Blame occurs frequently after disaster, yet, the process of blame is a neglected topic of disaster research. Our study looks at how a grassroots citizen's group blamed a local company for air pollution and health problems. The blaming process directed toward the company aided in the mobilization of the citizen's group but also prevented any immediate issue-oriented actions. As blame directed toward the company decreased within the group, solidarity within the group decreased. Yet, as blame decreased within the group, issue-oriented actions by the group increased. The placement of blame by the group had both positive and negative consequences for their goals. Comparing this case with other studies of blame in disaster, we found: 1) placing blame does not lead to structural changes in the social system, 2) organizations can be the focus of blame, and 3) only one target of blame can exist. In addition, we suggest that the type of disaster (diffuse or focalized, and technological or natural) may have an impact upon who or what becomes the target of blame.


Author(s): Wu, L.Y.; Huang, Z.J.; Gentry, T.J.; Wu, W-M; Nostrand, J.D. Van; Schadt, C.W.; Watson, D.; He, Z.; Criddle, C. S.; Tiedje, J.; Hazen, T.C.; Zhou, J.; Matthew, F.W. | Abstract: A pilot-scale system was established to examine the feasibility of in situ bioremediation and immobilization of U(VI) at a highly contaminated aquifer at the U. S. DOE's Field Research Center, Oak Ridge, TN. An above-ground treatment system, including a denitrifying fluidized bed reactor, was used to pre-condition the groundwater to optimize subsurface U immobilization. Ethanol to stimulate microbial reduction of soluble U(VI) to insoluble U(IV). Three monitoring wells (FW101-2, 102-2, and 102-3) were analyzed using a functional gene array containing g24,000 probes covering 10,000 genes to examine the effect of geochemistry on the functional microbial community dynamics. Microarray results indicate that, during the U (VI) reduction period, both FeRB and SRB populations reached their highest levels on day 212 in FW102-3 and on day 255 in FW102-2 and FW101-2, followed by a gradual decrease over the next 500 days in all three wells and then a rebound on day 719. Mantel tests of functional genes versus the geochemical parameters showed a significant correlation in all three wells between pH and most of the functional gene groups (p-value, l0.01-0.1) detected. The U (IV) concentrations were significantly correlated with the microbial communities in wells FW101-2 and FW102-3 over the entire study period. Once the microbial population peaked, this correlation was also observed for FW102-2, and even stronger correlations were observed in both FW101-2 and 102-3. Chemical oxygen demand (COD) correlated with the microbial community structure only in well FW101-2. Neither nitrate nor sulfate showed a significant correlation in any of the wells until after the population peak, when significant correlations were observed in FW102-2 and 102-3. Canonical correlation analysis revealed similar correlations between the functional community and the geochemical variables. In addition to correlations with the geochemical parameters, principal components analysis showed that the microbial communities also varied both temporally and spatially.


Image-based modeling and rendering is currently one of the most challenging topics in Computer Vision and Photogrammetry. The key issue here is building a set of dense correspondence points between two images, namely dense matching or stereo matching. Among all dense matching algorithms, Semi-Global Matching (SGM) is arguably one of the most promising algorithms for real-time stereo vision. Compared with global matching algorithms, SGM aggregates matching cost from several (eight or sixteen) directions rather than only the epipolar line using Dynamic Programming (DP). Thus, SGM eliminates the classical "streaking problem" and greatly improves its accuracy and efficiency. In this paper, we aim at further improvement of SGM accuracy without increasing the computational cost. We propose setting the penalty parameters adaptively according to image edges extracted by edge detectors. We have carried out experiments on the standard Middlebury stereo dataset and evaluated the performance of our modified method with the ground truth. The results have shown a noticeable accuracy improvement compared with the results using fixed penalty parameters while the runtime computational cost was not increased.


The ore of the Ashbrook district occurs as irregular patchy replacement deposits in fractured and folded limestone, whose structure has strongly influenced distribution of the orebodies. The distribution is controlled by small crenulations within the limestone, the apical portions of which are usually marked by a strong development of secondary calcite, which is generally more susceptible to replacement by mineralizing solutions. Due to two episodes of minor fracturing, the sequence of primary mineralization can be devided into three periods of deposition: (1) rhodochrosite to the exclusion of other minerals, (2) quartz, pyrite, arsenopyrite, sphalerite, and minor amounts of chalcopyrite, and (3) galena, argyrodite, pyrargyrite, pearceite, tennantite, and an unidentified mineral. The second phase seems to be responsible for the minor gold values in the ores. Processes of enrichment and oxidation have produced a large group of secondary minerals. Alteration of the primary silver minerals has been mainly to argentite and native silver which together account for the main values found in the ores.


Abstract Four different compositions of polylactide/thermoplastic starch blends (PLA/TPS blends) for application as drug carriers were examined. Initially, using cyanocobalamin (1.355 kDa) as a model compound, the blend with the highest starch content (wt. 60%) was selected for further research of mass transfer phenomenon. In this case, different concentrations of acetaminophen (0.151 kDa), doxorubicin hydrochloride (0.580 kDa) and cyanocobalamin (1.355 kDa) were used for determination of particular releasing profiles. Besides from the comparative analysis of obtained results, the values of the overall mass transfer coefficient (K) were calculated for each of tested drug molecules. Depending on the size and properties of used compound, determined values of the coefficient range from 10−11 to 10−13 m/s. Based on these outcomes, it could be stated that PLA/TPS blend selected in preliminary research, seems to be preferred material for fabrication of long-term drug delivery systems, which could be successfully applied for example in anti-cancer therapy.


We introduce the `Complete Wave Function' and deduce that all living beings, not just Schroedinger's cat, are actually described by a superposition of `alive' and `dead' quantum states; otherwise they would never die. Therefore this proposal provides a quantum mechanical explanation to the world-wide observation that we all pass away. Next we consider the Measurement problem in the framework of M-theory. For this purpose, together with Schroedinger's cat we also place inside the box Rasputin's cat, which is unaffected by poison. We analyse the system identifying its excitations (catons and catinos) and we discuss its evolution: either to a classical fight or to a quantum entanglement. We also propose the $BSV\Psi$ scenario, which implements the Complete Wave Function as well as the Big Bang and the String Landscape in a very (super)natural way. Then we test the gravitational decoherence of the entangled system applying an experimental setting due to Galileo. We also discuss the Information Loss paradox. For this purpose we consider a massless black cat falling inside a massive black hole. After that we outline a method to compute the contribution of black cats to the dark matter of the universe. Finally, in the spirit of Schroedinger, we propose that next generation double-slit experiments should use cats as projectiles. Cat interferometry will inevitably lead to the `Many Cats' interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, allowing to shed new light on old mysteries and paradoxes. For example, according to this interpretation, conservative estimates show that decision making of a single domestic cat will create about 550 billion whole universes every day, with as many replicas of itself.


Almost two decades on from when Enhanced Recovery Programs (ERPs), consisting of multi-modal therapies to reduce surgical stress, were first proposed by Kehlet et al. the complexity of ERPs has increased, with interventions now utilized pre-, intra- and post-operatively (1). Whilst the use of ERPs has been demonstrated to significantly reduce patient morbidity and mortality, and reduce costs to the healthcare system, what constitutes the gold standard ERP has yet to be defined and significant variation in practice exists (2). Despite improvements in ERPs pain remains the primary cause of delayed discharge, as well as a common cause of re-admission, following orthopaedic surgery (3).


This Article seeks to return to the intent of the Symposium, which was to stimulate a meaningful dialogue on the modern Second Amendment. More specifically, it proposes a return to the states' rights model that predated the Supreme Court's narrow decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago by using the Article V process set forth directly in the Constitution to address modern concerns about firearms. The proposal flows from a healthy skepticism about the role of the federal government in interpreting gun regulations, as well as a desire to avoid the inevitable follow-up decisions from a very fractured and often unpredictable Supreme Court.


Conidial germination and appressorial formation of Colletotrichum capsici and C. gloeosporioides were examined on pepper fruits and in association with some inorganic and organic compounds. Conidial germination and appressorial formation were greater on immature green or ripe red fruits of pepper (Capsicum annuum) variety Long Fruit than in water droplets on glass slides. Conidial germination was significantly (P= 0.05) higher for both fungi as concentrations of either sucrose of KCl increased. Appressorial formation for C. capsici was highest when sucrose was 10 mM and for C. gloeosporioides at 0.1 mM. Appressorial formation was reduced and mycelia formed for both fungi at higher sucrose concentrations, but not at 1-100 mM of KCl. Among six compounds tested for induced conidial germination and appressorial formation, CaCl 2 and sucrose caused a significant (P = 0.05) increase, KCl an intermediate one, and AlCl 3 was lowest. β-resorcilic acid did not stimulate conidial germination and appressorial formation, and Fe-resorcilic acid stimulated conidial germination only for C. capsici. Three test melanin biosynthesis inhibitors at 1 μm per milliliter stimulated conidial germination but varied in causing appressorial formation for both fungi. Appressorial formation of C. capsici was completely inhibited by tricyclazole and stimulated by fthalide and isoprothiolane; appressorial formation of C. gloeosporioides was completely inhibited and stimulated by isoprothiolane and tricyclazole, respectively, and only slightly inhibited by fthalide. Inorganic and organic compounds that affect conidial germination and appressorial formation may play a role in the preinfection process of Colletotrichum spp. on pepper fruits


Recent years have seen growing interest in high-level languages for programming networks. But the design of these languages has been largely ad hoc, driven more by the needs of applications and the capabilities of network hardware than by foundational principles. The lack of a semantic foundation has left language designers with little guidance in determining how to incorporate new features, and programmers without a means to reason precisely about their code. This paper presents NetKAT, a new network programming language that is based on a solid mathematical foundation and comes equipped with a sound and complete equational theory. We describe the design of NetKAT, including primitives for filtering, modifying, and transmitting packets; union and sequential composition operators; and a Kleene star operator that iterates programs. We show that NetKAT is an instance of a canonical and well-studied mathematical structure called a Kleene algebra with tests (KAT) and prove that its equational theory is sound and complete with respect to its denotational semantics. Finally, we present practical applications of the equational theory including syntactic techniques for checking reachability, proving non-interference properties that ensure isolation between programs, and establishing the correctness of compilation algorithms.


Women in public office are often assumed to "make a difference" for women, as women--in other words, to represent their female constituents better than do their male counterparts. But is sex really an accurate predictor of a legislator's political choices and actions? In this book, Beth Reingold compares the representational activities and attitudes of male and female members of the Arizona and California state legislatures to illuminate the broader implications of the election and integration of women into public office. In the process, she challenges many of the assumptions that underlie popular expectations of women and men in politics. Using in-depth interviews, survey responses, and legislative records, Reingold actually uncovers more similarities between female and male politicians than differences. Moreover, the stories she presents strongly suggest that rather than assuming that who our representatives are determines what they will do in office, we must acknowledge the possibility that the influence of gender on legislative behavior can be weakened, distorted, or accentuated by powerful forces within the social and political contexts of elective office. |This comparative study examines the behavior of male and female members of the Arizona and California state legislatures to investigate whether who our representatives are determines what they will do. Beth Reingold challenges many of the assumptions that underlie popular expectations of women and men in politics.


The bursting of the dot com bubble in March 2000 caused firms to be wary about investment in, and the use of, information technologies. Consequently, demand in technology-related jobs dropped significantly. This drop in demand has had a profound negative impact on the demand for information systems (IS) courses in the tertiary education sector. Some IS departments suffered badly, and some were forced to downsize their faculty through attrition, giving back faculty lines, freezing hiring, or releasing faculty. At the same time, there has been significant and sustained growth in demand for accounting programs. Professional accounting bodies have introduced technologies to accountants and auditors, and technologies have gained its significance in the accounting discipline. With such an observation, this paper explores whether accounting students see IS courses as a complement to their program and the chance to offer IS-related courses to accounting students. We administrated a survey to explore accounting students' preferences for accounting-related disciplines. We then conducted a number of focus groups to gain an understanding of their expectations and interest in technology-related courses. We found that although accounting students preferred finance courses to IS courses, they were interested in IS and considered IS to be useful to their long-term career. We then proposed several IS courses customized for accounting students. This will open up more teaching opportunities for IS academics, and strengthens the IS programs by providing stability in an otherwise unstable environment. After the rationale for a list of proposed IS-related courses for accounting students, we discussed some issues that IS academics should pay attention to before launching these courses.


Human recognition has become an important topic as the need and investments for security applications grow continuously. Numerous biometric systems exist which utilize various human characteristics. Among all biometrics traits, face recognition is advantageous in terms of accessibility and reliability. In the thesis, two challenges in face recognition are analyzed. The first one is face spoofing. Spoofing in face recognition is explained together with the countermeasure techniques that are proposed for the protection of face recognition systems against spoofing attacks. For this purpose, both 2D photograph and 3D mask attacks are analyzed. The second challenge explored in the thesis is disguise variations, which are due to facial alterations, facial makeup and facial accessories (occlusions). The impact of these disguise variations on face recognition is explored, separately. Then, techniques which are robust against disguise variations are proposed.


Map shows mid-nineteenth century Boston railroads, street names, buildings, parks, and ferry route distances for East and South Boston, Charlestown, and East Cambridge. Inset: "Map of the Country around Boston showing also its Harbor & Islands." Scale not given.


We use the recently completed one billion particle Via Lactea II A cold dark matter simulation to investigate local properties like density, mean velocity, velocity dispersion, anisotropy, orientation and shape of the velocity dispersion ellipsoid, as well as the structure in velocity space of dark matter haloes. We show that at the same radial distance from the halo centre, these properties can deviate by orders of magnitude from the canonical, spherically averaged values, a variation that can only be partly explained by triaxiality and the presence of subhaloes. The mass density appears smooth in the central relaxed regions but spans four orders of magnitude in the outskirts, both because of the presence of subhaloes as well as of underdense regions and holes in the matter distribution. In the inner regions, the local velocity dispersion ellipsoid is aligned with the shape ellipsoid of the halo. This is not true in the outer parts where the orientation becomes more isotropic. The clumpy structure in local velocity space of the outer halo cannot be well described by a smooth multivariate normal distribution. Via Lactea II also shows the presence of cold streams made visible by their high 6D phase space density. Generally, the structure of dark matter haloes shows a high degree of graininess in phase space that cannot be described by a smooth distribution function.


Women's land rights are increasingly advocated as an empowerment tool to spur development outcomes. However, empirical evidence of this relationship is limited. In this study we use data from peasant communities in rural Peru to explore the effect of the intra-household allocation of inherited land on women's empowerment. Empowerment is modeled as a latent variable measured by different influence indicators using a Generalized Structural Equation approach. We draw on Item Response Theory (IRT) to estimate difficulty and discrimination parameters which can inform policymakers about the impact of empowerment policies on women's types of influences within their households. The empirical approach is consistent with empowerment's latent and multidimensional nature and pays attention to endogeneity issues often present in other empirical studies. We find that although women's land rights increase empowerment, the intra-household allocation of land determines the magnitude of this impact.


The amount of information produced in the last decades has grown notably. Much of this information only exists in the form of electronic documents and it has often to be stored for long periods. Therefore, digital archives are increasingly needed. However, for the documents to remain trustworthy while they are archived, they need to be protected by the archivists. Important protection goals that must be guaranteed are integrity, authenticity, non-repudiation, and proof of existence.

To address these goals, several protection schemes for digital archives have been designed. These schemes are usually based on cryptographic primitives, namely digital signatures and hash functions. However, since documents can be archived for decades or even indefinitely, the used cryptographic primitives can become insecure during the archival time. This is a serious issue because it can be exploited by attackers to compromise the protection goals of the archived documents. Therefore, a requirement for long-term protection schemes is to address the aging of cryptography, i.e. replacing the used primitives properly before they become insecure.

In this work we analyze and improve long-term protection schemes for digital archives. More precisely, we aim at answering three questions. (1) How do long-term protection schemes compare with respect to trustworthiness? (2) How do they differ in performance? (3) Can new schemes be designed, which generate more efficient and trustworthy evidence needed to establish the protection goals?

Although several protection schemes can be found in the literature, many of them fail in addressing the aging of cryptography. Therefore, our first step is to identify which existing schemes provide long-term protection with respect to integrity, authenticity, non-repudiation, and proof of existence.

Afterwards, to answer question (1) we analyze the trustworthiness of the long-term protection schemes using two approaches. In the first approach, we initially identify the required trust assumptions. Then, based on these assumptions, we compare the protection schemes.

In the second approach, we turn to quantifying the trustworthiness of the evidence generated by time-stamping and notarial schemes. To this end, we use a belief trust model and design a reputation system. This leads to two further, more detailed answers to question (1). First, that trustworthiness depends on the reputation of the involved parties rather than the protection schemes themselves. Second, the trustworthiness of evidence tends to degrade in the long term. Therefore, we propose to use the reputation system to create incentives for the involved parties to build good reputation. This raises the trustworthiness of generated evidence, hence addressing question (3).

Next, we address question (2) by analyzing how schemes differ in performance using an analytical evaluation and experiments. More precisely, we measure the times needed to create and verify evidence, the space required to store evidence, and the communication necessary to generate evidence. Moreover, this analysis shows that while verifying evidence most of the time is spent on checking certificate chains.

The findings in the performance analysis provide us with directions for addressing question (3). We propose three new solutions that provide more efficient evidence. The first solution is a new notarial scheme that generates smaller evidence and that communicates less data than the existing notarial scheme. Novelties in our scheme include balancing the numbers of signatures that users and notaries verify, and using notaries as time-stamp authorities to provide proof of existence.

The second solution is based on the time-stamping scheme Content Integrity Service (CIS) and allows for faster evidence verification. To the best of our knowledge, CIS is the only scheme designed for an archive where documents are submitted and time-stamped sequentially but share the same sequence of time-stamps. However, in this case the validities of several time-stamps in this sequence may overlap. Consequently, many of these time-stamps need not be checked when verifying the time-stamp sequence for one document. We address this issue in our new scheme by using a data structure called skip list. The result is a time-stamp sequence where users can skip the time-stamps that are not necessary to guarantee the protection goals of one document. Using an analytical evaluation and experiments, we show that our scheme is notably faster than CIS.

The third solution is intended to reduce time spent on checking certificate chains when verifying evidence generated by time-stamping schemes. More precisely, we improve an existing public key infrastructure-based solution where the root certification authority generates smaller verification information for time-stamps. This verification information can be used to replace the certificate chains needed to verify time-stamps. However, this solution requires extra work from time-stamp authorities and the root certification authority, especially when the number of time-stamps grows significantly. In our solution, this issue is addressed such that this extra work is independent of the number of time-stamps. Using an analytical evaluation we demonstrate the advantage of our solution.

Finally, we provide our conclusions and future work. In this thesis we design new solutions that allow for more efficient and trustworthy evidence of protection for archived documents. As future work, we suggest conducting more research in the direction of developing methods that address the decay of the trustworthiness of evidence over time.


This thesis examines what it means for technology to open, and how that open technology may be applied in support of the arts. Drawing on H´el`ene Cixous' "Laugh of the Medusa", the paper proposes a feminist, inclusive design process that subverts imposter syndrome by involving community engagement in the software development process, then uses that method to develop software that powers narrative-focused FMV video games using Node.JS internet technologies. The design method addresses theoretical structures as well as pragmatic solutions, focusing on the use of limited hardware to serve a captive portal and a web application to a limited geographic space. Also examined is the concept of a "game jam" to develop content and test new software systems. The paper then reviews the capital and scarcity implications of such applications for serving new media works in galleries and geographically remote or
challenging exhibit contexts.


A multichannel, 24-fold seismic profile crossing the Bahama Escarpment south of San Salvador is tied stratigraphically to Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 99 and dredge hauls on the eroded platform slopes in the Bahamas. We conclude from the study that (1) a deep-water sequence crops out in Exuma Canyon west of the Bahama Escarpment between 2,600 and 3,800 m; it includes Valanginian through Cenomanian chalk and limestone presumably deposited in a re-entrant between the platforms; (2) beneath these carbonates the seismic data indicate a possible reef structure at 5,700 m and prograding clinoforms suggestive of rapidly deposited rift(?) sediments below 6,500 m; (3) the Bahama Escarpment, like the Blake Escarpment, is an erosional slope exposing Jurassic(?) to Early Cretaceous back-reef limestones; geometry indicates an erosional retreat of ca. 5 km of the base of the escarpment since Early Cretaceous time; (4) major faults may separate the re-entrant sequence from the ridge forming the escarpment and may also define Exuma Canyon and the escarpment itself.


Kader Attia lives and works in Berlin and Algiers. His first solo exhibition was held in 1996 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2003, he gained international recognition at the 50th Venice Biennale. In 2014, he was awarded the Berlin Art Prize: Jubilee Foundation 1848/1948. Recent exhibitions include Culture, Another Nature Repaired (solo show), Middelheim Museum, Antwerp; Contre Nature (solo show), Beirut Art Center; Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacob's Ladder (solo show), Whitechapel Gallery, London; Repair. 5 Acts (solo show), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Construire, Déconstruire, Reconstruire: Le Corps Utopique (solo show), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Biennale of Dakar; dOCUMENTA(13) in Kassel; Performing Histories (1) at MoMA, New York; and Contested Terrains, Tate Modern, London.


In this work we discuss One-Shot Object Detection, a challenging task of detecting novel objects in a target scene using a single reference image called a query. To address this challenge we introduce SPOT (Surfacing POsitions using Transformers), a novel transformer based end-to-end architecture which uses synergy between the provided query and target images using a learnable Robust Feature Matching module to emphasize the features of targets based on visual cues from the query. We curate LocateDS a large dataset of query-target pairs from open-source logo and annotated product images containing pictograms, which are better candidates for the one-shot detection problem. Initial results on this dataset show that our model performs significantly better than the current state-of-the-art. We also extend SPOT to a novel real-life downstream task of Intelligent Sample Selection from a domain with very different distribution.


Over the past three years, the Delaware Supreme Court has issued a series of opinions analyzing police encounters with citizens and the encounters' effects on subsequent motions to suppress. In these opinions, the Court has attempted to clarify the murky Fourth Amendment line where a consensual encounter may turn into something different. This article discusses those cases in the context of a Fourth Amendment continuum, and it proposes a straightforward framework counsel may use to explore the underlying encounter and aid the trial court's analysis of a motion to suppress. Adopting the proposed "shift in purpose" framework could help prosecutors, defense counsel, and the trial judge determine whether and at what point (if at all) a police officer has violated a person's rights under the Fourth Amendment or the Delaware Constitution. The article then examines additional doctrines that may apply when there has been such a violation. Finally, the article concludes with a brief examination of the Delaware Supreme Court's recent decision in Moore v. State, which applied some of these principles.


In the terrible aftermath of the moorland battle of Culloden, the Highlanders suffered at the hands of their own clan chiefs. Following his magnificent reconstruction of Culloden, John Prebble recounts how the Highlanders were deserted and then betrayed into famine and poverty. While their chiefs grew rich on meat and wool, the people died of cholera and starvation or, evicted from the glens to make way for sheep, were forced to emigrate to foreign lands. 'Mr. Prebble tells a terrible story excellently. There is little need to search further to explain so much of the sadness and emptiness of the northern Highlands today' - "The Times".


Although typically perceived as separate pathways, DNA repair and ribosome biogenesis have surprisingly been associated with one another by the reported interaction between the human DNA repair enzyme SMUG1 and the pseudouridine synthase dyskerin (DCK1, Cbf5 in yeast). Specifically, this interaction has been shown to excise 5-hydeoxylmethyl deoxyuridine, but not uridine or pseudouridine from RNA molecules.
Uracil glycosylases, such as SMUG1, remove damaged bases from DNA, leaving an abasic site open for repair. In particular, uracil glycosylases serve a role in protecting the genome from mutation in the event of cytosine deamination to uracil. Unrepaired U:G mismatches can give rise to transition mutations in replication, resulting in altered gene expression.
Dyskerin, a ribosome biogenesis factor, is part of a ribonucleoprotein complex that modifies ribosomal RNA by catalyzing the isomerization of uridine to pseudouridine. The function of dyskerin offers an interesting link to cancer, in which large ribosome quantities are generated within an enlarged nucleolus for rapid protein synthesis. Additionally, RNA pseudouridine synthases have been found to be overexpressed in many cancers and linked to a poor prognosis. Following the overexpression and purification of SMUG1 and Cbf5 (dyskerin homologue), the study looks to establish an electrophoresis and fluorescence based uracil-DNA glycosylase assay utilizing fluorescently labelled DNA molecules and DNA endonucleases. In light of the unclear SMUG1-dyskerin interaction, this fluorescence based assay, will be used to characterize the effect of Cbf5 on SMUG1 activity and vice versa. The affinity of SMUG1 to RNA in the presence and absence of Cbf5 will also be investigated via binding studies, with the aim of testing the hypothesis that dyskerin acts as an RNA tether for SMUG1.
Studying these protein-protein and RNA-protein interactions will provide insight into the crosstalk between the two important, and previously thought to be unrelated, cellular pathways of DNA repair and ribosome biogenesis with potential implications for new cancer treatment strategies.
*Indicates presenter


AIMS
A quality improvement initiative of nursing/chaplain collaboration on the early identification and referral of oncology patients at risk of spiritual distress.

BACKGROUND
Research shows that spiritual distress may compromise patient health outcomes. These patients are often under-identified, and chaplaincy staffing is not sufficient to assess every patient. The current nursing admission form with a question of 'Any spiritual practices that may affect your care?' is ineffective in screening for spiritual distress.

METHOD(S)
Ten nurses on the oncology unit were recruited and trained in a two-question screening tool to be utilized upon admission.

RESULTS
Six nurses made referrals; a total of 14 patients. Four (28%) were at risk of spiritual distress and were assessed by the chaplains.

CONCLUSIONS
Nurses are interested in the spiritual well-being of their patients and observe spiritual distress. They appreciate terminology/procedures by which they can assess more productively the spiritual needs of their patients and make appropriate chaplain referrals.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT
The use of a brief spiritual screening protocol can improve nursing referrals to chaplains. The better utilization of chaplains that this enables can improve patient trust and satisfaction with their overall care and potentially reduce the harmful effects of spiritual distress.


Entity disambiguation works by linking ambiguous mentions in text to their corresponding real-world entities in knowledge base. Recent collective disambiguation methods enforce coherence among contextual decisions at the cost of non-trivial inference processes. We propose a fast collective disambiguation approach based on stacking. First, we train a local predictor g 0 with learning to rank as base learner, to generate initial ranking list of candidates. Second, top k candidates of related instances are searched for constructing expressive global coherence features. A global predictor g 1 is trained in the augmented feature space and stacking is employed to tackle the train/test mismatch problem. The proposed method is fast and easy to implement. Experiments show its effectiveness over various algorithms on several public datasets. By learning a rich semantic relatedness measure between entity categories and context document, performance is further improved.


Traditional software controlled data cache prefetching is often ineffective due to the lack of runtime cache miss and miss address information. To overcome this limitation, we implement runtime data cache prefetching in the dynamic optimization system ADORE (ADaptive Object code Reoptimization). Its performance has been compared with static software prefetching on the SPEC2000 benchmark suite. Runtime cache prefetching shows better performance. On an Itanium 2 based Linux workstation, it can increase performance by more than 20% over static prefetching on some benchmarks. For benchmarks that do not benefit from prefetching, the runtime optimization system adds only 1%-2% overhead. We have also collected cache miss profiles to guide static data cache prefetching in the ORC compiler. With that information the compiler can effectively avoid generating prefetches for loops that hit well in the data cache.


An attempt is made to study theoretically the stability of a symmetrical, horizontal, rigid rotor mounted on two identical short bearings. Dilute viscoelastic solutions are used as lubricants. Experimental studies reveal that at high shear rates, which occur in the journal bearing clearance space, the Weissenberg effect is degraded while the relaxation time remains unaltered. Harnoy proposed a constitutive equation which decouples the Weissenberg effect and relaxation time may be used to depict the constitutive relations for lubricants under above-mentioned conditions. The study reveals that an apparent inertia tensor, arising out of linearized elasto-viscous acceleration dependent forces, has a predominant effect on the stability of such a rotor. As the stability map is considerably modified by the use of viscoelastic lubricants, the high speed instability limits are extended providing an incentive for using this type of lubricants. However, some new instability patches show off which correspond to lower speeds of a rotor. Nature of their instabilities is still to be established. A rotor may, however, be so designed that it never falls inside such patches of instability during its operation and speeding up period.


There is substantial evidence for non-intellectual factors to be considered as an additional criterion in the
appraisal of intellectual ability. Therefore, the development of a child's self-rating scale has been intensive in
the last decades. One of the most widely used self-rating scales is the School Feeling and Thought (SFT)
scale. Bearing in mind that the SFT was developed in America, it is essential to undertake a study to
ascertain whether the Malay versions of these instruments have the ability to assess intellectual ability of
Malay children. The Malay version of SFT was administered to 100 Primary Six pupils (53 boys and 47
girls) from a single school in Tampin. The intellectual ability (IQ) was measured using the revised version of
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-R). The correlations between the SFT scores and the
WISC-R full-scale IQ are modest. Two subtests of SFT, namely 'Action' and 'Affect', are found to be
significant predictors of IQ The equation derived from multiple regression analysis to estimate IQ using SFT
subtest scores is found to be able to predict intellectual ability (IQ). The only limitation is that the IQ
predicted by this equation has an II-point error. Therefore, SFT can be used to estimate IQ and thus can be
used as a screening test for intellectual ability of Malay children


This study is based on a comparative analysis of female and male employees in
leadership positions in the Malian Ministry of Agriculture. Special emphasis is placed
on the obstacles and challenges limiting women attaining leadership positions within
the Ministry. It provides insights into gender and cultural bias within the Ministry. Leadership
positions within the Ministry of Agriculture in Mali are male-dominated considering
the low number of females in management ranks, and little is done to help women fit
into these positions. This is especially true when female officials perceive that they
make more contributions such as focusing on process rather than just results, paying
attention to details, showing compassion and care in decision making, expressing
willingness to "go the extra mile," being sensitive in human relations, and offering
fresh perspective to administrative problems. However, the male officers claimed to be
more committed than their female counterparts. Keywords :Leadership positions, agricultural development, gender, culture. South African Journal of Agricultural Extension Vol. 37 2008: pp. 27-44


Question: What are the evolutionary consequences of extinctions in ecological communities? Can evolution restore pre-extinction communities by replacing lost ecological strategies with similar ones, or will communities change in fundamental ways and never be the same again? Mathematical approach: We develop and explore a new framework based on evolutionary domains of attraction (EDAs), defined as sets of strategy combinations from which a particular ESS community can be attained through gradual evolution. The latter dynamics may include three types of evolutionary processes: continuous strategy adaptation in response to directional selection, evolutionary branching in response to disruptive selection, and evolutionarily driven extinction. Key assumptions: We consider gradual frequency-dependent evolution in ecological communities, with evolutionary dynamics being fully determined by the strategy composition of a community's resident species. Results: The EDA approach distinguishes ESS communities that gradual evolution can restore after extinctions from ESS communities for which this option does not exist or is constrained. The EDA approach also offers a natural definition of 'evolutionary keystone species' as species whose removal causes a community to shift from one EDA to another. Our study highlights that environmentally driven extinctions can readily cause such shifts. We explain why the evolutionary attainability of an ESS Community through gradual evolution from a single precursor species does not imply its evolutionary restorability after extinctions. This shows that evolution driven by frequency-dependent selection may lead to 'Humpty-Dumpty' effects and community closure on an evolutionary time scale. By establishing EDAs for several example food webs, we discover that evolutionarily driven extinctions may be crucially involved in the evolutionary restoration of ESS communities. (Less)


A Bayesian pseudocoreset is a small synthetic dataset for which the posterior over parameters approximates that of the original dataset. While promising, the scalability of Bayesian pseudocoresets is not yet validated in realistic problems such as image classification with deep neural networks. On the other hand, dataset distillation methods similarly construct a small dataset such that the optimization using the synthetic dataset converges to a solution with performance competitive with optimization using full data. Although dataset distillation has been empirically verified in large-scale settings, the framework is restricted to point estimates, and their adaptation to Bayesian inference has not been explored. This paper casts two representative dataset distillation algorithms as approximations to methods for constructing pseudocoresets by minimizing specific divergence measures: reverse KL divergence and Wasserstein distance. Furthermore, we provide a unifying view of such divergence measures in Bayesian pseudocoreset construction. Finally, we propose a novel Bayesian pseudocoreset algorithm based on minimizing forward KL divergence. Our empirical results demonstrate that the pseudocoresets constructed from these methods reflect the true posterior even in high-dimensional Bayesian inference problems.


Rotor slot harmonics are found in the stator current waveforms for most squirrel-cage induction motors. These harmonics are caused by the finite number of rotor slots in a motor, and their frequencies are inherently correlated with the motor's rotational speed. A frequency demodulation approach is proposed in this paper to continuously and accurately track the rotational speed for induction motors that are operated at either dynamic or steady-state conditions from fixed-frequency power supplies. First, a complex current vector is synthesized from polyphase electrical current measurements. Second, a local oscillator and a mixer are cascaded with a digital filter to heterodyne a specific rotor slot harmonic and suppress adjacent interferences. A finite impulse response differentiator is then employed as a frequency demodulator to approximate the time derivative of the phase of this specific rotor slot harmonic and to resolve its instantaneous frequency. Finally, the induction motor speed is calculated from this resolved instantaneous rotor slot harmonic frequency. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is capable of interleaving data acquisition with real-time computation, iteratively estimating motor speed on a sample-by-sample basis.


BACKGROUND
Human minK protein is the beta-subunit of I(Ks) potassium channel and plays an important role in cardiac cellular electrophysiology. We investigated the association between human atrial fibrillation and the polymorphism of minK gene (38G or 38S) with a case-control study.

METHODS
We included 108 patients with atrial fibrillation and 108 control subjects. The case patients and control subjects were matched regarding age, sex, presence of valvular heart disease, and presence of left ventricular dysfunction. The genotype of minK was determined with polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment analysis.

RESULTS
The results showed an association between the minK 38G allele and atrial fibrillation. The odds ratios for atrial fibrillation in patients with 1 and 2 minK 38G alleles were 2.16 (95% CI 0.81-5.74) and 3.58 (95% CI 1.38-9.27), respectively, when compared with patients without minK 38G allele. In a logistic regression model, the odds ratio for atrial fibrillation was 1.80 (95% CI 1.20-2.71, P <.0046) for patients with 1 more minK 38G allele.

CONCLUSION
We report the association between the minK 38G allele and clinical atrial fibrillation. Our findings suggest possible genetic control on the pathogenesis of atrial fibrillation.


Migration from North Eastern Region (NER) to the rest of India (ROI) in general and to Bangalore in particular has increased. The rate of migration from NER to Karnataka has declined steadily; however, to Bangalore it has slightly increased. Urban people from NER show a higher tendency to migrate to Bangalore which is not the case for migrants from NER to ROI. Migration level from NER in Karnataka as well as in Bangalore is relatively insignificant. Migrants from NER are not choosing Karnataka as migration destination as before. Migrants from NER in Bangalore and Karnataka were dominated by males. Conversely, females dominated migration from NER in ROI. Males, unlike females, continue to prefer and choose Bangalore as one of their favourite migration destinations. NE people, particularly males, migrated to Karnataka and specifically to Bangalore mainly for education and employment. Females migrated mostly due to family migration. Migration from NER to Bangalore for employment and education has increased while migration along with their family has declined recently


Presentation delivered at the 6th CSIR Conference: Ideas that work for industrial development, CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa, 5-6 October 2017. The attachment includes a slideshow and a video clip.


Through the development of a valid and reliable instrument, this book sets out to study the role that interpreters play in the various settings where they work, i.e. the courts, the hospitals, business meetings, international conferences, and schools. It presents interpreters' perceptions and beliefs about their work as well as statements of their behaviors about their practice. For the first time, the administration and results of a survey administered across languages in Canada, Mexico and the United States offer the reader a glimpse of the interpreters' views in their own words. It also discusses the tension between professional ideology and the reality of interpreters at work. This book has implications for the theory and practice of interpreting across settings.


The problem of work related health disorder and productivity has long been underestimated. Most of the workers experience mental stress during their working lives. To be very clear, work-related stresses are a leading cause of illness and disability. It has a serious consequence on the individual workers and also to the enterprise. The performance of employees, increasing rates of illness, work site accidents, absenteeism. These are all affected by an employee's mental health status. The extent of work stress was noted to be decreased with an increase in their relationship with other staff in the establishments, level of education, average monthly earnings, the extent of satisfaction with factory environment, and also with financial status. Conversely, such stress experienced by the respondents has increased with an increase in their social status background and also found to be higher among those who own assets as well as migrated to the current place of living. While conducting the survey, most of the women respondents expressed that they suffer from sexual harassment problems. Also, they suffer from jealously, unnecessary gossip, and rivalry. Therefore fundamental changes are essential from employers, government, family members, and policy makers.


This article explores two issues that arise from a case decided by the Supreme Court this term: Morrison v. National Australia Bank, 130 S. Ct. 2869 (2010), which held that the Securities Exchange Act antifraud provisions do not apply to claims brought by foreign investors against foreign defendants over securities transactions outside the United States (so called f-cubed securities litigation). First, throughout the opinion Justice Scalia defined the reach of the federal securities laws based on a single inquiry: whether the United States was the place of the securities transaction. Then in summarizing the holding he said that Exchange Act Section 10(b) applies only to "transactions in securities listed on domestic exchanges . . . and domestic transactions in other securities." The problem is that the National Australia Bank (NAB) securities at issue in the case were in fact listed in the United States, which was required so NAB could have American Depository Receipts (ADRs) trade in New York. For other issuers that list the same securities both in the United States and in another country, as many issuers do, the confusion created by Justice Scalia's summary of the holding could be problematic. As discussed more fully in this article, the Court did not intend to grant a right to sue in the United States when such securities are bought outside the United States, but this will not stop some plaintiffs from claiming otherwise. This article explains why this argument is incorrect. Next Congress has had its own drafting problems. In the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress wanted to respond to Morrison by giving the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) power to pursue fraudulent conduct inside the United States that affects securities transactions outside the United States. For SEC and DOJ suits, Congress intended to reverse Morrison and make United States securities laws apply. Congress drafted the Dodd-Frank provisions based on the assumption that the question they were addressing – whether the securities laws applied to transactions outside the United States – was a question of subject matter jurisdiction, which is how courts of appeals had analyzed the issue for the past forty years. The Dodd-Frank provisions responded to Morrison by expressly giving federal courts jurisdiction in certain circumstances over SEC and DOJ suits concerning securities transactions outside the United States. The problem is that the Supreme Court in Morrison had already decided that under existing law federal courts had jurisdiction over these cases and that jurisdiction thus was not the issue. Rather, securities transactions outside the United States were not covered by the language of Section 10(b), a question of the merits. It seems obvious what Congress intended to do. The problem is that a credible case can be made that Congress didn't do it. Indeed, the day the Dodd-Frank Act was signed by the President, George Conway, the lawyer who had argued and won the Morrison case for NAB, published a memo to his firm's clients stating that Congress in the Dodd-Frank provisions may have done nothing meaningful at all. The Dodd-Frank provisions merely restated what Morrison clearly said – that the federal courts had jurisdiction. Because Dodd-Frank only approached this as a question of jurisdiction and did not address the substantive reach of Section 10(b), the Dodd-Frank provisions left the SEC and DOJ with no more power then they had the day Morrison was decided. This article observes that the SEC would have some good arguments in litigation on this issue, but that the statutory language is problematic and should be changed.


This memo documents an enhancement to the OSPF routing protocol, whereby an OSPF router can stay on the forwarding path even as its OSPF software is restarted. This is called "graceful restart" or "non-stop forwarding". A restarting router may not be capable of adjusting its forwarding in a timely manner when the network topology changes. In order to avoid the possible resulting routing loops, the procedure in this memo automatically reverts to a normal OSPF restart when such a topology change is detected, or when one or more of the restarting router's neighbors do not support the enhancements in this memo. Proper network operation during a graceful restart makes assumptions upon the operating environment of the restarting router; these assumptions are also documented.


The definition and basic equations defining the performance of three-dimensional radar systems are given. In particular the parameters defining data rate for different classes of three-dimensional radar are analyzed. Three-dimensional radars are divided into three classes as follows: single beam-rapid scan systems; multiple beam-scanning systems; and multiple beam-non-scanning systems. Each of these types is defined and compared in terms of important characteristics. It is shown that new developments in electronic scanning and multiple beam antennas have made feasible many of these new three-dimensional radar systems. A number of the more important antennas and their method of utilization in the three-dimensional radar equipment are described. Examples are given of two types of three-dimensional radar that are typical of two classes of this equipment. Finally, some of the more important applications for modern three-dimensional radar equipment are noted.


This paper presents a concept for ultralightweight deformable mirrors, based on a thin substrate of optical surface quality, coated with continuous active layers that provide separate modes of actuation at different length scales. This concept eliminates any kind of stiff backing structure for the mirror surface and exploits microfabrication technologies to provide tight integration of the active materials into the mirror structure, to avoid actuator print-through effects. Proof-of-concept, 10 cm diameter mirrors with an areal density of 0.6 kg/m² have been designed, built, and tested to measure their shape-correction performance and verify the finite-element models used for design. The low-cost manufacturing scheme involves low-temperature processing steps (below 140°C) to minimize residual stresses, does not require precision photolithography, and is therefore scalable to larger diameters depending on application requirements.


Three-dimensional (3D) Reconstruction is a vital and challenging research topic in advanced computer graphics and computer vision due to the intrinsic complexity and computation cost. Existing methods often produce holes, distortions and obscure parts in the reconstructed 3D models which are not adequate for real usage. The focus of this paper is to achieve high quality 3D reconstruction performance of complicated scene by adopting Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). We propose a novel workflow, namely 3D-Scene-GAN, which can iteratively improve any raw 3D reconstructed models consisting of meshes and textures. 3D-SceneGAN is a weakly semi-supervised model. It only takes real-time 2D observation images as the supervision, and doesn't rely on prior knowledge of shape models or any referenced observations. Finally, through the qualitative and quantitative experiments, 3D-Scene-GAN shows compelling advantages over the state-of-the-art methods: balanced rank estimation (BRE) scores are improved by 30%-100% on ICL-NUIM dataset, and 36%-190% on SUN3D dataset. And the mean distance error (MDR) also outperforms other state-of-the-art methods on benchmarks.


We describe the analysis of existing and new maximum-latewood-density (MXD) and tree-ring width (TRW) data from the Torneträsk region of northern Sweden and the construction of 1500 year chronologies. Some previous work found that MXD and TRW chronologies from Torneträsk were inconsistent over the most recent 200 years, even though they both reflect predominantly summer temperature influences on tree growth. We show that this was partly a result of systematic bias in MXD data measurements and partly a result of inhomogeneous sample selection from living trees (modern sample bias). We use refinements of the simple Regional Curve Standardisation (RCS) method of chronology construction to identify and mitigate these biases. The new MXD and TRW chronologies now present a largely consistent picture of long-timescale changes in past summer temperature in this region over their full length, indicating similar levels of summer warmth in the medieval period (MWP, c. ce 900–1100) and the latter half of the 20th century. Future work involving the updating of MXD chronologies using differently sourced measurements may require similar analysis and appropriate adjustment to that described here to make the data suitable for the production of un-biased RCS chronologies. The use of 'growth-rate' based multiple RCS curves is recommended to identify and mitigate the problem of 'modern sample bias'.


The paper explores the predictors of financial development in Ghana using data that span from 1971 to 2010. Evidence from the data supports the conclusion that interest rates and economic openness are long run significant predictors of financial development in Ghana whilst size of government is a short run significant predictor of financial development in Ghana. Economic growth, structural adjustment programme and democratic political system are not significant determinants of financial development. The results of the Granger causality tests in the error correction mode indicate a unidirectional causality running from economic openness and interest rate to financial development, meaning economic openness and interest rate drive financial development towards long run equilibrium. To the extent that rising interest rate as well as rising economic openness demonstrates a robust positive relationship with financial development, the paper contends that government intervention in the form of financial repression as well as trade restrictions should be avoided if the financial sector in Ghana is to develop. However, regarding economic openness, the paper cautions that the government must proceed with tact and circumspection so as to avoid the destabilizing effects of economic liberalization such as stock market volatility.


Significance Whether learning-induced changes in neuronal circuits are inhibited or erased during the process of unlearning remains unclear. In this study, we examined the impact of auditory-cued fear conditioning and extinction on the remodeling of synaptic connections in the living mouse auditory cortex. We found that fear conditioning leads to cue-specific formation of new postsynaptic dendritic spines, whereas fear extinction preferentially eliminates these new spines in a cue-specific manner. Our findings suggest that learning-related changes of synaptic connections in the cortex are at least partially reversed after unlearning. Fear conditioning-induced behavioral responses can be extinguished after fear extinction. While fear extinction is generally thought to be a form of new learning, several lines of evidence suggest that neuronal changes associated with fear conditioning could be reversed after fear extinction. To better understand how fear conditioning and extinction modify synaptic circuits, we examined changes of postsynaptic dendritic spines of layer V pyramidal neurons in the mouse auditory cortex over time using transcranial two-photon microscopy. We found that auditory-cued fear conditioning induced the formation of new dendritic spines within 2 days. The survived new spines induced by fear conditioning with one auditory cue were clustered within dendritic branch segments and spatially segregated from new spines induced by fear conditioning with a different auditory cue. Importantly, fear extinction preferentially caused the elimination of newly formed spines induced by fear conditioning in an auditory cue-specific manner. Furthermore, after fear extinction, fear reconditioning induced reformation of new dendritic spines in close proximity to the sites of new spine formation induced by previous fear conditioning. These results show that fear conditioning, extinction, and reconditioning induce cue- and location-specific dendritic spine remodeling in the auditory cortex. They also suggest that changes of synaptic connections induced by fear conditioning are reversed after fear extinction.


Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is a tool for comprehensive, integrated ocean management, used to mitigate anthropogenic impact on the environment and promote co-operation between ocean users. In the Beaufort Sea LOMA, the Inuvialuit are the primary users of coastal resources, making them a significant and necessary stakeholder in the MSP process. Inuvialuit possess a substantial body of knowledge and expertise related to management of the environment, and the Traditional Knowledge (TK) held by the Indigenous community is a valuable source of information in the context of MSP. In order for TK to be effectively integrated into MSP, challenges related to TK data integration must be addressed, and practices for managing, analyzing, and using TK must be explored and crafted. This research addresses epistemological and practical issues in using TK for environmental management, using an interdisciplinary approach to review best practices in TK integration, and suggest practices for using TK in MSP in relation to geospatial data and knowledge organization. The paper concludes that practices that foster transparency, accessibility, and the maintaining the context of TK as data are necessary for the successful use of TK in MSP.


Welfare states around the globe are changing, challenged by the development of knowledge economies. In many countries, policymakers' main response has been to modernize welfare states by focusing on future-oriented "social investment" policies that focus on creating, mobilizing, and preserving human skills and capabilities. Yet, there is massive variance in the development of social investment strategies. This is the first of two volumes of the World Politics of Social Investment (WOPSI) project, which systematically maps and explains different welfare reform strategies in democratic countries around the world. This volume develops a theory on the political and socioeconomic conditions for the development of social investment policies around the globe and studies the impact of the main explanatory factors on the empirical variety of social investment reforms (and non-social investment reforms). It also proposes a new typology of different welfare reform strategies, distinguishing nine types of social investment strategies depending on their functions (creating, mobilizing, and preserving human skill and capabilities) and their distributive profiles (inclusive, stratified, or targeted) and three types of non-social investment welfare strategies (market liberalism, social protectionism, and basic income). The chapters of this volume are written by leading social policy scholars from different disciplines and countries, who apply the WOPSI global theoretical framework in a range of contexts and policy fields, shedding light on the scope conditions of social investment, as well as political demand- and supply-side drivers of social investment reforms. The second volume focuses on inter-regional variation of social investment reforms. Jointly, the project offers the first worldwide analysis of social investment reforms around the globe.


Why should surgeons study gut microbiota and microbiome (totality of body's microorganisms and genomes)? There are at least three reasons. With the advent of new ways of analyzing gut microbiome it may soon be possible to use in diagnosis of clinical conditions. Secondly, knowledge of microbiome will give insights into the pathophysiology of trauma and surgical conditions and thirdly, new microbiome-based therapies are emerging.


A new type of an all-solid photonic bandgap fiber for a non-phase-matched tunable band-rejection filter was proposed and fabricated by introducing a hexagonal array of high-index rods surrounded by graded-index pedestals in silica cladding. Due to the graded index and subsequent weak confinement of light, the proposed fiber showed two contrasting transmission spectra: flat transmission for a long fiber segment of ~1 m in contrast to typical bandgap transmission in a short fiber segment of ~10 cm. For the 120-cm-long fiber, we observed unique band-rejection transmission without any requirement of phase-matching conditions, whose rejection strength was tunable by mechanical perturbations such as bending and twisting. Detailed device principles, fiber design, fabrication, and transmission characteristics are discussed in both theory and experiment.


Excessive hepatic glucose output is an important factor in the fasting hyperglycemia of non-insulindependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). To determine the relative contributions of gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis in a quantitative manner, we applied a new isotopic approach, using infusions of [6-3H]glucose and [2-14C]acetate to trace overall hepatic glucose output and phosphoenolpyruvate gluconeogenesis in 14 postabsorptive NIDDM subjects and in 9 nondiabetic volunteers of similar age and weight. Overall hepatic glucose output was increased nearly twofold in the NIDDM subjects (22.7 ± 1.0 vs. 12.0 ± 0.6 μmol · kg−1 · min−1 in the nondiabetic volunteers, P < .001); phosphoenolpyruvate gluconeogenesis was increased more than threefold in the NIDDM subjects (12.7 ± 1.4 vs. 3.6 ± 0.4 μmol kg−1 min−1 in the nondiabetic subjects, P < .001) and was accompanied by increased plasma lactate, alanine, and glucagon concentrations (all P < .05). The increased phosphoenolpyruvate gluconeogenesis accounted for 89 ± 6% of the increase in overall hepatic glucose output in the NIDDM subjects and was significantly correlated with the fasting plasma glucose concentrations (r = .67, P < .01). Glycogenolysis, calculated as the difference between overall hepatic glucose output and phosphoenolpyruvate gluconeogenesis, was not significantly different in the NIDDM subjects (9.9 ± 0.06 μmol · kg−1 · min−1) and the nondiabetic volunteers (8.4 ± 0.3 μmol kg−1 · min−1). We conclude that increased gluconeogenesis is the predominant mechanism responsible for increased hepatic glucose output in NIDDM.


Acoustic metamaterials constitute a new class of structures that exhibit acoustic properties not readily available in nature. These properties can be a negative mass density, expressing the opposition of the acceleration of a particle to the application of pressure, or a negative bulk modulus, signifying the rarefaction of the particle in reaction to a compression (resp. a condensation in reaction to a depression). However, these artificial behaviors result from a periodic arrangement of passive unit-cells (such as membranes and side holes), and not from individual "meta-properties" of each unit-cell. It is however possible to observe such intrinsic metamaterial properties out of a passive electroacoustic resonator. This concept encompasses a loudspeaker, connected to a specific electric load, thus altering the acoustic dynamics of the loudspeaker diaphragm when subject to an exogenous sound source. It is especially possible to achieve negative acoustic impedance at its diaphragm thanks to the connection of passive electric shunt circuits, such as simple RLC series resonators. This paper aims at highlighting the metamaterial nature of such electroacoustic resonators through computational and experimental results, followed by discussions on ongoing developments.


The 1995–96 cereal harvest in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) is the best within the last ten years. Provisional assessments project a regional maize surplus of 2.08 million tons, a 72% increase in production over the previous year's harvest. Overall cereal production substantially increased in all countries except Tanzania, where the current cereal forecast of 3.73 million tons is a 14% drop from last year's output of 4.34 million tons. Of special note are the exceptionally large increases in the area planted in cereals in war-ravaged Angola and Mozambique, for the first time in many years. Production trebled in Botswana, doubled in Zimbabwe, and ranged from 21% in Malawi to 85% in South Africa. Although all the SADC states harvested a normal to above-normal crop, only Zimbabwe, Zambia, and South Africa have the capacity to export. The other countries need to import grain from these three to augment strategic grain reserves, especially maize. Anticipated opening stocks for the 1996–97 marketing year are critically low despite the optimistic cereal supply expectations for the year. Cereal supplies during the period leading to harvest time remained less than satisfactory, particularly in Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, because of inadequate import plans and slow delivery rates.


The paper looks at a multi-classroom video conferencing activity case study from the perspective of EFL classroom practitioner action research. The practitioners had identified an unknown usage limitation problem when simultaneously using large numbers of video conferencing tools. The research took place at a tech focused university campus in Tokyo, Japan, during June and November 2019. The problem had actually manifested because the practitioners had a high degree of confidence in their WI-FI and broader network environment. The research identified and subsequently isolated the specific problem through A/B testing, and the findings were supported by linear regression analysis. On the basis of the findings, the research successfully trialled a solution. However, it became apparent that this was not a localised problem and that the identified issue was relatively generalisable to other school environments. The issue will eventually be faced by other schools as 5G and improved WI-FI are rolled out worldwide. The reaction to the COVID-19 lockdown is likely to speed up the process and mean the identified solution will be required sooner rather than later.


Human hair is a cultural material, with a rich history displaying individuality, cultural expression and group identity. It is malleable in length, color and style, highly visible, and embedded in a range of personal and group interactions. As wearable technologies move ever closer to the body, and embodied interactions become more common and desirable, hair presents a unique and little-explored site for novel interactions. In this paper, we present an exploration and working prototype of hair as a site for novel interaction, leveraging its position as something both public and private, social and personal, malleable and permanent. We develop applications and interactions around this new material in HäirIÖ: a novel integration of hair-based technologies and braids that combine capacitive touch input and dynamic output through color and shape change. Finally, we evaluate this hair-based interactive technology with users, including the integration of HäirIÖ within the landscape of existing wearable and mobile technologies.


Field studies demonstrate that displacements on northwest-striking wrench faults of the central Mojave Desert are too small to support hypotheses suggesting large interior translations and associated rotation of the province during late Cenozoic time. The margin of an early Miocene structural belt provides the marker with which to establish lateral displacement on individual faults. Displacement values for faults are as follows: Lenwood fault = 1.5–3 km, Camp Rock Fault = 1.6–4.0 km, Calico fault = 8.2 km, and Rodman-Pisgah faults = 6.4–14.4 km. Cumulative displacement on all the major northwest-striking faults of the Mojave Desert is about 26.7–38.4 km. Most, if not all, regionally distributed right shear (presumably related to Pacific–North American plate interaction) developed in the central Mojave Desert after 20 m.y. B.P. Right shear was preceded by significant amounts of kinematically unrelated northeast-southwest crustal extension.


Clothes are one of the most important needs of individuals, as they distinguish their personality and show their udentuty. The clothes are used permanently for individuals whether home clothes, clothes outside the house, work clothes, sportswear in its various forms or others, whether for children, women and men.Many companies use a mix of media to publicize and promote their products. They try to create and to new or innovative advertising methods to reach new customers, which makes some companies strive more than others to use new and different advertising media in these advertising innovations. Some of these companies may spend on this by putting pictures and shapes on clothes on several occasions for advertisements, for example regular daily clothes (casual), including what may be associated with different occasions such as sports natiobal teams (football teams, basketball teams, athletes for individual games. ..). In all cases, advertising through clothes requires aesthetic design values that maintain the advertising product and the identity associated with events and individuals. Advertising companies compete with their maximum creative potential to achieve the two goals together.


This paper tests the empirical performance of a model-independent measure of aggregate idiosyncratic risk introduced by Bali and Cakici (2004) in ICAPM framework. The results indicate a significantly positive relation between the equal-weighted average stock volatility and the value-weighted portfolio returns on the NYSE/AMEX/Nasdaq stocks for the sample period of 1963:08-1999:12. We show that this result is driven by small stocks traded on the NASDAQ. In addition, the positive risk-return tradeoff does not exist for the extended sample of 1963:08-2004:12 and for portfolios of NYSE/AMEX and NYSE stocks. More importantly, we find almost no evidence of a significant link between the value-weighted portfolio returns and various measures of the value-weighted average idiosyncratic volatility.


It is known that the chemical composition of milk is influenced by several factors and the length of lactation plays a prominent role. In Italy, where the reproductive activity of the herd is aimed at the demand for milk from the market, the chemical composition is influenced not only by the adoption or otherwise by the out-breeding-mating-strategy (OBMS) but also by the severity which characterise these techniques (the length of the interruption of sexual promiscuity). The productions and the chemical composition of the milk of 23 farms (average 9000 buffaloes a year) were processed from 2011 to August 2016. The milk was daily conferred and analysed. We evaluated the milk production (kg), the percentage of fat, protein, lactose, dairy yield calculated with the equation of Altiero (1989), the values of the titratable acidity (°SH) and of pH. For each parameter, the monthly values of each farm were divided by the respective annual average and were expressed as an index (monthly values/annual average) in order to homogenize the graphical representations.


Three experiments investigated how grammatical gender and gender stereotypicality influence the way person information is mentally represented. Participants read sentences about social groups denoted by nouns with different grammatical gender and stereotypicality. A following sentence contained a reference to the social group that qualified the group members as female, male, or neither one. Experiment 1 tested grammatically masculine nouns; Experiment 2 tested gender-balanced forms, composed of the masculine and the feminine or neither one; and Experiment 3 tested nouns without gender inflection. Stereotypicality varied within studies. Second sentence reading times differed depending on the fit between grammatical gender and stereotypicality of the first sentence's subject and the subsequent information's gender-relatedness. Both grammatical gender and stereotypicality contribute biological gender information to mentally represented person information. Strong grammatical input may override stereotypicality's influence. The feminine's influence seems to be weaker than the masculine's. Results are discussed in the framework of the scenario mapping and focus approach.


Cities around the world are facing an ever-increasing variety of challenges that seem to make more sustainable urban futures elusive. Many of these challenges are being driven by, and exacerbated by, increases in urban populations and climate change. Novel solutions are needed today if our cities are to have any hope of more sustainable and resilient futures. Because most of the environmental impacts of any project are manifest at the point of design, we posit that this is where a real difference in urban development can be made. To this end, we present a transformative model that merges urban design and ecology into an inclusive, creative, knowledge-to-action process. This design-ecology nexus—an ecology for cities—will redefine both the process and its products. In this paper we: (1) summarize the relationships among design, infrastructure, and urban development, emphasizing the importance of joining the three to achieve urban climate resilience and enhance sustainability; (2) discuss how urban ecology can move from an ecology of cities to an ecology for cities based on a knowledge-to-action agenda; (3) detail our model for a transformational urban design-ecology nexus, and; (4) demonstrate the efficacy of our model with several case studies.


This is the first systematic comparative study into how consumer ADR systems (usually ombudsmen and m?diateurs) work, the differing national architectures within which they operate and how they can be improved. It describes ADR schemes in Belgium, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom as well as emerging pan-EU dispute resolution schemes. Use of the techniques of mediation, conciliation and adjudication are noted. It also covers EU measures on consumer ADR, and 2011 proposals for legislation on ADR and ODR. Data on volumes, cost and duration of ADR schemes are compared, both between different systems and with courts. The authors' findings underpin EU and national developments, and outline options for future policy. Findings and proposals are included for the functions, scope, performance, essential requirements, architecture and operation of ADR systems. The relationships between ADR, courts and regulators are discussed, and need for reforms are noted. This is a ground-breaking work that will have a major impact on European legal systems.


Phase change memory (PCM) is emerging as a lead alternative to DRAM due to its good combination of speed, density, energy, and reliability. However, PCM can endure far fewer overwrites than DRAM before wearing out. PCM is susceptible to malicious or accidental overwrites which can wear out a frame in a few hundreds of seconds. Previous papers have proposed to randomize periodically the address-to-frame mapping in a memory region. Each randomization involves remapping the region's memory blocks which incurs significant write overhead. To guarantee reasonable worst-case lifetimes, the papers assume that every write overwrites the same memory block and incur either high write overhead for normal applications (i.e., the common case), or permanent, high hardware overhead (i.e., in all cases). We make the key observation that the overwrite rates of normal applications (i.e., common case) are orders-of-magnitude lower than that of the worst case. However, naively measuring the overwrite rate using brute-force hardware would incur significant complexity and power. Instead, we apply basic statistical sampling to estimate accurately the overwrite rate while requiring a small sampling buffer. Our approach, called statistical wear leveling (SWL), which randomizes address-to-frame mapping on the basis of the estimated overwrite rates instead of write rates. SWL achieves both lower common-case write overhead and lower hardware overhead, and similar, high common-case lifetime as compared to the previous schemes while achieving reasonable worst-case lifetime.


— Kuwait's electric power system is vertically integrated organization owned and operated by the government. For more than five decades, the government of Kuwait has provided relatively reliable electric services to consumers with subsidized electric service fees. Given the country's rapid socio-economical development and consequently the increase of electricity demand, a question that inflicts itself: Is it necessary to reform the power system to face the fast growing demand? This paper recommends that the government should consider the private sector as a partner in operating the power system. Therefore, power system restructuring is needed to allow such partnership. There are challenges that prevent such restructuring. Abstract recommendations toward resolving these challenges are proposed.


OBJECTIVE
This study examined the equivalence reliability of two administration methods for the Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM). The two methods were direct observation of child performance and parental interview.

METHOD
Thirty children between the ages of 19 months and 71 months with identified developmental disabilities were included in this study. The direct observation and interview methods were administered in random order to each subject within a 3-week period. The direct observation was completed in the educational setting, and the WeeFIM interview was obtained by either in-person interview or telephone interview with the parent.

RESULTS
The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for total WeeFIM ratings was .93, indicating consistency between the two administration methods. Analysis of the WeeFIM Motor (13 items) and Cognitive (5 items) domains yielded ICC values of .93 and .75, respectively, suggesting greater consistency for items measuring motor-related skills.

CONCLUSION
The results demonstrate good agreement for total ratings when the WeeFIM is administered by direct observation and by interview with a parent. The findings establish the clinical usefulness of information collected by clinical interview.


Indigenous communities have long, multi-generational histories of interaction with the environment that include coping with variability, uncertainty and change. However, climate-induced impacts on their territories and communities are anticipated to be both early and severe due to their location in vulnerable habitats, including small islands, high altitude zones, desert margins and the circumpolar Arctic. Climate change poses a direct threat to many indigenous societies due to their continuing reliance upon resource-based livelihoods. At the same time, resilience in the face of a changing environment is embedded in indigenous knowledge and know-how, diversified resources and livelihoods, social institutions and networks, and cultural values and attitudes. Attentiveness to environmental variability, shifts and trends is an integral part of indigenous ways of life. Community-based and local knowledge may offer valuable insights on climate-induced changes, and complement broader-scale scientific research with local precision and nuance. Indigenous societies have elaborated coping strategies to deal with unstable environments, and in some cases, are already actively adapting to early climate change impacts. While the transformations due to climate change are expected to be unprecedented, indigenous knowledge and coping strategies provide a crucial foundation for community-based adaptation measures. This toolkit provides access to articles, videos and various other resources that will assist indigenous peoples, local communities, policymakers and other stakeholders in accessing research on climate change adaptation and mitigation


Background: Adolescent obesity is increasingly more common in low- and middle-income countries like Nigeria. Obesity has been associated with metabolic derangement in adolescents in developed countries. This study compared the metabolic parameters in obese and non-obese adolescents in a developing country. Method: A cross-sectional study was performed on 1 000 adolescents selected by multi-stage sampling from eight secondary schools in Osun State, south-western Nigeria. Socio-demographic information was collected with the aid of a questionnaire. Using the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) body mass index (BMI) cut-off points, 29 obese adolescents were identified, and 29 suitably matched controls selected. The means for the anthropometric indices [height, weight and waist circumference (WC)], as well as blood pressure (BP), fasting blood glucose and the blood lipid levels of the obese and non-obese participants were compared using an independent t-test and one-way analysis of variance. Data were analysed using SPSS® 16.0 version. A p-value < 0.05 was taken to be statistically significant. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 13.7 years (standard deviation 2.04). Eight of 100 (7.7%) respondents were overweight and 2.9% obese. More female than male adolescents were overweight or obese. The means for the anthropometric indices and BP increased in general across the spectrum of weight categories, from normal weight to obese. Weight, BMI, WC, and systolic and diastolic blood pressure were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in the obese adolescents than in the non-obese controls. The controls had a significantly higher mean high-density lipoprotein value (1.46 mmol/l) than the obese adolescents (1.21 mmol/l). Conclusion: Obese adolescents are at higher risk of metabolic diseases than non-obese adolescents. Obese adolescents in low- to middle-income countries should be targeted to adopt lifestyle changes.


Two vertebrate faunas of Pliocene age, the Walnut Canyon and Buckhorn local faunas, are described from sediments of the Gila Group in the Mangas basin in northern Grant County, southwestern New Mexico. Stratigraphic sections and lithologic descriptions are provided for the three unnamed formations in the upper part of the Gila Group that produced these two faunas. The Walnut Canyon local fauna includes one major locality, the Walnut Canyon Horse Quarry, and three smaller sites located 5 km southeast of Gila. The fauna is
composed of 12 species of mammals, including one lagomorph, one rodent, two carnivores, two
horses, one peccary, three camels, one cervid, and one antilocaprid. The most common members
of the fauna are the equids Astrohippus stockii and Dinohippus mexicanus and two genera of
camelids (Hemiauchenia and Alforjas). The remaining species in the fauna are represented by very small samples. A. stockii, D. mexicanus, the canid Vulpes stenognathus, the tayassuid d. Catagonus brachydontus, and the camelid Alforjas are typical of late Hemphillian (late Miocene and early Pliocene) faunas. Furthermore, the presence of A. stockii, D. mexicanus, and a true cervid are
indicative of latest Hemphillian faunas. Two correlative latest Hemphillian faunas, the Yepomera fauna from Chihuahua in northern Mexico and the Palmetto fauna from the Bone Valley
Formation in Florida, are earliest Pliocene in age (5.2- 4.5 Ma). The Buckhorn local fauna incorporates 14 sites located between 3 and 10 km northwest of Buckhorn. The fauna is composed of 27 species of vertebrates, including one fish, one frog, one salamander, two snakes, six birds, one lagomorph, four rodents, four carnivores, two horses, one peccary, two camels, one ruminant, and one proboscidean. The abundance of aquatic vertebrates in several of the Buckhorn sites, in particular frogs (Rana) and birds, including a flamingo (Phoenicopterus), rails, and ducks, as well as the lithology of the sediments, suggest a lacustrine depositional environment. The mammals from the Buckhorn local fauna are clearly indicative of a Blancan (Pliocene) age, and several species permit a more precise placement within the Blancan. The presence of the small hipparionine horse Nannippus and a primitive species of the arvicoline rodent Mimomys and the absence of Neotropical immigrants, suggest a pre-late Blancan age (older than 2.5 Ma). The occurrence of the horse Equus (Dolichohippus) simplicidens and a large species of Mimomys (subgenus Ogmodontomys) excludes very early Blancan faunas. The evolutionary stage of the rodents Mimomys (Ogmodontomys) d. M. poaphagus and Repomys d. R. panacaensis is most consistent with a late early or early middle Blancan age (4.0-3.0 Ma) for the Buckhorn local fauna. Broadly correlative early or middle Blancan faunas are Cuchillo Negro Creek and Truth or Consequences in New Mexico, Clarkdale and Verde in Arizona, Rexroad in Kansas, and Panaca in Nevada.


The Tribunal's Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility in the Arbitration between the Republic of the Philippines and the People's Republic of China (the 'South China Sea Arbitration') is remarkable in that the Tribunal found with respect to seven of the Philippines' 15 submissions that a determination of its jurisdiction would involve consideration of issues that do not possess 'an exclusively preliminary character', and accordingly reserved consideration of its jurisdiction to rule on these submissions to the merits phase of the proceedings. By comparison, the International Court of Justice ('ICJ') found that questions of jurisdiction generally require decision at the preliminary stage of the proceedings. It is only in exceptional circumstances that the ICJ found that an objection to jurisdiction does not possess an exclusively preliminary character. In fact, since the change to its Rules of Court in 1972, i.e. in almost 45 years, the ICJ has done so only on four occasions. In all other cases, the ICJ either accepted or rejected the objection at the preliminary objections phase of the proceedings. This raises the question of whether and, if so, why the Tribunal in the South China Sea Arbitration has adopted a less restrictive approach with regard to preliminary objections. The paper identifies the criteria to be applied by UNCLOS Annex VII arbitral tribunals in deciding whether an objection possesses an 'exclusively preliminary character'. It concludes that the Tribunal has not scrupulously applied the 'exclusively preliminary character' test and has joined objections to the merits which should have been decided at the preliminary objections stage. Considering China's firm opposition to the proceedings on jurisdictional grounds this may provide China with further arguments for rejecting the Tribunal's Awards in the South China Sea Arbitration.


In order to study the widely-held belief that the sound of a guitar evolves with use due to vibrationinduced changes in the guitar, the tone of guitars subjected to controlled vibrations is investigated. The study uses three pairs of guitars, where each of the two guitars in the pair is the same make, model and year. One guitar from each pair is treated using a commercial device for effecting a tone change through imposition of vibrations. The guitars are evaluated before and after the treatment using double-blind player evaluations and physical property measurements. The player evaluations showed no statistically-significant changes in the differences between the two guitars in each pair. Fourier analysis of instrumented hammer strikes were used to extract the frequency response function. Statistical analysis showed no significant change in the correlation between treated and untreated guitars due to the vibration treatment. It is therefore concluded that this vibration treatment had no significant effect on the guitar tone. It is suggested that the evaluation approach used here could be useful for studies of other instruments or treatments.


This is the third policy brief from Young Lives about Juntos, the conditional cash transfer programme in Peru which aims, in the short term, to reduce poverty by making a payment of 100 nuevos soles per month to each participating household if they comply with certain conditions intended to improve children's health and education. The brief describes the conditionalities employed by Juntos and finds there are also some unintended impacts for beneficiary families. First the authors review the existing literature on Juntos and what Young Lives has already found from its research with participating families. Although a reduction of children's time spent on paid work is noted, more hours were found to be devoted to chores. This may be due to children's mothers being more engaged in complementary businesses, partially funded by cash transfers. The authors identify three types of conditionalities: the official conditions which must be met by all beneficiaries; conditions which are considered to be complementary but not mandatory; and other conditions that have not been established in any official documents, but which Juntos representatives require of the beneficiary families. Among other problems, this has led to a situation where many mothers believe that the third group of conditions is mandatory, while actual conditions may be perceived as non-compulsory. The authors also analyse the expected and unexpected impacts of Juntos based on discussions with beneficiaries and their children. This shows that the programme has had positive consequences for mothers and children, but has also had some negative consequences for both. Finally, they outline some policy recommendations to help ensure that beneficiaries can make the most of the programme. If the identified weaknesses can be overcome, families enrolled in the programme would be more likely to achieve greater prosperity in the long term.


We live in a moment of unprecedented complexity, an era in which change occurs faster than our ability to comprehend it. With "The Moment of Complexity", Mark C. Taylor offers a map for the unfamiliar terrain opening in our midst, unfolding an original philosophy of our time through a remarkable synthesis of science and culture. According to Taylor, complexity is not just a breakthrough scientific concept but the defining quality of the post-Cold War era. The flux of digital currents swirling around us, he argues, has created a new network culture with its own distinctive logic and dynamic. Drawing on resources from information theory and evolutionary biology, Taylor explains the operation of complex adaptive systems in natural, social and cultural processes. To appreciate the significance of emerging network culture, he claims, it is necessary not only to understand contemporary scientific and technological transformations, but also to explore the subtle influences of art, architecture, philosophy, religion and education. "The Moment of Complexity" is a remarkable work of cultural analysis on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how we arrived at this critical moment in our culture, and to know where we might head in the 21st century.


Dimensionality reduction is an essential data preprocessing technique for large-scale and streaming data classification tasks. It can be used to improve both the efficiency and the effectiveness of classifiers. Traditional dimensionality reduction approaches fall into two categories: feature extraction and feature selection. Techniques in the feature extraction category are typically more effective than those in feature selection category. However, they may break down when processing large-scale data sets or data streams due to their high computational complexities. Similarly, the solutions provided by the feature selection approaches are mostly solved by greedy strategies and, hence, are not ensured to be optimal according to optimized criteria. In this paper, we give an overview of the popularly used feature extraction and selection algorithms under a unified framework. Moreover, we propose two novel dimensionality reduction algorithms based on the orthogonal centroid algorithm (OC). The first is an incremental OC (IOC) algorithm for feature extraction. The second algorithm is an orthogonal centroid feature selection (OCFS) method which can provide optimal solutions according to the OC criterion. Both are designed under the same optimization criterion. Experiments on Reuters Corpus Volume-1 data set and some public large-scale text data sets indicate that the two algorithms are favorable in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency when compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms.


Objectives To evaluate different approaches for including time trends in quantitative exposures to total particulate matter (TPM) in an aluminium smelter for use in epidemiologic evaluation of incident heart disease, we compared the use of regression modelling to discrete modelling of changes in the workplace environment. Method We used an industrial hygiene database containing results for sampling conducted over 30 years and information on workplace environment (e.g. personal protective equipment policy, ventilation modifications, changes to materials or work organisation). The effects of these changes were tested with an analysis of variance model using log-transformed TPM concentrations. We compared the outcome of this approach to the use of a regression model for TPM concentrations over time. Results Time trends in 57 jobs in an aluminium smelter were evaluated by using 1123 TPM samples collected from 1984–2012. There was an overall decline in median TPM concentrations (mg/m3) at the smelter (3.7% per year). The trend was not observed in the majority individual jobs. The decreasing trend was concentrated in 14% of the jobs. The majority of jobs (61%) had no change over the time period, 19% had no consistent pattern of change, and 5% increased in TPM concentrations. Conclusions Applying a global trend to worker exposures would result in misclassification error in epidemiologic evaluations. When possible, process changes should be used to define changes in worker exposures rather than using a facility- or industry-wide time trend. Future work will explore regression modelling as a way to explain any remaining time trends in TPM.