Jurisdiction refers to the power of a court or judge to entertain an action. By contrast, admissibility concerns the power of a tribunal to decide a case at a particular point in time in view of possible temporary or permanent defects of the claim. With admissibility, the question is whether the claim is ready for decision at this stage. Whereas jurisdiction typically looks at the dispute as a whole, admissibility is concerned with particular claims. Even though the distinction between jurisdiction and admissibility is a longstanding one in international law, the delimitation of the two is not always straightforward, and in addition the terminology is sometimes inconsistent. In investment arbitration, the boundary between jurisdiction and admissibility is particularly fluid. After introducing the central concepts – jurisdiction, admissibility and applicable law, Section B examines different modalities of how states and investors consent to the adjudication of their investment disputes. Section C turns to three general jurisdictional questions: Kompetenz-Kompetenz; the existence of a legal dispute and counterclaims. Section D turns to the scope of jurisdiction, and looks the four dimensions of jurisdiction (personal, territorial, temporal and subject matter). Section E distinguishes issues of admissibility from issues jurisdiction, and explains how jurisdiction and admissibility interact.


Modern states claim rights of jurisdiction and control over particular geographical areas and their associated natural resources. Boundaries of Authority explores the possible moral bases for such territorial claims by states, in the process arguing that many of these territorial claims in fact lack any moral justification. The book maintains throughout that the requirement of states' justified authority over persons has normative priority over, and as a result severely restricts, the kinds of territorial rights that states can justifiably claim, and it argues that the mere effective administration of justice within a geographical area is insufficient to ground moral authority over residents of that area. The book argues that only a theory of territorial rights that takes seriously the morality of the actual history of states' acquisitions of power over land and the land's residents can adequately explain the nature and extent of states' moral rights over particular territories. Part I of the book examines the interconnections between states' claimed rights of authority over particular sets of subject persons and states' claimed authority to control particular territories. It contains an extended critique of the dominant "Kantian functionalist" approach to such issues. Part II organizes, explains, and criticizes the full range of extant theories of states' territorial rights, arguing that a little-appreciated Lockean approach to territorial rights is in fact far better able to meet the principal desiderata for such theories. Where the first two parts of the book concern primarily states' claims to jurisdiction over territories, Part III of the book looks closely at the more property-like territorial rights that states claim in particular, their claimed rights to control over the natural resources on and beneath their territories and their claimed rights to control and restrict movement across (including immigration over) their territorial borders.


©2016 8872147 Canada Inc. or its licensors CMAJ, April 19, 2016, 188(7) 529 A70-year-old woman presented with a 24-hour history of intermittent left arm pain. She had hypertension and a family history of premature coronary artery disease. Electrocardiography (ECG; Figure 1A) showed deep symmetric T-wave inversions in leads V1 to V4 and elevated troponin I level (0.82 μg/L). She was treated according to contemporary guidelines for non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction. The risk of death or recurrent ischemic event was 19.9% (TIMI [Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction]1 score of 4). Urgent coronary angiography showed 90% stenosis of the proximal left anterior descending coronary artery (Figure 1B), which was successfully revascularized with a single drug-eluting stent. The history and initial ECG and angiographic findings were in keeping with Wellens syndrome. Transthoracic echocardiography 24 hours later showed a normal left ventricle ejection fraction. Dual antiplatelet therapy for one year was prescribed, along with cardiac rehabilitation. In the first report of Wellens syndrome, de Zwaan and colleagues2 described a subgroup of patients with unstable angina who were at high risk of extensive acute myocardial infarction of the anterior wall. These patients had distinctive ECG findings, including deep symmetric T-wave inversion or biphasic T waves in the anterior precordial leads, ST-segment changes (elevation or depression), absence of Q waves and normal R-wave progression. The characteristic T-wave changes have 69% sensitivity, 89% specificity and 86% positive predictive value for clinically significant disease of the left anterior descending artery evident on coronary angiography.3 Although the pathophysiology is unknown, edema from the ischemic myocardial cell injury may result in the characteristic T-wave changes.4 These ECG findings are commonly seen in patients who have had recent ischemic chest pain but who may be pain-free at the time of presentation. Recognition of this ominous pattern is crucial for early diagnosis and intervention.5


5-Hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) is a newly discovered DNA modification in mammalian genomes. This protocol is to be a highly efficient and selective chemical approach to label and capture 5-hmC, taking advantage of a bacteriophage enzyme that adds a glucose moiety to 5-hmC specifically, which could in turn be used for high-throughput mapping via next-generation sequencing.


This article studies the impact of exogenous legal change on whether and how lawyers across four different deal types revise their contracts' governing law clauses in order to solve the problem that the legal change created. The governing law clause is present in practically every contract across a wide range of industries and, in particular, it appears in deals as disparate as private equity M&A transactions and sovereign bond issuances. Properly drafted, the clause increases the ex ante economic value of the contract to both parties by reducing uncertainty and litigation risk. We posit that different levels of agency costs are the motivating factors that influence beneficial innovations in governing law clauses as well as their mirror opposite, costly encrustations. Our data show that lawyers who draft private equity M&A deals pay more attention to the deal terms than lawyers producing corporate and sovereign bond contracts. Because agency costs are low in the private equity setting, we observe significantly more innovation in private equity deals as compared to sovereign and corporate bond transactions where the agency problems of drafting lawyers are much greater. More surprising, we also find that contracts drafted by private equity M&A lawyers have more obsolete and encrusted terms than the contracts of the other deal types. Our conjecture is that the lawyers' dominant drafting strategy is to find examples of a desired term in other documents and import that language verbatim into the contract together with other redundant and obsolete terms including, on occasion, terms that may harm the clients' interests if retained in the contract.


Soil water deficit is a principal a biotic factor that limits plant growth and development in dry areas. Insufficient moisture contributes to soil water deficit and some negative effects on Amaranthus (spp) such as reduced growth and altered biomass allocation. Differences in soil water deficit responses of plants may be a consequence of different morphological adaptations during their developmental growth stages. In arid and semi-arid areas, water shortage is becoming an increasing problem because of the unreliable and limited rainfall and it significantly contributes to food shortage especially in Kenya. During the vegetative stage amaranth leaves are harvested while during the reproductive stage their seeds are harvested this makes its growth stages critical. Despite this obvious advantages, and besides it being the most popular and widely consumed micronutrient rich African indigenous Leafy Vegetables in Kenya, published information is limited concerning the growth stages of amaranth species in response to soil water deficit. These research was therefore designed to evaluate the seven widely cultivated amaranth species in Kenya:Amaranthus blitum (L), Amaranthus retroflexus (L), Amaranthus Spinosus (L), Amaranthus albus (L), Amaranthus cruentus (L), Amaranthus hypochondriacus (L) and Amaranthus tricolor (L). to soil water deficit in relation to their growth. The experiment was carried out at Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation, Kisii Centre. The experiment was laid out as completely randomized design, consisting of four treatments, seven species and three replications. The treatments were: 100%, 75%, 50% and 25% available water capacity. Growth parameters measured included; plant height and the stem diameter using a meter rule and a veneer calliper respectively, and by counting the number of leaves. The root to shoot ratio was determined at the end of the experiment. Soil moisture content was determined gravimetrically. Data was subjected to analysis of variance and separation of means using the Least Significant Difference at 5% level. Results showed that the seven species of amaranth were significantly (p≤0.05) affected by soil water deficit. Growth parameters during the vegetative and reproductive stages decreased with increase in water deficit and reduced significantly (p≤0.05) with further increase in water deficit. The root to shoot ratio increased with increase in soil water deficit. From the results obtained, it can be concluded that among the seven species of amaranthus evaluated, A albus, had the highest growth to soil water deficit and therefore can be recommended to be grown in water deficient regions followed by A. hypochondriacus, A. cruentus, A. retroflexus, A. blitum, A. Spinosus, and A. tricolor respectively. The results of this study can also be used to recommend better management plant strategies to drought, as it considered the effects of soil water deficit on both the vegetative and reproductive stages of growth.


The interaction between the oar blade and the water is of key importance with regard to the propulsive efficiency of rowing. Without an efficient transfer of force from the rower(s) to the water, a high mean boat velocity could not be achieved, thus having a detrimental effect on performance. In order to determine the efficiency of oar blades in rowing, the fluid forces generated by the blade must be determined. Presented here is a new measurement system for the determination of these forces using quarter scale model oar blades in the controlled environment of a water flume. A quasi-static approach is employed, with the oar blade being held static at a range of angles relative to the fluid flow direction. The measured data were shown to be highly repeatable, and initial data suggested the importance of blade curvature in the generation of both lift and drag forces throughout the stroke.


In a seemingly virtual era, maritime commerce and shipping retain a central role in contemporary global capitalism. Approximately 90% of global imports and exports currently travel by sea on around 93,000 merchant vessels, carrying almost 6 billion tons of cargo. Oceanic mobility and long-distance networks of trade are made possible and sustained by the life and labor of over 1.25 million seafarers currently working at sea as well as regimes of global security and governance. Yet, this oceanic world and its role in shaping politics, sociality, and regulation remains, for the most part, obscured and hidden out of sight in everyday life. As one of the oldest perils at sea, maritime piracy is not only a daily threat to seafaring and global shipping but makes visible this oceanic world and the larger networks of security and regulation that govern maritime commerce.
 In recent years, coastal Africa, specifically the waters off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Guinea, has seen an unprecedented rise in incidents of maritime piracy. The geopolitical and global trade importance of these areas has led to numerous national, regional, and international military and legal responses to combat this problem. While often seen as a seaborne symptom of failed states or criminality, maritime piracy has a more complex relationship with land- and sea-based governance. Occurring primarily in spaces that are politically fragmented but reasonably stable maritime piracy is better understood as a practice of extraction and claim making on mobility that emerges from deeper historical contexts and is linked to land-based economies and politics. Emphasizing maritime piracy in the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea within these wider historical and geographic contexts highlights the imbrication of the political and economic in shaping the emergence and transformations of this practice. This is not to deny the violence that constitutes maritime piracy, but to locate piracy within larger processes of mobility, governance, and political economy on the African continent and beyond. In addition to impacting local communities, seafarers, and global shipping, maritime piracy is key to apprehending challenges to global governance from the vantage point of the world's oceans.


Most governments keep balance of payments statistics on exports and imports, by value, and construct international prices indexes in order to deflate these statistics. How can intrafirm trade, trade between related parties, bias the construction of these international price indexes? Does transfer pricing, the prices of products traded between related party firms, bias the export and import price indexes in any predictable fashion? If firms manipulate transfer prices to avoid taxes or tariffs, what is the appropriate transfer price to use in constructing export and import price indexes, in theory and in practice? These issues are important because related party trade is huge, representing half of US imports and one-third of US exports, and perhaps a third of worldwide merchandise trade flows. This paper explains how transfer pricing and intrafirm trade can bias the construction of export and import price indexes, outlines and evaluates the various prices that could be used to construct these indexes, and makes some recommendations for the international price program run by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.


The object-oriented database (OODB) is the combination of object-oriented programming language (OOPL) systems and persistent systems. Object DBMSs add database functionality to object programming languages. They bring much more than persistent storage of programming language objects. A major benefit of this approach is the unification of the application and database development into a seamless data model and language environment. This report presents the comparison between object oriented database and relational database. It gives advantages of OODBMS over RDBMS. It gives applications of OODBMS.


Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are expanding their global reach, carrying their products and brands to ever more remote corners of the world. They encounter business environments that vary not only from their country of origin, but also vary greatly amongst each other. Thus foreign investors have to adapt their strategies, most notably their marketing and acquisition strategies, to the local context. In this paper, we outline why globalisation drives MNEs into emerging economies, and we provide conceptual frameworks that may aid investors to adapt their strategies to emerging economy contexts. MNEs have to develop a portfolio of local and/or global brands that matches their competences with local needs. If they aim for market leadership they may pursue a multi-tier strategy, but this needs to be supported by an appropriate foundation of global and local resources. This strategy in particular requires the acquisition of complementary local resources controlled by local firms. However, acquisitions in emerging economies are inhibited by institutional obstacles and weak local firms. Thus, foreign investors may pursue staged, multiple, indirect, or Brownfield acquisitions to build their projected operation. We illustrate our proposed strategies by analysing how one multination enterprise – Carlsberg Breweries – has developed its operations in three very different emerging economies: Poland, Lithuania and Vietnam.


Carbonados are irregular polycrystalline aggregates of diamond that occur in placers and low-grade metamorphic rocks. They are characterized by fine grain size, light carbon isotope ratio, a wide variety of inclusions of crustal materials (silicates, phosphates, and oxides), and an absence of minerals characteristically associated with diamonds from the upper mantle. We propose that all these properties, and also the presence of lonsdaleite in one carbonado, can be explained by impact metamorphism of crustal rocks containing organic carbon or a graphitic derivative, including those of the Archean and Proterozoic eras.


Through the case method and Socratic dialogue, first year law students are taught to develop critical legal analytic skills-to "think like a lawyer." Those skills, however, are primarily, if not entirely, intellectual. This article discusses the need to address emotional issues in educating law students. Unlike other articles, my article does not merely urge professors to raise such issues in their classes and discuss them analytically. Rather, I want students to actually experience emotion in the classroom setting as they discuss various fact situations and the legal principles involved in the resolution of disputes involving those facts. Law students need to understand and appreciate the emotions of people, including their own emotions, if they are to become the best lawyers they are capable of becoming. Educating law students about emotions should not be deferred until upper class clinical courses or professional responsibility courses. The place to begin that education is in the first year. To encourage such education, I present specific examples from my first-year Torts class in which I raise issues in a manner that results in an emotional response by students. I demonstrate how such methodology stimulates class discussion and enriches the law student's educational experience.


Peter Georgescu arrived in this country as a penniless Romanian refugee and rose to become the CEO of Young & Rubicam. This is why he's so heartsick that with flat wages, disappearing jobs, and a shrinking middle class, his kind of rags-to-riches story doesn't seem possible now. But he has a message for his fellow CEOs: we're the ones who must take the lead in fixing the economy.

 Marshaling deeply sobering statistics, Georgescu depicts the stark reality of America today: a nation with greater wealth inequality and lower social mobility than just about any other country in the developed world. But the problem isn't that free-market capitalism no longer works—it's that it's been hijacked by shareholder primacy. Where once our business leaders looked to the needs and interests of a variety of stakeholders—employees, community members, the business itself—now they're myopically focused on maximizing their shareholders' quarterly returns. Capitalists Arise! shows how the short-term thinking spawned by shareholder primacy lies at the root of our current economic malaise and social breakdown. But Georgescu offers concrete actions that capitalists themselves can take to create a better future. The irony is that if businesses do this, shareholders will do even better. In the long run, businesses can thrive only when society is healthy and strong. This book is a manifesto calling on capitalists to heal the nation that has given them so much.


Concrete bridge decks are prone to ice accumulation. The use of road salts and chemicals for deicing is cost effective but causes damage to concrete and corrosion of reinforcing steel in concrete bridge decks. This problem is a major concern to transportation officials and public works due to rapid degradation of existing concrete pavements and bridge decks. The use of insulation materials for ice control and electric or thermal heating for deicing have been attempted and met limited success. Conductive concrete may be defined as a cementitious composite, which contains a certain amount of electronically conductive components to attain stable and relatively high electrical conductivity. When connected to a power source, heat is generated due to the electrical resistance in the cement admixture with metallic particles and steel fibers. Based on the results of a transient heat transfer analysis, a thin conductive concrete overlay on a bridge deck has the potential to become a cost effective deicing method. Small-scale slab heating experiments have shown that an average power of about W/m2 was generated by the conductive concrete to raise the slab temperature from -1.1 degrees C (30 degrees F) to 15.6 degrees C (60 degrees F) in 30 minutes. This power level is consistent with the successful deicing applications using electrical heating cited in the literature. The work described in this paper is part of an on-going research project being conducted for Nebraska Department of Roads. Two large slabs are under construction for a bridge deck deicing experiment in a natural environment to monitor power consumption and deicing performance. The construction costs and experimental data will be used to evaluate the cost effectiveness of using a conductive concrete overlay for bridge deck deicing or anti-icing.


Background & Objective: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is associated with maternal and fetal complications. Macrosomia is the common complication despite the attempts of maintaining the good glycemic control. Therefore, our study intended to evaluate the effect of gestational diabetes mellitus on the fetal growth parameters and birth weight.
Methods: Ultrasonograms was performed on 30 patients with GDM and 30 control subjects in the age group of 18 to 34 years and 32 to 40 weeks of gestation. Fetal abdominal circumference (AC), fetal head circumference (HC) and Gestational weight (GW) were noted, calculated and followed up to record their Birth weight (BW). One hour post prandial blood samples were collected for glucose estimation.
Results: The one hour PPBS was higher in GDM (cases: 146.3 ± 11.59 mg/dl, controls: 98 ± 13.25 mg/dl, p <0.001). AC (cases: 37.53 ± 2.04 cm, Controls: 34 ± 1.35, p <0.001), HC (cases: 35.28 ± 1.62, controls: 33.63 ± 0.77cm, p <0.001), GW (cases: 3629 ± 216.5 gms, controls: 2727 ± 186.2 gms, p <0.001) and BW (cases: 3859 ± 102 gms, controls: 2866 ±148.5 gms, p <0.001) were found to be significantly high in GDM patients. With in the GDM group, there was no statistically significant difference in values of fetal growth parameters between pimigravida and multigravida.
Interpretation & Conclusion: Despite the attempts for good glycemic control there is a risk of macrosomia in GDM. Fetal growth parameters show a significant high values in GDM and there is no significant correlation with birth weight. Also, there is no significant difference in the PPBS and in fetal growth parameters between primigravida and multigravida in GDM cases.


Mobile and social technologies are providing new opportunities to document, characterize, and gather impressions of urban environments. In this paper, we present a study that examines urban perceptions of three cities in central Mexico (Guanajuato, Leon and Silao), which integrates a mobile crowdsourcing framework to collect geo-localized images of urban environments by a local youth community, and an online crowdsourcing platform (Amazon Mechanical Turk) to gather impressions of urban environments along twelve physical and psychological dimensions. Our study resulted in a collection of 7,000 geo-localized images containing outdoor scenes and views of each city's built environment, including touristic, historical, and residential neighbourhoods; and 156,000 individual judgments from MTurk. Statistical analyses show that outdoor environments can be reliably assessed with respect to most urban dimensions by the observers of crowdsourced images. Furthermore, a cross-city statistical analysis shows that outdoor urban places in Guanajuato (a touristic, cultural heritage site) are perceived as more quiet, picturesque and interesting compared to places in Leon and Silao, which are commercial and industrial hubs, respectively. In contrast Silao, is perceived to have lower accessibility than Leon. Finally, we investigate whether the perceptions of urban environments vary across different times of the day and found that places in the evening are perceived as less happy, pleasant and preserved, when compared to the same place in the morning. Through the use of collective action, participatory sensing and mobile crowdsourcing, our study engages citizens to understand socio-urban problems in their communities.


The nature of combat and command is about to be changed dramatically by advancements in information technology, which will allow the individual soldier, squad, or armored unit to become an independent decision-maker on the battlefield. Soon the US Armed Forces will possess capabilities previously dismissed as science fiction: detailed physical knowledge of the battlefield along with an unprecedented amount of strategic information in the hands of even the most junior soldier. Many military leaders observe that tactical orders are often made irrelevant by rapidly changing circumstances common to combat situations. In modern warfare, the variables of combat can change at breathtaking speed: high-speed aircraft and ground vehicles coupled with increasingly accurate long-range missiles plague commanders' carefully crafted designs. Every officer's nightmare is sending well-prepared troops into combat only to watch the situation deteriorate due the unexpected. Low-ranking soldiers, trained under rigid decision-making hierarchies, face combat with specific orders made flexible only by permission. Traditionally, soldiers in unpredictable situations are incapable of rapid mission adjustment and suffer from slow reaction times, often converting a temporary setback into an unsalvageable disaster. However, with the widespread dissemination of essential information to even the most junior soldiers made possible by emerging communications technology, such past inefficiencies--and potential disasters--will likely disappear. A fundamental problem in battlefield decision-making is that commanders are often removed from the scene of combat and therefore have limited ability to fully understand the situations facing their soldiers. Conversely, soldiers in the field have access to valuable tactical intelligence, but have historically been unable to convey it effectively to their superiors and are restrained from acting independently based on their information. Past decision-making structures have concentrated information into centralized command centers to formulate orders issued to their subordinates in the field. Commanders, with their superior training and access to theater-wide information, are thought to be best situated and qualified to give momentary orders. However, using new technologies, providing this theater-wide information directly to field soldiers and bypassing the cumbersome hierarchy seem increasingly feasible. Soldiers can combine their commander's information with their own localized circumstances to produce the best possible decisions. The current assumption among US military planners is that soldiers in the field can, with the proper education and training, make better decisions than their commanders who are removed from the battlefield itself. Only in recent years has communications technology advanced to the point where it is no longer practical for commanders to maintain a theater-wide information monopoly. With the capabilities of reliable satellite communications and compact, lightweight computers, all soldiers will have instant access to all relevant information. This could potentially eliminate the requisite and perilous delay in obtaining information or changing orders through a centralized location. …


This article reviews Britain's experience of economic growth in the twentieth century. It argues that average living standards have risen much more rapidly than is generally appreciated. The main reasons for this include increased life expectancy which is highly valued by the public and downward bias in conventional estimates introduced by traditional price deflators which do not measure the true cost of living. The main policy implication of this analysis is the need to think about the value of outcomes if appropriate public expenditure policies are to be implemented.


The Meaning of Pracimayasa Building Pura Mangkunegaran Surakarta is a study of cultural studies. The problem of research, how the significance signs of Pracimayasa building Pura Mangkunegaran Surakarta. Globalization moves on the spirit and morality in favor of the interests of material activity. Pracimayasa building as a cultural heritage building used as a commodity in the global era. Research using critical approach with theory of deconstruction supported the theory of visual communication semiotics. The study is expected to give an opportunity to develop the creativity of interpreting the text, the interior of the cultural heritage building. Data collection with observation techniques, interviews, document studies and literature. The results showed that Pracimayasa building is the residence of the palace family especially for keputren. The reality of the building's private sign Pracimayasa seen from the location of buildings that are protected from other buildings and adjacent to the core building. The reality of keputren can be seen from the type of space and visual form Pracimayasa building. As a family residence, Pracimayasa buildings included in territorial areas that are not easily accessible physically and etiquette, not all ethical people enter. Therefore Pracimayasa building as a family residence is a symbol of ethics and manners within the life of Java.


The article discusses the impact of the European Convention on Human Rights ('the Convention')  and the  case law of the European Court of Human Rights on Estonian law. It gives historical background on the ratification of the Convention and its protocols by Estonia and describes the status of the Convention in the Estonian legal order. It then shows in more detail the impact of the case law of the Strasbourg Court on Estonia's legislature, executive power, and judiciary and examines the case law pertaining in particular to the historical past, deprivation of liberty, prison conditions, fair trial and length of proceedings, retroactivity, and lack of foreseeability of criminal law, along with the case law on pluralism and civil rights, especially freedom of expression. In addition, the article focuses on the important issue of reopening of a case on national level once the European Court of Human Rights has found a violation and looks at the implementation of judgements of that court by Estonia in general. Additional remarks are made on the Supreme Court of Estonia's application of the Convention and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Finally, the impact of the case law of the Strasbourg Court in relation to Estonia on the general development of precedents with that court is discussed. In conclusion, in relation to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, it is important to understand that the Court finding a violation of the Convention in respect of Estonia is not so much a condemnation, 'against' the country, as a learning opportunity, in a sense, for Estonia's democracy, rule of law, and human rights protection system. Furthermore, there could well be other difficulties in Estonia that the Court has for various reasons had no opportunity to address. This can be seen in areas wherein the Court has found a violation by another state but wherein a similar problem still exists in Estonia – e.g., in relation to prisoners' voting rights. It is important to consider a more global picture of the human rights situation. It is unfortunate that in Estonia, especially in the media and for the wider public, little attention is paid still to the case law of the Court with respect to other states.  In general, European law has been well accepted in Estonia, especially the Convention and the case law of the Court. Working from the Estonian examples, one can confirm that the legislature; the executive power, even more so; and, above all, the judiciary of Estonia have recognised well that the Convention is an inseparable part of Estonia's legal and democratic culture. Estonian courts need to feel that they also are human rights courts, especially in dealing with the facts and Estonian law, domains wherein the Court cannot and should not act as a fourth or first instance. At the same time, the Court should be able to speak not only to the Estonian courts as counterparts but also to the Estonian people. They as well need to understand European human rights law. All in all, Estonia is quite lucky: it does not have particularly worrying human rights problems; not many violations of the Convention are found in respect of Estonia by the Court. Estonian cases have been dealing with more or less the same issues every ordinary democratic country faces, even to a certain extent with problems of a modern, well-advanced society, such as freedom of expression and privacy rights on the Internet. Also the Court has been lucky to have Estonia as an exemplar: a country wherein the Convention system and the Court's case law have been to a large extent respected and well complied with. But this mutual 'happiness', this quite nice two-way street, should not be taken for granted. The Court's case law is a moving target. It is hoped that all future developments related to the Court will contribute to improvement of the protection of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law all over Europe. Neither Estonia nor any other European country can apply the generally recognised principles by choice 'in its own way'.  Estonia's trump in Europe and beyond could be to serve as a model in the protection of human rights. In consideration of its experience, geopolitical location, and size, alongside its investments in education and the historically rooted importance of nurturing intellectual and cultural values, Estonia could be in a very good position to achieve this ambitious goal.


Multiple resistant Staphylococcus aureus became a world-wide problem. It has been commonly reported to be one of the commonest causes of hospital acquired infections. The aim of this study was to investigate its prevalence in clinical specimens and its sensitivity pattern to other antibiotics. Different clinical specimens collected from patients attending General Hospital Minna were cultured and screened for S. aureus using standard microbiological procedures. The isolates were then subjected to disc diffusion technique. All the isolates were highly susceptible to tetracycline, cefxime and ciprofloxacin (80%) followed by erythromycin (72%), chloramphenicol (68%), gentamicin (64%), cotrimozaxole (52%) and the least ampicillin (32%) and penicillin (24%). All the MRSA isolates showed resistance to at least two antibiotics tested in this study, indicating the presence of strong selective pressure from antibiotics use in this locality. There is an urgent need to adopt basic principles of aseptic and high personal hygiene, for most staphylococcal infections are readily transmitted among susceptible populations by the individuals who have acquired them by hospitalization ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY


CEO dismissals attract considerable attention, presumably because of the visibility, publicity, and intrigue that often surrounds the decision to fire the CEO. With the goal of advancing scholarly understanding of CEO dismissals, we examine whether CEO gender influences the likelihood of dismissal. We theorize and find that ceteris paribus, female CEOs are significantly more likely to be dismissed than male CEOs. Perhaps even more importantly, we find a CEO gender by firm performance interaction such that male CEOs are less likely to be dismissed when firm performance is high (compared to when it is low), whereas female CEOs have a similar level of dismissal likelihood regardless of firm performance. Notably, our results are robust to multiple analytical techniques and various econometric specifications, bringing greater credence to the validity of our findings. Implications and directions for future research are also discussed.


ABSTRACT This article assesses the spillover effects of the United States' unconventional monetary policy (i.e., quantitative easing programs adopted during 2008–2014) on the Asian credit market. Focusing on cross-border bank lending, we employed firm-level loan data with regard to the syndicated loan market and measured the international bank lending channel through changes in the United States dollar-denominated loans extended to Asian borrowers. We found that the growth of dollar credit in Asia increased substantially in response to the quantitative easing in the US financial market. The results of this study confirm the existence of the bank lending channel in Asia and emphasize the role of credit flows in transmitting financial conditions. The article also provides new evidence of cross-border liquidity spillover in the syndicated loan market. We found that the overall spillover effect was large but differed significantly in Asia by types of borrowing firms, financing purposes, and loan terms at different stages of the quantitative easing programs.


We search for the process B-0 -> pi(-) tau(+)nu(tau) using the full Belle data set of 711 fb(-1), corresponding to 772 x 10(6)B (B) over bar pairs, collected at the gamma (4S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy e(+)e(-) collider. We reconstruct one B meson in a hadronic decay and search for the B-0 -> pi(-)tau(+)nu(tau) process in the remainder of the event. No significant signal is observed and an upper limit of B(B-0 -> pi(-) tau(+)nu(tau)) < 2.5 x 10(-4) is obtained at the 90% confidence level.


Music Was My First Love Why do human beings enjoy music? Salimpoor et al. (p. 216) combined behavioral economics with brain scanning to explore how a piece of music is considered rewarding to an individual when it is heard for the first time. They discovered that neural activity in the mesolimbic striatum during listening to a novel piece of music was the best predictor of the money listeners were willing to spend on buying the piece. These observations implicate sensory cortical areas in reward processing, which the authors attribute to the aesthetic nature of the judgment. Activity in the mesolimbic striatum and its interaction with auditory cortices determines the hedonic response to new music. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate neural processes when music gains reward value the first time it is heard. The degree of activity in the mesolimbic striatal regions, especially the nucleus accumbens, during music listening was the best predictor of the amount listeners were willing to spend on previously unheard music in an auction paradigm. Importantly, the auditory cortices, amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal regions showed increased activity during listening conditions requiring valuation, but did not predict reward value, which was instead predicted by increasing functional connectivity of these regions with the nucleus accumbens as the reward value increased. Thus, aesthetic rewards arise from the interaction between mesolimbic reward circuitry and cortical networks involved in perceptual analysis and valuation.


8 Recent in situ Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) Pb isotope analyses of lunar basalts have 9 provided precise crystallisation ages and initial Pb isotopic compositions for these samples. In this 10 study, the same approach has been tested in the Apollo 16 impact melt breccia 66095, referred to as 11 the "Rusty Rock" due to its enrichments in volatile elements, including Pb. Based on these analyses of 12 the breccia, a Pb-Pb isochron age of 3909±17 Ma (at the 95% confidence level) and an initial Pb 13 composition for 66095 have been determined. This age is interpreted as representing the time of 14 breccia formation that, when combined with recent studies of lunar breccias, can be linked to the 15 Imbrium basin forming impact. The directly measured initial Pb composition of the breccia from this 16 work is similar a modelled compositions presented previously, and likely reflects an average value for 17 the lithologies present at the Apollo 16 landing site at the time that the Imbrium ejecta was emplaced. 18 The 66095 initial Pb isotopic composition is compared with the compositions in other lunar samples 19 and the nature of the endmember lithologies in this mixture has been discussed within the framework 20 of a multiple stage model of Pb isotope evolution on the Moon. This study demonstrates the 21 effectiveness of this technique beyond its application in crystalline basalts, opening up the possibility 22 of obtaining precise geochronological and Pb isotopic compositions from a broader sample set than 23 was previously recognised. 24


Subaerial particle size data holds a wealth of valuable information for fluvial, coastal, glacial and other sedimentological applications. Recently, we have gained the opportunity to map and quantify surface particle sizes at the mesoscale using data derived from small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) imagery processed using structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry. Typically, these sUAS‐SfM approaches have been based on calibrating orthoimage texture or point cloud roughness with particle size. Variable levels of success are reported and a single, robust method capable of producing consistently accurate and precise results in a range of settings has remained elusive. In this paper, we develop an original method for mapping surface particle size with the specific constraints of sUAS and SfM in mind. This method uses the texture of single sUAS images, rather than orthoimages, calibrated with particle sizes normalised by individual image scale. We compare results against existing orthoimage texture and roughness approaches, and provide a quantitative investigation into the implications of the use of sUAS camera gimbals. Our results indicate that our novel single image method delivers an optimised particle size mapping performance for our study site, outperforming both other methods and delivering residual mean errors of 0.02 mm (accuracy), standard deviation of residual errors of 6.90 mm (precision) and maximum residual errors of 16.50 mm. Accuracy values are more than two orders of magnitude worse when imagery is collected by a similar drone which is not equipped with a camera gimbal, demonstrating the importance of mechanical image stabilisation for particle size mapping using measures of image texture. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


(57) ABSTRACT An implantable electroacupuncture device (IEAD) treats car diovascular disease through application of stimulation pulses applied at at least one of acupoints EX-HN1, BL 14, HT7. HT5, PC6, ST36, LI11, LU7 and LU2. The IEAD comprises an implantable, coin-sized, self-contained, leadless electroa cupuncture device having at least two electrodes attached to an outside Surface of its housing. The device generates stimu lation pulses in accordance with a specified stimulation regi men. Power management circuitry within the device allows a primary battery, having a high internal impedance, to be used to power the device. The stimulation regimen generates stimulation pulses during a stimulation session of duration T3 minutes applied every T4 minutes. The duty cycle, or ratio T3/T4 is very low, no greater than 0.05. The low duty cycle and careful power managementallow the IEAD to perform its intended function for several years.


The most fundamental comparative corporate governance debates have often focused on two issues. The first one concerns ownership structure: Why are large corporations in some corporate governance system owned by a multitude of disempowered shareholders, thus effectively giving management free rein? Why are corporations typically governed by a controlling shareholder or a coalition of controlling shareholders in other systems? The second issue is the role of other 'constituencies' of the corporation besides shareholders, of which labor is most central to the debate. Some jurisdictions explicitly give labor an influential voice in corporate affairs, whereas in others its influence is developed through factual power or unintended consequences of legislation. This chapter explores the interactions between firm ownership and labor, focusing on the United States on the one hand and Continental Europe, particularly Germany, on the other. It distinguishes between 'old' and 'new' comparative corporate governance, the former referring to the dichotomy studied by scholars of comparative corporate law up to the early 2000s. Recent changes, heralded by intermediated, but widespread share ownership are leading us to a new equilibrium whose contours have only begun to emerge. Over the past decades, outside investors have gained power both in the United States and in Continental Europe. However, neither in the US nor in Continental Europe has the traditional corporate governance system been completely superseded by a new one. The US remains to a large extent manager-centric. Continental Europe retains powerful large shareholders, and labor as an independent force has remained more important than in the United States. Outside institutional investors – sometimes from the US – have become a player to be reckoned with, thus adding an additional layer of complexity to the system.


Recent innovations in psychology bolster an information processing theory of motivated reasoning. However, there are few attempts to apply the theory outside of a laboratory setting, and it is limited in its application to only a few political phenomena. I argue that presidential campaign debates present unique case studies to test the theory. There is a wealth of scholarly literature that examines presidential debates. Much of this research examines the effects of debates on learning political information, candidate evaluation, and vote choice. Only a few of these studies are buttressed with a psychological model of how individuals process information. In this study I apply motivated reasoning to disentangle the mechanisms through which individuals process debate information. Using national panel data sets, I analyze pre and post responses to presidential debates in both 1996 and 2008. I find strong support for a prior attitude effect and polarization. More interestingly and consistent with theory, the effects are conditioned by levels of interest. The effects of campaign debates are strongest for motivated individuals with high levels of interest. This study presents a propitious opportunity to fill gaps in existing literature and provide a fruitful test and extension of an emerging theory.


The Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax (Linnaeus, 1758) is a medium-sized, 'Near Threatened' steppe bird, whose Iberian population has been alarmingly declining over recent decades. Although this population loss has been mainly attributed to agricultural intensification, there is no information on Little Bustard adult mortality levels and their drivers. Based on a joint effort combining all the tracking data on adult Little Bustards collected over a period of 12 years by all research teams working with the species in Iberia, we found that annual anthropogenic mortality is likely to have a critical impact on the species, with values almost as high as the mortality attributed to predation. Collision with power lines was found to be the main anthropogenic threat to the adult population (3.4–3.8%/year), followed by illegal killing (2.4–3%/year), which had a higher impact than initially foreseen. Our work shows how poorly understood and previously unknown threats are affecting the survival of the most important Little Bustard population in Europe.


A multiphysics simulation approach is used in order to analyse and optimize performance of thermostimulation equipment. The temperature distribution and electric field distribution within the body tissue is simulated for varying body composition, for varying design parameters of the thermostimulation equipment and for different heating methods. Based on these simulations, information is gained regarding design choices for thermostimulation equipment, and relative effectiveness of thermostimulation equipment for patients with different body composition. The finite element package COMSOL Multiphysics is used for the simulations.


Experimental populations of Drosophila simulans were established for the purpose of detecting the presence or absence of selection on a restriction fragment length polymorphism in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). It was then discovered that the founding strains differed with respect to the Rickettsia-mediated incompatibility system in this species, which is maternally transmitted together with the mtDNA differences. A population model was constructed using the known fitness effects of the incompatibility system, with the result that the population trajectories can be completely explained by the effects of the microorganism with no need to invoke selection on mtDNA. The strong conclusion is that in this case we can rule out the strong selection proposed by MacRae and Anderson to explain the "dramatic mtDNA changes" in their Drosophila pseudoobscura populations. The population theory used for the experiments is discussed in the context of natural populations. Estimated parameters include the possibility that with two populations, one with the organism and one without it, there may be no bias as to which will invade the other, which in turn suggests no global tendency for the infection to spread or decline.


One of the medically important roles that the phosphatase calcineurin plays in regulating T cell responses is the dephospho-rylation of the transcription factor NFAT, which then can move into the nucleus and initiate transcription and cell activation. Current immunosuppressive drugs inhibit calcineurin, and therefore inhibit all of its functions, which may contribute to the known toxicity of the drugs. Aramburu et al. have made a more specific inhibitor of the NFAT activation pathway by identification of a peptide that binds with high affinity to the site on calcineurin to which NFAT binds, thereby inhibiting the association of the two proteins and specifically blocking only the NFAT pathway in the cell. This result demonstrates that interaction sites may make good targets for specifically inhibiting a particular signaling pathway and provide alternatives for the development of therapeutics. Aramburu, J., Yaffe, M.B., López-Rodríguez, C., Cantley, L.C., Hogan, P.G., and Rao, A. (1999) Affinity-driven peptide selection of an NFAT inhibitor more selective than cyclosporin A. Science 285: 2129-2133. [Abstract] [Full Text]


The context for the reform of the UN's human rights machinery that resulted in the creation of the Human Rights Council (HRC) remains an important backdrop against which to study the outcome of this process. The first part of the article begins by pointing to the coordinates of this process in order to set the context for the analysis of the impact of the reform on the work of the public special procedures. Irrespective of the other changes it is argued that two particular innovations are likely to have greatest impact on the future of the UN special procedures. The first of these is the introduction of a tightly controlled mechanism for the appointment of mandate holders; and the second is the adoption of a Code of Conduct for special procedures. While this comment addresses the first of these changes briefly, it seeks to focus on the latter, since this Code is likely to have significant impact on the work of the special procedures.
The paper ends with a reflection on the meaning of the institutional reform from two perspectives. On one hand, one of the most significant differences between the former Commission on Human Rights and the HRC lies in their institutional positioning within the UN. Instead of being a subsidiary organ of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the HRC has been created as a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly. While this upgrade may be positive in terms of the importance given to the HRC, it may also signal new dangers for the future development of UN human rights activities. From the perspective of the public special procedures it remains difficult to gauge the kind of authority likely to be exercised by the General Assembly upon their work, nor is it easy to determine how decisive the actuation of the plenary organ of the UN will be for their operational work. A second perspective reflected upon is that this institutional change has terminated the last clear institutional link within the UN between its human rights mechanisms and its main body charged with development, i.e. ECOSOC. Disconnecting the work of special procedures from ECOSOC contradicts the supposed intention of the UN reform of closing the gap between security, human rights and development, as called for by the UN Secretary General. In addition the lack of competence attributed to the HRC, including the specific instance of not being able to raise recommendations to the Security Council, is likely to act as a further brake on the synchronisation of the three pillars of the UN agenda. In terms of special procedures this is likely to adversely affect the advance on the gains made in these mandates where security and development have been effectively linked in the human rights realm.


Hierarchical scheduling provides predictable timing and temporal isolation; two properties desirable in real-time embedded systems. In hierarchically scheduled systems, subsystems should receive a sufficient amount of CPU resources in order to be able to guarantee timing constraints of its internal parts (tasks). In static systems, an exact amount of CPU resource can be allocated to a subsystem. However, in dynamic systems, where execution times of tasks vary considerably during run-time, it is desirable to give a dynamic portion of the CPU given the current load situation. In this thesis we present a feedback control approach for adapting the amount of CPU resource that is allocated to subsystems during run-time such that each subsystem receives sufficient resources while keeping the number of deadline violations to a minimum. We also show some example simulations where the controller adapts the budget of a subsystems.If we allocate CPU only based on subsystems demand and don't take into account the availability of the resource, timing guarantees of the lower priority subsystems (using a priority based scheduler in the global level) will be violated in the overload situations. In such a situation the high criticality modules should be superior to the low criticality modules in receiving resources. In this thesis, in the extension of our adaptive framework, we propose two techniques for controlling the CPU distribution among modules in an overload circumstance. First we introduce the notion of subsystem criticality and then distribute CPU portions based on the criticality level of subsystems.


The eighth biennial groundfish assessment survey of the Aleutian Islands region was conducted during the summer of 2016 by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center's (AFSC) Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering Division's Groundfish Assessment Program (RACE-GAP). This effort constitutes the fourteenth in the full series dating from 1980. The survey area covered the continental shelf and upper continental slope to 500 m in the Aleutian Archipelago from Islands of Four Mountains (170� W long.) to Stalemate Bank (170� E long.), including Petrel Bank and Petrel Spur (180� long.), and the northern side of the Aleutian Islands between Unimak Pass (165� W long.) and the Islands of Four Mountains. The survey was conducted aboard two chartered trawlers, the FV Alaska Provider and FV Sea Storm. Samples were collected successfully at 419 survey stations using standard RACE Division Poly Nor'Eastern high-opening bottom trawl nets with rubber bobbin roller gear. The primary survey objectives were to define the distribution and estimate the relative abundance commercially or ecologically important principal groundfish and invertebrate species that inhabit the Aleutian marine habitat and to collect additional data to define biological parameters useful to fisheries researchers and managers such as growth rates; length-weight relationships; feeding habits; and size, sex, and age compositions. Pacific ocean perch or POP (Sebastes alutus) was the most abundant species with an estimated biomass of 982,522 metric tons (t). Atka mackerel (Pleurogrammus monopterygius) and northern rockfish (Sebastes polyspinis) were also abundant with estimated biomasses of 447,976 and 253,215 t, respectively. Catches of POP were large throughout the survey area at intermediate depths. Arrowtooth flounder (Atheresthes stomias) was the most abundant flatfish species, having almost twice the biomass of secondplace northern rock sole (Lepidopsetta polyxystra). The skate assemblage was primarily comprised of three skate species, whiteblotched (Bathyraja maculata), Aleutian (B. aleutica), and leopard (B. panthera) skates, with a wide diversity of species captured in the eastern portion


Background: Special or 'circumscribed' interests play a prominent role in the behavioural phenotype of autism in both children and adults. Yet how and why individuals with autism engage with their special interests and the impact of these interests on well-being are poorly understood. Parental reports tend to emphasise troublesome and functionally impairing features and few studies have directly explored special interests in adults. This study addressed these gaps using an online self-report questionnaire for a large sample of male and female adults with autism and neurotypical controls.
Objectives: i) To compare how adults on the autism spectrum and neurotypical controls engage with special interests in terms of intensity of commitment and reasons for attraction ii) to explore whether level of commitment to a special interest is related to well-being.

Methods: Participants were 175 adults with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis (95 males; 80 females) and 330 adult neurotypical (NT) controls (237 males; 93 females). Participants completed the survey via the online questionnaire interface of The Open University's Biomedical Online Research Network (BORN). The questionnaire included item ratings on a specially developed Special Interest Commitment Scale (SICS), and on questions exploring participants' reasons for attraction to their chosen interest. Participants also completed Cantril's Happiness Ladder (1965), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (Dieder et al., 1985) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965).

Results: The Special Interest Commitment Scale (SICS) comprised 8 items with good internal consistency (Cronbach's Alpha=.84). On the SICS, ASD participants showed significantly more intense commitment to their interest than controls (p<.0001). For instance, 61.1% of ASD participants vs. 31.6% of controls indicated that their special interest is the most important thing in their life (p <.0001). Participants with ASD were significantly more likely than controls to report that their interest prevented interactions with other people (64.2% vs. 28.0% p<.0001), and that others said they talked too much about it (56.2% vs.23.6% p<.0001). On the 'reasons for attraction' measure, ASD participants placed significantly less value than controls on meeting others through their interest and on encountering the unexpected, and were significantly more likely to value scope within their interest for predictability and order, being in control, and spending time alone (all p <.0001). For ASD participants SICS scores were unrelated to happiness, life satisfaction and self-esteem measures, while for controls there were modest negative correlations ( happiness: r= -.18, p=.004; life satisfaction: r= -.16, p=.01; self-esteem: r= -.13, p=.04).

Conclusions: Participants with ASD showed more intense commitment to their interests than controls. According to some previous research, intense special interests in autism are functionally impairing, as they impede meeting new people and engaging with new experiences. However, in this study ASD participants were positively attracted by the regularity and 'non-social' qualities of their interests such as predictability, order, control and spending time alone. Correspondingly, for the ASD group only, special interest commitment was not negatively related to happiness, life satisfaction and self-esteem, confirming that for this group, intense, somewhat solitary interests can be benign if not life-enhancing.


Background Polypharmacy is highly prevalent in elderly people with chronic conditions, including atrial fibrillation (AF). The impact of polypharmacy on adverse outcomes and on treatment effectiveness in elderly patients with AF remains unaddressed. Methods and Results We studied 338 810 AF patients ≥75 years of age enrolled in the MarketScan Medicare Supplemental database in 2007–2015. Polypharmacy was defined as ≥5 active prescriptions at AF diagnosis (defined by the presence of International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification [ICD‐9‐CM] codes) based on outpatient pharmacy claims. AF treatments (oral anticoagulation, rhythm and rate control) and cardiovascular end points (ischemic stroke, bleeding, heart failure) were defined based on inpatient, outpatient, and pharmacy claims. Multivariable Cox models were used to estimate associations of polypharmacy with cardiovascular end points and the interaction between polypharmacy and AF treatments in relation to cardiovascular end points. Prevalence of polypharmacy was 52%. Patients with polypharmacy had increased risk of major bleeding (hazard ratio [HR], 1.16; 95% CI, 1.12–1.20) and heart failure (HR, 1.33; 95% CI, 1.29–1.36) but not ischemic stroke (HR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.92–1.00), compared with those not receiving polypharmacy. Polypharmacy status did not consistently modify the effectiveness of oral anticoagulants. Rhythm control (versus rate control) was more effective in preventing heart failure hospitalization in patients not receiving polypharmacy (HR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.76–0.99) than among those with polypharmacy (HR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.91–1.07; P=0.02 for interaction). Conclusion Polypharmacy is common among patients ≥75 with AF, is associated with adverse outcomes, and may modify the effectiveness of AF treatments. Optimizing management of polypharmacy in AF patients ≥75 may lead to improved outcomes.


In this work we analyze the class prediction of parallel randomized ensembles by majority voting as an urn model. For a given test instance, the ensemble can be viewed as an urn of marbles of different colors. A marble represents an individual classifier. Its color represents the class label prediction of the corresponding classifier. The sequential querying of classifiers in the ensemble can be seen as draws without replacement from the urn. An analysis of this classical urn model based on the hypergeometric distribution makes it possible to estimate the confidence on the outcome of majority voting when only a fraction of the individual predictions is known. These estimates can be used to speed up the prediction by the ensemble. Specifically, the aggregation of votes can be halted when the confidence in the final prediction is sufficiently high. If one assumes a uniform prior for the distribution of possible votes the analysis is shown to be equivalent to a previous one based on Dirichlet distributions. The advantage of the current approach is that prior knowledge on the possible vote outcomes can be readily incorporated in a Bayesian framework. We show how incorporating this type of problem-specific knowledge into the statistical analysis of majority voting leads to faster classification by the ensemble and allows us to estimate the expected average speed-up beforehand.


1. Mangrove species richness declines dramatically from a maximum in the Indo-West Pacific (IWP) to a minimum in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic. Explaining this 'anomalous' biogeographic pattern has been a focus of discussion for most of this century.2. Two hypotheses have been put forward to explain the mangrove biodiversity anomaly. The 'centre-of-origin hypothesis' asserts that all mangrove taxa originated in the IWP and subsequently dispersed to other parts of the world. The 'vicariance hypothesis' asserts that mangrove taxa evolved around the Tethys Sea during the Late Cretaceous, and regional species diversity resulted from in situ diversification after continental drift.3. Five lines of evidence are used to test between these two hypotheses. First, we review the mangrove fossil record. Second, we compare modern and fossil distributions of mangroves and eight genera of gastropods that show high fidelity to the mangrove environment. Third, we describe species-area relationships of mangroves and associated gastropods with respect to area of available habitat. Fourth, we analyse patterns of nestedness of individual plant and gastropod communities in mangrove forests. Fifth, we analyse patterns of nestedness of individual plant and gastropod species.4. All five lines of evidence support the vicariance hypothesis. The first occurrences in the fossil record of most mangrove genera and many genera of gastropods associated with mangrove forests appear around the Tethys Sea from the Late Cretaceous through the Early Tertiary. Globally, species richness in any given mangrove forest is tightly correlated with available area. Patterns of nestedness at the community and species-level both point towards three independent regions of diversification of mangrove ecosystems: South-east Asia, the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and the Indian Ocean region.


During the past five years, delay-Doppler radar has become the primary technique for studying the structure of Earth-crossing asteroids. None of these objects has yet been visited by spacecraft, so ground-truth test cases are lacking. A laboratory system is described that provides optical-radar images at 0.1-mm resolution. These data are analogous to the highest-resolution asteroid radar images currently available and provided realistic test cases for developing signal-processing techniques. The system can be thought of as a 1/188,000 scale model of the Arecibo radar, or a 1/52,800 scale model of the Goldstone radar.


The study aims to present baseline data on the reproductive anatomy of a poorly known tropical deer  species, Rusa deer ( Rusa timorensis ). The anatomy of female reproductive system is described using  seven uniparous hinds, aged between four and eight years. The various reproductive structures were  studied via standard descriptive methods. There was a significant difference in the length and width of both  right and left ovaries. The left ovary was slightly larger than the right ovary which indicates that it is physiologically more active. The results of the study showed that the anatomy of female reproductive  system of R. timorensis was similar to that observed in domestic ruminants except that the uterus did not  have an interconual ligament and this implies that the uterine horns are anchored in such a way that sperm deposited into only one uterine horn of the Rusa deer will be transported to the other uterine horn  (interconual transport). Unlike the red brocket deer and pampas deer, the cervix of R. timorensis was  characterized by six cervical rings projecting into the cervical canal. This feature should be taken into  account when designing effective instrumentation and techniques for transcervical passage of semen during  artificial insemination in this species. The results from this study have provided baseline data on the reproductive anatomy of this vulnerable species, and the knowledge generated can be useful in the  development of appropriate reproductive techniques in order to increase its population in captivity and also enable easy detection of its reproductive anomalies, thus strategies to propagate and conserve the species can be established. Keywords : Anatomy, Female, Reproductive system, Rusa deer, Timorensis


Any discussion on India- China relations is incomplete without mentioning that today the center of gravity of the whole world is slowly shifting to Asia. Besides, one-third of the world's population lives in countries, bordering the Indian Ocean. The security environment is uncertain and great power transitions are taking place. India and China both are aspiring powers in Asia, however, with a certain degree of asymmetries in their power and strength. In the eighties, both the economies were of the same size but today the Chinese economy is way ahead and most global supply chains run through it. China is the world's manufacturing superpower and with its technological expertise, its military expansionist ways, and its distinct footprint in India's neighborhood, both land and maritime, all make it a serious force to contend with. Over time, the relations between the two neighbors have been a cause of grave concern. The interests of both India and China intersect. They have expanding geopolitical horizons and earnestly strive for 'strategic space' in the same region. The present essay reflects upon the relations between India and China that have been oscillating from cooperation to competition and from confrontation to conflict. Further, an attempt is made to focus on the challenges that are galore and the potentiality of reworking India's China strategy.


We propose a method for using instrumental variables (IV) to draw inference about causal effects for individuals other than those affected by the instrument at hand. Policy relevance and external validity turn on the ability to do this reliably. Our method exploits the insight that both the IV estimand and many treatment parameters can be expressed as weighted averages of the same underlying marginal treatment effects. Since the weights are identified, knowledge of the IV estimand generally places some restrictions on the unknown marginal treatment effects, and hence on the values of the treatment parameters of interest. We show how to extract information about the treatment parameter of interest from the IV estimand and, more generally, from a class of IV‐like estimands that includes the two stage least squares and ordinary least squares estimands, among others. Our method has several applications. First, it can be used to construct nonparametric bounds on the average causal effect of a hypothetical policy change. Second, our method allows the researcher to flexibly incorporate shape restrictions and parametric assumptions, thereby enabling extrapolation of the average effects for compliers to the average effects for different or larger populations. Third, our method can be used to test model specification and hypotheses about behavior, such as no selection bias and/or no selection on gain.


The recent boom and bust in commodity prices has renewed the policymakers' interest in three complementary issues: i) characteristics and determinants of commodity price instability, ii) its macroeconomic effects and, iii) the optimal policy responses to this instability. This work falls within the scope of studies dedicated to the macroeconomic effects of commodity price instability, but focuses on the impact on public finance, while existing works were concentrated on growth. This paper also differs from the few previous studies on two aspects. First, we test the impact of commodity price volatility rather than focusing only on price levels. Second, we use disaggregated data on tax revenues (income tax, consumption tax and international trade tax) and on commodity prices (agricultural products, minerals and energy) in order to identify transmission channels between world prices and public finance variables. Our empirical analysis is carried out on 90 developing countries over 1980-2008. We compute an index which measures the volatility of the international price of 41 commodities in the sectors of agriculture, minerals and energy. We find robust evidence that tax revenues in developing countries increase with the rise of commodity prices but that they are hurt by the volatility of these prices. More specifically, increased prices on imported commodities, lead to increased trade taxes and (to a smaller extent) consumption taxes being collected. Export prices are also positively associated with tax revenue collection but the channel is through income taxes and non-tax revenues rather than international trade taxes and consumption taxes. However, the volatility of commodity prices, both of imported and exported commodities, is robustly negatively affecting tax revenues. These findings point at the detrimental effect of commodity price volatility on developing countries public finances and highlight further the importance of finding ways to limit this price volatility and to implement policy measures to mitigate its adverse effects.


Diffusion of alkali metal cations in the first stage graphite intercalation compounds (GIC) LiC6, NaC6, NaC8 and KC8 has been investigated with density functional theory (DFT) calculations using the optPBE-vdW van der Waals functional. The formation energies of alkali vacancies, interstitials and Frenkel defects were calculated and vacancies were found to be the dominating point defects. The diffusion coefficients of the alkali metals in GIC were evaluated by a hopping model of point defects where the energy barriers for vacancy diffusion were derived from transition state theory. For LiC6, NaC6, NaC8 and KC8, respectively, the diffusion coefficients were found to be 1.5 × 10−15, 2.8 × 10−12, 7.8 × 10−13 and 2.0 × 10−10 m2 s−1 at room temperature, which is within the range of available experimental data. For LiC6 and NaC6 a curved vacancy migration path is the most energetically favourable, while a straight pathway was inferred for NaC8 and KC8. The diffusion coefficients for alkali metal vacancy diffusion in first stage GICs scales with the graphene interlayer spacing: LiC6 ≪ NaC8 < NaC6 ≪ KC8.


Encounters leading to competitive interactions between colonies on coral reefs are to some extent accidents of patterns of recruitment and growth. In contrast, colonies of Millepora spp. actively detect nearby arborescent gorgonians and subsequently redirect growth in order to contact and overgrow them. Detection is dependent on water flow over the two colonies.


Typologies are critical tools for linguists, but typologies, like grammars, are known to leak. This book addresses the question of typological overlap from the perspective of a single language. In Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca, a language of southern Mexico, change events are expressed with three types of predicates, and each predicate type corresponds to a different language type in the well-known typology of lexicalization patterns established by Talmy and elaborated by others. O'Connor evaluates the predictive powers of the typology by examining the consequences of each predicate type in a variety of contexts, using data from narrative discourse, stimulus response, and elicitation. This is the first detailed look at the lexical and grammatical resources of the verbal system in Chontal and their relation to semantics of change. The analysis of how and why Chontal speakers choose among these verbal resources to achieve particular communicative and social goals serves both as a documentation of an endangered language and a theoretical contribution towards a typology of language use.


Literary and philosophical marginal notes regarding the transformation trilogy of Antjie Krog.  In her published PhD thesis, ' baie worde : Identiteit en transformasie by Antjie Krog  [' many becomings ' : Identity and transformation in the thought of Antjie Krog ], Jacomien Van Niekerk directs her attention to the issues mentioned in the title of her thesis. In the discussion of the trilogy at hand a brief assessment is given of the place of works similar to these within the South African literature. The work of Van Niekerk is appreciated as a contribution to Krog studies, and as a reflection on identity within a South African context. According to Van Niekerk, the concept 'identity' and the concern for the possibility of the origination of new identities, such as a South African, Pan African and even a 'black' identity, occupies a central position in this work. The work of Van Niekerk is aligned with postcolonial thinking on identity, nationhood and becoming, as well as the investigation of 'whiteness', and 'blackness' as the opposite of the 'white' Eurocentrism of the colonial era. Van Niekerk shows that Krog understands identity as a process of becoming. According to Van Niekerk, the ultimate aim of her book is to launch an investigation into nationhood, while simultaneously highlighting Krog's rejection of Eurocentrism and the accompanying conception of the 'inherent superiority' of western modernity. A shortcoming in the work of Van Niekerk is the striking absence of references to writers such as F.A. van Jaarsveld, Fransjohan Pretorius, J.C. Steyn and Herman Giliomee, all of them authors who wrote extensively about these issues. This results in a particularly one-sided perspective on the past. Krog attempts to justify everything in terms of African thought. Her thinking often borders upon becoming superficial, emotional and ideologically driven. Sometimes it is even 'propagandistic' and non-intellectual in nature. Van Niekerk mentions the strong interest in African philosophy. However, both western philosophy and African philosophy are confronted with the same problems. In this article, attention is given to those philosophical problems that are implicit or explicit in the work of Van Niekerk. Among them are problems such as the issue of essentialism, the relationships between what is universal and what is individual, constancy and dynamics (persistence and change), the nature of the whole-parts relation, the question concerning identity-in-becoming, nation, ethnic groups and the state, the relationships between community and communality, the question regarding the assumed social constructs of human society, blackness and whiteness, and a postcolonial yearning to 'become otherwise'. Even though it may appear that these problems are not interrelated, the way in which they are scrutinised in more detail indeed makes it clear that they do cohere, apart from the fact that all these problems surface in Van Niekerk's work and in the publications of Krog. Ultimately all these problems are philosophical in nature. Investigating them does not elevate one or another 'thought-system' to become the norm for all the others. Rather attention is drawn to certain states of affairs, as well as exercising immanent criticism.


The nuclear pore complex (NPC) is the sole mediator of bidirectional nucleo-cytoplasmic transport and is also an important scaffold for chromatin organization and transcriptional regulation. Proteomic studies of numerous diverse eukaryotic species initially characterized the NPC as built with a number of remarkably similar structural features, suggesting its status as an ancient and conserved eukaryotic cell component. However, further detailed analyses now suggest that several key specific NPC features have a more convoluted evolutionary history than initially assumed. Recently we reported on TbNup92, a component in trypanosomes of one such conserved structural feature, a basket-like structure on the nuclear face of the NPC. We showed that TbNup92 has similar roles to nuclear basket proteins from yeasts and animals (Mlp and Tpr, respectively) in interacting with both the NPC and the mitotic spindle. However, comparative genomics suggests that TbNup92 and Mlp/Tpr may be products of distinct evolutionary histories, raising the possibility that these gene products are analogs rather than direct orthologs. Taken together with recent evidence for divergence in the nuclear lamina and kinetochores, it is apparent that the trypanosome nucleus functions by employing several novel or highly divergent protein complexes in parallel with conserved elements. These findings have major implications for how the trypanosomatid nucleus operates and the evolution of hierarchical nuclear organization.


What is the effect of liberalizing a country's broadcasting system on the level of information of its citizens? To analyse this question, we first construct a model of state monopoly broadcasting where the government selects the amount of television news coverage of different public policy outcomes, and then sets public policy and political rents. Voters vote retrospectively given the news provided. In equilibrium, the incumbent provides some news coverage, and more so to groups for which reducing policy uncertainty is more important. We then introduce a profit-maximizing commercial channel. It provides more news coverage to groups of voters valuable to advertisers or underprovided by the state monopoly. We test our predictions on a panel of individuals interviewed in the elections before and after the entry of commercial TV in Sweden. We find that people who start watching commercial TV news increase their level of political knowledge more than those who do not. They also increase their political participation more. The positive informational effects are particularly valuable since commercial TV news attracts ex ante uniformed voters.


There are two possible computational interpretations of second-order arithmetic: Girard's system F or Spector's bar recursion and its variants. While the logic is the same, the programs obtained from these two interpretations have a fundamentally different computational behavior and their relationship is not well understood. We make a step towards a comparison by defining the first translation of system F into a simply-typed total language with a variant of bar recursion. This translation relies on a realizability interpretation of second-order arithmetic. Due to Gödel's incompleteness theorem there is no proof of termination of system F within second-order arithmetic. However, for each individual term of system F there is a proof in second-order arithmetic that it terminates, with its realizability interpretation providing a bound on the number of reduction steps to reach a normal form. Using this bound, we compute the normal form through primitive recursion. Moreover, since the normalization proof of system F proceeds by induction on typing derivations, the translation is compositional. The flexibility of our method opens the possibility of getting a more direct translation that will provide an alternative approach to the study of polymorphism, namely through bar recursion.


This paper provides novel evidence on the main factors behind consumer choices regarding investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies using the OECD Survey on Household Environmental Behaviour and Attitudes. The empirical analysis is based on the estimation of binary logit regression models. Empirical results suggest that households' propensity to invest in clean energy technologies depends mainly on home ownership, income, social context and household energy conservation practices. Indeed, home owners and high-income households are more likely to invest than renters and low-income households. In addition, environmental attitudes and beliefs, as manifest in energy conservation practices or membership in an environmental non-governmental organisation, also play a relevant role in technology adoption.


The development of new E-learning technologies and the arrival of mobile learning systems have brought greater impact on the education sector especially towards higher education learning system. There is no doubt that it is extremely useful for all those individuals lacking sufficient time for their studies. They can use such electronic forms of learning to enjoy the anytime & anywhere learning environment. It has attracted the attention of big software industry owners as well as mobile technology based companies over the period. M-learning is able to provide the learners with learning opportunities with greater capabilities through the use of mobile phones or smart-phones. Northern Border University (NBU) in Saudi Arabia is already using several online and offline automated software's & Blackboard LMSs in its various Deanships, Colleges and Departments for student's self-learning purposes. This case study aims to assess the behavioral differences of students/faculty members using E-learning (Mobile Apps/ Web applications) to learn/teach the respective subjects. It discusses about the perceptions of students/faculty members about M-learning & E-learning including the modes and their maximum uses of certain mobile App/Web Application whether offline or online. There are five criteria and for each criterion questionnaires are designed to take the opinions from different groups. Likert scale method is used here. Statistical testing method T-Test is used here to calculate the results among the groups.


Objective: Atenolol is one of beta-blocker are prohibited as doping based on World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The purpose of this study was to the synthesis of molecular imprinted polymer (MIP) for extraction of atenolol from the sample. Method: This research compared the two of the method, bulk and precipitation polymerization. The MIP was successfully prepared from methacrylic acid as a functional monomer, ethyleneglycoldimethacrylate as a crosslinker, benzoyl peroxide as an initiator, butanol as a porogenic solvent with atenolol as a template molecule. Result: The result showed that the bulk polymerization method produces sorbents that have good adsorption capacity and small particle compare to the precipitation polymerization. Both methods were selective for atenolol. Conclusion: Generally, the MIP solid phase extraction is an alternative method for extraction atenolol from the sample. Key words: Atenolol, Molecular Imprinted Polymer, Solid Phase Extraction.


We apply the rigorous electromagnetic grating theory and an electromagnetic wave-propagation model with Kirchhoff boundary conditions to analyze and optimize the performance of arrays of cylindrical dielectric multilevel diffractive lenses. We show that the diffraction efficiency of a high-numerical-aperture lens array can be improved if the surface-relief profile is constructed with the use of rigorously optimized grating groove structures, which differ significantly from a multilevel approximation of a triangular profile.


The relative distribution of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) and sea surface temperature (SST) fronts have been studied in summer in the north-western Mediterranean Sea. We used passive acoustic data (778 samples) obtained offshore during dedicated surveys between 1999 and 2004 and Pathfinder/Modis remote sensing data to compute front maps and to calculate mean distances from sperm whale detections (N=132) to SST-fronts. Mean distances from sperm whale acoustic detections to SST-fronts were significantly lower (10.4 km) than from other acoustic samples to those fronts (17.0 km). The same result was obtained when calculating distances from sperm whales to the North Balearic Front surface signature. If sperm whales are commonly observed along the continental slope, we showed that offshore individuals were located close to SST-fronts. This bimodal distribution in the north-western Mediterranean is linked to sperm whale feeding strategy, demonstrating ecological opportunistic behaviour in this high level predator.


Although the role of theories in design research is recognized, we show that little attention has been paid on how to use theories when designing new artifacts. We introduce design principles as a new methodological approach to address this problem. Design principles extend the notion of design rationales that document how a design decision emerged. We extend the concept of design rationales by using theoretical hypotheses to support or object to design decisions. At the example of developing a new conceptual modeling grammar we demonstrate two main benefits of using design principles. First, the link between theory and design decision enables the design researcher to reason about the resulting behavior of the IT artifact prior to instantiation. Second, design principles allow deducing empirically testable hypotheses to foster the rigorous evaluation of IT artifacts.


Regions in the vasculature that are exposed to steady laminar blood flow are protected from atherosclerosis as compared with regions where flow is disturbed. We found that flow decreased TNF-mediated VCAM1 expression by inhibiting JNK and p38. JNK inhibition correlated with inhibition of apoptosis signal–regulating kinase 1 (ASK1), a JNK and p38 activator. Thioredoxin-interacting protein (TXNIP) is a stress-responsive protein that inhibits thioredoxin (TRX) activity. Since thioredoxin inhibits ASK1, we hypothesized that changes in TXNIP-TRX-ASK1 interactions mediate the antiinflammatory effects of flow. To explore this, we used perfused vessels and cultured ECs. Exposure of rabbit aortae or ECs to normal flow (12 dyn/cm2, 24 hours) was associated with decreased TXNIP expression and increased TRX activity compared with exposure to low flow (0.4 dyn/cm2). Normal flow inhibited TNF activation of JNK/p38 and VCAM1 expression. In cultured ECs, reduction of TXNIP expression by small interfering RNA increased TRX binding to ASK1 and inhibited TNF activation of JNK/p38 and VCAM1 expression. Conversely, overexpression of TXNIP stimulated JNK and p38. In aortae from TXNIP-deficient mice, TNF-induced VCAM1 expression was inhibited. The data suggest that TXNIP and TRX are key components of biomechanical signal transduction and establish them as potentially novel regulators of TNF signaling and inflammation in ECs.


The 40 km/h school zone measure was announced in 2001 and implemented for all NSW schools. The intention of the measure was to improve the safety of children around schools. The development of spatial information systems in conjunction with the RTA crash data system overcame previous limitations in the identification of defined school zones in the crash data, thus a study of the impact of the 40 km/h school zone initiative was able to be undertaken. Geo-coded information from the regional speed management databases and follow up site visits identified a sample of 820 school zones for the crash data analysis. Crash data within these school zones were analysed for the period prior to the 40 km/h hour school zone measure and the period post the measure. The results were analysed with respect to the underlying reductions in road trauma throughout NSW over this period. The introduction of the 40 km/h school zone measure was found to be associated with a significant reduction in child pedestrian trauma in the identified school zones. The analysis found that the 40 km/h school zone measure also benefited other road users.


To describe the horizontal and vertical distribution of recent planktic foraminifera in Fram Strait (Arctic), plankton samples were collected in the early summer of 2011 using a MultiNet sampler (>63 µm) at 10 stations along a west–east transect at 78°50′N. Five depth intervals were sampled from the sea surface down to 500 m. Additionally, sediment surface samples from the same locations were analysed. The ratio between absolute abundances of planktic foraminifera in the open ocean, at the ice margin and in the ice-covered ocean was found to be approximately 2:4:1. The assemblage was dominated by the polar Neogloboquadrina pachyderma (sin.) and the subpolar Turborotalita quinqueloba, which accounted for 76 and 15% of all tests in the warm, saline Atlantic waters and 90 and 5% in the cold and fresh Polar waters, respectively. Both species had maximum absolute abundances between 0 and 100 m water depth, however, they apparently lived shallower under the ice cover than under ice-free conditions. This indicates that the depth habitat of planktic foraminifera in the study area is predominantly controlled by food availability and not by temperature. The distribution pattern obtained by plankton tows was clearly reflected on the sediment surface and we conclude that the assemblage on the sediment surface can be used as an indicator for modern planktic foraminiferal fauna.


This study had two objectives: (1) to describe the levels of victimization of Salvadorians due to criminal violence, and the population groups most affected by it; (2) to learn if these levels of victimization are related to the presence of norms, attitudes, and behaviors that encourage the occurrence of violence. For this purpose data from the ACTIVA project of El Salvador were used. The project was carried out by the University Institute of Public Opinion during October and November 1996, with a sample of 1,290 personal interviews that were presumed to be representative of people between 18 and 70 years of age living in the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador. The sample was obtained through multistage probability sampling. The results show that the level of victimization from violence is quite high in San Salvador and that it especially affects adult and young men. The results also indicate that persons who have been victims of serious aggression tend to show, more frequently than average, norms justifying and approving the use of violence, a tendency to use weapons, and aggressive behaviors toward other people.


JNK proteins have been shown to be involved in liver carcinogenesis in mice, but the extent of their involvement in the development of human liver cancers is unknown. Here, we show that activation of JNK1 but not JNK2 was increased in human primary hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs). Further, JNK1 was required for human HCC cell proliferation in vitro and tumorigenesis after xenotransplantation. Importantly, mice lacking JNK1 displayed decreased tumor cell proliferation in a mouse model of liver carcinogenesis and decreased hepatocyte proliferation in a mouse model of liver regeneration. In both cases, impaired proliferation was caused by increased expression of p21, a cell-cycle inhibitor, and reduced expression of c-Myc, a negative regulator of p21. Genetic inactivation of p21 in JNK1-/- mice restored hepatocyte proliferation in models of both liver carcinogenesis and liver regeneration, and overexpression of c-Myc increased proliferation of JNK1-/- liver cells. Similarly, JNK1 was found to control the proliferation of human HCC cells by affecting p21 and c-Myc expression. Pharmacologic inhibition of JNK reduced the growth of both xenografted human HCC cells and chemically induced mouse liver cancers. These findings provide a mechanistic link between JNK activity and liver cell proliferation via p21 and c-Myc and suggest JNK targeting can be considered as a new therapeutic approach for HCC treatment.


There is a demand in the United States for a representative body of registered nurses to meet the needs of an ever-growing, aging, and increasingly diverse population. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the aging and retirement of the majority White nursing workforce created a need for a diverse body of competent and culturallysensitive nurses to care for the aging baby boomers, an increasingly diverse population, and to counter healthcare disparities. Lack of diversity in nursing has been compounded by the high attrition rate of minorities in nursing education programs, particularly African Americans, the largest minority group in nursing. This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of African-American women who have become registered nurses. Phenomenology was the primary qualitative research method used, with a focus on life histories. A purposive sample of 14 registered nurses participated in this study. The purpose of this study was to gather understanding of the participants' lived worlds and experiences before, during, and after becoming registered nurses by examining how their childhood, K-12 education, nursing education program, and life and professional experiences influenced their journeys to become registered nurses. Participants were interviewed using open-ended, semi-structured interview methods. Critical race theory and Black feminist thought were the conceptual frameworks used to guide this study. Analysis was grounded in the impacts of the intersection of race, class, and gender and contextualized historically by the decade participants attended nursing school. Significant themes that emerged from the participants' narratives were violence, living in poverty, overcoming educational obstacles, paying for nursing school, grit and tenacity, lack of diversity, and support/lack of support. Findings from this study provide VOICES OF PERSEVERANCE vi insight into the effects of educational inequity, socioeconomic status, role responsibilities, and marginalization each woman encountered on her journey to become a registered nurse. Additionally, participant grit and tenacity were highlighted as each persevered to become a registered nurse while overcoming personal, social, and structural barriers. This study aimed to illuminate the oft-absent voice of African-American women in nursing and to contribute to the discussion of strategies, policies, and practices to increase the number of AfricanAmerican registered nurses.