This paper provides a description of the switch-reference system based on converbs in the North Tungusic language Ėven. It is argued that Ėven converbal clauses are adjunct clauses and that their properties are derived from the ways in which adjunct subordinate clauses are structured and interpreted in this language. Similar to other adjuncts, converbs can be adjoined at clausal and predicate levels, and they can be attached to different elements of the clause. This accounts for their syntactic peculiarities. At a different level of description, switch-reference in Ėven is shown to be a part of the broader system of reference tracking based on the contrast between reflexive and non-reflexive elements. This explains the interpretive and semantic idiosyncrasies of converbal clauses.


Malnutrition and Handgrip Strength in Hospitalized and Non-Hospitalized Children 6-14 Years Old Kayla Camille Jensen Department of Nutrition, Dietetics, & Food Science, BYU Master of Science Background: Malnutrition is concerning in children because it effects proper growth and development. Handgrip Strength (HGS) has been identified as a diagnostic indicator for identifying pediatric malnutrition but normal reference ranges have not yet been established; therefore, HGS can be used to identify malnutrition but not quantify the degree of malnutrition: mild, moderate, or severe. The aim of this study was to determine if HGS differed between hospitalized and non-hospitalized children and to describe the association between HGS and several parameters including height, weight, body mass index (BMI), and mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC). Methods: One hundred nine hospitalized and 110 non-hospitalized pediatric patients ages 6-14 years participated in this cross sectional, nonequivalent control group design study. Nutrition status was evaluated using BMI z scores and MUAC z scores, and HGS was evaluated within 48 hours of hospital admission or at a well-child appointment. Results: According to BMI z scores, 24.8% of hospitalized and 18.3% of non-hospitalized participants were malnourished. Mean HGS of hospitalized participants was not significantly different from non-hospitalized participants (p=.2053). HGS was found to be associated with age, height, dominant hand, and MUAC z scores in all participants. Conclusion: The difference in HGS measurements was not statistically significant between hospitalized and non-hospitalized children using a one-time HGS measurement. Further research examining HGS measurements over time as well as comparing HGS measurements to the degree of malnutrition deficit in pediatrics is needed.


The primary purpose of this thesis was to identify practical solutions for scaling up the
adoption of solar lighting products in Africa. This work was conducted in the context of a
consultancy contract for SolarAid/SunnyMoney - East Africa's only product neutral distributor
and specialised retailer of solar lighting products.
The focus of the work was on the issue of access to finance from a consumer's perspective:
An off-grid household in rural Africa may spend large sums on kerosene on a daily
basis but would struggle to collect the sum necessary for the purchase of a quality solar
light. The main obstacle to making the switch to solar lighting is the high upfront cost required.
This highlights the need for end-user finance solutions to enable low-income
households to purchase a solar light.
An analysis of the commercially available fee-for-service solutions was conducted: The
most prominent solutions, such as MKopa, Simpa Networks and Azuri technologies, were
found to use pay-as-you-go technology and mobile money as the basis of a rent-to-own
service. The main finding from this analysis was that such distribution models are more
akin to the modus operandi of a service provider (a power utility) or a financial institution
than that of a product retailer: The relationship with the costumer extends for 12 to 36
months and investments are recovered over an extended period of time.
In search of ways of implementing a rent-to-own model that was more in phase with the
strategy and needs of SolarAid/SunnyMoney, a set of trials were conducted in Western
Kenya. The first of these trials aimed to sell and entry-level product in 4 instalments. The
initial response to this rent-to-own scheme was outstanding, as 115 out of the 180 parents
reached during the trial (or almost 65%) expressed their interest. After one week, 75% of
the 421 selected participants to the scheme had submitted the initial payment. If the remaining
three weekly payments are completed in time and the programme runs smoothly,
it will be the proof that a pay-as-you-go enabled entry level light could work.
It was concluded that a pay-as-you-go enabled entry-level product could possibly allow
SunnyMoney to massively increase the product uptake during its school campaigns. And
selling mid-range products in 4 to 6 instalments could allow customers with a low-income
to climb up the energy ladder. There are currently no PAYG-enabled products with the
right characteristics available in the market but some product manufacturers have started
to look in that direction.


Abstract. In this work, based on the well-known formulae of classical nucleation theory (CNT), the temperature TNc = 1 at which the mean number of critical embryos inside a droplet is unity is derived from the Boltzmann distribution function and explored as an approximation for homogeneous freezing temperature of water droplets. Without including the information of the applied cooling rate γcooling and the number of observed droplets Ntotal_droplets in the calculation, the approximation TNc = 1 is able to reproduce the dependence of homogeneous freezing temperature on drop size V and water activity aw of aqueous drops observed in a wide range of experimental studies for droplet diameter > 10 µm and aw > 0.85, suggesting the effect of γcooling and Ntotal_droplets may be secondary compared to the effect of V and aw on homogeneous freezing temperatures in these size and water activity ranges under realistic atmospheric conditions. We use the TNc = 1 approximation to argue that the distribution of homogeneous freezing temperatures observed in the experiments may be partly explained by the spread in the size distribution of droplets used in the particular experiment. It thus appears that the simplicity of this approximation makes it potentially useful for predicting homogeneous freezing temperatures of water droplets in the atmosphere.


Improving corporate engagement with society, as advocated in the Business Roundtable's 2019 statement, should not be viewed as a zero-sum proposition where attention to new stakeholders detracts from delivering shareholder value. Corporate programs for sustainable and ethical sourcing practices, however, have fallen far short of solving the underlying causes of extreme poverty, extensive use of child labor, and threats to the environment and human health. We identify several causes to explain this disappointing shortfall in societal performance, including traditional company policies and incentives that inhibit the implementation of innovative, inclusive growth strategies. We propose the role for a new actor, a catalyst, to help companies forge new relationships with external funders, local intermediary companies, NGOs, and community leaders. The catalyst aligns the multiple stakeholders from multiple sectors into enduring, mutually- beneficial relationships that produce more value than that currently produced when stakeholders connect only by transactional relationships. The catalyst attracts funding from public and private sources to invest in the new ecosystem, which can generate attractive financial returns while alleviating poverty and environmental degradation. Finally, the catalyst engages the multiple participants to collectively co-create explicit strategies and scorecards of metrics, which serve to motivate, create accountability, and enable an enduring governance model for a multi-stakeholder ecosystem.


Stock turning points detection is a very interesting subject arising in numerous financial and economic planning problems. In this paper, Evolving Neural Network model with Dynamic Time warping Piecewise Linear Representation system for stock turning points detection is presented. The piecewise linear representation method is able to generate numerous stocks turning points from the historic data base, then Evolving Neural Network model will be applied to train the pattern and retrieve similar stock price patterns from historic data for training the system. These turning points represent short-term trading signals for selling or buying stocks from the market. it is applied to forecast the future turning points from the set of test data. Experimental results demonstrate that the hybrid system integrating DPLR and evolving neural networks can make a significant and constant amount of profit when compared with other approaches using stock data.


Recent experiments on wide flange steel columns subjected to multi-axial cyclic loading underscore the influence of the member end boundary conditions on strength and stiffness deterioration due to coupling of local and lateral torsional buckling. Field observations complemented by recent tests indicate a similar sensitivity of response modes to the base flexibility. This paper investigates the effect of the column base flexibility on the hysteretic behavior of first story steel columns in moment resisting frames (MRFs). This is accomplished through rigorous finite element (FE) simulations, validated by full-scale column member and column base tests. Recent studies on embedded steel column base connections are used to infer the base flexibilities used in the FE simulations; these are representative of those commonly observed in first story interior columns of mid- to high-rise steel MRFs. The FE simulation findings indicate that column base flexibility delays the onset of local buckling, and subsequently reduces the axial shortening by about 50% compared to the fixed-base case. In contrast, the column base strength itself is insensitive to the column base flexibility.


Democratization and development are intrinsically related to each other. There is very little literature on the relationship between democratization and development, especially after major political movements in Nepal. Therefore, this paper focuses on impacts of democratization on development activities. This is based on descriptive analysis of the Nepalese censuses after 1950s, periodical demographic surveys and a review of official documents. Democratization in Nepal has resulted in changes in Nepalese society, especially in the areas of education, health, transportation, practices in elimination of caste differentials, and migration and remittance inflow into the country. This paper is expected to have importance for policy implications from holistic perspectives. Himalayan Journal of Sociology & Anthropology - Vol. VII (2016), Page: 141-154


Travelers visit destinations that are associated with organized religion for a variety of reasons. Building on Cohen's (2003) work, we categorize visitors to "religious" travel destinations as: (1) seekers who intend to visit both religious and secular tourist sites, (2) lotus-eaters who intend to visit only secular tourist sites, (3) pilgrims who intend to visit only religious tourist sites, and (4) accidental tourists who intend to visit neither type of tourist site. We use these four types of tourists to accomplish three aims: (1) explain each type of traveler, (2) explain the interaction between religious and secular elements at travel sites, and (3) provide guidelines for attracting each type of traveler.


Productivity measurement is useful in some circumstances but not others. Measured productivity is poor for the Australian dairy industry as a whole. This finding is consistent across a range of studies and is confirmed by other information and analysis.It is useful to explore reasons for this poor performance because some public policy questions are related to overall industry performance. In particular, productivity measurement concentrates attention on industry-based research and extension programs.Production (and exports) have increased rapidly in the dairy industry but input use has increased faster. The major change has been increased grain feeding. Both increased purchases of grain and a higher proportion of exports exacerbate the financial risks of dairy farming. Recent drought and associated water shortages in irrigated dairying areas have compounded these systematic changes. By definition, estimates of average productivity in the whole dairy industry have little to say about what is happening on individual farms. Moreover, productivity is measured using annual data on inputs and outputs. While day-to-day technical and management skills are important, many of the crucial economic decisions by farmers are long-term. Aggregate productivity analysis is a useful first step in analysing industry performance. A next step is disaggregating the data to identify inputs, regions or time periods of particular interest. The time path of prices, policy changes and the weather continue to have most effect on the dairy industry. A conclusion that follows from recent experience is that the change to increased grain feeding has not been well understood in its scientific dimension, nor well executed at the farm level. Furthermore, expected gains from specialisation in manufacturing milk production following deregulation have not been realised for technical reasons, presumably related to poor reproductive performance. In particular, it appears that farmers have been given poor information on the difference between the marginal costs and marginal benefits of concentrate feeding in different time periods and circumstances. Nor have the financial consequences been properly considered in advice that has been given to farmers. Production is not the same as productivity. Increased production and exports should not be promoted as such by dairy companie


Statistical language models have successfully been used to describe and analyze natural language documents. Recent work applying language models to programming languages is focused on the task of predicting code, while mainly ignoring the prediction of programmer comments. In this work, we predict comments from JAVA source files of open source projects, using topic models and n-grams, and we analyze the performance of the models given varying amounts of background data on the project being predicted. We evaluate models on their comment-completion capability in a setting similar to codecompletion tools built into standard code editors, and show that using a comment completion tool can save up to 47% of the comment typing.


Lymphangioma usually occurs in children and usually involves the skin. Mesenteric lymphangioma is extremely rare in adults. Typically, lymphangioma appears on computed tomography (CT) as a lower attenuation of a cystic mass, however, some cases appear to be a solid mass. We describe the CT and 18F-FDG positron emission tomography/CT appearance in a case of jejunal and mesenteric cavernous lymphangiomatosis mimicking metastasis in an adult patient with rectal cancer.


In this paper, recent results in game theory and stochastic approximation are brought together to mitigate the problem of femto-to-macrocell cross-tier interference. The main result of this paper is an algorithm which reduces the impact of interference of femtocells over the existing macrocells. Such algorithm relies on the observations of the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) of all active communications in both macro and femtocells when they are fed back to the corresponding base stations. Based on such observations, femto base stations learn the probability distributions over the feasible transmit configurations (frequency band and power levels) such that a minimum time-average SINR can be guaranteed in the macrocells, at the equilibrium. In this paper, we introduce the concept of logit equilibrium (LE) and present its interpretation in terms of the trade-off faced by femtocells when experimenting several actions to discover the network, and taking the action to maximize their instantaneous performance. Finally, numerical results are given to validate our theoretical findings.


Economic Geography: An Institutional Approach 2e is a comprehensive introduction to the study of economic activity in place and across space. Perfect for all second- and third-year courses in economic geography, the text provides both a solid foundation in the location dynamics of value chains and a perspective that recognizes the interdependence of places, institutions, activities, and ways of life around the world. Instead of taking the traditional approach, which surveys this history of economic geography as a whole, the authors trace the historical developments of individual sectors, focusing on the way economic, social, and political institutions interact to determine the quality of life in a particular location.


The National Vascular Registry is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement
Partnership (HQIP) to measure the quality and outcomes of care for patients who undergo
major vascular surgery in NHS hospitals in England and Wales. It aims to provide
comparative information on the performance of NHS hospitals and thereby support local
quality improvement as well as inform patients about the care delivered in the NHS. As
such, all NHS hospitals in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are encouraged to
participate in the Registry.
The measures used to describe the patterns and outcomes of care are drawn from various
national guidelines including: the "2014 The Provision of Services for Patients with Vascular
Disease" and the Quality Improvement Frameworks published by the Vascular Society, and
the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on stroke and
peripheral arterial disease.
In 2014, the Registry published NHS trust and surgeon-level information for elective infrarenal
Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) repair and carotid endarterectomy on the Registry
website. From 28 October, information on both procedures has been available on the
www.vsqip.org.uk website for all UK NHS trusts that currently perform them. For English
NHS trusts, the same information was published for individual consultants, as part of NHS
England's "Everyone Counts: Planning for Patients 2013/4" initiative. Consultant-level
information was also published for NHS hospitals in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
for consenting surgeons.
This progress report aims to complement that information by (1) providing an overview of
care delivered by the NHS at a national level, and (2) describing various developments
within the National Vascular Registry. The Registry will publish its next annual report on
major vascular surgery in November 2015.


With the rapid progression of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and especially of Internet of Things (IoT), the conventional electrical grid is transformed into a new intelligent paradigm, known as Smart Grid (SG). SG provides significant benefits both for utility companies and energy consumers such as the two-way communication (both electricity and information), distributed generation, remote monitoring, self-healing and pervasive control. However, at the same time, this dependence introduces new security challenges, since SG inherits the vulnerabilities of multiple heterogeneous, co-existing legacy and smart technologies, such as IoT and Industrial Control Systems (ICS). An effective countermeasure against the various cyberthreats in SG is the Intrusion Detection System (IDS), informing the operator timely about the possible cyberattacks and anomalies. In this paper, we provide an anomaly-based IDS especially designed for SG utilising operational data from a real power plant. In particular, many machine learning and deep learning models were deployed, introducing novel parameters and feature representations in a comparative study. The evaluation analysis demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed IDS and the improvement due to the suggested complex data representation.


Perovskite photovoltaics have attracted remarkable attention recently due to their exceptional power conversion efficiencies (PCE). State-of-the-art perovskite absorbers typically require thermal annealing steps for high film quality. However, the annealing process adds cost and reduces yield for device fabrication and may also hinder application in tandem photovoltaics and flexible/ultra-low-cost optoelectronics. Herein, we report an additive-based room-temperature process for realizing high-quality methylammonium lead iodide films with micron-sized grains (>2 μm) and microsecond-range carrier lifetimes (τ1 = 931.94 ± 89.43 ns; τ2 = 320.41 ± 43.69 ns). Solar cells employing such films demonstrate 18.22% PCE with improved current–voltage hysteresis and stability without encapsulation. Further, we reveal that room-temperature-processed perovskite film grain size strongly depends on the precursor aggregate size in the film-deposition solution and that additive-based tuning of aggregate properties enables enlarging grains to the micron scale. These results offer a new pathway for more versatile, cost-effective perovskite processing.


As investments in the Malaysian capital market become
institutionalised, unit trusts are increasingly becoming the main vehicle
for a retail investor to participate in the capital market. Unit Trusts are
originally promoted to generate stable income with reasonable risks for
medium to long term investors.
This study examines the performance of 27 unit trusts in
Malaysia.Monthly data were collected over a 8 year period from 1990
to 1997. Performance is measured by the returns earned by the Unit
Trust. However these returns must commensurate with the level of risk
and therefore risk-adjusted performance measures are used .
Performance evaluation is further refined by investigating the ability of the Unit Trust manager to select correct investments at the right time
i.e. his/her timing and selection performance.
The general findings of this study indicate that most Malaysian
Unit Trusts generally under perform the market, are poorly diversified
and generate low levels of returns, of the 27 funds studied only 33%
outperformed the market. However after adjusting for different risk
levels, none of the funds were able to outperform the market. The
average R2 was 0.516 indicating most funds were not fully diversified.
Specifically most funds analysed attained half the level of
diversification compared to the market portfolio which is used as the
benchmark portfolio
The findings indicate that funds generally perform better during
a bear market as compared to a bull market. Though the returns for
unit trusts in a down trending period was negative, the losses were less
than the market portfolio, whereas in an uptrend period the returns of
unit trusts were less than the market return.
The findings also indicate that the timing and selection ability of
Unit Trust managers were poor with all funds having negative net selection. Timing ability was only marginally positive for income growth
funds.
This implies that in terms of the performance measured on the
basis of returns per unit of risk and the level of diversification achieved
by these funds, it would have been better for investors to invest on their own.


While technology - in the form of laptops and cellphones - may be the cause of much of the distraction in university and college classrooms, some, including the personal or classroom response system (PRS/CRS) or clicker, also present pedagogical opportunities to enhance student engagement. The current study explored the reactions of students to clicker implementation in a large, introductory chemistry class. During the final class of the semester, 200 students in an introductory chemistry class responded to an attitudinal and informational student survey using both Likert-type and non-Likert type questions to evaluate their perception of the implementation of the clickers and their impact on student learning and engagement. The results demonstrated that, when implemented effectively, clickers contribute to greater student engagement and, ultimately, an opportunity for professors to enact best practices in higher education pedagogy. This study points to the importance of effective pedagogy in making clickers worthwhile. Keywords: Clicker; technology; student engagement; higher education; learning; pedagogy (Published: 16 March 2012) Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20 : 16150 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0.16150


: Introduction: This study set out to investigate the efficacy of training through emotion-focused therapy (EFT) on the improvement of marital passion. Methods: This is a quasi-experimental study with a pre- and post-test design, and experimental and control groups. The statistical population included all couples living in Bandar Abbas. In general 185 couples enrolled to participate in the research. The sample size comprised 20 subjects in the experimental group and 20 subjects in the control group, selected from 97 couples who gained low scores in the Love Component Scale (LCS). The Sternberg's Triangular Love Scale, or Sternberg's Love Components Scale, as well as Demographic Inventory were used for data collection. Data was analyzed using ANOVA and independent t-test. Results: Findings indicate that the focus on emotions and attachment styles can alter marital passion in couples. In addition, the RFT has positive significant effect on the improvement of marital passion (P<0.0005). Conclusion: These findings show that the development of a safe attachment style and identification of initial and secondary emotions in a training process not only fade negative interactions, but also improves marital passion.


Biggs (1999) stressed that education should be about "conceptual change, not just the acquisition of knowledge". Paradoxically, however, undergraduate science units often emphasize acquiring the knowledge content of the curriculum rather than the ability to think critically. There is evidence that science students in general appear to be less and less able to read critically, or to write with clarity and purpose (Birkerts 1994); yet these are key generic skills for all science professionals. We have developed a new level 2/3 unit, Evolution, Ecology and Society, that exposes students to contemporary theories and concepts in ecology and evolutionary biology, and examines how these ideas are used to inform both scientific progress and public debate. The unit focuses on developing the students' information literacy, their ability to assess scientific theory critically and analytically, and their communication skills. The teaching pattern is centred upon four learning modules dealing with topical issues in science. We visualise the basic module as a "learning spiral", beginning with student choice of topic, library research, and reporting to the group on their readings, working towards critical and comparative assessment of material through discussion, oral presentations and written assignments. Student response has been overwhelmingly positive. This paper elaborates on the learning strategies employed in this unit, which may easily be extrapolated to other discipline areas.


Self-directed learning confers a number of advantages relative to passive observation, including the ability to test hypotheses rather than learn from data generated by the environment. However, it remains unclear to what extent self-directed learning is constrained by basic cognitive processes and how those limits are related to the structure of the to-be-learned material. The present study examined how hypothesis generation affects the success of self-directed learning of categorical rules. Two experiments manipulated the hypothesis generation process and assessed its impact on the ability to learn 1D and 2D rules. Performance was strongly influenced by whether the stimulus representation facilitated the generation of hypotheses consistent with the target rule. Broadly speaking, the findings suggest that the opportunity to actively gather information is not enough to guarantee successful learning, and that the efficacy of self-directed learning closely depends on how hypothesis generation is shaped by the structure of the learning environment.


The use of whole-genome sequencing as a tool for the study of infectious bacteria is of growing clinical interest. Chlamydia trachomatis is responsible for sexually transmitted infections and the blinding disease trachoma, which affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Recombination is widespread within the genome of C. trachomatis, thus whole-genome sequencing is necessary to understand the evolution, diversity, and epidemiology of this pathogen. Culture of C. trachomatis has, until now, been a prerequisite to obtain DNA for whole-genome sequencing; however, as C. trachomatis is an obligate intracellular pathogen, this procedure is technically demanding and time consuming. Discarded clinical samples represent a large resource for sequencing the genomes of pathogens, yet clinical swabs frequently contain very low levels of C. trachomatis DNA and large amounts of contaminating microbial and human DNA. To determine whether it is possible to obtain whole-genome sequences from bacteria without the need for culture, we have devised an approach that combines immunomagnetic separation (IMS) for targeted bacterial enrichment with multiple displacement amplification (MDA) for whole-genome amplification. Using IMS-MDA in conjunction with high-throughput multiplexed Illumina sequencing, we have produced the first whole bacterial genome sequences direct from clinical samples. We also show that this method can be used to generate genome data from nonviable archived samples. This method will prove a useful tool in answering questions relating to the biology of many difficult-to-culture or fastidious bacteria of clinical concern.


Late Capitanian foraminifers are described from two cores taken by Amoco on the north side of the entrance of Dark Canyon. The Amoco #1 core (400ft) penetrates proximal forereef debris of the Tansill Formation and bottoms in massive Capitan reefal limestone. The Amoco #2 core (468ft) penetrates proximal backreef lagoonal deposits of the upper Yates Formation and the Tansill Formation. Foraminifers are very diverse and abundant in these cores. Based on the fusulinid distribution, the Codonofusiella extensa (upper part of the Yates Formation), Yabeina texana , Paradoxiella pratti and Reichelina lamarensis zones (lower and middle Tansill Formation) are present in the Amoco #2 core. Among small foraminifers, the first appearance of the genera Sengoerina and Crescentia are recorded at the base of the Y. texana Zone and they disappear at the top of the P. pratti Zone. The genus Baisalina appears at the base of the R. lamarensis Zone and disappears at the top of that zone. The Ocotillo Silt Member and upper dolomitized part of the Tansill Formation do not contain foraminifers. The Ocotillo Silt Member is present in the Amoco #2 core at a depth of from 88 to 112ft and, because of its regional dip of approximately six degrees, would possibly project below the base of the Amoco #1 core, thus correlating the Capitan and Tansill formations in the Amoco #1 core with the upper Tansill Formation of the Amoco #2 core. The lower part of the Amoco #1 core (from 110 to 370ft) contains fusulinacean species of the Paraboultonia splendens Zone. The assemblage of small foraminifers is dominated by species of nodosariids and hemigordiopsids. Four new genera and sixteen new species of foraminifers are described from both cores.


. In October 2010, the state government of Andhra Pradesh, India issued an emergency ordi-nance, bringing microfinance activities in the state to a complete halt and causing a nation-wide shock to the liquidity of lenders, especially those lenders with loans in the affected state. We use this massive dislocation in the microfinance market to identify the causal impacts of a reduction in credit supply on consumption, entrepreneurship, and employment. Using a proprietary, hand-collected district-level data set from 27 microlenders matched with household data from the National Sample Survey, we find that district-level reductions in credit supply are associated with significant decreases in casual daily wages, household wage earnings and consumption. In contrast to many experimental studies of microfi-nance, our estimates capture the average impacts on households, inclusive of general equilibrium effects. Moreover, we find significant heterogeneity by household landholdings, consistent with a model in which medium-wealth households scale back their businesses and landless households are hit by a fall in the wage.


An open question in research nowadays is the usability of brain–computer interfaces (BCI) conceived to extend human capabilities of interaction within a virtual environment. Several paradigms are used for BCI, but the steady-state visual-evoked potential (SSVEP) stands out as it provides a higher information transfer rate while requiring less training. It is an electroencephalographic response detectable when the user looks at a flickering visual stimulus. This research proposes a novel approach for SSVEP-based BCI controller used here for navigation within a 3D virtual environment. For the first time, the flickering stimuli were integrated into virtual objects as a part of the virtual scene in a more transparent and ecological way. As an example, when navigating inside a virtual natural outdoor scene, we could embed the SSVEP flashes in the wings of virtual butterflies surrounding the user. We could also introduce the use of animated and moving stimulations when using SSVEP-based BCI, as the virtual butterflies were left with the possibility of moving and flying in front of the user. Moreover, users received real-time feedback of their mental activity and were thus aware of their detected SSVEP directly and continuously. An experiment has been conducted to assess the influence of both the feedback and the integrated controller on navigation performance and subjective preference. We found that the usage of a controller integrated within the virtual scene along with the feedback seems to improve subjective preference and feeling of presence, despite reduced performance in terms of speed. This suggests that SSVEP-based BCI interfaces for virtual environments could move on from static targets and use integrated and animated stimuli presented in an ecological way for controls in systems where performance demands could be relaxed to benefit an improvement in interaction naturalness.


. Hidden Markov models (HMM) are a ubiquitous tool for modeling time series data. The HMM can be poor at capturing dependency between observations because of the statistical assumptions it makes. Therefore, the extension of the HMM called forward-directed Autoregressive HMM (ARHMM) is considered to handle the dependencies between observations. It is also more appropriate to use an Autoregressive Hidden Markov Model directed backward in time. In this paper, we present a sequence-level mixture of these two forms of ARHMM (called MARHMM), e (cid:11) ectively allowing the model to choose for itself whether a forward-directed or backward-directed model or a soft combination of the two models are most appropriate for a given data set. For this purpose, we use the conditional independence relations in the context of a Bayesian network which is a probabilistic graphical model. The performance of the MARHMM is discussed by applying it to the simulated and real data sets. We show that the proposed model has greater modeling power than the conventional forward-directed ARHMM. The source code is available at https: // bitbucket.org 4dnucleome .


The rise in incidence of antimicrobial resistance, consumer demands and improved understanding of antimicrobial action has encouraged international agencies to review the use of antimicrobial drugs. More detailed understanding of relationships between the pharmacokinetics (PK) of antimicrobial drugs in target animal species and their action on target pathogens [pharmacodynamics (PD)] has led to greater sophistication in design of dosage schedules which improve the activity and reduce the selection pressure for resistance in antimicrobial therapy. This, in turn, may be informative in the pharmaceutical development of antimicrobial drugs and in their selection and clinical utility. PK/PD relationships between area under the concentration time curve from zero to 24 h (AUC(0-24)) and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), maximum plasma concentration (C(max)) and MIC and time during which plasma concentrations exceed the MIC have been particularly useful in optimizing efficacy and minimizing resistance. Antimicrobial drugs have been classified as concentration-dependent where increasing concentrations at the locus of infection improve bacterial kill, or time-dependent where exceeding the MIC for a prolonged percentage of the inter-dosing interval correlates with improved efficacy. For the latter group increasing the absolute concentration obtained above a threshold does not improve efficacy. The PK/PD relationship for each group of antimicrobial drugs is 'bug and drug' specific, although ratios of 125 for AUC(0-24):MIC and 10 for C(max):MIC have been recommended to achieve high efficacy for concentration-dependent antimicrobial drugs, and exceeding MIC by 1-5 multiples for between 40 and 100% of the inter-dosing interval is appropriate for most time-dependent agents. Fluoroquinolones, aminoglycosides and metronidazole are concentration-dependent and beta-lactams, macrolides, lincosamides and glycopeptides are time-dependent. For drugs of other classes there is limited and conflicting information on their classification. Resistance selection may be reduced for concentration-dependent antimicrobials by achieving an AUC(0-24):MIC ratio of greater than 100 or a C(max):MIC ratio of greater than 8. The relationships between time greater than MIC and resistance selection for time-dependent antimicrobials have not been well characterized.


Many farmland bird species have declined markedly in Europe in recent decades because of changes in agricultural practice. The specific causes vary and are poorly known for many species. The Little Owl, which feeds extensively on large invertebrates and is strongly associated with the agricultural landscape, has declined over most of northwestern Europe, including Denmark. We investigated the likely reasons for the population decline in Denmark by identifying patterns of local extinction (scale, 5 · 5k m 2 ) and estimating demographic parameters affecting local survival, focusing on changes over time and their relationship to habitat characteristics. The distribution of the Little Owl in Denmark contracted considerably between 1972‐74 and 1993‐96. The extent of contraction varied across the country, and the only habitat correlate was that local disappearance was associated with smaller amounts of agricultural land. Analyses of ring recovery data suggested a constant annual adult survival rate of 61% from 1920 to 2002, which is similar to estimates from countries with stable populations. First-year annual survival rates were much lower than values previously reported. From the 1970s into the 21st century, the mean number of fledglings declined from around 3 to < 2 young per territory, but the decline in clutch size was considerably less. Reproductive parameters were higher closer to habitat types known to be important foraging habitats for Little Owls, and were also positively correlated with the amount of seasonally changing land cover (mostly farmland) within a 1-km radius around nests as well as temperatures before and during the breeding season. Experimental food supplementation to breeding pairs increased the proportion of eggs that resulted in fledged young from 27 to 79%, supporting the hypothesis that the main proximate reason underlying the ongoing population decline is reduced productivity induced by energetic constraints after egg-laying. Conservation efforts should target enhancement of food availability during the breeding season. Other farmland species dependent on large invertebrates are likely to share the problems that Little Owls face in modern agricultural landscapes.


It is remarkable how the world's short recent history of floating exchange rates among flat currencies has affected popular thinking about what is eternally normal and proper in the economic system. Recently, Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham (2006) wrote matter of factly in the Wall Street Journal that "One of the fundamental tenets of free trade is that currencies should float." Such a "tenet," if it were such, could only have emerged since the 1970s. Of course, exchange rates had fluctuated widely in previous centuries, but it has been only since the 1970s that such fluctuations have been taken as connatural with the international monetary regime. Even John Maynard Keynes, the arch slayer of the last remnants of commodity money, was an adamant supporter of fixed exchange rates. (1) Before the 1970s, it was generally taken for granted that international transactions would be best served by a system of fixed exchange rates relative to the international standard of value, which was a commodity or a claim on a commodity. Money accepted across borders had generally been gold, or claims on gold, for about 2,500 years. The post-1971 international monetary "system," certainly a misnomer, is comprised of 150-some-odd currencies, primarily national, all circulating in the form of irredeemable IOUs, or IOUs redeemable only in other IOUs. Some trade freely against others, some trade freely but with governments buying and selling so as to maintain a desired price, and some are subject to exchange restrictions by their government issuers. This would appear a recipe for continual global chaos, but it functions with far more stability than one might expect, given the complete absence of agreed rules or an agreed international money. This is because one currency, the U.S. dollar, is widely accepted voluntarily as money for the purposes of international transactions. Nonetheless, it is a source of tremendous periodic instability, manifesting itself in currency crises afflicting countries whose currencies are not acceptable for international transactions, but which build up currency imbalances in their national balance sheets through their imports of dollar capital. Over the past two decades, devastating currency crises have hit such countries across Latin America and Asia, as well as countries just beyond the borders of western Europe; in particular, Russia and Turkey. This has led to international capital flows becoming far and away the most widely condemned flaw in globalization. That the destabilizing effects of today's cross-border capital flows should be considered, however, even by economists who should know better, a manifestation of "market imperfection" or "irrationality" is to my mind astounding. The fundamental difference between capital flows under indelibly fixed and non-fixed exchange rates was well known generations ago, decades before the modern era of globalization. Consider this excerpt from a lecture by Friedrich Hayek in 1937: Where the possible fluctuations of exchange rates are confined to narrow limits above and below a fixed point, as between the two gold points, the effect of short-term capital movements will be on the whole to reduce the amplitude of the actual fluctuations, since every movement away from the fixed point will as a rule create the expectation that it will soon be reversed. That is, short-term capital movements will on the whole tend to relieve the strain set up by the original cause of a temporarily adverse balance of payments. If exchanges, however, are variable, the capital movements will tend to work in the same direction as the original cause and thereby to intensify it [Hayek 1937: 64]. This was because Every suspicion that exchange rates were likely to change in the near future would create an additional powerful motive for shifting funds from the country whose currency was likely to fall or to the country whose currency was likely to rise. …


Abstract. This paper proposes a novel method for point cloud classification using vertical structural characteristics of ground objects. Since urbanization develops rapidly nowadays, urban ground objects also change frequently. Conventional photogrammetric methods cannot satisfy the requirements of updating the ground objects' information efficiently, so LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology is employed to accomplish this task. LiDAR data, namely point cloud data, can obtain detailed three-dimensional coordinates of ground objects, but this kind of data is discrete and unorganized. To accomplish ground objects classification with point cloud, we first construct horizontal grids and vertical layers to organize point cloud data, and then calculate vertical characteristics, including density and measures of dispersion, and form characteristic curves for each grids. With the help of PCA processing and K-means algorithm, we analyze the similarities and differences of characteristic curves. Curves that have similar features will be classified into the same class and point cloud correspond to these curves will be classified as well. The whole process is simple but effective, and this approach does not need assistance of other data sources. In this study, point cloud data are classified into three classes, which are vegetation, buildings, and roads. When horizontal grid spacing and vertical layer spacing are 3 m and 1 m respectively, vertical characteristic is set as density, and the number of dimensions after PCA processing is 11, the overall precision of classification result is about 86.31 %. The result can help us quickly understand the distribution of various ground objects.


Background: This systematic review aimed at summarizing and evaluating the evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) using acupuncture to treat polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), specifically focusing on ovulation rate, menstrual rate, and related hormones. Methods: Fifteen databases were searched electronically through February 2016. Our review included RCTs of women with PCOS; these RCTs compared acupuncture with sham acupuncture, medication, or no treatment. Two reviewers independently extracted data. Data were pooled and expressed as mean differences (MDs) for continuous outcomes and risk ratios for dichotomous outcomes, with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using a random-effects model. Results: We found a low level of evidence that acupuncture is more likely to improve ovulation rate (MD 0.35, 95% CI: 0.14–0.56) and menstruation rate (MD 0.50, 95% CI: 0.32–0.68) compared with no acupuncture. We found statistically significant pooled benefits of acupuncture treatment as an adjunct to medication in luteinizing hormone (LH), LH/follicular stimulating hormone (FSH) ratio, testosterone, fasting insulin, and pregnancy rates, but the level of evidence was low/very low. Conclusion: There is limited evidence to judge the efficacy and safety of acupuncture on key reproductive outcomes in women with PCOS. Large-scale, long-term RCTs with rigorous methodological input are needed.


Individual rain events were sampled above and below the forest canopy in Walker Branch Watershed, Tennessee, from August 1977 to June 1978 for the purpose of analysis of acidity and organic content. Strong acid content correlated with sulfate concentrations. Total acid concentrations were conserved as rain penetrated chestnut oak (Quercus prinus L.) canopies, although the strong/weak acid ratio declined substantially. Although weak acids constituted at least 30% of the total acidity of incident rain and increased to over 50% in throughfall, the increase could not be entirely attributed to organic acids. The results of the study support the fundamental importance of ion-exchange models in systematizing rain-vegetation interactions.


This report proposes the scratchpad memory management unit (SMMU) to act as a perfect data cache for a known subset of the data used by a program. This enables the execution time for each load or store operation in the program to be precisely determined. The SMMU must be explicitly controlled by the program, which commands the addition and removal of objects from the SMMU and its associated scratchpad memory. This report explains why the SMMU enables memories with high access latency to be used efficiently within hard real-time embedded systems. It describes the SMMU in abstract form, explaining how it solves the memory latency and pointer aliasing problems and how programs could use it. Then, it describes the implementation of a version of the SMMU for the Microblaze processor, enabling SMMU experiments within real embedded systems. Lastly, it conducts a case study involving a large C program to understand the costs and benefits of the SMMU for real code. A memory profiler is used to detect objects that can be usefully allocated within the scratchpad by identifying their base pointers. The implementation for Microblaze is found to be practical in terms of clock frequency and logic area. The case study shows that the SMMU capabilities cannot be applied to all variables, but the performance of the SMMU within the functions being considered is within a factor of two of the performance of a perfect data cache.


1. We have studied the effects of the diuretic tienilic acid (Ticrynafen) upon renal tubular transport of urate, in 11 healthy volunteers on a constant dietary intake. 2. Daily administration of tienilic acid for 10 days to six subjects reduced the mean body weight from 67·1 ± 4·7 kg to 64·5 ± 4·7 kg and a reversible fall in serum urate from a mean value of 0·34 ± 0·04 to 0·16 ± 0·01 mmol/l. Fractional urate excretion in the six subjects on the first day of therapy was 30·3 ± 5·6% and then fell to reach a new steady-state mean value of 17·4 ± 2·0%. 3. To evaluate the mechanism of the uricosuria, studies were performed during acute sustained water diuresis in five subjects to assess the effects of tienilic acid, pyrazinamide, probenecid and their combinations. 4. Fractional urate excretion increased markedly with tienilic acid from 11·2 ± 1·3% to 47·5 ± 5·7%. Pyrazinamide, 24·4 mmol (3 g) orally, decreased urate excretion to 5·1 ± 0·7% and markedly blunted the uricosuric effects but not the natriuresis of tienilic acid. Probenecid increased urate excretion to 26 ± 6·0 % and when given with tienilic acid increased urate excretion to 66·4 ± 2·6%. Addition of pyrazinamide to this combination decreased urate excretion to 19·6 ± 4·0%, which was greater than the effect with pyrazinamide alone. 5. We suggest that tienilic acid increased urate excretion by inhibiting reabsorption of both filtered and secreted urate. We have used our results to construct semi-quantitative estimates of the various components of urate transport in man.


The choice of financial structure is appropriately viewed as a complex, multidimensional decision by insurer management. Specific attention is given to traditional theories regarding capital structure, including the tradeoff between the tax benefits and increasing probability of incurring the cost of financial distress associated with leverage, and the tradeoff between protecting franchise or charter value and expropriating value through increasing exposure to interest rate risk. Within this framework, the relation between leverage, interest rate sensitivity and firm value is investigated in the property-liability insurance industry. Equity value, as gauged by Tobin's q, is determined to be related to an insurer's choice of financial structure. It is shown that the market value of equity at first grows but then later declines as leverage increases. Interest rate risk has the opposite effect. Equity value first declines with interest rate risk, but then rises at high levels of interest rate risk. These results are consistent with the prediction that financial institutions will expend scarce resources to control risk in order to protect franchise value and may indeed be signaling the existence of these valuable intangibles via these actions.


Importance
Idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) aggregates in families, and early detection in at-risk family members can provide opportunity to initiate treatment prior to late-phase disease. Most studies have included only White patients, yet Black patients with DCM have higher risk of heart failure-related hospitalization and death.

Objective
To estimate the prevalence of familial DCM among DCM probands and the age-specific cumulative risk of DCM in first-degree relatives across race and ethnicity groups.

Design, Setting, and Participants
A family-based, cross-sectional study conducted by a multisite consortium of 25 US heart failure programs. Participants included patients with DCM (probands), defined as left ventricular systolic dysfunction and left ventricular enlargement after excluding usual clinical causes, and their first-degree relatives. Enrollment commenced June 7, 2016; proband and family member enrollment concluded March 15, 2020, and April 1, 2021, respectively.

Exposures
The presence of DCM in a proband.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Familial DCM defined by DCM in at least 1 first-degree relative; expanded familial DCM defined by the presence of DCM or either left ventricular enlargement or left ventricular systolic dysfunction without known cause in at least 1 first-degree relative.

Results
The study enrolled 1220 probands (median age, 52.8 years [IQR, 42.4-61.8]; 43.8% female; 43.1% Black and 8.3% Hispanic) and screened 1693 first-degree relatives for DCM. A median of 28% (IQR, 0%-60%) of living first-degree relatives were screened per family. The crude prevalence of familial DCM among probands was 11.6% overall. The model-based estimate of the prevalence of familial DCM among probands at a typical US advanced heart failure program if all living first-degree relatives were screened was 29.7% (95% CI, 23.5% to 36.0%) overall. The estimated prevalence of familial DCM was higher in Black probands than in White probands (difference, 11.3% [95% CI, 1.9% to 20.8%]) but did not differ significantly between Hispanic probands and non-Hispanic probands (difference, -1.4% [95% CI, -15.9% to 13.1%]). The estimated prevalence of expanded familial DCM was 56.9% (95% CI, 50.8% to 63.0%) overall. Based on age-specific disease status at enrollment, estimated cumulative risks in first-degree relatives at a typical US advanced heart failure program reached 19% (95% CI, 13% to 24%) by age 80 years for DCM and 33% (95% CI, 27% to 40%) for expanded DCM inclusive of partial phenotypes. The DCM hazard was higher in first-degree relatives of non-Hispanic Black probands than non-Hispanic White probands (hazard ratio, 1.89 [95% CI, 1.26 to 2.83]).

Conclusions and Relevance
In a US cross-sectional study, there was substantial estimated prevalence of familial DCM among probands and modeled cumulative risk of DCM among their first-degree relatives.

Trial Registration
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03037632.


The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of 2 different rest period lengths during a resistance training session with the number of repetitions completed per set of each exercise, the volume completed over 3 sets of each exercise, and the total volume during a training session. Fourteen experienced, weight- trained men volunteered to participate in the study. All subjects completed 2 experimental training sessions. Both sessions consisted of 3 sets of 8 repetitions with an 8 repetition maximum resistance of 6 upper body exercises performed in a set manner (wide grip lat pull-down, close grip pull-down, machine seated row, barbell row lying on a bench, dumbbell seated arm curl, and machine seated arm curl). The 2 experimental sessions differed only in the length of the rest period between sets and exercises: 1 session with a 1-minute and the other with a 3-minute rest period. For all exercises, results demonstrate a significantly lower total number of repetitions for all 3 sets of an exercise when 1-minute rest periods were used (p ≤ 0.05). The 3- and 1-minute protocols both resulted in a significant decrease from set 1 to set 3 in 4 of the 6 exercises (p ≤ 0.05), whereas the 1- minute protocol also demonstrated a significant decrease from set 1 to set 2 in 2 of the 6 exercises (p ≤ 0.05). The results indicate that, during a resistance training session composed of all upper body exercises, 1-minute rest periods result in a decrease in the total number of repetitions performed compared with 3-minute rest periods between sets and exercises.


We propose to use Rademacher complexity, originally developed in computational learning theory, as a measure of human learning capacity. Rademacher complexity measures a learner's ability to fit random labels, and can be used to bound the learner's true error based on the observed training sample error. We first review the definition of Rademacher complexity and its generalization bound. We then describe a "learning the noise" procedure to experimentally measure human Rademacher complexities. The results from empirical studies showed that: (i) human Rademacher complexity can be successfully measured, (ii) the complexity depends on the domain and training sample size in intuitive ways, (iii) human learning respects the generalization bounds, (iv) the bounds can be useful in predicting the danger of overfitting in human learning. Finally, we discuss the potential applications of human Rademacher complexity in cognitive science.


Using a political-frame-free, lab-in-the-field experiment, we investigate the associations between employment status, self-reported political ideology, and preferences for redistribution. The experiment consists of a real-effort task, followed by a four-player dictator game. In one treatment, dictator game initial endowments depend on participants' performance in the real-effort task, i.e., they are earned, in the other, they are randomly determined. We find that being employed or unemployed is associated with revealed redistributive preferences, while the political ideology of the employed and unemployed is not. In contrast, the revealed redistributive preferences of students are strongly associated with their political ideologies. The employed and right-leaning students redistribute earnings less than windfalls, the unemployed, and left-leaning students make no such distinction.


Introduction/Background . A key aspect of patient-centered communication is situational awareness (SA)While researchers often consider team SA, patient SA is equally importantPatient SA is particularly important in acute care, when a patient may be awake yet lying supine, possibly unaware of what the clinical team is doing to them. To measure patient SA, we developed an interaction analysis system called the Patient Situational Awareness Coding Scheme (PSACS).1–3 The tool was adapted from Endsley's model of SA for dynamic systems and healthcare teams.4,5 PSACS contains three dimensions: intra-team and patient-directed communication, patient safety practices and patient-directed haptic actions (touch)Collectively, these dimensions enable explicit and implicit measurement of patient-clinician communication. In this work, we apply the haptic-action dimension (PSACS-haptics) to ten simulations performed by three levels of BSN nursing students (4th, 5th, and 6th semester)Our primary research question is: Is there a difference in level of communication during haptic actions as nursing students advance in the program? We are interested in this question because as simulations increase in complexity throughout the curriculum, we would like students continue to exhibit best communication practices. Methods We analyzed ten single-patient simulations across three classes at the [Blinded] School of Nursing. Each simulation used a high-fidelity manikin, lasted approximately 20 minutes and involved a team of two students in the role of the nurse. A total of 20 students participated across the three classes (16 female/4 male). Three simulations were from a nursing fundamentals class (4th semester) and included basic care for a geriatric patient. Five simulations were from a Med/Surg I class (5th semester) and included care of a post-operative patient. Two simulations were from a Med/Surg II class (6th semester)and included care of a post-operative patient with diabetes. Using the ELAN annotation tool,6 two raters coded four types of haptic actions. For each action, they annotated how clinicians spoke to the patient – if they communicated with the patient, either by asking permission before acting or informing the patient the action was taking place or acted without communicating. The four haptic actions types were: 1) Interventions, which include administering IV medication, taking blood, caring for a surgical wound site, etc.; 2) Instrument-based assessment, which include checking blood pressure, checking breathing with a stethoscope, etc.; 3) Non-Instrument based assessment, which include observing and palpating the IV site for signs of complications, extremities for edema, etc.; 4) Gown movements, opening or closing the gown. The raters had high inter-rater reliability (Krippendorf's &agr; = 0.82). Results In Table 1, we report communication rates per class and category. Communication rates are reported as the proportion of haptic actions with communication out of all actions in that category. Conclusion Our Results suggest that nursing students appear to be communicating less with patients during haptic actions the further along they are in their studies. There are several possible reasons for this. First, the Med Surg I/II simulations were more difficult, requiring students to accomplish more technical tasks. This greater cognitive load may have made it difficult for students to remember to keep lines of communication open with the patients as they treated them. Second, in Med Sug II, students had to handle a crisis, adding an additional cognitive burden. Nonetheless, we want our students to retain their patient-centered communication skills regardless of the task load, so we plan to conduct additional evaluations. References 1–3. Blinded for review. 4. Van Servellen, G.: Communication skills for the health care professional: Concepts and techniques, 2nd edition. Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2008. 5. Wright, M. C., J. M. Taekman, and M. R. Endsley: Objective measures of situation awareness in a simulated medical environment. Quality and Safety in Health Care 2004; 13(1). 6. Wittenburg, P., Brugman, H., Russel, A., Klassmann, A., Sloetjes, H.: ELAN: a Professional Framework for Multimodality Research. Proceedings of LREC 2006; Fifth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation. Disclosures None.


In current architectural practice some important changes are taking place because of the development of numerous Building Performance Simulations (BPS) tools to support design decisions during early phases of the design process. Many difficulties still persist, however, not necessarily due to the limitations of the available technology, but to the lack of appropriate methodologies to use the existing tools to improve the decision making process, particularly at the early design stages. In this work we present an application of performance-based design in early design phases, with the purpose to take better-informed decisions which would ultimately contribute to improve the energy performance of buildings.


While the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) locus is the most polymorphic region in the human genome, Major Histocompatibility Complex Class Ib (MHC-Ib) molecules display far less polymorphism and variation than the structurally similar MHC Class Ia (MHC-Ia) molecules. From an evolutionary perspective, the polymorphism of MHC-Ia stems from the advantage conferred by a heterozygotic MHC-Ia genotype, due to the recognised role of antigen presentation to clonotypic αβT-cell receptors (TcRs) in the adaptive immune system. In contrast, the primary roles of the various MHC-Ib molecules are in the regulation of the innate immune system, roles which are generally independent of allele variation. Indeed, the two most extensively studied Class Ib molecules in humans, HLA-G and HLA-E, are essentially monomorphic at the amino acid level, though a limited number of polymorphisms have been found in healthy individuals. The role of HLA-G in regulating the innate immune response to the semi-allogeneic foetus in pregnancy has been a recent focus of research in reproductive biology. Little is known about the role of the peptide presented by HLA-G in this context, though the crystal structure of HLA-G presenting the endogenous peptide RIIPRHLQL, has been determined in both monomeric (Clements et al., 2005) and dimeric (Shiroishi et al., 2006a) forms. It has been proposed that the nature of the bound peptide may influence binding to Natural Killer (NK) cell receptors of the Leukocyte Immunoglobulin-like Receptor (LILR/LIR/ILT) family, as well as KIR2DL4, a member of the Killer Immunoglobulin-like Receptor (KIR) family of NK receptors. Therefore, the structure of HLA-G was determined with two further endogenous peptides, KLPAQFYIL and KGPPAALTL, in order to investigate the effect of the bound peptide on the conformation of HLA-G. KIR2DL4, which also displays significantly less polymorphism relative to other members of the KIR family, was expressed recombinantly and studied using biochemical techniques including circular dichroism (CD) analysis and small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) as part of the wider aim of solving the crystal structure of this NK receptor. HLA-E performs a distinct role in regulating the innate immune response, mediated by the presentation of related peptides, derived from the leader sequence of MHC-I molecules, to NK receptors of the CD94/NKG2 family. This role forms part of the 'missing self' reaction, with downregulation of pMHC-I (peptide/MHC-I) production (for example, in infected or damaged cells) resulting in downregulation of pHLA-E presentation and knockout of signals inhibiting NK cell-mediated lysis. Constitutive, activatory signals present in the NK cell are then able to mediate lysis of the infected or damaged cell. While the structure of HLA-E has been solved with several peptides and also in complex with CD94/NKG2A, a role in the adaptive immune system has recently been proposed based on the discovery of HLA-E-restricted T-cell populations in several individuals with latent or resolved Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections. It has been proposed that the product of the open reading frame UL40 (a Type 1 membrane protein) of some CMV strains has evolved to contain mimotopes of the MHC-I leader sequences, and that in infected individuals whose MHC-I haplotypes do not match the viral mimotopes, a T-cell response may be generated (Ulbrecht et al., 2000). Based on the haplotypes of individuals, a range of non-self pHLA-E-reactive TcRs may be generated. To date, two groups of HLA-E restricted TcR have been characterised, based on peptide recognition patterns (Pietra et al., 2003). The TcRs GF4 (Group 1) and KK50.4 (Group 2) have been isolated as representative of each of these groups. To investigate the mechanism of this TcR:MHC-Ib interaction, the crystal structure of GF4 has been determined in complex with HLA-E presenting the two related peptides VMAPRTLVL and VMAPRTLIL. These structures have enabled comparison with the previously determined KK50.4:HLA-EVMAPRTLIL complex structure (Hoare et al., 2006) as well as those of MHC-Ia:TcR complexes. Collectively, the work presented in this thesis has provided insight into the basis of peptide presentation and subsequent TcR recognition by MHC-Ib molecules in humans.


One of the most controversial recommendations in the National Academy of Sciences report on forensic science — Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: The Path Forward — concerns the removal of crime laboratories from the administrative control of law enforcement agencies. For decades scholars have commented on the "inbred bias of crime laboratories affiliated with law enforcement agencies." Some commentators have proposed independent laboratories as the remedy for this problem, and in 2002, the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment proposed the establishment of an independent state crime laboratory. This essay documents the problems that triggered the NAS Report's recommendation. It also examines the counter arguments as well as alternative approaches, including additional measures that should protect forensic analyses from improper influence.


Life cycle analysis methods were employed to model the greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy consumption associated with geothermal power production when supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) is used instead of saline geofluids to recover heat from below ground. Since a significant amount of scCO2 is sequestered below ground in the process, a constant supply is required. We therefore combined the scCO2 geothermal power plant with an upstream coal power plant that captured a portion of its CO2 emissions, compressed it to scCO2, and transported the scCO2 by pipeline to the geothermal power plant. Emissions and energy consumption from all operations spanning coal mining and plant construction through power production were considered, including increases in coal use to meet steam demand for the carbon capture. The results indicated that the electricity produced by the geothermal plant more than balanced the increase in energy use resulting from carbon capture at the coal power plant. The effective heat rate (BTU coal per total kW h of electricity generated, coal plus geothermal) was comparable to that of traditional coal, but the ratio of life cycle emissions from the combined system to that of traditional coal was 15% when 90% carbon capture efficiency was assumed and when leakage from the surface was neglected. Contributions from surface leakage were estimated with a simple model for several hypothetical surface leakage rates.


The UT-7 cell line was established from a patient with a megakaryoblastic leukemia (Komatsu et al, Cancer Res 51: 341, 1991). Its proliferation is strictly dependent on the presence of hematopoietic growth factors including erythropoietin (Epo), granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), and interleukin-3 (IL-3). We investigated the differentiation capacities of this cell line under the action of several growth factors, using immunomarkers, flow cytometry, and ultrastructural techniques. In the presence of GM-CSF and IL-3, eosinophil and basophil promyelocytes were detected, as well as a few cells with erythroid and megakaryocytic (MK) differentiation features. In contrast, Epo induced a marked erythroid differentiation with an increase of glycophorin A expression, accompanied by a few hemoglobinized cells. Differentiation induced by the growth factors took 24 to 48 hours to begin, and increased with cell passages to a plateau at 2 weeks of culture. However, this was not only due to a cell selection because the differential effects of Epo and GM-CSF were observed from a single cell clone and the phenotype could be reversed by opposite growth factors, even after a long period of culture. We subsequently investigated the phenotype of UT-7 in the presence of combinations of Epo, IL-3, and GM-CSF, and showed that GM-CSF and IL-3 act predominantly over Epo. This effect was mediated by a rapid downmodulation of Epo receptors by GM-CSF at messenger RNA and binding sites levels, without a change in receptor affinities. On the other hand, Epo had no effect on number and affinity of GM-CSF receptors. This study shows that UT-7 is a growth factor-dependent pluripotent cell line in which commitment may be directed by a hierarchical action of growth factors through an early and rapid transmodulation of growth factor receptors.


Smallholder supply chain participation remains low despite the potential welfare gains that would result from choosing a market-oriented production. Yet, studies on determinants of market participation for commodities with underdeveloped value chains are scanty. Employing a double-hurdle model, this paper examines factors determining households' participation in cavy marketing among cavy farmers from Sud-Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We find that wealthier households participated less in cavy marketing while those producing more cavies were more likely to participate in their marketing. Moreover, smaller households tended to sell more cavies, while households with other livestock sold fewer cavies. The findings underscore the significance of increasing the participation in the cavy supply chains by farmers through the promotion of appropriate husbandry practices that enhance cavy productivity and production and that enable farmers to participate in markets as sellers.


The statistical properties associated with the intensity fluctuations of a He–Ne laser beam propagating through extended clear-air turbulence over a homogeneous range were measured and compared with existing theoretical models. The statistics were determined by measuring the first five normalized moments of the beam intensity over varying distances from 183 m to 3 km. The beam geometry was approximately that of a spherical wave. Calculated values of the refractive-index-structure parameter Cn2 varied from a low of approximately 10−14 m−2/3 to a high value of the order of 10−10 m−2/3. Thus the data obtained correspond to many conditions of turbulence from weak to strong turbulence in the saturation regime. We found that the data generally support the lognormal model under conditions of weak turbulence and the negative-exponential distribution in the superstrong-turbulence regime. The K distribution fits some of, but not all, the data in the saturation regime. For conditions of strong turbulence before the superstrong regime, none of the above statistical models fits the data well. This is due primarily to the fact that a looping effect appeared in the data whereby the third- and higher-order normalized moments appear to follow a looped curve in the vicinity of their maximum values when they are plotted as functions of the second normalized moment. None of the theoretical curves for the normalized moments of the above-named distributions exhibits this looping effect (since they are essentially one-parameter distributions), and therefore they have limited applicability with respect to our data.


For over four decades there have been unrelenting calls to make the tax code "fair, simple, and efficient." But despite nine major tax acts between 1969 and 2003, along with many less extensive tax acts, the refrain for a "fair, simple, and efficient" tax code has continued to be heard. This continuing plea is not surprising, because over the decades the tax system has evolved to ask the highest income earners to pay less in taxes, become ever more complex, and eschewed "efficiency" in favor of the allowance of an ever-increasing number of tax preferences. Tax act after tax act failed to produce a fair, simple, and efficient tax code. The recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is simply another failure to enact tax reform that provides a fair, simple, and efficient tax code. The call for a "fair, simple, and efficient" tax code has become a mere trope. True "tax reform" entails revising the tax code better to meet normative tax policy criteria.
"Fairness" needs to be determined with respect to the extent to which the tax code provides both horizontal and vertical equity. The tax burden on similarly situated taxpayers should be equal. If a dollar is a dollar, then two taxpayers (or households) with equal incomes, however derived, should pay equal income taxes. Vertical equity means that taxpayers with greater income than others should pay appropriately greater taxes. This criterion has been interpreted to call for imposing graduated progressive rates, including very high marginal rates on extraordinarily high incomes, based on the ability to pay principle, reflecting the diminishing marginal utility of money. These equitable criteria call for repeal of preferential rates for capital gains.
Determining ability to pay requires re-examination of the role of itemized deductions and the standard deduction. The standard deduction should be abolished. Deductions for unreimbursed employee business expenses, producing investment income, casualty losses, medical expenses, and state and local taxes should be allowed without any significant limitation. In reality, the tax system cannot be "simple." All that we can ask is that the tax system is not unnecessarily unduly complex. That means minimizing special rules that are not necessary accurately to determine economic income or ability to pay consistent with both horizontal and vertical equity principles.
"Efficiency" requires structuring the tax system to minimize interference with economic decision-making. To the greatest extent possible, the tax law should be neutral, taxing every investment made by a particular taxpayer identically and taxing all industries identically. In this regard, the Internal Revenue Code is an abject failure. It is replete with special provisions — tax expenditures — favoring various investments by various industries to one extent or another. It is long past time to pay more attention to the wisdom advanced over fifty years ago by Stanley Surrey in his analysis of the systemic problems created by introducing spending provisions through tax expenditure preferences in the tax code.
An efficient tax system requires that all businesses, however organized, should be taxed at the entity level under a system that applies the same bases rules and rates to all businesses. The only distinction should be with respect to the treatment of distributions from publicly traded business entities and distributions from privately held businesses. Distributions from publicly traded business entities should continue to be taxed as dividends. Distributions from privately held businesses should be taxed to the owners by applying the imputation-credit model for corporate tax integration.


Traumatic childhood events have the potential to shape later life experiences and choices (Layne et al., 2014). Felitti et al. (1998) found that higher numbers of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) correlate to an increase in health risks and risky behaviors in adulthood. There is currently a lack of research regarding ACEs scores among graduate students in the helping profession. Thomas (2016) noted that graduate students in the helping profession have been overlooked in ACEs research although they tend to have higher rates of adverse childhood experiences than peers in comparable graduate programs. The current study sought to discover the rate of ACEs and if, among graduate students in the helping profession, self-compassion and psychological flexibility ameliorate the impact of ACEs on professional quality of life. Ninetytwo participants were sampled from doctoral and master's programs at George Fox University. Data analysis shed light on how ACEs scores, level of Self-Compassion, and level of Psychological Flexibility predicted self-reported Professional Quality of Life. A strong positive relationship was found between the abilities of self-compassion and psychological flexibility. In this sample, 25.8% endorsed 4 or more ACEs. Overall, they reported significantly more ACEs than the Felitti et al. (1998) sample and were more likely to report emotional abuse, emotional neglect, parental separation or divorce, having a household member incarcerated, and a household member struggling with mental health concerns. These adversities should become a strong consideration in program development, student support systems, and early career guidance. The present findings suggest that psychological flexibility and self-compassion may be important antidotes to the adverse impact of childhood suffering. Level of psychological STUDENT QUALITY OF LIFE iv inflexibility was shown to predict burnout; a concerning element of professional work. These data point to the importance of strengthening responses characterized by psychological flexibility and self-compassion during the educational stage of early career. The results of this study have implications for individuals, organizations, and the populations served by helping professionals. Often, the focus of trauma-informed policies is on the consumer. These data indicate the need for increased awareness of the trauma histories of providers and the development of self-compassion and psychological flexibility skills.


Background: More parasites are becoming resistant to antimalarial drugs, and in many areas a change in first-line drug treatment is necessary. The aim of the developed assay is to help determine drug use in these areas and also to be a complement to interviewing patients, which will increase reliability of surveys. Results: This assay detects quinine, mefloquine, sulfadoxine, pyrimethamine, lumefantrine, chloroquine and its metabolite desethylchloroquine in a 100-µl dried blood spot. Most of the drugs also have long half-lives that make them detectable at least 7 days after administration. The drugs are extracted from the dried blood spot with sequential extraction (due to the big differences in physicochemical properties), solid-phase extraction is used as sample clean-up and separation is performed with gradient-LC with MS ion-trap detection. Conclusion: Detection limits (S/N > 5:1) at 50 ng/ml or better were achieved for all drugs except lumefantrine (200 ng/ml), and thus can be used to determine patient compliance. A major advantage of using the ion-trap MS it that it will be possible to go back into the data and look for other drugs as needed.


The patterns of underwater acoustic signals, called soundscapes, were characterized at the river segment scale. A hydrophone was mounted onto the frame of an inflatable multihull raft and held just below the water's surface while floating for 5–24 km to continuously record acoustic signals along the longitudinal axis of the main channel (thalweg) of five hydro‐geomorphologically different river segments in Italy, Switzerland, and the United States of America. The river segments could be clearly distinguished based on sound pressure level (SPL), sound variability, and the spatial organization of the acoustic signal (10 octave bands: 0.0315–16 kHz). The spatial soundscape diversity between river segments was most likely related to the organization of turbulence along the segment length (distance between rapids) and to sound source (hydraulic turbulence or local sediment transport). Hydraulically and morphologically heterogeneous segments revealed more complex soundscapes than more homogeneous ones. Higher flow levels resulted in higher SPLs over most frequency bands. The acoustic variability of single octave bands increased from base to intermediate flow, while it decreased from intermediate to bankfull flow. The pulsating sound produced by breaking and reforming turbulent waves on flow obstacles was associated with SPL peaks and high acoustic variability in midrange frequency bands (0.063–0.5 kHz), whereas high‐frequency SPLs (1–16 kHz) were related to particle collisions during streambed sediment transport. Underwater soundscapes provide an independent measure to quantify habitat heterogeneity and spatial habitat organization that can be applied to river corridors at the segment scale.


We report on the observation of self-amplified parametric downconversion in a selectively oxidized AlGaAs cavity that was designed to perform as a guided-wave optical parametric oscillator in the near infrared. To date, two technological factors preclude such oscillation and are thoroughly investigated here: oxidation-induced optical propagation losses and the reflectivity of the waveguide resonator facets. The spectral study of the former has singled out two distinct mechanisms: scattering at the oxide interfaces and absorption by point defects in the oxide neighboring layers. Regarding the latter, dielectric mirrors have been designed and deposited on the ridge waveguide facets, with modal reflectivities of ∼10% at pump wavelength and ∼90% at signal/idler wavelengths. With respect to the case of a mirrorless waveguide, the monolithic cavity enabled a factor-2 enhancement of the conversion efficiency, indicating the close proximity of the oscillation threshold.


Voice transformation is the process of transforming the characteristics of speech uttered by a source speaker, such that a listener would believe the speech was uttered by a target speaker. Training F0 contour generation models for speech synthesis requires a large corpus of speech. If it were possible to adapt the F0 contour of one speaker to sound like that of another speaker, using a small, easily obtainable parameter set, this would be extremely valuable. We present a new method for the transformation ofF0contoursfrom one speakertoanotherbased on a small linguistically motivated parameter set. The system performs a piecewise linear mapping using these parameters. A perceptual experiment clearly demonstrates that the presented system is at least as good as an existing technique for all speaker pairs, and that in many cases it is much better and almost as good as using the target F0 contour.


The current semi-deregulated market structure of the electric utility industry does not appear to be a stable one. Taking into account what is happening in the financial mar-kets, regulatory incentives to preserve market operations until excess generation sur-pluses are absorbed may be appropriate. It is time for Washington policymakers to look reality in the face and consider radical, new, industry-encompassing approaches. Those approaches might include accepting the fact that there are excess reserve margins to be worked off over several years, freezing movement of generating assets from the unregulated to the regulated sector, proceeding with efforts to establish workable competitive markets without native load preference through standard market design (SMD), providing some incentive return to parent holders of independent generation assets frozen in the competitive sector, and affording merchant plants not owned by utility affiliates some parallel rate relief.


Although signing a decree granting the new National Security Concept the status of law in January 2000 was one of acting president Vladimir V. Putin's first official decisions in the area of security policy, this development should not be misunderstood as tied solely to Putin's views or personal leadership. The new national security policy has been developing for at least a year, and is the result of debate and consensus across a substantial portion of the Russian national security elite. The policy is a very substantial change from the December 1997 National Security Concept, and is a significant shift from liberal elements in former President Yeltsin's political coalition. The reasons for the shift are partly internal, arising from Russia's own domestic political and economic developments after the August 1998 financial crisis, but they are also the result of NATO's war in Kosovo and other difficulties in Russia's relations with the US. In this memo, I explain the background to the new policy and the reason for the change in thinking, analyze the main elements of the new policy, and assess its implications for Russia's future security policies, defense priorities, and relations with the United States.


Many developing countries are currently undergoing increasingly rapid economic growth, which contributes in turn to urban development. Though this urban development would seem to benefit these countries, it can also, if inappropriately managed, create distinct challenges for them. In this article, several development scenarios for a developing country are presented and discussed in order to demonstrate that robust long-term economic growth ultimately requires an increased commitment to sustainable development policies. After these scenarios, the article then identifies important and newly emerging issues for developing countries, and it concludes with specific policy recommendations for achieving more sustainable urban development.


A micrometer-scaled optical wavelength converter based on a multilayer structure is presented. The proposed structure is comprised of a grating of GaP nano-ribs heterogeneously integrated on the upper layer of a silicon-on-insulator waveguide. The GaP grating is used to couple the incident wave into the propagating modes of the waveguide and also to double the frequency of the incident light due to the second-harmonic generation process in GaP. The performance of this structure is numerically investigated using the generalized multipole technique for the linear analysis and the finite-difference time-domain method for the nonlinear analysis.


Despite the fact that pyrite is a relatively common phase in Ni-Cu-Platinum-Group Elements (PGE) magmatic sulphide deposits, the trace element content of the pyrite has been neglected in the studies of these deposits with most attention being paid to the PGE concentrations of pyrrhotite, pentlandite and chalcopyrite. Pyrite in these deposits exhibits a range of textures, from euhedral to xenomorphic. The origin of the different pyrites is not always clear; they could have formed by exsolution from monosulphide solid solution (mss), by replacement of the existing minerals during cooling or metamorphism or directly from hydrothermal fluids. In order to provide data on trace element contents of pyrite in a magmatic sulphide deposit and to investigate the origin of the pyrite, we have measured the content of PGE and other chalcophile elements (Au, Ag, Co, Ni, Cu, Se, Sb, As, Bi and Te) by laser ablation ICP-MS in pyrite exhibiting different textures from the Aguablanca Ni-Cu deposit (Spain). The results show that 1) large idiomorphic pyrite is compositionally-zoned with Os-Ir-Ru-Rh-As-rich layers and Se-Co-rich layers; 2) some idiomorphic pyrite grains contain unusually high PGE contents (up to 32 ppm Rh and 9 ppm Pt); 3) ribbon-like and small-grained pyrite hosts IPGE (i.e., Iridium-group PGE, Os, Ir, Ru and Rh) in similar contents (100–200 ppb each) than the host pyrrhotite; and 4) pyrite replacing plagioclase is depleted in most metals (i.e., PGE, Co, Ni and Ag). Overall, the different textural types of pyrite have similar abundances of Pd, Au, Se, Bi, Te, Sb and As. Mineralogical and compositional data suggest that the formation of pyrite is the result of the activity of late magmatic/hydrothermal fluids that triggered the partial replacement of pyrrhotite and plagioclase by pyrite, probably due to an increase in the sulphur fugacity on cooling. During this episode, pyrite inherited the IPGE content of the replaced mineral, whereas other elements such as Pd, Au and semi-metals were likely partially introduced into pyrite via altering fluids. These results highlight that pyrite can host appreciable amounts of PGE and therefore it should not be overlooked as a potential carrier of these metals in Ni-Cu-(PGE) sulphide deposits.


Studies of ocean ridge magmatism have been hampered by the difficulty in constructing time-series data over more than a few thousand years. Sediment rapidly covers newly formed ocean crust, and older rocks, even when recovered from fault scarps, cannot be dated accurately. Ridge eruptions, however, disperse pyroclastic glass over distances as far as 5 km, and these glasses have been shown to persist for thousands of years in on-ridge sediment push cores. Here we present data on such glasses from a piston core that impacted basement in much older (600 ka) sediment. The age of deposition was determined using established stratigraphic methods to date the host sediment, yielding an average sample resolution of a few thousand years and a continuous 65 k.y. time series. The new time-series data show systematic temporal variations in magma compositions related to a change to the dynamics of crustal storage, which led to greater extents of pre-eruptive differentiation. Shortly thereafter was a small but discernable shift toward more enriched primary melt compositions. These events coincide with the onset of enhanced crustal production, previously identified using seismic data and interpreted to reflect the capture of a hotspot by the ridge. These results show the long-term preservation of pyroclastic glasses and suggest that the construction of high-resolution volcanic stratigraphy over a million years or more may be possible at ocean ridges, using multiple piston cores that impact basement. Sediment-hosted glasses have the potential to transform ocean ridges from the volcanic setting with the worst time-series data to that with the best.


Context. Biometric technology is a secure and convenient identification method and it does not need to remember complex passwords, nor smart cards, keys, and the like. Biometrics is the measurable characteristics of individuals based on their behavioral patterns or physiological features that can be used to verify or recognize their identity. Physical characteristics include fingerprints, palm or hand geometry, iris, retina, and facial characteristics. Behavioral characteristics include signature, keystroke and voice pattern. With the combination of biometric technology products and modern computer technology, it is easy to perform monitoring, management, systems integration, automated management, and security applications. Objective. The aim of this research is to explore and clarify the main influencing factors and attitudes concerning biometrics Security technology by analyzing expert opinions. This is done through informal interviews and a web based survey in Blekinge healthcare. Methods. Literature review was the starting phase to map the current state of research in biometric technology implementation. The literature review helped authors to explore and solve different ambiguities in authors' minds, related to work flow, methods and procedures for different tasks. In our research, we selected five different interviewees from biometric solution supplier companies in Sweden and Denmark, Blekinge healthcare staff, biometric technology technical staff and IT security concerned to express their experiences, opinions and domain knowledge about the implementation of biometrics system in the county of Blekinge. Due to the resource and limited time constraint authors selected survey as a data collection procedure. In survey we planned a questionnaire with the different people related to healthcare. The questionnaire purpose was to collect the quantitative data and our questionnaire was relying on close ended questions. Results. It is analyzed that people have trust on biometrics system and in future they are agreed to face changing in the current system as well as the people who are related with healthcare system are already aware about biometrics and they will easily adopt the implementation of biometric system in healthcare. Conclusion. In concern of user acceptance it is analyzed that people have trust on biometrics system and in future they are agreed to face changing in the current system. In concern of implementation authors analyzed that it is very necessary to conduct a study in order to analyze the requirement of different actors that will participate in biometrics systems. In concern of cost Authors observed that for cost benefit advantage in the initial implementation stages the finger print technology could be a better selection as compared to other available biometric technologies. In concern of security there are strong reasons that biometrics could be implemented because there are many secure authentication devices related to biometrics are available in the market that could secure data in best possible way. Authors observed that there is a need of legislations for biometrics as the security measures going to be much higher as compared to the traditional password systems. In concern of privacy authors observed that the organizations are demanding strong authentication and focus on suggesting biometrics because it could provide advantages to patients, healthcare staff and healthcare providers.


This software demonstration paper presents a project on the interactive visualization of social media data. The data presentation fuses German Twitter data and a social relation network extracted from German online news. Such fusion allows for comparative analysis of the two types of media. Our system will additionally enable users to explore relationships between named entities, and to investigate events as they develop over time. Cooperative tagging of relationships is enabled through the active involvement of users. The system is available online for a broad user audience.


A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2016 Today, nations increasingly carry out geopolitical combat through economic means. Policies governing everything from trade and investment to energy and exchange rates are wielded as tools to win diplomatic allies, punish adversaries, and coerce those in between. Not so in the United States, however. America still too often reaches for the gun over the purse to advance its interests abroad. The result is a playing field sharply tilting against the United States. "Geoeconomics, the use of economic instruments to advance foreign policy goals, has long been a staple of great-power politics. In this impressive policy manifesto, Blackwill and Harris argue that in recent decades, the United States has tended to neglect this form of statecraft, while China, Russia, and other illiberal states have increasingly employed it to Washington's disadvantage." --G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs "A readable and lucid primer...The book defines the extensive topic and opens readers' eyes to its prevalence throughout history...[Presidential] candidates who care more about protecting American interests would be wise to heed the advice of War by Other Means and take our geoeconomic toolkit more seriously. --Jordan Schneider, Weekly Standard