Background Referral for brief intervention among people who misuse alcohol is reported to be effective but its impact among those who present to services following deliberate self-harm (DSH) has not been examined. Method Consecutive patients who presented to an Emergency Department (ED) following an episode of DSH were screened for alcohol misuse. Those found to be misusing alcohol were randomly assigned to brief intervention plus a health information leaflet or to a health information leaflet alone. The primary outcome was whether the patient reattended an ED following a further episode of DSH during the subsequent 6 months. Secondary outcomes were alcohol consumption, mental health and satisfaction with care measured 3 and 6 months after randomization. Results One hundred and three people took part in the study. Follow-up data on our primary outcome were obtained for all subjects and on 63% for secondary outcomes. Half those referred for brief intervention received it. Repetition of DSH was strongly associated with baseline alcohol consumption, but not influenced by treatment allocation. There was a non-significant trend towards the number of units of alcohol consumed per drinking day being lower among those randomized to brief intervention. Conclusions Referral for brief intervention for alcohol misuse following an episode of DSH may not influence the likelihood of repetition of self-harm. Longer-term interventions may be needed to help people who deliberately harm themselves and have evidence of concurrent alcohol misuse.


The reaction kinetics of two radical reactions that are important for coke formation during the thermal cracking of hydrocarbons is studied by transition-state theory. It is investigated how coupled internal rotations influence the partition functions of molecules with several torsional motions and the reaction kinetics involving such molecules. This is done by applying a general scheme, which is able to treat various rotating tops without restrictions on the symmetry of the rotating parts.


Immigration adjudication is more diverse than it may seem. Scholars tend to focus on one aspect of administrative immigration adjudication, the decision-making process established to determine whether an individual may be removed (deported) from the United States. But there is a whole other function of administrative immigration adjudication that relatively is ignored in the legal literature. Immigration adjudicators are also tasked with determining whether to grant immigration benefits, such as whether to grant lawful permanent resident (green card) status. Both types of administrative immigration adjudication, removal and benefits, are in crisis. This article explores the challenges facing each and argues that both crises are linked to a lack of transparency in immigration law. In the removal context, the lack of transparency is exemplified by the complexity of the law and by the negative discretion infused into the law. In the benefits context, the lack of transparency is exemplified by the use of administrative guidance to adjudicate benefits applications and by the obscurity of the administrative appellate adjudicating body, the Administrative Appeals Office. This lack of transparency presents big challenges for both removal and benefits adjudication, and once recognized, opens new lines of inquiry. In the removal context, the lack of transparency: (1) must be considered as a contributor to overwhelming caseloads; (2) highlights a lack of decisional independence for immigration adjudicators; (3) must be considered as a factor in the extreme lack of lawyers in the system; and (4) adds to the negative mystique surrounding immigration law. In the benefits context, the use of administrative guidance and the obscurity of the Administrative Appeals Office help to explain the confusion, uncertainty and extreme lack of confidence characteristic of the benefits adjudication system. The opacity of immigration law presents challenges to both removal and benefits adjudication. This connection suggests that the lack of transparency in immigration law is a broad and deep problem, and that this murkiness must be considered in crafting any reform.


This article argues that despite individual Fellows' interest in artistic practices, and similarities between a philosophical and a connoisseurial appreciation of art, the Royal Society as an institution may have been wary of image-making as a way of conveying knowledge because of the power of images to stir the passions and sway the intellect. Using Robert Hooke as a case study it explores some of the connections between philosophers and makers in Restoration London. It goes on to suggest that some epistemic images were in fact designed to elicit an emotional response in their viewers in order to force them to re-evaluate the subject-matter by presenting it in a new and surprising way.


We show that when citizens are uncertain about whether a successful revolution will turn out better than the status quo, communication between citizens reduces the likelihood of successful revolution when the status quo is sufficiently bad . A bad regime faces a tradeoff: communication helps citizens to coordinate, facilitating revolution; but it also facilitates the dissemination of any negative information about the alternative to the status quo, forestalling revolution. When the regime is sufficiently bad, this latter effect dominates. This result contrasts with the literature that assumes that each citizen knows that he wants to change the regime, but he is uncertain about whether enough citizens will revolt. In such settings, communication always raises the likelihood of successful revolution.


At the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology of DLR the method of cold gas-dynamic spray deposition is investigated. In this method deposition of coatings is performed by the impact of high-velocity particles that are in a solid state. Powder particles are accelerated by a supersonic free jet. The temperature of the gas is sufficiently lower than the melting temperature of the materials/particles. The method enables one to produce coatings made of most metals and alloys (Al, Zn, Cu, Fe, Ti, Ni etc.) on various substrates. Because cold spray does not use high-temperature heating for melting the feed material, the method is very attractive for depositing oxygen-sensitive materials such as copper and titanium. The actual mechanism by which solid-state particles deform and bond on impact has not been well characterized. The quality of coatings depends on particle velocity, size and density, on the reservoir pressure and temperature of the gas, on the nozzle shape and length, and other process parameters. Studying supersonic two-phase flows and shock wave structures produced by jets impinging on obstacles is important for an interpretation of the process. The complexity of a mathematical description of multiphase jets requires experimental measurements covering a wide range of parameters. In particular, the importance of the character of jet-substrate interactions, the influence of particles on shock structures, particle velocities and trajectories, and particle distributions and concentrations in the jet and ahead the substrate need to be studied. We have developed short light pulse diagnostics of supersonic two-phase flows that are applied to the cold spray facility. The set-up of the facility and preliminary results were described at the STAB-Workshops 2001, 2002. Main features of our facility are: axisymmetric jets; working gas: air, flow Mach number: M=2.6-2.8; reservoir temperatures: 20-500 C, degree of underexpansion: 0.3-1.2; powder materials: Zn, Al, Cu; particle size: 10-100 mikrometer. Parameters of the constructed optical diagnostics system: - visualization method: shadowgraph and schlieren visualization; - method of particle behavior recognizing: multiexposure, particle tracking visualization; - photodetector: CCD-camera, exposure time 10 mikrosec – 10 ms; - light source: semiconductor laser, impulse length 20 ns – 10 ms; - system of synchronization allows series of light pulses, modulated arbitrarily . The behavior of particle-laden and particle-free jets impinging on substrates was studied in the cold spray facility of DLR. The dynamics of the particles in the shock layer ahead the obstacle was observed.


Aspects of the establishment and use of ground cover plants for urban weed control were investigated. Established ground cover populations of different taxa were monitored over 1 year at 14 sites for their ability to block light from the soil and prevent weeds from establishing. Field trials compared 12 ground cover species of widely differing growth form for rate of establishment and ability to block light and suppress weeds. Another field trial compared various types of mulch with selective herbicides and hand weeding as techniques for establishing ground cover species. No single growth form was superior to others, and it was the density of the foliage that was key to suppressing weeds. Ground cover plants should be selected for having persistently dense canopies throughout the year, such as Coprosma acerosa 'Taiko' and Juniperus procumbens. Deciduous species like Persicaria capitata, evergreen species which become sparser in winter like Pimelea prostrata, and plant canopies which open up during flowering like Grevillea lanigera, all allow weeds to germinate while the ground is exposed. Ground cover plants appear to deter weeds mainly by keeping weed seeds dormant through preventing red light from reaching weed seeds and triggering a phytochrome response leading to germination. Keeping the ratio of red to far-red light below 0.3 appeared to give best inhibition of weed seed germination. Presence of mulch and spot application of selective herbicides can help prevent weeds causing problems should gaps appear within ground covers, and these may be preferable to hand weeding. Little herbicide tolerance information exists for ornamental ground cover plants, so herbicide tolerance trials were conducted on eight ground cover plant species. This work showed that herbicides can aid in ground cover plant establishment and subsequent maintenance to selectively spot-treat weeds that appear. Ground cover species were assessed which grow low enough to be mowed but which seldom need mowing, to replace grass turf in situations where mowing is inconvenient such as under trees, on slopes, or roadsides. Dichondra micrantha and Soleirolia soleirolii showed the most potential, forming dense low growing swards that tolerated a wide range of herbicides.


Some of the nation's wealthiest philanthropies, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in education reform. With vast wealth and a political agenda, these foundations have helped to reshape the reform landscape in urban education. In Follow the Money, Sarah Reckhow shows where and how foundation investment in education is occurring and presents in-depth analysis of the effects of these investments within the two largest urban districts in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. In New York City, centralized political control and the use of private resources have enabled rapid implementation of reform proposals. Yet this potent combination of top-down authority and outside funding also poses serious questions about transparency, responsiveness, and democratic accountability in New York. Furthermore, the sustainability of reform policies is closely linked to the political fortunes of the current mayor and his chosen school leader. While the media has highlighted the efforts of drastic reformers and dominating leaders such as Joel Klein in New York City and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., a slower, but possibly more transformative, set of reforms have been taking place in Los Angeles. These reforms were also funded and shaped by major foundations, but they work from the bottom up, through charter school operators managing networks of schools. This strategy has built grassroots political momentum and demand for reform in Los Angeles that is unmatched in New York City and other districts with mayoral control. Reckhow's study of Los Angeles's education system shows how democratically responsive urban school reform could occur-pairing foundation investment with broad grassroots involvement. Bringing a sharp analytical eye and a wealth of evidence to one of the most politicized issues of our day, Follow the Money will reshape our thinking about educational reform in America. Available in OSO:


Educational psychology is a far ranging discipline that focuses on the student, the teacher, the classroom and the teaching/learning process. The challenge of an introductory course in educational psychology is to familiarize the student with both theory and application in such diverse areas as human growth and development, learning, personality development, motivation, measurement and classroom management. This creates a problem for faculty members who seemingly must have expertise in all of these areas. While most, if not all, educational psychology faculty certainly have some familiarity with all these topics, in most cases, their expertise will be limited to a few of the topics closely related to their specialization or area of research. This often results in a course that focuses on the faculty member's research and superficially touches on other essential topics. Obviously this can result in significant gaps in student learning. A team teaching approach has been found to be very useful in resolving this problem. Team teaching is a method that has been successfully utilized in a wide range of subject areas, including optometry, women's studies, anthropology, economics and psychology (Heath, Carlson & Kurtz, 1987; Toomey & Eldridge, 1982; Plotnicov, 1985; Lindaver, 1990; Flanagan & Ralston, 1983). This article describes the team teaching approach used at The University of Montevallo in an introductory educational psychology course. The course, while open to all students, is taken primarily by junior teacher education majors. Logistics Each of four full time faculty members in the Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology is assigned one section of this course as part of his/her regular teaching load. Two of the sections are scheduled at 9:00 A.M. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and two are scheduled at 11:00 A.M. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Each sections has a maximum enrollment of 30 students. The sections which meet at the same hour are then combined, thus producing two classes of 50-60 students, one at 9:00 A.M. and the other at 11:00 A.M. Prior to the beginning of each semester, the Educational Psychology team meets to plan a schedule for the semester. After a review and updating of the curriculum each team member selects topics most appropriate for his/her areas of expertise. In addition, the calendar is planned such that no faculty member is scheduled to teach on a day when he/she might have other conflicting professional responsibilities. Some days involve just one faculty member who would on that day teach at both the 9:00 A.M. and 11:00 A.M. hours thus meeting all four sections on that day. Other class days may involve two faculty members while others may require the presence of the entire team. As part of the syllabus, each student receives a schedule showing the topic to be covered each day, the appropriate reading assignment for that topic and which faculty member(s) will be in class that day. Tests are constructed by creating a table of specifications from the topics discussed during the period covered by the tests. Each faculty member is responsible for writing test questions for his/her sessions. The grade in the course is based on the scores on four exams, each covering one-fourth of the course, plus an application level comprehensive final exam. The exam covering the final one-fourth of the course and the comprehensive final are given together on the final exam date. Each exam consists of fifty multiple-choice questions, thus the total possible points is 250. Letter grades are assigned based on a norm-referenced cluster system. Students are also given the opportunity to earn extra credit points through participation in several optional projects. Each faculty member is responsible for the grades of students in her/his section. Advantages The chief advantage of the team teaching approach is the resolution of the problem mentioned at the beginning of this article. …


This book collates the most up to date evidence from behavioural, brain imagery and stroke-patient studies, to discuss the ways in which cognitive and neural processes are responsible for language processing.

Divided into six sections, the edited volume presents arguments from evolutionist, developmental, behavioural and neurobiological perspectives, all of which point to a strong relationship between action and language. It provides a scientific basis for a new theoretical approach to language evolution, acquisition and use in humans, whilst at the same time assessing current debates on motor system's contribution to the emergence of language acquisition, perception and production.

The chapters have been written by internationally acknowledged researchers from a variety of disciplines, and as such this book will be of great interest to academics, students and professionals in the areas of cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, psycholinguistics and philosophy.


Abstract Background: Evidence links Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), a neurotropic parasite, with schizophrenia, mood disorders and suicidal behavior, all of which are associated and exacerbated by disrupted sleep. Moreover, low-grade immune activation and dopaminergic overstimulation, which are consequences of T. gondii infection, could alter sleep patterns and duration. Methods: Sleep data on 833 Amish participants [mean age (SD) = 44.28 (16.99) years; 59.06% women] were obtained via self-reported questionnaires that assessed sleep problems, duration and timing. T. gondii IgG was measured with ELISA. Data were analyzed using multivariable logistic regressions and linear mixed models, with adjustment for age, sex and family structure. Results: T. gondii seropositives reported less sleep problems (p < 0.005) and less daytime problems due to poor sleep (p < 0.005). Higher T. gondii titers were associated with longer sleep duration (p < 0.05), earlier bedtime (p < 0.005) and earlier mid-sleep time (p < 0.05). Conclusions: It seems unlikely that sleep mediates the previously reported associations between T. gondii and mental illness. Future longitudinal studies with objective measures are necessary to replicate our findings.


Ruchkin et al.'s theoretical conclusions reflect two venerable fallacies. They confound an experimental paradigm with a theoretical concept, and they assume that features of the paradigm that are most readily detected by their methods provide an adequate account of the operation of the theoretical system. This results in a simplistic theory that does not do justice to the richness of the available data.


Transcription factor SATB1 (special AT-rich sequence binding protein 1) contains multiple DNA-binding domains (DBDs), i.e. two CUT-domain repeats (CUTr1 and CUTr2 from the N-terminus) and a homeodomain, and binds to the matrix attachment region (MAR) of DNA. Although CUTr1 and the homeodomain, but not CUTr2, are known to contribute to DNA binding, different research groups have not reached a consensus on which DBD is responsible for recognition of the target sequence in MAR, 5'-TAATA-3'. Here, we used isothermal titration calorimetry to demonstrate that CUTr1 has binding specificity to this motif, whereas the homeodomain shows affinity for a variety of DNAs without specificity. In line with nonspecific DNA-binding properties of the homeodomain, a mutation of the invariant Asn at position 51 of the homeodomain (typically in contact with the A base in a sequence-specific binding mode) did not affect the binding affinity significantly. The NMR analyses and computational modeling of the homeodomain, however, revealed the tertiary structure and DNA-binding mode that are typical of homeodomains capable of sequence-specific binding. We believe that the lack of highly conserved basic residues in the helix relevant to the base recognition loosens its fitting into the DNA groove and impairs the specific binding. The two DBDs, when fused in tandem, showed strong binding to DNA containing the 5'-TAATA-3' motif with an affinity constant >10(8) M(-1) and retained nonspecific binding activity. The combination of the sequence-specific and nonspecific DNA-binding modes of SATB1 should be advantageous in a search for target loci during transcriptional regulation.


The geography of innovation is changing. First, it is increasingly understood that innovative firms and organizations exhibit a wide variety of strategies, each being differently attuned to diverse geographic contexts. Second, and concomitantly, the idea that cities, clusters and physical proximity are essential for innovation is evolving under the weight of new theorizing and empirical evidence. In this Handbook we gather 28 chapters by scholars with widely differing views on what constitutes the geography of innovation. The aim of the Handbook is to break with the many ideas and concepts that emerged during the course of the 1980s and 1990s, and to fully take into account the new reality of the internet, mobile communication technologies, personal mobility and globalization. This does not entail the rejection of well-established and supported ideas, but instead allows for a series of new ideas and authors to enter the arena and provoke debate.


Linear series have long played a central role in algebraic geometry. In recent years, starting with seminal papers by Demailly and Ein-Lazarsfeld, local properties of linear series – in particular local positivity, as measured by Seshadri constants – have come into focus. Interestingly, in their multi-point version they are closely related to the famous Nagata conjecture on plane curves. While a number of important basic results are available by now, there are still a large number of open questions and even completely open lines of research.


Japan's past engagement of the Pacific Islands, primarily developmental and generally low-key, is viewed as having been "slow and steady". However, as it has developed its 'Free and Open Indo-Pacific' (FOIP) strategy, Japan has begun to dispense with this quiet approach and now adopts a more strategic set of policies towards the Pacific Islands. Japan's shift in style and the implications of a more contested Indo-Pacific region raise some important questions for Japan's future engagement of the region, especially in terms of how the Pacific Islands fit within the FOIP vision. Indeed, as FOIP evolves, it is likely that the past approach will continue to be reworked as Japan's Pacific Islands policies become more closely integrated into FOIP. Whether Japan has the capacity to deliver on ambitions for the Pacific Islands and the wider Indo-Pacific, however, remains open to question.


Based on patient complain in dr. Kanujoso Djatiwibowo hospital Balikpapan, from complain box were 65% unsatisfied because of late doctor visit, 15% because of hard to connect the doctor and 20% because of short doctor treatment. The result of previous study with 6 specialist doctors who worked in out patient unit showed that unsatisfied doctors unfulfilled by management evevthough the management has been efforted to fullfil working satisfaction of specialist doctor. The main point of this research was to know some factors that related with working satisfaction of specialist doctors in out patient unit dr. Kanujoso Djatiwibowo Balikpapan.
 The kind of this research was descriptive explanatory with cross sectional approach and the research method was survey. Beside quantitative approach also qualitative with deep interview and than analysis content. The population and sample of this research were all specialist doctors who worked in out patient unit dr. Kanujoso Djatiwibowo Balikpapan year 2006 with amount 42 specialist doctors. Analysis univariate in this research was frequency distribution and analysis bivariate used Pearson Correlation for normal data and Rank Spearman for upnormal data.
 The result of univariate analysis show that most respondent ( 52,4% ) unsatisfied with job as specialist doctor in out patient unit RSKD Balikpapan. Majority responden
( 61,9% ) have medium perception about working situation, 59,5% respondent have medium perception about supervise, 85,7% respondent have medium perception about salary, 69,0% have medium perception about relationship with colleague and 73,8% respondent have perception that chance of promotion was not good. The result of bivariate analysis showed that there was connection between working situation
( p=0,001), there was connection between supervise ( p=0,0001 ), there was no connection between perception of salary ( p=0,061 ), there was no connection between perception of worker colleague ( p=0,400 ), there was no connection between chance of promotion ( p=0,134 ) and working satisfaction of specialist doctors. From deep interview with management state that the management has been efforted to fullfil working satisfaction of specialist doctors, but from deep interview with 3 of 5 specialist doctors they were unsatisfied with the management effort and there was no effort from management to fullfil doctors satisfaction working.

Sumber Utama : www.mikm.undip.ac.id


Background: Early cancer detection is widely recommended to reduce cancer mortality, for cancer is most successfully treated during the early stage. In Maryland, only 44.6% of all cancers are detected at the early stage, which may partially account for the fact that blacks in Baltimore City experience significantly higher mortality rates related to breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers. Access to cancer screening and early detection services and early education are critical in reducing cancer mortality and disparities. Past studies have examined the factors that influence cancer-screening behaviors, however, few have directly assessed how the association between knowledge and behavioral intentions relative to cancer screening varies with age. Methods: The data was collected from the Advancing Community Outreach Study (March 2014-June 2015) conducted by the Johns Hopkins Center to Reduce Cancer Disparities in collaboration with community partners in Baltimore City. The data was obtained via convenience sampling at health fairs and community presentations, and study participants (n=294) responded to various questions to assess knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intentions based on past and future communications with a health care provider about screening for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers. Cancer knowledge focused on screening methods and National Cancer Institute9s recommendations for screening. The primary outcome measure was defined by behavioral intentions indicated by the participant. Results: Preliminary analyses showed that the study population was 83.1% female and 88.5% black. Individuals were separated into three age groups ( 60 years of age) to examine the association between cancer screening knowledge and behaviors/intentions. Significant differences in knowledge of cervical cancer (p=0.030) and colorectal cancer (p 92.0 in all knowledge questions) and showed non-significant differences by age group. Conclusions: Study findings suggest that individuals closer in age to a specific cancer screening guideline demonstrate a positive association between cancer screening knowledge and behavioral intentions linked to obtaining cancer screening. The findings highlight the importance of increasing early and consistent education about cancer screenings to encourage early detection of cancer and to ultimately reduce the disparity in cancer mortality rates. Further research should be conducted to explore the additional factors that influence knowledge of cancer screening methods and guidelines and how that level of knowledge affects cancer screening behaviors. Citation Format: Anjani D. Kapadia, Ahmed Elmi, Lee Bone, Caryn Bell, Saad Tussaduq, Theron Scott, Olive Mbah, Adrian Dobs. The effect of knowledge on cancer screening intentions and behaviors among African Americans. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eighth AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 13-16, 2015; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2016;25(3 Suppl):Abstract nr B71.


A door can serve as a feature for place classification and localization for navigation of a mobile robot in indoor environments. This paper proposes a door detection method based on the recognition of various door handles using the general Hough transform (GHT) and support vector machine (SVM). The contour and color histogram of a door handle extracted from the database are used in GHT and SVM, respectively. The door recognition scheme consists of four steps. The first step determines the region of interest (ROI) images defined by the color information and the environment around the door handle for stable recognition. In the second step, the door handle is recognized using the GHT method from the ROI image and the image patches are extracted from the position of the recognized door handle. In the third step, the extracted patch is classified whether it is the image patch of a door handle or not using the SVM classifier. The door position is probabilistically determined by the recognized door handle. Experimental results show that the proposed method can recognize various door handles and detect doors in a robust manner.


A fast method for the direct analysis of soils, namely solid sampling (SS) electrothermal vapourization inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ETV-ICP-AES), was validated through the accurate analysis of a soil standard reference material (SRM) using another soil SRM as a calibration standard and an Ar emission line as internal standard to compensate for sample loading effects on the plasma. Good agreement was obtained between the measured concentrations and certified values according to a Student's t-test. The validated method was applied to the determination of the distribution of elements in depth profile soil samples from across the Talbot Lake VMS Cu-Zn prospect, in the Flin Flon-Snow Lake terrane, Manitoba, Canada. These profiles revealed that: Zn, P and Ag had anomalously high concentrations at 20–50 cm depth at 400 m, above where the easternmost part of the ore deposit is located along a 0–1000 m sampling line; Cu, Al, Ba, Pb and Hg were concentrated on the surface and at 40-cm depth mostly between 500 and 600 m; and Cl, Br and I were concentrated at depth at 400 m and over all depths at 600 m. As the geochemical anomaly is known to lie from 400 to 600 m, all these elements could be used to locate the ore. Good agreement was obtained with results by ICP mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) following aqua regia (AR) digestion, for those elements that could be determined by ICP-MS. In fact, not only is sample dissolution unnecessary but qualitative analysis by SS-ETV-ICP-AES is sufficient to obtain depth profiles, including for elements like Cl, which cannot be determined when AR is used for digestion.


Dialogue response generation models that use template ranking rather than direct sequence generation allow model developers to limit generated responses to pre-approved messages. However, manually creating templates is time-consuming and requires domain expertise. To alleviate this problem, we explore automating the process of creating dialogue templates by using unsupervised methods to cluster historical utterances and selecting representative utterances from each cluster. Specifically, we propose an end-to-end model called Deep Sentence Encoder Clustering (DSEC) that uses an auto-encoder structure to jointly learn the utterance representation and construct template clusters. We compare this method to a random baseline that randomly assigns templates to clusters as well as a strong baseline that performs the sentence encoding and the utterance clustering sequentially. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we perform an automatic evaluation with two annotated customer service datasets to assess clustering effectiveness, and a human-in-the-loop experiment using a live customer service application to measure the acceptance rate of the generated templates. DSEC performs best in the automatic evaluation, beats both the sequential and random baselines on most metrics in the human-in-the-loop experiment, and shows promising results when compared to gold/manually created templates.


In this paper, we calculate the four coefficients for the quantum theory of multiwave mixing including a local-field correction resulting from dipole-dipole interactions. We make contact with the semiclassical calculations of probe absorption and four-wave-mixing coupling coefficients, and illustrate the effects of local field corrections on resonance-fluorescence and coupled-mode-fluorescence spectra. The method uses the hybrid quantum-Langevin-equation master-equation approach of An and Sargent.


A Raman-active crystal, lanthanum tungstate doped with praseodymium (Pr) ions, was grown to facilitate the selection of the order of Stokes waves in stimulated Raman scattering. Absorption of the second Stokes wave by the Pr ions suppressed conversion to higher-order Stokes waves, resulting in efficient energy conversion to the first Stokes wave.


Metastatic cancer is regarded as one of the largest contributors to disease-related deaths worldwide. Poor patient prognosis and treatment outcome is tied to the lack of efficacious anti-cancer therapies, which is due in part to the lack of physiologically relevant in vitro screening systems that can mimic the native tumor microenvironment. Conventional drug-screening platforms, which are often used in the pharmaceutical industry, are either two-dimensional (2D) assays or three-dimensional (3D) hydrogel-based matrices that lack precise control over cell distribution, matrix architecture, and organization. Despite the significance of in vivo models, they have limitations as it is difficult to control and analyze the influence of specific variables within their tumor microenvironment. Thus, there is still a crucial need to develop tumor models that enable precise control of microenvironmental cues (e.g. matrix composition, soluble factors, cellular organization) to assess the efficacy of anti-cancer drugs. Herein, we report the development and validation of a 3D microfluidic invasion platform for anti-cancer drug studies. Our platform allowed for compartmentalization of tumor and stromal fibroblasts in a defined architecture, thereby enabling pharmacokinetic drug transport to a cell-dense tumor region. We analyzed the effect of suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor, on the behavior of SUM159 breast cancer cells. Many HDAC inhibitors, including SAHA, have been a subject of controversy with highly conflicting results for the treatment of solid tumors in vitro as well as in clinical trials. We found that SAHA significantly inhibited cellular migration/proliferation, and decreased microtubule polarization.


Organic electrosynthetic processes are key players in the integration of renewable energy in chemical manufacturing, but face important challenges in selectivity and energy efficiency. Although membrane-separated flow reactors can help address these issues, a deeper understanding of membrane behavior in organic-containing electrolytes is required. We evaluate the effect of organic reactants on the conductivity and permeability of one cation exchange membrane (Nafion 117) and two anion exchange membranes (Sustainion and Fumasep FAB), to later assess the advantages of their implementation in flow reactors for the electrohydrodimerization of acrylonitrile to adiponitrile – the largest organic electrosynthesis in industry. The presence of organic molecules led to important losses in membrane conductivity, however no significant contribution to reactor overpotential was observed from their implementation in membrane-separated reactors. Furthermore, permeabilities between 0.4–1.2 × 10−6 cm2 s−1 towards organic molecules led to low crossover of organics and improved reactor selectivity. Undivided reactors yielded selectivities as high as 48% (40 mA cm−2 and 4 V), while selectivities of 77% (20 mA cm−2 and 2.7 V) and 81% (40 mA cm−2 and 3 V) were obtained with Nafion and Sustainion-separated reactors, respectively. The demonstrated improvement in energy efficiency for continuous organic electrosynthetic processes makes the insights from this work a significant step in the development of sustainable electrochemical manufacturing processes.


In this paper we propose an unsupervised segmentation-free method for word spotting in document images. Documents are represented with a grid of HOG descriptors, and a sliding window approach is used to locate the document regions that are most similar to the query. We use the Exemplar SVM framework to produce a better representation of the query in an unsupervised way. Finally, the document descriptors are precomputed and compressed with Product Quantization. This offers two advantages: first, a large number of documents can be kept in RAM memory at the same time. Second, the sliding window becomes significantly faster since distances between quantized HOG descriptors can be precomputed. Our results significantly outperform other segmentation-free methods in the literature, both in accuracy and in speed and memory usage.


A history of concussions has shown to affect neurocognitive degeneration, but it has not been investigated whether or not these aspects affect baseline cognitive scores. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects a history of concussions has on neurocognitive function in collegiate wrestlers. Athletes (n = 28) were administered a neurocognitive computer test at the beginning of the wrestling season. We collected baseline cognitive scores, concussion history, and any post injury scores that occurred during the season. Results suggest that a history of three or more concussions had deleterious effects on neurocognitive function. Notched boxplots depicted variability among the baseline scores showing non-gaussain distributions. Spearhmens Rho (-1 to +1) showed almost no relationship (rs = -.07) between verbal and visual memory composite scores. A moderate positive relationship (rs = .38) between visual memory control and visual motor speed and a weak positive relationship (rs = .12) between verbal memory composite and visual motor speed. Reaction time and visual memory control had a moderate negative relationship (rs = -.42). We conclude that a history of concussions may cause deletrious effects cognitive function and using non-parametric statistics should be considered for future research in analyzing concussions.


Abstract. In order to quantify the risks from fire at the wildland urban interface (WUI), it is important to understand where fires occur and their likelihood of spreading to the WUI. For each of the 999 fires in the Sydney region we calculated the distance between the ignition and the WUI, the fire's weather and wind direction and whether it spread to the WUI. The likelihood of burning the WUI was analysed using binomial regression. Weather and distance interacted such that under mild weather conditions, the model predicted only a 5% chance that a fire starting >2.5 km from the interface would reach it, whereas when the conditions are extreme the predicted chance remained above 30% even at distances >10 km. Fires were more likely to spread to the WUI if the wind was from the west and in the western side of the region. We examined whether the management responses to wildfires are commensurate with risk by comparing the distribution of distance to the WUI of wildfires with roads and prescribed fires. Prescribed fires and roads were concentrated nearer to the WUI than wildfires as a whole, but further away than wildfires that burnt the WUI under extreme weather conditions (high risk fires). Overall, 79% of these high risk fires started within 2 km of the WUI, so there is some argument for concentrating more management effort near the WUI. By substituting climate change scenario weather into the statistical model, we predicted a small increase in the risk of fires spreading to the WUI, but the increase will be greater under extreme weather. This approach has a variety of uses, including mapping fire risk and improving the ability to match fire management responses to the threat from each fire. They also provide a baseline from which a cost-benefit analysis of complementary fire management strategies can be conducted.


Resonant inductive coupling wireless power transfer is widely known to be a possible convenient power supply method for the small mobile apparatus. However, the limited receiving-coil size tends to lower the efficiency and limit the output power owing to the small mutual inductance and comparatively large stray alternating current (AC) resistance of the receiving-coil. This study mitigates this issue by proposing a novel receiving-coil structure. This proposed structure comprises a coil and a drum core with a thin axis. The coil is wound on the axis to form a single winding layer. The proposed structure can reduce stray AC resistance by suppressing the proximity effect and reducing the wire length without deteriorating the mutual inductance significantly. Therefore, better efficiency and larger output power can be achieved. Simulations and experiments were performed to verify the proposed structure. Consequently, both simulations and experiments supported the reduction in AC resistance compared to the conventional structure. Furthermore, the experiment revealed improvements by the proposed structure in both efficiency and output power. These results support the effectiveness of the proposed structure for wireless power transfer to small mobile apparatus.


In this article, I suggest that incomplete markets and transaction costs are crucial for explaining the high equity premium and the low risk-free rate. I first demonstrate the failure of the complete frictionless markets model in explaining these return puzzles and then show how introducing incomplete markets and transaction costs can lead to success. Additionally, I explain how these features lead to predictions concerning individual consumptions, wealths, portfolios, and asset market transactions that are in better agreement with the facts than the predictions of the complete frictionless markets model.


Protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) is an essential intracellular serine/threonine phosphatase containing a catalytic subunit that possesses the potential to dephosphorylate promiscuously tyrosine-phosphorylated substrates in vitro. How PP2A acquires its intracellular specificity and activity for serine/threonine-phosphorylated substrates is unknown. Here we report a novel and phylogenetically conserved mechanism to generate active phospho-serine/threonine-specific PP2A in vivo. Phosphotyrosyl phosphatase activator (PTPA), a protein of so far unknown intracellular function, is required for the biogenesis of active and specific PP2A. Deletion of the yeast PTPA homologs generated a PP2A catalytic subunit with a conformation different from the wild-type enzyme, as indicated by its altered substrate specificity, reduced protein stability, and metal dependence. Complementation and RNA-interference experiments showed that PTPA fulfills an essential function conserved from yeast to man.


Every year a significant number of young children are injured as a result of accidents that occur on board trains in Great Britain. These accidents range from being caught in internal doors, slips, trips and falls and injuries caused by seats. We describe our efforts working with RSSB to design a new set of safety signs in order to help prevent such accidents occurring. The research involved running a set of workshops with young school children (aged 4–10, n=210) and showing them examples of existing train signs and gathering the requirements for new designs. A second set of workshops with these children was used to evaluate the new signs based on the outcomes from the earlier workshop. We describe our findings alongside a set of outline guidelines for the design of safety signs for young children, A final section outlines possibilities for future research.


People 's perception of climate change and daptation in the process, interview was used and questionnaire was administered as the primary source of data generation, while consultation of written materials and the Internet formed the secondary sources. The result revealed that the doubling price of firewood per annum and at same time supply is dwindled, insufficiency and irregularities in supply of some fuels like kerosene and gas and the unstable supply of electricity has made the people in the area to go for charcoal as a source of fuel which consequently increased the level of deforestation and has reached a kind of ecological disaster. Therefore, the study made the following recommendations; legislation should be put in place against indiscriminate felling of trees, government should enhance the supply of other sources of fuels like kerosene and gas, improve electric power supply and the people should be enlightened about the dangers of deforestation.


Cotton is one of the most important smallholder cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). How to ensure input supply, credit recovery and competition is a subject of intense policy debate. This paper examines the performance of cotton sector development policies in Mozambique and Zambia. Both countries face the challenge of organizing input supply to farmers in the absence of rural credit markets, and competing in international markets distorted by production subsidies in developed countries. Both countries privatized cotton ginning in the 1990s. Emerging from civil war, Mozambique established geographical monopolies to interlink input and output markets and facilitate credit recovery. In Zambia, the government completely liberalized the cotton sector, forcing the private sector to deal with the problem of input distribution and credit recovery by itself. Despite being landlocked, Zambia.s cotton sector has achieved better performance in terms of both value of cotton output per hectare and smallholder share of world market prices. An analysis of the institutional and technical factors behind the two countries. performance provides insights to guide the design of public/private partnerships relevant to many SSA countries.


We conduct a field experiment in 31 primary schools in England to test the effectiveness of different temporary incentive schemes, an individual based incentive scheme and a competitive scheme, on increasing the choice and consumption of fruit and vegetables at lunchtime. The individual scheme has a weak positive effect whereas all pupils respond to positively to the competitive scheme. For our sample of interest, the competitive scheme increases choice of fruit and vegetables by 33% and consumption of fruit and vegetables by 48%, twice and three times as much as the individual incentive scheme, respectively. The positive effects generally carry over to the week immediately following the treatment but we find little evidence of any effects six months later. Our results show that incentives can work, at least temporarily, to increase healthy eating but there are large differences in effectiveness between schemes and across demographics such as age and gender.


ABSTRACT Broad-host-range IncP-1 plasmids generally encode two replication initiation proteins, TrfA1 and TrfA2. TrfA2 is produced from an internal translational start site within trfA1. While TrfA1 was previously shown to be essential for replication in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, its role in other bacteria within its broad host range has not been established. To address the role of TrfA1 and TrfA2 in other hosts, efficiency of transformation, plasmid copy number (PCN), and plasmid stability were first compared between a mini-IncP-1β plasmid and its trfA1 frameshift variant in four phylogenetically distant hosts: Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas putida, Sphingobium japonicum, and Cupriavidus necator. TrfA2 was sufficient for replication in these hosts, but the presence of TrfA1 enhanced transformation efficiency and PCN. However, TrfA1 did not contribute to, and even negatively affected, long-term plasmid persistence. When trfA genes were cloned under a constitutive promoter in the chromosomes of the four hosts, strains expressing either both TrfA1 and TrfA2 or TrfA1 alone, again, generally elicited a higher PCN of an IncP1-β replicon than strains expressing TrfA2 alone. When a single species of TrfA was produced at different concentrations in E. coli cells, TrfA1 maintained a 3- to 4-fold higher PCN than TrfA2 at the same TrfA concentrations, indicating that replication mediated by TrfA1 is more efficient than that by TrfA2. These results suggest that the broad-host-range properties of IncP-1 plasmids are essentially conferred by TrfA2 and the intact replication origin alone but that TrfA1 is nonetheless important to efficiently establish plasmid replication upon transfer into a broad range of hosts.


Background: Hemodynamic balance in the heart-brain axis is increasingly recognized as a crucial factor in maintaining functional and structural integrity of the brain and thereby cognitive functioning. Patients with heart failure (HF), carotid occlusive disease (COD), and vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) present themselves with complaints attributed to specific parts of the heart-brain axis, but hemodynamic changes often go beyond the part of the axis for which they primarily seek medical advice. The Heart-Brain Study hypothesizes that the hemodynamic status of the heart and the brain is an important but underestimated cause of VCI. We investigate this by studying to what extent hemodynamic changes contribute to VCI and what the mechanisms involved are. Here, we provide an overview of the design and protocol. Methods: The Heart-Brain Study is a multicenter cohort study with a follow-up measurement after 2 years among 645 participants (175 VCI, 175 COD, 175 HF, and 120 controls). Enrollment criteria are the following: 1 of the 3 diseases diagnosed according to current guidelines, age ≥50 years, no magnetic resonance contraindications, ability to undergo cognitive testing, and independence in daily life. A core clinical dataset is collected including sociodemographic factors, cardiovascular risk factors, detailed neurologic, cardiac, and medical history, medication, and a physical examination. In addition, we perform standardized neuropsychological testing, cardiac, vascular and brain MRI, and blood sampling. In subsets of participants we assess Alzheimer biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid, and assess echocardiography and 24-hour blood pressure monitoring. Follow-up measurements after 2 years include neuropsychological testing, brain MRI, and blood samples for all participants. We use centralized state-of-the-art storage platforms for clinical and imaging data. Imaging data are processed centrally with automated standardized pipelines. Results and Conclusions: The Heart-Brain Study investigates relationships between (cardio-)vascular factors, the hemodynamic status of the heart and the brain, and cognitive impairment. By studying the complete heart-brain axis in patient groups that represent components of this axis, we have the opportunity to assess a combination of clinical and subclinical manifestations of disorders of the heart, vascular system and brain, with hemodynamic status as a possible binding factor.


Objectives: This study aims to describe the profile and predictors of health related quality-of-life (HRQoL) in a hypertensive population of Pakistan.
 Materials and Methods: A questionnaire based, cross-sectional study was conducted among 385 hypertensive patients visiting two public hospitals in the city of Quetta, Pakistan. Demographic and disease related data was obtained from patients and their hospital records. Euroqol quality-of-life questionnaire was used to measure HRQoL while drug attitude inventory and hypertension fact questionnaire were used to measure medication adherence and HTN related knowledge respectively. Scale scores were compared with Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis test. Standard multiple regression analysis was used to identify predictors of HRQoL.
 Results: Patients in the current study reported poor HRQoL with a mean score of 0.46 ± 0.28. In terms of practical implementation, age (e =0.298, P P = 0.025) and knowledge score (s =0.351, P = 0.024) reached level of significance in the multivariate analysis. The multiple regression analysis also found that variables such as gender, occupation, income, locality, duration of disease and medication adherence were not significantly associated with HRQoL.
 Conclusion: The results of the present study provide an evidence for a model that correlates with patients' socio-demographic information and HRQoL. The findings after implication in clinical practice can prove useful in guiding patients receiving treatment for HTN. It will also help the physicians to maintain and adjust treatment behaviors with drug or non-drug related interventions.


Background: Fat is stored in adipose tissue. In obesity, differentiation of preadipocytes to new adipocytes (fat cells) is required for energy storage. Otherwise fat accumulation in non-adipocytes contributes to fatty liver and diabetes. Our goal was to assess subject characteristics associated with poor in-vitro differentiation capacity of preadipocytes from omental (OM) and abdominal subcutaneous (SC) fat. Approach: A convenience sample of, 4 males and 20 females, age 39±2 (range 20–56) years, BMI 42 ± 2 (23–63) kg/m (i.e. from lean to obese), 7 Caucasian, 8 Hispanic, 1 other and 8 African Americans) undergoing elective surgery was studied. Fat samples collected during surgery were used for histology and preadipocyte isolation. Fat cell diameters and their distribution (normal or bimodal) were analyzed from histology. Preadipocyte differentiation capacity was measured in vitro. Results: In the OM depot, no effect of ethnicity, sex or HbA1c was found. Unexpectedly, subjects with preadipocytes with poor differentiation capacity tended to be younger (poor differentiation group 36 ± 2 years versus high 43 ± 3 years, p=0.09) and to have lower fasting glucose (poor 97 ± 3.65 mg/dl versus high 111 ± 7.08 mg/dl, p=0.06). In SC, no differences were noted. Fat cell size was not associated with differentiation capacity in either depot. Bimodal distribution, which may show formation of new


Five populations of the rough winkle Littorina saxatilis (Olivi) with different levels of trematode infection were investigated in the White Sea, NW Russia: 2 control populations N1 and N2 (ca 5'K) infection), 1 moderately infected population M (ca 10 to 15% infection) and 2 heavily infected populations H1 and H2 (50 to 80% infection). Trematode prevalence was the lowest in snails collected from macrophytes, intermediate on gravel and highest on stone surfaces at all collection sites. The distribution of infection in different age groups of snails was random in the control populations, but prevalence increased with age in moderately and heavily infected populations. Demographic structure was variable. The following parameters were typical for all populations regardless of infection level: (1) total sex ratios were close to 1:l or biased slightly towards females; (2) the relative abundance of males decreased with the age of snails; (3) no sex-specific ditterences in infection prevalence were found in any population, and (4 ) females became mature at 3 to 4 yr However, the following demographic parameters showed significant differences that were correlated with trematode ~nfection: (1) fewer juveniles were found in populations H1 and H2, probably a result of reduced recruitment due to severe infection; and (2) fecundity of uninfected females increased with the increase in trematode infection at the collection sites and was the lowest in populations N1 and N2, intermediate in population M and the highest in population HI. These results suggest an adaptation that ensures periwinkle survival under conditions of heavy infection pressure. K E Y WORDSLittorina saxatilis . Trernatoda . Demography


The article focuses on case marking of the arguments of deverbal nouns (action and agent nouns) in Lithuanian, with particular attention paid to argument alternation. As nominalizations derived from verbs taking nominative, accusative and genitive have already been studied, I mainly analyse nominalizations from verbs taking dative, instrumental and locative NPs, as well as PPs. Action nouns in Lithuanian retain more verbal features than agent nouns. Though action nouns tend to retain their oblique arguments, the choice of the argument with action nouns can depend on productivity, word order, semantic role and the animacy of the argument, while the alternation with agent nouns can depend on the form of the NP/PP and on the frequency of the word.


The ground plan in order to disentangle the hard problem of modelling the
motion of a bicycle is to start from a very simple model and to outline the
proper mathematical scheme: for this reason the first step we perform lies in a
planar rigid body (simulating the bicylcle frame) pivoting on a horizontal
segment whose extremities, subjected to nonslip conditions, oversimplify the
wheels. Even in this former case, which is the topic of lots of papers in
literature, we find it worthwhile to pay close attention to the formulation of
the mathematical model and to focus on writing the proper equations of motion
and on the possible existence of conserved quantities. In addition to the first
case, being essentially an inverted pendulum on a skate, we discuss a second
model, where rude handlebars are added and two rigid bodies are joined. The
geometrical method of Appell is used to formulate the dynamics and to deal with
the nonholonomic constraints in a correct way. At the same time the equations
are explained in the context of the cardinal equations, whose use is habitual
for this kind of problems. The paper aims to a threefold purpose: to formulate
the mathematical scheme in the most suitable way (by means of the
pseudovelocities), to achieve results about stability, to examine the
legitimacy of certain assumptions and the compatibility of some conserved
quantities claimed in part of the literature.


ALCOHOL USE AND RELIGIOSITY AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS Deena King Department of Sociology Master of Science Alcohol use among college students is often in the news. Some scholars argue, with literature to support it, that problem drinking in college is just a media-driven myth (Lederman et al. 2004). Yet it is clear that college students do drink, some to excess. Various reasons are cited from alcohol availability to the "freedom" associated with this stage of life. However, very few researchers have attempted to determine whether religiosity affects alcohol use among college students. The purpose of this study was to further examine the combined issues of religiosity and alcohol use among college students. Is excessive use of alcohol during this time of life simply an adult transition issue, as Jackson et al. (2005) contend, or is there more to it? Research seems to point to the fact that religiosity plays a role. The primary hypothesis tested was that students who valued religious activities as part of their college experience would use alcohol less, including binge drinking, than those who did not. The second hypothesis tested was that students who valued parties and Greek life would use alcohol and binge more than students who did not. The data set used was constructed by the Harvard School of Public Health and included data from 120 four-year colleges and universities from throughout the United States. The analysis supported the hypothesis that religiosity was a factor in reduced alcohol use by college students. College students who valued religious activities drank less than those who did not. The study also supported the hypothesis that students who valued parties and Greek life drank more. The heaviest drinkers were those who valued parties. These results are highly significant given the size of the sample. No other study that looked at religiosity and alcohol use among college students used a sample this large. These results help us to better understand the negative association between religiosity and alcohol use among college students as well as the positive association between parties and alcohol use. They especially help us to formulate strategies that might be considered to alleviate problem drinking during this stage of life.


The Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series presents early findings and case studies from a wide range of fundamental and applied work across the broad range of fields that comprise Experimental Mechanics. Series volumes follow the principle tracks or focus topics featured in each of the Society's two annual conferences: IMAC, A Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics, and the Society's Annual Conference & Exposition and will address critical areas of interest to researchers and design engineers working in all areas of Structural Dynamics, Solid Mechanics and Materials Research.


Switchgrass is a promising lignocellulosic biomass for fuel-ethanol production. However, pretreatment of lignocellulosic materials is necessary to improve its susceptibility to enzymatic hydrolysis. The objectives of this study were to examine the feasibility of microwave pretreatment to enhance enzymatic hydrolysis of switchgrass and to determine the optimal pretreatment conditions. Switchgrass samples immersed in water, dilute sulfuric acid and dilute sodium hydroxide solutions were exposed to microwave radiation at varying levels of radiation power and residence time. Pretreated solids were enzymatically hydrolyzed and reducing sugars in the hydrolysate were analyzed. Microwave radiation of switchgrass at lower power levels resulted in more efficient enzymatic hydrolysis. The application of microwave radiation for 10 minutes at 250 watts to switchgrass immersed in 3% sodium hydroxide solution (w/v) produced the highest yields of reducing sugar. Results were comparable to conventional 60 minute sodium hydroxide pretreatment of switchgrass. The findings suggest that combined microwave-alkali is a promising pretreatment method to enhance enzymatic hydrolysis of switchgrass.


Many specific DNA-binding proteins bind to sites with dyad symmetry, and the bound form of the protein is a dimer. For some proteins, dimers form in solution and bind to DNA. LexA repressor of Escherichia coli has been used to test an alternative binding model in which two monomers bind sequentially. This model predicts that a repressor monomer should bind with high specificity to an isolated operator half-site. Monomer binding to a half-site was observed. A second monomer bound to an intact operator far more tightly than the first monomer; this cooperativity arose from protein-protein contacts.


In 2016, the United Nations (UN) launched the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework for sustainable development and a sustainable future. However, the global challenge has been to engage, connect, and empower communities, particularly young people, to both understand and deliver the 17 SDGs. In this study, we show the benefit of a strategic planning-based experiential learning tool, the Young Persons' Plan for the Planet (YPPP) Program, to improve the underlying competencies of Australian and Mauritian adolescents in increasing understanding and delivering the SDGs. The study was conducted with 300 middle to senior high school students, in 25 schools throughout Australia and Mauritius, over an 18-month period. The intervention included the development of research, strategic planning, management, STEM (Science Technology, Engineering, Maths) and global competency skills in the students, to enable them to build and deliver regional and national SDG plans. Research methods included pre- and post-intervention testing of the attitudes of these students to sustainable development outcomes and compared these attitudes to subsets of scientists and the Australian national population. Our results, from both qualitative and quantitative evidence, demonstrate significant improvements in these adolescents' appreciation of, and attitudes towards, the SDGs and sustainable outcomes, across a range of key parameters. The results from the 76 students who attended the International Conference in Mauritius in December 2018 demonstrate significant improvements in mean levels of understanding, and attitudes of the students towards the SDGs awareness (+85%), understanding/engagement (+75%), motivation (+57%), and action orientation/empowerment (+66%). These changes were tested across a range of socio-demographic, geographic, and cultural parameters, with consistent results. These findings have significant implications for the challenge of sustainable education and achieving community engagement and action towards the SDGs in Australia and Mauritius, particularly for young people. As the intervention can be replicated and scaled, the findings also highlight the opportunity to extend both the research and this type of experiential learning intervention across both broader geographies and other generation and community segments.


An important question for our time concerns whether the Constitution could establish a right to engage in certain marijuana-related activities. Several states have now legalized cannabis, within strict limits, for recreational purposes, and that number will grow. Yet, some states will not promptly legalize but, instead, continue to criminalize, or only "decriminalize" in minor ways, and the federal criminalization statutes also will likely survive for a time. There currently is no recognized right under the Constitution to possess, use, cultivate or distribute cannabis for recreational purposes, even in small amounts, and traditional, single-clause arguments for such a right are weak. Neither the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, the Fourth Amendment, the Due Process Clause nor the Equal Protection Clause can justify such a protection, and that would remain true even when most states have legalized. But, could another theory justify this constitutional right?
A second important and topical legal question concerns when two or more rights-based clauses in the Constitution can combine to invalidate government action that none of the clauses could disallow on their own. The Supreme Court generally has declined to recognize multiple-clause rights. But, in the past, it occasionally seemed to endorse the approach. And, recently, in Obergefell v Hodges, 135 S.Ct. 2584 (2015), it gave new impetus to the idea by declaring the existence of a "synergy" between the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses that it asserted had helped explain its acknowledgment of certain rights previously and that purportedly helped lead, in the case at hand, to its acknowledgment of a right to same-sex marriage. In consequence, enthusiasm has again intensified over the notion that rights-based clause aggregation can expand constitutional protections. But, is clause aggregation only rhetoric offered to justify something the Court would have done anyway under a single clause or can it sometimes really matter? And, if so, when?
This Article puts both problems in play by asking this question: After a super-majority of states legalize, could multiple clauses together reveal a constitutional right to engage in certain recreational, marijuana activities? The Article answers with cautious affirmance: Clause aggregation could help justify such a constitutional right, in tightly limited circumstances. But, the Article also notes that many of the contours remain undeveloped in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on rights-based clause aggregation, complicating any effort to predict whether and how the Justices would apply it in the future to recreational marijuana.


In 2012 the Knesset approved a new sentencing law. Israel thus became the latest jurisdiction to introduce statutory directions for courts to follow in sentencing. The approach of the United States to structuring judicial discretion often entails the use of a sentencing grid with presumptive sentencing ranges. In contrast, the Sentencing Act of Israel reflects a less prescriptive method: it provides guidance by words rather than numbers. Retributivism is clearly identified as the penal philosophy underpinning the new law, which takes a novel approach to promoting more proportionate sentencing. Courts are directed to construct an individualised proportionate sentencing range appropriate to the case in hand. Once this is established, the court then follows additional directions regarding factors and principles related to sentencing. Although other jurisdictions have placed the purposes and principles of sentencing on a statutory footing, this is the first such legislative declaration in Israel. The statute also contains a methodology to implement a proportional approach to sentencing as well as detailed guidance on sentencing factors. This article describes and explores the new Sentencing Act, making limited comparisons to sentencing reforms in other jurisdictions – principally England and Wales, New Zealand and the United States. In concluding, we speculate on the likely consequences of the law: will it achieve the goals of promoting more consistent and principled sentencing?


According to a very dramatic account of Chartres during the French Revolution, the town's Gothic cathedral barely escaped destruction in November 1793 after the local Popular Society lobbied in favor of a proposal to tear it down. An in-depth examination casts some doubt on the veracity of this tale. Some of the sources that may have supported this story have since been destroyed, while the records of the municipal, district, and departmental governments make no mention of any such proposal. Furthermore, the actions of the local government on behalf of the cathedral throughout the Revolution reveal the officials' dedication to preserving its structural stability and sacred character. They could hardly have contemplated destroying a building that they had so painstakingly tried to maintain.


Several timbers and crop by-products were subjected to an enzymatic treatment to obtain a xylo-oligosaccharides-enriched preparation. The process was performed by means of the commercial endo-β-1,4-xylanase Buzyme 2511®. The enzymatic cocktail was applied onto the raw ground materials with yield up to 5.3 ± 1.0 g/L xylo-oligosaccharides for apple pomace. In order to make the materials more accessible to enzymatic hydrolysis, they were subjected to thermal-alkaline treatment. The biocatalysis process over the thermo-alkaline treated materials yielded xylo-oligosaccharide solutions with the following concentrations (g/l): 1.3 white poplar (Populus alba), 2.9 giant cane (Arundo donax), 3.7 apple pomace (Malus domestica), and 6.5 stalk of grapes (Vitis vinifera). The preparation resulting from biotransformation of grape stalk contained mostly xylo-oligosaccharides (96% w/v) with a small amount of xylose (3% w/v). The same ratio was obtained when pure xylan from birchwood was used as feedstock.


The challenging job market for recent law school graduates has highlighted a fact well known to those familiar with legal education: A significant gap exists between what students learn in law school and what they need to be practice-ready lawyers. Legal employers historically assumed the task of providing real-world training, but they have become much less willing to do so. At the same time, a large numbers of Americans – and not just those living at or below the poverty line – are simply unable to afford lawyers. In this Article, we argue that post-graduate legal training, similar to post-graduate medical training, is a good way to address these market failures and reduce the gap in both skills and legal services.We consider a number of questions regarding how best to structure post-graduate legal training programs, including whether law schools should take the lead in developing them, and, if so, whether to locate such programs within law schools. We then turn to the important tax issues such programs raise. Programs operated within law schools should generally not affect those schools' tax-exempt status. Tax exemption for stand-alone programs is more complicated, but we conclude that properly structured programs should be granted tax-exempt status, both as a policy matter and under current IRS guidance. We offer suggestions about how best to design programs to come within that guidance and call on the IRS to issue clear guidance for these kinds of programs.


Dr. B. DIXON (London W.C.2) writes: . . . The explanation for the nitroglycerine trade (Dr. S. V. Steinberg, 3 May, p. 278) is, surely, the vicious circle of anxiety, pain, and relief which often drives angina sufferers to become preoccupied with their daily requirements for tablets. Despite assurances from their medical practitioners about the safety of trinitrin, they become obsessively conscious of the relationslhip between their consu.mption of itrinitrin and 'the severity of their condition. Like the alcoholic, if they cannot deceive themselves about their intake, they can a,t least try to fool the doctor.


This article examines mental illness among adult, juvenile, male, female, jail, and prison inmates. It also explores the way in which mental health diagnoses impact offending and violent behavior. A review of literature pertaining to differences between the genders and age of offenders suggests that psychiatric disorders are more common among criminal offenders than the population at large. Furthermore, it appears that many mentally ill offenders do not receive sufficient treatment during their incarcerations and that barriers inherent to incarceration prevent adequate treatment of mental illnesses.


This dissertation is the reflection of the research study into urban planning structures of historic industrial complexes. The study's aim has been to promote recognition and acknowledgement of these structures as the carriers of cultural-historical values in spatial transformation.

Apart from object value, industrial heritage also has ensemble value. Being "the field of study into the material culture remains of industrial production and technology", the field of Industrial Archeology offers the opportunity to gain further knowledge of the nature and background of industrial spatial planning. Given the current focus on cultural- historical values in spatial planning and the fact that the strategy of 'conservation through development' has found widespread recognition and application, this dissertation has set out to arrive at concrete definitions and instrumentation of reuse and transformation in urban planning. The study is based on existing sources of knowledge which allowed two spheres of human involvement and endeavour to be connected. The first is building archeological research that has been put into operating guidelines and has developed into a considerable volume of knowledge and experience which has shaped the practice of planning as well as the teaching of design. This field of knowledge represents the cultural- historical component of the study. In addition there is the domain of spatial planning discipline. The knowledge acquired in this area has been brought together in a series of four publications under the heading "The Fundamentals of Urbanism in the Perspective of the Twenty-First Century". This, too, incorporates a considerable volume of knowledge and experience, which has been been laid down in publications classified on the basis of a planning-level approach to distinguish aspects of design, theory, law and programming. This planning-level approach allows for a structured and differentiated way to tackle industrial urbanization at the level of its composing parts.

One case study lies at the heart of this dissertation's research. It's that of the former industrial estate of Philips Strijp-S at Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In selecting this location aspects of size and range have been taken into consideration. A decisive factor in its selection, no doubt, has been the amount of attention generated by and for the transformation itself. Prominent administrative and professional parties have gone through a process of research and planning that has been extensively documented. As a result, a fair account of the facts could be made. In it the administrative and societal contexts are closely connected with both research and design of the transformation. Urbanization archeological research is conducted under two denominators: research and value assessment. In order to reach a cultural-historical valuation, this study includes reference research into the city of Zlín, the cradle of Thomas Bat'a's shoe industry in the former Czechoslovakia, for three reasons. There are major similarities between Philips and Bat'a in momentum, industrial ambition and innovative fundamental attitude first at the personal level of the entrepreneurs, secondly at the company level of industrialised production, and thirdly at the level of spatial and societal conditions.

Philips started as a light-bulb factory located at Emmasingel, now part of the city centre of Eindhoven. When the company expanded with the addition of its own glass factory, it marked the beginning of the Strijp-S industrial estate. The Strijp-S study continues to concentrate on the most important period in terms of urbanization history, from the start of construction at the site in 1916 up to the fifties. At that point the company's expansion involved the outplacement of essential company parts. The year 1951 marks the completion of the Strijp-S era, because it was then when the company's spatial situation was documented by means of an 'enriched' map of the factory's industrial estate.

The 'bottom-up' approach of the Guidelines for Building Archeological Research (2009) has been adopted for the research study into the history of Strijp-S construction and use. The origin and expansion of the spatial planning structure of the Strijp-S estate have been shown in connection with the development of the company itself. The innovative fundamental attitude that led to the diversification of production (from light bulbs to a broad range of electrical appliances) in the first half of the twentieth century turned out to have been the breeding ground for an equally innovative architectural and urban-planning establishment of spatial and societal conditions in the interest of the company and the city of Eindhoven as a whole. Narrowly tracing the growth stages of the estate has brought into focus the elementary parts of the kind of spatial and programmatic structure which in the course of time have developed into typological constructs. Knowledge of Zlín and Bat'a helped to identify the factors that contributed to the success of the Philips company organization as inspired by American examples, such as Daylight Factories, Integrated Industry and Company Town. Thomas Bat'a built nearly a hundred daylight factories in and around Zlín, a city with a population of 40,000. Here the Integrated Industry did not only involve the production of shoes but also the 'production' of the entire city, in recent literature praised as a model company town. There was a substantial connection with Philips as appeared from the decision in the twenties to locate the Dutch branch of Bat'a in the town of Best, not far from Philips. In addition, an architectural-historical connection came to light between Zlín and Tony Garnier's plan for a 'Cité Industrielle', which he had already developed in 1904, but was not published until 1917 under the title Une Cité Industrielle in reference to Lyon. Garnier's spatial concept was virtually copied for Zlín. Although there is no irrefutable proof, a connection between Strijp-S and Garnier's work is not unlikely in view of the personal connection between Anton Philips and Thomas Bat'a.

On the basis of existing knowledge of the Zlín reference case a value assessment has been made for Strijp-S. As an extension of the editorial part, a values map has been designed to serve as an instrument for the urban spatial developer. Much was to be gained from a cartographer's point of view since existing maps are wide of the mark. Maps that seemed to fit into the framework of the archeological urban approach turned out to be focused on the object too much, to be of varying levels of abstraction and to be unsuitable as blueprints for development.

Elementary parts of the spatial and programmatic development of the urbanization of Strijp-S could be identified and inserted into the plannning-level structure of "The Fundamentals of Urbanism". As a result a classification of concepts in the interest of cartografical representation was possible. The urbanization archeological values map that has been produced in this way has all the hallmarks that are needed for it to serve as a blueprint for the development process: topographical precision, abstract representation of spatial structures and distinguishing features according to cultural- historical values.

The transformation history of Strijp-S is characterized by a process in which urban- planning research has not always been connected to development in the proper chronological order. In a review of that process and the development plans that have been made for Strijp-S in recent years by means of the set of instruments developed, it has been found that there is much left to be desired about those plans in terms of the cultural-historical values of the industrial spatial planning of the estate.


We present a catalog of 9017 X-ray sources identified in Chandra observations of a 2°× 0.°8 field around the Galactic center. This enlarges the number of known X-ray sources in the region by a factor of 2.5. The catalog incorporates all of the ACIS-I observations as of 2007 August, which total 2.25 Ms of exposure. At the distance to the Galactic center (8 kpc), we are sensitive to sources with luminosities of 4 × 1032 erg s−1 (0.5–8.0 keV; 90% confidence) over an area of 1 deg2, and up to an order of magnitude more sensitive in the deepest exposure (1.0 Ms) around Sgr A*. The positions of 60% of our sources are accurate to <1 ″ (95% confidence), and 20% have positions accurate to <0.″5. We search for variable sources, and find that 3% exhibit flux variations within an observation, and 10% exhibit variations from observation-to-observation. We also find one source, CXOUGC J174622.7 − 285218, with a periodic 1745 s signal (1.4% chance probability), which is probably a magnetically accreting cataclysmic variable. We compare the spatial distribution of X-ray sources to a model for the stellar distribution, and find 2.8σ evidence for excesses in the numbers of X-ray sources in the region of recent star formation encompassed by the Arches, Quintuplet, and Galactic center star clusters. These excess sources are also seen in the luminosity distribution of the X-ray sources, which is flatter near the Arches and Quintuplet than elsewhere in the field. These excess point sources, along with a similar longitudinal asymmetry in the distribution of diffuse iron emission that has been reported by other authors, probably have their origin in the young stars that are prominent at l ≈ 0.°1.


Abstract In recent years, literacy problematics and different concepts (Cooperative Learning, Learning Styles) have taken up much of the school's literature teaching. It has pushed discussions of the professional content into the background. This article takes up the content discussion for renewed debate, but now also with the aim of discussing the literary texts one can present to children in school. The research questions posed are: Which texts can justifiably be presented to children as part of teaching in school? What will happen if 10 to 12-year-old Danish school pupils are presented with classical and canonized texts by authors like Kafka, Proust and Dostoyevsky? How will they react? How will they read the texts? The point of departure for the article is an observational and interview study of a Danish 6th grade's reading and analysis of classical and canonized adult literature. The study takes its starting point in three concepts rooted in theory, i.e. unpredictability, defamiliarization and entitlement, which are subsequently used to get to grips with the empirical part of the study. The article does not attempt to depict a hard-and-fast picture of all children being equally enthusiastic about the new texts. Instead it presents a picture of a class in which lively literary conversations are conducted. And irrespective of whether the child is one of those who enjoys the texts, whether the children are irritated, challenged or provoked by them, they are never experienced as trivial or irrelevant.


This thesis reports the results of both normative and empirical investigations into human conditional reasoning, i. e. reasoning using if... then and related constructions. Previous empirical investigations have concentrated on experimental paradigms like Wason's Selection Task, where subjects must assess evidence relevant to the truth or falsity of a conditional rule. Popperian falsification provided the normative theory by which to assess errorful behaviour on these tasks. However, it is doubtful whether this is an appropriate normative theory from which to derive a competence model of human reasoning abilities. The relationship between normative theory and competence model need not be direct, no more than the relationship between competence model and performance needs to be. However, research in this area has imported a theory directly into individual psychology from the philosophy of science. On the apparently orthodox assumption of directness, continued adherence to this import may stand in need of re-assessment in the light of the quite radical descriptive inadequacy of falsification as a model of rational scientific inquiry. However, this model also possesses the virtue of relating the interpretation of the rule directly to the normative task strategy. Hence, this thesis has two aims: first, to retain the virtue of a direct relation between normative task strategy and interpretation while simultaneously offering a competence model which is consistent with more recent and descriptively adequate accounts of the process of scientific inquiry. In Part I, this will involve introducing a semantic theory (situation semantics) and showing that the process of inquiry implicit in this semantic theory is consistent with recent normative conceptions in the philosophy of science. The second aim is to show that the competence model derived in Part I can provide a sound rational basis for subjects' observed patterns of reasoning in conditional reasoning tasks. In Part II, chapter 5, the data obtained from the Wason Selection Task using only affirmative rules is discussed and the behaviour observed rationally reconstructed in terms of the competence model of Part I. A central concept of that model is partial interpretation (motivated by concerns of context sensitivity). 'Prima facie evidence for partial interpretation is provided by the observation of defective truth tables. However, in conditional reasoning experiments using negated constituents, this evidence has been interpreted differently. A subsidiary aim of Part II (which will constitute the largest section of this thesis) therefore concerns the empirical demonstration of the consistency of this data with the competence model.


Recently, Chertkov and Chernyak (2006b) derived an exact expression for the partition sum (normalization constant) corresponding to a graphical model, which is an expansion around the belief propagation (BP) solution. By adding correction terms to the BP free energy, one for each "generalized loop" in the factor graph, the exact partition sum is obtained. However, the usually enormous number of generalized loops generally prohibits summation over all correction terms. In this article we introduce truncated loop series BP (TLSBP), a particular way of truncating the loop series of Chertkov & Chernyak by considering generalized loops as compositions of simple loops. We analyze the performance of TLSBP in different scenarios, including the Ising model on square grids and regular random graphs, and on PROMEDAS, a large probabilistic medical diagnostic system. We show that TLSBP often improves upon the accuracy of the BP solution, at the expense of increased computation time. We also show that the performance of TLSBP strongly depends on the degree of interaction between the variables. For weak interactions, truncating the series leads to significant improvements, whereas for strong interactions it can be ineffective, even if a high number of terms is considered.


Background : Haemostatic is a physiologic process. Blood clotting is one of it's mechanism. As we know, routine exercises had related to heart attack risk decrease, while heavy and long exercises were connected to heart attack related-sudden death infarct. On the other side, exercise had known to be afflicted to coagulation and fibrinolysis. It was supposed involved through increase of Factor VIII, dehydrations which changed blood biochemical compositions, and activation of Factor VII antigen (FVII-Ag)
Objective : Generally, the aim of this study is to compare the effect of light exercise times on blood clotting time by comparing whole blood clotting time after two different times on normal male human subjects
Method : This was a quasi-experimental study with Pre-Posttest design. Subjects were male student 18-25 years old. Samples were taken by purposive random sampling from population of medical students. Subjects were asked to exercising with ergocycle ; loaded with 1,5 N ; for 6 minutes in day 1st and 12 minutes in the next day. Clotting times were measured with duke method. Later, distributions and normalities were tested with K-S test. Means comparation were tested with paired t-test ; using SPSS 15.0 for Windows software.
Result : Exercise times are affecting the coagulations cascade. There was shown by a reduction in whole blood clotting time averages after 6 minutes exercise compared with 12 minutes exercise. The result of paired t-test showed that there were significant differences (p<0.05)

Keyword : Coagulation, exercise, Whole blood clotting time, ergocycle


We have found that when a virtual room expands around an observer as they walk, observers fail to notice any change despite veridical binocular and motion parallax cues (VSS 2003). This leads to gross errors in size constancy, particularly at far viewing distances. Here, we investigate whether this pattern of results imply a distorted representation of viewing distance in the expanding room. Wearing a head mounted display in an immersive virtual reality system, subjects carried out the following forced-choice tasks in both an expanding and a static room. Each task was carried out with the subject on the left of the room (when the expanding room was small) and on the right (when it was 4 times larger). Subjects (i) compared the size of an object visible on the left side of the room with one visible on the right; (ii) judged the depth of a triangular prism relative to its half-width; and (iii) judged the distance of a rod as greater or less than half (or twice) the distance to a comparison rod. Only task (i) required the observer to compare two objects viewed when the room was a different size. Estimates of viewing distance derived from the size comparison task were close to veridical in a static room but in the expanding room were consistent with either a compression or an expansion of visual space depending on whether the comparison object was shown when the room was small or large. For the depth-to-width judgement, subjects' biases were consistent with a compression of visual space in both static and expanding rooms. For the half- and double-distance task, judgements were close to veridical in both the static and expanding rooms. Conclusion: Performance in these tasks does not rely on a single internal 3D representation (e.g. Gogel, W.C., 1990). Instead, task-specific strategies are used.


The EU funded project RobLog recently developed a system able to autonomously unload coffee sacks from a standard container. Being the first of its kind, a further development is needed in order for the system to be competitive against manual labor. Financing this development entails a risk, hence a justified skepticism, which can be overcome by the longsighted view of the existing market potential. This paper presents a method to estimate the market potential of autonomous unloading systems for heavy deformable goods. Starting from the analysis of the coffee trade, first the current coffee traffic is investigated in order to calculate the number of autonomous systems needed to handle the imported sacks; Results are validated and the method is extended for the calculation of the potential of other market segments, where the same unloading technology can be applied.


Article one of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights ("P1-1") states that every person is entitled to peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. The role of property interests in allowing political participation had been highlighted during the Second World War, where the Third Reich had weakened political opponents through arbitrary deprivation of possessions. The drafters of the Convention sough to prevent a repeat of this political abuse. However, the political element of property is often secondary to its economic role, in which intervention by the state is necessary and sometimes desirable to allow a national economy to function. How can this inherent conflict in the right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions be resolved?

This thesis aims to demonstrate the development of the role of the property right in Europe and the United Kingdom through a critical analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the domestic courts of the United Kingdom. The central thesis of this research is that, although a framework has been determined within which P1-1 decisions can be taken, there is considerable work to be done in strengthening the parameters of that framework in order to create a protection that, whilst sufficiently flexible to deal with changes in law and society, offers a clearly defined and meaningful safeguard against unnecessary intervention by the state in every context.

The conclusion is that a clear decision-making process has been articulated through the European jurisprudence and subsequently adopted with qualified success in the United Kingdom. This process allows for the P1-1 implications of current and foreseeable events to be explored with some degree of certainty. However, the margin of appreciation afforded to states by the judiciary at certain steps of the process, particularly as regards the purported aim of state intervention and the necessity of avoiding payment of compensation in certain situations, compromises the strength of the protection as a whole.


The concept of 'necessity' is used in many legal systems to delimit permissible measures from prohibited measures where such measures negatively affect the regime's primary values, such as human rights, liberalized trade, and unimpeded use of an investment. International investment tribunals have adopted a variety of approaches to the question of whether a host state measure is 'necessary' to achieve its objective in relation to a number of provisions of investment treaties, including non-precluded measures clauses and fair and equitable treatment. Yet their approaches to this form of analysis are inconsistent and generally not analytically robust. By comparison, WTO tribunals have developed relatively sophisticated methods for analyzing a measure's necessity to achieve its objective in the context of general exceptions, sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical regulations. The WTO approach generally takes into account a number of factors including the importance of a measure's objective, a measure's effectiveness at achieving that objective, and the availability of alternative measures. Importantly, WTO tribunals generally undertake this analysis with a degree of deference, in recognition of states' right to set their own policy priorities. Investment tribunals could usefully employ aspects of the WTO approach to necessity in the context of both non-precluded measures and the positive obligations of fair and equitable treatment, non-discrimination and non-expropriation. Such an approach would go some way toward the development of a consistent, coherent body of cases in relation to the concept of necessity in international investment law, providing greater certainty for both host states and investors.