In this short paper, we take a first step towards empirically assessing Internet-wide malicious activities generated from and targeted towards Internet-scale business sectors (i.e., financial, health, education, etc.) and critical infrastructure (i.e., utilities, manufacturing, government, etc.). Facilitated by an innovative and a collaborative large-scale effort, we have conducted discussions with numerous Internet entities to obtain rare and private information related to allocated IP blocks pertaining to the aforementioned sectors and critical infrastructure. To this end, we employ such information to attribute Internet-scale maliciousness to such sectors and realms, in an attempt to provide an in-depth analysis of the global cyber situational posture. We draw upon close to 16.8 TB of darknet data to infer probing activities (typically generated by malicious/infected hosts) and DDoS backscatter, from which we distill IP addresses of victims. By executing week-long measurements, we observed an alarming number of more than 11,000 probing machines and 300 DDoS attack victims hosted by critical sectors. We also generate rare insights related to the maliciousness of various business sectors, including financial, which typically do not report their hosted and targeted illicit activities for reputation-preservation purposes. While we treat the obtained results with strict confidence due to obvious sensitivity reasons, we postulate that such generated cyber threat intelligence could be shared with sector/critical infrastructure operators, backbone networks and Internet service providers to contribute to the overall threat remediation objective.


The value of tension is often underestimated. While it may be the case that tension causes destruction and harm, it is equally likely that it can open up new avenues for creation, adaption, and change. Tension can be used as a conceptual tool for thinking about the moments when bodies collide with time and space, and each makes its presence known. It is in tension that we see moments of opportunity arise. Body Tensions explores these moments through the use of cross-chapter dialogue between inter-disciplinary and internationally located authors. Focusing on expressing and transgressing body tensions, the authors consider issues such as how humans embody time and space; where the limits of corporeality lie; and in what ways humans are able to re-imagine their bodies, environments, and cultures.


This new book introduces innovative research on democracy from the leading Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP).
It outlines the achievements of the project to date, illustrates how its findings may be applied, lays out the future challenges it faces and examines how the field as a whole can advance. It also presents a special assessment of the dimensionality of party competition, presenting ways in which research can be extended and related to broader approaches in Political Science and Theory.
Although CMP research is widely used and constitutes the major comparative data set on party positions and ideological location, it is also subject to challenge. The volume therefore provides the reader with a clear sense of the key debates and questions surrounding its work.
This volume also honors the life-time achievement of Professor Ian Budge, who has provided distinguished intellectual leadership for the CMP over the last twenty-five years.
This is an essential point of reference for all comparative research on the functioning of democracies. This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of politics and of democracy in particular.


Prior to the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, domestic FX derivatives markets in Chile had gained depth and liquidity, boosted by the growing hedging needs of private pension funds. During the crisis, Chile suffered significantly less stress than other EMEs, within Latin America and outside. We present evidence suggesting that this was related to the liquidity and resilience of its FX derivatives markets.


JOHN THELWALL CAME TO PUBLIC PROMINENCE IN THE 1790S AS AN ORATOR and political theorist at the center of the British reform movement. His writings on political philosophy and the public lectures he gave as a member of the London Corresponding Society have contributed greatly to our understanding of how the languages of romantic aesthetics and radical politics intersected and of how the cult of sensibility was appropriated and redeployed in the formation of a proletarian public sphere. This phase of Thelwall's career has been discussed elsewhere and is now seen as central to the history of radical political and literary culture in Britain.(1) By the end of the eighteenth century, however, Thelwall was confronted with a climate of official harassment and hindered by legislation that effectively outlawed radical association as treasonous. Disillusioned, he moved away from political life, publishing, in 1801, a collection of poems accompanied by a prefatory memoir that announced his renunciation of radicalism. In 1797 he also spent time with Coleridge and Wordsworth at Nether Stowey, and certainly this brush with what was to become the core of British romanticism is evident in his renunciation of political life and his brief embrace of the pastoral.(2) But Thelwall's move away from politics was by no means the end of his involvement in public life, although, with the exception of a brief renewal of interest in radicalism that ended with the failure of his journal The Champion, his career as an activist was effectively over. While Thelwall's writing from the 1790s is now attracting critical interest, his writings subsequent to 1800 have attracted almost no interest at all, partly because they don't sustain our view of Thelwall as the romantic orator victimized by an oppressive state apparatus. Thelwall's career after 1800 is no less interesting, and no less culturally symptomatic, for that. By 1803 he was again before the public, not as a politician, but as a self-styled teacher of elocution, traveling through Britain delivering lectures on the physiological aspects of pronunciation, on speech impediments, on the anatomy of the vocal organs and on the art of oration. By 1810 he had established an institution in London that claimed to treat speech impediments as well as teach oratory skills, composition and polite literature as part of a scheme to prepare students for what he called "the more liberal departments of active life."(3) His A Letter to Henry Cline, published the same year, is thought to be the first book concerned solely with speech impediments to be published in English,(4) and an important early text in the development of the field we now know as speech pathology. Elocution was a burgeoning field in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Britain. As Lynda Mugglestone has pointed out it was very directly related to the codification of class difference in styles of speech, such that "talking proper" became a sign of distinction with much broader social and political implications than it had previously had.(5) Crucial to this production of accent and enunciation as modes of social distinction was what Friedrich Kittler calls the "oralization" of the alphabet in European languages; that is, a new-found interest in the phonetic qualities of speech as a central component of language instruction and liberal education more generally.(6) For Kittler, this shift is integral to an understanding of German romanticism as a "discourse network," a system of discursive production and reception encompassing a range of material practices from the reading and writing of poetry to basic language instruction. This discourse, Kittler argues, thrives on a denial of its own discursivity: it is underwritten by the fantasy of a natural language, a primal orality or inner voice, that locates the origins of speech, and by extension, of the subject, not in material processes or discursive relations, but in a feminized version of nature. …


The objective of this study was to examine whether preoperative recommendation for specific reductions in body mass index (BMI) influenced weight loss in obese surgical patients. We retrospectively reviewed the electronic medical records of 48 patients who enrolled between January 2007 to June 2010 in an 800-calorie per day liquid meal replacement (LMR) weight loss program. Of these, 9 patients (surgical group) enrolled as a result of general surgeon-directed weight loss to enable nonbariatric surgery and 39 enrolled seeking weight loss (medical group). Patients enrolled in the LMR program before bariatric surgery were excluded from analysis. All patients were seen in the setting of a comprehensive weight loss program supervised by a medical bariatrician and followed for a period of 4 months. There were no significant differences in mean initial BMI between surgical and medical patients (41.7 ± 4.55 and 41.6 ± 8.54 kg/m2, respectively) or participation time in the weight loss program (120 days vs 133 days). Of the nine surgical patients, only five (56%) reached their weight goal and underwent the planned surgical procedure. Weight loss was significantly less in the surgical compared with medical patients (BMI reduction 4.03 ± 3.99 vs 7.75 ± 4.90 kg/m2, respectively; P < 0.05). Weight loss was significantly lower in patients directed to undergo BMI reduction to enable a general surgical procedure. Future studies are needed to assess factors influencing weight loss (metabolism, exercise capacity, motivation) in patients requiring weight loss to enable a surgical procedure.


Collective action by farmers including the development of cooperatives is regarded as one of solutions to overcome low productivity. This study investigates the impact of agricultural cooperative on technical efficiency (TE) and total factor productivity (TFP) of olive farms in the West Bank of Palestine. Using cross-section data of olive-growing farms in Jenin Governorate, we estimated a stochastic frontier production function with inefficiency components. TFP was also estimated by residual approach. We employed propensity score matching to reduce self-selection bias in becoming a member of the cooperative. Results suggest that cooperative membership has a positive impact on TE and TFP, as joining a cooperative raises the TE by 10.16 to 10.52 percentage points. We interpret access to credits, land and productive olive seedlings, and extension services provided by cooperatives are possible pathways that affect TE and TFP. Due to the existence of huge inefficiency and low land productivity of olive farms in Jenin, we imply participation in cooperatives is an effective strategy for them to catch up with productive farms in the Mediterranean region.


While crowdsourcing has been a cost and time efficient method to label massive samples, one critical issue is quality control, for which the key challenge is to infer the ground truth from noisy or even adversarial data by various users. A large class of crowdsourcing problems, such as those involving age, grade, level, or stage, have an ordinal structure in their labels. Based on a technique of sampling estimated label from the posterior distribution, we define a novel separating width among the labeled observations to characterize the quality of sampled labels, and develop an efficient algorithm to optimize it through solving multiple linear decision boundaries and adjusting prior distributions. Our algorithm is empirically evaluated on several real world datasets, and demonstrates its supremacy over state-ofthe-art methods.


Background— The endothelial nitric oxide synthase cofactor tetrahydrobiopterin (BH4) plays a pivotal role in maintaining endothelial function in experimental vascular disease models and in humans. Augmentation of endogenous BH4 levels by oral BH4 treatment has been proposed as a potential therapeutic strategy in vascular disease states. We sought to determine the mechanisms relating exogenous BH4 to human vascular function and to determine oral BH4 pharmacokinetics in both plasma and vascular tissue in patients with coronary artery disease. Methods and Results— Forty-nine patients with coronary artery disease were randomized to receive low-dose (400 mg/d) or high-dose (700 mg/d) BH4 or placebo for 2 to 6 weeks before coronary artery bypass surgery. Vascular function was quantified by magnetic resonance imaging before and after treatment, along with plasma BH4 levels. Vascular superoxide, endothelial function, and BH4 levels were determined in segments of saphenous vein and internal mammary artery. Oral BH4 treatment significantly augmented BH4 levels in plasma and in saphenous vein (but not internal mammary artery) but also increased levels of the oxidation product dihydrobiopterin (BH2), which lacks endothelial nitric oxide synthase cofactor activity. There was no effect of BH4 treatment on vascular function or superoxide production. Supplementation of human vessels and blood with BH4 ex vivo revealed rapid oxidation of BH4 to BH2 with predominant BH2 uptake by vascular tissue. Conclusions— Oral BH4 treatment augments total biopterin levels in patients with established coronary artery disease but has no net effect on vascular redox state or endothelial function owing to systemic and vascular oxidation of BH4. Alternative strategies are required to target BH4-dependent endothelial function in established vascular disease states. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00423280.


Yucca Flat is a topographic and structural basin in the northeastern part of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) in Nye County, Nevada. Between the years 1951 and 1992, 659 underground nuclear tests took place in Yucca Flat; most were conducted in large, vertical excavations that penetrated alluvium and the underlying Cenozoic volcanic rocks. Radioactive and other potential chemical contaminants at the NTS are the subject of a long-term program of investigation and remediation by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration, Nevada Site Office, under its Environmental Restoration Program. As part of the program, the DOE seeks to assess the extent of contamination and to evaluate the potential risks to humans and the environment from byproducts of weapons testing. To accomplish this objective, the DOE Environmental Restoration Program is constructing and calibrating a ground-water flow model to predict hydrologic flow in Yucca Flat as part of an effort to quantify the subsurface hydrology of the Nevada Test Site. A necessary part of calibrating and evaluating a model of the flow system is an understanding of the location and characteristics of faults that may influence ground-water flow. In addition, knowledge of fault-zone architecture and physical properties is amore » fundamental component of the containment of the contamination from underground nuclear tests, should such testing ever resume at the Nevada Test Site. The goal of the present investigation is to develop a detailed understanding of the geometry and physical properties of fault zones in Yucca Flat. This study was designed to investigate faults in greater detail and to characterize fault geometry, the presence of fault splays, and the fault-zone width. Integrated geological and geophysical studies have been designed and implemented to work toward this goal. This report describes the geophysical surveys conducted near two drill holes in Yucca Flat, the data analyses performed, and the integrated interpretations developed from the suite of geophysical methodologies utilized in this investigation. Data collection for this activity started in the spring of 2005 and continued into 2006. A suite of electrical geophysical surveys were run in combination with ground magnetic surveys; these surveys resulted in high-resolution subsurface data that portray subsurface fault geometry at the two sites and have identified structures not readily apparent from surface geologic mapping, potential field geophysical data, or surface effects fracture maps.« less


Endangered languages are those that are spoken by a very small percentage of the population and are at risk of disappearing with all the knowledge and diversity they contain. Endangered languages often become endangered because the speakers and the society perceive the language as low status or of little use, and a positive change in perception of the language could aid in revitalizing the language. Institutions such as governments, businesses, and universities have recently begun supporting endangered languages in several areas, and this support could greatly affect language ideologies, perceptions of and attitudes about the language. In this research project, I intend to explore the effects on how an endangered language is viewed by both speakers and non-speakers when it is supported by linguistically dominant institutions such as business and higher education. This research was conducted in various areas of Scotland and Ireland and consists of survey data, ethnographic interviews, and participant observation. Specifically, this research aims to answer the following research questions: 1. What is the relationship between institutional support and language ideologies? 2. How do different forms of institutional support affect language ideologies? Institutional support of endangered languages could provide these languages with validity and recognition as a language, as well as offer economic and status advantages to speakers, creating positive attitudes about speaking and learning the languages. This positive change in the way these languages are perceived could be a crucial step in revitalizing endangered languages and preserving the linguistic diversity of the world.


It is well-known that current Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) and high-end MultiProcessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) designs are growing in their number of components. Networks-on-Chip (NoC) provide the required connectivity for such CMP and MPSoC designs at reasonable costs. However, as technology advances, links become the critical component in the NoC. First, because the power consumption of the link is extremely high with respect the power consumption of the rest of components (mainly switches), becoming unacceptable for long global interconnects. Second, the delay of a link does not scale with technology, thus, degrading the performance of the network. To solve both problems, several solutions have been previously proposed. In this paper, we present a new switch architecture that reduces the negative impact of links on the NoC. We call our proposal distributed switch. The distributed switch moves the circuitry of a standard switch onto the links. Then, packets are buffered, routed, and forwarded at the same time they are crossing the link. Distributing a standard switch onto the link improves the trade off between the power consumption and the operating frequency of the entire network. In contrast, area requirements are increased. The distributed switch reduces up to 14.8% the peak power consumption while increases its area up to 22%. Furthermore, the distributed switch is able to increase the maximum achievable frequency with respect to the standard switch. In particular, the maximum operating frequency of the distributed switch can be increased up to 14.3%.


Certain entanglement (Renyi) entropies of the ground state of an extended system can increase even as one moves away from quantum states with long range correlations. In this work we demonstrate that such a phenomenon, known as non-local convertibility, is due to the edge state (de)construction occurring in the system. To this end, we employ the example of the ground state of the "2-SAT"/Ising model, displaying an order-disorder quantum phase transition. We consider both the thermal ground state, enjoying the same symmetry of the Hamiltonian, and the ferromagnetic ground state with a non vanishing local order parameter. Employing both analytical and numerical methods, we compute entanglement entropies for various system's bipartitions (A|B). We find that the ground states enjoying the Hamiltonian symmetries show non-local convertibility if either A or B are smaller than, or of the order of, the correlation length. A ferromagnetic ground state, instead, is always locally convertible. Our interpretation in terms of the edge states behavior explains all these results and could disclose a paradigm to study the local convertibility protocol in both topologically ordered and topologically trivial quantum phases, in a unified way and provides a clear characterization of which features a universal quantum simulator should possess to outperform a classical machine.


Background The mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1) plays a key role in pain perception, response to opioids and opioid addiction. Several gene polymorphisms on OPRM1 have been associated with higher opioid requirements, opioid addiction and/or less control of pain. Among them, 118AG and 17CT are the most studied, which are uncommon in Caucasian patients: 1.7% GG genotype for 118AG and 0.8% TT genotype for 17CT, according to HapMAP-CEU. Purpose To investigate the effect of OPRM1 genotype on fentanyl doses and the analgesic effect of oxycodone in a patient treated with opioids for oncologic pain. Materials and methods Case report. Clinical and pharmacological data were collected from hospital records. Pharmacological interactions were assessed using Medscape Reference database. Genotyping of 118AG/17CT in OPRM1 was performed by Polymerase Chain Reaction and Direct Sequencing. Results Male patient, 48 years old, diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma stage IV. Bone and soft tissue metastases in the shoulder joint were confirmed by Computerised Tomography (CT) and Positron Emission Tomography/CT (PET/CT). The patient was treated with increasing doses of transdermal fentanyl, from May to September 2013, until reaching 150 mcg/72 h. Additional oral fentanyl 1600 mcg/day was prescribed since September 2013. After this period, patient continued to be in severe pain in his right shoulder and hospitalisation was required for uncontrolled pain. The patient was treated with intravenous infusions of oxycodone, increasing the dose up to 600 mg/day. The pain remained uncontrolled throughout the treatment, and intravenous oxycodone 40 mg/4 h was additionally required on demand. No pharmacological interactions were identified for the drug administered. The patient was found to have the polymorphisms GG for 118AG and CC for 17CT OPRM1. Conclusions The patient was homozygous for 118G, which could explain the higher opioid dose requirements, since numerous studies have been associated this genotype with higher fentanyl consumption, compared to heterozygous or homozygous for 118A, and with a reduction of analgesic effect in opioid treatment with oxycodone. No conflict of interest.


Three-dimensional rotational angiography (3D-RA) is an established method within the field of interventional neuroradiology. The method has also a great potential in other areas with a complicated arterial anatomy. The purpose of this study was firstly to develop an investigative protocol for 3D-RA in renal transplanted patients with threatening allograft failure in diagnosing stenosis in the transplanted renal artery; secondly the protocol was evaluated and compared with a modified protocol including reduced contrast medium load. Furthermore, the advantages of the 3D reconstructions compared to the angiographic images were evaluated, likewise if an extended angle of rotation reduced the artifacts in the 3D reconstructions. The two protocols were compared with regard to image quality and acute nephrotoxicity. The accuracy of Doppler ultrasonography and the result of percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) were also assessed.3D-RA was consecutively performed in 57 renal transplanted patients with suspicion of renal artery stenosis. A significant stenosis was found in 49% of the patients. The 3D reconstructions profiled 43% of the transplant renal artery stenoses better than the angiographic images. An extended angle of rotation reduced the artifacts. There was no statistical difference regarding image quality between the two protocols, and the renal function was equally affected in both protocols. Doppler ultrasonography sensitivity was 100%; specificity was 48% and positive predictive value 67%. PTA had a technical success rate of 92% and a clinical success rate of 75% after 3 months.3D-RA is a helpful supplement in cases with complicated vascular anatomy, especially when PTA may be indicated. The 3D reconstructions profile the course of the artery more frequently than the angiographic images and support PTA. The 3D reconstructions are degraded of artifacts. Sampling artifacts can be diminished by increased C-arm rotation and increased number of projections. The distortions caused by beam hardening remain to be solved.


Objective. To review whether 2 weeks' follow-up is safe for women at 42 weeks with an uncertain gestational age (GA) and amniotic fluid index (AFI) of ≥10 cm, as well as reassuring cardiotocography (CTG). Methods. A retrospective descriptive study of women with an uncertain GA of 42 weeks was done at Tygerberg Hospital. The women had weekly CTG and AFI determinations. Induction of labour followed non-reassuring CTG or an AFI of <5. Results. A total of 135 women were studied. The time interval between first evaluation at uncertain 42 weeks and delivery ranged between 0 and 46 days (median 10 days). Of the women, 104 had normal vaginal deliveries and 31 (23.0%) caesarean sections. Eleven women (8.1%) with an AFI ≥10 had CS for fetal distress within 2 weeks of the visit at 42 weeks. No neonatal morbidity or mortality was noted. Conclusion. Weekly monitoring with CTG and AFI at 42 weeks with unsure GA is safe. A follow-up visit after 2 weeks cannot be recommended, as 8% of women required CS within less than 2 weeks because of fetal distress.


Researchers in the economics of development have been struggling for the past fifty years to find theoretical explanations for the economic backwardness characteristic of an important number of territories around the world. Several countries seem trapped in vicious circles whereby poverty self-sustains under-development. And while the channels linking low wealth to poor economic performances are multiple and highly complex, a recurrent feature of under-developed polities is their weak institutional setting. In the absence of strong and credible institutions, one needs to depart from the neoclassical paradigm to understand how some countries are entrapped in high poverty. An assumption that is both critical for the theoretical reasoning, and dear to economists, gets violated: property rights are not enforced. The consequences of lifting this hypothesis are dramatic since the traditional institution to operate economic transactions, the market, can no more be fully relied upon. Indeed, instead of being secured by a Leviathan or some other third party, transactions and property claims need to be backed by power. As a consequence, rather than integrally allocating scarce resources to production, agents need to divert some production factors to accumulating power. The aim of this thesis is to improve our understanding of the allocation of scarce resources under weak institutions. We distinguish two distinct ways to acquire power. Depending on the contexts, an agent can either produce such power himself, or else he may purchase the services of other agents serving his cause. The two first chapters of this manuscript are devoted to the latter situations where an agent (patron) offers a material good to another agent (client) in exchange for power, status, or support. In the last two chapters the purchase of power is ruled out by assumption, but the agents are allowed to devote resources in producing power. More precisely, the first chapter aims at a better understanding of the conditions under which unequal rank or power positions may get permanently established through asymmetric gift exchange when a gift brings pride to the donor and shame to the subordinated recipient. In this chapter only two players are assumed to interact, the patron and the client. The central result obtained is that an asymmetric gift exchange equilibrium can occur only if the importance attached to social shame by a recipient is smaller than that attached to social esteem by a donor. Moreover, an income transfer is more likely to be traded against social esteem, status, or power when the weight put on these attributes by the donor or patron is higher. In that chapter, co-written with Jean-Philippe Platteau, we also show that the recipient's productivity may take on a rather wide range of values in the domain of feasibility of asymmetric gift exchange, and that, contrary to a commonly prevailing view, it is even possible that his productivity would be identical to that of the donor. Finally, the conditions are spelt out under which the recipient's effort is more likely to be reduced upon entering into asymmetric gift exchange relationships. In the second chapter, I develop a setting where such power enables the patron to maintain his position and to extract rents. In that setting, instead of directly deriving utility from power and status, autocrats barter political and economic concessions for support to remain in power and extract rents. Contrary to the most of the existing literature, instead of viewing the favors' beneficiaries, i.e. the elites, as an exogenous entity, I allow the ruler to decide whom to coopt provided the subjects are heterogeneous in the potential support - their strength - they could bring to the regime. While the ruler can select the elites on the basis of their personal characteristics, an alternative strategy consists in introducing some uncertainty in the cooptation process. The latter strategy allows the ruler to reduce the clients' cooptation price since in the event of a revolution the likelihood of being included in the future elites is lower. I show that weak rulers are more likely to coopt the society's strongest individuals, while powerful ones diversify the composition of their clientele. Moreover, when agents value more future discounted outcomes, and when power is more dispersed across subjects, the ruler is more likely to randomly coopt subjects. In the third chapter, co-authored with Giacomo De Luca, patron-client relationships are assumed away. Agents enter in contests for scarce resources by producing power rather than acquiring it through the purchase of support and subordination. Landless subjects intent to obtain land by violent means, while landlords invest resources in defending their property. Our task is to track the effect of land inequality on conflict intensity. A fundamental distinction with the existing literature lies in the nature of inequality under consideration. We investigate how land inequality extit{across landlords only} influences the intensity of the fight against a rebel group constituted by landless individuals. We show that conflict intensity is non-monotonic in land inequality. In particular, the most severe conflicts occur for intermediate land inequality levels. Moreover, a Pareto improving transfer of land from the smaller to the larger landlord may exist. The last chapter is perhaps the most abstract piece of the present thesis, making it the most general part of the manuscript as well. In that paper we explore, together with Giacomo De Luca, the existence of deterrence equilibria in a general equilibrium model of guns (power) and butter (goods) production. If fighting entails sufficiently low destruction, war is the unique equilibrium of the game. If, however, conflict generates sufficiently large damages, only mixed strategy equilibria survive, in which players randomize over their deterrence and war strategies. War, therefore, always occurs with positive probability for any positive investment in weapons.


In June of 1990, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a 63-year-old retired pathologist, was charged with first-degree murder after he helped an Oregon woman with Alzheimer's disease commit suicide in June 1990. The charge was dismissed in December 1990. (Michigan has no law against suicide.) In October of 1991, Marjorie Wantz used a suicide machine devised by Kevorkian to take her own life. Kevorkian also assisted Sherry Miller in an act of suicide by pulling a mask over her face so she would inhale carbon monoxide from a tank. Miller's veins were too delicate for a needle involved in Kevorkian's suicide machine. The police found both bodies in a cabin 40 miles north of Detroit. Miller was incapacitated by multiple sclerosis and Wantz suffered from a painful pelvic condition. Neither condition was life threatening.


Crack formation in concrete engineering structures can produce both strength and stiffness reduction as well as an increase of permeability of concrete and a danger of corrosion of reinforcement. A laboratory method of crack system diagnostics is presented. The developed method for automated crack identification and quantification was set at a meso-level of observation by means of the image analysis system. A procedure of sample preparation for crack detection was elaborated, the quantitative parameters to characterize crack mesostructure were defined, the algorithms for the automated crack identification taking into account morphological operations and shape of objects were developed. The algorithms for determination of degree of crack orientation and distribution of crack width were developed as well. The applicability of the crack analysis method was verified on concrete specimens subjected to freeze/thaw cycles and sustained compressive loading.


IMPORTANCE
Immediate postreduction imaging is a standard practice in the management of mandibular fractures at many hospitals. However, the literature suggests that postreduction imaging in maxillofacial fractures fails to influence clinical decision making significantly.

OBJECTIVES
To determine the cost-effectiveness of different clinical decision pathways regarding postreduction imaging as it relates to the experience of the surgeon, and to demonstrate that baseline postreduction imaging has utility based on the complication rate of the surgeon.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS
We developed a decision tree model using commercially available software. The model accounted for cost of imaging modalities, adequacy of reduction, complication rate, cost of initial operating room time, and, if applicable, operative charges for revision surgery in the event of a complication. A review of the University of Virginia clinical data repository of 100 patients with recent mandible fractures was used to estimate the cost associated with running an operating suite for mandibular fracture repair. The University of Virginia billing system also provided costs associated with a single computed tomogram, panoramic radiography, and intraoperative 3-dimensional computed tomography. A sensitivity analysis determined how variation in complication rate affects the cost of the decision pathways.

INTERVENTION
Intraoperative imaging, postreduction imaging, or no imaging.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Sensitivity of the decision tree model to variation in complication rate.

RESULTS
Using current hospital charges, the model is sensitive to variability in the complication rate with a breakpoint of 17.7%. It is most cost-effective to obtain a post-reduction panorex if the surgeon's complication rate is above 17.7% and most cost-effective not to obtain any postreduction imaging if the complication rate is below 17.7%. Intraoperative computed tomography is not cost-effective at any complication rate. Two-way sensitivity analysis allowed the model to be generalizable to varied institutional costs and surgical complication rates.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
The utility of postreduction imaging from the standpoint of cost analysis depends on the complication rate of the facial traumatologist and institutional charge data. Based on this model, the facial traumatologist at our institution should obtain postreduction panorex imaging for patients with mandible fractures until their complication rate drops below 17.7%. The 2-way sensitivity analysis in this study allows the facial traumatologist to apply his or her complication rate and institutional cost data to determine whether routine postreduction imaging is necessary.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
NA.


Tumors often induce specific CTL responses, but these are usually ineffective at eliminating the growing tumor. The T cell growth factor IL-2 has potential for expanding and prolonging CTL responses, and there is considerable interest in using this cytokine in combination with other immunotherapeutic agents that target T cell responses. Using adoptive transfer of OT-I CD8 T cells specific for OVA257–264 peptide, and E.G7 tumor cells transfected with OVA, we have examined the effects of IL-2 on the generation and maintenance of a CTL response to the tumor. Administration of IL-2 during the initial phase of the response, clonal expansion, and development of effector function, had no effect on the number of CTL generated or the control of tumor growth. In contrast, a short 2-day time course of low-dose IL-2 at the peak of clonal expansion or at later times resulted in prolonged and expanded responses by the OT-I CTL, with concomitant decrease in tumor load and extension of survival. However, when IL-2 administration was more prolonged, as is often the case in clinical trials, the therapeutic benefit was lost due to elimination of the tumor-specific CTL, at least in part through induction of apoptosis. These results demonstrate that use of IL-2 for tumor immunotherapy is very much a double-edged sword and strongly suggest that more limited time and dose regimens may substantially improve its clinical efficacy when it is used in conjunction with approaches that target CTL responses.


Background The venom of Loxosceles reclusa (Brown Recluse spider) can cause a severe, life-threatening hemolysis in humans for which no therapy is currently available in the USA beyond supportive measures. Because this hemolysis is uncommon, relatively little is known about its clinical manifestation, diagnosis, or management. Here, we aimed to clarify the clinical details of envenomation, to determine the efficacy of the complement inhibitor eculizumab to prevent the hemolysis in vitro, and to investigate markers of exposure to Brown Recluse venom. Study Design and Methods We performed a 10-year chart review of cases of Brown Recluse spider bite-mediated hemolysis at our institution. We also designed an in vitro assay to test the efficacy of eculizumab to inhibit hemolysis of venom exposed red blood cells. Finally, we compared levels of CD55, CD59 and glycophorin A on venom exposed versus venom-naïve cells. Results Most victims of severe Brown Recluse spider mediated hemolysis at our institution are children and follow an unpredictable clinical course. Brown Recluse spider bite mediated hemolysis is reduced by 79.2% (SD=18.8%) by eculizumab in vitro. Erythrocyte glycophorin A, but not CD55 or CD59, is reduced after red blood cells are incubated with venom in vitro. Conclusion Taken together, our laboratory data and clinical observations indicate that L . reclusa venom exposure results in non-specific antibody and complement fixation on red blood cells, resulting in complement mediated hemolysis that is curtailed by the complement inhibitor eculizumab in vitro. Glycophorin A measurement by flow cytometry may help to identify victims of L . reclusa envenomation.


The Furniture of the World: Essays in Ontology and Metaphysics Guillermo Hurtado and Oscar Nudler (eds.) Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2012, 335 pp. ISBN 978-90-420-3503-4Aubenque maintains that Plato tries to resolve the paradox of the existence of a false discourse by recourse to the theory of the reciprocal participation of the kinds of being. Being is the most overarching notion that cannot be subsumed under a more universal concept. The ti, minimal determination, cannot be thought of as such without being thought of as a being determination or a determination of being. The doctrine of Aristotle is characterized by the affirmation of a non-exclusive complementariness among the different meanings of "to be." Hurtado offers a map of the paths of ontology, distinguishing five branches of this network of ontological paths: pure ontology, higher ontology, transcendental ontology, categorial ontology, and regional ontology. Smith remarks that, for Quine, the theories of the natural sciences are our best sources of knowledge as to what the world is like. Each natural science has its own preferred repertoire of types of objects to the existence of which it is committed. The language of first-order logic is the medium of canonical representation (this is the only clear form of language). Quine believes in a world beyond language and beliefs. Only the bound variables of a theory carry its definitive commitment to existence. The best we can achieve in ontology lies in the quantified statements of particular theories. Herrera Ibanez emphasizes that, for Castaneda, at every moment of our "dealings" with the individual we deal with guises (aspects). The guises functions as superimposed layers (each guise is an individual). Rodriguez Larreta offers an empiricist and reductionist ontological theory ("Leibnizian"), purporting to reduce space and time to "internal" relations among particulars, positing an immaterialist monism, and adopting a bundle theory of particulars. Robles notes that, as More puts it, our quite large but finite universe is surrounded by an enormous spiritual extension which penetrates everything. Space is an enormous extension identifiable with God's immensity (Barrow holds that space is an enormous possibility).Benitez observes that the ontology required by Newton is grounded on the principle of simplicity and on the necessity-contingency relation. Newton reserves the name "substantive" solely for God. Space and time are not accidents or attributes of a substance. Spirits and God possess extension. Space and time are indissolubly tied to the existence of the entities. Clarke argues that the necessity for being to exist of itself is a de re necessity which determines an exceptional existence. God's necessity cannot be deduced from His existence. Descartes establishes that the real qualities are mere abstractions, truly hidden qualities. Rodriguez-Pereyra stresses that a significant class of true propositions are made true by entities. Truthmakers of propositions like that ? is F are facts whose all and only constituents are resembling particulars. If a proposition is made true by something, it is made true by some thing. Truthbearers are propositions. A truthmaker is an entity in virtue of which a certain proposition is true. The truthmaker principle says that necessarily the members of an important class of synthetic true propositions have truthmakers. The idea that truth is grounded commits us to the idea that truths are made true by entities. Junqueira Smith posits that the ontological question is associated with the one regarding the "nature of truth." In ontological questions the contemporary skeptic is a kind of deflationist (the contemporary skeptic accepts the existence of many types of entities or objects and the occurrence of facts or events). The skeptic rejects that such entities, objects, facts and events have essences. The skeptic rejects the philosophical or scientific explanations of entities. …


INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Ureteral strictures represent one of the most serious reconstructive challenges for urologists. In this video we present three cases of ureteral strictures, managed with a combination of endoscopic and robot-assisted approach. The first two cases were iatrogenic strictures due to previous ureteral endoscopic surgery performed for stone disease, while the last one was an acquired stricture in a patient with endometriosis, after a gynecological procedure METHODS: The first two patients had nephrostomy tube before surgery, while the third patient has double J ureteral stent to avoid obstructive urophaty. The preoperative work-up was performed with a computed tomography scan, renal scintigraphy and diagnostic ureteroscopy with retrograde pyelography to confirm the position and the length of the stricture. In these cases a combined endoscopic and robot-assisted approach was used. The patients were positioned in the standard flank position. Four robotic trocars were placed in line along the pararectal line. One additional 12 mm assistance trocar and Air Seal trocar were placed. After mobilisation of colon the urether was identified and isolated. The stricture was located in the lower and distal part of the lumbar urether, in the first and second case respectively and in the right pelvic urether in third case. The flexible uretheroscope was backloaded and the distal end of the stricture was easily identified by a transillumination technique. To identify the proximal end of the stricture, Indocianine Green was administrated to the patient. The stricture appeared as a devascularized portion of the ureter and was precisely marked and sectioned with monopolar scissors. A flexibile ureteroscopy was also perfomed up to exclude presence of further strictures. Distal and proximal ureteral ends were spatulated and a termino-terminal tension-free anastomosis was perfomed using two 4-0 Vycril running sutures. Antegrade ureteral stenting was performed before the anastomosis was completed in the first two cases. In the third case a decision was made to perform a uretero-vesical reimplantation with psoas hitch, due to the position and length of the stricture. In this case a double J stent was placed and a Lich-Gregoir anastomosis was performed with double running suture with 4-0 Vicryl RESULTS: Mean operative time and console time were 186 (SD 11) minutes and 156 (SD 20) minutes, respectively. Mean hospitalization time was 4 days. Uretheral stent was removed after a mean of 4 weeks after surgery. No perioperative complications were reported. 3 month after surgery the CT scan showed a regression of the hydronephrosis and good functional results at renal scintigrapy in all cases CONCLUSIONS: The management of ureteral strictures is challenging. This technique is safe and feasible for short strictures up to 2 cm and assure good early functional results Source of Funding: none


Adjustments to flow width, depth, and velocity in response to changes in discharge are commonly characterized by using downstream hydraulic geometry relationships. The spatial limits of these relationships within a drainage basin have not been systematically quantified. Where the erosional resistance of the channel substrate is sufficiently large, hydraulic driving forces presumably will be unable to adjust channel form. Data sets from 10 mountain rivers in the United States, Panama, Nepal, and New Zealand are used in this study to explore the limits of downstream hydraulic geometry relationships. Where the ratio of stream power to sediment size (Ω/ D 84) exceeds 10,000 kg/s3, downstream hydraulic geometry is well developed; where the ratio falls below 10,000 kg/s3, downstream hydraulic geometry relationships are poorly developed. These limitations on downstream hydraulic geometry have important implications for channel engineering and simulations of landscape change.


The biospeckle (BSL) is based on the incidence of laser light upon active biological materials, followed by analysis and manipulation of secondary images, and then, application to those images of a second-order statistics technique called the inertial moment (IM) that results in information about the activity of the specimen. This technique was previously used to analyze sperm motility. A bull's fertility could be evaluated by several semen parameters in vitro and more precisely by conception rates of AI heifers. The objective of this work was to evaluate the fertility of bull's frozen semen showing different levels of activity in an AI program. Semen of 6 mature IA donor bulls (Bos taurus indicus) was previously divided in 2 groups (group I: motility ≥50%; group II: motility <50%), each group comprising 3 animals. Sperm concentration was 30 to 35 × 106 cells per straw. Semen was thawed at 37°C for 30 s in a water bath. Samples were illuminated by nonpolarized He-Ne laser (632 nm, 10 mW) for 40 s, the time needed to take 512 images under a time rate of 0.08 s. Images were acquired by a CCD camera and analyses were conducted by building space-time speckle matrices from center columns of 512 images of the dynamic speckle and then the IM was calculated. Beef heifers (n = 109) under the same nutrition and management conditions underwent AI with the semen samples. All inseminations were done by the same technician and donor bulls were used consecutively throughout the breeding season. Pregnancy diagnosis was done by ultrasound images (Falco 100, 6 MHz, Pie Medical, Crawley, UK) 28 days after insemination. The SISVAR software was used for variance analysis and comparison of means by Tukey test at a nominal level of 5%. The IM (194.13 ± 31.99) obtained from 10 illuminations per sample of each bull and the conception rate (CR) of group I (CR = 0.63 ± 0.49) differed (P < 0.05) compared with group II (IM = 142.03 ± 30.62; CR = 0.43 ± 0.50). Pearson correlation coefficient (P < 0.05) between IM and CR was r = 0.21, showing coherence with IM and CR, despite its low value. These data showed that second-order statistics are correlated to semen fertility and could be used to evaluate ejaculates of the bull. Financial support: FAPEMIG grant EDT 94/07 and CNPq.


Dramatists and the Bomb: American and British Playwrights Confront the Nuclear Age, 1945-1964. By Charles A. Carpenter. Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press. 1999. xv +183 pp. 47.95 [pounds sterling]. Mirrors of Our Playing: Paradigms and Presences in Modern Drama. By Thomas R. Whitaker. (Theater: Theory/Text/Performance) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1999. viii + 309 pp. $49.50; 36 [pounds sterling]. These two books, both of which spring from intensely personal concerns, take very different approaches to the nature of drama and its function within twentieth-century culture. For Charles A. Carpenter, who charts in a confessional prologue the delayed onset of `nuclear terror' in his own life, Dramatists and the Bomb is the culmination of a twenty-year-long hunt for plays `relevant' to his seminar on `the literature of the Nuclear Age' (pp. xii-xiii). A methodology that moves `between the realities of nuclear events, the perceptions of them in the public mind [...], and the ways they are projected in dramatic works' takes in memoirs, letters, and interviews as well as plays, and results in a book that is `two-thirds dramatic criticism but one-third investigative journalism' (p. xiii). Unable to process the eighty-odd plays he had uncovered world-wide by 1995, he confines himself to the activities of American and British dramatists between the devastation of Hiroshima and the signing of the partial test ban treaty in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis. With a rueful acknowledgement that no `neglected masterpiece' came to light to rival the contemporary work of Frisch and Durrenmatt or the later Anglo-American contributions of Arthur Kopit and Edward Bond, he sets out rather doggedly to review some twenty-five plays that reflected the responses of American and British playwrights to `various aspects' of the nuclear threat. He begins by tracking down the `first dramatic harbinger of the Atomic Age' (p. 26), an English `extravaganza' entitled Wings Over Europe (1928) which owed its inspiration to H. G. Wells. The bulk of what follows is devoted to recording the pronouncements and ruminations on either side of the Atlantic by the likes of Anderson, Miller, Shaw, and Coward and to commentary on the trawl of plays, mostly by less-known playwrights. The Offshore Island, written by Marghanita Laski in 1954, is `by far the most interesting and impressive English-language drama of the first phase of the Nuclear Age' (p. 61) and four short plays written by David Campton between 1957 and 1961 make him `a significant figure in the context of this book' (p. 115). The volume closes with a look at two American plays about the `private fallout shelter dilemma' and a gleaning of allusions to `a post-holocaust shelter situation' (p. 136) from the text of Beckett's Endgame. Carpenter's study has some value as a slice of social history, but its admittedly journalistic affiliation works against any more serious critical pretensions, as play after play is tagged according to reach-me-down generic categories: a `half-poetic allegory' (p. 47); a `moving piece of tragic naturalism' (p. 61); a `compelling little theatrical fantasy' (p. 78); a `semi-realistic, emblematic "fable"' (p. 89); a `semi-expressionist parable' (p. …


Revised Edition. New York: Holmes and Meier, 2001. 485 pp. $24.95. How does one look at the history of the Jewish experience in small settlements far removed from the "traditional" mainstreams of Jewish life in Europe, the Middle East, or the eastern seaboard of North America? Is this history to be written from the perspective of the Jewish community itself, from the remote society of which it was a part, or from the perspective of the remote society's relationship with a larger metropolis? These are not questions for which an easy answer may be found, but in this book Suzanne D. Rutland has made an excellent attempt at doing so. Quite simply, Rutland's work shows why the Jews are in Australia, what their relationship has been with other Australians over time, and how their own community has developed and been organized in the years since 1788. Overall, it has been a story more of acceptance than of toleration, of achievements rather than failures. Jewish life in remote countries such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or even Canada has often been subjected to strains and stresses the like of which are not so apparent in, say, Europe or the United States. The most obvious major questions facing Jewish communities such as these would be (a) how does one confront antisemitism when (or if) it occurs? (b) how may one best live a Jewish life in a society where the necessary infrastructure is at best poor, and at worst non-existent? and finally, (c) what is the best way of relating to the majority non-Jewish population so as to avoid (a) and enhance (b)? Australia would appear to have found a happy medium in addressing these vital questions, but it was never entirely certain that this would be the case. The Jewish historical experience in Australia is one of enormous success over all kinds of adverse situations, but, together with this, there has been a continuing theme of "just making it" whenever the community has seemed in danger of drowning in the Anglo-Celtic sea of immigrants that dominated Australian life throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Rutland capably chronicles the ways in which the various Australian Jewish communities have saved themselves, and how in so doing they have adapted to the ever-increasing challenges taking place in the world around them. Edge of the Diaspora is a most comprehensive survey of a colonial merchant and trading people whose settlement experience is as old as that of the majority population. The first Jews in Australia came (as convicts) with the First Fleet of convicts and guards who arrived when the initial settlement of what was to become Sydney took place on 26 January 1788, and Rutland's study chronicles the slow growth and early triumphs of colonial Jewry, first in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania), then in all the colonies. Along the way she demonstrates how and from where the community drew its early strengths. She shows quite clearly how the Jewish community for most of the nineteenth century was prepared to integrate with the majority surrounding it, but would not assimilate in such a way as to "sell itself out" to wider gentile society. Her study also shows how the successors to this community, by the end of the nineteenth century, were prepared to go to nearly any lengths to achieve the opposite, so keen was their desire not to stand out of the majority and to indentify themselves with the goals of Anglo-Australia. The ebbs and flows of Australian Jewish history are all here: the lively early years of random Jewish settlement; the formation of organized communities in the middle of the nineteenth century, which remained faithful to the tradition of the Fathers and clung resolutely to a specific Jewish identity; the assimilationist spirit which replaced it later in the century; the nadir of Jewish communal identity and activity in the first quarter of the twentieth century; the Jewish and Australian response to refugees from Nazism; and the attitude of Australian Jews to Jewish developments in the wider world, especially Zionism. …


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Breaking Free of Chevron's Constraints: Zuni Public School District 89, et al. v. U.S. Department of Education analyzes the Supreme Court's latest review of an administrative interpretation under Chevron review, and concludes that the doctrine's exclusive focus on deciding "who gets to decide" led to a complete failure by the Court to consider the consequences of the agency interpretation at issue. Such a failure rendered the Court unprepared to accurately determine whether the agency interpretation was "permissible" under the second prong of Chevron review. As a solution, the article advocates for the replacement of Chevron's second prong with the more consequence-oriented arbitrary and capricious review. Although such a replacement limits agency discretion, it serves Chevron's underlying goal of ensuring that agency actions reflect Congressional intent. In light of the Court's recent administrative law decisions clarifying the parameters of Chevron review, the Zuni case offers an opportunity to consider the outer limits of the review doctrine and its accompanying deference. The article uses a case that highlights the intersection between administrative law and public education to further the debate about those parameters, and to present a situation in which decreased agency deference is particularly appropriate. Finally, the article draws attention not only to the necessity of a more rigorous review when the provision of adequate public education is at stake, but to the broader implications of a review schema that is overly deferential to agency action


The importance of the adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and the associated cost savings cannot be ignored as an element in the changing delivery of health care. However, the potential cost savings predicted in the use of EHR are accompanied by potential risks, either technical or legal, to privacy and security. The U.S. legal framework for healthcare privacy is a combination of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory law at the federal and state levels. In contrast, it is generally believed that EU protection of privacy, including personally identifiable medical information, is more comprehensive than that of U.S. privacy laws. Direct comparisons of U.S. and EU medical privacy laws can be made with reference to the five Fair Information Practices Principles (FIPs) adopted by the Federal Trade Commission and other international bodies. The analysis reveals that while the federal response to the privacy of health records in the U.S. seems to be a gain over conflicting state law, in contrast to EU law, U.S. patients currently have little choice in the electronic recording of sensitive medical information if they want to be treated, and minimal control over the sharing of that information. A combination of technical and legal improvements in EHRs could make the loss of privacy associated with EHRs de minimis. The EU has come closer to this position, encouraging the adoption of EHRs and confirming the application of privacy protections at the same time. It can be argued that the EU is proactive in its approach; whereas because of a different viewpoint toward an individual's right to privacy, the U.S. system lacks a strong framework for healthcare


Background: Satureja mutica (Lamiaceae) is an herbaceous plant which grows in NorthWest of Iran. Oleanolic acid has been previously isolated from some Lamiaceae genus and showed a broad range of biological activities. Besides Silphium spp., Panax quinquefolium root and Calendula officinalis flower as the interesting source of oleanolic acid used in the herbal industry, here we report the isolation and quantitative evaluation of oleanolic acid, as one of the major constituents in S. mutica. Methods: Dried aerial parts of S. mutica were successively extracted with diethyl ether. This extract was used for further isolation on silica gel column chromatography to obtain compound 1. Isolated compound was identified based on the spectral data of HNMR, CNMR and Mass spectroscopy. Densitometric analysis of the developed plate of TLC was carried out to quantify the oleanolic acid using TLC scanner. Results: Isolated compound (1) was structural elucidated as oleanolic acid and its NMR data showed good agreement with the reference data mentioned in literature. Spectrodensitometric analysis showed that the band characterized by absorption maximum of oleanolic acid was placed at λmax = 270 nm without derivatization. The contents of oleanolic acid are calculated 17.5 mg in 100 g of S. mutica leaves based on dry weight. Conclusions: Oleanolic acid is a ubiquitous triterpenoid in plant kingdom, medicinal herbs, and is integral part of the human diet. Densitometric analysis is the accurate, selective, and precise method which can be used for routine quality control analysis and quantitative determination of oleanolic acid in Lamiaceae plants specially Satureja species, as one of the industrial source of this compound.


The heating, acceleration, and pitch-angle scattering of charged particles by magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence are important in a wide range of astrophysical environments, including the solar wind, accreting black holes, and galaxy clusters. We simulate the interaction of high-gyrofrequency test particles with fully dynamical simulations of subsonic MHD turbulence, focusing on the parameter regime with β ∼ 1, where β is the ratio of gas to magnetic pressure. We use the simulation results to calibrate analytical expressions for test particle velocity-space diffusion coefficients and provide simple fits that can be used in other work. The test particle velocity diffusion in our simulations is due to a combination of two processes: interactions between particles and magnetic compressions in the turbulence (as in linear transit-time damping; TTD) and what we refer to as Fermi Type-B (FTB) interactions, in which charged particles moving on field lines may be thought of as beads sliding along moving wires. We show that test particle heating rates are consistent with a TTD resonance that is broadened according to a decorrelation prescription that is Gaussian in time (but inconsistent with Lorentzian broadening due to an exponential decorrelation function, a prescription widely used in the literature). TTD dominates the heating for vs ≫ vA (e.g., electrons), where vs is the thermal speed of species s and vA is the Alfvén speed, while FTB dominates for vs ≪ vA (e.g., minor ions). Proton heating rates for β ∼ 1 are comparable to the turbulent cascade rate. Finally, we show that velocity diffusion of collisionless, large gyrofrequency particles due to large-scale MHD turbulence does not produce a power-law distribution function.


Objectives. To evaluate the injury presentation data for all teams taking part in 10 warm-up matches and 46 matches during the 2003 Cricket World Cup played in South Africa, in order to provide organisers with the basis of a sound medical-care plan for future tournaments of a similar nature.
Methods. The data collected included the role of the injured person, the nature of the injury, whether the treatment was for an injury or an illness, whether the injury was acute, chronic or acute-on-chronic, and the prognosis (rest, play, unfit to play, sent home, follow-up treatment required). The medical personnel in charge of the medical support documented patient information which included the total number of patient presentations and the category of illness/injury.
Results. Ninety patient presentations (1.6 patient presentations per match) were recorded. The most common patient presentations were by the batsmen (50%), followed by the bowlers (29%) and all-rounders (17%). Of the patient presentations, 53% were classified as injuries, while the remaining 47% were classified as illnesses. The patient presentations occurred in the early stages of the competition. The most common presentations were of an acute nature (63%). The main injury pathology categories were trigger point injuries (10%), and bruises / abrasions (10%), while infection (29%) was the main illness pathology.
Conclusions. The 2003 Cricket World Cup proved to be an ideal opportunity to collect data on international cricketers participating in an intensive 6-week international competition; the epidemiological data collected should assist national cricket bodies and organisers of future Cricket World Cup competitions to predict participant-related injury rates. South African Journal of Sports Medicine Vol. 18 (4) 2006: pp. 129-134


Although the escalating criminalization of immigration law has been examined at length, the social control dimension of this phenomenon has gone relatively understudied. This Article attempts to remedy this deficiency by tracing the relationship between criminal punishment and immigration law, demonstrating that the War on Terror has further blurred these distinctions and exposing the social control function that pervades immigration law enforcement after September 11th prioritized counterterrorism. In doing so, the author draws upon the work of Daniel Kanstroom, Michael Welch, Jonathan Simon and Malcolm Feeley.


Participatory research is increasingly recognized as being useful for conducting multiple activities in research for development projects. The co-learning environment created in participatory research helps to identify existing social and technological gaps, and develop possible solutions to improve the livelihoods of rural communities. This report describes a participatory approach used in the establishment and implementation of hydrometeorological monitoring networks in the Blue Nile River Basin of Ethiopia. The networks were established with the involvement of rural communities and other stakeholders to gain insights into the hydrological processes of the watersheds, in order to improve rainwater management strategies. Local people were involved in the day-to-day management and maintenance of the networks. The participatory approach proved beneficial for several reasons, not least, because it instilled trust and goodwill amongst the communities.


Mice systematically bred for randomization of their genotype show large individual differences when performing a two-way avoidance task (shuttle-box learning). Their behavioral scores correlate strongly (r = -0.80, P less than .01) with the number of mossy fibers synapsing on basal dendrites of hippocampal pyramidal neurons, poor avoiders having relatively more such terminals. This confirms previous findings showing that rat and mouse strains known for genetically dependent poor avoidance learning have extended intra- and infrapyramidal mossy fiber projections.


In The Kazakh Khanates between the Russian and Qing Empires Jin Noda portrays the structure of the foreign relations that existed between the Kazakh Chinggisid sultans and the Russian and Qing empires during the 18th and 19th centuries


In 1971 Jim Sherard was engaged to investigate the common failure of a group of Soil Conservation Service (SCS) floodwater retarding earthfill dams built between 1957 and 1970, eleven being located in Oklahoma and three in Mississippi. These dams failed upon initial reservoir filling from internal erosion along cracks developed in compacted dispersive clays. The uniqueness of the natural dispersion and erodability of these otherwise intact plastic clays intrigued Dr. Sherard, leading him to further expand this investigative research at his own expense to include other earthfill projects known to him to have had similar problems. He therefore became involved with researching information from projects located in several other states and many foreign countries. In one parallel to the study, Jim unraveled some mystery involving a piping accident in the late 1940's with a large dam in eastern Oklahoma. While a small number of engineers in the United States and Australia were familiar with dispersive clays, it was not until Dr. Sherard happened upon the scene that the civil engineering profession became aware of the nature and identity of these problem soils. His presentations of the following two papers at the Purdue specialty conference in 1972 were the vehicles that brought this about. The paper 'Hydraulic Fracturing in Low Dams of Dispersive Clay' was awarded the Arthur M. Wellington prize by ASCE in 1973.


It is shown that some simple ideas of topology can be applied to the diffraction theory. As an example, the phase of the wave transmitted through the crystal is considered for the Laue diffraction geometry. When the angle of incidence varies across the diffraction region, the phase of the transmitted wave can be changed on 2πN, where N is an integer. The number N is a topological invariant (topological charge) of the diffraction region: in the general case, this number does not change its value when any parameters of experiment are slightly varied, but it changes by unity for some fixed values of those parameters. Therefore, from the topological point of view, the regions of diffraction are analogous to the domain walls in ferroelectrics. Then, within this approach, the singular points are revealed inside the diffraction region. It is shown that the topological ideas are especially fruitful for those cases where the solution of diffraction problem is absent or formidable (for instance, the multiple-beam diffraction or diffraction in imperfect crystals). The topological charge is also important for the dispersion relations connecting the phase and the amplitude of the transmitted wave in the diffraction region.


Small non-coding RNAs play a key role in many physiological and pathological processes. Since 2004, miRNA sequences have been catalogued in miRBase, which is currently in its 21st version. We investigated sequence and structural features of miRNAs annotated in the miRBase and compared them between different versions of this reference database. We have identified that the two most recent releases (v20 and v21) are influenced by next-generation sequencing based miRNA predictions and show significant deviation from miRNAs discovered prior to the high-throughput profiling period. From the analysis of miRBase, we derived a set of key characteristics to predict new miRNAs and applied the implemented algorithm to evaluate novel blood-borne miRNA candidates. We carried out 705 individual whole miRNA sequencings of blood cells and collected a total of 9.7 billion reads. Using miRDeep2 we initially predicted 1452 potentially novel miRNAs. After excluding false positives, 518 candidates remained. These novel candidates were ranked according to their distance to the features in the early miRBase versions allowing for an easier selection of a subset of putative miRNAs for validation. Selected candidates were successfully validated by qRT-PCR and northern blotting. In addition, we implemented a web-server for ranking potential miRNA candidates, which is available at: www.ccb.uni-saarland.de/novomirank.


In view of its function, language is the ability to communicate with others. There are significant differences
between the understanding of language and speech. Languages include all forms of communication, both
expressed in the form of oral, written, sign language, the language of gestures, facial expressions pantonim
or art. While the speech is the spoken language is the most effective form of communication, and the most
important and widely used.
Language development is always increased with increasing age of the child. Parents should always
pay attention to these development, because at this time, largely determines the learning process. This can
be done by giving a good example, to motivate children to learn and so on. Parents are largely responsible
for the success of a child's learning and should always strive to improve the potential of children in order
to develop optimally.
According to the study that was done prior to 1960, interest in the child's language began to arise in
the first decade of the 20
th
 century that who pioneered by scientists in the field of psychology or pedagogy,
among others, W. Stern, W. Preyer and G. Stumpf. In general, they studied the diaries of her children and
then compare the results. Arises arguments about children's language acquisition.
In the period after 1960 significant changes, besides due to the emergence of many figures with
theory carries, also aided by advances in technology, such as the tape recorder, video equipment, attention
to children's language development is increasing. With an appliance, children's language can be
investigated, with a record and then analyze it. Figure - figure much investigation in this regard is W. Miller
(1964), P. Menyuk (1963), R. Brown (1964), and Braine (1963).
Research conducted on children's language development must not be separated from the view,
hypothesis, or theory embraced psychology. On this there are several theories have challenged the
development of language, such theories have natavisme, cognitivism, and behaviorism.
Language development is divided into three periods, namely : Period Prelingual, Lingual Early
Period and Period Differentiation. Start early period this lingual early child starts to say the word - first
word which is the most amazing moment for parents.
The factors that affect languages development including health, intelligence, socio-economic
condition, family relationship, family size, peer relationships and personality.
There are some obstacles that are often experienced by children in learning to speak, partly because
of excessive crying and difficulty in understanding the content of the speech of others for children.


Background/Aims: Splicing CYP19 gene variants causing aromatase deficiency in 46,XX disorder of sexual development (DSD) patients have been reported in a few cases. A misbalance between normal and aberrant splicing variants was proposed to explain spontaneous pubertal breast development but an incomplete sex maturation progress. The aim of this study was to functionally characterize a novel CYP19A1 intronic homozygote mutation (IVS9+5G>A) in a 46,XX DSD girl presenting spontaneous breast development and primary amenorrhea, and to evaluate similar splicing variant expression in normal steroidogenic tissues. Methods: Genomic DNA analysis, splicing prediction programs, splicing assays, and in vitro protein expression and enzyme activity analyses were carried out. CYP19A1 mRNA expression in human steroidogenic tissues was also studied. Results: A novel IVS9+5G>A homozygote mutation was found. In silico analysis predicts the disappearance of the splicing donor site in intron 9, confirmed by patient peripheral leukocyte cP450arom and in vitro studies. Protein analysis showed a shorter and inactive protein. The intron 9 transcript variant was also found in human steroidogenic tissues. Conclusions: The mutation IVS9+5G>A generates a splicing variant that includes intron 9 which is also present in normal human steroidogenic tissues, suggesting that a misbalance between normal and aberrant splicing variants might occur in target tissues, explaining the clinical phenotype in the affected patient.


Calcium plays an important role in the regulation of several chloroplast processes. However, very little is still understood about the calcium fluxes or calcium-binding proteins present in plastids. Indeed, classical EF-hand containing calcium-binding proteins appears to be mostly absent from plastids. In the present study we analyzed the stroma fraction of Arabidopsis chloroplasts for the presence of novel calcium-binding proteins using 2D-PAGE separation followed by calcium overlay assay. A small acidic protein was identified by mass spectrometry analyses as the chloroplast protein CP12 and the ability of CP12 to bind calcium was confirmed with recombinant proteins. CP12 plays an important role in the regulation of the Calvin-Benson-Bassham Cycle participating in the assembly of a supramolecular complex between phosphoribulokinase and glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase, indicating that calcium signaling could play a role in regulating carbon fixation.


Minimization of the error probability to determine optimum signals is often difficult to carry out. Consequently, several suboptimum performance measures that are easier than the error probability to evaluate and manipulate have been studied. In this partly tutorial paper, we compare the properties of an often used measure, the divergence, with a new measure that we have called the Bhattacharyya distance. This new distance measure is often easier to evaluate than the divergence. In the problems we have worked, it gives results that are at least as good as, and are often better, than those given by the divergence.


Embedded systems like cellular phones, portable media players, etc. are often used for
multimedia and high speed communication applications. The complexity of these applications
increases rapidly. Because of this, faster devices are required, while the capacity
of batteries does not increase at the same pace. Therefore it is important to make the
devices energy e�cient. Many multimedia and communication applications are real-time
applications. They consist of many tasks that all have a deadline. In a video decoder,
decoding a single frame can be seen as such a task. The deadlines are given by the time
instants at which the frames have to be displayed. Real-time applications are not allowed
to miss their deadlines. This means that a task has to �nish all its work before its deadline.
The amount of work often
uctuates, but is bounded from above by some constant
W. Many applications are designed such that all deadlines are met, even if the work for
each task is W. This makes it possible to decrease the speed at which certain tasks are
processed and still meet all deadlines. The energy consumption is reduced with the clock
frequency.
In this thesis two problems are considered. The �rst problem is o�ine energy minimisation.
It is assumed that the work of each task is known before the application is
executed. A mathematical model is given in which deadlines are written as constraints
and energy consumption as a cost function. This model implies an in�nite-dimensional
convex optimisation problem. The in�nite-dimensional problem is then reduced to an
equivalent �nite-dimensional problem. By �nding the global minimiser, the energy used
by running this application can be signi�cantly reduced. This thesis explains how to �nd
a global minimum, even in the case when only a �nite set of speeds is available. The
Karush Kuhn Tucker conditions are used to achieve this.
The second problem studied in this thesis is the online optimisation problem. All
work before the current task is known, for the future tasks only an upper bound of the
work and predictions of the work are known. The speed for the next task is determined
analytically, this is a result that cannot be found in the literature. The task is executed
and the procedure is repeated for following task.
In this thesis, these results are not only given, but also compared to approaches in the
literature. The energy per work is an important and useful quantity, but is rarely studied
in the literature. Using this quantity, energy ine�cient speeds are eliminated and a wider
range of realistic problems can be solved using the theory that is presented in this thesis.
The results of o�ine and online optimisation are evaluated using a video decoder
that decodes DVDs. These results are compared to a straightforward (greedy) online
approach. Video fragments of 30 minutes were used for testing. It turns out that for
playback of these video sequences, the speed has to be changed only a few times. In
case only a �nite set of speeds is available, the size is an upper bound to the minimum
number of times the speed has to be changed. When online energy optimisation is used
with perfect predictions (i.e., the actual values), the energy consumption is almost as low
as with o�ine energy minimisation. This gives a theoretical lower bound to online energy
minimisation. Furthermore, energy can be minimised given predictions of the work.


On making geographic specificity a driver for territorial development in Europe. As part of the ESPON project Geospecs delving deeper into the issue of geographic specificities and development potentials in Europe, this Working Paper presents analytical material and conclusions aiming at feeding the policy debate on local development challenges and opportunities in Europe's sparsely populated areas. After characterizing Sparsely Populated Areas in Europe in terms of demographic and socio-economic structures and trends, the authors propose a discussion that aims at inspiring the elaboration and implementation of local and regional development strategies in these territories. As a basis for dialogue, the authors developed a specific Nexus Model for Sparsely Populated Areas that illustrate how the spatial effects of sparsity impact 'soft' and 'hard' development factor in those areas leading to the identification of specific challenges and opportunities. An important conclusion of the report is that regional policies should more proactively promote the more efficient use of these areas' assets to grasp new development opportunities, for instance via reinforced Territorial Cooperation and expanded Business Networks, instead of excessively focusing on 'overcoming' their permanent locational disadvantage through 'hard' infrastructure.


The aim of the present study was to detect preliminarily the capacity and capability of a modified electrometric method for use in the measurement of cholinesterase (ChE) activity in the blood of adult stray dogs. These values could be used for comparison with the values of cholinesterase (ChE) activity in dogs exposed to organophosphorus and carbamate pesticides. The highest activity of ChE (the change in pH / 30 minutes) in the blood plasma was 0.81, erythrocytes 0.73 and least in the whole blood (0.67).There was no significant difference between EDTA and heparin when used as anticoagulants in blood samples. To illustrate the accuracy of the way the coefficients of variation in blood plasma, erythrocytes and the whole blood were 5.5%, 5.4% and 5%, respectively. This was done using 0.1 ml iodide acetylcholine iodide (7.5%). Quinidine sulfate specifically inhibited pseudo ChE in the plasma, erythrocytes and whole blood, and it was estimated to be (4%, 28%, 6%), whereas true ChE activity was (96%, 72%, 94%). Monocrotophos at a concentration (0.5, 1 μM) and carbaryl at (5, 10 μM) significantly inhibited plasma, erythrocyte and whole blood ChE in vitro. These results suggest that the used modified electrometric method is simple, precise, efficient and have the validity of measuring blood ChE activities in dogs. Available online at http://www.vetmedmosul.org/ijvs دلجملا ،ةيرطيبلا مولعلل ةيقارعلا ةلجملا ٢٨ ددعلا ، ٢ ، ٢٠١٤ ) ١٥٣ ١٥٩ (


Security can play an important role in the development of some multi agent
systems. However, a careful analysis of software development processes indicates
that the definition of security requirements is, usually, considered after the design of
the system. This approach, usually, leads to problems, such as conflicts between
security and functional requirements, which can translate into security
vulnerabilities. As a result, the integration of security issues in agent oriented
software engineering methodologies has been identified as an important issue.
Nevertheless, developers of agent oriented software engineering methodologies have
mainly neglected security engineering and in fact very little evidence has been
reported on work that integrates security issues into the development stages of agent
oriented software engineering methodologies.
This thesis advances the current state of the art In agent oriented software
engineering in many ways. It identifies problems associated with the integration of
security and software engineering and proposes a set of minimum requirements that a
security oriented process should demonstrate. It extends the concepts and the
development process of the Tropos methodology with respect to security to allow
developers, even those with minimum security knowledge, to identify desired
security requirements for their multi agent systems, reason about them, and as a result
develop a system that satisfies its security requirements. In doing so, this research
has developed (1) an analysis technique to enable developers to select amongst
alternative architectural styles using as criteria the security requirements of the
system, (2) a pattern language consisting of security patterns for multi agent systems,
and (3) a scenario-based technique that allows developers to test the reaction of the
system to potential attacks.
The applicability of the approach is demonstrated by employing it in the
development of the electronic single assessment process (eSAP) system, a real-life
case study that provided the initial motivation for this research.


We have studied a new aqueous reprocessing system that consists of anion exchange as the main separation method, electrolytic reduction for reducing U(VI) to U(IV), and extraction chromatography for minor actinide partitioning. In this work, hot tests were carried out on the main flow sheet (U and Pu recovery) using a nitric acid solution of a spent commercial boiling water reactor fuel with burnup of 55 000 MWd/t HM. First, a separation experiment was conducted using a column packed with AR-01 anion exchanger, and the separation behavior of about 20 elements was examined. Then electrolytic reduction was performed for the U(VI) eluate from the first column using a flow-type electrolysis cell. Subsequently, the reduced U solution was applied to the second AR-01 column to separate the U(IV) from contaminated fission products. Most amounts of Pu(IV)-Np(IV), were successfully separated and recovered in the first column. In the electrolysis, U(VI), Np(V,VI), and a trace amount of Pu(VI) were reduced to U(IV), Np(IV), and Pu(IV), respectively. In the second column, the U(IV) with small amounts of Np(IV) and Pu(IV) was completely separated from the fission products. These results demonstrated that the proposed U and Pu recovery process is essentially feasible, though more effective elution methods for Pd and Tc need to be investigated further.


Exploring praxis as a key construct, this article disputes the understandings of digital history as a relatively recent phenomena by providing an alternative narrative of digital history's development. Understanding that "digital" history is a constellation of practices drawn from humanities and computing disciplines, this paper argues that digital sport history must demonstrate critical, intentional engagement with interdisciplinary research to achieve its fullest future. Using Michael Oriard's Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle as a basis for a speculative design exercise, the paper suggests three alternative research methods that scholars could now use to explore Oriard's sources. The exercise illustrates how digital sport historians must recognize the digital and its multiplicity of forms as historical objects that are produced, interpreted, and contested. As important, the article closes by presenting core values for our consideration as we move toward recognized methodologies for digital sport history.


The least squares (LS) minimization problem constitutes the core of many real-time signal processing problems, such as adaptive filtering, system identification and adaptive beamforming. Recently efficient implementations of the recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm and the constrained recursive least squares (CRLS) algorithm based on the numerically stable QR decomposition (QRD) have been of great interest. Several papers have proposed modifications to the rotation algorithm that circumvent the square root operations and minimize the number of divisions that are involved in the Givens rotation. It has also been shown that all the known square root free algorithms are instances of one parametric algorithm. Recently, a square root free and division free algorithm has also been proposed. In this paper, we propose a family of square root and division free algorithms and examine its relationship with the square root free parametric family. We choose a specific instance for each one of the two parametric algorithms and make a comparative study of the systolic structures based on these two instances, as well as the standard Givens rotation. We consider the architectures for both the optimal residual computation and the optimal weight vector extraction. The dynamic range of the newly proposed algorithm for QRD-RLS optimal residual computation and the wordlength lower bounds that guarantee no overflow are presented. The numerical stability of the algorithm is also considered. A number of obscure points relevant to the realization of the QRD-RLS and the QRD-CRLS algorithms are clarified. Some systolic structures that are described in this paper are very promising, since they require less computational complexity (in various aspects) than the structures known to date and they make the VLSI implementation easier. >


A microscope small enough to fit into a needle creates many new possibilities for optics in medicine. We have developed a range of optical coherence tomography (OCT) needle probes. Connected to an OCT scanner via a single mode fiber, the probes are constructed by fusing exact lengths of no-core fiber and graded-index fiber to focus a broadband light beam. We terminated the optics with anglepolished, gold-coated no-core fiber to deflect the beam. Encased in a needle (outer diameter 310 ?m), these probes are capable of 3-D imaging. However, the important developments of 2012 have been where we have taken these needle probes.


INTRODUCTION
Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) is the most common skin cancer worldwide, which appears over sun-exposed skin as slow-growing, locally invasive lesion that rarely metastasizes. Many phenotypic presentations are possible. BCCs are more common in males and tend to occur in older people. Majority is found on the head and neck. Many histopathological subtypes have been defined including nodular, micronodular, cystic, superficial, pigmented, adenoid, infiltrating, sclerosing, keratotic, infundibulocystic, metatypical, basosquamous and fibroepitheliomatous. Mixed patterns are common.

AIM
The aim was to study morphological spectrum of BCC in a tertiary care hospital in southern Karnataka.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This was a retrospective analysis of 100 cases of BCCs reported in the Department of Pathology over a 9-year period from 2006 to 2014.

RESULTS
The mean age of presentation was 62 years. There was slight female preponderance (56%). The most common location was face (65%) and the most common presentation was ulceration (45%). Of the 100 BCCs, 50% were nodular, 13% infiltrating, 6% basosquamous, 4% superficial, 3% keratotic, 3% multinodular and 1% mixed.

CONCLUSION
BCC, besides being the commonest cutaneous cancer, is also known for its numerous histological patterns which are shown to have prognostic implications. This study reveals the frequency of the various histological patterns of BCC in southern Karnataka, where it has been rarely studied before.


Very high resolution satellite images are used to derive the spatial distributions of landscape ecological metrics within suburban areas. These indicators are weighted mean patch size and lacunarity computed from thresholded normalized difference vegetation index obtained from multispectral IKONOS-2 imagery. Spatial distributions of the metrics are derived for an extensive suburban area on the southwest edge of London, U.K. Weighted mean patch size and lacunarity values have also been investigated in subimages corresponding to different kinds of suburban land cover and with different box sizes. The results indicate typical ranges of the metrics in environmentally sustainable localities. The spatial distributions of the metrics provide new insight into landscape structure, which can be exploited in land use planning and in the construction of empirical spatial planning heuristics for sustainable urban development.


Read no further if you want a definite answer to this question. It is a sort of detective story with clues scattered around. The circumstances surrounding the question however are so interesting since they involve two of the most important scientific publications of the 19th century.

The truly ground-breaking studies of Gregor Mendel were read before the Society for the Study of Natural Science of Brunn in 1865 entitled Versuche uber Pflanzen-Hybriden (Experiments in Plant Hybridization). Mendel ordered 40 reprints of his paper to send to famous European scientists; Darwin by then was certainly one of the most famous. Darwin's book on Origin of Species had been out for 6 years and was already in its 3rd edition. It had been translated into German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Polish and Russian.

Mendel had of course read and studied the Origin of Species in the German translation, Uber die Entstehung der Arten as soon as the second edition appeared in 1863. In his personal copy, he made many notes in the margin with his small and careful handwriting with double underlines of some of the text and even interspersed with the occasional exclamation mark. He bought most of Darwin's other works and studied them carefully making frequent annotations. So it would be natural for him to send Darwin, as an eminent English naturalist, one of his 40 reprints.

Of the 40 reprints of Mendel's article records exist that one was sent to each of the following scientists: von Marilaun, Kerner, Beijerinck, Boveri, Schleiden, and the Swiss botanist Karl Wilhelm von Nageli, now working in Munich. The last exchanged letters with Mendel over 7 years on the topic. More copies of the reprint were to be found in learned societies around Europe including the Royal Society, the Linnaean Society and the Greenwich Observatory …


We investigate the cooperative pursuit of an evader by a group of quadrotors in an environment with no-fly zones. While the pursuers cannot enter into no-fly zones, the evader may freely move through zones to avoid capture. Once the evader enters a no-fly zone, the pursuers calculate a reachable set of evader positions. Using tools from Voronoi-based coverage control applied to the evader's reachable set, we provide an algorithm that distributes the pursuers around the zone's boundary and minimizes the capture time once the evader leaves the no-fly zone. Robust model predictive control (RMPC) tools are used to control the quadrotors and to ensure that they always remain in free space. We demonstrate the performance of our proposed algorithms through a series of experiments on KMEL Nano+ quadrotors.


ABSTRACTObjective: To understand parents' propensity to migrate and willingness to pay with respect to outdoor air pollution, and to explore related affecting factors.
Methods: This study used a convenience sample and subjects were collected from a community in Wuchang District and Children's Hospital of Wuhan, respectively. A designed questionnaire was used for this study. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression models were applied to analyze the relationship between parents' individual and familial characteristics and related behavioral intensions to air quality improvement. Statistical analysis was done with SAS 9.1.
Results: The questionnaire was completed by 865 subjects (response rate = 86.5%). The number of people with migrant intent was 150(36.4%) from hospital group, and 139(30.7%) from community group. In the hospital group, subjects with higher knowledge of air quality (OR = 6.268, p < 0.05) and higher average annual household income (AAHI), which was equal or more than 50,000 Yuan (OR = 2.045, p < 0.01), were found to be more intent to migrate. AAHI (OR = 1.939, p < 0.05) was also the affecting factor in the community group correspondingly. Those willing to pay for air quality improvement included 297 people (72.1%) from the hospital group and 333 people (73.5%) from the community group, and affecting factors was the public responsibility for air quality improvement (hospital group: OR = 3.380, p < 0.01; community group: OR = 4.436, p < 0.01).
Conclusions: This study indicated high tendency of propensity to migrate for avoiding poor air condition and willingness to pay to improve air quality in Wuhan. Local governments should pay more attention to parents' knowledge of air pollution and attitudes towards government management of air quality, especially those willing to migrate.