We introduce a finite volume scheme for multi-dimensional drift-diffusion equations. Such equations arise from the theory of semiconductors and are composed of two continuity equations coupled with a Poisson equation. In the case that the continuity equations are non degenerate, we prove the convergence of the scheme and then the existence of solutions to the problem. The key point of the proof relies on the construction of an approximate gradient of the electric potential which allows us to deal with coupled terms in the continuity equations. Finally, a numerical example is given to show the efficiency of the scheme.


Abstract. To better understand the characteristics of biomass burning in the northern Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), total suspended particles were collected in a rural site, Lumbini, Nepal, during April 2013 to March 2014 and analyzed for the biomass burning tracers (i.e., levoglucosan, mannosan, vanillic acid). The annual average concentration of levoglucosan was 734 ± 1043 ng m−3 with the maximum seasonal mean concentration during post-monsoon season (2206 ± 1753 ng m−3), followed by winter (1161 ± 1347 ng m−3), pre-monsoon (771 ± 524 ng m−3) and minimum concentration during monsoon season (212 ± 279 ng m−3). The other biomass burning tracers (mannosan, galactosan, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, vanillic acid, syringic acid and dehydroabietic acid) also showed the similar seasonal variations. There were good correlations among levoglucosan, organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC), indicating significant impact of biomass burning activities on carbonaceous aerosol loading throughout the year in Lumbini area. According to the characteristic ratios, levoglucosan ∕ mannosan (lev ∕ man) and syringic acid ∕ vanillic acid (syr ∕ van), we deduced that the high abundances of biomass burning products during non-monsoon seasons were mainly caused by the burning of crop residues and hardwood while the softwood had less contribution. Based on the diagnostic tracer ratio (i.e., lev ∕ OC), the OC derived from biomass burning constituted large fraction of total OC, especially during post-monsoon season. By analyzing the MODIS fire spot product and 5-day air-mass back trajectories, we further demonstrated that organic aerosol composition was not only related to the local agricultural activities and residential biomass usage but also impacted by the regional emissions. During the post-monsoon season, the emissions from rice residue burning in western India and eastern Pakistan could impact particulate air pollution in Lumbini and surrounding regions in southern Nepal. Therefore, our finding is meaningful and has a great importance for adopting the appropriate mitigation measures, not only at the local level but also by involving different regions and nations, to reduce the biomass burning emissions in the broader IGP region nations.


Dynamic Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) with contrast media injection is an important tool to study renal perfusion in humans and animals. The goal of this study is to build classifiers for the automatic classification of a kidney as healthy or pathological. A new algorithm is developed that segments out the cortex from the rest of the kidney including the medulla, the renal pelvic, and the background. The performance of two classifier-types (Soft Independent Method of Class Analogy, SIMCA; Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis, PLS-DA) is compared for various types of data pre-processing including segmentation, feature extraction, baseline correction, centering, and standard normal variate (SNV).


A governance networks literature that uses social network analysis has emerged, but research tends to be more technical than conceptual. This restricts its accessibility and usefulness for non-quantitative scholars and practitioners alike. Furthermore, the literature has not adequately appreciated the importance of informal networking for the effective operation of governance networks. This can hinder inter-disciplinary analysis. Through a critical review, this article identifies four areas of challenge for the governance networks literature and offers four corresponding, complementary sets of concepts from the social network analysis field: (a) the difference between policy networks and governance networks, (b) the role and status of people in governance networks, (c) the 'dark side' of networks and the role of power differentials within them and (d) network evaluation and the question of 'what works' in network management. The article argues that a less technical, more accessible account of social network analysis offers an additional lens through which to view governance networks.


In September 1950, Horace Ward, an African American student from La Grange, Georgia, applied to law school at the University of Georgia. Despite his impressive academic record, Ward received a reply - in reality, a bribe - from one of the university's top officials offering him financial assistance if he would attend an out-of-state law school. Ward, outraged at the unfairness of the proposition and determined to end this unequal treatment, sued the state of Georgia with the help of the NAACP, becoming the first black student to challenge segregation at the University of Georgia. Beginning with Ward's unsuccessful application to the university and equally unsuccessful suit, Robert A. Pratt offers a rigorously researched account of the tumultuous events surrounding the desegregation of Georgia's flagship institution. Relying on archival materials and oral histories, Pratt debunks the myths encircling the landmark 1961 decision to accept black students into the university: namely the notion that the University of Georgia desegregated with very little violent opposition. Pratt shows that when Ward, by then a lawyer, helped litigate for the acceptance of Hamilton Earl Holmes and Charlayne Alberta Hunter, University of Georgia students, rather than outsiders, carefully planned riots to encourage the expulsion of Holmes and Hunter. Pratt also demonstrates how local political leaders throughout the state sympathized with - even aided and abetted - the student protestors. Pratt's provocative story of one civil rights struggle does not stop with the initial legal decision that ended segregation at the university. He also examines the legacy of Horace Ward and other civil rights pioneers involved in the university's desegregation - including Donald Hollowell and Constance Baker Motley - who continued for a lifetime to break color barriers in the South and beyond. We Shall Not Be Moved is a testament to Horace Ward, Hamilton Holmes, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and others who bravely challenged years of legalized segregation.


The presidential election of 1896 is widely acknowledged as one of only a few that brought about fundamental realignments in American politics. New voting patterns replaced old, a new majority party came to power, and national policies shifted to reflect new realities. R. Hal Williams now presents the first study of that campaign in nearly fifty years, offering fresh interpretations on the victory of Republican William McKinley over Democrat William Jennings Bryan. In tracing the triumph of gold over silver in this fabled 'battle of the standards', R. Hal Williams also tells how the Republicans - the party of central government, national authority, sound money, and activism - pulled off a stunning win over the Democrats - the party of state's rights, decentralization, inflation, and limited government. Meanwhile the People's Party, one of the most prominent third parties in the country's history, which also nominated Bryan, went down to a defeat from which it would never recover. Williams plunges readers into a contest that set new standards in financing, organization, and accountability, and he analyzes the transition from the long-dominant 'military style' of campaign to the 'educational style' that appealed to a savvier electorate. He also presents key players in new light: he views Bryan not simply as a gifted speaker whose 'Cross of Gold' speech took the Democratic convention by storm, but as a more calculating politician with his eye squarely on the nomination; he depicts McKinley's campaign manager Mark Hanna not as the one-dimensional fundraising machine painted by history but rather as a shrewd, insightful politician who understood what was required to get his man elected; and, he presents retiring president Cleveland as an increasingly out-of-touch, irrelevant chief executive whom the Democrats repudiated in a way no other party ever had a sitting president. With the Republicans' star on the rise and the Democrats banished to the South and the cities, the 1896 election was more than a victory of one party over another, it marked the emergence of new ways of politicking that makes this campaign especially relevant for twenty-first-century readers.


Atlantic Water takes various pathways through the Nordic Seas, and its transformation to denser waters forms a crucial connection to the lower limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Circulation maps often schematize two distinct pathways of Atlantic Water: one following the Norwegian Atlantic Slope Current along the continental slope of Norway and one following the Norwegian Atlantic Front Current along the Mohn and Knipovich Ridges. In this paper, the connectivity between the northward flow along these ridges is investigated. Analyzing trajectories of surface drifters and ARGO floats, we find that only 8% of the floats that travel near the mid-ocean ridges take the frontal pathway to the north. Indeed, by tracing numerical particles in a realistic numerical simulation, part of the water mass traveling along the Mohn Ridge follows the 2,500 m isobath eastward and joins the slope current, instead of flowing north along the Knipovich Ridge. Furthermore, north of 74°N, frequent exchange between the slope current and the front current is observed. Therefore, the slope current and front current are less isolated than often schematized. Additionally, the observational data set reveals substantial cross-ridge exchange; 31% of the floats that travel within 60 km from the mid-ocean ridges cross it. Results from numerical simulations indicate that the cross-ridge exchange leads to cooling and freshening of the Atlantic Water along the front. Deployments of floats near the mid-ocean ridges are needed to investigate the pathway of Atlantic Water and its exchange across the ridge in more detail.


The perfect guide to help visual learners maximize website discoverabilityWhether promoting yourself, your business, or your hobbies and interest, you want your website or blog to appear near the top when your customers search. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is increasingly essential to businesses. This full-color, step-by-step guide demonstrates key SEO concepts and practices in an easy-to-follow visual format. Learn how to set up your website and what to implement to help your business or product make a great showing in search results.Helps visual learners understand and practice important SEO conceptsUses full-color, step-by-step tasks to teach the elements of SEOProvides information you can quickly and easily implement to enhance your site's search engine rankingsDemonstrates how to make your site attractive to casual web surfers as well as to the algorithms and spiders used by Google and other search enginesTeach Yourself VISUALLY SEO will demystify search engine optimization, helping you boost search engine rankings and improve the visibility of your website.Note: Per the Penguin Policy 2.0 update, some of the tasks in Chapter 6 may present a risk to Google page rank. Please read the latest policy update from Google to know fully what will work best for increasing and maintaining Google Page Rank


The U.S. Chamber of Commerce uses its Survey of State Liability to criticize judiciaries and seek legal change but no detailed evaluation of the survey's quality exists. This article presents evidence that the survey is substantively inaccurate and methodologically flawed. It incorrectly characterizes state law; respondents provide less than 10% correct answers for objectively verifiable responses. It is internally inconsistent; a state threatened with judicial hellhole status ranked first in the survey while venues not on the list ranked lower. The absence of correlation between survey rankings and observable activity suggests that other factors drive the rankings. Two factors may help explain them. First, persistent low ranking of Gulf Coast states indicates that corporate counsel cannot shed hostility to states that were prominent in asbestos and tobacco litigation, notwithstanding changes in state laws. Second, low rankings of populous states suggest respondents fail to distinguish between rates of events and the absolute number of events. Adverse events in large states may occur more often but not necessarily at higher rates than in small states. The Chamber's uses of the survey fail to account for the sample design, fail to account for the same respondent rating multiple states, fail to account for industry effects, and fail to distinguish among respondents based on their knowledge of a state. The survey may discourage investment in the U.S. and corporate risk managers' views suggest that the survey promotes corporate behavior that needlessly endangers the public.


Conventional optical coherence tomography is based on A-scans, i.e., the fast scan direction is the z-direction. While this technique has been successfully demonstrated for two-dimensional cross sectional imaging of various tissues, it is rather slow if three-dimensional information is to be obtained. We report on a new technique that combines the transverse scanning approach of a confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope with the depth sectioning capability of OCT. A stable high-frequency carrier is generated by use of an acousto optic modulator, and high frame rate is obtained by using a resonant scanning mirror for the priority scan (x-direction). Our prototype instrument records 64 transverse images consisting of 256x128 pixels in 1.2 seconds, thus providing the fastest retinal 3D OCT scanning system reported so far. We demonstrate the capabilities of our system by measuring and imaging the fovea and the optic nerve head region of healthy human volunteers in vivo.


Abstract: Health care practitioners around the globe have observed that the COVID19 crisis has been associated with an unprecedented decrease in non-COVID-19 visits to emergency departments. We corroborate this observation using administrative daily data from Chile and study the potential causes for this decrease. To that end, we merge regional emergency visits with Google mobility data and show that the crisis-induced changes in mobility patterns explain a significant portion of the overall drop in nonrespiratory emergency room visits, especially for visits related to trauma and poisoning. Our results reveal that an important reason for the dramatic drop in non-COVID-19 utilization of emergency care is the lower incidence of emergencies. This result suggests that lockdown measures may have the unexpected benefit for public health of freeing up healthcare resources to confront the pandemic. Health care practitioners around the globe have observed that the COVID19 crisis has been associated with an unprecedented decrease in non-COVID-19 visits to emergency departments. We corroborate this observation using administrative daily data from Chile and study the potential causes for this decrease. To that end, we merge regional emergency visits with Google mobility data and show that the crisis-induced changes in mobility patterns explain a significant portion of the overall drop in nonrespiratory emergency room visits, especially for visits related to trauma and poisoning. Our results reveal that an important reason for the dramatic drop in non-COVID-19 utilization of emergency care is the lower incidence of emergencies. This result suggests that lockdown measures may have the unexpected benefit for public health of freeing up healthcare resources to confront the pandemic.


The genus Polerovirus contains positive-sense, single-stranded RNA plant viruses that cause significant disease in many agricultural crops, including vegetable legumes. This study aimed to identify and determine the abundance of Polerovirus species present within Tasmanian pea crops and surrounding weeds that may act as virus reservoirs. We further sought to examine the genetic diversity of TuYV, the most commonly occurring polerovirus identified. Pea and weed samples were collected during 2019–2020 between October and January from thirty-four sites across three different regions (far northwest, north, and midlands) of Tasmania and tested by RT-PCR assay, with selected samples subject to next-generation sequencing. Results revealed that the presence of polerovirus infection and the prevalence of TuYV in both weeds and pea crops varied across the three Tasmanian cropping regions, with TuYV infection levels in pea crops ranging between 0 and 27.5% of tested plants. Overall, two species members from each genus, Polerovirus and Potyvirus, one member from each of Luteovirus, Potexvirus, and Carlavirus, and an unclassified virus from the family Partitiviridae were also found as a result of NGS data analysis. Analysis of gene sequences of the P0 and P3 genes of Tasmanian TuYV isolates revealed substantial genetic diversity within the collection, with a few isolates appearing more closely aligned with BrYV isolates. Questions remain around the differentiation of TuYV and BrYV species. Phylogenetic inconsistency in the P0 and P3 ORFs supports the concept that recombination may have played a role in TuYV evolution in Tasmania. Results of the evolutionary analysis showed that the selection pressure was higher in the P0 gene than in the P3 gene, and the majority of the codons for each gene are evolving under purifying selection. Future full genome-based analyses of the genetic variations will expand our understanding of the evolutionary patterns existing among TuYV populations in Tasmania.


The question addressed is:- How can we have pleasant long-term humane, human survival on Earth, given our very potent globally impacting technologies, huge populations and our terrible propensity for solidarity to propagate our own 'pure' quasi-tribal genetic and cultural identities through ruthlessly devastating competition with and suppression of, others' genes and cultures? What has been tried and why it is not good enough:  We have tried religious visions of peace, love (caritas) and even asceticism. These have indeed appealed to vast numbers of people, but have left them almost defenceless against those whose religious beliefs demand the conversion or extermination of unbelievers. We have also tried bread and circuses - economic growth with fair shares for all, but some humanimals are much more equal than others. The have-nots rebel (Thailand, Jamaica).  Moreover large-scale economic growth without system-sciences based ecological wisdom quickly becomes ecocidal and eventually may be anthropocidal. Mankind's guiding visions have been workable for small populations with primitive technics, but they are proving to be much too simple to enable us to collaboratively steer the complex webs of coupled systems which constitute Life on Earth today. Recently, many people have pushed for notions of "sustainability" a rather ambiguous term, attractive to those with much to lose, but not so attractive to the have-nots of the World. What we propose:  We propose an alternative, systems-sciences based vision that is simple enough to evoke World-wide acceptance and concertation of efforts by educated people, yet complex enough to ensure requisite variety of ventures, strategies, tactics and tools. The vision we call SYMVIABILITY is a vision of both ecological-cultural symbioses and intercultural symbioses World-wide, where each cultural actor appreciates the need to allow and support other cultural actors to live and flourish, providing that they control themselves to do likewise. It is important to eschew the use of "sustainability" which ambiguously allows people to believe that they can somehow manage to sustain whatever they feel identified with, (e.g. SUVs, imported foods and global air-travel etc.), provided that they make small sacrifices and others suffer large ones! . We propose this SYMVIABILITY as a transformative educative ultimate value vision based on methodological pragmatic philosophy and the systems sciences and implemented fairly through discursive legitimation forums representing all stakeholders - the whole to be carried out through global social networking and modelling and simulation games technology.


Meat can harbour a large variety of pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms which include mesophilic and psychrophilic bacteria, during slaughtering and further processing. These microorganisms may be sources of infection to human and spoilage of meat. Organic acids are generally recognized as safe antimicrobial agents and the low dilute solutions of organic acids are generally without affecting on the desirable sensory properties of meat; in addition, they do not create residual problems when used as carcass decontaminants. Spray wash treatments utilizing three concentrations (1, 1.5 and 2%) of acetic, lactic, propionic and formic acids (individually and/or in combination of two acids) were performed to evaluate their efficacy in reducing numbers of Escherichia coli O157:H7, Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella Typhimurium and Pseudomonas putida on meat tissues stored at 4±1oC. The procured beef pieces were decontaminated with hot water and then inoculated with E. coli O157:H7, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes, S. Typhimurium and P. putida seperately which then were spray washed with organic acids for 15 seconds either individually or in combination of two acids separately. The population of E. coli O157:H7, S. Typhimurium, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and P. putida (P 1.5% concentration > 1% concentration. Mean log reductions of E. coli O157:H7, S. Typhimurium, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and P. putida showed that the antibacterial effect of formic acid > lactic acid > acetic acid > propionic acid. Combinations of two organic acids indicated a stronger inhibitory effect on selected bacteria compared to the effect of each acid alone. The combinations of acetic and formic, lactic and formic, and propionic and formic acids showed higher reductions effect at ranges of 0.22-1.67, 0.26-1.55, 1.43-1.56, 1.43-1.69 and 0.44-1.59 log10 cfu/ml for E. coli O157:H7, S. Typhimurium, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes and P. putida respectively, more than combinations of acetic and lactic, acetic and propionic, and lactic and propionic acids. The combination of lactic and formic acids showed the highest reduction effect, where more than 3 log10 cfu/ml, of all bacterial species were reduced. The populations of S. aureus and L. monocytogenes as Gram-positive bacteria reduced more significantly (P<0.05) than the population of E. coli O157:H7, S. Typhimurium and P. putida as Gram-negative bacteria. The results of this study indicated that formic acid is a good antibacterial agent for decontaminating animals' carcass surfaces especially when mixed with lactic acid.


In this paper we compare author cocitation analysis (ACA) results for the highly collaborative stem cell (SC) research field 2004--2009 using three types of ACA: all-author, first-author, and last-author. The latter of these, introduced here for the first time, is found to be an excellent compromise between first- and all-author ACAs in that (a) Scopus directly supports it and (b) its results are close to those of an (optimal) all-author ACA in fields where last authors are traditionally those who supervise the research published in a paper. We confirm predictions from previous studies that all-author ACA results have better model fits than single-author ACA ones, but cannot confirm the hypothesis that significantly higher levels of collaboration in a field lead to significantly greater differences between first- and all-author ACA results.


The goals of this article are to give students advice related to entering the world of development and a clear view of the responsibilities and pitfalls that come along with the profession of international consultancy as applied anthropologists. In doing so, I discuss the necessary skills required, such as a background in research, knowledge of foreign and vernacular languages, and fieldwork experience. I also give some advice about contacting development agencies and preparing for overseas work. In addition, I comment on what to expect while working in developing countries in the field of public health. In order to illustrate some of the interventions, I have drawn examples from my own experiences in the field. Motivation is very important for this career and students must be aware that although the profession may be exciting, it is also difficult and demanding. Apart from giving counsel, I have attempted to show that being a consultant is a great opportunity to learn more about the human race and that the job is full of challenges and rewards.


Diazinon (DZN) is a commonly used Organophosphorus (OP) pesticide to control a variety of insects in agriculture and in the environment. The aim of this project is to study the effects of organophospherous pesticide (Diazinon) on histological and histochemical of kidney in male rabbit. The present study is based upon observations made on 24 male Baladi rabbits, which was divided into: 3 groups: Eight animals each, the whole body of the rabbit was dipped in 10 liters of the diazinon solution, while sparing the head for 10 seconds. Group one (control group) was dipped in water only. Animals of Group 2; were dipped in diazinon solution dipped every 2 days for 4 weeks, and Group 3 were dipped in diazinon solution every 7days for two months. Decreased in body weight was noticed in group 2 and group 3 may be due to increases in the exposed doses and increased accumulation of DZN in the blood of the exposure animals. Histological changes in group 2 and 3 are similar, renal tubules were severely damaged with cytoplasmic vacuolation and atrophy of some glomeruli. Blood capillaries in between the degenerated tubules were congested; the urine spaces are widening, and fibrosis inters tubules in group 3 only. Exposure of animals to diazinon caused extensive changes in histopathologicaly as well as histochemicaly in the kidney of group 2 and group 3. But very marked changes in group 3.


Macroecological analyses often test hypotheses at the global scale, or among more closely related species in a single region (e.g. continent). Here, we test several hypotheses about climatic niche widths among relatively closely related species that occur across multiple continents, and compare patterns within and across continents to see if they differ. We focus on the lizard genus Varanus (monitor lizards), which occurs in diverse environments in Africa, Asia, and Australia. We address three main questions. 1) How do climatic niche breadths of species on a given niche axis change based on the position of species along that niche axis? (E.g. are species that occur in more extreme environments more narrowly specialized for those conditions?) 2) Are there trade-offs in niche breadths on temperature and precipitation axes among species, or are niche widths on different axes positively related? 3) Is variation in niche breadths among species explained primarily by within-locality seasonal variation, or by differences in climatic conditions among localities across the species range? We generate a new time-calibrated phylogeny for Varanus and test these hypotheses within and between continents using climatic data and phylogenetic methods. Our results show that patterns on each continent often parallel each other and global patterns. However, in many other cases, the strength of relationships can change dramatically among closely related species on different continents. Overall, we found that: 1) species in warmer environments have narrower temperature niche breadths, but there is no relationship between precipitation niche breadth and niche position; 2) temperature and precipitation niche breadths tend to be positively related among species, rather than showing trade-offs; and 3) within-locality seasonal variation explains most variation in climatic niche breadths. Some of these results are concordant with previous studies (in amphibians and North American lizards), and might represent general macroecological patterns.


A pilot-scale combination process of anoxic baffled reactor -hybrid membrane bioreactor for the real textile dyeing wastewater treatment was investigated. Anoxic baffled reactor as a hydrolysis process pre-treatment was performed well, which achieved 35.6 % COD removal efficiency when hydraulic retention time (HRT) was 16 h. The total COD removal efficiency of the combined process was 83.8 %. GC-MS analysis results demonstrated that the main component of raw influent was alkanes including 13 types. After hydrolysis process, the types of alkanes decreased to 5. In subsequent aerobic treatment phase, alkanes of supernatant of HMBR increased to 19, but total organic compounds category decreased to 24. New intermediate CholestaN-3β-ol production demonstrated that some complicated structures or large molecules substances in raw wastewater could be decomposed. GC-MS quantitative analysis results further showed that some toxic and hazardous substances, such as toluene, styrene, 1,2-dichlorobenzene were still in the final effluent. However toxic compounds e.g. phenols could be removed in the subsequent aerobic process. Therefore, most organic pollutants could be removed using the combined process. There were still some amounts of toxic compounds present in the final effluent.


In the search for natural reservoirs of hepatitis C virus (HCV), a broad diversity of non-human viruses within the Hepacivirus genus has been uncovered. However, the evolutionary dynamics that shaped the diversity and timescale of hepaciviruses evolution remain elusive. To gain further insights into the origins and evolution of this genus, we screened a large dataset of wild mammal samples (n = 1,672) from Africa and Asia, and generated 34 full-length hepacivirus genomes. Phylogenetic analysis of these data together with publicly available genomes emphasizes the importance of rodents as hepacivirus hosts and we identify 13 rodent species and 3 rodent genera (in Cricetidae and Muridae families) as novel hosts of hepaciviruses. Through co-phylogenetic analyses, we demonstrate that hepacivirus diversity has been affected by cross-species transmission events against the backdrop of detectable signal of virus-host co-divergence in the deep evolutionary history. Using a Bayesian phylogenetic multidimensional scaling approach, we explore the extent to which host relatedness and geographic distances have structured present-day hepacivirus diversity. Our results provide evidence for a substantial structuring of mammalian hepacivirus diversity by host as well as geography, with a somewhat more irregular diffusion process in geographic space. Finally, using a mechanistic model that accounts for substitution saturation, we provide the first formal estimates of the timescale of hepacivirus evolution and estimate the origin of the genus to be about 22 million years ago. Our results offer a comprehensive overview of the micro- and macroevolutionary processes that have shaped hepacivirus diversity and enhance our understanding of the long-term evolution of the Hepacivirus genus. Significance Since the discovery of Hepatitis C virus, the search for animal virus homologues has gained significant traction, opening up new opportunities to study their origins and long-term evolutionary dynamics. Capitalizing on a large-scale screening of wild mammals, and genomic sequencing, we expand the novel rodent host range of hepaciviruses and document further virus diversity. We infer a significant influence of frequent cross-species transmission as well as some signal for virus-host co-divergence, and find comparative host and geographic structure. We also provide the first formal estimates of the timescale of hepaciviruses indicating an origin of about 22 million years ago. Our study offers new insights in hepacivirus evolutionary dynamics with broadly applicable methods that can support future research in virus evolution.


The purpose of the work is a simulation model (in the Matlab environment) of a hypothetical stand-alone energy system in design conditions. This system is based just on renewable sources (solar and micro-hydroelectric energy) integrated with a hydrogen energy system (electrolyzer, hydrogen storage, PEM (proton exchange membran fuel cell). It could supply the whole electric and part of the heat requests of a small residence situated in a remote mountainous area (e.g. an isolated village in the Italian Alps) during a complete year of operation. The work is made up of two. The subject of this first paper is the simulation of the performances of the micro-hydro power source. To obtain the flow duration curve necessary for a correct design of the micro-turbine, the following hypothesis have been made: the behavior of the mountain basin is modeled like a linear reservoir, the rainfall is described as a marked Poisson process and the snowmelt is modeled using the empirical temperature-index approach. The result of the simulation is the hourly electrical output as a function of the daily flow of available water. A single micro-turbine is enough for this basin. The maximum value of electric power obtained during spring months corresponds to 1400 W and the annual electric energy produced by this plant is in the order of 4 MWh/yr.Copyright © 2002 by ASME


Mental toughness (MT) has been associated with both higher academic and physical performance. Adventure sports studies involve exposure to exploratory and risk-taking activities aiming to facilitate positive psychological characteristics. Although such programs are frequently promoted for this purpose, there is lack of empirical evidence concerning the effects of such a curriculum on the levels of MT in undergraduate students. PURPOSE: To examine the efficacy of an adventure-sport curriculum on the levels of MT of freshmen, undergraduate students throughout their first semester in the program. Hypothesis: The MT levels of the participants increase at the end of the semester. METHODS: In total, 13 students agreed to participate. The sample was of the same Expeditionary Studies class, predominantly male (Mage = 18.7, SD = 1.1). The Mental Toughness Index (MTI) was used for data collection. MTI was administered in the first, seventh, twelfth, and fifteenth week of classes. The analysis consisted of one-way ANOVA with repeated measures in IBM SPSS Statistics. The confidence interval was set at 95%. Normality was checked via the Shapiro-Wilk test. Sphericity was checked via the Mauchly's test. RESULTS: Assumptions were satisfied. The curriculum had a positive effect on students' levels of MT at the end of the semester (F(3,36) = 7.629, p < 0.01, ηp = 0.39). On average, overall MT scores improved by 9.5 points. Therefore, evidence to support the hypothesis was found. However, pairwise comparisons revealed no statistically-significant mean difference between the first and the second assessment. CONCLUSION: These preliminary results indicate that an adventure-sport curriculum may increase the level of MT of undergraduate students, but not before seven weeks. Therefore, the authors suggest that these programs should be considered as facilitators of MT, but caution should be placed on the duration of intervention. MT's high level of transferability (e.g., from the classroom to the field to personal life) adds significance to these findings. Future studies should include comparison with students of unrelated courses, higher number of assessments, longer periods of intervention, and experimental design. Possible limitations include small sample size, convenience sample, and limited number of assessments.


1. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between granulocyte activation, pulmonary intravascular granulocyte transit, pulmonary extravascular granulocyte migration and lung injury in patients with systemic conditions (bone marrow transplant recipients, inflammatory bowel disease and systemic vasculitis) in which abnormalities of pulmonary granulocyte traffic have previously been reported. 2. A double 111In-99mTc granulocyte labelling technique was used for quantification of granulocyte kinetics in 23 patients, of whom five were control patients. The pulmonary vascular granulocyte pool was measured from dynamic data centred on the 99mTc signal and expressed as a percentage of the total blood granulocyte pool. Granulocyte migration was quantified on 24 h images using the 111In signal. Granulocyte activation was measured as the percentage of cells showing a change in shape. The clearance rate of an inhaled aerosol of 99mTc-diethylenetriaminepenta-acetic acid (DTPA) was used as a marker of lung injury. 3. Pulmonary granulocyte pool, migration, activation and aerosol clearance, although highly variable in the patient groups, were, in general, elevated compared with the controls. 4. Granulocyte activation correlated with pulmonary granulocyte pool (Rs = 0.72, n = 22, P < 0.01), while the t1/2 of DTPA clearance correlated with migration (Rs = -0.84, n = 17, P < 0.01). Fifteen patients had an expanded pulmonary granulocyte pool, of whom six with no evidence of migration, had a normal DTPA clearance, while nine, who had an abnormal migration signal, had an accelerated DTPA clearance. The pulmonary granulocyte pool in these nine was significantly higher than in the six without a migration signal. 5. Activation of granulocytes results in delayed transit through the lung vasculature. With increasing margination, granulocytes migrate into the lung interstitium and injure the lung. An increased intravascular pool does not by itself lead to lung injury.


The author analyzes the effects of the expansion of broadband Internet access from 1999 to 2007 on labor market outcomes throughout the United States. Recent federal policy programs have allocated $18 billion toward subsidizing the spread of this technology, especially to rural areas. Understanding the interplay between technology, firms, and the labor market is important for evaluating whether additional scarce government resources should be allocated to improve this type of infrastructure. Using models that include county and time fixed effects, the author finds that gaining access to broadband services in a county is associated with approximately a 1.8 percentage point increase in the employment rate, with larger effects in rural and isolated areas. Most of the employment gains result from existing firms increasing the scale of their labor demand and from growth in the labor force. These results are consistent with a theoretical model in which broadband technology is complementary to skilled workers, with larger effects among college-educated workers and in industries and occupations that employ more college-educated workers.


Three full length 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) oxidase cDNA clones (pNG-ACO1, 1,254 bp; pNG-ACO2, 1,198 bp; and pNG-ACO3, 1,053 bp) were isolated from the TMV-treated leaf cDNA library of Nicotiana glutinosa plant. They share a high degree of sequence identity (78-81%) throughout the coding regions but are divergent within the 3'-untranslated regions. The gene-specific probes were prepared using these regions to investigate the differential expression of the ACC oxidase gene family in various organs and in response to a multitude of biotic and abiotic stresses in N. glutinosa plants. All three genes were transcriptionally active displaying unique patterns of expression. Both the pNG-ACO1 and pNG-ACO3 transcripts highly accumulated during the senescence of leaves, while the pNG-ACO2 mRNA was constitutively present. In addition, the NG-ACO1 and NG-ACO3 transcripts were predominantly found in roots whereas the NG-ACO2 mRNA was mainly in stems. Upon TMV infection, both NG-ACO1 and NG-ACO3 were markedly induced, but in mock treatment which has an effect of mild wounding, only the NG-ACO3 gene was induced. Furthermore, salicylic acid and CuSO4 treatments of leaves increased the level of NG-ACO1 and NG-ACO3 transcripts, while they did not affect the NG-ACO2 gene expression. Results showed that both the NG-ACO1 and NG-ACO3 genes were highly inducible by ethylene and methyl jasmonate treatments, with NG-ACO3 being more responsive. By contrast, NG-ACO2 did not respond to these growth regulators. Thus, it appears that there are two groups of ACC oxidase transcripts expressed in leaf tissue of N. glutinosa, either stress-induced or constitutive. The possible molecular mechanism of differential regulation of ACC oxidase gene expression and its physiological significance are discussed.


A new proprietary herbomineral formulation was formulated, consisting of essential ingredients viz. herbal root extract ashwagandha and minerals (zinc, magnesium, and selenium). The aim of the study was to evaluate the immunomodulatory potential of Consciousness Energy Healing Treatment on the herbomineral formulation in male Sprague Dawley rats. The test formulation was divided into two parts. One part was denoted as the control without any Biofield Energy Treatment, while the other part was defined as the Biofield Energy Treated sample, which received the Biofield Energy Healing Treatment remotely from seven renowned Biofield Energy Healers. Additionally, one group of animals also received Biofield Energy Treatment per se (day -15) by Biofield Energy Healers under similar conditions. The test formulation was evaluated for immunological parameters viz. humoral immune analysis, paw volume, hematological study, biochemistry, body weight, feed and water intake, and histopathology analysis were performed. The humoral immune response showed a significant increased primary and secondary antibody titre values by 26% and 150.4%, respectively in Biofield Energy Treatment per se group (G6, day -15), while primary and secondary antibody titre values were increased by 100.0% and 110.4%, respectively in the Biofield Energy Treated test formulation (G7, day -15) group compared with the disease control group (G2). The results of delayed type hypersensitivity showed a significant increase in the paw volume by 94.44% in the Biofield Energy Treated test formulation (G4) group with respect to the G2 group. However, a significant increase in paw volume by 61.11% and 44.44% was found in G6 and G7 group, respectively with respect to the G2 group. Hematological parameters showed a significant (p<0.001) increased platelet count by 85.6% in the G4 group, while 39.15% and 35.22% increase in the G6 and G7 groups, respectively compared with the G2 group. In biochemical analysis, a significant increase in calcium and phosphorus level were found in the G4 group compared with the G2 group. Animal weight parameters suggests that there were no treatment-related changes in any group, organ to body weight ratio, feed and water intake. The data described that the Biofield Energy Treated test formulation was found to be safe without any side effect during the course of the experiment. These data suggests that the Biofield Energy Treated test formulation and Biofield Energy Treatment per se can be used for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, enhancing stress management and prevention, and anti-aging by improving overall health.


Physiological races of Hemileia vastatrix in southern Africa were identified.
Prevalent races were I (2.2%), II (88.9%) and III (2.2%). Six samples could not be
identified. Twelve biotypes of race II were distinguished. In some cases, the
biotypes only occurred in specific regions.
It was established, using fluorescence microscopy, that, in some cases, the
percentages of germinated urediospores that did not form appressoria,
appressorium formation over stomata, and aborted appressoria, were significantly
different between susceptible and resistant selections of the host, and non-hosts.
The sequence of events leading to successful infection was investigated using
scanning electron microscopy (SEM). When a stoma is encountered by a germ
tube tip a uniquely shaped appressorium forms over one end of the stomatal slit.
A distinct appressorial foot is wedged within the stomatal vestibule. In coffee, a
torpedo-shaped substomatal vesicle initial (SSVI) develops bilaterally from the apex
of the infection wedge, While in bean, the infection wedge protrudes into the
substomatal chamber. The substomatal vesicle (SSV), at 48 hours post inoculation
(hpi) is anchor-shaped. Haustorial mother cells are formed on stubby primary
infection hyphae which curve back onto subsidiary cells. No differences in
appearance of these structures were noted between resistant and susceptible
coffee selections. A much-branched mycelium ramifies through the intercellular
spaces of the mesophyll cells 96hpi. In bean, the SSV began to collapse 48hpi.
Bayfidan ® only slightly suppressed fungal development on the leaf surface.
However, within susceptible tissue, this systemic fungicide had an effect on the
morphology of the fungus. Extracellular material accumulated on the SSVI and the
SSV. The SSV appeared swollen, and disruptions in the vesicle wall was noted.
The discovery of teliospores on locally infected trees led to a SEM study on their
structure, development and germination.
Infection structure formation on the leaf surface, latent period, reaction score and
urediosorus concentration differed between susceptible coffee leaves of different
ages. Generally, mature leaves are more susceptible than very young or old
leaves.
A range of fungicides, mainly systemics, were tested in the field on naturally
infected coffee trees. Various epidemiological and climatic factors influence rust
development in the field. The role of these factors at the fungicide site and in
commercial coffee-growing regions of southern Africa was evaluated.


This paper asks what insights the literature provides on divergence versus convergence of innovation paths in Europe and Asia. It contrasts the abundant literature on determinants of innovation paths with the scarcity of studies that are explicitly comparative across countries or continents. Implicit conclusions however emerge from several lines of work including evolutionary perspectives which stress differences in national conditions, and other perspectives which stress latecomer and globalisation effects. This paper distils and draws together the main conclusions on why innovation paths can be expected to diverge or converge. Its contribution lies in spelling out and bringing together implicit and explicit insights from a wide range of literatures. It also provides an analytical backdrop for some of the other papers in this special issue of Science and Public Policy which provide comparative empirical analyses of low carbon innovation paths.


During the past year, the Executive Board (EB) has met regularly and has held frequent meetings with the Operational Board (OB) via Skype. These meetings have allowed us to discuss a range of issues relating to the Project Committees (PCs), to EMBnet.journal, to the website, the Stichting accounts, membership, etc.


The opacity of machine learning data is a significant threat to ethical data work and intelligible systems. Previous research has addressed this issue by proposing standardized checklists to document datasets. This paper expands that field of inquiry by proposing a shift of perspective: from documenting datasets towards documenting data production. We draw on participatory design and collaborate with data workers at two companies located in Bulgaria and Argentina, where the collection and annotation of data for machine learning are outsourced. Our investigation comprises 2.5 years of research, including 33 semi-structured interviews, five co-design workshops, the development of prototypes, and several feedback instances with participants. We identify key challenges and requirements related to the integration of documentation practices in real-world data production scenarios. Our findings comprise important design considerations and highlight the value of designing data documentation based on the needs of data workers. We argue that a view of documentation as a boundary object, i.e., an object that can be used differently across organizations and teams but holds enough immutable content to maintain integrity, can be useful when designing documentation to retrieve heterogeneous, often distributed, contexts of data production.


Begon, Townsend, and Harper's Ecology has long been regarded as the definitive textbook on all aspects of ecology. This new edition provides a comprehensive treatment of the subject, from the first principles of ecology to the current state of the field, and aims to improve students' preparedness to address the environmental problems of the new millennium.Thoroughly revised and updated, this fourth edition includes: - three new chapters on applied ecology, reflecting a rigorous, scientific approach to the ecological problems now facing mankind - discussion of over 800 new studies, updating the text throughout - an updated, user-friendly design with margin notes and chapter summaries that serve as study aids - dedicated website at www.blackwellpublishing.com/begon The resulting textbook is easy to use, lucid and up-to-date, and is the essential reference for all students whose degree program includes ecology and for practicing ecologists.


This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Tongji University Press via the DOI in this record


What does the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA) teach us about federalism? A first lesson is that, when confronted with state-based decision making of which they disapprove, national lawmakers federalize rights, as they have repeatedly done throughout United States history. In 2005, Congress turned to the federal courts because CAFA's proponents believed that state courts were too welcoming of collective adjudication. CAFA is part of a cohort of enactments and doctrinal developments of this era that preempt state decision making and push litigants toward noncollective and nonadjudicative remedies such as privately sponsored arbitration programs. CAFA's reliance on federal courts to deal with aggregate litigation parallels decisions made in the 1960s to revise the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to facilitate the aggregation of parties and claims. The mechanism of federalization is the same, but the goals are not. In the 1960s, Rule 23 was redrafted to expand class action opportunities for claimants in the federal courts. By easing access, rulemakers wanted to maximize the enforcement of federal rights, which they perceived to be under-protected in state courts, especially when state actors were charged with discrimination. In 2005, the purpose was, once again, to offer an alternative to state courts, perceived by then to have over-protected rights for various kinds of plaintiffs. Thus, a second lesson to be drawn from the enactment of CAFA is how quickly substantive "national" goals can change aimed now at deploying federal courts to very different ends. Turning the question around to ask what federalism teaches us about CAFA yields other insights. A review of the history of the interactions between state and federal governance results in a third lesson, that efforts to centralize authority in the federal government and to exclude the states are not likely to endure. In this federation, national rule pronouncement regularly relies on local implementation. Fourth, local decision making does not occur in isolation. Rather, state policies and laws are regularly shaped through the interaction of state officials crossing their own borders as well as those of the nation. The interactions across localities have increased as government officials work, translocally as well as transnationally, through national organizations of local officials such as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Governors Association, and the National League of Cities. While CAFA may try to centralize decision making at the national level in an effort to assert the United States' sovereign interests, pressures from local and transnational levels function as "political safeguards" that limit concentrations of power through countervailing mechanisms that produce other policy judgments. From the density and richness of such translocal initiatives comes a fifth lesson: CAFA's efforts to diminish the role of aggregate-rights claiming will not succeed. Joint endeavors by local officials and their national organizations are themselves a form of aggregation, prompted by the need for collective responses to problems that affect large numbers of persons. Like the invention of the class action rules in the 1960s, the development of translocal organizations is likewise innovative. These national networks of local actors function as "political safeguards" that check exclusive national authority, but they are not themselves intrinsically "safe." Rather, their power raises questions that are familiar in the class action and political science literatures about the adequacy of representation by spokespersons for the group, the commonality of interests among members, and the opportunities of members to participate so as to inform and to monitor their representatives. Further, some of these national networks raise new questions for social movement theory, which has been focused on networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) rather than on these voluntary national, private entities gaining authority by virtue of their members holding local and state offices. Thus, I propose capturing their presence through the term "transnational organizations of government actors," or TOGAs, as I begin below to interrogate their contributions both to federalism and to aggregation.


Tuberous sclerosis is a rare genetic disease with multiple organ involvement. Renal involvement is manifested by the presence of angiomyolipomas and cysts. Angiomyolipomas due to the progressive increase in size over time can complicate by bleeding that can lead to severe retroperitoneal hemorrhages. Hence, it is important to perform an active surveillance of the masses and to institute therapeutic attempts in order to manage or prevent any complication. We present three clinical cases of three women with various clinical presentations and treated in different ways. Recently, the employment of mTOR inhibitors such as Everolimus has been shown therapeutic efficacy in this disease, especially in terms of a dimensional reduction of renal angiomyolipomas.


Parthenogenesis is an artificial oocytes activation process without paternal contribution so that embryos will develop without fertilization [3]. The process of parthenogenesis as a reproductive strategy occurs in species of insect, pisces, or amphibian, which not require any implantation. Naturally, parthenogenesis is not common in mammals, but by understanding cellular mechanism during fertilization, it is possible to artificially activate mammalian oocytes.Blastocyst, derived from parthenogenesis, can be used for developmental study, embryo reconstruction, and one of potential source for pluripotent stem cells. Unfortunately, previous studies reported that parthenogenetic embryo did not achieve exhilarating blastocyst rate.One of the component that has been predicted to inhibit parthenogenetic embryo development is phosphate. Haraguchi et al. (1996)    reported that phosphate caused a negative effect on in vitro culture of AKR/N mice fertilized embryos, removal of phosphate elements was significantly improved the blastocyst rate up to 42.6% [1]. The effects of phosphate also became an interesting finding in the study that reported mouse fertilized embryos could well developed in modified medium rat 1 cell embryo medium (MR1ECM) which not contained any phosphate [2].The effect of phosphate on in vitro culture of mouse parthenogenetic embryo has not been clear. The aim of this research was to analyze inhibitory effect caused by phosphate in the medium and compare the development pattern between parthenogenetic and fertilized embryos in order to reach optimal production of parthenogenetic blastocyst for further purposes.


This thesis examines the use and nature of chartism in the foreign exchange market, bringing together an analysis of chartist methods and the views/empirical work of economics. A survey of general chartist methods demonstrates the origins of the modern techniques, the construction of the various indicators, the use of pattern recognition and the variety of calculated indices. Despite these methods being widely used in the market, there seems to be very little bridging between practical chartism and the many fundamental-based academic studies of exchange rate determination/forecasting. Key points of the academic literature which have features pertinent to non-fundamental chart analysis are therefore discussed, and what little explicit analysis of chartism has been done is highlighted. It is clear that analysis of the subject is a growing area of the literature. It transpires, however, that there is minimal actual evidence available about the use of chartism in practice. To provide information on this, a questionnaire survey was conducted to examine the extent to, and manner by which, chartism is used in the (London) foreign exchange market and how it is perceived by the market participants themselves. This gives clear information on the extent of chartist advice in the market and the wide variety of techniques used, along with insights into the differing views held by market participants on the subject. While something of a broad consensus emerges regarding the possible methods and the weights given to charts at differing time horizons, there is sufficient heterogeneity in general to suggest that differences of views will be transmitted in actual chartists advice. To test this directly, a database of chartists' forecasts was constructed by a telephone survey of a panel of chartists, to compile their one and four week ahead predictions for the three major bilateral rates. This gives a unique data set, from which it is possible to analyse the forecasts of individuals as well as the median forecast. The data is subjected to a battery of tests and comparisons, a recurring result of which is indeed the apparent difference in accuracy between individual chartists. For example comparisons with a range of other forecasting techniques (economic and statistical), show some chartists under-perform these consistently while the best are even able to outperform a random walk. Tests of the implied expectations mechanism reveal that the hypothesis of rationality of chartism cannot be entirely rejected over the short horizon, but that there is stronger evidence of irrationality over the four week period, a result which becomes more pronounced as the information set is expanded, which provides evidence against the chartist tenet that 'the price discounts everything'. Testing for different methods of expectation formation reveals that in general the hypothesis of static expectations cannot be rejected against the variety of afternatives considered. Overall, the crucial result in this area was that of an inelasticity of expectations: chartists' advice does not appear to exert a destabilising on the foreign exchange market by overreacting systematically to changes in the current rate. In sum, this thesis forms a bridge between chartism and economics, by examining the methods and results of the former and analysing them with the tools of the latter.


Solar geoengineering is the deliberate reduction in the absorption of incoming solar radiation by the Earth's climate system with the aim of reducing impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Climate model simulations project a diversity of regional outcomes that vary with the amount of solar geoengineering deployed. It is unlikely that a single small actor could implement and sustain global-scale geoengineering that harms much of the world without intervention from harmed world powers. However, a sufficiently powerful international coalition might be able to deploy solar geoengineering. Here, we show that regional differences in climate outcomes create strategic incentives to form coalitions that are as small as possible, while still powerful enough to deploy solar geoengineering. The characteristics of coalitions to geoengineer climate are modeled using a 'global thermostat setting game' based on climate model results. Coalition members have incentives to exclude non-members that would prevent implementation of solar geoengineering at a level that is optimal for the existing coalition. These incentives differ markedly from those that dominate international politics of greenhouse-gas emissions reduction, where the central challenge is to compel free riders to participate.


This article analyses the motives of violence against civilians during internal wars. It is suggested that soldiers may terrorize civilians because they need the loot to augment their resources while the rest of the time is engaged in fighting proper. An alternative hypothesis suggests that terrorizing the civilian population plays a direct military role. The displacement of large fractions of the civilian population reduces the fighting efficiency of the enemy, as they cannot hide as easily and obtain less support. These two alternative hypotheses are investigated in a simple two-stage game-theoretic model. At stage 1, the government and the rebels simultaneously decide on the level of forces engaged in violence against civilians before they choose the level of forces that they engage in the fighting proper at stage 2. There are two types of sub-game perfect equilibria in this model: there is a pure fighting equilibrium in which no violence against civilians takes place and a pure terror equilibrium. In the latter equilibrium, it is shown that terror substitutes for fighting if the government can afford it. Predictions of the model are tested using African refugee data. In accordance with the theoretical model, the refugee population displays strong positive serial correlation, and after controlling for war, overseas development assistance has a positive impact on the outflow of refugees. Thus, the results support the hypothesis that violence against civilians is motivated by military objectives and suggest that donor funding to governments at war should be cut if the protection of civilians is regarded as more important than the fate of the fighters.


The U.S. Muslim population, although currently only comprising one percent of all Americans, is on the rise. Muslim Americans are largely assimilated, happy with their lives, moderate with respect to divisive issues, and opposed to violence. Nonetheless, in recent years, a growing misunderstanding and fear of Muslims has led some activists to seek to ban the application of Islamic law, or Sharia, in American courts, despite the lack of evidence of an increase in the use of Sharia in U.S. courts. These attempted bans have seen varying degrees of success. This Note argues that these bans violate the voluntary, but longstanding, principle of comity and are unnecessary. When properly applied, comity prevents Sharia from pre-empting the Constitution while encouraging mutual acceptance and understanding between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans.


INTRODUCTION: Vision is considered one of the most important means of capturing the information from the environment. It is central to the process of child development. OBJECTIVES: Aware of the contribution of vision on balance maintenance and on human biopsychosocial development, and considering the factors resulting from loss or impairment of vision, this research objected to analyze the balance on orthostatic posture of low vision children, from 8 to 11 years old, of both genders (experimental group) comparing with normal children balance of both genders and same age (control group) using stabilometric parameters. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A stabilometric plataform was used to measure the postural oscillations (radial displacement and displacement speed). RESULTS: Considering the experimental and control groups radial displacement rates (media and standard diversion), it could be observed that there was no significant difference on the closed eyes condition (p > 0,05). On the opened eyes condition, there was a bigger radial displacement of the experimental group comparing to the control group (p < 0,05). Analysing the displacement speed rates of the control and experimental groups, it could be observed that in both conditions (closed and opened eyes) the control group presented the higher displacement speed when compared to the experimental one (p < 0,01). CONCLUSION: After the presented results, we concluded that low vision might have a negative influence on the orthostatic posture stability as well as on the postural adjustment speed, damaging the body balance.


A new methodology for hierarchical floor planning and global routing for building block layout is presented. Unlike the traditional approach, which separates placement and global routing into two consecutive stages, our approach accomplishes both jobs simultaneously in a hierarchical fashion. The global routing problem is formulated at each level as a series of the minimum Steiner tree problem in a special class of partial 3-trees, which can be solved optimally in linear time. The floor planner with a maximum of five rooms per level has been implemented in the C language, running on a VAX 8650 under 4.3 BSD UNIX. The experimental results on examples with a large number of irregular blocks show that our approach out-performs other well-known deterministic algorithms, and gives results that are comparable to random-based algorithms but with a computing time an order of magnitude less. Due to the unique goal-oriented and pattern-directed features of our floor planner, it accepts specifications for overall aspect ratio and I/O pad positions, thus making our approach suitable for hierarchical design.


This article reports on a study undertaken to determine the influence of conative attitudes towards green advertising on black Generation Y students' environmental behaviour in the South African context. In South Africa, the Generation Y cohort, which is defined as including individuals born between 1986 and 2005, accounted for 40 percent of the country's population in 2011. The African portion of this cohort (hereafter referred to as black Generation Y) comprise an estimated 84 percent of this cohort. This translates into black Generation Y individuals being a market force of significant importance to marketers, including those engaged in green advertising efforts. Despite the importance of this market segment, their consumer behaviour remains under researched in general, specifically concerning their attitudes towards environmental issues and marketing. In order to address this shortfall in the literature, a structured, self-administered questionnaire was used to gather data on conative attitudes towards green advertising and how this influences environmental behaviour from a sample of 400 black Generation Y students across four South African public registered higher education institutions' campuses situated in the Gauteng province. Data analysis included measurement of model fit, independent z-tests and path analysis using structural equation modelling. According to the results, there was acceptable fit between the proposed two-dimensional model for measuring conative attitudes towards green advertising and the data in the sample. The findings suggest that in South Africa, black Generation Y students' conative attitudes towards green advertising have a significant positive influence on their environmental behaviour.
 DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n3p17


Nurse-Midwifery: The Birth of a New American Profession By Laura E. Ettinger (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006) (269 pages; $74.95 cloth; $26.95 paper) The question of how the hybrid profession of nurse-midwifery developed in the United States from its precursors in lay midwifery, public health nursing, and western European midwifery is one that is successfully addressed by Laura Ettinger's Nurse-Midwifery: The Birth of a New American Profession, the first book-length study of the topic. The author successfully weaves together her interests in the history of women, history of medicine, culture of childbirth, and gender of professions. She analyzes how nurse-midwives affected and were affected by larger childbirth trends in the United States; how bright, ambitious maternity and public health nurses in the early twentieth century became nurse-midwives and "created a space of their own in the face of many obstacles" (p. 3); the relationships between nurse-midwifery, nursing, and medicine; and the place that nurse-midwives occupied and continue to hold in the American access-to-care landscape. Nurse-Midwifery is a story of the ways in which nurse-midwives negotiated with others in the maternity care system in the early twentieth century to develop and maintain their profession. Ettinger's primary thesis is that nurse-midwives developed strategies of accommodation in order to survive. One strategy was the cultivation of an outsider status in order to be less threatening to physicians and others in power in maternity health care. By limiting their practice to caring for patients who could afford to pay little or nothing for their health care, nurse-midwives carved out a place for themselves. Ettinger's innovative use of labor terms as chapter titles keeps the reader focused on the work of midwives. In the first chapter, "Conception," Ettinger outlines her thesis and places nurse-midwifery in the larger context of changing childbirth practices in the United States. She emphasizes the medicalization of birth, the decline of traditional midwives, the public health nursing movement, increased interest in maternal-child health in the Progressive Era, and midwifery trends in western Europe. In "Early Labor Pains," Ettinger details the pre-World War II work of the two best-known early nurse-midwifery services: Mary Breckinridge's Frontier Nursing Service (FNS) in Eastern Kentucky and New York's Maternity Center Association (MCA). …


For a small patient group with type 1 diabetes (T1D), standard treatment with insulin is very difficult, and donor pancreas or islet transplantation is an option. Nonetheless, limited donor organs mean that alternative sources for cell-replacement therapy are desirable. We investigated the presence of human adult stem cells (or progenitor cells) in the exocrine part of the pancreas, in the context of the possible application of these cells in cell therapy for T1D. We developed a 3D cell culture method for the generation of min-organs, or 'organoids' of pancreatic tissue, and found that such organoids differentiated into a limited number of insulin-positive cells. Further, we isolated a subpopulation from these cultures with progenitor-cell characteristics, which could differentiate into insulin-positive cells. Thereby, showing that it is possible to isolate an endocrine subpopulation of progenitor cells, and that pancreatic tissue can expand through cultivation of organoids. We also explored, a way to improve culture conditions via retinoic acid (RA) signalling. We found that organoid formation from the precursor cell population was was improved when we blocked signal transduction via RA. In addition, it appeared that RA could somewhat enhance expression of endocrine markers such as insulin in organoids. Finally, looking at the single-cell level, we could determine that pancreatic organoids retained the overall RNA profile of mature exocrine cells. We find that 3D culture of human pancreatic organoids represents a system with interesting potential both for clinical applications such as cell therapy, as well as as a model for fundamental research.


This study examined the implementation of family-friendly employment policies in the government and selected private manufacturing organizations in Malaysia. Three broad categories of facilities were studied including work arrangements, family care benefits, and child care facilities and related benefits. Policy practices in the federal government were examined through document analysis and interviews with human resource personnel. Data from four private organizations were gathered using questionnaires and interviews with human resource managerial staff. Generally, the government has been more generous than the private organizations studied in providing family-friendly facilities. Overall, these organizations were still at the early stage of development of policies which could support the reconciliation of the demands of work and family life. The results imply the need to improve the family-friendly policy practices and the need to recognize the development of such policies as an important task for human resource development policy-makers.


Heterobimetallic complexes of the general formula [{(OC)5MC(Me)OTi(OiPr)2}(µ-OiPr)]2 with M = Cr (1), W (2) were synthesized by reacting (OC)5MC(Me)OLi (M = Cr, W) with ClTi(OiPr)3. X-Ray crystallography revealed dimeric molecular structures based on four-membered Ti2O2-rings for both compounds. Most intriguingly crystals of 1 virtually "shattered" upon cooling below −60 °C. Treatment of 1 and 2 with an excess of pyridine did not effect symmetric cleavage of the dimers, but afforded the unique rearrangement products [(OC)5MC(Me)O]2Ti(OiPr)2(C5H5N)2 with M = Cr (3) and W (4). The isomorphous structures, determined by means of X-ray diffraction, are only the second examples of an unrestrained titanium center coordinated by four OR and two N-donor ligands. Complexes 3 and 4 were also accessible from Cl2Ti(OiPr)2(C5H5N)2 (5) and (OC)5MC(Me)OLi. Owing to the inherent dynamic behaviour of all complexes, low-temperature NMR studies were undertaken. The formation of nanoparticles upon thermolysis of complex 2 lends support to the notion that the presented (or related) compounds could be useful as single source precursors for nano-sized mixed metal oxides or oxo nitrides.


Although children's acquisition of a first, or native language is a matter of perennial interest, no consensus has emerged in English-language scholarship about how to refer to what it is that children do (or what it is that happens) in the first few years of life, when children move from non-talking neonates to full participation in a human speech community. Some have called this phenomenon 'child language learning'; others 'first language acquisition'; others 'the development of language'; and still others, 'the emergence of speech'. This paper compares a range of expressions used in the late 1800s (by Whitney, Pollack, and Lukens, among others) to discuss child language acquisition, to the terminology employed by present-day generativist and nongenerativist scholars. In both periods, writers' word choice reveals not only their own conceptualization but also how they position themselves vis-a-vis competing ways of conceptualizing how children learn language.


Archaeological investigations at site 41 HR 39 on De Zavala Point in Channelview, Harris County, Texas, were conducted by personnel from the Center for Archaeological Research, The University of Texas at San Antonio from December 16 through December 22, 1984. The site is recorded as an aboriginal shell midden with a historic component which will be impacted by the proposed disposal of dredged materials under the Department of the Army Permit Application No. 17151, during industrial development of the area. The field investigations were conducted for the Department of the Army, Galveston District, Corps of Engineers, to determine the el igibi 1 ity of the site for recommendation for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. Field work at site 41 HR 39 involved excavating nine shovel tests, two 1-m2 controlled test units, five backhoe test pits, and five backhoe trenches, mapping and photographing the site, and gathering artifacts exposed by wave action along the bluff which marks the northern and eastern 1 imits of the site. Analysis of the site stratigraphy and cultural materials indicates that the site contains a stratum of Rangia cuneata shell with prehistoric and historic materials in a dark, sandy clay loam matrix. The shell midden stratum overl ies a sterile clay matrix. Most, if not all, of the site appears to have been disturbed by bioturbation, erosion, historic dredging, and other historic occupation and utilization of the site area. The research potential of the remaining historic component and the aboriginal shell stratum at 41 HR 39 appears to be low. The site is therefore recommended to be not el igible for nomination to the National Register of Hi storic Pl aces.


Unemployment varies substantially over time and across subgroups of the labour market. Worker flows among labour market states act as key determinants of this variation. We examine how the structure of unemployment across groups and its cyclical movements across time are shaped by changes in labour market flows. Using novel estimates of flow transition rates for the UK over the last 35 years, we decompose unemployment variation into parts accounted for by changes in rates of job loss, job finding and flows via non-participation. Close to two-thirds of the volatility of unemployment in the UK over this period can be traced to rises in rates of job loss that accompany recessions. The share of this inflow contribution has been broadly the same in each of the past three recessions. Decreased job-finding rates account for around one-quarter of unemployment cyclicality and the remaining variation can be attributed to flows via non-participation. Digging deeper into the structure of unemployment by gender, age and education, the flow-approach is shown to provide a richer understanding of the unemployment experiences across population subgroups.


Languages such as Java, Cs, Standard ML, and Haskell use automated memory management to simplify development and improve reliability by eliminating the need for programmers to manually free unused objects. The cost of this improved programmer experience is that the implementation of the language becomes more complex, requiring a garbage collector. Garbage collectors are becoming increasingly sophisticated to adapt them to high-performance, concurrent and real-time applications, making internal collector invariants and the interface with user programs (mutators in garbage collector parlance) subtle and difficult to implement correctly.
My thesis is that treating the garbage collected heap as an abstract data type allows the specification and verification of flexible and expressive garbage collector-mutator interfaces, and that the mechanized verification of garbage collector implementations using Hoare-style logic is both practical and effective. The mutator-garbage collector interface I describe in this paper is expressive enough to be used with verified mutators, while being abstract enough that a single interface can be used with both stop-the-world and incremental collectors. It is also powerful enough to be used with collectors that require read or write barriers.
In this dissertation, I describe my framework for the mechanized verification of garbage collector implementations. I discuss the formal setting, and my approach to garbage collector interfaces. I also describe the specification and verification of the Cheney and Baker copying collectors. The Baker collector is an incremental collector that requires a read barrier. Finally, I discuss some practical tools I developed for program verification using separation logic in the Coq proof assistant.


The heat dissipation and output power characteristics of kilowatt ytterbium-doped double-clad (YDDC) fiber power amplifiers are investigated through numerical modeling. Solutions to facilitate heat dissipation and reduce operating temperature in YDDC fibers under bi-directional end pump and distributed pump are presented and compared. It is shown that the heat dissipation issue in kilowatt fiber power amplifiers can be effectively solved by optimizing the arrangement of pump powers, pump absorption coefficients, and fiber lengths.


High non-revenue water (NRW) values as percentage of system input volume form a serious problem that many water utilities word wide have to confront nowadays. There are ways to mitigate the effect by adopting strategies with short and long term results. Water pressure management (PM) is one of the most efficient and effective NRW reduction strategies. To calculate pressure's management economic level of leakage (ELL) several steps have to be made like full water costing, calculation of economic benefits and losses of PM interventions and defining the related investment's break-even point. In this paper the results of these three procedures required to define the ELL level are analyzed, in order to present the link between them. The water distribution system of Kozani city (in Northern Greece) is used as the case study network. The results of both the net present values PM implementation results and the investment's break-even estimation are analyzed.


The situation of the terminologies of cutting-edge sciences and technologies in such important languages as French and Spanish is rapidly changing. It can be demonstrated that they rely more and more directly on English-language terms and conceptual structures. This new situation calls for a review of the factors involved and how they affect neology as secondary term formation. This article seeks to characterize terminological dependency and to identify those parameters by which it can be measured. To do this, the authors first interviewed some Spanish-speaking researchers about their own practice, and then took three highly specialized micro-domains brought to light in the terminology work of graduate students of translation. After evaluating the validity of this latter approach, the authors analyse the three terminologies from linguistic and pragmatic points of view, concluding that, in the three fields, new terms are as closely modeled as possible on their existing English-language counterparts.


Written to engage IR theory debates, this chapter argues that the crafting, invocation, interpretation and application of international law are a primary means through which states collectively rule and contest politics in international relations today. Yet since international law (IL) draws its legitimacy and authority from public affirmations of and diffuse support for the rule of law, public support for the rule of law is a permissive condition for IL to be politically constraining. After explaining how national and transnational legal practices constitute international law's de facto authority, the chapter explores both ordinary and extraordinary contestations of IL authority. Ordinary contestation takes place within a legal field, when lawyers, stakeholders, judges and government officials debate and contest over the meaning of international law. Political tactics are also part of ordinary contestation, but because the curators of IL authority are transnational, a state may be unable to impose its preferred IL interpretation. Where states fail to impose a preferred interpretation, three extra-ordinary contestation strategies can be used to escape IL authority: 1) states can seek to replace international law's authority with domestic law's authority; 2) states can pit different international laws against each other by maneuvering within and around international regime complexes; and (3) states can attack the legitimacy and authority of international law altogether. Where authority challenges enhance IL accountability, they are to be welcome. But each strategy can also be used to tear at the fabric of IL authority, potentially undermining the permissive conditions that make IL both constraining and effective.


VASILEVA, S. and M. MARCHEVA, 2016. Genetic analysis of productivity components in malting barley (Hordeum vulgare, L.) hybrid progenies. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 22: 452–457 The investigation was conducted on the experimental fi eld of the Agricultural University of Plovdiv, during the period 2011–2014. Coeffi cients of heritability and selection, the number of genes, transgressions and heterosis in relation to maintraits, determining productivity in malting barley crosses were studied. For this purpose biometrical data of P1, P2, F1 and F2 populations of four hybrid combinations were used. Hybridological analysis data of studied barley populations showed that the inheritance of some traits as plant height, productive tilling, main spike lenght, number of spiklets and grains, grains weight on spike and 1000-grain weight is mainly overdominant in direction of the higher trait values. Parental genotypes Kaskadior, 96105046, 96105023, Emon, 96105027 and 96105024 differ in a small number of genes affecting expression of productive tillering and grains weight on the spike. Based on the conducted analysis it was found that the mass selection by phenotype for main spike lenght, number of spiklets and grains and 1000-grains weight would be more effective in earlier hybrid generations (F2-F3).


The chameleonic behaviour of the string theory dilaton and of matter fields is suggested. Some of the possible consequences of this scenario are analyzed. In particular, (1) I suggest a stringy solution to the cosmological constant problem and (2) I point out the non-equivalence of different conformal frames at the quantum level. The correct Dark Energy scale is recovered in the Einstein frame without unnatural fine-tunings and this result is robust against all quantum corrections, granted that we make some assumptions in the string frame of the model. At this stage the possibility still exists that a certain amount of fine-tuning may be required to satisfy phenomenological constraints. A detailed phenomenological analysis of the model is definitely necessary.


Analyzing the reasons of financial crises in "The Black Swans," N.N. Taleb concludes that modern economic models badly describe reality for they are not able to forecast such crises in advance. We tried to present processes on stock exchange as two random processes one of which happens rather often (regular regime) and the other one - rather rare. Our answer is that if regular processes are correctly recognized with the probability a bit higher than 1/2, this allows to get positive average gain. We believe that this very phenomenon lies in the basis of unwillingness of people to expect crises permanently and to try recognizing them.


This chapter evaluates models of participant choice in retirement plans, in the context of advisory services offered by their employers. We find that small barriers to accessing online advisory services seem to have significant impact on the likelihood of their use. We also find that by reducing the number of choices offered to participants from five to two greatly changes behavior. Depending on the decision, curtailing the number of choices changed participant investment choices by 40 to 100 percent.


Cooper summarizes the discussions and presentations from the session entitled "Control of Splice Site Selection" held at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the RNA Society. Paradigms are shifting as experiments show that some of the proteins involved in regulating splicing can act as splicing enhancers or repressors, depending on the cellular context. The complex interactions among the ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) and proteins, and the role of cis elements, in controlling cell-specific splicing are highlighted. The importance of properly regulated splicing is emphasized by examples of disease pathologies in which alternative splicing is aberrant.


How does cavitation start? Presently, the nucleus theory provides the answer to this fundamental question. However the idea of nuclei contains inaccuracies that cannot be rationalized. Recent Developments in Cavitation Mechanisms discusses the uncertainties surrounding the nucleus theory, and proposes another theory of cavitation mechanism. Characteristically, the new theory is based on recent discoveries of cavity generation phenomena in separating flows. This book consists of chapters that introduce topics such as unsoundness of cavitation nuclei, and phenomena of cavity generation on walls of flow separation in hydraulic oil and water flows. Subsequent chapters cover the mechanism of cavity generation at point of flow separation, nucleation by contact motion between solids in liquid and a proposal of new cavitation mechanism based on flow separation and solid contact. The final chapters present the demonstration of a new mechanism in the hydraulic poppet valve and a concluding summary.proposes a new mechanism of cavitation inception in liquid machinesdescribes in detail phenomena of cavity generation at point of flow separation recently discovered by the authordiscusses peculiar properties of flow separation as cause of cavity generationpresents abundant experimental data of incipient cavitation obtained with high resolution of time and spaceprovides supplementary materials of slow motion videos that can help understand the very rapid and minute phenomena of cavity generation which has been discovered by the author and will be still unfamiliar to many


Approximately 51% of the adult population in Indonesia remains unbanked. They cannot fulfill formal requirements to prove their credit worthiness and are therefore not considered for services by conventional financial institutions. Addressing this barrier to their financial well- being, innovative credit scoring (ICS) has emerged as a solution for financial inclusion. Digital service providers have developed tools to gather alternative relevant data that enable them to service a much wider segment of society. However, the promise of ICS to extend financial inclusivity to the underserved population is not without caveats. Key risks include data inaccuracy, a lack of data privacy, heightened exposure to cyber risks, and potential for increasing or entrenching discrimination. As with any emerging digital financial innovation, further clarity in regulation, technology use, and data protection is needed. While Indonesia's ICS sector is still new and developing, it has been widely used for years in some developed markets including the United States and China. Following a CIPS policy paper on "The Rise of Innovative Credit Scoring Systems in Indonesia," this discussion paper unpacks the approaches to credit scoring in China and the United States to draw lessons for Indonesia. Looking at the Chinese experience, it is fair to say that excessive use of data and transparency issues remain key constraints upon a robust rating system. The Social Credit System that has been put in place alongside ICS, with widespread data-sharing to third parties, indicates the need for a clear-cut accountability chain. The state is in a difficult, maybe an impossible position, in which its interest in gathering data and concealing how it is used is in conflict with its obligation to its citizens to regulate and control the associated risks to privacy, cyber security, and users' ability to control their own data. Meanwhile, the experience with the ICS industry in the United States can inform the development of effective policies and practices in Indonesia. In the United States, the relevant policy discourse focuses not just on market power and data privacy, but also on algorithmic governance and socioeconomic biases. In particular, concerns about socioeconomic biases and algorithmic decision making has not yet gained traction in China and Indonesia, which both have substantial minorities that might find themselves subject to discriminatory access to financial services through AI and machine learning biases. Observing these international experiences helps us better understand the risks and challenges associated with innovative digital solutions that appear and evolve at a rapid pace in Indonesia.


Background: The degree to which different sinonasal symptoms contribute to the overall quality of life (QOL) detriment in chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) patients remains unknown. In this study we sought to characterize the effect of different CRS symptoms on the general health-related QOL in patients. Methodology: We performed a prospective cross-sectional study of 131 adult patients with CRS. Sinonasal symptoms were evaluated using the 22-item Sinonasal Outcomes Test (SNOT-22) and general health-related QOL was evaluated using the EuroQol 5-Dimensional general health-related QOL survey (EQ5D) and visual analog scale (EQ5D-VAS). Health utility values (HUV) were determined using responses to the EQ5D. SNOT-22 scores were broken down into subdomain scores for sleep, nasal, otologic/facial pain and emotional function symptoms. Results: The otologic/facial pain subdomain score consistently had the largest impact on EQ5D-VAS and HUV. After otologic/facial pain, the sleep subdomain score had the second largest effect while the nasal subdomain score had the least impact on general health-related QOL. Conclusions: Different types of CRS symptoms - most prominently otologic/facial pain and sleep-related symptoms - and their underlying pathophysiologic mechanisms may differentially affect the general health-related QOL detriment associated with CRS. These findings raise the possibility that treatment of the various symptoms associated with CRS may lead to differential improvement in general-health related QOL.


Based on unprecedented access to the corporation's archives, The Intel Trinity is the first full history of Intel Corporation-the essential company of the digital age- told through the lives of the three most important figures in the company's history: Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove. Often hailed the "most important company in the world," Intel remains, more than four decades after its inception, a defining company of the global digital economy. The legendary inventors of the microprocessor-the single most important product in the modern world-Intel today builds the tiny "engines" that power almost every intelligent electronic device on the planet. But the true story of Intel is the human story of the trio of geniuses behind it. Michael S. Malone reveals how each brought different things to Intel, and at different times. Noyce, the most respected high tech figure of his generation, brought credibility (and money) to the company's founding; Moore made Intel the world's technological leader; and Grove, has relentlessly driven the company to ever-higher levels of success and competitiveness. Without any one of these figures, Intel would never have achieved its historic success; with them, Intel made possible the personal computer, Internet, telecommunications, and the personal electronics revolutions. The Intel Trinity is not just the story of Intel's legendary past; it also offers an analysis of the formidable challenges that lie ahead as the company struggles to maintain its dominance, its culture, and its legacy. With eight pages of black-and-white photos.


This paper re-examines the role of exchange rates as determinant of FDI. It extends the analysis to include the issue of how exchange rates determine the decision of invest in one country depending on whether the firm is deciding to invest on the country to service the local market or to invest on the country in order to re-export. This paper offers a broad literature review of the state of the empirical research in order to draw conclusions of the real importance of the exchange rate as a determinant of FDI. Details of FDI current behavior in Latin American are described and I propose a model of FDI to be applied for these countries. Data sources are given.


Objective. Investigation into the relationship between lifestyle factors (particularly cigarette smoking) and perceived oral health has been limited. Data from the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III), 1988–1994, were used to explore this relationship in a large sample of U.S. adults. Methods. This study used data on 13,357 dentate participants in NHANES III aged 20–79 years. In NHANES III, information on perceived dental health, sociodemographic attributes, smoking status, frequency of dental visits, dental insurance, and general health perception were collected during a home interview, and oral health status was assessed at a mobile examination center. Results. Overall, 34.4% of individuals in the study sample reported having an unfavorable perception of their dental health by qualifying it as "fair" or "poor." Furthermore, 46.6% of smokers had an unfavorable dental health perception, compared to 28.3% of non-smokers. An interaction between smoking and race/ethnicity was found in logistic regression modeling. Stratified results show that cigarette smoking was not a significant predictor for an unfavorable dental health perception among individuals who self-identified as Mexican American, but smoking was a significant predictor for an unfavorable dental health perception among those who identified as non-Hispanic black or non-Hispanic white. Conclusions. This is the first study to describe the effects of smoking on dental health perception while controlling for examined oral health status. Because perceived dental health is a potential indicator for dental care utilization, a better knowledge of the factors that influence dental health perception is not only important for dental services planning, but also for understanding oral health–related quality of life issues. Additionally, given that smoking may negatively affect dental health perception, these findings have potential implications for smoking cessation activities conducted by dental care providers.