temperature. The role of the wings morphology in colors was investigated. Different colors of wings have different topology and can be identified by them. AFM in semi-contact mode was used to study the wings surface. The wing surface area, which is close to the butterfly body, has shiny brown color and the peak of surface roughness is about 600 nm. The changing of morphology at different temperatures is shown.


Abstract. Conducting long-term hazard assessment in active volcanic areas is of primary importance for land-use planning and defining emergency plans able to be applied in case of a crisis. A definition of scenario hazard maps helps to mitigate the consequences of future eruptions by anticipating the events that may occur. Lanzarote is an active volcanic island that has hosted the largest (>  1.5 km3 DRE) and longest (6 years) eruption, the Timanfaya eruption (1730–1736), on the Canary Islands in historical times (last 600 years). This eruption brought severe economic losses and forced local people to migrate. In spite of all these facts, no comprehensive hazard assessment or hazard maps have been developed for the island. In this work, we present an integrated long-term volcanic hazard evaluation using a systematic methodology that includes spatial analysis and simulations of the most probable eruptive scenarios.


[Article in French]
This work concerns the Coleoptera Hydradephaga collected in several sites of the Birougou Monts National Park (Republic of Gabon), in which altogether 67 species are listed (4 Noteridae and 63 Dytiscidae). The authors describe 6 new species (1 Noteridae and 5 Dytiscidae): Canthydrus lepidus (notula group) distinguishable from other african species for elytral drawing and for shape of penis; Hyphydrus simulans (opaculus group) close to H. congoanus Bistrom, 1982 and H. ntsa Bilardo & Rocchi, 2008, distinguishable for shape of penis; Liodessus contractipenis distinguishable for shape of penis clearly different from all other species know for Africa; Copelatus apicinotatus (erichsonii group, atrosulcatus subgroup) close to bottegoi Regimbart, 1895 and distinguishable chiefly for shape of penis; Copelatus birougouensis (haemorrhoidalis, group, ferruginicollis subgroup, sensu Guignot, 1961 = hydroporoides group, sensu Nilsson and Hajek, 2017) with penis different that one other all african species know of group; Hydaticus (Prodaticus) lepemangoyei (leander group, leander subgroup) close to H. arcuatus Regimbart, 1895 and H. matruelis Clark, 1864, distinguishable for more width of body and for shape of penis. Besides observations concerning some of the collected species are furnished.


Beyond an initially occurring, temporally saturable mode of degradation, we demonstrate that clearly existing facet erosion does not cause degradation in (Al,Ga)As double-heterostructure proton-delineated stripe-geometry lasers with unprotected facets operated in a room-temperature (22°C) laboratory ambient [∼ 25 percent relative humidity (RH)] in times ∼3000 h and for power outputs ≈ 3 mW/ facet. Contrary claims relating facet erosion to long-term degradation are explained as actually being based upon observations of the initial saturable mode made under circumstances in which short and long term effects were not easily distinguished. A clear demonstration of a long-term facet erosion mode of degradation was produced by aging devices in a 70°C 85 percent RH environment. This elevated temperature ambient rich in oxygen and water vapor promoted a facet erosion which severely degraded laser performance. The observed significant increases in the operating current, required to maintain 3 mW/facet outputs, caused by both altered mirror reflectivities, in accord with theoretical expectations, and associated beam steering, could be substantially suppressed by half-wavelength "quick" coatings ofE-gun deposited Al2O3applied to the laser facets soon after cleaving. The aging results for the ambients examined suggest that alterations of the temperature and oxidant concentration in the aging environment should permit a characterization of the facet erosion mode of degradation, and a determination of the extent to which a real operating ambient must be oxidant or contamination free in order to realize the million hour lifetimes which have been predicted for room-temperature operation of these lasers. An alternative approach to facet protection, namely, a dielectric film (Al2O3) deposition, has been shown to be quite promising in an extreme example of a hostile environment (70°C 85 percent RH). The coating approach is stressed because it is highly desirable to coat lasers for reasons (reviewed herein) other than the prevention of facet erosion.


There is a need in clinical practice for a concise measure to screen for personality pathology in patients seeking treatment for common mental disorders, such as mood or anxiety disorders. A shortened version of the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology Basic Questionnaire (DAPP-BQ)—the DAPP-Short Form (DAPP-SF), comprising 136 items (6-10 items for each dimension), was tested on its criterion-related validity and ability to screen for personality disorders. Scores on the dimensions and the second-order factors of the instrument were compared for two samples: patients with personality disorders (N = 1 091) and a community-based sample (N = 478). The mean score of the two groups differed significantly on most of the scales of the DAPP-SF, a finding in support of the criterion-related validity of the instrument. Identity problems and the second-order factor emotional dysregulation were best suited to discriminate patients with personality disorders from the control group. Cut-off values with optimum sensitivity or optimum specificity for screening of personality disorders are presented for men and women separately. In the community sample, the proposed cut-off value suggests a prevalence of 13.8% for personality disorders. Applied to a sample of patients with mood, anxiety and somatoform disorders (N = 1 329), the proposed cut-off with optimum specificity suggests a prevalence of 45.6% of personality psychopathology in this sample.


Health of tropical coral reefs depends largely on the balance between constructive (calcification and cementation) and destructive forces (mechanical-chemical degradation). Gradual increase in dissolved CO2 and the resulting decrease in carbonate ion concentration ('ocean acidification') in ocean surface water may tip the balance towards net mass loss for many reefs. Enhanced nutrients and organic loading in surface waters ('eutrophication'), may increase the susceptibility of coral reef and near shore environments to ocean acidification. The impacts of these processes on coral calcification have been repeatedly reported, however the synergetic effects on bioerosion rates by sponges are poorly studied. Erosion by excavating sponges is achieved by a combination of chemical dissolution and mechanical chip removal. In this study, Cliona caribbaea, a photosymbiont-bearing excavating sponge widely distributed in Caribbean reef habitats, was exposed to a range of CO2 concentrations, as well as different eutrophication levels. Total bioerosion rates, estimated from changes in buoyant weights over 1 week, increased significantly with pCO2 but not with eutrophication. Observed chemical bioerosion rates were positively affected by both pCO2 and eutrophication but no interaction was revealed. Net photosynthetic activity was enhanced with rising pCO2 but not with increasing eutrophication levels. These results indicate that an increase in organic matter and nutrient renders sponge bioerosion less dependent on autotrophic products. At low and ambient pCO2, day-time chemical rates were ~50% higher than those observed at night-time. A switch was observed in bioerosion under higher pCO2 levels, with night-time chemical bioerosion rates becoming comparable or even higher than day-time rates. We suggest that the difference in rates between day and night at low and ambient pCO2 indicates that the benefit of acquired energy from photosynthetic activity surpasses the positive effect of increased pCO2 levels at night due to holobiont respiration. This implies that excavation must cost cellular energy, by processes such as ATP usage for active Ca2+ and/or active proton pumping. Additionally, competition for dissolved inorganic carbon species may occur between bioerosion and photosynthetic activity by the symbionts. Either way, the observed changing role of symbionts in bioerosion can be attributed to enhanced photosynthetic activity at high pCO2 levels.


Background: Animal mitochondrial (mt) genomes are characteristically circular molecules of ~16–20 kb. Medusozoa (Cnidaria excluding Anthozoa) are exceptional in that their mt genomes are linear and sometimes subdivided into two to presumably four different molecules. In the genus Hydra, the mt genome comprises one or two mt chromosomes. Here, we present the whole mt genome sequence from the hydrozoan Hydra magnipapillata, comprising the first sequence of a fragmented metazoan mt genome encoded on two linear mt chromosomes (mt1 and mt2).
Results: The H. magnipapillata mt chromosomes contain the typical metazoan set of 13 genes for respiratory proteins, the two rRNA genes and two tRNA genes. All genes are unidirectionally oriented on mt1 and mt2, and several genes overlap. The gene arrangement suggests that the two mt chromosomes originated from one linear molecule that separated between nd5 and rns. Strong correlations between the AT content of rRNA genes (rns and rnl) and the AT content of proteincoding genes among 24 cnidarian genomes imply that base composition is mainly determined by mt
genome-wide constraints. We show that identical inverted terminal repeats (ITR) occur on both chromosomes; these ITR contain a partial copy or part of the 3' end of cox1 (54 bp). Additionally, both mt chromosomes possess identical oriented sequences (IOS) at the 5' and 3' ends (5' and 3'
IOS) adjacent to the ITR. The 5' IOS contains trnM and non-coding sequences (119 bp), whereas the 3' IOS comprises a larger part (mt2) with a larger partial copy of cox1 (243 bp).
Conclusion: ITR are also documented in the two other available medusozoan mt genomes (Aurelia aurita and Hydra oligactis). In H. magnipapillata, the arrangement of ITR and 5' IOS and 3' IOS suggest that these regions are crucial for mt DNA replication and/or transcription initiation. An analogous organization occurs in a highly fragmented ichthyosporean mt genome. With our data, we can
reject a model of mt replication that has previously been proposed for Hydra. This raises new questions regarding replication mechanisms probably employed by all medusozoans, and also has general implications for the expected organization of fragmented linear mt chromosomes of other taxa.


The Internet is now the most important and e cient way to gain information, and mobile devices are the easiest way to access the Internet. Furthermore, wearable devices, which can be considered to be the next generation of mobile devices, are becoming popular. The more people rely on mobile devices, the more private information about these people can be gathered from their devices. If a device is lost or compromised, much private information is revealed. Although today's smartphone operating systems are trying to provide a secure environment, they still fail to provide users with adequate control over and visibility into how third-party applications use their private data. The privacy leakage problem on mobile devices is still severe. For example, according a field study [1] done by CMU recently, Android applications track users' location every three minutes in average. After the PRISM program, a surveillance program done by NSA, is exposed, people are becoming increasingly aware of the mobile privacy leakages. However, there are few tools available to average users for privacy preserving. Most tools developed by recent work have some problems (details can be found in chapter 2). To address these problems, we present PrivacyGuard, an e cient way to simultaneously detect leakage of multiple types of sensitive data, such as a phone's IMEI number or location data. PrivacyGuard provides real-time protection. It is possible to modify the leaked information and replace it with crafted data to achieve protection. PrivacyGuard is configurable, extensible and useful for other research. We implement PrivacyGuard on the Android platform by taking advantage of the VPNService class provided by the Android SDK. PrivacyGuard does not require root permissions to run on a device and does not require any knowledge about VPN technology from users either. The VPN server runs on the device locally. No external servers are required. According to our experiments, PrivacyGuard can e↵ectively detect privacy leakages of most applications and advertisement libraries with almost no overhead on power consumption and reasonable overhead on network speed.


At present, we are witnessing globalization as a truly worldwide phenomenon. Trade agreements among differing countries, a reduction in trade costs, the mobility of production factors, the free flow of information and so on are all proof of the present day era of globalization. Countries are trading with one another more and more every day and the effects of international trade on economies represent a central discussion in all economic spheres. In spite of increasing trade around the world and the promotion of globalization by multilateral organisms such as WTO and IMF, the effects of international trade are not yet clear. Economics literature concerning the effects of international trade on economic growth and welfare remains ambiguous in terms of both theoretical models and empirical research. The present thesis tries to contribute to the theoretical debate surrounding the effects of dynamic international trade, focusing in particular on the implications for economic growth, welfare and changes in the preferences of individuals.


The following reminiscences and commentary by Phillip Frazer, original editor of the Australian edition of Rolling Stone, were first published during April 2017 in the Byron Echo and at dailyreview.com.au. In November of that year Joe Hagan's The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine appeared in bookshops around the world. Wenner was the American founder and editor of the magazine. Since it was first published, the uninhibited biography has generated some controversy, initially due to a falling out between the biographer and his subject, but also in connection with the portrait of Wenner revealed therein. For example, one commentator noted upon reading the book: 'All the sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll got a bit tiring after a while. Wenner may have been a "clever" businessman (to some extent) and got the right people on side, but despite his friendships with Springsteen and company, he was a rather despicable cad in many ways.' Though Frazer met up with Wenner and had ongoing contact, the Australian edition of Rolling Stone appears to have been left to follow its own path, based around the American magazine's successful template and the experience built up locally through Frazer's experience with pop, rock and counterculture magazines such as GoSet (1965-73), Revolution (1970-1), High Times (1971-2) and The Digger (1972-5). Creative Commons License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This journal article is available in Counterculture Studies: https://ro.uow.edu.au/ccs/vol1/iss1/7


Abstract We evaluated the interaction of dexamethasone 10−17 and 10−33 M (equivalent to 7cH and 15cH) with dexamethasone in pharmacological concentrations, using as experimental models: acute inflammation induced by carrageenan, Ehrlich ascitic tumour, and migration of tumour infiltrating leukocytes (TIL). Male adult BALB/c mice (n=7 per group) were used in all experiments. Carrageenan (1%) was injected into the footpad for oedema evaluation and into the peritoneal cavity (i.p.), for differential counting of inflammatory cells. Ehrlich ascitic tumour cells (107 viable cells/ml) were injected i.p. and tumour cells were counted after 6 days, by the Trypan blue exclusion method. The differential TIL was counted using smears stained by hematoxylin–eosin. Treatments were made immediately after carrageenan inoculation or once a day, during Ehrlich tumour development, until the animals were killed. Animals were treated with the following preparations: (1) phosphate buffer saline (PBS) solution; (2) dexamethasone (0.5 mg/kg for inflammation model or 4 mg/kg for tumour model) mixed with dexamethasone 7cH or 15cH; (3) dexamethasone (same doses) mixed in PBS. Homeopathic dexamethasone partially blocked the anti-inflammatory effect of pharmacological dexamethasone with regard to paw oedema (two-way ANOVA, P≤0.0008) and polymorphonuclear cell migration (χ2, P=0.0001). No important differences were observed between experimental and control groups, in relation to Ehrlich tumour cells viability or count, or bodyweight, but potentised dexamethasone restored control levels of TIL viability, compared to mice treated with pharmacological doses of dexamethasone (χ2, P≤0.001). The results demonstrate that a potentised substance may change its own pharmacological effects and suggest that ultradilutions effects act mostly on host response.


Generative Adversarial Nets (GANs) and Conditonal GANs (CGANs) show that using a trained network as loss function (discriminator) enables to synthesize highly structured outputs (e.g. natural images). However, applying a discriminator network as a universal loss function for common supervised tasks (e.g. semantic segmentation, line detection, depth estimation) is considerably less successful. We argue that the main difficulty of applying CGANs to supervised tasks is that the generator training consists of optimizing a loss function that does not depend directly on the ground truth labels. To overcome this, we propose to replace the discriminator with a matching network taking into account both the ground truth outputs as well as the generated examples. As a consequence, the generator loss function also depends on the targets of the training examples, thus facilitating learning. We demonstrate on three computer vision tasks that this approach can significantly outperform CGANs achieving comparable or superior results to task-specific solutions and results in stable training. Importantly, this is a general approach that does not require the use of task-specific loss functions.


Garnet porphyroblasts from southern Vermont and northwestern Massachusetts typically preserve multiple generations of inclusion trails, reflecting a potentially complex deformation and metamorphic growth history. Textural discontinuities, such as inclusion trail truncations or deflection planes, are commonly preserved within these complex inclusion trails and they are dominantly sub-vertically and sub-horizontally oriented. This observation cannot be adequately explained using the rotational model of spiral inclusion trail formation, leading to the conclusion that the trails were formed by the inclusion of multiple sub-vertical and sub-horizontal foliations during episodic garnet growth without porphyroblast rotation. Foliation inflection/intersection axes preserved within porphyroblasts (FIAs) provide important information about the kinematics of deformation, particularly the direction of bulk shortening at the time they formed. Samples from this study preserve a succession of six FIA sets resulting from a progressive change in the direction of bulk shortening through time. The distribution of these FIA sets across the field area indicates that the deformation was heterogeneously partitioned and occurred at different scales throughout orogenesis. Localization of deformation is an important control on garnet growth and repartitioning during successive deformation events resulted in a heterogeneous spatial distribution of garnet growth through time. The episodic nature of garnet growth is reflected in compositional zoning anomalies in garnet porphyroblasts from the Hoosac Formation. Zones of manganese enrichment, accompanied by calcium depletion, reveal pauses in garnet growth that may have been accompanied by fluid infiltration, garnet dissolution-reprecipitation and metasomatism at crystal or greater scales. The metamorphic history of these samples was further investigated using P-T pseudosections constructed via THERMOCALC. The mineral assemblages predicted are in good agreement with the observed mineralogy of the samples and estimates of P-T conditions at the time of garnet core growth were made using compositional isopleths based on microprobe analyses of garnet core composition. The samples do not show a clear relationship between the P-T data and the FIA data, suggesting that the preservation of different FIAs is not simply a function of P-T conditions. In samples where initial garnet appears to have occurred at temperature and/or pressure conditions higher than the minimum P-T conditions predicted for garnet stability, deformation probably played an essential role in garnet nucleation and growth. These "overstepped" samples indicate a progressive increase in pressure through the different phases of orogenesis.
This study reveals that garnet porphyroblasts in southern Vermont and northwestern Massachusetts grew during a complex history of deformation involving the production of multiple sub-horizontal and sub-vertical foliations with garnet growth primarily controlled by deformation partitioning, resulting in a heterogeneous spatial distribution through time. FIAs allow the relative age of different phases of garnet growth to be established and provide a framework for interpreting the relationship between deformation and metamorphism. Compositional zoning anomalies reflect the episodic nature of garnet growth and P-T modelling suggests that deformation took place under conditions of increasing pressure.


This paper reports preliminary findings of a survey of in-service teachers in WA and SA conducted in 2012. Participants completed an online survey open to all teachers in WA and SA. The survey ran for three months from April to June 2012. One section of the survey asked teachers to report their perceptions of the impact that NAPLAN has had on the curriculum and pedagogy of their classroom and school.

Two principal research questions were addressed in this preliminary analysis. First what are teacher perceptions of the effects on NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy? Second, are there any interaction effects between gender, socioeconomics status, location and school system on teachers perceptions? Statistical analyses examined one- and two-way MANOVA to assess main effects and interaction effects on teachers' global perceptions. These were followed by a series of exploratory one- and two-way ANOVA of specific survey items to suggest potential sources for differences among teachers from different socioeconomic regions, states and systems.

Teachers report that they are either choosing or being instructed to teach to the test, that this results in less time being spent on other curriculum areas and that these effects contribute in a negative way on the engagement of students. This largely agrees with a body of international research that suggests that high-stakes literacy and numeracy tests often results in unintended consequences such as a narrow curriculum focus (Au, 2007), a return to teacher-centred instruction (Barret, 2009) and a decrease in motivation (Ryan & Wesinstein, 2009). Preliminary results from early survey respondents suggests there is a relationship between participant responses to the effect of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy based on the characteristics of which State the teacher taught in, their perceptions of the socioeconomic status of the school and the school system in which they were employed (State, Catholic, and Independent).


Péter Apor: Authenticity and Scepticism: Memory, History and Coming to Terms with the Recent Past in East-Central Europe In post-communist East Central Europe even the most dubious historical constructions seem to be able to gain signifi cant credibility in the public. One of the most striking – often also shocking – features of the societies emerging after the fall of the Berlin Wall is a pervasive and strange disorientation, some kind of confusion that prevails in broadly conceived public manifestations on matters of history. Th ere seems to be no broad social agreement about the condemnation and denial of fascist and communist dictatorships, the terror that these regimes imposed, the Holocaust, and the institutionalized state violence. Th e problems with history in this region have been recognised and the distortion interpreted as the result of various political attempts to appropriate the right to interpret the past. Th e scholarly discourse about the ways of coming to terms with the recent past in East-Central Europe, initially focused on the cultural and social frames that shape the images of history, has recently turned towards the concepts of collective memory. Th is approach off ers an explanatory model that integrates the aspects of social practices, cultural codes and power. While this explanation is valid, there is more at stake in this case. Th e various representations of the recent past in the region elucidate the conspicuous uncertainty of the criteria of authenticity of historical representations in the region. Historical argument, evidential work and archival verifi cation are arbitrary and contingent operations for broad segments of East-Central European societies. Th is condition opens the fl oor for odd para-historiographies, political justifi cation and self-appointed prophets off ering reference points that further increase the state of confusion in Central and Eastern Europe. Th e image of shaping the past in terms of collective memory, however, undermines the relevance of evidence-based criteria of authenticity. Th e concept of memory as a social and cultural product inimical to evidential procedures, therefore, is not suffi cient as a valid explanation for the problems with contemporary history in the region. In fact, scholarship based on the concepts of memory, unintentionally, albeit regretfully, is part of the problem rather than solution.


Psychological or emotional maltreatment of children may be the most challenging and prevalent form of child abuse and neglect. Caregiver behaviors include acts of omission (ignoring need for social interactions) or commission (spurning, terrorizing); may be verbal or nonverbal, active or passive, and with or without intent to harm; and negatively affect the child's cognitive, social, emotional, and/or physical development. Psychological maltreatment has been linked with disorders of attachment, developmental and educational problems, socialization problems, disruptive behavior, and later psychopathology. Although no evidence-based interventions that can prevent psychological maltreatment have been identified to date, it is possible that interventions shown to be effective in reducing overall types of child maltreatment, such as the Nurse Family Partnership, may have a role to play. Furthermore, prevention before occurrence will require both the use of universal interventions aimed at promoting the type of parenting that is now recognized to be necessary for optimal child development, alongside the use of targeted interventions directed at improving parental sensitivity to a child's cues during infancy and later parent-child interactions. Intervention should, first and foremost, focus on a thorough assessment and ensuring the child's safety. Potentially effective treatments include cognitive behavioral parenting programs and other psychotherapeutic interventions. The high prevalence of psychological abuse in advanced Western societies, along with the serious consequences, point to the importance of effective management. Pediatricians should be alert to the occurrence of psychological maltreatment and identify ways to support families who have risk indicators for, or evidence of, this problem.


This paper presents a study on developing a new model of broadband internet regulation. It attempts to shed new light on the concepts that could enhance the effectiveness of broadband internet regulation, with particular reference to the principles of technology management. Broadband internet service differs from telephone service in many ways. Governments, however, promote competition in broadband internet service by employing traditional telecommunications regulation of telephone service without adaptations to suit broadband internet characteristics. As there is the trade-off between regulatory methods and the competition is based on an uneven playing field, broadband internet regulation is ineffective in promoting fair competition. Taking various established concepts in technology management, this paper proposes a new model of broadband internet regulation and applies the model in Thailand. The proposed model shows that governments are able to manage the trade-off and create a level playing field by separately regulating internet service and broadband network.


Context. Due to the extreme extinction towards the Galactic centre (AV ∼ 30 mag), its stellar population is mainly studied in the near-infrared (NIR) regime. Therefore, a proper analysis of the NIR extinction curve is necessary to fully characterise the stellar structure and population of the inner part of the galaxy.
Aims. We studied the dependence of the extinction index (αλ) in the NIR on the line of sight, wavelength, and extinction.
Methods. We used the GALACTICNUCLEUS imaging survey, a high angular resolution catalogue (0.2″) for the inner part of the Galaxy in JHKs, and studied the spatial variation in the extinction index. We also applied two independent methods based on red clump stars to compute the extinction index between different bands and its variation with wavelength.
Results. We did not detect any significant line-of-sight or extinction variation in α within the studied region in the nuclear stellar disc. The extinction index between JH and HKs differs by 0.19 ± 0.05. We obtained mean values for the extinction indices αJH = 2.43 ± 0.03 and αHKs = 2.23 ± 0.03. The dependence of the extinction index on the wavelength could explain the differences obtained for αλ in the literature since it was assumed constant for the NIR regime.


History of Polygamous Practices in the U.S. Religious and social groups experimented with different forms of familia social bonds in America during the 19th century. Foster (1981) provides examples of two such groups: "The Shakers ... established celibate, essentially monastic communities in which women shared equally in all aspects of leadership; and, The Oneida Perfectionists ... created a system of complex marriage or group marriage which resulted in radical changes in sex roles and behavior." "Every man was theoretically married to every woman in the group and vice versa." (Muncy, 1988) The practice of polygyny in America has always been relegated to those persons in religious groups, Native American Cultures or isolated groups of individuals. The more notable practitioners were the Mormons. "Beginning in the 1830's, Latter Day Saints Church leaders secretly practiced what both they and their detractors called "polygamy," a self-consciously patriarchal marriage system in which men were encouraged to take more than one wife. In 1852, after they had relocated to Utah, church leaders took polygamy public." (Pascoe, 1993) The Mormons' polygamous practices were not accepted by the American Protestant churches. Pascoe reports that between 1852 and 1882 the Mormons were under attack by evangelical Protestants. (Pascoe, 1993) Further attacks on this practice came from the federal government with the passage of the Edmunds - Tucker Act of 1882. This act proposed by "Senator George Edmunds of Vermont ... was one of a series of bills designed to end the Mormon practice of polygamy ... (Buice, 1981). There are reports of "Americans of social conscience confronted with the issue of polygamy had an immediate and negative response. Victorian Americans believed that the Christian Civilization was fragile, ... (and) feared any relaxation of sexual standards would lead to a complete breakdown of civilized order." (Buice, 1981 and Cannon, 1974). Many Americans during the 19th century opposed polygamy because of its association with Native American Cultures considered to be primitive and savage. Further, the assumption was that easy access to sex was at the bottom of all of the polygamous unions regardless of their origin. Two examples of the reasons for polygyny among Native Americans are presented. First, Moore (1991) offers this assessment of polygamy among the Cheyenne: "The pervasive Anglo-American idea (is) that polygyny is sexually motivated on the part of the husband.... From an American Indian standpoint, the institution of polygyny was seen to benefit both husbands and wives. For men, a larger household meant (an) increase ... more children (and) ... wealth. For women, polygyny meant ... (wholly sharing) a household with sisters, ... help with child care and other household chores." The second example of polygamy is provided by Gillis (1966) who describes this practice among the Comanche. As with other Native American populations, the practice of polygamy was more practical than a matter of sexual convenience for the male in the household. Gillis states that: "Polygamy had been an economic and social necessity for the Comanches, ... (provided) a husband (to every Comanche female), ... maintained the birthrate and ... (provided) many trained hands to keep a Comanche camp functioning properly." Polygamy has been reported for almost all Native American Peoples (Moore, 1991). Other examples of the practice of polygyny in America's past can be found among cases which were adjudicated in various states. The extent to which severe punishment was given to the polygamist, demonstrated America's intolerance for persons attempting to change the one man - one woman, monogamous way of life supported by Protestant religious churches, and state and federal judicial branches of government, during the latter part of the 19th, and early 20th twentieth century. Buice (1981) notes numerous incidents where "threats and lesser acts of violence were almost daily occurrences" for Mormon elders attempting to find church converts in Southern States. …


Suit (jacket and skirt) of heavy woven polyester(?) in a harlequin pattern of diamonds of off-white, brown, beige, and tan. Suit consists of:

A) Jacket. Short, waist length jacket with long sleeves edged in narrow band of same fabric. Double breasted, with two hidden snaps and with 6 large circular plastic buttons at front in 3 pairs, each button of medium brown with light tan ring around rim. Princess darts for fit. Fully lined in tan acetate.

Designer's label at inside neckline: "Irene Galitzine / Roma"

B) Skirt. Matching skirt, knee-length or slightly shorter, slightly A-line from front, with flat front and with heavy, large box pleats at back. Narrow waistband with two hook-and eye fasteners at right side above side zipper. Lining matches jacket's lining.

Designer's label at center back inside waistline: "Irene Galitzine / Roma"


Our daily lives revolve around sharing experiences and memories with others. When different people recount the same events, how similar are their underlying neural representations? In this study, participants viewed a fifty-minute audio-visual movie, then verbally described the events while undergoing functional MRI. These descriptions were completely unguided and highly detailed, lasting for up to forty minutes. As each person spoke, event-specific spatial patterns were reinstated (movie-vs.-recall correlation) in default network, medial temporal, and high-level visual areas; moreover, individual event patterns were highly discriminable and similar between people during recollection (recall-vs.-recall similarity), suggesting the existence of spatially organized memory representations. In posterior medial cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and angular gyrus, activity patterns during recall were more similar between people than to patterns elicited by the movie, indicating systematic reshaping of percept into memory across individuals. These results reveal striking similarity in how neural activity underlying real-life memories is organized and transformed in the brains of different people as they speak spontaneously about past events.


Optical Music Recognition (OMR) is a branch of artificial intelligence that aims at automatically recognizing and understanding the content of music scores in images. Several approaches and systems have been proposed that try to solve this problem by using expert knowledge and specialized algorithms that tend to fail at generalization to a broader set of scores, imperfect image scans or data of different formatting. In this paper we propose a new approach to solve OMR by investigating how humans read music scores and by imitating that behavior with machine learning. To demonstrate the power of this approach, we conduct two experiments that teach a machine to distinguish entire music sheets from arbitrary content through frame-by-frame classification and distinguishing between 32 classes of handwritten music symbols which can be a basis for object detection. Both tasks can be performed at high rates of confidence (> 98%) which is comparable to the performance of humans on the same task.


TGF-beta regulates many aspects of cellular performance relevant to tissue morphogenesis and homeostasis. Postnatal perturbation of TGF-beta signaling contributes to the pathogenesis of many disease states, as recently exemplified through the study of Marfan syndrome (MFS), including aortic aneurysm and skeletal muscle myopathy. Heterogeneity in the regulation and consequences of TGF-beta signaling, amplified in the context of disease, has engendered confusion and controversy regarding its utility as a therapeutic target. Three studies recently published in the JCI, including one in this issue, underscore the complexity of this subject. Heydemann and colleagues implicate dimorphic variation in latent TGF-beta-binding protein 4 (LTBP4), a regulator of TGF-beta bioavailability and activation, as a modifier of muscular dystrophy in gamma-sarcoglycan-deficient mice. In contrast to experience with ascending aortic aneurysm in MFS, Wang and colleagues show that systemic abrogation of TGF-beta signaling worsens (rather than attenuates) Ang II-induced abdominal aortic aneurysm progression in mice. Tieu and colleagues define alterations in the regulation of vascular inflammation in the pathogenesis of Ang II-induced aneurysm and dissection in mice, which may help shed some light on this apparent paradox.


ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) has experienced an unprecedented economic and financial crisis since 2007, the effects of which form the object of analysis in this Special Issue. In particular, it addresses the questions of whether and how the crisis has served as an obstacle or an opportunity for further integration. It concentrates on two broad types of implications for the EU that are central elements of theories on integration and policy and public opinion change. First, the crisis has triggered events of proposed and actual change of policies and institutions. Second, the crisis and the EU's response to it have had an impact on how citizens perceive the EU and its democratic legitimacy. Based on the contributions by scholars of European integration, this Special Issue concludes that, at least in the short run, the crisis has (overall) created an opportunity structure for European integration rather than an obstacle. At the same time, the contributions show the need for further research on the nexus of public opinion and politicization on the one side and institutional and policy change on the other.


Most predictive writing systems are based on n-gram model with different size. Systems designed for English are easier than those for flective languages since even smaller models allow reasonable coverage. However, the same corpus size is significantly insufficient for languages with many word forms. The paper presents a new predictive writing system based on n-grams calculated from a large corpus. We designed the high-performance server-side script that returns either the most probable endings of a word or the most probable following words. We also designed the client-side script that is suitable for desktop computers without touchscreens. We calculated 150 millions most frequent n-grams for n = 1, . . . , 12 from a Czech corpus and evaluated the writing system on Czech texts. The system was then extended by custom-built model that can consist of domain or user specific n-grams. We measured the key stroke per character (KSPC) rate in two different modes: one – called letter KSPC – excludes the control keys since they are input method specific, the other – called real KSPC – includes all key strokes. We have shown that the system performs well in general (letter KSPC on average was 0.64, real KSPC on average was 0.77) but performs even better on specific domains with the appropriate custom-built model (letter KSPC and real KSPC were on average 0.63 and 0.73 respectively). The system was tested on Czech, however it can easily be adapted an arbitrary language. Due to its performance, the system is suitable for languages with high inflection.


We describe a mobile molecular Doppler wind lidar (DWL) based on double-edge technique for wind measurement of altitudes ranging from 10 to 40 km. A triple Fabry-Perot etalon is employed as a frequency discriminator to determine the Doppler shift proportional to the wind velocity. The lidar operates at 355 nm with a 45-cm-aperture telescope and a matching azimuth-over-elevation scanner that provides full hemispherical pointing. To guarantee wind accuracy, a single servo loop is used to monitor the outgoing laser frequency to remove inaccuracies due to the frequency drift of the laser or the etalon. The standard deviation of the outgoing laser frequency drift is 6.18 MHz and the corresponding velocity error is 1.11 m/s. The wind profiles measured by the DWL are in good agreement with the results of the wind profile radar (WPR). Evaluation is achieved by comparing at altitudes from 2 to 8 km. The relative error of horizontal wind speed is from 0.8 to 1.8 m/s in the compared ranges. The wind accuracy is less than 6 m/s at 40 km and 3 m/s at 10 km.


The phenomenon known as Hip Hop encompasses a global, multiethnic, grassroots culture committed to social justice and self-expression through performance. Hip Hop Theater emerged from that culture, mixing spoken-word performance with music and dance and marked by Hip Hop's strong sense of activism and resistance. Hip Hop Theater is engaged with questions of identity culture, heritage, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and difference narrating the experiences of historically marginalized peoples and putting them in dialogue with other oppressed communities. "Say Word! Voices from Hip Hop Theater" collects eight works by contemporary artists who confront today's compelling issues, ranging from racial profiling and police brutality to women's empowerment and from the commercial exploitation of Hip Hop to identity politics. Editor Daniel Banks has assembled work by Abiola Abrams, Zakiyyah Alexander, Chadwick Boseman, Kristoffer Diaz, Rha Goddess, Antoy Grant, Joe Hernandez-Kolski, Rickerby Hinds, and Ben Snyder, augmented with an extensive introduction and other informative commentary. The book also includes a roundtable moderated by Holly Bass and featuring Hip Hop pioneers Eisa Davis, Danny Hoch, Sarah Jones, and Will Power, a conversation that traces the roots of Hip Hop Theater and imagines its future directions."


Lipidic formulations (LFs) are increasingly utilised for the delivery of poorly–water soluble drugs to improve oral bioavailability. In vitro lipolysis is capable of mimicking the lipid digestion process and therefore it is a suitable method for assessing the fate of drugs administered in LFs. Intestinal micellar solubilisation and first–pass metabolism are the main contributors to the oral bioavailability of drugs that belong to class II of the Biopharmaceutics Classification System (BCS). The intraluminal solubility of BCS II drugs in LFs can be estimated with the in vitro lipolysis model, whereas the first–pass extraction ratio can be assessed by performing microsomal stability assays. This thesis work proposes, for the first time, the combination of in vitro lipolysis and microsomal metabolism studies for the quantitative prediction of human oral bioavailability of BCS II drugs administered in LFs. Marinol® (Δ9–tetrahydrocannabinol dissolved in sesame oil) and Neoral® (a lipidic self–emulsifying drug delivery system of cyclosporin A), were selected as model LFs. The observed oral bioavailability (Fobserved) values were obtained from published clinical studies that described the oral administration of the selected LFs to human subjects. Two different lipolysis buffers, differing in the level of surfactant concentrations, were used for digestion of the LFs. The predicted fraction of absorbed dose (Fabs) was calculated by measuring the drug concentration in the micellar phase, obtained after ultra–centrifugation of the lipolysis medium. To determine the fraction of drug dose that escapes metabolism in the gut wall and in the liver (Fg∙Fh), microsomal metabolism stability studies with human intestinal and hepatic microsomes were performed. Clearance values were determined by applying the "in vitro half–life approach", which is based on the measurement of the first–order rate depletion constant of a drug substrate. The estimated Fabs and Fg∙Fh values were combined for the calculation of the predicted oral bioavailability (Fpredicted). For the model LFs tested, results showed there was a correlation between Fobserved and Fpredicted values only when Fabs was calculated with the buffer characterised by more bio–relevant (lower) surfactant levels. The general accuracy of the predicted values, and the strong correlation shown with the clinical ones, suggests the novel in vitro lipolysis/metabolism approach could satisfactory quantitatively estimate the oral bioavailability of BCS II drugs administered in LFs.


With large expanses of open vegetation, airports serve as major attractants for numerous bird species, such as the American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos), which can lead to high risk of bird–aircraft collision. Previous observations of large influxes of crows at the Prince George Airport (British Columbia, Canada) in July and August suggested that crows were opportunistically foraging on grasshopper (Melanoplus sp.) population eruptions in mown grass during those months. We tested whether grasshoppers were more visible (i.e., easier for crows to detect) under different grass lengths, and whether crows were preferentially attracted to these same grass lengths. Employing line transects during July to August 2010 and 2011, we detected >6 times as many grasshoppers in short-cut grass (0 to 15 cm) than in uncut grass (>30 cm). Data from 2011 also revealed that grasshopper detections by crows was significantly higher in short-cut grass than in grass left at intermediate lengths (long-cut grass [15 to 30 cm]). Crow densities also varied with grass length, with significantly more crows foraging in short-cut than long-cut or uncut grass lengths. Our results indicate that allowing the grass to grow to >15 cm could reduce the attraction of crows to the airfield and may reduce bird–aircraft collisions.


Response to Letter Regarding Article, "Myostatin Regulates Energy Homeostasis in the Heart and Prevents Heart Failure" In the article referred to by the letter of Neumann et al, we found that inactivation of myostatin in the adult heart caused a metabolic switch toward glycolysis and glycogen accumulation, cardiac hypertrophy, and heart failure, which was associated with massive activation of AMP-activated kinase (AMPK). Because pharmacological inhibition of AMPK in vitro and in vivo reversed several aspects of this phenotype, we concluded that myostatin-mediated repression of AMPK is required to maintain a mature aerobic energy metabolism in the heart and to prevent cardiac hypertrophy. Neumann et al challenge this conclusion arguing that activation of AMPK might represent the reaction to metabolic alterations rather than the cause. Furthermore, they postulate that increased transphosphorylation of protein kinase D observed in our study after inactivation of myostatin in the adult heart might explain increases in glucose utilization and uptake and cardiac hypertrophy by phosphorylation of HDAC5 (histone deacetylase 5) and subsequent deinhibition of myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2). We share the skepticism expressed by Neumann et al on the use of pharmacological inhibitors such as the AMPK-inhibitor compound C, because many inhibitors exert off-target effects. To cope with this problem, we took advantage of a second inhibitor Ara-A, which is structurally and mechanistically different from compound C. Ara-A had exactly the same effect as compound C in rescuing the metabolic phenotype after myostatin deletion. In addition, we found that the treatment of primary cardiomyocytes with compound C followed by real-time respirometry leads to decreased glycolytic capacity, whereas AICAR (5-aminoimidazole4-carboxamide ribonucleotide), an AMPK activator, increased the glycolytic capacity. We also demonstrated that either inhibitor blocked increased phosphorylation of AMPK at the activating phosphorylation site T172 after inactivation of myostatin. In our view these observations clearly indicate that the inactivation of myostatin directly causes AMPK activation. To further validate activation of AMPK, we monitored phosphorylation of 2 AMPK targets, acetyl-CoA carboxylase, and glycogen synthase (GS). Neumann et al speculate that phosphorylation of GS at S641 might have been caused by GS kinase 3 and not by AMPK. Of course, GS kinase 3 does also phosphorylate GS at Ser641. However, increase of GS phosphorylation at Ser641 closely correlated with increased AMPK activity in our study, whereas inactivation of AMPK results in decreased Ser641 phosphorylation indicating that AMPK targets GS. Moreover, activation of GS kinase 3 suppresses and not induces cardiac hypertrophy, which argues against functionally relevant GS kinase 3 activation in myostatin mutant mice. Based on the general assumption that AMPK is a safeguard and not a culprit when it comes to cardiac hypertrophy, Neumann et al challenge our hypothesis that excessive activation of AMPK contributes to cardiac hypertrophy. Yet, treatment of adult myostatin mutant mice with either compound C or Ara-A prevents cardiac hypertrophy in our experimental setting. We are aware of the fact that AMPK is generally seen as inhibitor of protein synthesis, which seems to contradict a role of AMPK activation in promoting cardiac hypertrophy. However, point mutations in the nucleotide-binding region of the AMPK γ2-subunit, encoded by the Prkag2 gene (eg, the N488I allele) resulting in aberrant increase of kinase activity, cause cardiac hypertrophy probably via mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) and FoxO (forkhead box O) signaling pathways independent of glycogen storage. Moreover, the expression of a kinase-dead version of AMPK-α2 mice in compound-heterozygous mice carrying the Prkag2 allele N488I, which increases AMPK activity, blocks cardiac hypertrophy and decreases enhanced glycogen storage. In further support of the prohypertrophic role of aberrant AMPK activity, we identified several new interaction partners of AMPK involved in hypertrophic signaling by coimmunoprecipitation. Therefore, a link seems to exist between myostatin, AMPK, and cardiac hypertrophy, which would fit to the well-known role of myostatin as inhibitor of Akt and mTOR signaling in heart and skeletal muscle. Neumann et al correctly state that most of the PRKAG2 mutations render AMPK insensitive to AMP, but cause increased AMPK activity, glycogen storage, and cardiac hypertrophy (see also paragraph above). We cannot see that these facts collide with our notion that PRKAG2 "mimics aspects of the myostatin phenotype," which is characterized by increased AMPK activity, glycogen storage, and cardiac hypertrophy. Instead, the rescue of the PRKAG2 N4881 phenotype associated with increased AMPK activity by kinase-dead AMPK-α2 seems to phenocopy the effects of pharmacological inhibitors of AMPK in hearts of myostatin mutants with increased AMPK activity. Neumann et al reason that activation of AMPK after inactivation of myostatin in the heart might represent the reaction to metabolic alterations rather than the cause, which is a reasonable concern. However, we demonstrated several direct effects of myostatin signaling on AMPK: (1) we showed that cardiacspecific overexpression of myostatin reduces AMPK activity in vivo and (2) we demonstrated that treatment of adult primary cardiomyocytes with recombinant myostatin blocks AMPK phosphorylation after 10 minutes in vitro. Moreover, other groups also observed activation of AMPK in skeletal muscle and fat after inactivation of myostatin. Regulation of AMPK activity is complex and does not solely depend on the cellular energy status as indicated by the activation of AMPK via CamKKβ (calcium/ calmodulin-dependent protein kinase kinase beta). Similarly, we are just at the beginning of understanding the pleiotropic effects of AMPK in the heart in physiological and pathological conditions. Neumann et al point out that the stimulation of AMPK in cardiomyocytes upregulates glucose and fatty acid uptake as well as their utilization but did not mention that AMPK activation in left-ventricular hypertrophy activates glucose uptake and in parallel decreases β-oxidation. In our article, we described decreased interaction of AMPK with all major enzymes involved


Growth theories highlight the importance of domestic savings for Economic growth. The savings and growth literature points generally to a positive growth effect of domestic savings. For a country like South Africa, where the level of domestic saving is low, the question of the role of savings in economic growth becomes critical. An understanding of the contribution of the different forms of savings in an economy to its economic growth is important, especially to be able to make the proper policy addresses. This paper applies cointegration analysis within a multivariate framework to establish the effect of household, government and corporate savings on economic growth in South Africa. The result indicates that corporate saving has a significant positive relationship to growth in both the long and short run, while household and government saving have no significant impact on growth. There is need for policies that increase the level of domestic savings and also a need to address government policies that impact on both public and household savings rate


Aim: This study aimed at the identification of environmental cleaning and managerial best practices for integration in competitive bidding documents for outsourcing of housekeeping services in tertiary care hospitals in India. Materials and Methods: This study design was cross-sectional. The sample comprised of tender documents of eight government super-specialty hospitals/corporations and housekeeping contract agreements of five private ones. Convenience sampling was used-current tenders of most popular government hospitals available online and housekeeping agreements of consenting popular private hospitals were considered. Excel sheet was used for the analysis. Results: Hospitals outsourced housekeeping services on performance or human resource basis, use risk classification (23%) of hospital areas for determining intensity of cleaning, and outlined scope of services (50%). Fifteen percent tenders provide comprehensive lists of material. Scrubber requirements ranged from one per 25–250 beds. In 40% tenders, scope included handling of biomedical waste. Workforce included managerial cadres. There is a focus on occupational health and safety. Quality assurance is inbuilt in the contracts including bid evaluation criteria for selecting competent agencies and penal provisions such as in case of adverse report (INR 10,000) and unsatisfactory survey reporting (1% of monthly payment). Conclusion: Since successful outsourcing must focus on above-mentioned parameters, this study provides necessary guidance for health-care administrators for patient satisfaction, positive image, reducing hospital-acquired infections, and ensuring provision of quality care services.


Learning analytics (LA) is often considered as a means to improve learning and learning environments by measuring student behaviour, analysing the tracked data and acting upon the results. The use of LA tools implies recording and processing of student activities conducted on software platforms. This paper proposes a flexible, contextual and intuitive way to provide the teacher with full control over student activity tracking in online learning environments. We call this approach AngeLA, inspired by an angel guarding over LA privacy. AngeLA mimics in a virtual space the privacy control mechanism that works well in a physical room: if a person is present in a room, she is able to observe all activities happening in the room. AngeLA serves two main purposes: (1) it increases the awareness of teachers about the activity tracking and (2) provides an intuitive way to manage the activity tracking permissions. This approach can be applied to various learning environments and social media platforms. We have implemented AngeLA in Graasp, a social platform that fosters collaborative activities.


"The Missing Peace", published to great acclaim last year, is the most candid inside account of the Middle East peace process ever written. Dennis Ross, the chief Middle East peace negotiator in the presidential administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is that rare figure who is respected by all parties: Democrats and Republicans, Palestinians and Israelis, presidents and people on the street in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Washington, D.C. Ross recounts the peace process in detail from 1988 to the breakdown of talks in early 2001 that prompted the so-called second Intifada - and takes account of recent developments in a new after word written for this edition. It's all here: Camp David, Oslo, Geneva, Egypt, and other summits; the assassination of Yitzak Rabin; the rise and fall of Benjamin Netanyahu; the very different characters and strategies of Rabin, Yasir Arafat, and Bill Clinton; and the first steps of the Palestinian Authority. For the first time, the backroom negotiations, the dramatic and often secretive nature of the process, and the reasons for its faltering are on display for all to see. "The Missing Peace" explains, as no other book has, why Middle East peace remains so elusive.


This report offers a case study in the advantages and disadvantages of depository libraries, their economics, and the practical and political issues associated with their creation. As director of the library at Amherst College, the author played a key role in establishing the initial off-site storage facility, as well as in broadening its service to the Five Colleges, Inc. (Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst). As libraries change in response to budgetary constraints as well as developments in information technology, the Five College Library Depository model suggests new possibilities for collection management and ways for libraries to reframe their service missions. The questions facing all academic libraries--to what extent can they provide access to materials that they do not own, and which materials must they preserve for future generations--are examined in this report.


This report describes an integrated approach for designing communication, sensing, and control systems for mobile distributed systems. Graph theoretic methods are used to analyze the input/output reachability and structural controllability and observability of a decentralized system. Embedded in each network node, this analysis will automatically reconfigure an ad hoc communication network for the sensing and control task at hand. The graph analysis can also be used to create the optimal communication flow control based upon the spatial distribution of the network nodes. Edge coloring algorithms tell us that the minimum number of time slots in a planar network is equal to either the maximum number of adjacent nodes (or degree) of the undirected graph plus some small number. Therefore, the more spread out that the nodes are, the fewer number of time slots are needed for communication, and the smaller the latency between nodes. In a coupled system, this results in a more responsive sensor network and control system. Network protocols are developed to propagate this information, and distributed algorithms are developed to automatically adjust the number of time slots available for communication. These protocols and algorithms must be extremely efficient and only updated as network nodes move. In addition,more » queuing theory is used to analyze the delay characteristics of Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) networks. This report documents the analysis, simulation, and implementation of these algorithms performed under this Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) effort.« less


The explosive increase of mobile traffic demands higher spectrum efficiency for future wireless communications. By properly configuring a 2-dimensional (2D) antenna array at the basestation, the system capacity can be improved with 3 dimensional (3D) multiuser Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) techniques without modifying the terminal antennas. Therefore, the signal will propagate in a 3D space with angle dispersion in both horizontal and vertical planes. Due to its role in facilitating research and development of 3D MIMO technology, the 3D fading channel model is receiving increasing attention. However, existing fading channel models mostly focus on the azimuth angle characteristics, while neglecting the elevation angle impact. This article provides a state of the art review on 3D fading channel models, emphasizing research related to the elevation angle. We also report some recent field measurements for 3D MIMO and investigate the comprehensive propagation characteristics of the elevation angle.


Background and purpose: Among the numerous chemicals utilized in agriculture, 2,4Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) is widely used to control weeds. This herbicide is considered as a carcinogen and high toxic pollutant which is very difficult to remove due to its biological and chemical stability. This study aimed at photocatalytic degradation of 2,4-D using indium oxide nanoparticles in the presence of ultraviolet light. Materials and methods: This study was carried out in bench scale and batch system. The effect of operating parameters such as pH (2-11), contact time (5-240 min), catalyst dose (0.1-2 g/l) and initial concentration of herbicide (5-40 m/l) on the efficiency of the process were studied. The experimental data were fitted to a pseudo-first-order kinetic model. Results: Increasing the pH and initial concentration of herbicide led to reduced efficiency while increasing the contact time and catalyst dose increased the efficiency. The best result (70% efficiency) was achieved at pH 3, 1 g/l catalyst dose, 120 min contact time, and 5 mg/l initial concentration. The process data well followed the pseudo-first-order kinetic model (R = 0.915). Conclusion: The results demonstrated that the photocatalytic process using indium oxide nanoparticles in the presence of ultraviolet light have a relatively good efficiency in removing 2,4-D.


This study shows the importance of interaction to student learning within Web-based online learning programs. The population of this study was students enrolled in multiple academic disciplines at a private university in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area. A Web-based research instrument was designed to assess students' characteristics, their perceptions of learning, satisfaction, student-to-student interactions and student-to-instructor interactions. Regression analyses were employed to analyze the relationship of interaction variables with student learning and satisfaction. Student-instructor interaction and student-student interaction were found to be significant contributors of student learning and satisfaction.


This paper presents a technique for tracking of oil slicks movement using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and external force data with optimal coefficients. The detected oil from the SAR image is used as input data for tracking model, and wind and tidal current data are used as external forces to determine the displacement of oil slick. Forward and backward trackings were performed using a set of 4 SAR images observed at the time of the Hebei Spirit accident in 2007. The movement vectors are calculated using wind and tidal current with various coefficients. All tracking results show more than 56% accuracy. The new linear equations were calculated using coefficient values with the highest accuracy and velocity values of wind and tidal current. The modified equations were used to back-track from the satellite observation time to the accident occurrence time. The simulation results shows that most of the particles of the spread oil traced back around the point of the accident with little exceptions to some particles which shifted more than the oil spill. This is because the spill time of the particles are different from each other. Thus, the proposed method will contribute to the quick response activities and the estimation of location for the source of oil pollution. Article history: Received 31 March 2018 Revised 2 January 2019 Accepted 3 March 2019


Current software development environments lack support for architecture-related activities like architecture design, analysis, and architecture knowledge management. We present a toolkit supporting architecture-centric development. The toolkit is an extension of the Eclipse IDE and supports architecture-related activities during the whole software life cycle, from analysis to design, implementation, and maintenance. It provides multiple views for capturing architectural knowledge, and for architecture modeling and visualization. Incremental development and consistency between architecture and system implementation are supported through continuous forward and reverse engineering. Capturing architectural knowledge supports tracing from requirements to architecture and implementation.


Sessions of March 2 and 3 The twenty-seventh annual meeting of the Cordilleran Section of the Geological Society of America was held at Bacon Hall, University of California, Berkeley, on Friday and Saturday, March 2 and 3, 1928. BUSINESS MEETING ELECTION OF OFFICERS A business meeting and luncheon was held at the Faculty Club, with seventeen Fellows of the Society in attendance. A Nominating Committee appointed by the Chairman, Robert van V. Anderson, proposed the following officers for the year 1929: Chairman, Bruce L. Clark Secretary, Ralph W. Chaney Councilor, F. L. Ransome The nominees were subsequently elected in a mail ballot conducted by the Secretary. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON PRIZES The Committee on Prizes presented the following report: 1. The prize shall be awarded annually to a young man or woman, preferably a student who has not yet received his doctor's degree and who is under thirty years . . .


We provide evidence that open-end structures undermine asset managers' incentives to attack long-term mispricing. First, we compare open-end funds with closed-end funds. Closed-end funds purchase more underpriced stocks than open-end funds, especially if the stocks involve high arbitrage risk. We then show that hedge funds with high share restrictions, having a lower degree of open-ending, also trade against long-term mispricing to a larger extent than other hedge funds. Our analysis suggests that open-end organizational structures are not conducive to long-term risky arbitrage.


In modern tokamaks, visible and infrared video cameras are becoming more and more important in monitoring plasma evolution during fusion experiments. Analyzing these images in real time can provide relevant information for controlling plasma and improving machine safety. The real-time image processing capability of the cellular nonlinear/neural network-based chips that are available nowadays has been applied to several tasks, both at Frascati Tokamak Upgrade (FTU) and at Joint European Torus (JET). The successful applications range from the identification of plasma instabilities, such as multifaceted asymmetric radiations from the edge (MARFEs), to the determination of the strike-point position in the divertor and to the detection of the so-called ldquohot spots.rdquo


This article aims to present in overview of the evolution of the policy of legal regulations on public procurement in Lithuania in 1990–2004. The public procurement policy in this article is understood as the concept, principles and main aims of legal regulation on this sphere. According to some scientific researchers there are two major paradigm shifts of public procurement policy in the world – a shift from internal processes to value adding benefits and a shift to opening up of public purchasing market. The author analyses how those tendencies are reflected in Lithuanian public procurement policy and legislation. These concerns are explored applying logical, comparative and legal-historical methods. The main intent of regulation on public procurement is to ensure that purchasing made by public or semi-public sector contracting authorities were effective. But what is effective, could be understood variously. In the precocious phase of Lithuanian public procurement regulation it was believed that the lowest price represented the effectiveness for government and the only award criteria was the price. But starting with 1995 it was created legal base for the evaluation not only the price of an object, but its value (in other words, it was allowed to award the contract on the criteria of the most economically advantageous offer). Also the precocious phase of Lithuanian public procurement was based on "buy national" policy and was "rich" with overt and less visible forms of discrimination of foreign tenders. Only starting with 2000 (mainly influenced by integration processes to the European Union) public procurement market was opened up to international trade and public procurement legislation vouchsafed equal rights to foreign companies to be awarded a contract. So investigation of Lithuanian legislation on public procurement points up a big progress of government policy in this sphere, but despite those positive changes, the operation of public procurement system is mainly based on the previous acquisition philosophy: contracts are generally awarded primarily on price and the focus of each acquisition is mainly the process itself. Also even then there is no official policy of buying national goods, but there are strong psychological, administrative and practical pressures.


Despite a high drinkable quality, many people avoid tap water because of vague anxiety about its safety. Conjoint analysis (CA) was conducted to determine what factors are considered important for consumers' selection of drinking water. The information provision effect was also investigated inside CA profiles using different model equations. Results indicate that the perception of the safety of tap water was much lower than that of other waters. Higher levels of water hardness and cancer risk negatively influenced selection of drinking water, while third-party certifications about taste and safety positively impacted it. When cancer risk was shown in a CA profile, the weight given to other attributes decreased. Among different socio-demographic groups, gender was important in establishing drinking water preferences with men paying less attention to the benefits of water-dispensers and certifications from third parties. Besides, age also has some influence on drinking water selection. People's consciousness of taste, safety, cost, and handling for drinking water were assessed by using analytic hierarchy process and the scores were incorporated in CA equation. The results suggest that improving people's perceptions of the taste and safety of tap water can promote consumers' selection of tap water as drinking water.


This thesis addresses open challenges in the field of myoelectrically controlled upper limb prostheses. These challenges include the inherently low bandwidth of the myoelectric control channel that makes the current control interfaces limited and unintuitive for the user, especially when controlling modern multi-function prostheses, as well as the lack of somatosensory feedback that would allow the user to better perceive the state of his/her prosthesis. This thesis aims at addressing these challenges by designing novel man-machine-interfaces, based on the latest sensing and automatic control technologies, to provide improved operation and perception of the prosthetic device. To this end, the thesis comprises introductory chapters that describe the state of the art in the field, the aim of the thesis and the used methodology, as well as four peer-reviewed journal publications presenting the novel feedforward and feedback methods.
In the first two studies, I proposed and evaluated a novel system for prosthesis control based on sensor-fusion. In the classic approach, the user has the responsibility of generating all the command signals, while the prosthesis controller operates as a decoder, acquiring the signals and decoding user intention. In the novel framework, proposed here, the prosthesis is enhanced with advanced sensing and autonomous decision-making, becoming thereby an intelligent agent assisting the user. The inspiration for this novel approach comes from the modern-day autonomous robotic systems that utilize a variety of multimodal sensors and data processing methods in order to perceive and interpret the environment. In the present work, the prosthetic hand was equipped with computer vision and inertial sensing, and this information was used by the prosthesis controller to provide an additional, artificial-intelligence processing layer. This component analyzed the usage-context (environment, user and prosthesis) and, based on this, automatically controlled the hand preshape and orientation, thereby supporting the user in operating the prosthesis functions. The overall control loop is therefore simplified for the user because the sensor-fusion controller takes over the part of the inherent control complexity by adjusting the prosthesis parameters automatically. The user only provides high-level commands (e.g., grasp an object) that can be delivered robustly through a simple two-channel myoelectric interface.
In the second two studies, I introduced a versatile development framework for evaluating a variety of feedback interfaces. The framework comprises a library of components implementing specific elements of a generic closed-loop prosthesis control system, from control inputs to the feedback interfaces. The framework operates in real-time and allows fast prototyping and testing. This has been used to develop and evaluate a novel biofeedback paradigm that closes the loop by feeding the myoelectric control signals (prosthesis input) back to the user. This is a novel approach with respect to the classic methods in literature, in which the feedback variables were the prostheses outputs (e.g., grasping force, joint angle). Due to the nature of the prosthesis control interface, in which the prosthesis reaction is proportional to the user's myoelectric commands, this paradigm allows for predictive and robust control in comparison to the state-of-the-art approaches. For example, the user can exploit the biofeedback to modulate his/her command to the prosthesis during closing, so that desired grasping force is generated, after contact (predictive force control). Finally, a practical biofeedback implementation that utilizes augmented-reality and wearable see-through display embedded in Google Glass is also presented.
In conclusion, by innovating both feedforward as well as feedback interfaces with new functionalities, this thesis advances the overall development of the modern man-machine-interfaces used for prosthesis control. This research can lead to effective and user friendly methods for control of advanced modern-day prostheses (e.g., dexterous hands, full arms), which in return could improve the utility and facilitate wider acceptance of these systems in daily life.


A spectrophotometric and thermodynamic method is described for the assay of glibenclamide. The method is based on charge transfer complexation reaction of glibenclamide as n-electron donor with 2,3-Dichloro-5,6-Dicyano-1,4-benzoquinone (DDQ) as 𝜋-acceptor to form highly coloured charge transfer complex with a stoichiometric ratio of 1:1. The coloured product was analyzed at 474 nm under the optimized experimental conditions. Beer's law was obeyed over the concentration range of 20-100 μg/ml. The apparent molar absorptivity was calculated to be 0.99 × 103 L.mol-1.cm-1. Corresponding Sandell's sensitivity, detection and quantification limits were also reported. Also, the association constant, free Gibb's energy, enthalpy and entropy changes of the complex were determined. The proposed method was applied successfully to the determination of glibenclamide in pure and commercial forms with good average recovery of 98.24%. Statistical comparison was done using student t-test and f-test at 95% confidence level.


This title describes the symbolic process in child's play at each stage from infancy onwards. In addition it shows how particular symbols can facilitate the healing of blocks that may arise in each stage of psychological development. The book is in two parts, In part one, each of the chapters describes a new phase of the symbolic process as it emerges in typical fantasies that accompany a stage of normal development. In part two, each chapter is devoted to the exposition of the particular healing role played by symbols at different stages of development in psychotherapy with infants, children, adolescents and adults.


As an instance of the critical dystopia, The Last of Us lets the player enact a postapocalyptic story in which human society has been severely decimated by the Cordyceps infection and where nature has made an astonishing return. This paper examines the ecological rhetoric of The Last of Us by laying emphasis on the empirical player's emancipated involvement in the gameworld (virtualized storyworld) and how s/he engages in a creative dialectic with the implied player. In suggesting the utopian enclave of a life in balance with nature, The Last of Us scrutinises the ills of our empirical present and lays a negative image on the latter. As such, The Last of Us is a magnificent example of the video game dystopia and succeeds in triggering a powerful aesthetic response in the empirical player, which might result in a call to action in the real world.


European accounting terminology is dynamic as term creation and formation occurs on national, European Union and international levels. Although English is the lingua franca of accounting, international accounting standards in English exist on a par with their translations into other languages. However, an analysis of online dictionaries shows that these cannot cope with the dynamic nature of accounting terminology. We discuss a network of internet dictionaries in English, Danish, and Spanish that was compiled using the functional approach to specialised lexicography. We show how terminologists can work in subject fields where culture and context play a key role in the development of nationally accepted and internationally recommended terms, and propose ways to remedy deficiencies identified in the dictionaries examined. Finally, we discuss strategies for translating English metaphorical terms into Spanish assuming that bilingual accounting dictionaries should use conceptually similar terms in both source and target languages


BACKGROUND
Physical activity is important for maintaining independence and quality of life in older people living in care homes. Little is known about patterns of physical activity or sedentary behavior in this population.

METHODS
Thirty-three care home residents (82.6 ± 9.2 years) wore an ActiGraph GTX3 accelerometer for seven days, which provided minutes of sedentary behavior and low, light, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Participants undertook the Mini-Mental State Examination and care staff reported activities of daily living (Barthel index) and functional ambulation classification (FAC) for each participant.

RESULTS
Participants spent on average 79% of their day sedentary, 14% in low, 6% in light, and 1% in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Activity levels did not significantly differ between days or hours of the day (P > .05).

CONCLUSION
Levels of physical activity were very low and time being sedentary was high. This study can inform physical activity and sedentary behavior interventions for care homes' residents.


The time is right for biologists to post their research findings onto preprint servers A preprint is a complete scientific manuscript (often one also being submitted to a peer-reviewed journal) that is uploaded by the authors to a public server without formal review. After a brief inspection to ensure that the work is scientific in nature, the posted scientific manuscript can be viewed without charge on the Web. Thus, preprint servers facilitate the direct and open delivery of new knowledge and concepts to the worldwide scientific community before traditional validation through peer review (1, 2). Although the preprint server arXiv.org has been essential for physics, mathematics, and computer sciences for over two decades, preprints are currently used minimally in biology.


Conducting molecular dynamics (MD) simulations involving chemical reactions in large-scale condensed phase systems (liquids, proteins, fuel cells, etc...) is a computationally prohibitive task even though many new ab initio based methodologies (i.e., AIMD, QM/MM) have been developed. Chemical processes occur over a range of length scales and are coupled to slow (long time scale) system motions, which make adequate sampling a challenge. Multistate methodologies, such as the multistate empirical valence bond (MS-EVB) method, which are based on effective force fields, are more computationally efficient and enable the simulation of chemical reactions over the necessary time and length scales to properly converge statistical properties.
 The typical parallel scaling bottleneck in both reactive and nonreactive all-atom MD simulations is the accurate treatment of long-range electrostatic interactions. Currently, Ewald-type algorithms rely on three-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform (3D-FFT) calculations. The parallel scaling of these 3D-FFT calculations can be severely degraded at higher processor counts due to necessary MPI all-to-all communication. This poses an even bigger problem in MS-EVB calculations, since the electrostatics, and hence the 3D-FFT, must be evaluated many times during a single time step.
 Due to the limited scaling of the 3D-FFT in MD simulations, the traditional single-program-multiple-data (SPMD) parallelism model is only able to utilize several hundred CPU cores, even for very large systems. However, with a proper implementation of a multi-program (MP) model, large systems can scale to thousands of CPU cores. This paper will discuss recent efforts in collaboration with XSEDE advanced support to implement the MS-EVB model in the scalable LAMMPS MD code, and to further improve parallel scaling by implementing MP parallelization algorithms in LAMMPS. These algorithms improve parallel scaling in both the standard LAMMPS code and LAMMPS with MS-EVB, thus facilitating the efficient simulation of large-scale condensed phase systems, which include the ability to model chemical reactions.


TDC Offset Estimation from Motored Cylinder Pressure Data based on Heat Release Shaping — Finding the correct Top Dead Center (TDC) offset for an internal combustion engine is harder than it seems. This study introduces a novel method to find the TDC offset based on the simple assumption that the heat loss power through the combustion chamber walls is constant for motored cycles in a narrow Crank Angle interval around TDC. The proposed method uses nonlinear least squares optimization to find the combination of specific heat ratio and TDC offset that makes the heat loss power as constant as possible. An important subproblem is to determine the peak pressure location with high accuracy. Fitting a third order Fourier series to the motored cylinder pressure allows the pressure maximum to be estimated with a standard deviation of 0.005◦ Crank Angle (CA) and it can also be used instead of the measured pressure to reduce the uncertainty of the TDC estimate by approximately 50%. The standard deviation of a single-cycle TDC estimate is approximately 0.025◦ CA when using a crank resolution of 0.2◦ CA for the measurements. The bias of the TDC estimate is in the 0-0.02◦ CA range both when comparing to measurements with a TDC sensor and with simulated 706 Oil & Gas Science and Technology – Rev. IFP Energies nouvelles, Vol. 66 (2011), No. 4 motored cycles. The method can be used both for calibration and on-board diagnostics purposes e.g. during cranking, fuel cut-off or engine switch-off. The third order Fourier series fit comes with a significant computational penalty but since it is only applied very intermittently this does not have to be a serious issue.


A variety of error resilience and scalable coding techniques have recently been proposed to facilitate the delivery of video over best-effort networks; a common drawback of these techniques is reduced compression efficiency. Also, MPEG-7 descriptors have recently been developed for the purpose of indexing. In this paper, we propose to employ MPEG-7 descriptors to improve the quality of the video delivered over best-effort networks. In particular, we propose a video transmission system that uses the motion activity descriptors to ensure robust video transmission. A novel motion activity extraction technique is proposed, which relies on a neural network approach. By considering several low-level visual features, our proposed extraction approach achieves high consistency with subjective evaluations of motion activities. In order to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed transmission system, we develop a selective packet dropping scheme that can be applied in case of network congestion. Simulations demonstrate that the reconstruction quality of the proposed congestion scheme can surpass conventional schemes by 1.2 dB. The network performance of the proposed transmission system when video sequences are coded into single layer or scalable layers is presented. We also present a transcoding scheme that achieves the optimal reconstructed quality by exploiting the motion activities of the underlying video sequence


This film script created by Joel Sayre and William Faulkner with Nunnally Johnson, written because Darryl F. Zanuck had acquired the rights to a French film, "Les Croix de Bois "(1932), in order to use its battle sequences as stock footage, is as much prophetic truth as it is accurate history.Indeed, as George Garrett points out, "The Road to Glory "became an allegory for our times. Aided by Howard Hawks s direction (in his first of many collaborations with Faulkner) and a superb cast: Warner Baxter as the Captain, Lionel Barrymore as the Old Man, Fredric March as the Lieutenant, and June Lang as Monique, this script was made into an outstanding motion picture, one of the finest on the subject of men at war, and one that has influenced many subsequent films. The script is all the more remarkable because at the same time he was writing "The Road to Glory, "Faulkner managed to finish a complete draft of "Absalom, Absalom!"Even in this early collaboration Faulkner displays a craftsman s skill in employing in the script cinematic moments and devices he was to employ in later scripts, such as "The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, "and "Air Force. "The arrival of Pierre Delaage at Fifth Company headquarters in a hearse provides an excellent example. Pierre is immediately established as a lively and sympathetic character and his arrival visually and dramatically makes the point that the differences between the living and the dead are less clearly defined and more a matter of accident than anyone might wish to allowThere is much of Faulkner himself in this script, for as Garrett writes, Something of him was the Old Man with his bugle and his dream of old glories. Something of him was as weary, as battered, and as dutiful as the Captain. Something was still young, at that time, as lively and sardonic, as fond of whiskey and love and the quixotic gesture as the Lieutenant. And something in him deeply understood Bouffiou; for here he was, making commerce of his art, selling his time in an effort to earn more free time for himself, trying to survive at all costs. "


In this article the case of the August 2008 to March 2009 cholera epidemic is used to examine the intersections between health and politics in Zimbabwe. The focus is on the different narratives deployed by the mainstream opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change under Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) and the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU -PF) to explain the causes of, and responses to the cholera epidemic which emerged in the immediate aftermath of the disputed June 2008 presidential runoff. An analyses of how regional governments, especially South Africa, responded to the cholera outbreak is made. The opposition argued that the epidemic was a clear indicator of government's mismanagement. On the other hand, public intellectuals aligned to ZANU-PF and government ministers invoked conspiracy theories and blamed external forces for the epidemic. South Africa and the region saw it through a humanitarian crisis lens. In the discussion the varied narratives explaining the causes of the outbreak and responses to the cholera epidemic exposed ongoing internal and external political contestations are noted. The epidemic seems to have become inextricably entangled with discourses revolving around political governance, human rights problems and the struggles over political power between the ruling party and opposition parties.


This paper analyses the appropriateness of public versus private models of providing and managing water and sanitation services. Better management practices, along with well-suited institutional arrangements, are needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on water supply and sanitation. There has been Private Sector Involvement (PSI) in the drinking water sector in the four cases studied in this paper: Buenos Aires, Cochabamba, Cartagena de Indias and Santiago de Chile. Each has its own particular history with regards to governance, the institutional arrangements and the particular socioeconomic conditions that were in place at the time of the PSI. The paper concludes that PSI in water services in Latin America may increase the possibility of reaching the targets established in the MDGs, but this can only happen if appropriate financial schemes for water tariffs are in tune with the consumers' ability to pay. Secondly, a solid institutional arrangement and a regulatory framework need to be in place, and finally there should be active citizen participation at the community level.