Water quality from the Murray River, Australia, can vary considerably and is expected to become more challenging to treat due to recent drought followed by widespread flooding and future climate change impacts. Better tools are required to help plant operators maintain water quality. Morgan water treatment plant (WTP) operates overnight to take advantage of off-peak electricity, however the stop/start practices add an additional complication to accurate coagulant dosing. Online monitoring and feed forward prediction is ideal in these situations as it can provide information while there is still a chance to make adjustments, unlike the feedback (post-dosing) control achieved with many other methods. Using a multiport sampling arrangement, water quality was monitored at Morgan WTP for a 6 month period. Data were validated against other online parameters and laboratory measured samples. In a comparison of predicted versus actual plant dose, results showed that treatment was optimised when the plant dose was changed in response to product water quality deterioration and eventually matched the prediction, even though this was not known to the operators at the time. The software prediction demonstrated faster reaction to inlet water quality changes and can produce more stable treated water quality. The predicted dose was added to the operator9s Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for several months as a real-time display to provide an additional tool to aid decision making and instill confidence in the resulting water quality.


UNLABELLED
Timely recognition of risk factors influencing graft survival time following kidney transplantation could facilitate the development of clinical interventions that would increase the longevity of graft survival. To identify these risk factors, we performed a retrospective analysis of the clinical outcome of 1949 renal transplants performed at The Ohio State University Transplant Program between 22 September 1982 and 14 June 1996. The number of acute rejection (AR) episodes was most predictive of shorter graft survival time. The first AR episode severity (indexed using the difference between post-treatment serum creatinine (RxCr) and baseline serum creatinine (BCr), or DeltaCr = RxCr - BCr) was the best predictor of graft survival time (r = 0.27, p < 0.0001) in patients experiencing AR. Subsequent AR episodes occurred more frequently in patients with a higher DeltaCr. However, DeltaCr was the best predictor of graft survival time (r = 0.44, p < 0.0001) in patients who had only one AR episode. The severity of the first AR episode (DeltaCr) correlated with the risk of subsequent AR episodes, the severity of a second AR episode and the average of mean blood pressures obtained after, but not before, the first AR episode. Therefore, we conclude that the severity of the first AR episode was the best predictor of renal allograft survival time in all patients experiencing AR, independent of subsequent AR episodes and correlated with subsequent clinical events which also influence renal allograft survival time. Thus, early diagnosis and aggressive treatment of the first AR episode are warranted to minimize AR severity and thereby maximize subsequent graft survival time.

CONCLUSIONS
The severity of the first acute rejection episode following renal transplantation is the best determinant of graft survival time and correlates with subsequent clinical events which could further reduce graft survival time.


The central purpose of medical research on children is to generate new knowledge that can improve children's health, subject to ethical standards that promote justice. Incorporated in U.S. law, international law, and European Union law, the Justice Principle prohibits targeting in medical research, which is the selection of research subjects because of their manipulability and compromised position, rather than for reasons directly related to the problem being studied. Unfortunately, medical research studies involving children have too often violated the Justice Principle, by targeting children in a compromised position due to their health status and vulnerable to manipulability because of their race and class. For example, a U.S. physician implanted pacemakers in fifty-five healthy African-American children resulting in disability, while a drug company tested an unapproved antibiotic in Nigerian children suffering from meningitis causing the death of eleven children, although there was a proven therapy available to the children. To prevent the targeting of these children, I recommend the development of a Vulnerability and Equity Impact Assessment tool (VEIA) similar to the Health Equity Impact Assessment tool to determine whether it is just to select children from particular groups as research subjects. Specifically, the VEIA will measure the societal burdens borne by children as a result of their race, class, and/or health status that compromises their position and makes them vulnerable to manipulability, the potential risks of the research such as physical and psychological harm, and the prospective benefits from the research such as guaranteed access to the therapy if it works. The research study using children from particular groups should not be approved for funding and/or the drug should not be approved for use, unless based on the VEIA, the researcher shows that the benefits to children from these particular groups outweigh the burdens and the risks.


Soy sauce (Shoyu) is a traditional Japanese fermented seasoning and is available worldwide. We investigated the effects of Shoyu polysaccharides (SPS) prepared from soy sauce on hyperlipidemia in vitro and in vivo. First, SPS inhibited pancreatic lipase. Second, in experiments with animals, it was found that SPS reduced serum triacylglycerol (TG) elevation induced by high-fat diets. Third, in a 2-week placebo-controlled parallel group study, healthy men (TG <150 mg/dl) were treated with 600 mg of SPS (n=5) or placebo (n=5) every day. After 2 weeks, serum TG elevation was significantly (P<0.05) lower in the SPS-treated group than in the placebo-treated group after 6 h of a high-fat diet. Fourth, in a 4-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled parallel group study, hyperlipidemic men (TG >150 mg/dl) were treated with 600 mg of SPS (n=15) or placebo (n=15) daily. After 4 weeks, serum TG levels in the SPS-treated group were significantly (P<0.05) lower than the baseline (0 week). In conclusion, SPS of soy sauce reduce lipid absorption, and soy sauce is a potentially promising seasoning for the treatment of hyperlipidemia through food.


The well-known Axler-Zheng theorem characterizes compactness of finite sums of finite products of Toeplitz operators on the unit disk in terms of the Berezin transform of these operators. Subsequently this theorem was generalized to other domains and appeared in different forms, including domains in C-n on which the (partial derivative) over bar -Neumann operator N is compact. In this work we remove the assumption on N, and we study weighted Bergman spaces on smooth bounded pseudoconvex domains. We prove a local version of the Axler-Zheng theorem characterizing compactness of Toeplitz operators in the algebra generated by symbols continuous up to the boundary in terms of the behavior of the Berezin transform at strongly pseudoconvex points. We employ a Forelli-Rudin type inflation method to handle the weights.


PurposeData from a national patient survey (N = 1,155) of the Swedish PAEHR "Journalen" users were analysed, and an extended version of the theory of technological frames was developed to explain the variation in the technological and informational framing of information technologies found in the data.Design/methodology/approachPatient Accessible Electronic Health Records (PAEHRs) are implemented globally to address challenges with an ageing population. However, firstly, little is known about age-related variation in PAEHR use, and secondly, user perceptions of the PAEHR technology and the health record information and how the technology and information–related perceptions are linked to each other. The purpose of this study is to investigate these two under-studied aspects of PAEHRs and propose a framework based on the theory of technological frames to support studying the second aspect, i.e. the interplay of information and technology–related perceptions.FindingsThe results suggest that younger respondents were more likely to be interested in PAEHR contents for general interest. However, they did not value online access to the information as high as older ones. Older respondents were instead inclined to use medical records information to understand their health condition, prepare for visits, become involved in their own healthcare and think that technology has a much potential. Moreover, the oldest respondents were more likely to consider the information in PAEHRs useful and aimed for them but to experience the technology as inherently difficult to use.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample excludes non-users and is not a representative sample of the population of Sweden. However, although the data contain an unknown bias, there are no specific reasons to believe that it would differently affect the survey's age groups.Practical implicationsAge should be taken into account as a key factor that influences perceptions of the usefulness of PAEHRs. It is also crucial to consider separately patients' views of PAEHRs as a technology and of the information contained in the EHR when developing and evaluating existing and future systems and information provision for patients.Social implicationsThis study contributes to bridging the gap between information behaviour and systems design research by showing how the theory of technological frames complemented with parallel informational frames to provide a potentially powerful framework for elucidating distinct conceptualisations of (information) technologies and the information they mediate. The empirical findings show how information and information technology needs relating to PAEHRs vary according to age. In contrast to the assumptions in much of the earlier work, they need to be addressed separately.Originality/valueFew earlier studies focus on (1) age-related variation in PAEHR use and (2) user perceptions of the PAEHR technology and the health record information and how the technology and information–related perceptions are linked to each other.


This paper focuses on the investigation of the wake flow around a circular patch of cylinders with different solid volume fractions (SVF). The wake flow pattern was found to be dependent on the SVF and the flow stability factor S. A non-hydrostatic model was used to simulate the open channel flow through the cylinders. The turbulence was simulated using the SST (shear strain transport) k-ω turbulence model. The model was first validated against experimental data to ensure the accuracy of the numerical simulation. Then the local turbulent flow and the wake flow field structures were investigated by changing the SVF and the water depth. The spatial evolution of the wake flow behind the patch was analysed, and the correlation between the flow pattern and the wake flow stability was discussed. The cylinder-scale turbulence was intensive, even at low SVFs and low water depths. In contrast, the patch-scale turbulence in the wake was suppressed and the unsteady bubble wake was formed when the water depth decreased, which revealed the importance of the bed friction force to the flow pattern. The parameters S and SVF were adjusted to demonstrate their contributions to the formation of the different wake flow patterns.


Large carnivores provide key ecological services to ecosystems, and full species assemblages are thought to be important in maintaining full ecosystem function. The African large carnivore guild represents one of the last functionally intact guilds of large carnivores on Earth, but relatively little is known of the mechanisms facilitating coexistence between some of its members. As such, I investigate coexistence mechanisms between leopards (Panthera pardus) and their competitors and present four pieces of original research on leopard ecology and monitoring, primarily within the framework of carnivore interactions. To this end, I focus on sympatric populations of wild, but habituated, lions (Panthera leo), leopards, African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), and cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) in northern Botswana. Data were primarily collected through a combination of field-based observations, high-resolution GPS radio collars, and tourist-contributed photographs. I found that at both broad- and fine- scales, leopards were largely resilient to the effects of intraguild competition. Specifically, I found little evidence that spatio-temporal niches were driven by predator avoidance and found limited impacts of competitor encounters on leopard behaviours and movements. In the context of intraspecific competition, my thesis also informs on the optimal scent marking strategies used by leopards to communicate with conspecifics, presumably, in part, to facilitate territory maintenance. Specifically, leopards invested more in maintaining scent marks at home range boundaries and scent marked at higher frequencies on roads. My thesis results also highlight the potential of using tourist photographs to monitor large carnivore densities within protected areas. In sum, my findings provide key insights into the coexistence mechanisms between leopards and their competitors and provide a framework for sustainable citizen-driven wildlife monitoring programs.


Microbiological data on foodborne pathogens used in research for risk assessment or risk mitigation should be accurate and reliable to the specified level of the underlying measurement performance characterization. This chapter reviews standard statistical approaches to performance characterization for detection and enumeration with emphasis on validity aspects. It describes the most important statistical measures described by International Organization for Standardization (ISO 16140) for validation of qualitative and quantitative methods of accuracy used for alternative methods. The chapter also briefly describes the performance characterization with regard to precision (interlaboratory reproducibility). Issues related to the limit of detection (LOD), sometimes referred to as analytical sensitivity, are relevant for both classical and alternative methods for detection and enumeration. Data generated by using methods with an LOD include nondetects, i.e., false-negative results, and are referred to as censored data, because only values that are greater than the LOD can be reliably observed. Ignoring the censoring problem and also the substitution of nondetects with an arbitrary value selected from a range between zero and the LOD leads to biases. New technologies have emerged in response to the need for fast, cost-efficient, and high-throughput devices for the detection and classification of foodborne microorganisms. The chapter finally reviews some applications of statistical methods and provides references for further reading.


The plant hormones ethylene, jasmonic acid and salicylic acid have interconnecting roles during the response of plant tissues to mutualistic and pathogenic symbionts. We used morphological studies of transgenic- or hormone-treated Populus roots as well as whole-genome oligoarrays to examine how these hormones affect root colonization by the mutualistic ectomycorrhizal fungus Laccaria bicolor S238N. We found that genes regulated by ethylene, jasmonic acid and salicylic acid were regulated in the late stages of the interaction between L. bicolor and poplar. Both ethylene and jasmonic acid treatments were found to impede fungal colonization of roots, and this effect was correlated to an increase in the expression of certain transcription factors (e.g. ETHYLENE RESPONSE FACTOR1) and a decrease in the expression of genes associated with microbial perception and cell wall modification. Further, we found that ethylene and jasmonic acid showed extensive transcriptional cross-talk, cross-talk that was opposed by salicylic acid signaling. We conclude that ethylene and jasmonic acid pathways are induced late in the colonization of root tissues in order to limit fungal growth within roots. This induction is probably an adaptive response by the plant such that its growth and vigor are not compromised by the fungus.


We demonstrate a unique microfluidic device for continuous-flow cell sorting by railing target cells along physical tracks (electrode sidewalls) based on the combined effect of dielectrophoresis and hydrodynamic drag. The tracks are the raised digits of comb-like structures made of conducting bulk silicon as the electrodes. Unlike other volumetric electrodes, the structures feature a segmented sidewall profile with linear and concave segments forming the tracks and supporting columns, respectively. The interdigitated bulk electrodes lead to a built-in flow chamber in which the digits (tracks) extend downstream at a characteristic angle with respect to the flow, which runs through the passages between the columns. Target cells leaving the passages are levitated and docked against the tracks under positive dielectrophoresis and railed under hydrodynamic drag. Railing efficiency, as high as >95%, is reported against the activation voltage and flow rate for the designs 7°, 16°, and 26° as the track angles. A collection efficiency of about 86% is noted for both target (HCT116) and non-target cells (K562) in the 16° design at a sample flow rate of 8.3 μL min-1 and an activation voltage of 12.5 Vp at 200 kHz. This performance is comparable if not better than those obtained with thin-film surface microelectrodes and yet achieved here at an order of magnitude higher sample flow rate. This enhancement mainly arises from a considerably low drag along the tracks in relation to the chamber top or bottom surface where the thin-film electrodes would be typically placed.


The purpose of this study was to analyze the guidance and counseling program at Thika High School for the Blind, the only residential secondary school for students with visual impairments in Kenya. The study examined the content of the existing guidance and counseling program and whether the teacher counselors were adequately trained to handle the youth with visual impairments. The study adopted the fifth stage of Erikson's psychoanalytic theory (1975), "identity versus role confusion" under which adolescents fall. The theory states that at adolescent stage, the youth with visual impairments experience a major crisis due to rejection, negative attitudes, and social stigma from family, peers and society. The study was descriptive and included observations and a survey design. A sample of 22 subjects which comprised of 16 students who were conveniently sampled plus 4 teachers, 1 deputy principal and 1 head of guidance and counseling department who were purposively sampled. Data were collected through questionnaires supplemented by an interview schedule for the deputy principal, unstructured interview schedule for students, and observation checklists for human resources and physical facilities. The study found that there is need to strengthen guidance and counseling services in Thika High School for the Blind through school-based in-service courses, workshops and seminars for teacher counselor. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)


This thesis investigates the distribution of superconductivity in a Type-II planar, bounded, and smooth superconductor submitted to a piecewise-constant magnetic field with a jump discontinuity along smooth curves---the magnetic edge. This discontinuous case has not been treated before in the mathematics literature, where the considered applied magnetic field is usually assumed to be smooth.We examine the behavior of the sample in different regimes of the intensity of the applied magnetic field. When the magnetic field is relatively weak, we prove that superconductivity exists all over the sample. Increasing the magnetic field's intensity to higher levels, superconductivity is shown to vanish in the interior of the sample away from the magnetic edge and can nucleate near this edge as well as near the boundary. Such nucleation may not be uniform. Under stronger magnetic fields, superconductivity is confined to the vicinity of the intersection of the magnetic edge with the boundary, when such an intersection exists, before being completely destroyed at a certain stage of the field's intensity. The results show a behaviour of the sample that, according to the intensity-regime, may differ from or resemble to that in the case of smooth/corner domains submitted to uniform magnetic fields. This highlights the particularity of our discontinuous case.The study is modeled by the Ginzburg--Landau (GL) theory, and the obtained results are valid for the minimizers of the two-dimensional GL functional with a large GL parameter and with a field's intensity comparable to this parameter.


For the first time, researchers have found that a novel immunologic therapy increases survival by nearly 18 percent in men with advanced prostate cancer that no longer responds to hormone therapy. The therapeutic cancer vaccine, called APC8015 (Provenge), is likely to become a new standard of care for patients with metastatic prostate cancer. The UCSF-led study is the first to demonstrate a survival benefit from immunologic therapies or vaccines in patients with advanced prostate cancer. "We're very pleased with the results. A therapy that prolongs life yet avoids the side effects of other therapeutic approaches is clearly attractive to patients and physicians alike," said Eric Small, MD, UCSF professor of medicine and urology and lead investigator of the study. The study was presented in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday, Feb. 19, at a prostate cancer symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, and the Society of Urologic Oncology. Although the new agent is called a vaccine, it is not designed to prevent cancer. Rather, it uses the patient's own immune system to recognize and attack existing cancer cells. APC8015 is designed to stimulate the immune system to attack cells that express prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP), a protein found on approximately 95% of prostate cancer cells. APC8015 is produced by collecting blood from each patient, isolating the relevant immune cells, and stimulating those cells so that they recognize PAP as "foreign." The resulting product, APC8015, is administered as an intravenous infusion. In this study, investigators randomized 127 men with asymptomatic metastatic prostate cancer that no longer responded to hormone therapy to receive the vaccine (82 men) or a placebo (45 men). Patients received three doses of the vaccine at two-week intervals, and were followed for three years. Overall survival among patients receiving the vaccine was 25.9 months, compared to 22 months in the placebo group. Three years later, more than three times as many vaccine patients (34 percent) were still alive, compared to the placebo group (11 percent). Treatment was well-tolerated - fever and shaking were reported as the most common side effects, and generally disappeared within two days of vaccine administration. Therapeutic vaccines are being studied in the treatment of other types of cancer including lymphoma, leukemia, and cancers of the brain, breast, lung, kidney, ovary, pancreas, colon, and rectum. In 2004, 26,000 men in the US died of prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is the most often diagnosed non-skin cancer in the US and the third most-common cancer worldwide, according to the American Cancer Society. Of the 185,000 men diagnosed each year in the US, an estimated 10-15 percent already have metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis, and another estimated 20 percent will develop metastatic disease.


Mounting empirical evidence suggests the conflation of teachers' instructional orientations and personal epistemological beliefs helps form the perceptual identity of educators. The current study, therefore, sought to describe in what way Oklahoma agricultural education teachers' epistemological beliefs and orientations toward instruction combine to form the dominant perceptual identities of school-based, agricultural education (SBAE) instructors. To accomplish this, a Q methodological approach was employed. Findings revealed three key perceptual identities of SBAE instructors: Diligent Educator, Daring Educator, and Devoted Educator. Each perceptual identity stressed the importance of experiential learning. However, positions differed in how they believed experiential learning should be delivered to students. For example, Diligent Educators maintained that learning should involve a well-designed educational plan that stresses hard work. Devoted Educators, however, placed emphasis on nurturing students throughout the learning process. Meanwhile, Daring Educators contend knowledge is more fluid and self-constructed. Using Perry's (1970) epistemological development scheme and Bowden's (1990) conception of phenomenographic pedagogy, recommendations for praxis are offered for each perceptual identity.


Increasing the conductivity of polycrystalline zinc oxide films without impacting the transparency is a key aspect in the race to find affordable and high quality material as replacement of indium‐containing oxides. Usually, ZnO film conductivity is provided by a high doping and electron concentration, detrimental to transparency, because of free carrier absorption. Here we show that hydrogen post‐deposition plasma treatment applied to ZnO films prepared by metalorganic low‐pressure chemical vapor deposition allows a relaxation of the constraints of the conductivity/transparency trade‐off. Upon treatment, an increase in electron concentration and Hall mobility is observed. The mobility reaches high values of 58 and 46 cm2V−1s−1 for 2‐μm‐ and 350‐nm‐thick films, respectively, without altering the visible range transparency. From a combination of opto‐electronic measurements, hydrogen is found, in particular, to reduce electron trap density at grain boundaries. After treatment, the values for intragrain or optical mobility are found similar to Hall mobility, and therefore, electron conduction is found to be no longer limited by the phenomenon of grain boundary scattering. This allows to achieve mobilities close to 60 cm2V−1s−1, even in ultra‐transparent films with carrier concentration as low as 1019 cm−3.


Spatial integration and increased connectivity have hugely affected regions and cities across national borders, and real estate assets, including offices, have inevitably felt the effects of global consolidation. Despite the abundance of discussions on the real estate and office markets, research that focusses on this phenomenon has rarely been conducted.Thus, this study aims to reflect the effects of inter-city connectivity on the world's office market and office rents. The spatial scope of the paper is 50 major cities throughout the world, and the time scope is the period 2010-2014. This study is distinctive in that it conducts a comparative study amongst cities worldwide, and tries to discover a previously unidentified determinant of office rents. The basic assumption of the study is that the spatial integration effect, represented by air connectivity, positively affects office rents. Three models have been set up according to aspects of air connectivity: the number of flight seats, the number of flights, and ASKs (available seat kilometres). Formerly established determinants of office rents, vacancy and GDP per capita are also set as independent variables.Panel analysis of the 50 cities resulted in the following: In the case of Europe and North America, which comprise 80 percent of all samples, correlation of rent and air connectivity turned out to be significantly positive in all models. This empirical result satisfies the basic assumption of the study that increased spatial integration significantly affects world office rents on the whole. Asia Pacific samples, however, turned out to have a statistically insignificant correlation between rents and air connectivity. This result suggests that Asia Pacific's regional complexity is not fully reflected in the models, and shows that the study has some limitations with respect to explanatory power.Considering the office market's importance in both the commercial real estate market and the real estate market as a whole, it is a crucial task to determine factors that affect office rents to properly understand the asset market and predict the market's future movement. This study acquires significance in this context because it involves considering how connectivity effects may lessen uncertainty in the real estate market and improve efficiency in this market, where illiquidity has long been thought of as one of its feature


Community Health Worker (CHW) programs have been implemented in many developing countries to combat the challenge of poor access to healthcare. CHWs are unpaid volunteers who provide basic health information, education, and resources to their communities. In rural areas the large distances between households make it difficult for CHWs to fulfill their responsibilities in a timely fashion. Additionally, difficult working conditions, lack of pay, and limited feedback severely hinder the success and retention of CHWs in these rural areas. Proper economic incentives can provide motivation for CHWs to make CHW programs sustainable. Income generating activities for CHWs can be focused on health services or can be coupled with other entrepreneurial ventures that provide benefits to local communities. After examining problems with retention and turnover of CHWs in rural areas, this article discusses a potential model of co-located community health and activity centers - a place for the community to gather, socialize, and receive basic health information, education, and resources. The center will create an entrepreneurial opportunity for CHWs, providing them an economic incentive to improve their livelihoods and a motivation to continue as an unpaid health care provider.


OBJECTIVE
This project was aimed at designing and putting an electronic prototype into practice for improving the initial time taken by visually handicapped people for learning Braille, especially children.

METHODS
This project was mainly based on a prototype digital electronic device which identifies and translates material written by a user in Braille by a voice synthesis system, producing artificial words to determine whether a handicapped person's writing in Braille has been correct. A global system for mobile communications (GSM) module was also incorporated into the device which allowed it to send text messages, thereby involving innovation in the field of articles for aiding visually handicapped people.

RESULTS
This project's main result was an easily accessed and understandable prototype device which improved visually handicapped people's initial learning of Braille.

CONCLUSIONS
The time taken for visually handicapped people to learn Braille became significantly reduced whilst their interest increased, as did their concentration time regarding such learning.


P>The role of fat content and type of surfactant for oral friction processes and texture perception of oil-in-water emulsions was assessed. Emulsions at 22% and 33% fat content containing either sodium caseinate or a sucrose ester as emulsifier were compared with viscosity-adapted aqueous solutions of dextran using both sensory evaluation and friction coefficient measurements on a tongue-palate contact model. The impact of saliva on the emulsion droplet size distribution was studied using tribology, differential interference contrast microscopy and light diffraction measurements. Emulsions at 33% and the corresponding iso-viscous aqueous solutions were discriminated in the sensory experiment whereas emulsions at 22% were not. Friction was significantly different for emulsions at 33% and the corresponding iso-viscous aqueous solutions. The difference was not significant for emulsions with 22% fat level when compared with the iso-viscous aqueous solutions. Saliva significantly decreased the friction coefficient of emulsions depending on the surfactant and amount of fat used.


Global emergence of Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii) displays a mechanism of resistance to all existing antimicrobials. Objective of this study was to investigate the effect of biofield treatment on antimicrobial sensitivity pattern, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC), biochemical reactions and biotype number of A. baumannii. A. baumannii cells were procured from MicroBioLogics in sealed packs bearing the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC 19606) number and stored according to the recommended storage protocols until needed for experiments. Two sets of ATCC samples were taken in this experiment and denoted as A and B. ATCC-A sample was revived and divided into two parts i.e. Gr.I (control) and Gr.II (revived) analyzed on day 5 and 10, respectively; likewise, ATCC-B was labeled as Gr.III (lyophilized) and was assessed on day 10. Gr.II and III were treated with Mr. Trivedi's biofield and were analyzed for its antimicrobial sensitivity, MIC value, biochemical reactions and biotype number with respect to control. Experimental results showed the impact of biofield treatment directly onto the revived and lyophilized form of A. baumannii and found alteration both in qualitative and quantitative aspect as compared with untreated groups. These results showed altered sensitivity pattern of antimicrobials in biofield treated group as compared to control. Apart from altered MIC values, changes were also observed in biotype number of revived treated group as compared to control. These findings suggest that biofield treatment can prevent the emergence of absolute resistance of existing antimicrobials to A. baumannii.


Abstract Geomagnetic and mineral magnetic data provide geological indices that are both independent of human impact (i.e. geomagnetic) and respond to human-induced environmental impact (i.e. mineral magnetic). We provide the first discussion of such magnetic events for help in defining the Anthropocene. Within the Holocene, a potential geomagnetic marker for the Anthropocene is the low dipole latitude at c. 2700 cal a BP, which is associated with distinct palaeosecular variation features in northerly mid- to high-latitude sites. Mineral magnetic records from lake and marine sediments identify major deforestation and soil delivery events from catchment systems in many parts of the world during the last 4000 years. In Europe, clusters of these events occur around both 2600 cal a BP and AD 1100, the former coinciding with a low in geomagnetic field dipole latitude and peak intensity. Mineral magnetic records in peats and lake sediments can reflect particulate pollution from fossil fuel burning. The expansion of major coal burning began c. AD 1800 in western Europe and eastern North America, but around AD 1900 this expanded due to more widely distributed coal use, and this event is the most clear mineral magnetic marker for the base of the Anthropocene.


The insight into deconvolution and phase retrieval afforded by the concept of the zero sheet (of the spectrum of a compact image) is summarized. Difficulties associated with practical implementation of the zero-sheet concept are outlined. Possible means for overcoming these difficulties are suggested and are illustrated with selected examples for several types of deconvolution, i.e., standard, ensemble blind (i.e., blind deconvolution in Stockham's sense), and pure blind (i.e., deconvolution of a single blurred image without prior knowledge of the point-spread function). A specialized procedure is described for blindly deconvolving a blurred image when the spectrum of the point-spread function is an unknown pure phase function. It is indicated how this procedure may facilitate phase retrieval for spectra of complex-valued images. Possible effects on Wiener filtering and on astronomical speckle imaging are discussed.


This research was originally undertaken to aid the Jamaican government and the World Bank in making funding decisions relative to improvement of road systems and traffic control in Jamaica. An investigation of the frequency and causes of road accidents and an evaluation of their impact on the Jamaican economy were carried out, and a model system which might be applied was developed. It is believed that the importance of road accident economic and manpower losses to the survival of developing countries, such as Jamaica, cannot be overemphasized. It is suggested that the World Bank, in cooperation with national governments, has a role to play in alleviating this serious problem. Data was collected from such organizations as the Jamaica Ministry of Construction, Police Department, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization. A variety of methodologies were utilized to organize this data in useful and understandable forms. The most important conclusion of this research is that solvable problems in road systems and in traffic control result in the unnecessary loss of useful citizens, in both developed and developing countries. However, a lack of information and understanding regarding the impact of high rates of road accident death and injury on the national economy and stability of a country results in an apparent lack of concern. Having little internal expertise in the field of road accident prevention, developing countries usually hire consultants to help them address this problem. In the case of Jamaica, this practice has resulted in distrust and hard feelings between the Jamaican authorities and major organizations involved in the field. Jamaican officials have found confusing the recommendations of most experts contracted to study traffic safety. The attempts of foreign consultants to utilize a technological approach (the use of coding systems and computers), methods which do not appear cost-effective for Jamaica, have resulted in the expenditure of limited funds for studies which offer no feasible approach to the problem. This funding limitation, which hampers research and road improvement, could be alleviated by such organizations as the World Bank. The causes of high accident rates are many, it was found. Formulation of a plan to address this serious problem must take into account the current failure to appreciate the impact of a high level of road accidents on national economy and stability, inability to find a feasible approach to the problem, and inadequate funding. Such a plan is discussed in detail in the main text of this research.


Southern Africa is characterized by a large number of international river basins inherent climatic variability and a natural maldistribution of perennial rivers. The region also has a history of political instability driven by liberation struggles against the former colonial powers and the Cold War. Southern Africas transboundary rivers and their associated ecosystems could become either drivers of peace and economic integration or sources of endemic conflict. Water scarcity has also placed limits on the future economic growth potential of the regions four most economically developed countries. This situation combined with the regional development of international and increasingly complex interbasin water transfers highlights the need to develop appropriate scientific methodologies that can explain and predict future patterns of conflict and cooperation. (authors)


The recently approved IEEE 802.17 Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) network deteriorates under multicast traffic to legacy ring technologies that do not support spatial reuse. We extend our multicast approach with spatial reuse from a currently single-channel RPR to WDM-upgraded multichannel RPR networks, where each node can transmit packets on all wavelengths and receive on one wavelength, and analyze their multicast capacity. Our analysis provides a convenient method for evaluating the multicast and reception capacities of WDM-upgraded RPR networks for a wide range of uniform unicast, multicast, and broadcast traffic scenarios.


Heavy charged particle induced soft errors in semiconductor memory devices have been a field failure problem for the manufacturers and the users of microelectronic systems in recent years, but these did not become significant until the introduction of 16k and 64k dynamic Random Access Memories (dRAMs). Soft errors, sometimes referred to as "single event upsets" (SEUs), can deposit sufficient electrical charge on integrated circuit nodes to initiate logic state reversal without causing any permanent changes in the device. Therefore, correctable errors may be introduced randomly in space and time that are distinguishable from intended states only by their information content. In terms of memory circuits, dRAMs turn out to be the most susceptible to such errors because they contain relatively the smallest individual elements and are operated on the smallest amounts of charge. A hardware system has being designed and constructed with a view to using it in the detection of neutrons. A feasibility study was initially carried out to demonstrate that dRAMs may be used as heavy charged particle detectors and furthermore can be sensitive to neutrons. The addition of a thermal neutron to charged particle converter which makes use of the (n,a) reaction maximizes detection efficiency of the incident neutrons. A model has been developed to examine the use of possible converters with respect to soft error generation including those factors that determine the optimum thickness and the efficiency of such a detector. The construction of a detector that is also position sensitive has many attractions, therefore experiments were carried out to investigate the relative sensitivity of specific elements within the dRAM chips to cycle time. Any area of the device with an electric field has the potential to separate charge and acts as a collector. A heavy charged particle can, therefore, discharge a storage capacitor either by disturbing the bit lines or by causing the information to be inverted during the sensing of the sense amplifiers. Hence, the variation of the memory cycle time allowed to determine from the dependence of soft error, whether the impact of charged particles was in the region of memory cells or of the bit lines and sense amplifiers which has left the bit line-sense amplifier contribution to soft error rate as the dominant one. The findings from this research highlight the usefulness of such a device as a radiation sensor and, in particular, as a position sensitive one.


AIMS
To identify good and bad behaviors by bar staff in aggressive incidents, the extent these behaviors apparently reflect aggressive intent, and the association of aggressive staff behavior with level of aggression by patrons.

DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS
Data on staff behavior in incidents of aggression were collected by 148 trained observers in bars and clubs on Friday and Saturday night between midnight and 2 a.m. in Toronto, Canada. Behaviors of 809 staff involved in 417 incidents at 74 different bars/clubs were analysed using descriptive statistics and three-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses.

MEASUREMENTS
Observers' ratings of 28 staff behaviors were used to construct two scales that measured escalating/aggressive aspects of staff behavior. Apparent intent level for bar staff was dichotomized into (1) no aggressive intent versus (2) probable or definite aggressive intent. Five levels of patron aggression were defined: no aggression, non-physical, minor physical, moderate physical and severe physical.

FINDINGS
The most common aggressive behaviors of staff were identified. Staff were most aggressive when patrons were either non-aggressive or highly aggressive and staff were least aggressive when patrons exhibited non-physical aggression or minor physical aggression. Taking apparent intent into consideration decreased staff aggression scores for incidents in which patrons were highly aggressive indicating that some aggression by staff in these instances had non-aggressive intent (e.g. to prevent injury); however, apparent intent had little effect on staff aggression scores in incidents with non-aggressive patrons.

CONCLUSION
Although there is potential for staff to act as guardians or handlers, they often themselves became offenders when they responded to barroom problems. The practical implications are different for staff aggression with nonaggressive patrons versus with aggressive patrons.


This paper uses a simultaneous-equations model of the new consensus macroeconomic model to examine whether the inclusion of the money stock in the aggregate demand function improves the statistical fit of the model. The results indicate that the consensus model is accurate for the U.S. in that the inclusion of money does not increase the predictive power of the model. However, the results reveal that the estimated coefficients are more robust when money is included as an instrumental variable in the simultaneous equations consensus model.


Size-Change Termination (SCT) is a method of proving program termination
based on the impossibility of infinite descent. To this end we use a program
abstraction in which transitions are described by Monotonicity Constraints over
(abstract) variables. When only constraints of the form x>y' and x\geq y' are
allowed, we have size-change graphs. In the last decade, both theory and
practice have evolved significantly in this restricted framework. The crucial
underlying assumption of most of the past work is that the domain of the
variables is well-founded. In a recent paper I showed how to extend and adapt
some theory from the domain of size-change graphs to general monotonicity
constraints, thus complementing previous work, but remaining in the realm of
well-founded domains. However, monotonicity constraints are, interestingly,
capable of proving termination also in the integer domain, which is not
well-founded. The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of
monotonicity constraints in this domain. We lay the necessary theoretical
foundation, and present precise decision procedures for termination; finally,
we provide a procedure to construct explicit global ranking functions from
monotonicity constraints in singly-exponential time, and of optimal worst-case
size and dimension (ordinal).


We examine predictions for the quasar luminosity functions (QLFs) and quasar clustering at high redshift (z ≥ 4.75) using MassiveBlack, our new hydrodynamic cosmological simulation which includes a self-consistent model for black hole (BH) growth and feedback. We show that the model reproduces the Sloan QLF within observational constraints at z ≥ 5. We find that the high-z QLF is consistent with a redshift-independent occupation distribution of BHs among dark matter haloes (which we provide) such that the evolution of the QLF follows that of the halo mass function. The sole exception is the bright end at z = 6 and 7, where BHs in high-mass haloes tend to be unusually bright due to extended periods of Eddington growth caused by high-density cold flows into the halo centre. We further use these luminosity functions to make predictions for the number density of quasars in upcoming surveys, predicting that there should be ∼119 ± 28 (∼87 ± 28) quasars detectable in the F125W band of the WIDE (DEEP) fields of the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) from z = 5 to 6, ∼19 ± 7 (∼18 ± 9) from z = 6 to 7 and ∼1.7 ± 1.5 (∼1.5 ± 1.5) from z = 7 to 8. We also investigate quasar clustering, finding that the correlation length is fully consistent with current constraints for Sloan quasars (r0 ∼ 17 h−1 Mpc at z = 4 for quasars above mi = 20.2) and grows slowly with redshift up to z = 6 (r0 ∼ 22 h−1 Mpc). Finally, we note that the quasar clustering strength depends weakly on luminosity for low LBH, but gets stronger at higher LBH as the BHs are found in higher mass haloes.


Recently, we discovered that cyclodextrin (CD)-stabilized gold nanoparticles could be synthesized in an aqueous medium from a self-assembled supramolecular structure of CD and gold salt. We showed that the self-assembled structure of the CD complex induced by the gold salt acted as a solid template for the formation of nanoconfined gold seeds and that gold seeds grew into CD-stabilized gold nanoparticles in water without the necessity of other reducing or stabilizing agents. Here, we extensively investigate the supramolecular self-assembled structure of the CD/gold salt complex under various synthetic conditions, the mechanism of the α-CD-stabilized gold nanoparticles formation, and the processing parameters for controlling the size of gold nanoparticles. We demonstrate that gold salts were confined between two different crystalline phases of the supramolecular CD solid template via a gold salt-induced molecular self-assembly process and that thermal treatment of the CD/gold salt complex led to the formation of nanosized gold seeds geometrically confined within the crystalline interface region. Placement of the thermally treated complex in water without the addition of any supplementary additives proliferated the growth of CD-stabilized gold nanoparticles via stabilization of the growing gold seed intermediates by CD molecules. In addition, various processing parameters such as Au salt concentration are shown to affect the size of AuNPs.


One hundred years ago, Frederick Taylor and Frank Gilbreth astounded the industrial world by establishing time and motion procedures which enable employers to get higher productivity from workers. In doing so, Taylor and Gilbreth established the basis of time management techniques, which were widely adopted by executives. Time management, however, can no longer solve anyone's problems. The number of variables affecting one's schedules, workload, and responsibilities simply cannot be governed by such antiquated notions. Roasting sacred cows The six points below represent conventional time management wisdom. Following each bit of "wisdom" is what I call the Breathing Space approach that serves as the guiding principle. While time management was a set of rules that worked well in a relatively finite setting, these principles will prove to be far more effective for the ever-changing multi-variable situations that executives and managers face today. 1. Handling paper--Conventional wisdom: "Handle each piece of paper once." Perspective: It always depends on what a piece of paper says; you may have to handle some papers 25 times! Never handle most pieces of paper: don't let them cross your desk. 2. Reducing clutter--Conventional wisdom: "When in doubt, throw it out" Perspective: Not bad advice, but hang onto things when you sense downstream consequences of not doing so. Pack-up and store current non-essentials and check them again later. 3. Being more efficient--Conventional wisdom: Speed reading, listening, learning. Perspective: We walk, talk, eat, read, listen, and learn at certain speeds for a reason. Notice most successful people in your profession are not in a hurry. It can be harmful to accelerate basic your personal functioning. Operate at a pace that is comfortable for you. 4. Beating the competition--Conventional wisdom: "Work smarter, not harder" Perspective: Was Edison smart after 8,000 attempts to invent the light bulb? When it finally worked, did his IQ rise? Sometimes the smartest way you can work is harder. 5. Managing your schedule--Conventional wisdom: Use sophisticated scheduling tools. Perspective: Electronic calendars, time management software, etc., will fail when you don't keep them current. Tackle the few key projects that count; have the guts to leave the rest. 6. Staying informed--Conventional wisdom: Read key executive publications. …


The lipid raft resident adaptor molecules LAT1 and Non-T cell activation linker (NTAL), also known as linker for activation of B cells (LAB)/LAT2 are known participants in the regulation of mast cell calcium responses. Both LAT and NTAL are expressed and phosphorylated following engagement of FCERI on mast cells. NTAL is functionally and topographically different from LAT. There is a considerable debate on the role of NTAL in mast cell. Depending on the circumstances, NTAL appears to have a dual role as positive and negative regulator of MC responses elicited via FCERI. Studies conducted in bone marrow-derived mast cells (BMMCs) of mice lacking NTAL displayed enhanced FCERI-mediated tyrosine phosphorylation of several substrates, calcium response, degranulation, and cytokine production. This indic-ated that NTAL negatively regulates FCERI-mediated degranulation. However, in mice lacking both LAT and NTAL showed severe block in FCERI-mediated signaling than BMMCs deficient in LAT alone, sug-gesting that NTAL also shares a redundant function with LAT to play a positive role (Draberova et al. 2007, Orr & McVicar. 2011, Zhu et al. 2004, Volna et al. 2004). The major steps in NTAL mediated Ca+2 influx NTAL--> GAB2--> PI3K


Stem rust, caused by Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici, is a destructive disease of wheat that can be controlled by deploying effective stem rust resistance (Sr) genes. Highly virulent races of P. graminis f. sp. tritici in Africa have been detected and characterized. These include race TRTTF and the Ug99 group of races such as TTKSK. Several Canadian and U.S. spring wheat cultivars, including the widely grown Canadian cultivar 'Harvest', are resistant to TRTTF. However, the genetic basis of resistance to TRTTF in Canadian and U.S. spring wheat cultivars is unknown. The objectives of this study were to determine the number of Sr genes involved in TRTTF resistance in Harvest, genetically map the resistance with DNA markers, and use markers to assess the distribution of that resistance in a panel of Canadian cultivars. A doubled haploid (DH) population was produced from the cross LMPG-6S/Harvest. The DH population was tested with race TRTTF at the seedling stage. Of 92 DH progeny evaluated, 46 were resistant and 46 were susceptible which perfectly fit a 1:1 ratio indicating a single Sr gene was responsible for conferring resistance to TRTTF in Harvest. Mapping with single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers placed the resistance gene distally on the chromosome 6AS genetic map, which corresponded to the location reported for Sr8. SSR marker gwm459 and 30 cosegregating SNP markers showed the closest linkage, mapping 2.2 cM proximal to the Sr gene. Gene Sr8a confers resistance to TRTTF and may account for the resistance in Harvest. Testing a panel of Canadian wheat cultivars with four SNP markers closely linked to resistance to TRTTF suggested that the resistance present in Harvest is present in many Canadian cultivars. Two of these SNP markers were also predictive of TRTTF resistance in a panel of 241 spring wheat lines from the United States, Canada, and Mexico.


We have developed an ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) to estimate 8-day regional surface fluxes of CO 2 from space-borne CO 2 dry-air mole fraction observations (XCO2) and evaluate the approach using a series of synthetic experiments, in preparation for data from the NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO). The 32-day duty cycle of OCO alternates every 16 days between nadir and glint measurements of backscattered solar radiation at short-wave infrared wavelengths. The EnKF uses an ensemble of states to represent the error covariances to estimate 8-day CO 2 surface fluxes over 144 geographical regions. We use a 12 ×8-day lag window, recognising that X CO2 measurements include surface flux information from prior time windows. The observation operator that relates surface CO 2 fluxes to atmospheric distributions of XCO2 includes: a) the GEOS-Chem transport model that relates surface fluxes to global 3-D distributions of CO2 concentrations, which are sampled at the time and location of OCO measurements that are cloud-free and have aerosol optical depths <0.3; and b) scene-dependent averaging kernels that relate the CO 2 profiles to XCO2, accounting for differences between nadir and glint measurements, and the associated scene-dependent observation errors. We show that OCO XCO2 measurements significantly reduce the uncertainties of surface CO 2 flux estimates. Glint measurements are generally better at constraining ocean CO 2 flux estimates. Nadir XCO2 measurements over the terrestrial tropics are sparse throughout the year because of either clouds or smoke. Glint measurements provide the most effective constraint for estimating tropical terrestrial CO 2 fluxes by accurately sampling fresh continental outflow over neighbouring oceans. We also present results from sensitivity experiments that investigate how flux estimates change with 1) bias and Correspondence to: L. Feng (firstname.lastname@example.com) unbiased errors, 2) alternative duty cycles, 3) measurement density and correlations, 4) the spatial resolution of estimated flux estimates, and 5) reducing the length of the lag window and the size of the ensemble. At the revision stage of this manuscript, the OCO instrument failed to reach its orbit after it was launched on 24 February 2009. The EnKF formulation presented here is also applicable to GOSAT measurements of CO2 and CH4.


When a domain name is registered, the registrant is given five days to cancel for a full refund. While the purpose of this grace period is to protect those who innocently err in the registration process, speculators have taken advantage of the grace period through a process called "domain tasting." These "domain tasters" register hundreds of thousands of domain names and cancel the vast majority of them within the five-day grace period, keeping only those that may be valuable as placeholder advertising websites or to holders of trademark rights. This iBrief will outline the "domain tasting" process, analyze why it is a problem, and discuss solutions to the problem. Ultimately, it concludes that the five-day grace period is unnecessary because it serves little, if any, legitimate purpose.


On May 4, 2011, in Montz v. Pilgrim Films & Television, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that an implied-in-fact contract claim survived preemption by the Copyright Act of 1976 because it was qualitatively different from a copyright claim. It did so by applying a permissive interpretation of the extra element test. Under this interpretation, the contract claim alleged an extra element that transformed the nature of the action. This Comment argues that this narrow interpretation of the Copyright Act's preemption clause was correct because it provides idea-creators with greater protection for their creative concepts and conforms with the Copyright Act's underlying goals.


The rubber-brass adhesion is influenced by the chemical composition and thickness of the interfacial layer. The effects of inorganic compounds at the interface consisting of CuxS, ZnS and ZnO on the adhesion phase have been investigated. The CuxS has been formed by the reaction between brass and sulfur, being highly non-stoichiometric. The values of x may vary between 1.0 and 2.0. There is an evolution from Cu1.8S over Cu1.93-1.97S to fully stoichiometric Cu2S. This Cu2S is basically non-bonding because of its inability to form donor-acceptor bonds. Although minute amount of CuxS are a prerequisite, an excess of this compound is detrimental to adhesion, as thick films are brittle and non-adherent to the brass substrate.


The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contingent relationship between government marketing assistance for export and the performance of early internationalizing firms in a developing country's low-tech industry.The authors employ hierarchical multiple regression based on the data obtained from Indonesia, a developing country and a leading exporter of apparel products worldwide. The authors used a sample of 100 early internationalizing apparel firms to test the hypotheses.Research describes the relationship between export assistance (financial and marketing assistance) and performance as direct. Recently, some researchers have suggested moderators between them. The authors argue that the relationship between the two is contingent on the level of competitive advantage. The authors find that financial assistance and marketing assistance are directly related to export performance. The relationship between financial assistance and export commitment to export performance are significantly. The effect of marketing assistance is positively, but only marginally, moderated by competitive advantage.Contrary to researchers overarching focus on a direct relationship, the authors investigate the moderation on the relationship between financial assistance and marketing assistance, and early internationalizing firm's performance in a developing country's low-tech industry setting. The authors use competitive advantage as the moderator; it is one of the most important internal determinants of export performance and extremely relevant in early internationalizing firms. The differential impact of financial and marketing assistance provides additional insights.


Abstract. This study demonstrates a method of retrieving the mass column loading and cloud-top pressure of a volcanic ash cloud, together with the effective radius and spread of the ash particle size distribution, as well as the cloud top pressure of any underlying water cloud, using an optimal estimation technique applied to Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer data. Two shapes of particle size distribution are considered, a log-normal and a gamma distribution. Results show that it is viable to retrieve a measure of the size distribution spread, namely the geometric standard deviation, when a log-normal distribution is assumed, whereas this is not the case for an assumed gamma distribution in terms of its effective variance. The volcanic conditions under which the method works well are discussed, as are its shortcomings. The method is applied to two volcanic eruptions: Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland using data from 6th May 2010 and Kasatochi, Alaska using data from 8th August 2008. The results show that the retrieved geometric standard deviation of these ash clouds is spatially variable, and is generally similar to what is assumed in many passive infrared remote sensing techniques. An abrupt change in the retrieved geometric standard deviation has been observed for the Eyjafjallajokull eruption along the trajectory of the ash cloud, and possible explanations for this are discussed.


Based on our previous work, this paper presents a dynamic hybrid framework, called DyHF, for solving constrained optimization problems. This framework consists of two major steps: global search model and local search model. In the global and local search models, differential evolution serves as the search engine, and Pareto dominance used in multiobjective optimization is employed to compare the individuals in the population. Unlike other existing methods, the above two steps are executed dynamically according to the feasibility proportion of the current population in this paper, with the purpose of reasonably distributing the computational resource for the global and local search during the evolution. The performance of DyHF is tested on 22 benchmark test functions. The experimental results clearly show that the overall performance of DyHF is highly competitive with that of a number of state-of-the-art approaches from the literature.


Severe asthma imposes a significant burden on patients, families and healthcare systems. Management is difficult, due to disease heterogeneity, co‐morbidities, complexity in care pathways and differences between national or regional healthcare systems. Better understanding of the mechanisms has enabled a stratified approach to the management of severe asthma, supporting the use of targeted treatments with biologicals. However, there are still many issues that require further clarification. These include selection of a certain biological (as they all target overlapping disease phenotypes), the definition of response, strategies to enhance the responder rate, the duration of treatment and its regimen (in the clinic or home‐based) and its cost‐effectiveness. The EAACI Guidelines on the use of biologicals in severe asthma follow the GRADE approach in formulating recommendations for each biological and each outcome. In addition, a management algorithm for the use of biologicals in the clinic is proposed, together with future approaches and research priorities.


A liquid argon time projection chamber, constructed for the Argon Response to Ionization and Scintillation (ARIS) experiment, is exposed to the highly collimated and quasimonoenergetic LICORNE neutron beam at the Institut de Physique Nucleaire d'Orsay (IPNO) in order to study the scintillation response to nuclear and electronic recoils. An array of liquid scintillator detectors, arranged around the apparatus, tag scattered neutrons and select nuclear recoil energies in the [7, 120] keV energy range. The relative scintillation efficiency of nuclear recoils is measured to high precision at null field, and the ion-electron recombination probability is extracted for a range of applied electric fields. Single-scattered Compton electrons, produced by gammas emitted from the deexcitation of Li*7 in coincidence with the beam pulse, along with calibration gamma sources, are used to extract the recombination probability as a function of energy and electron drift field. The ARIS results are compared with three recombination probability parametrizations (Thomas-Imel, Doke-Birks, and PARIS), allowing for the definition of a fully comprehensive model of the liquid argon response to nuclear and electronic recoils down to the few-keV range. The constraints provided by ARIS to the liquid argon response at low energy allow the reduction of systematics affecting the sensitivity of dark matter search experiments based on liquid argon.


In linguistic creativity, the pragmatic effects of the message are often as important as its aesthetic properties. The productions of creative humans are often based both on a generic intent (such as amusing) and a specific one, for example to attract the attention of the audience, to provoke thoughts, to get the message home, to influence other people and change their attitudes and beliefs. In computational linguistic creativity, however, these pragmatic effects are rarely accounted for. Most works in automated linguistic creativity are limited to the production of a syntactically and semantically correct output that is also pleasing, but in applied scenarios it would be important to validate also the effectiveness of the output. This thesis aims at demonstrating that automatic systems can create productions that are attractive, pleasant and memorable, based on variations of well-known expressions, using the optimal innovation hypothesis as a frame of reference.
In particular, these witty expressions can be used for evoking a given concept, improving its memorability, or for other pragmatic goals.


Background The future of personalized medicine depends on advanced diagnostic tools to characterize responders and non-responders to treatment. Systems diagnosis is a new approach which aims to capture a large amount of symptom information from patients to characterize relevant sub-groups. Methodology 49 patients with a rheumatic disease were characterized using a systems diagnosis questionnaire containing 106 questions based on Chinese and Western medicine symptoms. Categorical principal component analysis (CATPCA) was used to discover differences in symptom patterns between the patients. Two Chinese medicine experts where subsequently asked to rank the Cold and Heat status of all the patients based on the questionnaires. These rankings were used to study the Cold and Heat symptoms used by these practitioners. Findings The CATPCA analysis results in three dimensions. The first dimension is a general factor (40.2% explained variance). In the second dimension (12.5% explained variance) 'anxious', 'worrying', 'uneasy feeling' and 'distressed' were interpreted as the Internal disease stage, and 'aggravate in wind', 'fear of wind' and 'aversion to cold' as the External disease stage. In the third dimension (10.4% explained variance) 'panting s', 'superficial breathing', 'shortness of breath s', 'shortness of breath f' and 'aversion to cold' were interpreted as Cold and 'restless', 'nervous', 'warm feeling', 'dry mouth s' and 'thirst' as Heat related. 'Aversion to cold', 'fear of wind' and 'pain aggravates with cold' are most related to the experts Cold rankings and 'aversion to heat', 'fullness of chest' and 'dry mouth' to the Heat rankings. Conclusions This study shows that the presented systems diagnosis questionnaire is able to identify groups of symptoms that are relevant for sub-typing patients with a rheumatic disease.


Osteoarthritis (OA) poses a major clinical challenges owing to limited regenerative ability of diseased or traumatized chondrocytes in articular cartilage. Previous studies have determined the individual therapeutic efficacies of hyaluronic acid (HA) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) on OA; however, the underlying mechanism is still lacking. Therefore, we investigated mechanistic approach of HA+PRP therapy on chondrocyte apoptosis in IL-1β+TNF-α (I+T) treated in vitro OA model, in addition to in vivo anterior cruciate ligament transection-OA mice model. MTT assay showed an enhanced chondrocyte proliferation and viability in HA+PRP-treated group, compared to I+T, I+T/HA, I+T/PRP, I+T/HA+PRP groups. Further, HA+PRP also significantly suppressed ROS, apoptotic cleaved caspase-3 and PARP, p53 and p21 and MMP-1; whereas, cell cycle modulatory proteins including p-ERK, cyclin B1, D1, and E2 were upregulated. The sub-G1 population and TUNEL assay confirmed the higher abundance of healthy chondrocytes in HA+PRP group. A significantly decreased ARS staining in HA+PRP group was also noted, indicating reduced cartilaginous matrix mineralization compared to other groups. Conclusively, compared to HA or PRP, the combined HA+PRP might be a promising therapy for articular cartilage regeneration in osteoarthritic pathology, possibly via augmented anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidative chondrocyte proliferation and inhibited MMP-1 activity and matrix calcification.


Introduction Dental caries affects humans of all ages throughout the world and remains the major dental public health problem among children globally. Materials and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted using the cluster sampling technique to obtain the required sample size of 400 children from urban slum population of Faridabad, Haryana, India. Data were collected using World Health Organization dentition status 1997 criteria and PUFA/pufa index. Type of study Cross-sectional study. Results Among 6- to 12-year-age group, 68.5% subjects had one or more decayed deciduous teeth, of which 65.3% subjects had one or more pufa score, and 26.4% subjects were having one or more decayed permanent teeth, of which 16.7% subjects were having one or more PUFA score. The overall caries prevalence was 79.64% and overall prevalence of one or more than one PUFA+pufa was reported in 69.2% subjects. Conclusion The findings of the study showed the relevance of PUFA/pufa index to address the neglected problem of untreated caries and its consequences. The study also suggests the importance for implementation of the primary oral care programs for this deprived population. How to cite this article Marya C, Kataria S, Nagpal R, Oberoi SS, Dhingra C, Arora D. A Cross-sectional Study for Assessment of Untreated Dental Caries and Its Consequences among Slum-dwelling Children. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2017;10(1):29-33.


Hyporheic zones (HZs) influence biogeochemistry at the local reach scale with potential implication for water quality at the large catchment scale. The characteristics of the HZs (e.g., area, flux rates, and residence times) change in response to channel and aquifer physical properties, as well as to transient perturbations in the stream–aquifer system such as floods and groundwater withdraws due to evapotranspiration (ET) and pumping. In this study, we use a numerical model to evaluate the effects of transient near-stream evapotranspiration (ET) on the area, exchange flux, and residence time (RT) of sinuosity-induced HZs modulated by regional groundwater flow (RGF). We found that the ET fluxes (up to 80 mm/day) consistently increased HZ area and exchange flux, and only increased RTs when the intensity of regional groundwater flow was low. Relative to simulations without ET, scenarios with active ET had more than double HZ area and exchange flux and about 20% longer residence times (as measured by the median of the residence time distribution). Our model simulations show that the drawdown induced by riparian ET increases the net flux of water from the stream to the nearby aquifer, consistent with field observations. The results also suggest that, along with ET intensity, the magnitude of the HZ response is influenced by the modulating effect of both gaining and losing RGF and the sensitivity of the aquifer to daily cycles of ET withdrawal. This work highlights the importance of representing near-stream ET when modeling sinuosity-induced hyporheic zones, as well as the importance of including riparian vegetation in efforts to restore the ecosystem functions of streams.


In this paper, we propose a memory efficient multi-rate Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) decoder for China Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting (CMMB). We find the best trade-off between the performance and the circuit area by designing a partially parallel decoder which is capable of passing multiple messages in parallel. By designing an efficient address generation unit (AGU) with an index matrix, we could reduce both the amount of memory requirement and the complexity of computation. The proposed regular LDPC decoder was designed in Verilog HDL and was synthesized by Synopsys¿ Design Compiler using Chartered 0.18 ¿m CMOS cell library. The synthesized design has the gate size of 455 K (in NAND2). For the two code rates supported by CMMB, the rate-1/2 decoder has a throughput of 14.32 Mbps, and the rate-3/4 decoder has a throughput of 26.97 Mbps. Compared with a conventional LDPC for CMMB, our proposed design requires only 0.39% of the memory.


The quantitative significance for a planetary mag- netosphere of plasma sources associated with a moon of the planet can be assessed only by expressing the plasma mass input rate in dimensionless form, as the ratio of the actual mass input to some reference value. Traditionally, the solar wind mass flux through an area equal to the cross-section of the magnetosphere has been used. Here I identify an- other reference value of mass input, independent of the so- lar wind and constructed from planetary parameters alone, which can be shown to represent a mass input sufficiently large to prevent corotation already at the source location. The source rate from Enceladus at Saturn has been reported to be an order of magnitude smaller (in absolute numbers) than that from Io at Jupiter. Both reference values, however, are also smaller at Saturn than at Jupiter, by factors 40 to 60; expressed in dimensionless form, the estimated mass input from Enceladus may be larger than that from Io by factors 4 to 6. The magnetosphere of Saturn may thus, despite a lower mass input in kg s 1 , intrinsically be more heavily


Abstract : We conducted telephone surveys of wildlife professionals who work with large carnivores to ask their opinions about how people should respond to avoid being injured when confronted by a black bear (Ursus americana), grizzly bear (Ursus arctos), mountain lion (Puma concolor), or gray wolf (Canis lupus). The respondents agreed that the most appropriate response was to try to increase the distance between a person and the carnivore. In the event of an attack by a black bear, mountain lion, or wolf, most respondents said to fight back. Opinion was divided over the best response for an individual who was being attacked by a grizzly bear, but a slight majority of professionals said to fight back if the attack was predatory and be passive if the attack was defensive; however, respondents also noted that many victims would be unable to identify the bear's motive. If a black bear came into camp, most respondents said that a person should aggressively encourage the bear to leave and to fight back against a bear that enters a tent at night, regardless of species. Respondents unanimously agreed that bear pepper-spray is effective in defending against an attack. While any encounter with a large carnivore can be fatal to the person involved, we believe that selecting the right course of action increases the odds that the victim can escape without injury.


After decades of development, quantitative instruments for human gait analysis have become an important tool for revealing underlying pathologies manifested by gait abnormalities. However, the gold standard instruments (e.g., optical motion capture systems) are commonly expensive and complex while needing expert operation and maintenance and thereby be limited to a small number of specialized gait labora-tories. Therefore, in current clinical settings, gait analysis still mainly relies on visual observation and assessment. Due to recent developments in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology, the cost and size of gyroscopes are decreasing, while the accuracy is being improved, which provides an effective way for qualifying gait fea-tures. This chapter aims to give a close examination of human gait patterns (normal and abnormal) using gyroscope-based wearable technology. Both healthy subjects and hemiparesis patients participated in the experiment, and experimental results show that foot-mounted gyroscopes could assess gait abnormalities in both temporal and spatial domains. Gait analysis systems constructed of wearable gyroscopes can be more easily used in both clinical and home environments than their gold standard counterparts, which have few requirements for operation, maintenance, and working environment, thereby suggesting a promising future for gait analysis.


This study was undertaken in response to concerns that mentors who assessed practical competence were reluctant to fail student nurses in assessments which generated doubts about the fitness to practice of some registered nurses. This study set out to investigate mentor's experiences of failing students in England and was undertaken in two phases.

In phase one comparative failure rates obtained from 27 universities indicated that, over a three year period, a very small proportion of students failed practical assessments; failure rates for theory outstripped practice by a ratio of 5:1. A quarter of the universities failed no students in practice. These findings appeared to support the initial concerns and raised a number of questions about practical assessment systems and practices.

In phase two, a grounded theory approach was used to explore the experiences of thirty one participants who had been involved in failing student nurses in practice and the factors which enabled them to do this. Findings revealed that a clash of priorities and cultures between universities and health care organisations generated significant obstacles to failing students. The practical assessment process itself functioned on the mentors' goodwill, their informal social support network and local arrangements rather than on timely, formal, organisational systems. A number of effective interventions were identified which, when combined, supported a three stage process that enabled mentors to fail an underperforming student.

This study is the first to examine mentors' perspectives of how and why they were enabled to fail student nurses in practical assessments in England, and resonates with those reported by other vocationally-based professions. The challenges faced by mentors that this study identifies contribute to national understanding of the processes and context which combine to facilitate robust assessment of the future nursing workforce, ensuring patient safety and public confidence in professions which provide essential care and services.


This paper provides a review of the different methodologies for the fragility assessment of
critical transportation infrastructure subjected to earthquake excitations with emphasis placed on
geotechnical effects. Available approaches to fragility analysis are summarized, along with the
main parameters and limitations. Additionally, definitions of damage are synthesized for the
individual transportation assets and subsequently the definition of system of assets (SoA) is
introduced. Numerical fragility curves are developed for a representative SoA subjected to
seismic excitations. The paper concludes with the gaps in the area of fragility analysis and the
needs for future development.


This study explores alternative ways of reducing the number of variables/features and additional ways of combining information across features to produce more stable and accurate e-rater® scores. Following an explanation of the statistical aspects of the process is a description of alternatives to the process. Our explorations resulted in certain conclusions and directions for future research. We have examined enough e-rater data to conclude that stepwise regression seems to be effective as a feature reduction procedure. However, this may be attributed to the consistently strong relationship with essay score that is observed for the content vector analysis (CVA) variables and the two variables used to approximate word length (number of auxiliary verbs and the ratio of the number of auxiliary verbs to the number of words). To yield better validation results, we also suggest that the hold-out method for evaluating validity should replace the current two-stage approach of first developing a model in a quasi-uniform training sample and then validating these results in a target cross-validation sample. More research is needed in several areas. First, explicit modeling of the part of essay scores that is unrelated to word length is warranted. The POM (Proportional Odds Model) approach should be investigated in greater depth. Also needed is a statistical justification for using essay scores to score CVA variables. Algorithmic approaches to prediction/classification problem, such as boosting, may prove fruitful. Further investigation of quantile regression and ridge regression should be conducted.


This study aimed to assess the feasibility of collective vegetable gardening into an existing development programme for adolescent girls as a means of improving awareness about health and nutrition and increasing vegetable consumption in Afghanistan. A one and half year pilot study tested the feasibility of layering an intervention that combined agricultural training and input support in Kabul, Parwan and Kapisa regions on an adolescent programme implemented by a non-government organisation. The study included 400 adolescent girls for survey and qualitative tools to understand the local context of adolescent girls' participation in vegetable cultivation. The assessment demonstrates the evidence that despite of the challenging situation and traditional culture in Afghanistan the pilot had successfully engaged almost all of the adolescent girls in collective vegetables cultivation by making them aware about health, nutrition and the usefulness of vegetables consumption while the bad effects of not intake those. And the cultivation proved itself financially viable and very much effective for the community though there were little challenges. The pilot would be feasible and scalable to address the malnutrition and girls' marginalization if those challenges were taken into consideration carefully.


A recent study by Higgins and colleagues reports that the Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA) had the highest percentage of articles with both librarian and faculty coauthors out of 13 peer-reviewed journals in science, technology, engineering, and medicine librarianship and education between 2005 and 2014. A deeper and updated analysis of JMLA research articles and case studies published between 2008 and 2017 revealed that 29% of articles had both librarian and faculty coauthors. The main topics of librarian-faculty collaboration, as described in these articles, were related to patient and consumer health information and clinical information-seeking and decision-making by health care providers. Most faculty coauthors came from the disciplines of biomedical or health informatics and biostatistics and library and information science. The publication of these articles in the JMLA provides evidence of health sciences librarians' and information specialists' ability to collaborate with faculty members to advance the knowledgebase and practice of librarianship and the health sciences.


There is growing interest in developing automated, non-invasive techniques for long-lasting, laboratory-based monitoring of behaviour in organisms from deep-water continental margins which are of ecological and commercial importance. We monitored the burrow emergence rhythms in the Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus , which included: a) characterising the regulation of behavioural activity outside the burrow under monochromatic blue light-darkness (LD) cycles of 0.1 lx, recreating slope photic conditions (i.e. 200-300 m depth) and constant darkness (DD), which is necessary for the study of the circadian system; b) testing the performance of a newly designed digital video-image analysis system for tracking locomotor activity. We used infrared USB web cameras and customised software (in Matlab 7.1) to acquire and process digital frames of eight animals at a rate of one frame per minute under consecutive photoperiod stages for nine days each: LD, DD, and LD (subdivided into two stages, LD1 and LD2, for analysis purposes). The automated analysis allowed the production of time series of locomotor activity based on movements of the animals' centroids. Data were studied with periodogram, waveform, and Fourier analyses. For the first time, we report robust diurnal burrow emergence rhythms during the LD period, which became weak in DD. Our results fit with field data accounting for midday peaks in catches at the depth of slopes. The comparison of the present locomotor pattern with those recorded at different light intensities clarifies the regulation of the clock of N. norvegicus at different depths.


Telescoping languages is a strategy for allowing users to develop code in high-level, domain-specific languages and still achieve high performance. It uses extensive offline processing of the library defining the language. This process speculatively determines the possible uses of the library subroutines and generates variants specialized toward those uses. LibGen is a telescoping-language system for generating highperformance Fortran or C libraries with multiple specialized variants from a single version of MATLAB prototype code. LibGen uses variable types to guide specialization. Previously, we have shown that the generated code has comparable performance to hand-coded and optimized Fortran libraries and that specialization on type is important for achieving high performance. In this paper, we describe the type inference system necessary for LibGen to speculate on the possible variants of library procedures and to generate code. We develop the concept of type jump-functions, which describe the transfer of type information through and across procedures. To compute these type jump-functions, we develop a static typeinference approach that uses a constraint-based formulation and a graph-theoretical algorithm shown to be efficient under conditions met in most practical cases.


While bipartisan passage of the First Step Act and state reforms like it will lead to changes in sentencing and release practices, they do little to combat the collateral consequences that ex-offenders face upon release. Because collateral consequences involve the state's infliction of serious harm on those who have been convicted or simply arrested, their existence requires justification. Many scholars classify them as punishment, but modern courts generally diverge, deferring to legislative labels that classify them as civil, regulatory measures. This label avoids having to address existing constitutional and legal constraints on punishment. This Article argues that although collateral consequences occur outside of the formal boundaries of the criminal system, they align with utilitarian, public-safety-based rationales for criminal punishment, such as incapacitation. Interpreting the nature of collateral consequences, their legislative justifications, and judicial doctrine confirms that utilitarian terrain underlies the creation and reform of collateral consequences. At the same time, these philosophical premises stunt broad reform because public safety and risk-prevention rationales inspire only marginal tinkering and do not adequately respond to the general public's understanding of desert as crucial to the administration of criminal justice. The result is extra punishment run amok and in desperate need of constraints.

This Article suggests a different approach to reforming collateral consequences: subjecting them to the constraints of retributivism by first asking whether they are deserved. Retributivist constraints emphasize dignity and autonomy, blameworthiness, proportionality, and restoration, and impose obligations and duties on the state, suggesting many collateral consequences are overly punitive and disruptive of social order. This mode of analysis aligns with earlier Supreme Court precedent and accounts for retributivist constraints that already exist in present-day sentencing codes. Proponents of rolling back collateral consequences should consider how utilizing desert principles as a constraint on punishment can alleviate the effects of collateral consequences on ex-offenders.


BACKGROUND
Physical activity (PA) may play a role in preserving kidney health. The purpose of this study was to determine if PA and sedentary behavior are associated with incident chronic kidney disease (CKD) and change in kidney function in older adults.

METHODS
The Health, Aging, and Body Composition study is a prospective cohort of 3075 well-functioning older adults. PA and television watching was measured by self-report, and serum cystatin C was used to estimate glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). CKD was defined as an eGFR <60 ml/min/1.73 m(2). Rapid kidney function decline was defined as an annual loss in eGFR of >3 ml/min/1.73 m(2). Discrete survival analysis was used to determine if baseline PA and television watching were related to 10-year cumulative incidence of CKD and rapid decline in kidney function.

RESULTS
Individuals who reported watching television >3 hours/day had a higher risk of incident CKD (HR 1.34; 95% CI, 1.09-1.65) and experiencing a rapid decline in kidney function (HR 1.26; 95% CI, 1.05-1.52) compared with individuals who watched television <2 hours/day. PA was not related to either outcome.

CONCLUSIONS
High levels of television watching are associated with declining kidney function; the mechanisms that underlie this association need further study.


The potential effect of ocean acidification (OA) on seawater halocarbons in the Arctic was investigated during a~mesocosm experiment in Spitsbergen in June–July 2010. Over a period of 5 weeks, natural phytoplankton communities in nine ~50 m3 mesocosms were studied under a range of pCO2 treatments from ~185 μatm to ~1420 μatm. In general, the response of halocarbons to pCO2 was subtle, or undetectable. A large number of significant correlations with a range of biological parameters (chlorophyll a, microbial plankton community, phytoplankton pigments) were identified, indicating a biological control on the concentrations of halocarbons within the mesocosms. The temporal dynamics of iodomethane (CH3I) alluded to active turnover of this halocarbon in the mesocosms and strong significant correlations with biological parameters suggested a biological source. However, despite a pCO2 effect on various components of the plankton community, and a strong association between CH3I and biological parameters, no effect of pCO2 was seen in CH3I. Diiodomethane (CH2I2) displayed a number of strong relationships with biological parameters. Furthermore, the concentrations, the rate of net production and the sea-to-air flux of CH2I2 showed a significant positive response to pCO2. There was no clear effect of pCO2 on bromocarbon concentrations or dynamics. However, periods of significant net loss of bromoform (CHBr3) were found to be concentration-dependent, and closely correlated with total bacteria, suggesting a degree of biological consumption of this halocarbon in Arctic waters. Although the effects of OA on halocarbon concentrations were marginal, this study provides invaluable information on the production and cycling of halocarbons in a region of the world's oceans likely to experience rapid environmental change in the coming decades.


This article attempts to glean from field interviews and secondary sources some of the sociopolitical complexities that underlay women's engagement in Tunisia's 2011-14 constitution-making process. Elucidating such complexities can provide further insight into how women's engagement impacted the substance and enforceability of the constitution's final text. We argue that, in spite of longstanding roadblocks to implement and enforce constitutional guarantees, the greater involvement of Tunisian women in the constitution drafting process did make a difference in the final gender provisions of Tunisia's constitution. Although not all recommendations were adopted, Tunisian women were able to use an autochthonous process to edify the country and set the foundation for greater rights consciousness. This article also seeks to define the degree and nature of external influence on national efforts to advance women's rights and on the drafting of Tunisia's gender provisions. Although our research suggests that international forces had less of an impact on the Tunisian constitution-making process than we had assumed initially, we also found that many Tunisian women still saw themselves as part of a transnational women's movement in which they were able to engage with a broad network of international women's groups and transnational stakeholders. Our conclusion, thus, is that the Tunisian constitutional project, at least in regards to its gender provisions, can be regarded as intermestic in the sense that it drew directly or indirectly from both local and transnational sources. This shows that even when drafters are able to create constitutions that fit local contexts, they are still deeply influenced by international human rights provisions and relevant structural frameworks. Finally, this article summarizes some of the early efforts to translate constitutional guarantees into enforceable legislation. While we have deemed Tunisia's drafting process as a success in participatory constitution-making, the country has a considerable way to go to ensure that "equal opportunities for men and women" as guaranteed in its new constitution become a reality for Tunisians in their daily modes of existence.


Plants come under attack by a variety of organisms, including insects and pathogenic microorganisms such as viruses. Plant viruses can interact indirectly with their vectors by inducing changes to plant chemistry which may alter its attractiveness as a host for herbivore vectors. Using red raspberry as a study system, this study aimed to investigate the host plant mediated interactions occurring between the large raspberry aphid, Amphorophora idaei, and two of the viruses that it transmits, Black raspberry necrosis virus (BRNV) and Raspberry leaf mottle virus (RLMV).

In whole plant bioassays, BRNV and RLMV-infected plants were shown to be initially more attractive to A. idaei and aphids remained on the initially selected host plant for a period of approximately 30 minutes. In addition, A. idaei took three days longer to reach reproductive maturity compared with those feeding on non-infected plants, suggesting a virally-induced manipulation of aphid behaviour whereby a deceptive attraction of the vector to a host plant found to be nutritionally poor, presumably acts to promote virus transmission.

Investigations of the underlying plant chemistry revealed that raspberry viruses may be capable of facilitating aphid feeding by reducing leaf phenolic concentration when aphids are feeding and that infection with BRNV and RLMV resulted in significantly elevated levels of carbon and free amino acids in the leaves. While increased concentrations of amino acids might be expected to promote aphid performance, the amino acid composition was dominated by glutamate (77% of total content of infected plants), a previously suggested indicator of reduced host-plant suitability for aphids. Volatile entrainments from virus-infected plants showed elevated levels of the green leaf volatile (Z)-3-hexenyl acetate. Bioassays subsequently revealed that this compound acted as an aphid attractant at a concentration of 50 ng ml-1 but that aphid behaviour was unaffected by lower concentrations.

The combined utilisation of PCR diagnostics developed from newly sequenced viral genomes and the implementation of a non-invasive, targeted method of sampling plant headspace volatiles enabled this study to provide novel insights into the nature of host plant mediated interactions between aphids and the viral pathogens that they transmit.