Many disciplines spend considerable resources studying behavior. Tools range from pen-and-paper observation to biometric sensing. A tool's appropriateness depends on the goal and justification of the study, the observable context and feature set of target behaviors, the observers' resources, and the subjects' tolerance to intrusiveness. We present two systems: Viz-A-Vis and Tableau Machine. Viz-A-Vis is an analytical tool appropriate for onsite, continuous, wide-coverage and long-term capture, and for objective, contextual, and detailed analysis of the physical actions of subjects who consent to overhead video observation. Tableau Machine is a creative artifact for the home. It is a long-lasting, continuous, interactive, and abstract Art installation that captures overhead video and visualizes activity to open opportunities for creative interpretation.
We focus on overhead video observation because it affords a near one-to-one correspondence between pixels and floor plan locations, naturally framing the activity in its spatial context. Viz-A-Vis, or VIsuali Zation of Activity through VISion, is an information visualization interface that renders and manipulates computer vision abstractions. It visualizes the hidden structure of behavior in its spatiotemporal context. We demonstrate the practicality of this approach through two user studies. In the first user study, we show an important search performance boost when compared against standard video playback and against the video cube, an advanced technique from the video visualization literature. Furthermore, we determine a unanimous user choice for overviewing and searching with Viz-A-Vis. In the second study, a domain expert evaluation, we validate a number of real discoveries of insightful environmental behavior patterns by a group of senior architects using Viz-A-Vis. Furthermore, we determine clear influences of Viz-A-Vis over the resulting architectural designs in the study.
Tableau Machine is a sensing, interpreting, and painting artificial intelligence. It is an Art installation with a model of perception and personality that continuously and enduringly engages its co-occupants in the home, creating an aura of presence. It perceives the environment through overhead cameras, interprets its perceptions with computational models of behavior, maps its interpretations to generative abstract visual compositions, and renders its compositions through paintings on a television screen and a printer. We validate the goal of opening a space for creative interpretation, playful experimentation, reflection, contemplation, and conversation through a study that included three long-term deployments in real family homes.


This study was undertaken in Kitui South in Kitui County in the south eastern parts of Kenya. The main objective of the study was to develop a spatial model that can be used for selection of suitable sites for sand dam in Kitui South. The study also assessed the spatial variation of sand grain sizes and how these determine the suitability of sites for the sand dams. Data analysis was done using three approaches. The first approach involved the use of the Remote Sensing (RS) technique where data was preprocessed and analyzed using Erdas Imagine software and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for spatial modelling. The distribution of sand particle-sizes was based on sieve analysis on the sand samples collected from seasonal rivers in the study area. The seasonal rivers that were investigated in this study included Mwila, Kakya, Wiitu, Nguni, Ngunyumu, Muvuko, Kanzilu, Masaa, Katiliku, Ngulungu, Nzeeu, Koma and Katitika. Statistical analysis was done to establish the relationships between the various spatial components affecting sand particle distribution. The results from the spatial model which integrated all factors shows that 16% of the studied sites along the seasonal rivers in Kitui South were fairly suitable for construction of sand dams while 79% were classified as suitable and 5% are categorized as very suitable. Several sites in the central and the entire eastern parts of Mutha Ward were found not suitable for sand dam construction due to poor conditions such as the lack of suitable sand particles, lack of bedrock exposure on the riverbeds, flat terrain, very shallow stream banks, and weak soils on the riverbanks. Suitable sites for sand dams were found on the western and central areas of Kitui South where production and high accumulation of coarse sands was observed along the seasonal rivers. The areas near Mutomo hills and the rocky areas in Ikanga wards were found to be characterized by few excellent sites for sand dams. The optimum accumulation of different grades of sand in the seasonal rivers was found on streams with slope of between 1.5 and 6% that were dominated with 0 to 40% coarse sands, 0 to 30% fine gravels, 0 to 20% fine sands, and 20 to 80% medium sands. The accumulation of fine gravels was found to be closely related to the distribution of D30, D60 and D90 sand particle-sizes (0.4-4 mm) while accumulation of coarse sands showed good relationship with the distribution of the medium size sand (0.2-0.4 mm). The accumulation of medium sands was equally high when the occurrence of coarse sands was minimal. Different grades of sand were found to be strongly influenced by the changes in the elevation of the stream especially with regard to the accumulation of the medium sands (r=0.76) and coarse sands(r=0.75). Out of 80 investigated sites, 59% of them were dominated with uniform sands (Cu 5). The study also found that 86% of the sites along the seasonal streams were dominated with medium sands while 10% were dominated with fine sands and the rest (4%) dominated by coarse and gravelly sands. From the results this study concludes that 59% of the 80 sites that were investigated in this study have a high potential for providing suitable sites for sand dams in Kitui South.


It is proposed that entrepreneurship as a process is largely affected, not only by cognitive factors, but also by social tools. Particularly, it is suggested that entrepreneurs' social skills play a dual role. On the one hand, pre-seed-stage entrepreneurs need social skills in order to develop their social networks. On the other hand, these social skills may help entrepreneurs to gain access to essential resources. In this research, a basic framework of a successful entrepreneurial pre-seed-stage (consisting of two elements: social skills and social networks), is proposed. The conceptual model is empirically tested using a database of 64 Tunisian entrepreneurs operating in the high-technology field. The results show that specific social competencies, relevant to the pre-seed-stage of a venture creation process, have a significant and positive impact on entrepreneurs' social networks encompassing strong, affective and redundant ties. The findings assist entrepreneurs operating in the high technology sector to understand the dynamic process by which social determinants may interfere and contribute to the trigger's prosperity.


Noise injection consists of adding noise to the inputs during neural network training. Experimental results suggest that it might improve the generalization ability of the resulting neural network. A justification of this improvement remains elusive: describing analytically the average perturbed cost function is difficult, and controlling the fluctuations of the random perturbed cost function is hard. Hence, recent papers suggest replacing the random perturbed cost by a (deterministic) Taylor approximation of the average perturbed cost function. This article takes a different stance: when the injected noise is gaussian, noise injection is naturally connected to the action of the heat kernel. This provides indications on the relevance domain of traditional Taylor expansions and shows the dependence of the quality of Taylor approximations on global smoothness properties of neural networks under consideration. The connection between noise injection and heat kernel also enables controlling the fluctuations of the random perturbed cost function. Under the global smoothness assumption, tools from gaussian analysis provide bounds on the tail behavior of the perturbed cost. This finally suggests that mixing input perturbation with smoothness-based penalization might be profitable.


This impressive volume provides over 1,500 thoroughly revised and updated entries on modern poets active from 1910 to the present day. An extensive guide to the lives of influential poets writing in English, in Britain and around the world, this companion helps to illuminate the influences, inspirations, and movements that have shaped the lives and works of these important authors. First published in 1994 as the Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry in English and compiled by a team of 230 experts, including famous poets such as Carol Rumens and Andrew Motion, this edition also includes new biographical entries on more contemporary poets such as Don Paterson, Anne Carson, John Kinsella, and Leslie Marmon Silko. It also contains insightful entries by well-known peers, such as Seamus Heaney on Robert Lowell and Anne Stevenson on Sylvia Plath. The A-Z biographies are complemented by new appendices including coverage of poetry events and movements and lists of anthologies and important poetry prizes and prize-winners. In addition, many entries include details of in-depth supplementary material available online on the dedicated companion website. This superb reference work is the ideal companion for students of English Literature, Language, and Creative Writing, as well as for anyone with an interest in modern poetry.


Written by Will Eisner Art and cover by Eisner DC Comics is proud to present its first-ever collection celebrating the greatest stories by comics mastermind Will Eisner starring one of the most indelible characters ever created: The Spirit! THE BEST OF THE SPIRIT reprints 22 Spirit sections from 1940-1950, featuring famous first appearances, classic confrontations, human interest tales, and all those magnificent splash pages! Eisner's blue-suit-clad, fedora-wearing crimefighter starred in hundreds of newspaper adventure stories that thrilled readers with Eisner's groundbreaking style. Eisner was a master of utilizing the comics format to its greatest strengths, and his Spirit stories are some of his finest examples! This volume also features an introduction by New York Times best-selling novelist Neil Gaiman (THE SANDMAN).


Ideas from topology have played a major role in physics especially to describe and explain exotic quantum phenomena. There has been a considerable interest among physicists who are working on string theory and quantum gravity to use ideas and results from topology to explain their work. However, often one is limited to the choice of spaces with relatively simpler topologies e.g. sphere, torus etc because more complex spaces are difficult to be characterized or even distinguished. It is our particular interest to consider singularities (i.e. having one or several punctures on it) as a tool to generate a family of complex two-dimensional configuration surfaces. These surfaces may find applications in to mathematical models of quantum chaos, cosmology, particle physics, condensed matter, quantum gravity and string theory.
Extensive mathematical studies have been carried out for punctured surfaces but their literature in physics are scarce. Most have tackled the case of quantum mechanical systems on punctured torus with respect to its scattering and chaotic behavior. Of particular interest in the present work are the quantum mechanical systems of singly punctured two-torus and triply punctured two-sphere. They both have two generators and three possible non-contractible loops. Both surfaces can be generated from the same parent generators of the modular group Γ, which is a discrete subgroup of linear fractional transformations of the upper half complex plane H (the universal cover of the punctured surfaces). In this dissertation, we construct both surfaces of singly punctured two-torus and triply punctured two-sphere stepwise using these generators.
The main aim however is to construct the energy eigenequation for particle on surfaces of singly punctured two-torus and triply punctured two-sphere. For that purpose, we first identify the configuration space explicitly by considering the tessellation of the upper half-plane and the required surfaces are determined. Next, by using the Fourier expansions, finite Fourier transform of the energy eigenequation is performed to give rise to a sought standard relation for generating the eigenfunction.
It is known that the eigenfunction on a punctured system exhibit both discrete and continuous energy spectra. The discrete energy spectrum will correspond to the computation of a countable number of Maass cusp forms while for the continuous spectrum, it is spanned by the Eisenstein series. In this work, we present the expressions for the Maass cusp forms of the singly punctured two-torus and triply punctured two-sphere and the expression of the Eisenstein series for the singly punctured two-torus. At the end of this thesis a unified treatment of the Maass cusp forms and the Eisensteins series for the singly punctured two-torus and the triply punctured two-sphere are presented. The importance of each technique used on the formation of the energy eigenequation are explained in a more physical approach.


A model is used to evaluate the relative importance of temperature, soil pCO2, and organic acidity on silicate weathering rates in an average soil of warm temperate climate. The model has a structure similar to the Model of Acidification of Groundwater in Catchments, (Cosby et al., 1985a, b) used to predict catchment responses to acid deposition, but it is modified to account for the effects of temperature, the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the soil, and organic acidity on dissolution of silicate minerals. The model is run with a mean soil temperature of 15°C, and when equilibrium is achieved it is raised to 19°C. Soil pCO2 and organic acids adjust accordingly. It is found that temperature is the main control of the weathering rate; the other two factors have a very minor forcing effect. The transient after the step function disturbance occurs on a century to millennial timescale. Consequently, it is not possible to study weathering rates through either purposeful soil manipulations lasting several years or by examining the effect on soils of land use changes because steady state may have not been achieved yet.


An important issue during architectural design is that besides functional requirements, software architecture is influenced greatly by quality requirements [9][2][7], which often are neglected. The earlier quality requirements are considered, the less effort is needed later in the software lifecycle to ensure a sufficient software quality levels. Errors due to lack of their fulfilment are the most expensive and difficult to correct. Therefore, attention to quality requirements is crucial during an architectural design. The problem is not only to gather the system's quality requirements, but to establish a methodology that helps to deal with them during the software development. Literature has paid some attention to software architecture in the context of quality requirements, but there is still lack of effective solutions in this area. To alleviate the problem, this paper lays out important concepts and notions of quality requirements in a way they can be used to drive design decisions and evaluate the architecture to estimate whether these requirements are fulfilled. Important concepts of software architecture area are presented to indicate how important quality requirements are during the design and what are the consequences of their lack in a software system. Moreover, a quality requirement-oriented design method is proposed as an outcome of the literature survey. This method is a model taking quality requirements into account at first, before the core functionality is placed. Besides the conceptual solution to the identified problems, this paper also suggests a practical method of handling quality requirements during a design. A recommendation framework for choosing the most suitable architectural pattern from a set of quality attributes is also proposed. Since the literature provides insufficient qualitative information about quality requirement issues in terms of software architectures, an empirical research is conducted as means for gathering the required data. Therefore, a systematic approach to support and analyze architectural designs in terms of quality requirements is prepared. Finally, quality requirement-oriented and pattern-based design method is further proposed as a result of investigating patterns as a tool for addressing quality requirements at different abstraction levels of a design. The research is concerned with the analysis of software architectures against one or more desired software qualities that ought to be achieved at the architectural level.


A major challenge in volcanology is determining the factors that control the frequency and magnitude of eruptions at hazardous caldera volcanoes. Understanding the critical sequence of events that may lead to future eruptions is vital for volcanic monitoring and risk assessment. Here we use magma chemistry and mineral diffusion modeling to interpret the magmatic processes and time scales involved in the youngest three eruptions (2.15–1.7 ka) from Taupo volcano (New Zealand), which peaked with the voluminous A.D. 232 eruption. Of the rhyolites erupted since ca. 12 ka, the 2.75 ka) rhyolites that were tapped from the same magma reservoir. Orthopyroxene Fe-Mg diffusion time scales indicate that the onset of rapid heating and priming of the host silicic mush occurred <120 yr prior to the <2.15 ka eruptions, with subsequent melt accumulation occurring in only decades. Elevated mafic magma supply to the silicic mush pile, rapid melt accumulation, and high differential tectonic stress built up and culminated in the ∼105 km3 A.D. 232 eruption, one of the largest and most violent Holocene eruptions globally. These youngest eruptions demonstrate how Taupo's magmatic system can rapidly change behavior to generate large eruptible melt bodies on time scales of direct relevance to humans and monitoring initiatives.


Three behavioral experiments were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that perceived emotion activates expectations for upcoming musical events. Happy, sad, and neutral pictures were used as emotional primes. In Experiments 1 and 2, expectations for the continuation of neutral melodic openings were tested using an implicit task that required participants to judge the tuning of the first note of the melodic continuation. This first note was either high or low in pitch (Experiment 1) or followed either a narrow or wide melodic interval (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 assessed expectations using an explicit task and required participants to rate the quality of melodic continuations, which varied in register and interval size. Experiments 1 and 3 confirmed that emotion indeed modulates expectations for melodic continuations in a high or low register. The effect of emotion on expectations for melodic intervals was significant only in Experiment 3, although there was a trend for happiness to increase expectations for wide intervals in Experiment 2.


This paper briefly presents the software for interactive decision support that was developed in 1990-1991 within the Contracted Study Agreement between the System and Decision Sciences Program at IIASA and several Polish scientific institutions, namely: Institute of Automatic Control (Warsaw University of Technology); Institute of Computing Science (Technical University of Poznaii); Institute of Informatics (Warsaw University); and Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. This Contracted Study Agreement has been a continuation of the same type of activity conducted since 1985. Therefore many of the software packages are actually improved versions of the programs developed in 1985-1989.

The theoretical part of the results developed within this scientific activity is presented in the IIASA Collaborative Paper CP-90-008 by A. Ruszczynski, T. Rogowski and A.P. Wierzbicki entitled "Contributions to Methodology and Techniques of Decision Analysis (First Stage)." Detailed descriptions of the methodology and the user guide for each particular software package are published in separate Collaborative Papers.

Each software package described here is available in executable form for non-profit educational and scientific purposes, however, any profit-oriented or commercial application requires a written agreement with IIASA. Inquires about the software should be directed to the System and Decision Sciences Program at IIASA, Methodology of Decisions Analysis Project.


Hydrocarbon systems, by nature, are a complex interplay of elements that must be spatially and temporally aligned to result in the generation and preservation of subsurface hydrocarbon accumulations. To meet the increasing challenges of discovering hydrocarbon resources, it is essential that we advance our understanding of these systems through new geochemical approaches and analytical developments. Such development requires that academic- and industry-led research efforts converge in ways that are unique to the geosciences. The aim of this volume is to bring together a multidisciplinary geochemical community from industry and academia working in hydrocarbon systems to publish recent advances and state-of-the-art approaches to resolve the many remaining questions in hydrocarbon systems analysis. From Source to Seep presents geochemical and isotopic studies that are grouped into three themes: (1) source-rock identification and the temperature/timing of hydrocarbon generation; (2) mechanisms and time-scales associated with hydrocarbon migration, trapping, storage and alteration; and (3) the impact of fluid flow on reservoir properties.


During February 1992, field studies on the epidemiology of Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever (VHF) were carried out in a rural area of Portuguesa State in central Venezuela. The objective of this work was to determine the prevalence of infection with Guanarito virus, the etiologic agent of VHF, among wild rodents and humans living within an endemic focus of the disease. A total of 234 rodents, representing nine different species, were collected and their spleens were cultured for virus. Thirty-one Guanarito virus isolates were made from two rodent species: 19 from 40 Sigmodon alstoni and 12 from 106 Zygodontomys brevicauda. Guanarito virus antibody rates among these two species were 5.1% and 15.0%, respectively. Nine of the 12 Z. brevicauda that yielded virus from their spleens also had Guanarito virus antibodies in their sera. In contrast, none of the 19 Guanarito virus-positive S. alstoni had antibodies to the virus. These data suggest that S. alstoni usually develops a persistent nonimmunizing infection with Guanarito virus, while Z. brevicauda develops an immunizing infection. Based on knowledge of the behavior of other human pathogenic arenaviruses, these results imply that S. alstoni is the principal rodent reservoir of Guanarito virus in nature. To determine the prevalence of Guanarito virus infection among humans in the same region, 195 people living near one of the rodent collecting sites were bled and their sera were tested for antibodies to the virus. Five individuals (2.6%) had Guanarito virus antibodies; all were adults, and two had been diagnosed previously as having VHF.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Media choice theories conceptualize decisions people make when they are faced with communication media alternatives to fit a communicative need. In this paper we address two gaps in extant research on media choice. First, we show that media choices may be intimately intertwined with the questions of power. The second contribution comes from situating an online community as the focus of media choice research – a novel combination. We conducted an interpretive case study on how power is intermingled with the choice of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in the Finnish Wikipedia. We found that IRC was viewed in starkly different ways by different actors. Moreover, the IRC was largely associated with the notions of power. In particular, it was related to accession and ability to influence decisionmaking in the community. One party perceived IRC as a useful and open channel for quick-tempo collaborations and informal interactions, while others saw it as an arena for "the elite" to scheme against "the proletariat". Overall, IRC was a source of "multiplex tensions": conflicts originating from communication being dispersed into multiple media and from different perceptions towards a medium. The study provides several important implications for theory and practice.


Coal combustion for power generation made up 30% of global CO2 emissions in 2018. To achieve the goal of the Paris Agreement to keep global average temperatures below 2°C, power generation must be decarbonized globally by mid‐century. This requires a rapid phase‐out of coal‐fired power generation. However, global coal power expansion continues, mostly in developing countries where electricity demand continues to increase. Since the early 2010s, Southeast Asia's coal power capacity expansion has been among the fastest in the world, following China and India, but its implications for the global climate and regional energy transition remain understudied. Here we examine Southeast Asia's power generation pipeline as of mid‐2020 and evaluate its implications for the region's CO2 emissions over the plant lifetime as well as projected electricity generation between 2020‐2030 in Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. We find that power plants under construction and planned in Southeast Asia as of 2020 will more than double the region's fossil fuel power generation capacity. If all fossil fuel plants under development are built, Southeast Asia's power sector CO2 emissions will increase by 72% from 2020 to 2030 and long‐term committed emissions will double. Moreover, in Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, projected electricity generation from fossil fuel plants under development, combined with generation from renewable capacity targets and existing power capacity, will exceed future national electricity demand. As a result, fossil fuel plants will likely be underutilized and/or become stranded assets while also potentially crowding out renewable energy deployment.


Two naturally occurring radionuclides, Beryllium-7 (7Be) and Lead-210 (210Pbxs) were used as tracers to discriminate eroded surface soils from channel-derived sediments in the fine suspended sediment loads of eight Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) benchmark watersheds. Soil, bank, and suspended sediment samples, as well as rainfall samples, were collected in the watersheds from single storm events and analyzed for the radionuclide activities, which were then applied to a two end-member mixing model to determine the relative proportions from the two source areas. In larger watersheds where the transport length of the sediment was longer, the suspended sediment load contained lower proportions of eroded upland soils compared to smaller systems. The longer transport paths contained more depositional areas in which fine sediment could settle, and hence, less eroded surface soils reached the stream channel, resulting in higher proportions of sediment from the channels. This study showed that more than 50% of the fine sediment in six of the eight watersheds originated from channel sources that included stream banks, the riverine bed, and gullies. These results underscore the need to consider channel and gully processes when management practices are designed to reduce sediment yield in agricultural watersheds.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the effects of nurse staffing and organizational support for nursing care on nurses' dissatisfaction with their jobs, nurse burnout, and nurse reports of quality of patient care in an international sample of hospitals.

DESIGN
Multisite cross-sectional survey.

SETTING
Adult acute-care hospitals in the United States (Pennsylvania), Canada (Ontario and British Columbia), England, and Scotland.

STUDY PARTICIPANTS
10 319 nurses working on medical and surgical units in 303 hospitals across the five jurisdictions.

INTERVENTIONS
None.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Nurse job dissatisfaction, burnout, and nurse-rated quality of care.

RESULTS
Dissatisfaction, burnout, and concerns about quality of care were common among hospital nurses in all five sites. Organizational/managerial support for nursing had a pronounced effect on nurse dissatisfaction and burnout, and both organizational support for nursing and nurse staffing were directly, and independently, related to nurse-assessed quality of care. Multivariate results imply that nurse reports of low quality care were three times as likely in hospitals with low staffing and support for nurses as in hospitals with high staffing and support.

CONCLUSION
Adequate nurse staffing and organizational/managerial support for nursing are key to improving the quality of patient care, to diminishing nurse job dissatisfaction and burnout and, ultimately, to improving the nurse retention problem in hospital settings.


A continuous measurement for black carbon (hereafter "BC") in a 40 m shallow ice core retrieved from the East Rongbuk Glacier (hereafter "ERG") in the northeast saddle of Mt. Qomolangma (Everest) provided the first historical record of BC deposition during the past ~50 yrs in the high Himalyas. Apparent increasing trend (smooth average) of BC concentrations was revealed since the mid-1990s. Seasonal variability of BC concentrations in the ice core indicated higher concentrations in monsoon seasons than those in non-monsoon seasons. Backward air trajectory analysis by the HYSPLIT model indicated that South Asia's BC emissions had significant impacts on the BC deposition in the Mt. Qomolangma (Everest) region. The estimated average atmospheric BC concentration in the region was about 80 ng m −3 during 1951–2001. And it was suggested BC emitted from South Asia could penetrate into the Tibetan Plateau by climbing over the elevated Himalayas. A significant increasing trend of the radiative forcing simulated by the SNICAR model appeared since 1990, which even exceeded 4.5 W m −2 in the summer of 2001. It was suggested that this amplitudes of BC concentrations in the atmosphere over the Himalayas and consequently in the ice in the glaciers could not be neglected when assessing the dual warming effects on glacier melting in the Himalayas.


Body-area sensor network or BAN-based health monitoring is increasingly becoming a popular alternative to traditional wired bio-monitoring techniques. However, most biomonitoring applications need continuous processing of large volumes of data, as a result of which both power consumption and computation bandwidth turn out to be serious constraints for sensor network platforms. This has resulted in a lot of recent interest in design methods, modeling and software analysis techniques specifically targeted towards BANs and applications running on them. In this paper we show that appropriate optimization of the application running on the communication gateway of a wireless BAN and accurate modeling of the microarchitectural details of the gateway processor can lead to significantly better resource usage and power savings. In particular, we propose a method for deriving the optimal order in which the different sensors feeding the gateway processor should be sampled, to maximize cache reuse. In addition, we also investigate the effects on cache reuse of different memory layouts of the code processing the different sensor data. The joint optimization of code layout and the order in which the different sensors should be sampled—in order to maximize code cache reuse—turns out to be a difficult combinatorial optimization problem. But our experiments show that optimizing the sampling order of the sensors has a much larger influence on cache reuse, compared to the effects that different code layouts have. Based on this, we also propose a heuristic that obtains near-optimal solutions in jointly optimizing both code layout as well the sensor sampling order. Our case study using a faint fall detection application—from the geriatric care domain—which is fed by a number of smart sensors to detect physiological and physical gait signals of a patient show very attractive power consumption in the underlying processor. Alternatively, our method can be used to improve the sampling frequency of the sensors, leading to higher reliability and better response time of the application.


Businesses would undoubtedly prefer a legal environment with less complexity. In the European Commission's view, the legal diversity resulting from the 27 different national contract laws of the Member States creates unnecessary legal complexity and constitutes an impediment to the proper functioning of the internal market. While existing European contract law instruments mainly focus on harmonizing aspects of consumer law, with the proposed Common European Sales Law (CESL), the Commission has now firmly extended the scope of European contract law to also cover commercial sales contracts. However, the CESL is not the first instrument to create a set of uniform rules for cross-border commercial sales contracts. At the international level, there is already the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The current proposal consequently raises a number of pertinent questions concerning the relationship between the two instruments, as well as the necessity, desirability, choice for legal base and likely success of the European instrument. The introduction of a European instrument for cross-border commercial sales contracts essentially inserts a new, regional instrument between the divergent national laws of the Member States and the international sales convention. Rather than simplifying the legal environment, such a step adds to its complexity. This would only make sense if (i) diversity of national contract laws is a serious problem for business that needs to be tackled by creating uniform (European) rules; (ii) the existing uniform rules (CISG) have significant shortcomings, and (iii) the new instrument has added value. This article examines the proposed CESL on this basis.


In F. Hoffman LaRoche Ltd. v. Empagran S.A., 542 US 155 (2004), the Supreme Court limited access to American courts by foreign plaintiffs suing under the Sherman Act based on foreign transactions. Jurisdiction over foreign antitrust claims is governed by the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act ("FTAIA"). However, rather than parsing this opaque and poorly drafted statute, the Court drew on the doctrine of prescriptive comity and held that where a statute is vague, it should be construed narrowly so as not to interfere with the prerogatives of co-sovereigns. Alternatively, the Court concluded that if the conduct in question would have been beyond the reach of the Sherman Act prior to the enactment of FTAIA, it would not be cognizable under the FTAA because that statute was designed to limit — not expand — jurisdiction over foreign claims. The Court found that there were no pre-FTAIA cases to support jurisdiction.On remand, the D.C. Circuit ruled that even if foreign plaintiffs could show that "but for" participation of U.S. firms in the conspiracy, they would not have been injured, their claims would still be barred. The FTAIA contemplates that (1) the illegal foreign have a "direct, substantial and reasonably foreseeable effect" on U.S. commerce; and (2) such adverse effect on foreign commerce gives rise to claims by foreign plaintiffs. Incidental or "but for" linkage does not suffice; proximate cause is the standard.Moreover, foreign claims based on foreign transactions are also barred under the doctrines of standing and antitrust injury. Antitrust courts have traditionally denied standing to firms that were neither competitors nor consumers in the U.S. market. Similarly, the doctrine of antitrust injury limits the universe of antitrust plaintiffs to those who have suffered injury of the kind that the antitrust laws are met to protect against and that flows from that which makes the conduct unlawful. The U.S. antitrust laws were not meant to protect plaintiffs who were not participants in the U.S. market. Empagran may not eliminate antitrust actions by foreign purchasers, but the decision is a major hurdle to their successful prosecution.


Plutonium-beryllium (Pu-Be) sources can be used as didactic source materials for special nuclear materials (SNM) detection evaluation protocols. Since limited specific information exists for many of the Pu-Be sources currently in service, before using a Pu-Be source for field studies, the leakage radiation of neutrons and gamma rays from the source must be fully assessed. Most Pu-Be sources have an outer stainless steel jacket and an inner tantalum jacket, with the Pu-Be homogeneously distributed throughout the inner jacket. To fully characterize the net leakage terms from our Pu-Be source, we applied three-dimensional radiation transport computations, including Monte Carlo (MCNP5) and deterministic (PENTRAN) methodologies. The transport model for our Pu-Be capsule is based on limited schematic and technical data. To define the decay history and resulting source spectrum, exothermic [alpha-neutron (α,n)] reactions are modeled using OrigenArp in the SCALE5 package. For transport modeling purposes, the intermetallic Pu-Be compound was treated as an intimate mixture of plutonium and beryllium, based on the manufacturer's mass specifications. The net capsule leakage was derived using transport computations, and an iterative estimation of plutonium age was performed. Computational results for net leakage are in agreement with the manufacturer's specification of neutron yield and dose rate. We also combined computational results with experimental measurement data to fully validate our computational methods. We have successfully achieved agreement between computational and experimental data for our Pu-Be source leakage, and we are using the results at the Florida Institute of Nuclear Detection and Security to evaluate a prototype SNM neutron detector array for parcel screening and national security applications.


Government employees face enormous challenges today, including being stigmatized as underworked and overpaid. At the same time, they're being asked to solve some of our toughest problems including unemployment, security, poverty, and education In Engaging Government Employees, Bob Lavigna gives managers the tools they need to leverage the talents of government's most important resource: its people. He shows them how to measure, nurture, and sustain the kind of authentic employee engagement that drives results. With over three decades of experience in public sector HR, he knows how to get team members passionate about the agency's mission, and committed to its success. Readers will learn:

 Why a highly engaged staff is 20 percent more productive

 How to get employees to deliver "discretionary effort"

 How to assess the level of engagement

 Why free pizza and Coke every Friday is not a viable strategy

 And more

 Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence, Engaging Government Employees rejects the typical, one-size-fits-all approach to motivation and shows how America's largest employer can apply the science of engagement to dramatically improve performance.


Absract: The inhibition potentials of Emblica officinalis leaves extract (EOLE) was investigated by evaluating the corrosion behavior of mild steel immersed in 1 N HCl solution containing varied concentration of the extract ranging from 200 ppm to 1000 ppm. The corrosion inhibition of the extract was evaluated using weight loss studies. The inhibition efficiency increased with increase in concentration of the inhibitor and the highest %IE was obtained at 1000 ppm. UV and SEM, provided the confirmatory evidence of improved surface condition, due to adsorption, for the corrosion protection.


The land-surface interaction is as important to the climate of a global model as the sea surface boundary condition. However over land, there is no measured input field analogous to the sea surface temperature, which controls the surface sensible and latent heat fluxes (together with surface wind, air temperature and humidity). The fluxes over land in contrast are driven on diurnal time scales by the net radiation, and the partition into latent and sensible heat, which depends on the availability of water (either in the soil or in surface reservoirs) for evaporation. The accuracy of the down-welling fluxes depends on the model radiation physics, and the specification of clouds and aerosols. The outgoing fluxes depend on the calculated surface radiation or skin temperature, and the albedo, which in turn depends on snow cover, vegetation type and season (for example, leaf-out). Thus even the calculation of net radiation at the surface involves many physical parameterizations. The availability of water for evaporation depends on both a realistic hydrological model (balancing model precipitation, surface and soil water reservoirs and runoff) and a realistic vegetation model (to extract soil water for transpiration as a function of photosynthetic processes). At higher latitudes, soil water only becomes available after the ground melts, so the soil thermal balance processes, and the timing of snow melt (snow insulates the ground) also control the seasonal cycle of transpiration. However global fields for soil water and soil temperature are not available for analysis, so a model must derive them from its own physical parameterizations, using near surface atmospheric measurements as constraints (e.g. Douville et al., 1999). However the coupling between surface fluxes and the convective boundary layer is so tight, that errors in any of the physical parameterizations, whether sub-surface hydrology or thermal transfers, vegetation parameterizations, or stable/unstable boundary layer parameterizations can all interact to give an erroneous diurnal cycle of the mixed layer, and in turn an erroneous diurnal cycle of convective precipitation in a model. This paper will address efforts to use data from both field programs and on the scale of river basins to assess errors in the model formulation of the land surface interaction.


Adelle Blackett Professeure, Chaire de recherche du Canada en droit transnational du travail et développement, Faculté de droit, Université McGill Le mardi 1 octobre 2019 11h30 FTX 202 Labour Organization's (ILO) Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention No. 189, and its accompanying Recommendation No. 201 which in 2011 created the first comprehensive international standards to extend fundamental protections and rights to the millions of domestic workers laboring in other peoples' homes throughout the world. As the principal legal architect, Blackett is able to take us behind the scenes to show us how Convention No. 189 transgresses the everyday law of the household workplace to embrace domestic workers' human rights claim to be both workers like any other, and workers like no other. In doing so, she discusses the importance of understanding historical forms of invisibility, recognizes the influence of the domestic workers themselves, and weaves in poignant experiences, infusing the discussion of laws and standards with intimate examples and sophisticated analyses. Looking to the future, she ponders how international institutions such as the ILO will address labor market informality alongside national and regional law reform. Regardless of what comes next, Everyday Transgressions establishes that domestic workers' victory is a victory for the ILO and for all those who struggle for an inclusive, transnational vision of labor law, rooted in social justice.


The European Union is seeking to establish a place for itself in Central Asia in the face of a Chinese presence that is growing exponentially and a Russian influence that continues to be strong. Grand speeches about the EU's partnership with the Central Asian states notwithstanding, relations between both regions have remained rather limited. The EU strategy also aims to encourage exports, economic diversification and market-economic structures, in particular by developing public-private partnerships. The EU's commercial involvement in Central Asia enables it to further European goals in the region. These include consolidating the overall EU-Central Asia relationship, avoiding an excessive reliance by Central Asian countries on a few markets; helping to strengthen the institutions of civil society, which in turn could speed up the arrival of a substantial European presence; developing the rule of law, the private sector and transparency in government; and finally, addressing poverty, the root cause of instability. This EUCAM working paper thus reflects upon the pertinence of having a collective EU business and trade agenda with Central Asia, what stands to be won and lost both economically and socially, and the goals it might include. It has become essential to ascertain whether or not this agenda ought to be placed at the service of more global European strategies for promoting its social model, and if so, to what extent. Also available in Spanish and Russian.


The thesis investigates the responses of older audiences to representations of lesbian, gay, and bisexual sexualities and transgender identities in British prime time television soap operas between1986 and 2002. It combines cultural research, in relation to theories of soap opera and audience engagement and social research into the responses and views of older audiences to such representations and the life experiences of the participants which inform their views. The thesis recognises that the voices of older people are underrepresented in socio-cultural research, especially when investigating sexuality. Soap opera constitutes a genre which functions as a vehicle for social issues, including sexualities. Soap operas draw large audiences across generations and gender; they have high profile publicity and intertextual material to engage viewers' interests, and broadly accessible scheduling. They therefore provide an accessible means of engagement with these issues with older people.
Chapter 1 outlines the social context of the research and reviews selected discourses and research, noting that much recent research is directed to issues of care and therefore tends to address the needs and preferences of older people rather than their active engagement with, and potential contribution, to popular culture and issues of sexualities and gender identity. Chapter 2 identifies and evaluates cultural theories and issues around textual analysis. The relevance and validity of these general themes are examined in Chapter 3 by means of 'close readings' of two selected episodes with relevant narratives and
representations through textual analysis and in relation to everyday social interaction.
Chapter 4 addresses the epistemological issues involved in combining cultural research into the meanings and significance of these representations and narratives with social research into the meanings, associations and value derived from them by older audiences. The methodological framework for social research and the qualitative research methods are discussed and evaluated. The research focuses upon five groups of older people, two from an Inner London Drop- in Centre and an Outer London Day Centre and three from Campaign groups who identify as members of a London based Older Lesbian Group,
Older Gay Men's Group and Male to Female Transgender Group. More self-conscious readings of the narratives and representations could be expected from groups with a campaigning history or trans-gender identity than the other two groups. Differences and commonalities between and within groups are noted and analysed in Chapter 5 and the analysis of the data is structured by the theories and themes identified and demonstrated in Chapters 2 and 3.
The thesis supports and develops recent research which recognises that older people are diverse and demonstrate strong opinions. It also shows that as television audiences and in conversation older people actively engage with issues of non-normative sexualities which are too frequently regarded as peripheral for older people, if not taboo. This could usefully be further investigated.


This paper presents a system for acoustic event detection in recordings from real life environments. The events are modeled using a network of hidden Markov models; their size and topology is chosen based on a study of isolated events recognition. We also studied the effect of ambient background noise on event classification performance. On real life recordings, we tested recognition of isolated sound events and event detection. For event detection, the system performs recognition and temporal positioning of a sequence of events. An accuracy of 24% was obtained in classifying isolated sound events into 61 classes. This corresponds to the accuracy of classifying between 61 events when mixed with ambient background noise at 0dB signal-to-noise ratio. In event detection, the system is capable of recognizing almost one third of the events, and the temporal positioning of the events is not correct for 84% of the time.


Benzimidazole derivatives are well-known biologically active substances, and therefore, they are mostly synthesised for therapeutic purposes. However, such heteroaromatic molecular systems own structure-related properties that enable a variety of applications, especially in optical science. Multifunctionality of the benzimidazole unit, such as electron accepting ability, π-bridging, chromogenic pH sensitivity/switching and metal-ion chelating properties, makes it an exceptional structural candidate for the design of optical chemical sensors and functional materials. Development of smart molecular sensors and novel (nano)materials is the emerging trend observed in materials and optical sensing science in general, in which the benzimidazole molecular systems strongly contribute and participate. In this chapter, we summarised recent advances in optical sensing (nano)materials that incorporate the benzimidazole structural moiety. Solid-state optical sensing systems, including self-assembled molecular materials based on benzimidazoles, are reviewed and discussed. In addition, immobilisation of benzimidazole derivatives onto or into various substrates and matrices, such as organic and inorganic polymers, bulk membranes and nanoparticles, utilising different chemical and physical methods, is presented and analysed.


This study in the aerospace ground equipment (AGE) apprentice course at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, examined the use of mobile digital devices to determine which device leveraged the best results and was most compatible with military technical training requirements. The sample consisted of 160 students who attended the course between January and June, 2010. Three devices loaded with course materials were issued to the students, who used the devices in the classroom and were encouraged to use the devices to enhance their study time after class. Quantitative data were obtained by comparing block test scores to determine if any device produced a significant change in student learning. Qualitative data were collected from surveys administered to instructors and students to measure which device instructors and students found easiest to understand and use, and student satisfaction with the device. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed a statistically significant difference (p < .05) in the block test mean scores between groups using mobile devices and the students in the control group that had no device. Post hoc comparisons on each block showed that there was a statistically significant difference between students using the smartphone and students using the other devices, but no statistically significant difference in the block test mean scores between students using the iPod and the netbook. The netbook leveraged the best results, both in block test scores and student satisfaction. The greatest reported disadvantage of the smartphone and the iPod Touch was the small screen size.


In the wake of globalisation, most universities are intensifying efforts to improve their overall performance in order to attract students and enhance chances of securing competitive funding from various sources. As part of these efforts, universities are striving to ensure that their postgraduate programmes meet nationally and internationally acceptable standards. Research projects conducted by students form a critical component of most postgraduate programmes and universities have put in place procedures meant to ensure that postgraduate research meets acceptable minimum standards. The procedures include setting minimum entry educational qualifications, supervision by qualified members of university academic staff, institutional evaluation of research proposals before the proposed research is embarked on, submission of progress reports by postgraduate students during the course of their programmes, and final examination of students' theses, dissertations or research reports by internal as well as external examiners. In some instances, the examiners recommend outright rejection of the student's write-up if they consider the methodology used to be inappropriate to answer research questions of the project conducted. The implications of research methodological shortcomings which are identified at the final examination stage, even if the research proposals were evaluated and approved by appropriate university structures before commencement of the research projects, are discussed. As postgraduate programmes are meant to nurture a competent and resourceful workforce and future researchers, universities need to pay attention to the issue of research methodology and internal evaluation systems in order to minimise chances of compromising the quality of their postgraduate degree programmes.


Slides from a presentation discussing the development of the UNCG University Libraries' research data management services. Many university libraries are expanding their research services to include support for research data needs. But in a climate of growing demands and limited resources, how can libraries explore these options and address these needs without breaking the bank in terms of staff time or expertise? The University Libraries of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro began exploring these questions in 2012 and are continuing to grow a suite of research data support services to meet demands on campus and to educate new researchers. This collaborative effort builds on existing strengths within the Libraries by bringing together personnel from Research, Outreach, and Instruction (ROI); Technical Services; and Electronic Resources and Information Technology (ERIT). This presentation discusses the scope and component pieces of the University Libraries' research data management services, including the development of our service model and various associated activities: support for data management planning, a series of workshops for graduate students created in collaboration with our Institutional Review Board, outreach and training efforts, and institutional repository integration. Presenters address specific roles, workflows, challenges, and lessons learned, and provide perspectives from both public and technical services. This presentation was delivered on February 24th, 2017 as part of the Empirical Librarians Conference at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, NC.


The present study aims to investigate the role of L1 transfer effects on L2 sentence processing strategies during the interpretation of relative clause (RC) attachment ambiguities. The main body of the study is divided into two sections. The first section describes Experiment 1, which is designed to test the resolution of RC attachment ambiguities by Turkish learners of L2 English both in Turkish and English through the use of an off-line task (i.e., paper-and-pencil comprehension tests) and compare their processing preferences to those of native English speakers. The second section presents Experiment 2, which aims to investigate the real-time processing of the RC attachment ambiguities by the same participant groups employing eye-tracking methodology. The results indicated that L1 Turkish and L1 English RC attachment preferences differed and that Turkish learners of L2 English tended to transfer their Turkish sentence processing pattern to real-time interpretation of the English RC attachment ambiguities.


Purpose Exome and genome sequencing have proven to be effective tools for the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), but large fractions of NDDs cannot be attributed to currently detectable genetic variation. This is likely, at least in part, a result of the fact that many genetic variants are difficult or impossible to detect through typical short-read sequencing approaches. Methods Here, we describe a genomic analysis using Pacific Biosciences circular consensus sequencing (CCS) reads, which are both long (>10 kb) and accurate (>99% bp accuracy). We used CCS on six proband-parent trios with NDDs that were unexplained despite extensive testing, including genome sequencing with short reads. Results We identified variants and created de novo assemblies in each trio, with global metrics indicating these data sets are more accurate and comprehensive than those provided by short-read data. In one proband, we identified a likely pathogenic (LP), de novo L1-mediated insertion in CDKL5 that results in duplication of exon 3, leading to a frameshift. In a second proband, we identified multiple large de novo structural variants, including insertion-translocations affecting DGKB and MLLT3, which we show disrupt MLLT3 transcript levels. We consider this extensive structural variation likely pathogenic. Conclusion The breadth and quality of variant detection, coupled to finding variants of clinical and research interest in two of six probands with unexplained NDDs strongly support the value of long-read genome sequencing for understanding rare disease.


This thesis investigates the impact of firms' political connections in three different aspects. The first study focuses on the impact of firms' political connections on their profitability. It shows the importance of recognising the political ruling system of the study context when defining which firm is politically connected, as the power holders who are able to affect firms' performance are linked to the ruling system. The study context is characterised by examining countries under monarchical rule. The first study shows that members royal families in the Gulf Country Council (GCC) are influential and powerful, whereas the powers of ministers and members of parliament are limited. Thus, firms' connections to royal families show positive and significant effects on their performance and profitability, whereas the connection with non-royal politicians is not statistically significant.

The second study focuses on the effect of firms' political connections on their capital structure. In line with the results of the first study, this study finds that connections with non-royal politicians are not statistically significant, whereas connections with the members of the royal family result in a lower level of leverage, which is explained by royal family members reflecting national culture the study context that discouraged obtaining debts.

The third study deals with the political crisis of June 2017 in the GCC region, which led to the collapse of political relations between the countries of the region and a blockade imposed on Qatar. The research found that the crisis had a greater negative impact on companies connected with members of the royal families than non-connected firms. Also, consistent with the results of the first and second studies, connections with non-royal family politicians were not statistically significant.

The results demonstrate that investors and traders in the stock market place value on the connection with royal family members, as they are considered to be a source of power and a means of securing vital resources for firms.


A rapid and sensitive liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometric (LC–MS/MS) assay method has been developed and fully validated for the quantitative determination of pitavastatin in human plasma. A pitavastatin stable labeled isotope (pitavastatin d4) was used as an internal standard. Analyte and the internal standard were extracted from human plasma via solid phase extraction technique. The chromatographic separation was achieved on a C18 column by using a mixture of acetonitrile–0.1% formic acid (90:10, v/v) as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.85 mL/min. The calibration curve obtained was linear (r 2 0.99) over the concentration range of 0.05–160 ng/mL. Method validation was performed as per FDA guidelines and the results met the acceptance criteria. A run time of 1.5 min for each sample made it possible to analyze more than 450 plasma samples per day. The proposed method was found to be applicable to clinical studies.


This book provides an overview of private real estate markets and investments. The 14 chapters are divided into three sections for conventional and alternative real estate investments and regulatory issues. Conventional investable real assets examined are retail spaces, apartments, offices, and industrial facilities owned by corporate entities. Alternative real estate assets are uniquely and extensively addressed. These include healthcare, both for facilities and the pricing to make it an investable asset; infrastructure contains roads, bridges, and public utilities; and resources are in land, agriculture, oil, and gas. The regulatory section includes appraisal and valuation, brokerage and transaction costs, sustainability, and green buildings. Readers should gain a greater appreciation of what is needed to be successful when investing in private real estate markets. The share of real estate in institutional portfolios has risen above a previous 5% target, as investors avoid the risks of low interest rates. The world's wealth is shifting to emerging markets where real estate is already a dominant asset class and public securities markets are limited. Institutions with long horizons avoid publicly traded markets because they want to capture any premium from illiquidity. Real estate involves local and cultural restrictions on land usage, sustainability and on the regulation of the illiquidity. For information about public real estate, read Public Real Estate Markets and Investments. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/economicsfinance/9780199388752/toc.html Contributors to this volume - John S. Baen Sandy Bond Man Cho Francois Des Rosiers William G. Hardin III Douglas Hough G. Donald Jud John A. Kilpatrick Kyung-Hwan Kim Peter Linneman Ming Kai Low Isaac Megbolugbe Glenn R. Mueller Graeme Newell Hsu Wen Peng Michael J. Seiler Marius Theriault Elaine Worzala


The notion of Universal Designated Verifier Signature (UDVS), introduced by Steinfeld et al. in Asiacrypt 2003, allows any holder of a signature to convince any designated verifier that the signer indeed generated the signature without revealing the signature itself, while the verifier cannot transfer the proof to convince anyone else of this fact. Such signature schemes can protect the privacy of signature holders and have applications in certification systems. Very recently, as pointed out by Baek et al. in Asiacrypt 2005, one significant inconvenience of all existing UDVS schemes is that they require the designated verifier to create a public key using the signer's public key parameter and have it certified to ensure the resulting public key is compatible with the setting that the signer provided. This is unrealistic in some situations where the verifier is not willing to go through such setup process. Baek et al. introduced the concept of Universal Designated Verifier Signature Proof (UDVSP) to solve this problem. In this paper, we first introduce the idea of identity-based (ID-based) UDVSP system. Furthermore, we point out that the algorithm "Signature Transformation ST " of the UDVSP defined by Baek et al. can be eliminated, which results in a more efficient UDVSP system. We present two ID-based UDVSP systems based on bilinear pairings, and provide the security proofs of our systems in the random oracle model.


In the last twenty years, the policy of the European Union in the field of digital technologies has shifted from a liberal economic perspective to a constitution-oriented approach. This change of heart has resulted primarily from the rise of the information society which has created not only new opportunities but also challenges to fundamental rights and democratic values. Even more importantly, this technological framework driven by liberal ideas has empowered transnational corporations operating in the digital environment to perform quasi-public functions on a global scale. This article analyzes the path and the reasons that have led the European Union to enter a new phase of modern constitutionalism (i.e. digital constitutionalism). The primary goal of this article is to describe the characteristics of this new constitutional phase opposing platform powers, and to outline the potential evolution of European digital constitutionalism in the global context.


Lower Triassic strata in the western United States and northern Italy have yielded the first reported occurrence of microbially mediated wrinkle structures in shallow subtidal siliciclastic paleoenvironments since the Cambrian. We hypothesize that wrinkle structures formed under reduced infaunalization conditions during the aftermath of the end-Permian mass extinction. These wrinkle structures occur in siliciclastic sedimentary rocks in association with hummocky cross-stratification and, in some cases, trace fossils such as Asteriacites , Rhizocorallium , Planolites , and Gyrochorte that indicate a subtidal paleoenvironment. Wrinkle structures were found in the Campil Member in the Werfen Formation of northern Italy and in the Virgin Limestone Member of the Moenkopi Formation and the upper member of the Thaynes Formation exposed in the western United States. The presence of wrinkle structures is likely related to a unique taphonomic window that allowed for the preservation of these delicate features on storm-dominated siliciclastic shelves. Wrinkle structures commonly formed in a variety of subtidal paleoenvironments during the Proterozoic–Cambrian, but thereafter became restricted to intertidal-supratidal and deep-sea environments. This restriction has been attributed to the increase in infaunalization of metazoans following the Cambrian radiation. The proliferation of wrinkle structures in subtidal settings during the Early Triassic suggests that infaunal bioturbation was reduced after the end-Permian mass extinction and that this reduction lasted for millions of years.


Abstract A spectral theory for constituents of macroscopically homogeneous random microstructures is developed and provided with a sound mathematical basis, where the spectrum obtained by Fourier methods corresponds to the angular intensity distribution of X-rays scattered by this constituent. It is shown that the fast Fourier transform applied to three-dimensional images of microstructures obtained by micro-tomography is a powerful tool of image processing. The applicability of this technique is demonstrated in the analysis of images of porous media.


Objective We aimed to quantify the short-term effect of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), aspirin and paracetamol analgesia dose prescribing on estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) decline in the general practice population. Design A population-based longitudinal clinical data linkage cohort study. Setting Two large general practices in North Staffordshire, UK. Participants Patients aged 40 years and over with ≥2 eGFR measurements spaced ≥90 days apart between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2010 were selected. Exposure Using WHO Defined Daily Dose standardised cumulative analgesia prescribing, patients were categorised into non-user, normal and high-dose groups. Outcome measure The primary outcome was defined as a >5 mL/min/1.73 m2/year eGFR decrease between the first and last eGFR. Logistic regression analyses were used to estimate risk, adjusting for sociodemographics, comorbidity, baseline chronic kidney disease (CKD) status, renin-angiotensin-system inhibitors and other analgesia prescribing. Results There were 4145 patients (mean age 66 years, 55% female) with an analgesia prescribing prevalence of 17.2% for NSAIDs, 39% for aspirin and 22% for paracetamol and stage 3–5 CKD prevalence was 16.1% (n=667). Normal or high-dose NSAID and paracetamol prescribing was not significantly associated with eGFR decline. High-dose aspirin prescribing was associated with a reduced risk of eGFR decline in patients with a baseline (first) eGFR ≥60 mL/min/1.73 m2; OR=0.52 (95% CI 0.35 to 0.77). Conclusions NSAID, aspirin and paracetamol prescribing over 2 years did not significantly affect eGFR decline with a reduced risk of eGFR decline in high-dose aspirin users with well-preserved renal function. However, the long-term effects of analgesia use on eGFR decline remain to be determined.


Conceptual modeling is widely recognized to be the necessary foundation for building a database that is well-documented and fully satisfies the user requirements. In particular, from the designer point of view the availability of a conceptual model provides a higher level of abstraction in describing the warehousing process and its architecture in all its aspects. Typically conceptual models rely on a graphical notation that facilitates writing, understanding, and managing conceptual schemata by both designers and users. The Entity/Relationship (E/R) model (Chen, 1976) is widespread in the enterprises as a conceptual formalism to provide standard documentation for relational information systems; nevertheless, as E/R is oriented to support queries that navigate associations between data rather than synthesize them, it is not well-suited for data warehousing (Kimball, 1998). Actually, the E/R model has enough expressivity to represent most concepts necessary for modeling a Data Warehouse (DW); on the other hand, in its basic form, it is not able to properly emphasize the key aspects of the multidimensional model, so that its usage for DWs is expensive from the point of view of the graphical notation and not intuitive (Rizzi, 2006). Some designers claim that star schemata are expressive enough for conceptual modeling. Actually, a star schema is just a (denormalized) relational schema, so it merely defines a set of relations and integrity constraints. Using star schema for conceptual modeling is like starting to build a complex software by writing the code, without the support of any static, functional, or dynamic model, which typically leads to very poor results from the points of view of adherence to user requirements, maintenance, and reuse. For all these reasons, in the last few years the research literature has proposed several original approaches for modeling a DW, some based on extensions of known conceptual formalisms (e.g. E/R, Unified Modeling Language (UML)), some based on ad hoc ones. Remarkably, a comparison of the different models made by Abello (2006) pointed out that, abstracting from their graphical form, the core expressivity is similar, thus proving that the academic community reached an informal agreement on the required expressivity. This paper discusses the expressivity of an ad hoc conceptual model, the Dimensional Fact Model (DFM), in order to let the user verify the usefulness of a conceptual modeling step in DW design. After a brief listing of the main conceptual model proposals, the basic and advanced features in DW conceptual modeling are introduced and described by examples. Finally, the current trends in DW conceptual modeling are reported and the conclusions are drawn.


Background Wingless and integration site growth factor (Wnt) signaling is a tumorigenesis-related signaling pathway. Dickkpof-1 (DKK1) and secreted frizzled-related protein-1 (SFRP1) are endogenous negative regulators of Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Accumulating evidence indicates that higher serum levels of DKK1 are correlated with poor prognosis of various types of cancer. Here, we investigated whether exercise training causes changes in the serum levels of DKK1 and SFRP1 in patients with breast cancer. Methods Twenty-four breast cancer survivors, after chemo- or radiotherapy, participated in this single-blind randomized, controlled pilot study. Subjects were randomized to either an exercise program or a control group for 12 weeks and completed pre- and post-training tests for health-related fitness and body composition as well as blood biomarkers. The serum levels of DKK1 and SFRP1 were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as the primary outcome. Results Exercise training for 12 weeks remarkably increased muscle strength, endurance, and flexibility and decreased body fat percentage, waist circumference, and visceral fat area (all p < 0.05). Exercise training lowered serum insulin levels and leptin/adiponectin ratios (all p < 0.05). The levels of DKK1 and SFRP1 were also significantly decreased by exercise training in breast cancer survivors (all p < 0.01). Conclusions Our results indicate that DKK1 and SFRP1 may be potentially useful biomarkers for evaluating the beneficial effects of long-term exercise on physical fitness and metabolism as well as the prognosis of patients with cancer. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02895178


ABSTRACT Mental health during the preadolescent years may be determinant for later periods of life; therefore, the factors that influence it need to be studied deeply. The aim of this study was to determine the association between depressive symptoms with physical activity (PA), body image dissatisfaction and weight status in preadolescents. A total of 269 girls and 329 boys (age 12.02 ± 0.98 years) were included in this study. Body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, body image dissatisfaction, PA and depressive symptoms were assessed. The PA reported an inverse association with depression in girls (β:-2.12, P < 0.0001) and boys (β:-1.13, P = 0.001). Instead, BMI in girls (β: 1.00, P < 0.0001) and boys (β: 0.70, P < 0.0001), and body image dissatisfaction in girls (β: 0.05, P = 0.017) and boys (β: 0.04, P = 0.003) reported positive association with depression. In the same way, depression was associated with obesity (odds ratio [OR] = 2.05, P = 0.020), but, the boys had higher risk (OR = 18.4, P < 0.001) than girls. In conclusion, depression in Chilean preadolescents presented association with low levels of PA, obesity and body image dissatisfaction. Therefore, schools should target and promote PA to improve psychological and physical health in preadolescents, which may reduce the future burden of mental illness.


Objective: To examine variations in processes of paediatric inpatient rehabilitation care related to school re-entry and management of cognitive and communication impairments after traumatic brain injury. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Methods: Adherence to care processes recommended for children (aged 0–17) with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury and admitted for inpatient rehabilitation was assessed. Quality-of-care indicators for processes supporting school re-entry and cognitive and communication rehabilitation were applied to measure variations in care delivered to 174 children across nine facilities using medical record review. Main outcomes and results: Adherence rates (the number of times recommended care was delivered or attempted divided by the number of times care was indicated) were calculated, revealing substantial variations in care within and between facilities. Overall, children received 51.3% (95% CI = 31.9–70.7) and 72.3% (95% CI = 61.1–83.5), of the care recommended for school re-entry and cognitive and communication rehabilitation, respectively. Conclusion: Substantial variations exist in the delivery of paediatric inpatient rehabilitation care processes for managing school re-entry and cognitive and communication impairments after traumatic brain injury. Measures of association of these care processes with patient outcomes are necessary. Reduction in this variation is essential to improving quality of care.


James Buchanan's protective state emerges at the constitutional level and protects the core rights of citizens via internal security, contract enforcement, and defense against external threats. This paper focuses on the potential for the protective state to produce anti-liberty outcomes. I identify five specific channels through which the activities of the protective state may yield anti-liberty results. They include: (1) interpretation in an open-ended system, (2) institutional changes within constraints, (3) the centralization of state power, (4) the emergence of coercion-enabling human capital, and (5) the emergence of coercion-enabling physical capital. These channels are endogenous to the legitimate operations of the protective state and do not require any nefarious motivations by those involved.


A ground-breaking new research report has been released today by the analysts at Meteo Protect demonstrating that despite the best efforts of government leaders and international organizations to lead the response to climate change, their efforts have not been able to galvanize the key players who can make a difference. In fact, not only are they not engaged, they do not even know they are already at risk.A new White Paper from Meteo Protect modelling the impact of climate variability on the private sector finds that climate change is already making a significant impact in the profits of companies operating in sectors exposed to weather. Directly challenging the direction of present empirical research, and the consensus of how to respond to climate change, it identifies how and why private industry, including companies and investors, must act immediately to manage the consequences of climate change.Indeed, the extent to which the vast majority of companies are presently exposed to climate variability is likely to be a revelation for many analysts, investors and even companies executives themselves. Demonstrating that billions of dollars are at risk each quarter, continuing to go unreported and unmanaged, the researchers call for the provision of actionable and objective indicators to measure the exposure to climate risk and the implementation of mitigating weather hedging strategies to protect financial performance.A must-read for finance executives, investors, asset managers and business analysts, the White Paper takes a new approach to tackling a long-standing and unresolved problem, making it understandable, relevant and manageable.


Abstract New container terminals are embracing robotized transport vehicles such as lift-automated guided vehicles (LAGVs) and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) to enhance the terminal throughput capacity. Although LAGVs have a high container handling time, they require less coordination with other terminal equipment in comparison with AGVs. In contrast, AGVs are hard-coupled resources, require less container handling times, but operate with high coordination delays in comparison with LAGVs. The effect of such operational trade-offs on terminal performance under various design parameter settings, such as yard block layout and a number of resources, is not well understood and needs to be evaluated at the terminal design phase. To analyze these trade-offs, we develop stylized semi-open queuing network models, which consist of two-phase servers and finite capacity queues. We develop a novel network decomposition method for solving the proposed queuing models. The accuracy of the solution method is validated using detailed simulation models. Using the analytical models, we study the performance trade-offs between the transport vehicle choices: LAGVs and AGVs. Our results show that the throughput capacity of the terminal in the container unloading process increases by up to 16% if LAGVs are chosen as transport vehicles instead of AGVs. However, at certain parameter settings, specifically, when the arrival rate of containers is low, the throughput time performance of the terminal is higher (up to 8%) with AGVs than with LAGVs. We also derive insights on the yard block layout and the technology choice for quay cranes.


The development of Taiwan's Sustain Schools is in the recent ten years time. It can be traced back in 2002, when the Ministry of Education implemented "Sustainable Campus" project. This project aimed at improving and establishing hardware facilities in the campus. Afterwards, there are enterprises which needs to carry out corporate social resoponsibility (CSR), giving funds to develop Sustain Schools through the counseling from universities. This project is funded by Innolux Education Foundation, aims at saving energy and reducing carbon, helping five elementary schools in Miaoli County to establish energy plus classrooms, managing seed schools in sustainable development. The goals include the establishment of "Taiwan Sustainable School Indicators", implementing whole school approach and developing Sustainable Teaching Material. The project initially outlines "Taiwan Sustainable Schools Indicators", undergoing communication among partner schools, in order to establish whole school approach, thirdly, to establish Sustain School's sustainable schools' online network resource platform. Finally, the teaching and learning of "Carbon Zero Classroom", enhancing the concept and knowledge of the schools' teachers and students, and help bringing along the neighboring schools in sustainable development. This kind of cooperation mode has gained great achievements.


The purpose was to determine whether evidence exists in published research from 1970 to 1996 to support motor skill intervention for children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) or equivalent conditions. The following questions were addressed: (a) Which (if any) of three theoretical approaches to motor skill interventions is supported by evidence? (b) How do age of participants, research design, intervention setting, and intervention duration affect motor outcomes? (c) What are the results of meta-analysis? Twenty-one relevant studies were identified, and 13 (all that reported means and standard deviations) were subjected to meta-analysis. Findings indicated that motor skill intervention is most effective when applied with (a) children with DCD over age 5, (b) the specific skill theoretical approach, (c) intervention conducted in a group setting or as a home program, and (d) intervention frequency of at least 3 to 5 times per week. No clear findings emerged in regard to other variables.


The work presented in this chapter lies within Learner modeling in an adaptive ed‐ ucational system construed as a computational modeling of the learner. All actions of the learner in a learning situation on an adaptive hypermedia systems are not limited to valid or invalid actions (true and false), but they are a set of actions that characterize the learning path of his formation. Thus, we cannot represent the infor‐ mation from the system of each learner using relative data. It requires putting our work in a probabilistic context due to the changes in the learner model information during formation. We propose in this work to use Bayesian networks as a probabil‐ istic framework to resolve the issue of dynamic management and update of the learner model. The experiments and results presented in this work are arguments in favor of our hypothesis, and can also promote reusing the modeling obtained through different systems and similar modeling situations.


Received: September 2016, Accepted: November 2016 Background: Today, obesity is considered as a health problem that increases the risk of some diseases. Therefore, identifying the effective factors on obesity is of great importance. Shift work is one of the indicators for increased risk of obesity in society and also shift work may cause various health problems for workers in military organizations. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between shift work, and body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio (WHR) among military personnel in 2016. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 100 male military personnel in Southern Iran in June-July 2016. The participants were divided into two groups based on their working schedule; shift work (50 personnel) and day work (50 personnel). The two groups were similar in terms of type of work. The subjects were selected through simple random sampling. The data collection tools consisted of a tape measure and a digital balance. Data analysis and comparison of BMI and WHR in the two groups were performed using descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, and Pearson correlation in SPSS. Results: The findings revealed that mean body weight, waist circumference, hip circumference, BMI, and WHR were higher in shift workers than day workers. The findings of the current study showed that 81.6% of shift workers had a BMI of higher than 25 kg/m 2 and 80.3% of shift workers had a WHR of higher than 0.90 m. Moreover, 86.2% of day workers had a BMI of less than 25 kg/m 2 and 83.1% of days workers had a WHR of less than 0.90 m. The Pearson correlation coefficient for BMI (r = 0.71) and WHR (r = 0.64) in shift workers were higher than day workers. Conclusions: The findings of this research showed that shift work increased the risk of overweight and obesity. Increased BMI and WHR are the cause of disease and require intervention measures (job rotation, sports activities, and avoidance of long duration of shift work) among shift workers.


This book reviews the role of information literacy (IL) in developing employability skills, personal health management and informal learning from a variety of areas including: information policy issues, information usage and training needs and skills development. Early years education, lifelong learning and the role of IL in relevant organisations, including government departments, skills agencies, and professional bodies will also be considered. With a UK focus, this book also considers the leading role of the US in the development of information literacy policy. Case studies and examples of good practise are included and discussed, drawn primarily from Europe, North America and Australasia, also identified examples from other countries. Looks at value and impact and discusses policymaking and issues for the future.

 Conveniently brings together a usable text to which people can easily refer to for an overview of a diffuse area

 No existing book considers this subject area from a UK and European perspective

 Also aimed at a non-traditional readership including educationalists, lifelong learning activists and those involved with informal learning activities


Biorefineries allow for the sustainable production of higher value products from biomass. In addition to bioethanol, they can produce added value chemicals and pharmaceutical intermediates from isolated component compounds such as sugars. Sugar beet pulp (SBP) is a high volume, low value by-product from sugar beet processing with a low lignin and a high carbohydrate content, making it an attractive biomass feedstock for biorefinery processing. The pectin fraction of SBP can be isolated via steam explosion, which, after complete acid hydrolysis, gives a hydrolysate rich in monosaccharides: primarily L-arabinose (Ara) and D-galacturonic acid (GA), with some D-galactose (Gal) and L-rhamnose (Rha). Isolation of these sugars is therefore a critical step in realising an integrated, whole crop biorefinery. Currently, little work has been reported on the separation and utilisation of SBP hydrolysates. The aim of this thesis is to establish novel, scalable separation processes for the isolation of the component monosaccharides from crude hydrolysed sugar beet pulp pectin. Centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC) is a liquid-liquid separation technique with no solid stationary phase and offers an alternative to traditional resin-based chromatographic techniques. As such it can more easily cope with crude feedstreams such as hydrolysates. Hydrophilic ethanol : ammonium sulphate two-phase systems were examined based on monosaccharide partition coefficients and phase settling times. An ethanol : aqueous ammonium sulphate (300 g L-1 ) (0.8:1.8 v:v) system was chosen for CPC separations of the crude SBP hydrolysate and was shown to be capable of removing the coloured contaminants and isolating three sugar fractions in a single step: Rha, Ara and Gal, and GA. The separation was optimised and the throughput was increased by maximising the sample loading. Operation in an elution-extrusion mode allowed for reproducible separations in 100 min without additional column regeneration. The process was scaled up from a 250 to a 950 mL column providing a final throughput of 1.9 gmonosaccharides L -1 column h -1 using the crude SBP. The following purities and recoveries of the three main fractions were achieved: Rha at 92% purityand 93% recovery; Ara at 84% purity and 97% recovery; and GA at 96% purity and 95% recovery. Simulated moving bed (SMB) allows for continuous chromatographic separations using multiple columns, improving separation performance and throughputs. Isolation of Ara from the neutral sugars Gal and Rha was performed with resins and conditions screened on single columns leading to the selection of a Dowex 50W X8 resin in the Ca2+ form. SMB separation using 8 columns was performed in the 4-zone and 3-zone setups and achieved 94% purity with 99% recovery at a throughput of 4.6 gmonosaccharides L -1 column h -1 with a synthetic mixture of the neutral sugars (Ara, Gal and Rha). However, equivalent separations could not be achieved using the crude SBP hydrolysate which needed pretreatment before SMB. Decolourisation with activated carbon was able to remove 97% of the coloured contaminants with sugar losses of 15% (w/w) in a batch process demonstrated to 50 mL scale. Anion exchange chromatography using a Dowex 1x8 resin was then found to be capable of isolating GA from a synthetic crude mixture of GA and neutral sugars with a dynamic binding capacity of 1.31 mmol mL-1 resin. However, further work is needed to enable this anion exchange step to achieve satisfactory separations with the decolourised crude hydrolysate. The isolated neutral sugars, after GA removal, can be processed on the SMB with comparable separation performance and throughput to a mixture of neutral sugars prepared without GA. In summary, this thesis presents two possible process paths each with their own benefits and drawbacks. CPC is capable of processing the crude SBP hydrolysate directly, isolating the sugars and removing the coloured contaminants in a single step. However, Ara co-elutes with Gal providing a stream that is only 84% pure. In SMB, the potential throughputs and separation performance are higher, however, this could only be experimentally demonstrated with synthetic crude mixtures of sugars and not with the crude SBP hydrolysate. Further pretreatment or SMB method development would be required in order to process the crude hydrolysate, and the resulting multistep processes may reduce the overall viability. Overall this thesis demonstrates two feasible approaches to the preparative scale separation of SBP pectin hydrolysates and supports development of an integrated SBP biorefinery.


In this paper, we consider an underlay secondary network comprising of K transmitter-receiver pairs sharing the spectrum of a primary network, which is divided into n non-overlapping frequency bands (subchannels). Each secondary pair can communicate over only one subchannel and should keep the interference generated to the primary network below a threshold. A decentralized multiple access algorithm is used by the secondary pairs to select a proper subchannel. We study the performance of a modified version of the medium access control (MAC) protocol proposed by Elkashlan et al., referred to as the general order selection algorithm. We obtain the statistics of the output signal-to-noise ratio of the algorithm, and the statistics of the achievable capacity per secondary pair. Closed-form expressions for the outage probability, average bit error rate of the secondary users, and the aggregate throughput of the secondary network are derived. Assessment of the analytical work of this paper is done through comparisons with simulation.


Case-based reasoning refers to the class of memory-based problem solving methods which emphasize the adaptation of recalled solutions (explanations, diagnoses, plans) over the generation of solutions from first principles. CBR has become a popular methodology, resulting in a proliferation of case organization and representation proposals. The goal of this paper is to sort through some of these proposals. Using the formal models of "procedure" and "case-based reasoning" introduced in Zito-Wolf and Alterman (1992), we compare three current proposals for the organization of procedural case-bases: individual cases, microcases, and multi cases. We give a worst-case analysis that shows the advantages of the multi case in terms of case storage and retrieval costs. The model predicts that multi cases reduce case storage and retrieval costs as compared to the other two models. We then provide some empirical evidence from an implemented system that suggests that the trends observed in the formal model are also observable in case bases of practical size.


Background Injury and illness surveillance plays an integral role in the prevention of injury and the protection of athletes' health, and there are few epidemiological studies documenting injury and illness in Paralympic athletes. Objective A prospective cohort study to report incidence and characteristics of injuries and illnesses in Paralympic athletes. Design Daily injury and illness data were obtained from team physicians and through the London 2012 Medical services medical encounters over the full period of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Setting London 2012 Paralympic Games. Participants 3 565 athletes (85%) that participated in any of the 20 sports of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Risk factor assessment Data collection was carried out on a daily basis through the Games' Medical Encounter System and through a web-based Injury and Illness survey populated by the team physicians. Main outcome measurements Incidence rates and incidence proportion have been recorded, as well as sport-specific analysis. Results The incidence rate of injury during competiton was 12.1/1000 athlete-days, with and incidence proportion of 11.6%. Upper limb injuries (35%), particularly of the shoulder (17%) were most common. Higer injury rates were found in older athletes and certain sports like Football-5-a-side (22.4/1000). Most commonly injured region was the shoulder, followed by wrist/hand, elbow and knee. The incidence rate of illness was 12.8/1000 athlete-days with an incidence proportion of 10.2%. The incidence proportion was highest in the respiratory system, skin, gastrointestinal and genitourinary system. Athletes in the sports of cycling, table tennis, swimming and athletes reported most frequently for medical care. Conclusions Injury and illness rates in Paralympic Games are similar to those in other events in able-bodied sports, but patterns of injuries and illness are different. Athletes, team physicians, International Federations and event organizers can plan different prevention and intervention strategies based on this information.


Objective:To evaluate the association between prehospitalization aspirin therapy and incident acute lung injury in a heterogeneous cohort of at-risk medical patients. Design:This is a secondary analysis of a prospective multicenter international cohort investigation. Setting:Multicenter observational study including 20 US hospitals and two hospitals in Turkey. Patients:Consecutive, adult, nonsurgical patients admitted to the hospital with at least one major risk factor for acute lung injury. Interventions:None. Measurements and Main Results:Baseline characteristics and acute lung injury risk factors/modifiers were identified. The presence of aspirin therapy and the propensity to receive this therapy were determined. The primary outcome was acute lung injury during hospitalization. Secondary outcomes included intensive care unit and hospital mortality and intensive care unit and hospital length of stay. Twenty-two hospitals enrolled 3855 at-risk patients over a 6-month period. Nine hundred seventy-six (25.3%) were receiving aspirin at the time of hospitalization. Two hundred forty (6.2%) patients developed acute lung injury. Univariate analysis noted a reduced incidence of acute lung injury in those receiving aspirin therapy (odds ratio [OR], 0.65; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.46–0.90; p = .010). This association was attenuated in a stratified analysis based on deciles of aspirin propensity scores (Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel pooled OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.48–1.03; p = .072). Conclusions:After adjusting for the propensity to receive aspirin therapy, no statistically significant associations between prehospitalization aspirin therapy and acute lung injury were identified; however, a prospective clinical trial to further evaluate this association appears warranted.