The third air transport liberalisation package in the EU was fully implemented in Greece in July 1998. Nevertheless, little has changed since then in terms of the geographical dispersion of air traffic flows. The recent financial downturn of the Greek economy led to a substantial deterioration of traffic, particularly in the domestic market The Greek state concluded an airport concession tender process in late 2014 with potentially important repercussions not only for the 14 regional airports in question but also for the wider aviation market in Greece. Nonetheless, a newly elected government announced in early 2015 that it will re-examine the whole issue, building, among other factors, on the opinions, concerns and reasons expressed by various interested groups including senior staff in affected airports. On these grounds, the present paper discusses the findings of semi-structured telephone interviews with all 39 Greek airport managers to identify the rationale behind this stance. Moreover, issues related to airport operations and development prospects are addressed from various viewpoints. The paper concludes with policy suggestions, taking into account the existing literature on airport management and ownership while combining the findings from desk and empirical research undertaken by the authors.


OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to demonstrate the effect of self-exercise with a therapeutic inflatable ball (SEIB) in elderly patients with myofascial pain syndrome.

DESIGN
Single-blind, randomized, controlled noninferiority trial.

SETTING
University campus.

PARTICIPANTS
Forty elderly patients with myofascial pain syndrome completed the study. They were randomly allocated to SEIB (n = 22; mean age, 70.23 ± 6.11 years) or ultrasound (US) therapy (n = 18; mean age, 67.99 ± 5.64 years).

INTERVENTION
SEIB and US therapy (twice weekly for 4 consecutive weeks).

OUTCOME MEASURES
Visual analog scale (VAS), pressure pain threshold (PPT), and cervical lateral flexion (CLF) were measured at baseline and at 1, 2, 3, and 4 weeks.

RESULTS
The noninferiority test indicated that SEIB was not inferior to US for VAS, PPT, and CLF. Between-group comparisons showed no significant differences in the VAS (F = 2.579; p = 0.117), the PPT (F = 0.245; p = 0.624), and the CLF (F = 2.072; p = 0.159). In within-group comparisons, both groups presented significant differences in VAS (SEIB after 1 week and US after 1 week), PPT (SEIB after 3 weeks and US after 4 weeks), and CLF (SEIB after 4 weeks and US after 4 weeks) compared with baseline values.

CONCLUSIONS
SEIB for 4 weeks has an effect similar to that of US for desensitizing myofascial pain and increasing joint flexibility. High accessibility and low cost would make SEIB a practical self-treatment method in elderly patients with myofascial pain syndrome.


Corporate groups are specific types of business networks that generate particular advantages for firms. They allow corporates to reduce costs, develop the pool of resources and increase the flexibility of operations and responses to external shocks among others. The above mentioned benefits are of even greater importance during times of economic turbulence. Their involvement in a corporate group should theoretically allow firms to perform better. The aim of this study is to verify whether corporate group membership truly translated into a firm's higher input competitiveness and a firm's better performance during the recent economic crisis. First, we try to investigate if the input competitiveness is higher in the case of firms being members of corporate groups. Second, we test whether the involvement in a corporate group matters for the performance of the firms. Using critical in-depth literature studies and conducting the primary empirical research using the CATI (computer-assisted telephone interviewing) method we strive to verify the following hypothesis - the higher a company's input competitiveness during the economic crisis, the better a competitive position the company achieves. The empirical research encompasses more than 700 corporates from the manufacturing sector in Poland during the global economic crisis and shortly afterwards. To investigate the issue we use the following methods of statistical analysis – cluster analysis, non-parametric tests and correlation coefficients. The results of the study show that firms involved in both Polish and international corporate groups were more resilient during the economic crisis than those which were not.


This paper presents an unsupervised learning approach to video-based face recognition that does not make any assumptions about the pose, expressions or prior localization of landmarks on the faces. The proposed algorithm exploits spatiotemporal information obtained from local features that are extracted from arbitrary keypoints on faces as opposed to pre-defined landmarks. The algorithm is inherently robust to large scale occlusions as it relies on local features. During unsupervised learning, faces from a video sequence are automatically clustered based on the similarity of their local features and a voting-based algorithm is employed to pick the representative features of each cluster. During recognition, video frames of a probe are sequentially matched to the clusters of all individuals in the gallery and its identity is decided on the basis of best temporally cohesive cluster matches. The proposed algorithms can also detect sudden identity changes in video by utilizing the temporal dimension. The algorithm was tested on the Honda/UCSD video database and a maximum of 99.5% recognition rate was achieved.


The Queretaro area, 200 k m northwest of Mexico City, has been producing fine, unusually transparent opal with vivid red and green play of color for over 100 years. These opals occur largely in gas cavities in pink to brick-red, thinly bedded rhyolitic lava flows and are mined in open-pit quarries. After examining thousands of opals from this area, the authors selected 20 specimens containing excellent examples of both common and rare inclusions that seemed to represent the variety o f inclusions found in gemquality opals from this locality. The opals and their inclusions were then subjected to a battery of tests to ascertain their nature. These tests revealed both twoand three-phase inclusions and a variety of different mineral species.


Electricity pools are generally cleared through auctions that are conveniently formulated as mixed-integer linear programming problems. Since a mixed-integer linear programming problem is non-continuous and non-convex, marginal prices cannot be easily derived. However, to trade electricity, prices are needed. Thus, a relevant question arises: how does one generate appropriate prices? This paper addresses this important issue and proposes a primal-dual approach to derive efficient revenue adequate uniform prices that guarantee that dispatched producers are willing to remain in the market. Such prices may not significantly deviate from the marginal prices obtained if integrality conditions are relaxed in the original mixed-integer linear programming problem. Two case studies illustrate the functioning of the proposed pricing scheme.


A refinement type can be used to express a detailed specification of a higher-order functional program. Given a refinement type as a specification of a program, we can verify that the program satisfies the specification by checking that the program has the refinement type. Refinement type checking/inference has been extensively studied and a number of refinement type checkers have been implemented. Most of the existing refinement type checkers, however, need type annotations, which is a heavy burden on users. To overcome this problem, we reduce a refinement type checking problem to an assertion checking problem, which asks whether the assertions in a program never fail; and then we use an existing assertion checker to solve it. This reduction enables us to construct a fully automated refinement type checker by using a state-of-the-art fully automated assertion checker. We also prove the soundness and the completeness of the reduction, and report on implementation and preliminary experiments.


Energy is considered as a main influence on urban configurations. However, there is a difficulty on translating the city models based on theoretical renewable energy concepts into practical applications. This study considers the possibility of understanding this future model as a transformation of the existing urban centres. With this objective, a methodology to intervene in existing cities based on the study of solar access is developed. Therefore, an analysis of solar potential in relation with urban morphology is carried on through a simulation software in l'Eixample, a neighbourhood of Barcelona. The distribution of the sun factor in the different areas of the building blocks envelope displays possible morphological modifications that would facilitate solar energy collection. Consequently, the analytical method presented could be applied to regulate urban interventions with the aim of obtaining more solar energy based cities.


One justification of public private partnerships (PPP) is the alleged benefit they offer in terms of through-life management (TLM). Aiming at an evaluation of this claim, the dominant reasoning connecting PPPs and TLM is first defined: In creating a single point of responsibility and a long temporal involvement, the PPP model provides an effective incentive to implement TLM. This reasoning is first evaluated through prior large scale studies and through two case studies undertaken by the authors. No substantial evidence of TLM benefits is found. To identify the causes for this gap between intention and achievement, a critical review of the PPP literature supported by insights from management and organization theory is undertaken. Four problems in the reasoning are found to explain the gap: fragmentation is factually prevailing; not all parties in PPPs intend to have a long term commitment to the project; there may be competing incentives for some parties; and the effort to achieve the change and learning necessary for TLM may be missing. It is concluded that for the TLM benefits to be achieved, the PPP model has to be redesigned to secure incentivisation towards TLM and to incorporate TLM mechanisms at the level of the production system.


'I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it's sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday; but on Friday, when the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get re-made; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three!


Library automation in Taiwan began in the 1970s and has been marked by an impressive array of achievements since the 1980s. In 1972, the Department of Physics at National Tsinghua University began automation using an IBM 1120 computer for the book catalog of Western materials.[1] Three years later, in 1975, Margaret Fung experimented with an integrated library system of acquisitions, cataloging, and circulation on a Wang MVP minicomputer.[2] In 1980, the Chinese Character Code for Information Interchange (CCCII) was completed, and--a year later--the Chinese MARC was developed.[3] In library automation, the National Central Library has taken the helm.[4] Its Automated Information Service (NCLAIS) is the most ambitious library project in Taiwan. In 1980, the National Central Library and the Library Association of China jointly developed the Chinese Library Automation Planning Project with four main objectives: to develop the Chinese MARC format; to organize the data processing system for Chinese-language materials; to create a database for Chinese publications and introduce foreign databases; and to establish a national information network. The National Central Library has developed four main databases: acquisitions, catalog, serials control, and index. The acquisitions database consists of four subfiles, namely: acquisitions, budget control, publishers/suppliers, and statistics. The statistics file provides statistical data on cancellations, budgeting, performance of suppliers, and average price. There is, however, no breakdown by discipline. The index database indexes Chinese periodicals and gazettes published since 1983. About one thousand periodicals and gazettes are regularly reviewed for inclusion. The index database is not yet available for public access. Its print counterparts are Index to Chinese Periodical Literature and Index to Chinese Official Gazettes. A CD-ROM version is also available. The serial control has not operated as part of the integrated system. The best and currently fully implemented database is the online catalog. This database uses the Chinese MARC format, structured on the basis of UNIMARC with modifications to meet local requirements. Full descriptions of bibliographic records in the Chinese language conform with the Chinese cataloging rules and, to a large extent, with the International Standard Bibliographic Descriptions and the second edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules. The online catalog database provides the source for publishing the Chinese National Bibliography, a monthly with annual and multiyear cumulations. The online catalog of the National Central Library provides a dozen or so access points, such as title, author, Chinese subject heading, English subject heading, Chinese classification, Library of Congress classification, Chinese printed card number, SuDoc number, ISBN, ISSN, Library of Congress card number, and accession number. In addition, four qualifiers (language, publisher, publication date, and format) are available for restricted searching. A set of Chinese characters can be searched with Boolean logical operators. Four methods can be used for inputting Chinese: three-corner, chuyin (phonetic symbols), ts'ang-chieh (radical index), and simplified ts'ang-chieh. In 1989, the National Central Library purchased a Tandem and developed a cooperative online cataloging project. At present, the National Central Library uses URICA, which began operation in March 1995. A survey of library automation released in 1988 indicates that the National Central Library, the Academia Sinica, nine universities, four colleges, twelve special libraries, and two producers have implemented, developed, or tested their library automated systems to varying degrees.5 In 1984, the National Chengchi University began its automated circulation system designed by First International Computer (FIC), and later developed an FIC integrated library system. …


Efficient collective communication is crucial to parallel-computing applications such as distributed training of large-scale recommendation systems and natural language processing models. Existing collective communication libraries focus on optimizing operations for dense inputs, resulting in transmissions of many zeros when inputs are sparse. This counters current trends that see increasing data sparsity in large models. We propose OmniReduce, an efficient streaming aggregation system that exploits sparsity to maximize effective bandwidth use by sending only non-zero data blocks. We demonstrate that this idea is beneficial and accelerates distributed training by up to 8.2x. Even at 100 Gbps, OmniReduce delivers 1.4--2.9x better performance for network-bottlenecked DNNs.


Control and optimization of an oil production network based on gas-lift is a difficult task with challenges including well fluid flow oscillations and pipeline slugging which can lead to instabilities in the system. A possible control solution to this is Model predictive control, which requires a model capable of capturing the main characteristics of the controlled process, such as oscillations and input dependencies. In this thesis models for wells and flowlines are instantiated in the detailed multiphase dynamic fluid flow simulator OLGA. Further, simpler dynamic models are attempted fitted to these models, and the comparison between the resulting models is discussed. In addition state estimation using an Extended Kalman Filter is performed on the flowline model, based on measurements proposed in \cite{Lund}. Based on the fitting of models and implementation of state estimation for the flowline system, methods for NMPC are attempted implemented using the JModelica.org environment, and limitations and advantages associated with this environment are assessed.


Recently, there has been considerable progress on designing algorithms with provable guarantees -- typically using linear algebraic methods -- for parameter learning in latent variable models. But designing provable algorithms for inference has proven to be more challenging. Here we take a first step towards provable inference in topic models. We leverage a property of topic models that enables us to construct simple linear estimators for the unknown topic proportions that have small variance, and consequently can work with short documents. Our estimators also correspond to finding an estimate around which the posterior is well-concentrated. We show lower bounds that for shorter documents it can be information theoretically impossible to find the hidden topics. Finally, we give empirical results that demonstrate that our algorithm works on realistic topic models. It yields good solutions on synthetic data and runs in time comparable to a single iteration of Gibbs sampling.


Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) is a common neoplasm, representing 5 - 10% of malignant solid tumours in childhood, and is the commonest soft-tissue sarcoma in the paediatric age group. Even though the tumour usually arises from striated muscle, it frequently originates from sites devoid of striated muscle such as the urinary bladder, prostate gland and gallbladder. We present an unusual case of a large intra-abdominal embryonal RMS which demonstrated a mesenteric cleft inferolaterally with feeding vessels entering the mass. This unique presentation of embryonal RMS proved to be a diagnostic challenge.


In Quebec more than 48% of residual materials produced in 2006 throughout all societal activities have been disposed of finally in landfills. Despite of the government policies on 3Rs (Reduction, Reutilization, Recycling) and the total recovery objectives set-up, the total mass landfilled has increased by 120% over the last 10 years. Over the last 50 years, although the agricultural surface decreased by half, the number of pigs tripled. With an annual production of almost 8 million pigs, on a more than 400 out of a total of 1200 Quebec municipalities have a considerable surplus in liquid manure. The present work undertakes a review of these two growing problems-opportunities in Quebec and proposes alternative and sustainable solutions. Since the building and operation of experimental bioreactors (manure digesters) in some farms in Quebec, the anaerobic co-digestion of the rural and urban putrescible materials seems an interesting avenue. The development of a green energy vector by valorizing the so-produced biogas, would also contribute in decreasing the rejection of contaminants in the environment. In this work, only the biomass, resulting from the residential sector and the quantity of the liquid manure available in Quebec, is considered to calculate the bioenergy potential. The bioenergy output of the various methanisation processes is compared with that abroad, particularly in Europe. The available biomass in Quebec has been calculated based on available statistical data regarding the production of urban waste and manure. The review shows that this bioenergy vector technology is sustainable and that its commercialization can be profitable at a cost not higher than that of disposal in landfills.


Introduction. High subscription fees to scholarly research journals provoke researchers to use illegal channels of access to scientific information. Analysis of statistical data on downloads of scholarly research papers by Ukrainian Internet users from illegal web resource can help to define gaps in information provision at the institutional or the state level for each scientific field. Problem Statement. To conduct an analysis of behavior and geography of downloads of scholarly research publications from illegal web resource Sci-Hub by Ukrainian Internet users within the period from September 1, 2015 to February 29, 2016. Purpose. To assess the information needs of Ukrainian researchers who download scientific papers from Sci-Hub. Materials and Methods. The used file is available at public domain and contains complete data of downloads of scholarly research articles from Sci-Hub for the period from September 1, 2015 to February 29, 2016. Inquiries of users with Ukrainian IP-addresses have been selected. Using DOI of downloaded articles enables finding the publishers and journal brands with the help of CrossRef API, whereas using the All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes makes it possible to identify the subject. Results. The study has shown that the most documents downloaded related to natural sciences (primarily, chemistry, physics, and astronomy), with Elsevier publications being the most frequently inquired by Ukrainian users of Sci-Hub and Internet users from Kyiv downloading the papers most actively. Conclusion. The obtained data are important for understanding the information needs of Ukrainian researchers and can be used to formulate an optimal subscription policy for providing access to information resources at Ukrainian R&D institutions.


Shales often show strong elastic anisotropy that originate from the alignment and platy nature of its constituent minerals. Despite its impact on amplitude variation with offset response and seismic time‐shifts, elastic anisotropy of shales is, however, often ignored since it is difficult to measure enough parameters in the field. Being able to correctly estimate anisotropy parameters of shales can therefore significantly improve seismic reservoir characterization. A predictive model is developed by combining existing theories. Properties of locally aligned clay platelets, called domains, are calculated using a rock physics model based on the anisotropic Hashin‐Shtrikman estimates. The effect of domain orientation is then accounted for by the orientation distribution function of domains. The applicability of the model was investigated using existing core measurements. Interesting findings include: (a) most of modeled anisotropy parameters are consistent with the measured values even though only limited information was used for the model parameters optimization, and (b) most of optimized interplatelet medium properties are consistent with the saturated fluid and small interplatelet medium shear modulus suggested by existing studies. These findings imply that the model can be used to predict anisotropy parameters from limited information.


This chapter provides an overview of the recently described vaccine-associated adverse events and also provides an estimate of the rate of such events. In the early development stages of the vaccine, neurotropic disease (also known as postvaccinal encephalitis) among children was the most common serious adverse event associated with yellow fever vaccines. Of the eight patients, five had renal failure that required hemodialysis and five died. In two fatal cases, yellow fever antigen was identified by immunohistochemistry in liver biopsies in one case and multiple tissue specimens in the other. All vaccine recipients during the most recent 12-month period for which complete information was available were categorized by age group. Yellow fever virus was isolated from the blood of one person 13 days after vaccination. Yellow fever vaccine-associated adverse events among U.S. citizens that were reported to Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) from 1990 through 2002 were categorized as yellow fever vaccine-associated viscerotropic disease or yellow fever vaccine-associated neurotropic disease and classified by age group. Like the current analysis of the rate of yellow fever vaccine adverse events, this estimate was based on passive reporting and the number of vaccine doses distributed as provided by the manufacturer.


Abstract Internal time-resolved measurement of magnetic field and electron temperature in low-field (≤ 1 T) plasmas is a difficult diagnostic challenge. To meet this diagnostic challenge in the Madison Symmetric Torus reversed-field pinch, two techniques are being developed: 1) spectral motional Stark effect (MSE) and 2) Fast Thomson scattering. For spectral MSE, the entire Stark-split Hα spectrum emitted by hydrogen neutral beam atoms is recorded and analyzed using a newly refined atomic emission model. A new analysis scheme has been developed to infer both the polarization direction and the magnitude of Stark splitting, from which both the direction and magnitude of the local magnetic field can be derived. For Fast Thomson scattering, two standard commercial flashlamp-pumped Nd:YAG lasers have been upgraded to "pulse-burst" capability. Each laser produces a burst of up to fifteen pulses at repetition rates 1–12.5 kHz, thus enabling recording of the dynamic evolution of the electron temperature profile and electron temperature fluctuations. To further these capabilities, a custom pulse-burst laser system is now being commissioned. This new laser is designed to produce a burst of laser pulses at repetition frequencies 5–250 kHz.


In his Longwood Sketches: Suite for Organ in Four Parts (Theodore Presser, 1927), Belgian-American organist Firmin Swinnen provides the vicarious traveler with an aural travelogue of gunpowder magnate Pierre S. du Pont's Longwood Gardens outside Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. Swinnen relays his impressions of landscapes, waterscapes, and the Lenni Lenape Indian provenance of the estate in a composition that stylistically resembles music that accompanied silent travel films of the early 1900's known as Scenics. As organist at Broadway's Rialto and Rivoli Theatres between 1916 and 1921 and Philadelphia's Aldine Theatre in 1922, Swinnen accompanied Scenics with titles like Tropical Nights (Robert C. Bruce, 1920), Lake Tahoe, Land of the Sky (Essanay, 1916), Geysers of the Yellowstone (Paramount, 1917), and Trails that Lure (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1920). These films have been archived and preserved to allow for viewing by modern-day audiences. Absent from the films, however, is the sound of musical accompaniment which, during the silent era, was provided either by an orchestra or organist who through-played one or two composed orchestral compositions or by an organist who improvised an accompaniment that was informed by changing scenery on the screen. By referring to period film music columns like Montville Morris Hansford's "Preparing Music for Photoplay Accompaniments" (New York Dramatic Mirror) and George W. Beynon's "Music for the Picture" (Moving Picture World), where documentation can be found that indicates which orchestral selections were paired with given Scenics, it is possible for contemporary musicians to replicate authentic orchestral accompaniments. However, the organ improvisations that accompanied Scenics have been lost to time, making it impossible to recreate the exact aural experience for the 20th-century movie-goer. Longwood Sketches is an important connection to the unwritten practices of the silent film period and can provide contemporary organists with authentic material with which to design Scenic scores. The purpose of this paper is to show that, with its illustrative nature titles, program notes that show Swinnen's intent to portray specific Scenic subjects, and musical language that depicts these subjects using tropes common to cinema, Longwood Sketches replicates a Scenic film score. In the first chapter, sacred, pastoral, avian, and atmospheric subjects are identified in Longwood Sketches and a comparison is made between Swinnen's representations of these topics in the composition to his representations of comparable topics in his 1926 recording of a "Storm" improvisation. The second chapter contains a comparison between Swinnen's representations of Native American, water, faunal and floral topics in the composition and music recommended for use by organists when accompanying scenes with comparable topics in cinema as found in period anthologies like Erno Rapee's Motion Picture Moods for Pianists and Organists (1924) and Sam Fox Moving Picture Music (1913-1914). The third chapter shows that Swinnen uses compositional devices such as motif, rhetorical pause and characteristic key associations in a like manner to the recommendations made in authoritative manuals such as Edith Lang and George West's Musical Accompaniment of Moving Pictures (1920) and George Beynon's Musical Presentation of Motion Pictures (1921). The paper ends with an examination of audience and critical reception of Longwood Sketches to determine if those in attendance at the initial performances of the work, who were movie-goers accustomed to receiving visual codes in moving pictures to guide narrative, were able to identify Swinnen's intended themes by aural cues alone.


The Drosophila genome contains >13,000 protein coding genes, the majority of which remain poorly investigated. Important reasons include the lack of antibodies or reporter constructs to visualise these proteins. Here we present a genome-wide fosmid library of ≈10,000 GFP-tagged clones, comprising tagged genes and most of their regulatory information. For 880 tagged proteins we have created transgenic lines and for a total of 207 lines we have assessed protein expression and localisation in ovaries, embryos, pupae or adults by stainings and live imaging approaches. Importantly, we can visualise many proteins at endogenous expression levels and find a large fraction of them localising to subcellular compartments. Using complementation tests we demonstrate that two-thirds of the tagged proteins are fully functional. Moreover, our clones also enable interaction proteomics from developing pupae and adult flies. Taken together, this resource will enable systematic analysis of protein expression and localisation in various cellular and developmental contexts.


In flowering plants, the immotile sperm cells are transported toward the egg through the pollen tube, which navigates its own path from the pollen grain to the female gametophyte. Márton et al. have now identified one of the signals likely to guide the pollen tube. Studying maize, a small egg apparatus-derived protein, ZmEA1, was found to light up the way for the final steps of pollen tube guidance. The ZmEA1 gene was expressed in the egg apparatus, and the protein acted as a short-range signal required for successful fertilization. After fertilization, ZmEA1 expression was rapidly down-regulated. M. L. Márton, S. Cordts, J. Broadhvest, T. Dresselhaus, Micropylar pollen tube guidance by egg apparatus 1 of maize. Science 307, 573-576 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Herein, we report the synthesis and structural analysis of 3,6-bis(5-(4-(dimethylamino)phenyl)thiophen-2-yl)-2,5-dihexadecylpyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,4(2H,5H)-dione [DPP(PhNMe2)2], a stable diketopyrrolopyrrole derivative end-capped with a strongly electron-donating dimethylaminophenyl moiety. Optical and electrochemical characterization determined the band gap, HOMO, and LUMO energies of the above compound as 1.63, −4.65, and −3.02 eV, respectively. The prepared DPP(PhNMe2)2 was fabricated into thin films to construct field-effect transistors and resistance load-type inverters, the responses of which to static/dynamic electrical stimuli were analyzed in detail. Specifically, field-effect transistors demonstrated stable output/transfer characteristics during 100 sweeping cycles and showed excellent performance stability (over 300 days) under ambient conditions, with the corresponding dynamic switching characteristics being well maintained during 500 on–off cycles. The above inverters also showed good performance under ambient conditions. To clarify the origin of this performance enhancement, the above thin films were subjected to structural analysis by atomic force microscopy, density function theory calculations, and two-dimensional grazing incidence X-ray diffraction, which revealed that DPP(PhNMe2)2 molecules were stacked over the surface of the gate dielectric via their NMe2 groups. Based on the obtained results, the improved device performance was ascribed to the end-on orientation and close packing of DPP(PhNMe2)2 molecules along the π–π stacking direction.


Radical psychiatrists and others assert that mental illness is a myth. The opening and closing portions of the article deal with the impact such an argument has had in law and psychiatry. The body of the article discusses the five following versions of the myth argument prevalent in radical psychiatry: (1) that there is no such thing as mental illness; (2) that those called "mentally ill" are really as rational as everyone else, only with different aims, that the only reasons anyone ever thought differently was (3) because of unsophisticated category mistakes or (4) because of an adherence to the epistemology of a sick society; and (5) that the phrase "mental illness" is used to mask value judgments about others' behavior in pseudoscientific respectability. Reasons are given for rejecting each of these versions of the argument that mental illness is a myth.


In this work we propose a secure architecture for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) that encapsulates all security and privacy critical components and I/O functions into secure hardware and thus drastically reduces the underlying trusted computing base. Our proof-of-concept implementation shows that high security and reliance on established standards and software (e.g., device drivers, transmission control, and protocols) to keep development costs down are no contradiction. Security is ensured as all security and privacy critical operations of the VoIP system are performed in protected hardware and as a consequence a successful attack on any software component (e.g., buffer overflow) does not lead to a violation of security. All I/O devices like microphones, speakers, displays, and dial buttons are directly connected to the secure hardware and cannot be controlled by an adversary even if the software part has been compromised.


MANY TEACHERS advocate teaching students to deliberate on controversial political issues as a powerful way of preparing them for political participation. Support for this approach recently came from a Civic Mission of the Schools report, which endorsed including political controversies in the curriculum. Specifically, it recommends that schools: Incorporate discussion of current local, national, and international issues and events into the classroom, particularly those that young people view as important to their lives. When young people have opportunities to discuss current issues in a classroom setting, they tend to have greater interest in politics, improved critical thinking and communications skills, more civic knowledge, and more interest in discussing public affairs out of school.' The literature on democracy education abounds with varying approaches to teaching controversial issues. Embedded in most approaches is a focus on encouraging the analysis and critique of multiple perspectives on how the issue should be resolved. Such an orientation has been the object of harsh critiques, though, as being naive and wrongheaded. For example, when introducing their resource text on teaching about globalization, William Bigelow and Robert Peterson state that for educators to feign neutrality is irresponsible. The pedagogical aim in this social context needs to be truth rather than balance--if by balance we mean giving equal credence to claims that we know to be false and that, in any event, enjoy wide dispersal in the dominant culture. (2) For some time I have been interested in questions and controversies about how teachers' political views influence what and how they teach and what their students learn as a consequence. I used to believe that the most important decision teachers had to make about teaching controversial issues was whether (and, if so, in what ways) they should disclose their personal views on the issue to their students. The "disclosure question" is prevalent in the literature, causes heated debates among teachers I worked with in a variety of professional development seminars and graduate courses, and is one with which I have personally wrestled since the beginning of my teaching career. When I started teaching, one of the most controversial political issues facing the body politic was whether the Equal Rights Amendment should be added to the Constitution. I remember searching for good pro/con articles for my students to read and then moderating heated and often exciting discussions about the issue in the social studies courses I taught. As a new teacher, I was unsure about how to respond to students' queries about my own views on the issue, but I remember feeling vaguely pleased when I heard two students debating what I thought about the issue as they left the classroom. Their debate was a signal to me that my strongly held personal views on the issue were not readily apparent to my students. It was evidence, I thought, that I was not a biased teacher. At lunch, I shared the students' conversation I had overheard with other teachers, which sparked an intense debate. Some of my colleagues thought I had wasted an opportunity to demonstrate to my students how adults think through political issues. One said I was acting like a "political eunuch" and knowing of my own intense interest in politics, asked, "Why do you want to be a non-political political role model?" Other teachers at the lunch table disagreed. "It's our job," said one, "to help our students think through these issues, not to impress upon them our own views." Another added, "The longer I teach the more I understand about how much power teachers have over students. I don't want to abuse that power--and I don't want kids to agree with my views just because I am the teacher." I remember leaving the lunch table feeling ambivalent about what I now call the "disclosure dilemma" and have subsequently listened carefully when others teachers discuss their views about it. …


This article critically examines the received wisdom on the value of labor power that posits the workers' material reproduction and the class struggle as two independent factors that determine the bundle of wage-goods consumed by the working class. It shows that this reading has no solid textual basis on Marx's writings. Furthermore, it argues that it rests on a problematic separation of the actual immanent unity between materiality and social form in the capitalist mode of production.


Scientific inquiry thrives only in a society that fosters the free flow of ideas and information. The power of online (internet) publication in democratizing science and incorporating scientists from developing countries into the scientific community is profound. The desired and obvious properties of scientific publishing such as accessibility, economy, quality, innovation, and retrieval can be more readily achieved with electronic methods. Online publication is much cheaper and faster, and that is major reason Africa should embrace the open access model for research communication. An open access African journal (the African Journal of Biotechnology) is evaluated. Key Words: Open access, African Journal of Biotechnology, research communications. African Journal of Biotechnology Vol.3(2) 2004: 123-126


As the site of everyday social interaction, the street has always provided a source of inspiration for writers, artists and musicians. It has also become the focus for critical theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Michel de Certeau in their attempt to push the limits of textual analysis beyond literature and art towards our daily experience of the world. This collection of essays and interviews examines the street as both the site and space of competing discourses and also a form of discourse in its own right. Covering a broad range of topics including the role of the street in literature, photography and journalism, practices which take place upon the street such as skateboarding, graffiti and flânerie and the politics and philosophy involved in negotiating the street, Word on the Street affirms the continued and renewed importance of the pedestrian street in the social consciousness of the 21st century.


ABSTRACT Study aims were to explore differences in predictors of respite care use between older (aged 65+) and younger caregivers (aged 18–64 years), and associations between caregiving load and respite care use using multivariate logistic regression analysis and unpaid caregiver (n= 10,500) data from the 2009 California Health Interview Survey. Caregiving load comprised number of care recipients, weekly hours in caregiving, and caregiving duration. Variables with a significant association with respite care for older caregivers were female gender, income, and health insurance. For younger caregivers, respite care use associations were with ethnicity, caregiving relationship, education, and availability of substitute help.


This article illuminates the largely misunderstood relationship between complexity and the regulation of property interests. Specifically, the article presents the "complexity thesis" -- a novel explanatory account of the principle of numerus clausus. The principle of numerus clausus is an ancient common law rule which prohibits the customization of property interests. The complexity thesis holds that the primary function of numerus clausus is to prevent the proliferation of highly idiosyncratic property interests. In so doing, numerus clausus provides a bulkhead against the overwhelming complexity that would ensue if customized property interests were permitted. For the last fifteen years, numerus clausus has been the subject of a spirited colloquy in which property theorists of all methodological stripes have sought to unravel some of the mysteries that surround the principle. This article carefully engages several prominent explanatory accounts of numerus clausus, and demonstrates that while these competing accounts supply a number of important insights about the principle, the complexity thesis does a better job of accounting for all of the salient features of the principle without sacrificing coherence or consilience. Finally, the complexity thesis is especially instructive today, as the 2007 collapse of the housing market can largely be traced to a set of basic misapprehensions about the destructive power of complexity in the context of highly alienable interests. The complexity thesis demonstrates that standardization serves an essential epistemic function. Standardization makes it possible for us to better apprehend risk, and thereby avoid catastrophic miscalculations such as those that led to the housing collapse.


Phosphate rock is a key component in producing fertilizer and many other economically important products. Getting phosphate rock out of the ground produces a by-produce called phosphate clay, which mining operations must return to the landscape. However, phosphate clay retains large amounts of water, making them unsuitable for use as farmland or wildlife habitat. This 6-page fact sheet explains how using a sand-clay mix can more efficiently restore the landscape and put it to beneficial use. Written by Casey Beavers, Edward A. Hanlon, Matt Wilson, James "Bud" Cates, and George J. Hochmuth, and published by the UF Department of Soil and Water Sciences, July 2015.


Reducing Drifts in Buckling Restrained Braced Frames Through Elastic Stories Jennifer Lorraine Craft Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, BYU Master of Science It is possible to reduce residual and maximum drifts in buildings by adding "elastic stories" that engage gravity columns in seismic response. An elastic story is a story wherein the buckling restrained brace frame (BRBF) size is increased to prevent yielding when an earthquake occurs. Buildings ranging from 4–16 stories were designed with various elastic story brace sizes and locations to determine the optimal combination to best reduce drifts. Gravity column stiffnesses were also varied in elastic story buildings to determine the effects on drifts. Computer models were used to analyze these buildings under a suite of earthquakes. Adding elastic stories reduce residual drifts 34% to 65% in 4to 16-story BRBF buildings. General recommendations are made to achieve optimal reductions in drifts. For buildings with six or more stories, drifts were generally reduced most when an elastic story was added to every 4 story starting at level 1 (the bottom story). The most effective size for the braces in the elastic story appears to be three times the original brace size. For buildings with less than six stories, adding a three times elastic story to the bottom level was observed to reduce drifts the most. Further research is also recommended to confirm the optimal location and size of elastic stories for buildings with differing number of stories. Increasing gravity column stiffnesses in buildings with elastic stories helps to further reduce drifts, however it may not be economical. Residual drifts were observed to decrease significantly more than maximum drifts when elastic stories were added to buildings. Maximum drifts generally decreased at some levels, but also increased at others when elastic stories were used.


In the summer of 1956, I enrolled in my first graduate courses in the Speech Department of the University of Iowa. This department included rhetoric, public address, theatre, and broadcasting, and was under the direction of H. Clay Harshbarger, an impressive fellow who specialized in broadcasting. Dr. Harshbarger had recently succeeded the legendary E. C. Mabie, who had emphasized professional theatre to the perceived detriment of the other areas then called "Speech," and who had a reputation as a real tyrant.(1) The broadcasters and the rhetoricians in the Speech department were full of optimism about the new Harshbarger regime and were hoping for equity at last. Even though I had been a drama major I felt a move to Speech was indicated for me, in that I had no future as a professional actor, and the night work in educational theatre was daunting. So I took a course in "Directing the Forensics Program" taught by Carl Dallinger, together with an introductory course in directing for television, taught by Harshbarger himself. Both courses were less than challenging, in that I had already a good deal of experience in high school forensics activities and had worked in television since the first stations opened in Sioux City. To put it mildly, I was bored. I could tell that my boredom was shared by only one fellow student, another iconoclast named Gerald Miller. Miller and I had similar backgrounds: we had both grown up in straitened circumstances in depressed river towns, we had both served in the army in Korea (he in a supply depot and me in a POW camp), and we both had families. What really set us apart in the directing forensics course was our shared attitudes about high school forensics. Gerald and I had both come to the conclusion that the system only rewarded winners, and our personal philosophy was that one should win at all costs, since the system gives you little support for developing character. We made the profound mistake of admitting this in class discussions, and together with our inbred skepticism for the student-centered pedagogy so popular at the time ensured that he and I soon became outlaws. We constantly disagreed with the instructor and just about everyone else, and class sessions often became acrimonious sessions in which Gerald and I took on the establishment. We took to hanging out between classes at the local pool hall and played the odd game of "eight-ball" or "rotation" instead of discussing serious issues such as the relative contributions of original oratory or extemporaneous speaking. We discovered that we had both been forced to attend Iowa because of our low undergraduate grade point average (they had to take us since we were Iowa residents). We had both applied to Northwestern's prestigious School of Speech and had been unceremoniously rejected. One day we had started a game of rotation without regard for the time and discovered that we had only ten minutes to get to class. Miller calmly ran the table (for those of you not familiar with pool, this means making every ball in succession--fifteen straight perfect shots). I was amazed. He had never exhibited such skill in previous games between classes, and I discovered that he had been playing at my level so that we could enjoy ourselves. In actuality, he had been the Big Ten billiard champion the year before he was drafted. Pool was not the only place he excelled. He was an outstanding softball pitcher--next to impossible to catch, in that his fastball always rose and if you weren't careful, would hit you in the chest or other sensitive places. No one I knew could hit his pitching. His really impressive skill was with cards, specifically poker. He had brought home enough money from Korea to finance a year of school! The only thing I could beat him in was chess, and naturally we didn't play that very often! The summer ended and I got an "A" by some miracle, and Miller got a "B." It was the only time I got a better grade than he did. …


Autopsy has historically played a critical role in our understanding of normal anatomy, disease and treatment efficacies, or adverse effects of medications. Despite the importance of autopsy as a teaching tool, it is now limited to an ancillary role in modern medical education (
1
). This effect may continue to be amplified as physicians who did not observe autopsies during their training are less likely to request an autopsy later on in the course of their careers (
2
). In the 1970s, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) eliminated the requirement for a minimum autopsy rate from its accreditation process, and Medicare stopped reimbursing for autopsies in 1986 (
3
). Reasons physicians do not request an autopsy have reportedly included trepidation regarding the lack of training on how to seek autopsy permission, fear of offending the family, and fear of malpractice litigation. In addition, confidence in contemporary diagnostic technology and the ever present desire to reduce health care spending have also been cited as reasons (
2
,
4
–
9
). Given the forces aligned against this procedure, autopsy rates have declined in the United States and other Western countries over the past 3 decades (
4
). Unfortunately, the sequelae of this decline include the loss of an established teaching tool along with the inability to identify and correct clinical errors and missed diagnoses (
4
).


Environmental Context.Since the discovery of a diverse array of microbial life associated with hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, where conditions are hot, reducing and acidic, scientists have been seeking insight into the mechanisms used by 'extremophilic' organisms (those that reside permanently under environmental extremes of temperature (hot or cold), pH (acid or alkaline), salinity, or pressure) to thrive under such seemingly inhospitable conditions. Abstract.The discovery of an abundance of microorganisms that flourish in a diverse range of environments, from the frigid waters of the Antarctic, to the superheated waters of the hydrothermal vents, at the bottom of 11-km deep ocean trenches and in salt-saturated lakes, has fuelled research aimed to understand the novel survival strategies evolved by these extreme-loving (extremophilic) organisms. Adaptations of biomolecules (proteins, nucleic acids, membranes and small molecules) evolved by extremophiles are wide ranging. Compared with a protein from a 'regular' organism, the extremophilic analogue might feature changes to the relative frequencies of amino acid residues that modulate the properties (e.g. conformational flexibility and stability) of the protein under conditions of the specific environmental challenge. The integrity of RNA and DNA from extremophiles may be maintained by subtle structural changes to RNA nucleobases and, in the case of (hyper)thermophiles, the expression of the enzyme reverse gyrase, which catalyses positive DNA supercoiling. The expression of small molecular weight heat-shock or related caretaker proteins also features as a common adaptive strategy for maintaining cell viability at environmental extremes. Membrane architecture in extremophiles can be modulated by the environmental temperature, with additional thermal stability in membranes from some hyperthermophiles conferred by novel (cyclised) lipid chains. In addition, a selection of osmolytes and small molecules are biosynthesised or sequestered by extremophilic organisms that have adapted to conditions of high salt and/or micronutrient deprivation.


Our analysis of how banks' responses to asset price changes can result in procyclical leverage reveals that, for banks with a binding regulatory leverage constraint, absent differences in regulatory risk weights across assets, procyclical leverage does not occur. For banks without a binding constraint, fair value and bank regulation both can contribute to procyclical leverage. Empirical findings based on a large sample of U.S. commercial banks reveal that bank regulation explains procyclical leverage for banks relatively close to the regulatory leverage constraint and contributes to procyclical leverage for those that are not. We also show that fair value accounting does not contribute to procyclical leverage.


Soil hydraulic parameters are often indispensable input in hydrological modeling. The
required input parameters can be obtained by measuring soil texture, bulk density, organic matter
content, soil water retention and hydraulic conductivity. To minimize soil measurements, information
is needed on how well hydrologic models perform with varying levels of soil hydraulic parameters.
The objective of this study is to determine which level of soil information would be sufficient to use
with DRAINMOD in predicting subsurface drainage volumes. Three groups of parameters were
obtained by various methods: 1) determining the soil texture and bulk density (BD) data from the Soil
Survey Database, then inputting them into a pedotransfer function model (ROSETTA) to determine
soil hydraulic parameters (denoted as SP_1); 2) analyzing the soil texture and organic matter(OM)
content in laboratory and deriving the BD, field capacity (e33kPa) and wilting point (e1500kPa) from
literature, then inputting them into ROSETTA to determine soil hydraulic parameters (SP_2); and 3)
calibrated soil hydraulic parameters based on initial inputs from the Soil Survey Database plus
ROSETTA (SP_3). Parameters obtained from these three methods were used with DRAINMOD under the same weather, crop and soil conditions for 14 consecutive years at the subsurface
drainage plots located in Pocahontas County, IA. Predicted subsurface drainage based on those
three levels of soil hydraulic parameter inputs were compared to the observed ones through four
statistical measures: Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Co-efficient of Mass Residual (CRM), Index
of Agreement (IoA) and Model Efficiency (EF). The statistical results indicated that output from SP_3
had the best fit with respect to observed values during the calibration period (1990-1993) and that
from SP_2 has the best fit when considering all 14 years. However, all methods provided reliable
estimates of subsurface drainage. ROSETTA in combination with Soil Survey offers a quick and easy
way to derive the soil hydraulic parameters, which were found reliable for DRAINMOD simulations to
predict long-term subsurface drainage volumes for the site studied.


From the earliest days of gas liquefaction, the thermodynamic process advantage of employing cryogenic liquefied gas expanders in place of throttling valves was very well recognized. The available technology was unable to offer reliable cryogenic liquefied gas expanders until the aerospace industry developed materials and designs suitable for the cryogenic environment. LNG expanders reduce the high pressure of the condensed LNG by converting the static pressure energy of the fluid into electricity and sub-cooling the refrigerated LNG. The Carnot efficiency of the liquefaction process is significantly increased by using LNG expanders, resulting in a very short amortization time of less than six months for the financial investment in LNG expanders. During the past fifteen years cryogenic LNG expanders have experienced an accelerated development in design and performance. Every newly built LNG liquefaction plant since 1996 has included two or more LNG expanders operating in each train. The evolutionary design and performance of LNG expanders is presented, discussed, and fifteen years of practical field experience is demonstrated. Particular linear and non-linear phenomena in rotor-dynamics and fluid dynamics that are specific to the design and operation of single phase and twophase LNG expanders are described. An outlook for upcoming and future requirements of the LNG Expander Technology indicates trends towards both much higher and much smaller flow rates, together with much higher pressures. New design concepts to meet these future requirements are also disclosed.


Cardiovascular risk factors and atherosclerosis are associated with lumbar disc herniation. However, studies fail to identify a consistent risk factor for the recurrence. To investigate the association between cardiovascular risk factors and true recurrent of lumbar disc herniation, 186 patients who underwent unilateral microdiscectomy for intractable radiculopathy due to lumbar disc herniation were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. One surgeon performed all operations, and all patients were treated with the same procedure. The follow-up period was between 6 months to 5 years. The association between some cardiovascular risk factors e.g. hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, smoking and true recurrent lumbar disc herniation investigated using logistic regression analysis. Sixty-nine patients with true recurrence of lumbar disc herniation (RLDH group) were compared to 117 patients who were surgically treated with no recurrence of lumbar disc herniation (LDH group). The differences of age, gender, diabetes, morphine addiction, hyperlipidemia and smoking between two groups were not statistically significant. The prevalence of hypertension in RLDH and LDH was 61.5% and 38.5% respectively. The difference was significant (p<0.001). The logistic regression analysis showed the recurrence rate was significantly higher in hypertensive patients (OR: 1.74-7.55, CI: 95%, P = 0.001). Furthermore, there was no correlation between confounding factor of medications, diabetes, history of cardiovascular disease, hyperlipidemia, duration of the symptom-free interval, gender and the true recurrence. The results of this preliminary study showed that there might be a possible relation between arterial hypertension and true recurrence of lumbar disc herniation, so it would be advisable to pay more attention to hypertensive patients who have been operated.


Background: Bag making is a kind of occupation which comes under unorganized sector. An occupation is always associated with some risk which can account to health hazard. Bag makers are also not an exception to this rule. Objectives: A present study was conducted to assess the sociodemographic determinants and morbidity profile among bag makers. Material and methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in the field practice area (cheetah camp urban health centre) of the T. N. Medical College, Mumbai during the period of March 2008 to August 2009. A total 800 bag makers from cheetah camp area were interviewed and examined. A pre-tested interview tool was used to collect necessary information such as clinical history, socio-demographic profile, clinical examination findings and investigations performed. Results were analysed using Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) version -17.0. Results: In the present study, out of the 800 study participants taken in to consideration, 95.9% were males and 4.1% were females. Musculoskeletal problems were most predominant, seen in 76.3% participants followed by skin problems (40.9%), while 30.3% participants presented with gastrointestinal and 17.3% with respiratory ailment. Thirty three percent workers had ocular morbidity and injuries were observed in 26.3% workers including minor injuries such as cuts and abrasions. Conclusion: In this study, large proportion of workers suffered from work related symptomatic morbidities mainly of musculoskeletal problems, followed by skin, eye, gastrointestinal and respiratory problems. Bag makers should be educated regarding their work related health hazards so that they are detected at the earliest and proper treatment can be initiated.


Incompatible strains of Acidovorax avenae elicit an immune response in cultured rice cells, with immunity specifically induced by the flagellin of the incompatible strain. To identify genes regulated by flagellin perception signaling in cultured rice cells, gene expression patterns were analyzed with rice cDNA microarrays, including 3,353 independent rice cDNA clones. In all, 131 genes were differentially expressed between incompatible and compatible interactions. K-means clustering showed that 94 genes were upregulated and 32 genes were downregulated during incompatible interactions, whereas only 5 genes were upregulated during compatible interactions. Among the 126 genes that were up- or downregulated during incompatible interactions, expression of 46 genes was decreased when cultured rice cells were inoculated with a flagellin-deficient incompatible strain (delta fla1141-2), indicating that approximately 37% of the 126 genes were directly controlled by flagellin perception. Real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis using flagellins purified from incompatible or compatible strains was performed to confirm flagellin-regulated expression of candidate genes selected by microarray analysis. Results showed that induction of some genes involved in the immune response is regulated not only by the flagellin perception pathway, but also by another recognition molecule-perception pathway.


Protein folding/unfolding are complex phenomena and it is accepted that multidomain proteins generally follow multiple pathways. Maltose binding protein is a large (a two-domain 370 amino acid residue) bacterial periplasmic protein involved in maltose uptake. Despite the large size, it has been shown to exhibit an apparent two-state equilibrium unfolding in bulk experiments. Single-molecule studies can uncover rare events that are masked by averaging in bulk studies. Here, we use single-molecule force spectroscopy to study the mechanical unfolding pathways of maltose binding protein (MBP) and its precursor protein (preMBP) in the presence and absence of ligands. Our results show that MBP exhibits kinetic partitioning on mechanical stretching and unfolds via two parallel pathways: one of them involves a mechanically stable intermediate (path I) while the other is devoid of it (path II). The apoMBP unfolds via path I in 62% of the mechanical unfolding events and the remaining 38% follow path II. In the case of maltose bound MBP, the protein unfolds via the intermediate in 79% of the cases, the remaining 21% via path II. Similarly, on binding to maltotriose, a ligand whose binding strength with the polyprotein is similar to that of maltose, the occurrence of the intermediate is comparable (82% via path I) to that of maltose. The precursor protein preMBP also shows a similar behaviour upon mechanical unfolding. The percentages of molecules unfolding via path I are 53% in the apo form and 68% and 72% upon binding to maltose and maltotriose, respectively for preMBP. These observations demonstrate that ligand binding can modulate the mechanical unfolding pathways of proteins by a kinetic partitioning mechanism. This could be a general mechanism in the unfolding of other large two-domain ligand binding proteins of the bacterial periplasmic space.


Introduction: Anxiety is considered as a serious problem before many of diagnostic procedures such as coronary angiography. In recent years, many researches have been done on non-pharmacological methods to control anxiety. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of foot reflexive massage on the anxiety of candidate patients for angiography. Methods: This clinical trial study was done on 162 candidate patients for coronary angiography. Samples were selected through random sampling and after obtaining written consent allocated to intervention and control groups. Each patient in the intervention group received foot reflexive massage for 20 minutes and the patients in the control group received no similar intervention. The extent to which patients felt anxiety in the two groups before, immediately after, and half an hour after the intervention was measured. Data was collected using the clinical personal information record form and anxiety part of the hospital anxiety and depression scale, and performing physiological parameters sheet. Data was analyzed by Chi-square test, Fisher's exact test, Paired and independent t-test. Result: There was not a significant difference in anxiety scores between the two groups before the intervention. The mean score of anxiety was significantly different in two groups, immediately (Intervention group = 9.2±2.79, control =10.27±2.98), and 30 minutes after the intervention (Intervention group =8.67±26, control =10.27±2.99)(P=0.001). Conclusion: Using this method as a safe, effective, applicable and affordable nursing interventions is recommended to reduce the level of anxiety before angiography.


Climate change, pollution, and energy insecurity are among the greatest problems of our time. These problems are no longer issues in particular countries but international issues. Several framework conventions on these issues are now in place throughout the world, and developing countries are no exception. Energy efficiency is one of the important issues for developing countries. Lao PDR is one such country. This paper proposes a technology roadmap and policy recommendations for Lao PDR with consideration given to a wide range of economic and social impacts of prospective technologies. For the implementation of technology assessment in the formulation of an energy efficiency roadmap, we first elaborate the social and economic conditions of Lao PDR through preliminary research and field research, and then design three scenarios for a future Lao PDR. These three scenarios are as follows: 1. The "Poverty Reduction" scenario is for electrification rate improvement; 2. The "Industrial Creation" scenario is for stable domestic energy supply; and 3. The "GMS Integration" scenario is for the acquisition of foreign exchange by energy export.


Immigrants can increase international trade by shifting preferences towards the goods of their country of origin and by reducing bilateral transaction costs. Using geographical variation across U.S. states for the period 2008 to 2013, I estimate the respective causal impact of immigrants on U.S. exports and imports. I address endogeneity and reverse causality by exploiting the exogenous allocation of political refugees within the U.S. refugee resettlement program that prevents immigrants from choosing the destination location. I find that a 10 percent increase in recent immigrants to a U.S. state raises imports from those immigrants' country of origin by 1.2 percent and exports by 0.8 percent.


Abstract Recent observations suggest that high-frequency forcing events have profound influence on the air-sea-ice interactions in the polar region. Studying these events with sea-ice models requires close examination of the model sensitivity that may arise from the high-frequency variability of the forcing. We show that the maximum layer thickness is dictated by the time-scale of the forcing variability and that the computation of the surface temperature develops enhanced sensitivity at high-frequency forcing. We resolve these constraints by developing an "adjustable-layering" thermodynamic formulation for ice and snow that re-computes the number of layers required each time-step to satisfy this maximum thickness, which preserves the total enthalpy and general internal thermal gradients. The conservation equations form a tri-diagonal system ideal for a fast and efficient implicit solution. Furthermore, we resolve the issue of the high sensitivity of the surface flux balance by solving the linearized version of the flux boundary condition simultaneously with the overall conservation system. In this paper we develop the analyses specifying the model requirements, describe the model system and test its algorithmic implementation.


In enacting the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), Congress modified the nexus test that determines eligibility for asylum on account of religious persecution. In recognizing the "global scourge" of religious persecution, Congress sought to reduce the unfairness and bias in asylum adjudications that had occurred under pre-IRFA law. Courts have traditionally held that international refugee law protections are incorporated into United States domestic law, and therefore, not explicitly applicable in U.S. courts. Through IRFA, however, Congress instructed the courts to take a different approach. Congress directed all involved in asylum adjudication to invoke international law's protection of religious liberty under its definition of religion and its broad interpretation of religious persecution.

Since 1992, eligibility for asylum under United States asylum law has been constrained by the Supreme Court's decision in INS v. Elias-Zacarias (1992) which required applicants seeking asylum on account of political opinion to possess a political opinion that the persecutor intended to thwart through persecution. This has led courts to deny relief when intent could not be proven and undermined protection when neutral laws of general applicability harmed applicants. Subsequent courts have expanded the nexus test to apply to asylum's other grounds of protection: race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group. When Congress instructed judges and adjudicators to examine religious persecution cases under international law through IRFA, it modified the nexus test for religion.

This chapter first explains how IRFA modifies the nexus test for religious persecution. The chapter next examines the one federal case that followed IRFA as Congress intended, although that case was later vacated on other grounds. The chapter next explores how the application of international law would have impacted cases if IRFA had been applied as Congress instructed. The chapter concludes that even if courts determine IRFA did not modify the nexus test, IRFA requires adjudicators to demonstrate more sensitivity to the many ways religion is practiced and how religious persecution harms the liberty of those attempting to live faithful lives.


Abstract:Though a "vision-centered" perspective is apparent in a variety of contexts in Greco-Roman life and literature, of particular interest to this essay are the visually oriented rhetorical techniques that Greco-Roman authors and orators used to appeal to the visual imaginations of their audiences. Through these well-theorized techniques, authors and orators hoped not only to engage their audiences' visual imaginations but also to transport them emotionally into the described scene. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was to all appearances well versed in these techniques, and perhaps this is nowhere more evident than in Heb 12:1-4. Enlisting the language and imagery of agonistic sport and spectacle, this visually evocative text helps the community reenvision their current situation. Their sufferings are thus reconfigured as normative to the athletic sphere, while their commitment to Christ and his community is translated into a test of endurance in a footrace. Integral to this agonistically shaped exhortation is the vivid portrayal of Jesus as the "forerunner" and victorious "finisher" of the same contest of faith in which the community is presently competing. Ekphrasis and epiphany coalesce in this mimetic portrayal, signaled by the author's exhortation to "fix our gaze" on the one who has triumphed over adversity and adversaries.


Over the last 70 years there has been a major shift in the threats to global peace. While the 1950's and 1960's were characterised by the cold war and the arms race, many security threats are now characterised by group behaviours that are disruptive, subversive or extreme. In many cases such groups are loosely and chaotically organised, but their ideals are sociologically and psychologically embedded in group members to the extent that the group represents a major threat. As a result, insights into how human groups form, emerge and change are critical, but surprisingly limited insights into the mutability of human groups exist. In this paper we argue that important clues to understand the mutability of groups come from examining the evolutionary origins of human behaviour. In particular, groups have been instrumental in human evolution, used as a basis to derive survival advantage, leaving all humans with a basic disposition to navigate the world through social networking and managing their presence in a group. From this analysis we present five critical features of social groups that govern mutability, relating to social norms, individual standing, status rivalry, ingroup bias and cooperation. We argue that understanding how these five dimensions interact and evolve can provide new insights into group mutation and evolution. Importantly, these features lend themselves to digital modeling. Therefore computational simulation can support generative exploration of groups and the discovery of latent factors, relevant to both internal group and external group modelling. Finally we consider the role of online social media in relation to understanding the mutability of groups. This can play an active role in supporting collective behaviour, and analysis of social media in the context of the five dimensions of group mutability provides a fresh basis to interpret the forces affecting groups.


This thesis investigated visual word recognition in bilinguals and monolinguals through the effects of word frequency, lexicality and repetition. The first series of experiments focused on whether bilinguals can suppress lexical access in a non-target language and the role of task demands in L1 and L2 lexical access. The next series of experiments further investigated the role of task demands, list composition and repetition in monolinguals. The ERP data show, for the first time, that in bilinguals, lexical access occurs in the non-target language, supporting the notion of a nonselective lexical access. Delayed lexicality effects in ERPs for L2 compared to L1 suggested a delay in lexical access for L2 in late bilinguals, although behavioural data showed a similar word frequency effect to L1. These conflicting responses have not been anticipated by current models of bilingual visual word recognition. However, monolingual data make clear that lexical effects can be modulated by task demands and list composition in behavioural responses. In monolinguals, the slower processing of less familiar items was enhanced by item repetition only when the task required a lexical decision and words and word-like letter strings were presented. Lastly, this thesis has demonstrated that current models of visual word recognition have not fully implemented these elements and have not predicted response times distribution or ERPs. Future models of visual word recognition should incorporate these elements to be able to characterise lexical access in bilinguals and monolinguals.


Abstract. The representation of moist convection in climate models represents a major challenge, due to the small scales involved. Using horizontal grid spacings of O(1km), convection-resolving weather and climate models allows one to explicitly resolve deep convection. However, due to their extremely demanding computational requirements, they have so far been limited to short simulations and/or small computational domains. Innovations in supercomputing have led to new hybrid node designs, mixing conventional multi-core hardware and accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs). One of the first atmospheric models that has been fully ported to these architectures is the COSMO (Consortium for Small-scale Modeling) model. Here we present the convection-resolving COSMO model on continental scales using a version of the model capable of using GPU accelerators. The verification of a week-long simulation containing winter storm Kyrill shows that, for this case, convection-parameterizing simulations and convection-resolving simulations agree well. Furthermore, we demonstrate the applicability of the approach to longer simulations by conducting a 3-month-long simulation of the summer season 2006. Its results corroborate the findings found on smaller domains such as more credible representation of the diurnal cycle of precipitation in convection-resolving models and a tendency to produce more intensive hourly precipitation events. Both simulations also show how the approach allows for the representation of interactions between synoptic-scale and meso-scale atmospheric circulations at scales ranging from 1000 to 10 km. This includes the formation of sharp cold frontal structures, convection embedded in fronts and small eddies, or the formation and organization of propagating cold pools. Finally, we assess the performance gain from using heterogeneous hardware equipped with GPUs relative to multi-core hardware. With the COSMO model, we now use a weather and climate model that has all the necessary modules required for real-case convection-resolving regional climate simulations on GPUs.


The paper discusses the issue of supporting informatics (computer science) education through competitions for lower and upper secondary school students (8 19 years old). Competitions play an important role for learners as a source of inspiration, innovation, and attraction. Running contests in informatics for school students for many years, we have noticed that the students consider the contest experience very engaging and exciting as well as a learning experience. A contest is an excellent instrument to involve students in problem solving activities. An overview of infrastructure and development of an informatics contest from international level to the national one (the Bebras contest on informatics and computer fluency, originated in Lithuania) is presented. The performance of Bebras contests in 23 countries during the last 10 years showed an unexpected and unusually high acceptance by school students and teachers. Many thousands of students participated and got a valuable input in addition to their regular informatics lectures at school. In the paper, the main attention is paid to the developed tasks and analysis of students' task solving results in Lithuania.


The Fereydani Georgians are Shi'a Muslims, while the Georgians of Georgia are predominantly Orthodox Christians. This article deals with the mechanism by which Fereydani Georgians reaffirm their Shi'a identity in harmony with the Iranian Georgians' role in the Iranian history. After discussing the theoretical foundation of the relationship between history and ethnic (and national) self-identification, the article describes how Fereydani Georgian identity is represented today and how important historical events are narrated in order to create a cohesive and coherent image of self - an outcome that is called 'emic coherence'. The concept of historical peak experience is introduced on an ethnic level.


This work proposes a unique configuration of two-dimensional metamaterial lattice grid comprising of curved and tapered beams. The propagation of elastic waves in the structure is analyzed using the dynamic stiffness matrix (DSM) approach and the Floquet-Bloch theorem. The DSM for the unit cell is formulated under the extensional theory of curved beam considering the effects of shear and rotary inertia. The study considers two types of variable rectangular cross-sections, viz. single taper and double taper along the length of the beam. Further, the effect of curvature and taper on the wave propagation is analysed through the band diagram along the irreducible Brillouin zone. It is shown that a complete band gap, i.e. attenuation band in all the directions of wave propagation, in a homogeneous structure can be tailored with a suitable combination of curvature and taper. Generation of the complete bandgap is hinged upon the coupling of axial and transverse component of the lattice grid. This coupling emerges due to the presence of the curvature and further enhanced due to tapering. The double taper cross-section is shown to have wider attenuation characteristics than single taper cross-sections. Specifically, 83.36% and 63% normalized complete bandwidth is achieved for the double and single taper cross-section for a homogeneous metamaterial, respectively. Additional characteristics of the proposed metamaterial in time and frequency domain of the finite structure, vibration attenuation, wave localization in the equivalent finite structure are also studied.


Detailed description of two new species of fishes, Eurumetopos johnstonii,nov. sp. and Triptergium clarkei, nov. sp.
Eurumetopos johnstonii, nov. sp. This very remarkable fish was found washed on the beach
at Bridgewater. Unfortunately the crows had eaten a great
part of one side, taking the eyes and the intestines out. I have great pleasure in giving this very
remarkable genus the specific name of Johnstonii, in honour
of R. M. Johnston, Esq., F.L.S., whose very valuable works
in all matters relating to the Natural History of Tasmania
and the Geological features of the Island place him as the
foremost scientist in Tasmania.


Despite recent improvements in data collection and measurement, data on migration intentions and out-flows remains scarce, largely inconsistent across countries, and often outdated. Rapidly growing internet usage around the world provides geo-referenced online search data that can be exploited to measure migration intentions in origin countries in order to predict subsequent outflows well-ahead of official data publication (now-casting). We contribute to the literature by projecting flows using Google Trend Index data (GTI) on migration-specific search terms. Based on fixed effects panel models of migration as well as machine learning and prediction techniques, we show that our approach yields substantial predictive power for international migration flows. We provide evidence based on survey data that our measures indeed reflect genuine emigration intentions. They can hence not only be used in research but may also inform border control or humanitarian aid management and thus matter for policy-makers in both developing and developed


We study mathematical programs with vanishing constraints (MPVCs) from a topological point of view. We introduce the new concept of a T-stationary point for MPVC. Under the Linear Independence Constraint Qualification we derive an equivariant Morse Lemma at nondegenerate T-stationary points. Then, two basic theorems from Morse Theory (deformation theorem and cell-attachment theorem) are proved. Outside the T-stationary point set, continuous deformation of lower level sets can be performed. As a consequence, the topological data (such as the number of connected components) then remain invariant. However, when passing a T-stationary level, the topology of the lower level set changes via the attachment of a q-dimensional cell. The dimension q equals the stationary T-index of the (nondegenerate) T-stationary point. The stationary T-index depends on both the restricted Hessian of the Lagrangian and the number of bi-active vanishing constraints. Further, we prove that all T-stationary points are generically nondegenerate. The latter property is shown to be stable under C^2-perturbations of the defining functions. Finally, some relations with other stationarity concepts, such as strong, weak, and M-stationarity, are discussed.


The thermite reaction between Al and CuO is well known and highly exothermic. For a conventional thermite mixture, the reaction is rate limited by a slow heterogeneous mass transfer at the metal and oxide interface. The relatively low reaction rate and ignition difficulty have restricted practical applications for this reaction. For newly developed nanocomposed thermites, the interface area is substantially increased resulting in a much higher reaction rate and a new range of possible applications. A top-down approach to preparation of reactive nanocomposite materials in the Al-rich Al-CuO system is discussed in this paper. The materials are prepared using arrested reactive milling, a technique based on high-energy ball milling performed at room temperature and stopped (or arrested) before the exothermic reaction between Al and CuO is triggered mechanically. The products are micron-sized, fully dense powders in which reactive components are uniformly mixed on the nanoscale. Optimized milling conditions for the powders with bulk compositions xAl + 3CuO with x = 8, 10, and 12 are found. Respective powders are produced and characterized. Particle sizes are measured and the sizes of nano-inclusions of CuO in Al matrix are determined. Reactions occurring in the nanocomposite materials are also characterized by thermal analysis. Ignition of the produced powders is studied by coating them onto an electrically heated filament. Constant volume explosion experiments are used to characterize combustion performance of the produced powders. Compositions of the produced powders and products of their combustion are studied by X-ray powder diffraction. Correlations between combustion performance and material characteristics are established. Ignition for Al-rich Al-CuO nanocomposite powders was observed to occur at 850±10 K independently of the heating rate.


Negative implications of gentrification have been continually recognized over the past several decades, prompting varied forms of resistance in cities around the world. However, gentrification has also been more recently framed in public discourse as a beneficial and constructive process, grounded in examples of 'revitalizing' centres. These contrasting positions introduce underexplored tensions in how different interests approach gentrifying environments in an urban area, particularly with respect to the impact of resistance movements. Using Hamilton, Ontario as a case study, I consider how acts of resistance to gentrification and displacement are perceived and (de)legitimized by local residents, business owners, and others, focusing on the recent emergence of direct action tactics across the inner city. Applying concepts of antagonism, hegemony, and transparent space, I explore dominant values in a context of municipal-led revitalization as portrayed through discourse on resistance to gentrification in central Hamilton. This analysis draws primarily on news articles and Twitter responses pertaining to prominent instances of gentrification-related resistance in Hamilton between 2016 and 2018, supplemented by interviews conducted in early 2018 with representatives from local community organizations. The paper finds three discourses through which antagonistic relations emerge and the (de)legitimization of gentrification-related resistance occurs: violence, entrepreneurship, and productivity. The dismissal of certain acts of resistance in residents' and others' responses can be connected to their contestation of dominant ideals of revitalization and the contrived simplicity of gentrified space. Importantly, this delegitimization includes the invalidation or minimizing of underlying concerns and imperatives. These findings have implications for mobilizing collective responses to address inequities of gentrification.


Abstract. To investigate the soil-pile interactive performance under lateral loads, a set of laboratory model tests was conducted on remoulded test bed of soft clay and medium dense sand. Then, a simplified boundary element analysis had been carried out assuming floating pile. In case of soft clay, it has been observed that lateral loads on piles can initiate the formation of a gap, soil heave and the tension crack in the vicinity of the soil surface and the interface, whereas in medium dense sand, a semi-elliptical depression zone can develop. Comparison of test and boundary element results indicates the accuracy of the solution developed. However, in the boundary element analysis, the possible shear stresses likely to be developed at the interface are ignored in order to simplify the existing complex equations. Moreover, it is unable to capture the influence of base restraint in case of a socketed pile. To bridge up this gap and to study the influence of the initial stress state and interface parameters, a field based case-study of laterally-loaded pile in layered soil with socketed tip is explored and modelled using the finite element method. The results of the model have been verified against known field measurements from a case-study. Parametric studies have been conducted to investigate the influence of the coefficient of lateral earth pressure and the interface strength reduction factor on the results of the model.


Abstract : Research is described in which a concrete funicular shell, 35 x 40 feet in plan with a 2-inch thickness and a 30-inch rise, was tested to define its behavior under various loadings. The shell sustained a uniformly distributed load of 135 psf before failing in local buckling. In a subsequent test on an undamaged portion, it sustained a concentrated load of 10,800 pounds over an area 6 inches square before failing in punching shear. In addition to the test, pertinent construction and analysis techniques are discussed. It was found that double-curved shallow shells may be easily cast over an earth mound. When combined with the lift-slab technique, this mode of construction is expected to provide an inexpensive method for fabricating large shells for floors and roofs. Approximate limit analyses can be used to proportion shallow shells for ordinary purposes; however, no completely satisfactory method is available for treating such members. Elastic analysis provides a reasonable representation of behavior only at low loads. Despite the limitations in current analysis, the technology has developed sufficiently to permit use of shallow shells in military and civilian construction. Naval Shore Establishment uses include decks of docks and floors and roofs of warehouses. (Author)


The recent growth in use of the World-Wide Web in the Internet has caused a significant increase in the demand placed on Web servers. This increased load results in noticeably longer response times for users. We propose an approach to using multicast in the delivery of Web resources that reduces the load on servers as well as the networks that connect them. We analyze the issues involved in using multicast in the Web, especially those related to routing and addressing. We also discuss the design and implementation of a system based on the existing WWW client and server architecture and the multicast support provided within IP.<<ETX>>


This dissertation presents theoretical and experimental
results from a research program that was aimed at finding
practical ways of transferring energy to various loads,
mainly from an inductive energy store fluxed by a primary
store such as a capacitor bank.
The main obj ecti ves of the work were to investigate and
develop high power opening and closing switches, together
with the transfer circuits needed to generate the fast (less
than lOOns duration) high energy, pulses required in many
applications. The study was to include a feasibility study of
the use of the Plasma Erosion Opening Switch (PEOS) in such a
system.
To produce the large fast pulses required, an opening switch
is required that:
* Carry a current of the order of several kA during the
inductor storage time. It should also be able to interrupt
this current and to withstand the high voltage it will
experience as the current is subsequently transferred to a
load.
* Conduct for as long as possible (up to one quarter period
of the current waveform), to maximise the inductively stored
energy which can be transferred to xhe load when the switch
opens.
* Open to an impedance that is large compared to the load
impedance . This ensures that most of the inductively stored
energy is transferred to the load.
Open sufficiently rapidly to produce the required sharp
pulse of voltage.
In pulsed-power applications, energy is usually supplied from
slow and relatively inexpensive power sources such as a
capacitor bank, or an explosive flux-compression generator,
which deliver large quantities of energy in the lO-lOO time
range. Although no single switch is currently available which
has such a long conduction time, together with a nanosecond
opening time, the PEOS is a potential candidate. To overcome
its short conduction time, while still obtaining an opening
time of less than lOOns, the PEOS is used together with an
additional slower stage or stages of switching.
The key to this method is that each successive switching
stage produces a considerably increased voltage. Various
different types of switch were investigated and these are
described in the thesis. Particular consideration is paid to
the performance of the PEOS, as the final conditioning stage.
Exploding foils are also investigated, together with a novel
Automatic Exploding Foil Change-Over Switch, since an
exploding foil opening switch is needed to condition the
output of the capacitor bank before the PEOS. The initial
resistance of the PEOS is very low, and the change-over
switch is required to ensure that the current transfer takes
place when the voltage across the fuse approaches its peak
value. An important part of the investigation was to develop
a mathematical model of the PEOS, as a part of the power
condi tioning circuit, in order to simulate the system for
different load conditions.
The thesis explains the design, operation and performance
characteristics of the various pulsed-power components, such
as capacitor banks, closing and opening switches, pulse
transformer, the vacuum system required for a PEOS, and high
voltage and current measurement techniques.


Purpose: To explore the concerns of at-risk relatives of colorectal cancer patients about genetic discrimination and their awareness of current legislative protections.Methods: A questionnaire was sent to unaffected individuals with a family history of colorectal cancer who had enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Hereditary Colorectal Cancer Registry (N = 777).Results: Of the 470 respondents, approximately half rated their level of concern about genetic discrimination as high. The majority of respondents, 79%, learned about genetic discrimination from at least one media source (television, newspapers, magazines, and radio). If they were to pursue genetic testing, respondents with a higher level of concern about genetic discrimination would be significantly more likely to pay out of pocket, use an alias, or ask for test results to be excluded from their medical record. Awareness and understanding of legislation regarding genetic discrimination was found to be minimal.Conclusion: Findings from this study demonstrate the negative effect of concerns about genetic discrimination on decisions about utilization of genetic services. Stronger legislative protections against genetic discrimination and increased public education through the scientific community and media sources are needed.


Abstract Freshwater turtle courtship is an exciting and potentially phylogenetically important field of study. Scattered data exist from the past century of research, yet no recent summary is available. Courtship in freshwater turtles includes a number of common behaviors, which usually involve visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory signals. These signals function in both species and sex recognition and in the seduction of potential mates. Specific behavioral sequences are required to facilitate successful copulation, and these behaviors presumably play a role in mate choice. We performed a series of meta-analyses to investigate the evolution of courtship behavior in freshwater turtles. Biting, an aggressive form of courtship behavior, is plesiomorphic, conserved only in the Chelydridae, Kinosternidae, subfamily Emydinae and South American species in the Pleurodira. Head movement and foreclaw display are apparently apomorphic and evolved independently in the Geoemydinae, Deirochelyinae, and Australian species of the Pleurodira. Display type (pre- or postmounting display) and sexual size dimorphism also show phylogenetic patterns. Therefore, the evolution of courtship behavior in freshwater turtles might accompany the evolution of sexual dimorphism, which is directly subject to natural selection.