Personal budgets aim to increase choice and independence for people with social care needs but they remain underused by people with mental health problems compared to other disability groups. The use of personal budgets may impact on families in a variety of ways, both positive and negative. This paper draws on interviews, undertaken in 2012-2013 with 18 family carers and 12 mental health service users, that explored experiences of family involvement in accessing and managing personal budgets for a person with mental health-related social care needs. The sample was drawn from three sites across England, with additional carers being recruited via voluntary sector networks. Our findings show that for many people with severe mental health needs who lack motivation and confidence to negotiate access to personal budgets, carers may provide the necessary support to enable them to benefit from this form of social care support. We illustrate the role carers may play in initiating, pursuing and maximising the level of support available through personal budgets. However, some carers interviewed considered that personal budget funding was reduced because of practitioners' assumptions about carers' willingness and ability to provide support. We also report perceived tensions between family carers and practitioners around appropriate involvement in decision-making. The study findings have implications for local authorities, practitioners and family carers in supporting the involvement of family carers in support for people with severe mental health problems.


OBJECTIVE
A recent study conducted by the Pediatric Research in Office Settings network provided evidence that girls in the United States, especially black girls, are starting puberty at a younger age than earlier studies had found, but the reasons for this are not known. Because nutritional status is known to affect timing of puberty and there is a clear trend for increasing obesity in US children during the past 25 years, it was hypothesized that the earlier onset of puberty could be attributable to the increasing prevalence of obesity in young girls. Therefore, the objective of this study was to reexamine the Pediatric Research in Office Settings puberty data by comparing the age-normalized body mass index (BMI-ZS; a crude estimate of fatness) of girls who had breast or pubic hair development versus those who were still prepubertal, looking at the effects of age and race.

RESULTS
For white girls, the BMI-ZS were markedly higher in pubertal versus prepubertal 6- to 9-year-olds; for black girls, a smaller difference was seen, which was significant only for 9-year-olds. Higher BMI-ZS also were found in girls who had pubic hair but no breast development versus girls who had neither pubic hair nor breast development. A multivariate analysis confirms that obesity (as measured by BMI) is significantly associated with early puberty in white girls and is associated with early puberty in black girls as well, but to a lesser extent.

CONCLUSIONS
The results are consistent with obesity's being an important contributing factor to the earlier onset of puberty in girls. Factors other than obesity, however, perhaps genetic and/or environmental ones, are needed to explain the higher prevalence of early puberty in black versus white girls.


"There are no easy solutions to the ongoing food price crisis. Maize and wheat prices doubled between 2003 and 2008, and the price of rice doubled in the first four months of 2008, rising 33 percent in a single day. Even with declines in food prices later in 2008, prices remain well above 2000–2005 levels. To address the complex causes of this phenomenon, IFPRI has recommended a combination of "emergency" and "resilience" actions. One of the proposed policies emphasizes the need to boost agricultural production. This "emergency" agriculture package requires carefully targeted subsidies to ensure increases in production of major foodcrops (rice, wheat, and maize) in favorable environments with good soils, moisture, and market infrastructure. Following the Green Revolution model, delivery of improved varieties of seed, fertilizers, and other inputs, along with targeted, short-term subsidies, would augment production through higher yields rather than area expansion, so that scarce land can be reserved for other crops and uses. As part of the "resilience" package, IFPRI proposes scaled-up investment in agricultural growth to bolster production responses over the longer term. Until recently, public complacency regarding food abundance has contributed to a prolonged decline in agricultural investment by aid donors and developing-country governments. In-depth field research—undertaken by IFPRI with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other partners in India, Kenya, and Mali—brings to light new evidence about farmers' access to seed and the role of village markets in supplying it, with a focus on semi-arid environments. The findings point to several policy options aimed at improving the effectiveness of these markets, which can be crucial for reducing the potential negative impacts of high food prices. Such options might be considered in tandem with those recommended for more favorable environments, where seed systems already function more effectively. This brief introduces the issues that drove this research project, relevant concepts, and methods. The accompanying briefs present findings of specific country case studies." from text


Objective: In January of 2013, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence of United Kingdom have announced that taking tamoxifen for five years could reduce breast cancer risk, include positive family history or chronic estrogen and phytoestrogen users. However, routinely oral intake of tamoxifen for breast cancer prophylaxis on high risk women is occasionally difficult because of its potential side effects. The intention of this study is to prove transdermal delivery by using minimal dose of tamoxifen and phytonutrients for breast protection. Methods: We retrospectively studied 2795 breast MRI images from Taiwanese women and classified them as either healthy or unhealthy according to BI-RADS categories. A subgroup of the study patients had received estrogen supplements containing estrogen components or phytoestrogen for at least 3 months. Based on breast MRI analysis, these 2 groups were compared and found significant different. The overuse of estrogen or phytoestrogen supplements can increase breast glandular tissue proliferation, as reflected in MRI images. Such proliferation may increase the risk of future breast cancer. We also studied the efficacy of tamoxifen and the phytonutrients to inhibit proliferation of mammary glandular cell, as well as their transdermal absorption in animal models. Results: We demonstrated cell proliferative change of normal breast cells (MCF-10a) under estrogen treatment. For studied of transdermal absorption by topical application, we used Franz cell with artificial skin membrane to demonstrate positive transdermal diffusion using animal urine/feces, blood samples and subcutaneous skin retention for HPLC analysis. Conclusion: We successful demonstrate the transdermal absorption of topical application of tamoxifen and phytonutrients; it may help to reduce breast cancer development in regular estrogen and phytoestrogen users.


Computer vision models suffer from a phenomenon known as catastrophic forgetting when learning novel concepts from continuously shifting training data. Typical solutions for this continual learning problem require extensive rehearsal of previously seen data, which increases memory costs and may violate data privacy. Recently, the emergence of large-scale pre-trained vision transformer models has enabled prompting approaches as an alternative to data-rehearsal. These approaches rely on a key-query mechanism to generate prompts and have been found to be highly resistant to catastrophic forgetting in the well-established rehearsal-free continual learning setting. However, the key mechanism of these methods is not trained end-to-end with the task sequence. Our experiments show that this leads to a reduction in their plasticity, hence sacrificing new task accuracy, and inability to benefit from expanded parameter capacity. We instead propose to learn a set of prompt components which are assembled with input-conditioned weights to produce input-conditioned prompts, resulting in a novel attention-based end-to-end key-query scheme. Our experiments show that we outperform the current SOTA method DualPrompt on established benchmarks by as much as 4.5% in average final accuracy. We also outperform the state of art by as much as 4.4% accuracy on a continual learning benchmark which contains both class-incremental and domain-incremental task shifts, corresponding to many practical settings. Our code is available at https://github.com/GT-RIPL/CODA-Prompt


Over Our Heads: the brilliant debut by Andrew Fox. A young man rushes to the bedside of his ex, knowing the baby she's having is not his own. Travelling colleagues experience an eerie moment of truth when a fire starts in their hotel. A misdirected parcel sets off a complex psychodrama involving two men, a woman and a dog...Andrew Fox's clever, witty, intense and thoroughly entertaining stories capture the passions and befuddlements of the young and rootless, equally dislocated at home and abroad. Set in America and Ireland - and, at times, in jets over the Atlantic - Over Our Heads showcases a brilliant new talent. "The stories are wonderfully crafted and cared-for, the undertones are witty and ironic, but also serious and filled with sympathy." (Colm Toibin, Guardian). "Over Our Heads is full of surprises, all of them great." (Roddy Doyle, winner of the Booker Prize). "Deft, clever, intense - this is a terrific debut from a very gifted new writer." (Kevin Barry, winner of the IMPAC prize). "Andrew Fox's stories are slivers of power; knowing, watchful and burning with intelligence. Lives half-lived or grasped at; loves longed for and destroyed; the journey of the modern emigrant who goes away in the same daze in which he comes home: these are stories which linger long after they have been read." (Belinda McKeon). "Fox is skilful at probing the bigger emotions: alienation, loss and nostalgia. His sparse prose is an effective counterpoint to complex feelings. His stories deal with the moments that shape a life: first trysts, the illness of a parent, the graduation of a child...Fox knows the hallmark of a good short story: leave the reader wanting more." (Financial Times). "An impressive and thoroughly enjoyable collection...Fox lets his characters tramp around their worlds, searching for heaven on earth." (Irish Times). "Achieves the effect of intimating deep fissures of pain and longing beneath the lightest of surface cracks. Fox's prose is poised and confident, a well-honed tool with which to treat his delicate subject matter." (Sunday Times). "The best of these stories are very good indeed...While there are few happy souls in these arresting stories, the reader can find consolation in Fox's supple prose and frequently subtle insights." (Irish Independent). "A remarkable new talent...He is able to tread so lightly that we only realise we have been cleverly punched in the solar plexus after we finish the last line." (Irish Mail on Sunday (five stars)).


Objectives & Background Inadvertent intra-arterial cannulation (IIAC) is a recognised complication of peripheral cannulation with the potential for severe consequences including limb ischaemia and amputation. Patients presenting to EDs are often complex, frail or obese (known risk factors for difficult cannulation) meaning the overall incidence may be much higher than that suggested by existing evidence. Objectives: ▸ To report the rate of IIAC in our Emergency Department. ▸ To assess whether blood gas analysis can be used to screen for IIAC. Methods A prospective observational study was undertaken over a two week period. Every cannula inserted in the ED during hours of recruitment had blood drawn and blood gas analysis performed. The results were analysed by a senior ED clinician who assessed whether the blood gas values represented arterial or venous blood. Ultrasound assessment was performed on every cannula to confirm placement and, if there was any degree of uncertainty, transduced pressure readings were obtained. Results Two IIACs were confirmed out of the 83 cannulae analysed, a rate of 2.4%. Both of these IIACs were detected by the senior clinician interpreting the blood gas. Two further cannulae were incorrectly identified as potentially arterial on the blood gas, but were proven to be venous using ultrasound. Both patients experiencing IIACs had multiple risk factors for difficult cannulation and 44% of all subjects had at least one risk factor. Conclusion IIAC occurs more frequently than previously reported in our ED. A high proportion of ED patients have risk factors that make IIAC more likely. Point of care blood gas analysis may be a useful screening tool for detecting IIAC, particularly when used in conjunction with ultrasound +/− transduction. The results of this study justify further research to confirm and extend these observations. Implications for everyday practice within the ED include increased awareness and recognition of IIAC.


Progressive tax policies are important measures to narrow the inequality gaps and maintain a balanced distribution of income and wealth in a society. However, the potentials of such policies have yet to be fully realized in Asia-Pacific developing countries, where direct taxes remain a smaller component in the overall tax mix and redistributive tax tools such as the personal income tax and wealth taxes are under-utilized. As Asia-Pacific developing countries become middle-income and higher-middle income economies, they are experiencing the negative impacts of rapidly rising income and wealth inequalities that have come with fast economic growth. Therefore, a transition towards a more balanced strategy that emphasizes inclusive development needs to happen and progressive tax policies would have an important role in facilitating such a transition. However, implementing progressive tax reforms in developing countries is a challenging task, where the local institutional, historical, and social-economic contexts could be deciding factors for success or failure. This paper advocates for a differentiated, pragmatic and prudent approach for progressive tax reforms in Asia-Pacific. First, countries at different stages of development should follow different strategies. Second, countries need to anchor their policy making on the actual outcomes rather than on theoretical assumptions, and should always be prepared to adjust their policies according to local context and realities. Last but not least, policy makers and to some extent also the general public need to understand that there is a learning curve of policy design and implementation when it comes to progressive taxation, and therefore should allow the policies to improve and mature over time.


There is a growing concern amongst football supporters, government and the wider community about the increasing level of financial and operational difficulties facing many of today's professional football clubs. The focus of much of this concern currently centers on the many of the clubs owners and where their interests really lie. Clubs that were once the cornerstones of local communities run with sporting success as the primary motivator are seemingly becoming the 'playthings' of wealthy individuals with no links to the community or the clubs history. This paper details a history of club ownership in the Premier League through to present day. It then examines current regulation in the football industry and focuses on the applicability of Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006. The paper concludes by detailing alternative forms of ownership as a possible solution to one of footballs most enduring corporate governance challenges.


This thesis examines the use of expert systems in semi-formal domains. The research identifies the main problems with semi-formal domains and proposes and evaluates a number of different solutions to them. The thesis considers the traditional approach to developing expert systems, which sees domains as being formal, and notes that it continuously faces problems that result from informal features of the problem domain. To circumvent these difficulties experience or other subjective qualities are often used but they are not supported by the traditional approach to design. The thesis examines the formal approach and compares it with a semiformal approach to designing expert systems which is heavily influenced by the socio-technical view of information systems. From this basis it examines a number of problems that limit the construction and use of knowledge bases in semi-formal domains. These limitations arise from the nature of the problem being tackled, in particular problems of natural language communication and tacit knowledge and also from the character of computer technology and the role it plays. The thesis explores the possible mismatch between a human user and the machine and models the various types of confusion that arise. The thesis describes a number of practical solutions to overcome the problems identified. These solutions are implemented in an expert system shell (PESYS), developed as part of the research. The resulting solutions, based on non-linear documents and other software tools that open up the reasoning of the system, support users of expert systems in examining the boundaries of the knowledge base to help them avoid and overcome any confusion that has arisen. In this way users are encouraged to use their own skills and experiences in conjunction with an expert system to successfully exploit this technology in semi-formal domains.


Black bear (Ursus americanus) damage to coniferous forests can be detrimental to the forest products industry in Washington state. Value of timber damage, west of the Cascade Mountains is millions of dollars every year. The Washington Forest Protection Association's (WFPA) Animal Damage Control Program (ADCP) manages bear damage in cooperation with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). Bears can significantly affect the viability of other wildlife, for example, elk (Cervus elaphus) calf predation on calving sites. Conversely, bear-damaged trees add to the snags and dead wood on the ground, which provide important habitat and feeding opportunity for cavity nesting birds and many other species. Social conflicts among forest managers, farmers, animal rights activists, and hunting organizations have escalated in the last few years because lethal black bear control is highly controversial in Washington. Law and policy changes in this state reflect these conflicts. The ADCP concentrates therefore on non-lethal control of bears but retains all lethal options, such as hound hunting, foot snares, and hunting over bait. The supplemental bear feeding program has great public support.


The basic mechanisms of fatigue failure were studied in a eutectoidcarbon steel. Three different structures were produced in the steel,these being coarse pearlite,;fine pearlite and spheroidised carbide.Pearlite structures were selected because of their practical importanceand also because multi-phase alloys have, until recently, receivedlittle attention from research workers.Specimens were fatigued either in reverse plane bending or uniaxialtension-compression conditions. In the latter case, constant amplitudestrain controlled tests were performed using a closed loop servo-hydraulic machine. Much of the testing was conducted under conditionsgiving failure beyond 10[5] cycles of stress.Cyclic properties and changes of deformation resistance during testing were determined. The major emphasis was on the observation of the development of fatigue damage during the life of the pre-polished specimens. A number of optical and electron microscopical techniques were used to examine damage.Fatigue damage appeared early in the life in all three structures.It existed as slip bands in the ferrite. The ferrite-cementite interface was shown to be the principal source of mobile dislocations.Damage was more localised in coarse than fine pearlite and all damage was associated with a very shallow surface topography.Cracks appeared at slip bands and ferrite-cementite interfaces.In coarse pearlite and spheroidised carbide they were detected at up to 25% of the life whereas in fine pearlite they could not be detected until about 75% of the life. Surface crack propagation rates were greater in lamellar than spheroidised carbide structures. The proportion of thefull fracture zone occupied by the fatigue crack area was greatest in the spheroidised structure and least in the coarse pearlite.


In-depth knowledge about the global patterns and dynamics of land surface net water flux (NWF) is essential for quantification of depletion and recharge of groundwater resources. Net water flux cannot be directly measured, and its estimates as a residual of individual surface flux components often suffer from mass conservation errors due to accumulated systematic biases of individual fluxes. Here, for the first time, we provide direct estimates of global NWF based on near-surface satellite soil moisture retrievals from the Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellites. We apply a recently developed analytical model derived via inversion of the linearized Richards' equation. The model is parsimonious, yet yields unbiased estimates of long-term cumulative NWF that is generally well correlated with the terrestrial water storage anomaly from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite. In addition, in conjunction with precipitation and evapotranspiration retrievals, the resultant NWF estimates provide a new means for retrieving global infiltration and runoff from satellite observations. However, the efficacy of the proposed approach over densely vegetated regions is questionable, due to the uncertainty of the satellite soil moisture retrievals and the lack of explicit parameterization of transpiration by deeply rooted plants in the proposed model. Future research is needed to advance this modeling paradigm to explicitly account for plant transpiration.


Intensity correlation microscopy (ICM), which is prominently known through antibunching microscopy or super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI), provides super-resolution through a correlation analysis of antibunching of independent quantum emitters or temporal fluctuations of blinking fluorophores. For correlation order m the PSF in the signal is effectively taken to the mth power, and is thus directly shrunk by the factor m. Combined with deconvolution, a close to linear resolution improvement of factor m can be obtained. Yet, analysis of high correlation orders is challenging, which limits the achievable resolutions. Here we propose to use three dimensional structured illumination along with mth-order correlation analysis to obtain an enhanced scaling of up to m + m = 2m. Including the stokes shift or plasmonic sub-wavelength illumination enhancements beyond 2m can be achieved. Hence, resolutions far below the diffraction limit in full 3D imaging and with already low correlation orders, can potentially be achieved. Since ICM operates in the linear regime our approach may be particularly promising for enhancing the resolution in biological imaging at low illumination levels.


This article explores the role of the legal profession in urban development along the U.S.-Mexico border in the nineteenth century. It argues that lawyers, through their tripartite roles as land brokers, boosters, and social engineers, were one of the primary forces in social and legal transformation during this period. Drawing from research on one particular border town, that of El Paso, Texas, this article counters prior scholarship that has largely either underplayed the role of lawyers in western development all together, or treated them merely as instruments of capitalists and cattle ranchers. Lawyers in El Paso had a direct role in the conversion of El Paso from an isolated, frontier community to a burgeoning border metropolis. A key part of this change was the shift from a cooperative multiethnic community - where Anglo Americans, Mexican Americans, and Tigua Indians shared in the governance of the county and the disposition of the law - to one that was dominated by Anglo Americans only. This article demonstrates that as El Paso became more connected to other metropolitan areas, to state and federal governments, and to transnational commercial networks, it simultaneously became profoundly more stratified by race and national identity. By looking to El Paso's legal history and the changes in its legal culture during this time of transition, we can see how deeply involved were local lawyers not just in economic growth but also in racial and cultural boundary-drawing. These findings have repercussions for how we understand both the role of the legal profession and the mechanics of urban growth and development during the nineteenth century.


Orientation: Women in male-dominated occupations face unique challenges and use distinct coping strategies affecting their motivation and retention in these occupations. Research purpose: The purpose was to explore the experiences of women working in maledominated occupations to clarify the challenges they face and identify coping strategies that enable them to continue on their career paths. Motivation for the study: Many women who choose male-dominated careers soon change in favour of more female-dominated or gender-balanced career paths. An understanding of women's experiences may facilitate strategies geared towards their motivation and retention in male-dominated occupations. Research design, approach and method: The authors conducted this exploratory qualitative study from a constructivist grounded theory perspective. They used a purposive sample of five women and conducted in-depth unstructured interviews. They analysed data using a constructivist grounded theory methodology. Main findings: The authors found that formal and covert organisational practices, which upheld gender discrimination and bias, were the main challenges that women face. These practices included the inadequate accommodation of women's unique physical, identity and work-life balance needs. Elements of women's resilience included the use of femininity, adopting male characteristics, mentorship and intrinsic motivational factors. Practical/managerial implications: The findings may guide organisations to develop and implement policies, strategies and initiatives geared towards attracting, integrating, retaining, supporting and motivating women who are, or wish to be, employed in historically maledominated occupations. Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to an evolving body of knowledge aimed at understanding how to integrate and retain women in male-dominated occupations better.


"Joseph Beuys", "Andy Warhol", "Yves Klein", and "Marcel Duchamp" form an unlikely quartet, but they each played a singular role in shaping a new avant-garde for the 1960s and beyond. Each of them staged brash, even shocking, events and produced works that challenged the way the mainstream art world operated and thought about itself. Distinguished philosopher Thierry de Duve binds these artists through another connection: the mapping of the aesthetic field onto political economy. Karl Marx provides the red thread tying together these four beautifully written essays in which de Duve treats each artist as a distinct, characteristic figure in that mapping. He sees in Beuys, who imagined a new economic system where creativity, not money, was the true capital, the incarnation of the last of the proletarians; he carries forward Warhol's desire to be a machine of mass production and draws the consequences for aesthetic theory; he calls Klein, who staked a claim on pictorial space as if it were a commodity, "the dead dealer"; and he reads "Duchamp" as the witty financier who holds the secret of artistic exchange value. Throughout, de Duve expresses his view that the mapping of the aesthetic field onto political economy is a phenomenon that should be seen as central to modernity in art. Even more, de Duve shows that Marx - though perhaps no longer the "Marxist" Marx of yore - can still help us resist the current disenchantment with modernity's many unmet promises. An intriguing look at these four influential artists, "Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx" is an absorbing investigation into the many intertwined relationships between the economic and artistic realms.


A 10-year-old girl has had a worsening rash for 1 week. The mildly pruritic, nontender eruption initially appeared on the child's thighs and then spread to the arms and face. The child's right hand, feet, and ankles have been swollen for the past 4 days, which has made ambulation intermittently painful.


This work comprises three independent essays in Telecommunications Policy and Management. In the first study we focus on the deployment of green field next generation access network infrastructures when the national regulatory authority has the power to define geographical markets at sub-national level for which it can apply differentiated regulatory remedies Geographically Segmented Regulation (GSR). Using a game theory model that we developed, we confirm the asymmetric business case for the geographic development of these new infrastructures: highly populated areas are likely to develop into competitive telecommunication markets while regions with low household density will only see limited investment and little or no competition. We show that supply side interdependencies among markets make the implementation of GSR non-trivial, namely, we show that changes in the wholesale access price in one market can have undesirable consequences in the competitive conditions of interrelated regions where wholesale prices are unchanged. In the second study we focus on how individual purchase decisions are influenced by the behavior of others in their social circle. We study the case of the diffusion of the iPhone 3G across a number of communities sampled from a dataset provided by a major mobile carrier in one country. We find that the propensity of adoption increases with the proportion of each indivudal's adopter friends. We estimate that 14% of iPhone 3G adoptions in this carrier were due to peer influence. We provide results from several policy experiments that show that with this level of effect from peer influence the carrier would hardly be able to significantly increase sales by selectively targeting consumers to benefit from viral marketing. Finally, in the third study, we perform a randomized field experiment to determine the role that likes play on the sales of movies in Video-on-Demand (VoD). We use the VoD system of a large telecommunications provider during half a year in 2012. The system suggests movies to consumers ordered by the number of consumer likes they obtained in previous weeks. We manipulated such natural order by randomly swapping likes across movies. We found that movies promoted (demoted) increased (decreased) sales, but the amount of information publicly available about movies affected the result. Better known movies were less sensitive to manipulations. Finally a movie promoted (demoted) to a fake slot sold 15.9% less (27.7% more) than a true movie placed at that slot, on average across all manipulations. A movie promoted (demoted) to a fake slot received 33.1% fewer (30.1% more) likes than a true movie at that slot. Hence manipulated movies tended to move back to their true slots over time. This means that self-fulfilling prophecies widely discussed in the literature on the effect of ratings on sales are hard to sustain in markets with costly goods that are sufficiently well-known.


PAVLOVIC, M., O. NIKOLIC and Z. JESTROVIC, 2016. Genetic analysis of variability and inheritance of nitrogen harvest index in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 22: 119–124 Hybrid progeny of F1 and F2 generations were produced in diallel crosses (without reciprocals) of five genetically divergent wheat cultivars (Zitnica, Jugoslavija, Zelengora, NS Rana 2 and Nizija). The variability, mode of inheritance, gene effect, combining ability of parent cultivars and F1 and F2 hybrids for NHI were studied. The different mode of inheritance: partial dominance, dominance and overdominance for analyzed traits were established, with prevalence of overdominance, taking into account all crossing combinations. On the base of genetic components of variance analysis was estimated that non-additive gene action has higher impact than additive in the inheritance of NHI, with higher frequency of dominant alleles and positive interaction additive x dominant genetic effects. The average degree of dominance was positive and indicates overdominance as prevailing inheritance mode, considering all crossing combinations. Dominance i.e. overdominance as inheritance mode was recorded by regression analysis. The parents were divergent in terms of order of dominant and recessive alleles. The interalleles interaction was registered, too. Analysis of combining ability showed high significance of specific combining abilities in both of generations, while general combining abilities were significant only in F2 generation, what confirm higher proportion of non – additivegenetic variance. The relation genetic combining abilities/specific combining abilities was less than 1. The best general combiner for NHI in both F1 and F2 generation was Zitnica cultivar. The highest values of specific combining abilities were obtained in combinations Zelengora x Nizija and Zitnica x NS Rana 2. The emphasized cultivars could be recommended for wheat breeding programes as source of desirable properties.


In Taiwanese alternative medicine Lu-doh-huang (also called Pracparatum mungo), mung beans are mixed with various herbal medicines and undergo a 4-stage process of anaerobic fermentation. Here we used high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene to profile the bacterial community structure of Lu-doh-huang samples. Pyrosequencing of samples obtained at 7 points during fermentation revealed 9 phyla, 264 genera, and 586 species of bacteria. While mung beans were inside bamboo sections (stages 1 and 2 of the fermentation process), family Lactobacillaceae and genus Lactobacillus emerged in highest abundance; Lactobacillus plantarum was broadly distributed among these samples. During stage 3, the bacterial distribution shifted to family Porphyromonadaceae, and Butyricimonas virosa became the predominant microbial component. Thereafter, bacterial counts decreased dramatically, and organisms were too few to be detected during stage 4. In addition, the microbial compositions of the liquids used for soaking bamboo sections were dramatically different: Exiguobacterium mexicanum predominated in the fermented soybean solution whereas B. virosa was predominant in running spring water. Furthermore, our results from pyrosequencing paralleled those we obtained by using the traditional culture method, which targets lactic acid bacteria. In conclusion, the microbial communities during Lu-doh-huang fermentation were markedly diverse, and pyrosequencing revealed a complete picture of the microbial consortium.


Evidence from developed country data suggests that cognitive and non-cognitive skills contribute to improved labor market outcomes. This paper tests this hypothesis in a developing country by using an individual-level data set from Peru that incorporates modules to measure cognitive and non-cognitive skills. The paper estimates a structural latent model with unobserved heterogeneity to capture full ability rather than just measured skill. It also applies standard ordinary least squares techniques for comparison. The analysis confirms that cognitive and non-cognitive skills are positively correlated with a range of labor market outcomes in Peru. In particular, cognitive skills positively correlate with wages and the probability of being a wage worker, white-collar, and formal worker, with verbal fluency and numeric ability playing particularly strong roles. The results are robust to methodology. The patterns are less uniform for non-cognitive skills. For instance, perseverance of effort (grit) emerges strongly for most outcomes regardless of methodology. However, plasticity—an aggregation of openness to experience and emotional stability—is only correlated with employment, and only when using the structural latent model. The ordinary least squares method also finds that the disaggregated non-cognitive skills of kindness, cooperation, emotional stability, and openness to experience emerge significantly, mostly for the wage estimates. The different results derived from the ordinary least squares and the structural model with latent skills suggest strong measurement bias in most non-cognitive skills measurement. These findings, although only correlational because of the use of a single cross-section, suggest that recent efforts by the Peruvian government to incorporate non-cognitive skill development into the school curriculum are justified.


Abstract Lake depth is an important characteristic for understanding many lake processes, yet it is unknown for the vast majority of lakes globally. Our objective was to develop a model that predicts lake depth using map-derived metrics of lake and terrestrial geomorphic features. Building on previous models that use local topography to predict lake depth, we hypothesized that regional differences in topography, lake shape, or sedimentation processes could lead to region-specific relationships between lake depth and the mapped features. We therefore used a mixed modeling approach that included region-specific model parameters. We built models using lake and map data from LAGOS, which includes 8164 lakes with maximum depth (Zmax) observations. The model was used to predict depth for all lakes ≥4 ha (n = 42 443) in the study extent. Lake surface area and maximum slope in a 100 m buffer were the best predictors of Zmax. Interactions between surface area and topography occurred at both the local and regional scale; surface area had a larger effect in steep terrain, so large lakes embedded in steep terrain were much deeper than those in flat terrain. Despite a large sample size and inclusion of regional variability, model performance (R2 = 0.29, RMSE = 7.1 m) was similar to other published models. The relative error varied by region, however, highlighting the importance of taking a regional approach to lake depth modeling. Additionally, we provide the largest known collection of observed and predicted lake depth values in the United States.


This paper presents a simulation study to evaluate the combined effect of cutting depth (drilling rate) and wear (bit dull) on the thermal response of polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) cutters under downhole drilling conditions. A new understanding of frictionally generated heat between rock and PDC cutter is introduced from the analysis of forces active on the wearflat and the cutting (leading) surfaces of a cutter. Then this new concept is used to predict PDC bit performance with the controlled temperature of its cutters. Previous concepts, largely based on the laboratory drilling tests (with low drilling rate and under atmospheric conditions), recognize only one source of heat—the wearflat surface. However, this study, using field data, shows that the heat generated at the cutting surface may significantly contribute to the total heat flux in the cutter. As a result, the distribution of temperature within the cutter is changed, which particularly affects the maximum value of temperature at the cutting edge. A simplified 2-D finite difference numerical code is used to quantify the difference in cutter wearflat temperatures calculated with and without the additional heat flux generated at the cutting surface. The numerical analysis reveals that neglecting the cutting surface effect results in underestimation of the actual wearflat temperature by 10 to 530 percent, depending upon bit dull and downhole hydraulics. Also demonstrated is the actual impact of these findings on field drilling practices. The example comparison is made by calculating the optimal-control procedures for PDC bit with and without the effect of cutting surface. In these procedures, wearflat temperature becomes a mathematical constraint which limits weight on bit and rotational speed. The comparison includes calculation of the maximum bit performance curves which represent maximum drilling rate attainable for a bit to drill a predetermined length of a borehole (footage). The curves show an up to 18 percent reduction of drilling rate when the new and more rigorous temperature limitation is used. In addition, the example calculations show that the actual temperature of the bit cutters can be 460°C (860°F), and exceeds by almost 30 percent its maximum acceptable value of 350°C (660°F). For practical applications, the study reveals that many field failures of PDC bits may have been caused by lack of understanding of operational limits imposed by heat considerations.


Fiscal policy has been actively deployed globally by G20 governments to counter the impact of the global financial crisis on the real sectors of their economies. This coordinated fiscal response has involved a mix of new public expenditure, including on infrastructure, tax relief and increased income transfers to favoured groups. In the end, the case for fiscal stimulus rests on the presumption that it works in theory, along lines first proposed by Keynes. Yet, Keynesian fiscal activism founded on this presumption is contestable on numerous theoretical and practical grounds. This paper addresses key concerns about the consequences of using fiscal stimulus. It proposes that discretionary fiscal measures that have increased budget deficits and public indebtedness for economies worldwide entail significant macroeconomic costs and risks, and that, as a corollary, reducing unproductive public spending can be expansionary.


We report a case of an erroneously elevated bispectral index (BIS) during robot assisted thyroidectomy using an electromyographic endotracheal tube (EMG tube), which is safe and useful for laryngeal electromyographic monitoring. Ten minutes after start of the operation, a sudden increase of BIS value up to 98 was noticed. The BIS values were not decreased to < 65 with supplemental anesthetics. The anesthetic method was changed from total intravenous anesthesia to balanced anesthesia. The BIS sensor and monitor were changed and other models were used. These interventions did not alter BIS values. BIS levels remained between 60 and 70 throughout the main procedure and intermittently increased to the mid-90s without any trace of poor signal quality. At the end of the surgery, the BIS values returned to normal range. The patient did not complain of intraoperative recall. Knowledge of potential interference from the use of an EMG tube must be considered when interpreting BIS.


Online video pornography websites have grown into a key online industry and location for pornography consumption. While much work has been done investigating reception of online video generally, discourse analysis of comments and interaction around online pornography remains rare. This article focuses on comments on adult videos, comparing and contrasting the comments on adult videos with other online video sites. The goal is to identify and explain differences and similarities in the content of comments and interaction. The article therefore analyses 22,562 comments taken from the 100 most-viewed videos on the popular porn-hosting website, Pornhub. In contrast to studies of non-pornographic online video pages, analysis shows little interaction among users in comments sections and that offense is largely absent. Building on this analysis, I then discuss why offense does not arise in the comments. Findings suggest that the location of the comments at the point of pornography consumption affects the comment content, resulting in a discourse of solitary pleasure and fantasy rather than community engagement.


Information technology (IT) investments frequently yield unexpected, uncertain, and undesired results. Therefore, managers must either locate or devise methods for effectively evaluating IT initiatives. Unfortunately, a review of the extant literature suggests that existing methods are frequently either inappropriate or ineffective. In analyzing this problem, we have found that numerous evaluation methods appear to exhibit a tendency toward a 'product-based' view of information technology while ignoring its 'service-based' dimensions. In addition, we believe that a critical gap exists between the discipline's conceptualization of "IS success" and the identification and/or creation of metrics for predicting or measuring the contribution of IT to an organization's value chain. In this paper, we outline our ongoing research efforts to examine the link between IT-based activities and organizational value creation. Specifically, we discuss our motivations for working to develop an IS process model based upon conceptualizations of organizational value chains that is explicitly mapped to the causal relationship models of IS success, such as DeLone and McLean (1992, 2003).


The present paper investigates the NP-triggered Differential Argument Marking phenomena (DAM) found in the debitive construction of Latvian. There are two perspectives: the synchronic perspective aims at providing a coherent description of the DAM in Contemporary Latvian, while comparison with data from Old and Early Modern Latvian allows for a diachronic perspective. The arguments of the debitive, A, S and P, are marked non-canonically by the dative and nominative case, respectively. The emergence of new, canonical case-marking strategies, namely, acc on the P argument and occasionally nom on the S argument, has created differential marking for the S (dat/nom) and for the P argument (nom/acc). We claim that the appearance of these new case-marking strategies is the result of the increasing degree of grammaticalization of the debitive as well as the pressure of the canonical case-assignment patterns. Thus, the debitive incipiently and gradually loses its original lexical properties such as the own case frame (stemming from the possessive predicate) in favor of the case frame of the embedded lexical verb, thereby becoming similar to an auxiliary. In turn, the appearance and spread of the new case-marking strategies is conditioned by various factors and constraints that are established through a multifactorial analysis. Thus, acc marking proceeds along the accessibility scale starting from the most-accessible NP types, and is additionally conditioned by linear position, animacy and the semantic class of the lexical verb embedded under the debitive. In contrast, the sporadic appearance of the nom marking, i.e. the failure of the underlying nom to be turned into the dat otherwise required by the debitive, is found with NPs with low-individuated referents and may appear with existential verbs only. The postverbal position is an additional attracting factor here.


The paper examines a game-theoretic evolutionary model of an asset market with endogenous equilibrium asset prices. Assets pay dividends that are partially consumed and partially reinvested. The investors use general, adaptive strategies (portfolio rules), distributing their wealth between assets, depending on the exogenous states of the world and the observed history of the game. The main objective of the work is to identify strategies, allowing an investor to "survive", i.e. to possess a positive, bounded away from zero, share of market wealth over the whole infinite time horizon. This work brings together recent studies on evolutionary finance with the classical topic of non-cooperative market games.


The quantitative analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG) relies heavily on methods of time series analysis. A quantitative approach seems indispensable for research (be it clinical or basic neurophysical research), but it can also be a useful information for purely clinical purposes. Apart from the ongoing spontaneous EEG, evoked potentials (EPs) also play an important role. They can be elicited by simple sensory stimuli or more complex stimuli. Their analysis requires methods which are different from those for the spontaneous EEG. Those methods operate usually in the time domain and offer many challenging problems to statisticians. Methods for analysing the spontaneous EEG usually work in the frequency domain in terms of spectra and coherences. Biomedical engineers who take care of the equipment are usually also trained in time series analysis. Thus, they have contributed much more to methodological progress for analysing EEGs and EPs, compared with statisticians. However, the availability of a sample of subjects, and the associated problems in modelling followed by an inferential analysis could make a larger influence from the statistical side quite profitable. This paper tries to give an overview of a fascinating area. In doing so we treat more extensively problems with some statistical appeal. This leads inevitably to some overlap with our own work.


A deluge of empirical research became available on MOOCs in 2013–2015 and this research is available in disparate sources. This paper addresses a number of gaps in the scholarly understanding of MOOCs and presents a comprehensive picture of the literature by examining the geographic distribution, publication outlets, citations, data collection and analysis methods, and research strands of empirical research focusing on MOOCs during this time period. Results demonstrate that (a) more than 80% of this literature is published by individuals whose home institutions are in North America and Europe, (b) a select few papers are widely cited while nearly half of the papers are cited zero times, and (c) researchers have favored a quantitative if not positivist approach to the conduct of MOOC research, preferring the collection of data via surveys and automated methods. While some interpretive research was conducted on MOOCs in this time period, it was often basic and it was the minority of studies that were informed by methods traditionally associated with qualitative research (e.g., interviews, observations, and focus groups). Analysis shows that there is limited research reported on instructor-related topics, and that even though researchers have attempted to identify and classify learners into various groupings, very little research examines the experiences of learner subpopulations.


Except to the extent of the uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior consent from the Manager, NSW Parliamentary Research Service, other than by Members of the New South Wales Parliament in the course of their official duties. Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.


In this paper we head for a fully Bayesian analysis of the latent class model with a priori unknown number of classes. Estimation is carried out by means of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. We deal explicitely with the consequences the unidentifiability of this type of model has on MCMC estimation. Joint Bayesian estimation of all latent variables, model parameters, and parameters determining the probability law of the latent process is carried out by a new MCMC method called permutation sampling. In a first run we use the random permutation sampler to sample from the unconstrained posterior. We will demonstrate that a lot of important information, such as e.g. estimates of the subject-specific regression coefficients, is available from such an unidentified model. The MCMC output of the random permutation sampler is explored in order to find suitable identifiability constraints. In a second run we use the permutation sampler to sample from the constrained posterior by imposing identifiablity constraints. The unknown number of classes is determined by formal Bayesian model comparison through exact model likelihoods. We apply a new method of computing model likelihoods for latent class models which is based on the method of bridge sampling. The approach is applied to simulated data and to data from a metric conjoint analysis in the Austrian mineral water market. (author's abstract)


In the literature, numerous works have modeled user activity on smartphones and the effects on battery life. Power-saving modes prolong battery life by saving energy, but application performance is limited as a result. We investigate performance-energy trade-offs of smartphone applications by investigating three strategies: first, we propose an M/M/1 discriminatory processor sharing queue to act as a smartphone server and measure delays of Android applications; secondly, we form a performance-energy trade-off that takes into account cellular radio transfers using an objective cost function incorporating mean delay and power consumption; and thirdly, we build an online HMM to act as a power consumption model that predicts battery life given recent data transfers. For all three strategies, we obtain logged smartphone activity of over 750 users via an open-source smartphone data-collection application. Hence, we obtain three hypotheses from our strategies: first, delay of applications is approximated well using the beta prime distribution; secondly, power consumption increases as mean delay decreases with battery life prolonged if adjustments are made to cellular radio usage; and thirdly, burstiness is captured by HMMs in both data transfers and rates of power consumption.


Background: Previous studies found miRNAs can play important role in the pathogenesis, metastasis and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma by regulating the expression of its target genes. We evaluated the clinical significance of miRNA-433 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma.
Method: We collected 28 primary hepatocellular carcinoma specimens matched by 28 normal paracarcinoma tissues. The RNA concentration was calculated by the following formula: OD260 × 50 times × 40/100. We detected the absorbance at 260 nm and 280 nm, and calculated OD260/OD280. The purity was considered to be acceptable when the ratio value fallen into between 1.8 and 2.0. The expression of MiR-433 was analysed via Real time-PCR method. The Cq value was calculated, and Data were processed using 2-ΔΔCT method.
Results: According to the 2-ΔΔCT method, the expression of miR-433 in the hepatocellular carcinoma specimens was significantly lower than that in the normal tissue specimens (3.61 ± 1.35 vs. 9.39 ± 2.46, t=-10.899, P<0.001). The receiver operating characteristic cure was used to identify the diagnostic value of miR-433 expression levels in hepatocellular carcinoma. The area under curve of miR-433 was 0.770 (95% confidence interval: 0.594-0.947).
Conclusion: The low expression of miR-433 in hepatocellular carcinoma may be related to occurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma. miR-433 expression might have a moderately diagnostic value to hepatocellular carcinoma.


Background/aims Adult black athletes (BA) exhibit left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) on echocardiography and marked ECG repolarisation changes resembling those observed in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Limited data are available for adolescent BA, the group most vulnerable to exercise-related sudden cardiac death. Methods Between 1996 and 2011, 245 male and 84 female adolescent BA from a wide variety of sporting disciplines underwent cardiac evaluation including ECG and echocardiography. Athletes exhibiting T-wave inversions and/or echocardiographic LVH were investigated further for quiescent cardiomyopathies. Results were compared with 903 adolescent white athletes (WA) and 134 adolescent sedentary black controls (BC). Results LVH on echocardiography was present in 7% of BA compared to only 0.6% of WA and none of the BC. In the very young (<16 years), 5.5% of BA, but none of the WA, demonstrated LVH. Within the BA group, LVH was more prevalent in men compared to women (9% vs 1.2%, p=0.012). T-wave inversions were present in 22.8% BA, 4.5% WA and 13.4% BC. T-wave inversions in BA occurred with similar frequency in men and women and were predominantly confined to leads V1–V4. T-wave inversions in the lateral leads, commonly associated with cardiomyopathies, were present in 2.4% of BA. On a further evaluation and mean follow-up of 8.3 years, none of the athletes exhibited HCM. Conclusions Athletic training has a pronounced effect on adolescent BA. Black athletes as young as 14 years of age may exhibit left ventricular wall thicknesses of 15 mm and marked repolarisation changes resembling HCM. Male and female BA demonstrate a high prevalence of T-wave inversions.


Many policymakers, judges, and scholars justify patent law on economic-utilitarian grounds. It is therefore unsettling that when it comes to damages for patent infringement in excess of the compensatory baseline, courts have followed an approach that reflects primarily moral, rather than economic, considerations. In order to obtain enhanced damages, the prevailing plaintiff must show — among other things — that the defendant actually knew of the existence of the patent-in-suit. This subjective standard stems from pre-industrial tort actions designed to punish egregious interpersonal behaviors such as assault, piracy, libel, and seduction, and to preserve the public order. But as the law developed to cover "depersonalized" torts committed by corporate defendants and expanded from its moral foundations to embrace economic reasoning to a greater degree than before, the range of cases in which punitive damages could be awarded broadened significantly. Specifically, courts relaxed the culpability standard by making it less subjective, allowing punitive damages for generalized reckless disregard for the rights of others. The recklessness framework is now dominant in the fields of negligence and products liability, which typically allow for punitive damages without actual knowledge of a specific victim or defect, and in other civil actions — including copyright and trademark infringement. Patent law, however, continues to be an outlier by requiring actual, subjective knowledge of the plaintiff's patent and, in so doing, in effect clings to the old moral opprobrium model of punitive damages.
Not surprisingly, this standard has led to anomalous results. For one thing, the actual-knowledge approach to enhanced damages discourages firms from searching for and reading relevant patents, an unfortunate result given the widely recognized notion that disclosure is a core function of the patent system. Indeed, this rule errantly treats potential infringers who make good-faith attempts to ascertain the nature of the patent landscape in the fields in which they operate worse than those that decide to bury their heads in the sand and do no patent searching whatsoever. But there is a prospect for improvement in the law. A recent Supreme Court decision, Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics, arguably pushed a reset button on the jurisprudence of enhanced damages in patent cases. Although it accepted the pre-industrial, subjective conception of punitive damages in its discussion of "deliberate" and "wanton" infringements, the Court also pointed to the modern trend when it referred to recklessness as an acceptable standard of culpability for enhanced patent damages.
I argue that, in failing to embrace Halo's endorsement of recklessness, the lower courts are making a mistake. I contend that installing recklessness toward patent rights of others as the threshold level of culpability for enhanced damages is consistent with the modern conception of punitive damages in tort — which, at least to some degree, reflects a shift away from the moral grounding of this remedy and toward economic analysis. Accordingly, I propose a recalibration of the willfulness doctrine to include reckless failures to search for patents as a route to making infringers eligible for enhanced damages. If applied properly, the new standard would mitigate the current doctrine's perverse effect of discouraging reading of patents, promote cost-effective patent searches, and take account of significant differences in patent landscapes between various industries.


This article analyzes the unique historical collaboration between
the revolutionary Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948), the cultural
psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), and the founder of contemporary
neuropsychology, Alexander Luria (1902–1977). Vygotsky's legacy is associated
primarily with the idea that cultural mediation plays a crucial role in the emergence
and development of personality and cognition. His collaborator, Luria,
laid the foundations of contemporary neuropsychology and demonstrated
that cultural mediation also changes the functional architecture of the brain.
In my analysis, I demonstrate how the Eisenstein-Vygotsky-Luria collaboration
exemplifies a strategy of productive triangulation that harnesses three disciplinary
perspectives: those of cultural psychology, neuropsychology, and film
theory and practice.


This paper presents an ongoing investigation into how people use the Internet in an attempt to escape situations of information poverty. We consider posts from a variety of newsgroups which indicate that individuals feel they have nowhere else to go to find information or support for concerns crucial to their everyday lives. A qualitative content analysis is performed to examine three main issues: what information needs people posting to these groups have, who they hide these needs from in the 'real world', and why they feel they can only express their needs online. Preliminary findings show that information on health and relationships is most commonly sought. Needs are most often hidden from parents and family, and the main reasons for seeking information online are a lack of understanding and the fact that people simply don't know where else to go. Our work confirms that newsgroups provide a means of expression for those who feel they have no local support available to them.


BACKGROUND
En bloc resection of primary sacral tumors has a demonstrated survival benefit. Total and high sacral amputations are traditionally performed by using a staged anterior and subsequent posterior approach. However, we have found that en bloc resection and biomechanical reconstruction of the spinal column is possible from a posterior-only approach in many cases.

OBJECTIVE
To assess our series of posterior-only sacrectomies, emphasizing postoperative complications and overall surgical and oncologic outcome.

METHODS
Sixty-nine consecutive patients underwent sacral resections for tumor at our institution between 2004 and 2009. Medical records of all patients were reviewed, and patients were excluded if they had an intentional intralesional resection, hemipelvectomy, or a previous operation. The records of the resulting 36 consecutive patients who underwent primary posterior-only en bloc sacral resections were retrospectively reviewed.

RESULTS
Of the posterior-only patients, all underwent midline posterior approaches for en bloc sacral resection. Sacral amputation was defined by the by sacral root preservation: total (2 cases), high (8 cases), middle (9 cases), low (12 cases), and distal (5 cases). Chordoma was the most common tumor type (30 cases), and surgical margins were marginal in 34 cases and contaminated in 2. Overall, there were 13 complications, including 9 wound infections/revisions. The extent of sacrectomy, and thus the extent of roots sacrificed, correlated with functional outcome.

CONCLUSION
It may be possible to perform a posterior-only approach to en bloc sacral resections/reconstructions in patients with tumors that do not extend beyond the lumbosacral junction or invade the bowel requiring bowel resection and diversion.


The problem of estimating the direction of point-source illumination in digital photographs has been studied extensively, and the cast-shadow and occluding-contour algorithms have been used to detect tampering and compositing; differences between the lighting directions estimated from different objects indicate that at least one of them was composited into the image. Such methods have also been applied to the analysis of realist paintings to estimate the position of illuminants within a tableau and thereby test for artists' use of optical aids. Recently, the occluding-contour algorithm has been enhanced to address the case of diffuse illumination, for instance from light passing through several windows, from multiple lamps, and so forth. Here, the pattern of lightness along the occluding contour of an object is expressed as a weighted sum of spherical harmonics. Significant differences between the coefficients extracted from different objects indicates that they were recorded under different illumination conditions, and thus that one or more was likely composited into the image. We apply this technique to the analysis of diffuse lighting in realist paintings, focussing on the portraits of the contemporary American realist Garth Herrick. Herrick often works with multiple photographs as referents, for instance a photograph of the portrait subject and a different photograph of the background. There is no guarantee that the two lighting conditions are the same, nor that Herrick can perceive or compensate for such lighting discrepancies when executing his painting. We tested for lighting consistency throughout two of his paintings: one based on a single photographic referent, and another "composited," i.e., based on two photographic referents. Our algorithms found great illumination consistency in the first painting and significant inconsistencies in the second painting-inconsistencies difficult to discern by eye. As such, our methods reveal this artist's working methods. Our algorithms have broad applicability to the study of studio practice throughout the history of art.


How to pinpoint primary sources in the FIU library catalog, library databases containing primary sources, and freely accessible primary sources on the web


An improved Jones sample splitter is described which is faster to operate than the conventional type, yet requires no special skill or training. Samples obtained with this instrument are free from the occasional erratic samples obtained with ordinary Jones sample splitters. Working drawings are given for this improved sample splitter, which can be built with hand tools.

The sample splitter was tested with small gravel, granules, and sand in which the percentage of each constituent was accurately known. Three series of 24 samples each were taken and sieved; in each series one detail of technique was varied. The components separated by sieving were returned to the original mixture in each test to keep the conditions of the experiment nearly constant. Summarized instruction are given for the best technique of operation.

The second part of the paper deals with methods used to measure the performance of the improved sample splitter. The concept of a state of control is discussed. The calculations required to detect lack of constancy in the chance cause system, biased percentages, or the presence of a predominating cause of variation are shown. The principle that variability in comparable series of samples tends to diminish as the state of control is approached was found to apply in the present study.

These methods of statistical analysis are very general and may be applied to field sampling studies or wherever quantitative measurements are made on a series of samples suspected of coming from an essentially homogeneous unit or constant chance cause system.


The oxygen non-stoichiometry was determined by coulometric titration for the perovskite oxides La0.2Sr0.8FeO3−δ and La0.2Sr0.8Fe0.8B0.2O3−δ (B = Al , Ti and Ta) in the temperature range 600 ◦C ≤ T ≤ 900 ◦C and the oxygen partial pressure range: 1 · 10−15 ≤ pO2 ≤ 0.209 atm. The non-stoichiometry (δ) is observed to decrease with B-site substitution of Fe. The data can be well fitted with simple defect chemistry models. At low oxygen non-stoichiometry all compositions show a deviation from a localized electrons defect model. The standard and partial molar thermodynamic quantities were obtained and a gradual transition from localized to itinerant electrons with decreasing non-stoichiometry is proposed from the δdependency of the configurational entropy. The absolute value of the enthalpy of oxidation decreases upon B-site substitution of Fe proposing a decreased thermodynamic stability for the substituted materials. The electrical conductivity was measured at T = 900 ◦C in the oxygen partial pressure range: 1 · 10−17 ≤ pO2 ≤ 0.209 atm. The electrical conductivity and charge carrier mobility decrease upon 20% substitution of Fe roughly by a factor of 2, but do not show a significant dependence on the nature of the B-site dopant.


An in-situ sulphated-combustion reaction was conducted on the precursor mixture consisting of yttrium nitrate, organic fuels (urea, citric acid and glycine) and 10 mol% ammonium sulphate [(NH4)2SO4] at 500°C. Effect of sulphate addition on yttria particles morphology has been analyzed with respect to the types of fuels. In un-sulphated combustion, the calcined yttria powders showed rectangular particle morphology and low specific surface area. Whereas in sulphated-combustion spherical shaped yttria particles were achieved for glycine fuel. In the case of citric acid fuel, yttria powders with high specific surface area [26 m2/g] were obtained. For all the fuels, the sulphated-combustion reaction produced nanocrystalline yttria powders and they also had primary crystallite size below 4 nm in the as prepared conditions. Upon calcination at 1100°C, these powders attained mean particle size of 50 nm which was confirmed by TEM.


Introduction. Part I: SQL Server 2005: An Overview. Chapter 1: Introducing SQL Server 2005. Chapter 2: New Features in SQL Server 2005. Chapter 3: Introducing and Configuring Management Studio. Part II: Basic Operations. Chapter 4: Creating Databases, Tables, and Relationships with T-SQL. Chapter 5: Asking Questions and Getting Answers. Chapter 6: Building a Simple Application. Part III: Working with SQL Server. Chapter 7: Working with XML. Chapter 8: Using the Common Language Runtime. Chapter 9: Using Stored Procedures. Chapter 10: Error Handling in T-SQL. Part IV: Protecting Your Data. Chapter 11: Securing Your Data. Chapter 12: Availability and Preventing Data Loss. Chapter 13: Maintaining Integrity with Transactions. Chapter 14: Maintaining Data Integrity with Constraints and Triggers. Part V: Administering a SQL Server System. Chapter 15: Configuring a SQL Server System. Chapter 16: Scheduling SQL Server Agent Jobs. Chapter 17: Sending Information Using Notification Services. Chapter 18: Maintaining a SQL Server System. Chapter 19: Working with Multiple Servers. Part VI: Using SQL Server Business Intelligence (BI) Services. Chapter 20: SQL Server Integration Services. Chapter 21: Analysis Services. Chapter 22: Building Business Reports with Reporting Services. Part VII: The Part of Tens. Chapter 23: Ten Sources of Information on SQL Server 2005. Chapter 24: Products that Work with SQL Server 2005. Index.


Things are never as simple as they might appear - and that is particularly true of understanding the demands on the new "smarter" grid. That "smarter" grid will include expanded renewable energy sources and new copper wire transmission to connect these new sources to load centers. Sounds simple, but there is much more to it to get it right. Electricity is our one form of energy that is not capable of efficient or low-cost storage; the grid must remain perfectly balanced second by second, or the power system collapses, as it did in California during its 2000–2001 electric system crisis, or in the eastern United States in August 2003. There is much more to the grid than just poles and wires. It is a carefully balanced, second-by-second, replenished network of almost 5000 interconnected generating sources in the United States; modern society depends on speed-of-light movement of electrons over thousands of miles in a system that never creates a single new electron in the process. As the last of the regulated industries in America, legal conventions, fictions, and protocols decide where these electrons are delivered and consumed, although no actual consumption or possession of moving electrons actually exists. In this world of shadow and light, the author maintains that electric infrastructure in the twenty-first century is every bit as important a societal force as the more opined-upon oil and the automobile. While there are substitutes for oil, there are no substitutes for electricity in the information age.This Article examines specific aspects of the new grid. As we move more to wind and solar power, these technologies are intermittent resources, which on an hourly basis ebb and flow in only partly predictable manners. What does this do to the grid? This will decentralize and alter the balance of resources and responsibilities in the electric network vertically, horizontally, and virtually. The heretofore largely hidden issue of whether the grid has the backup quick-start power resources to deal with this intermittency is examined - it doesn't. Fights are already brewing on the financial value of intermittent renewable resources - some wanting to pay more for them, and others noting that they have less value for providing reliable power. The answers to this debate have profound social and financial consequences on the power future, and their legal issues are analyzed herein. How we physically extend the grid to accommodate new renewable power resources is examined. The role of distributed generation and cogeneration, as new active elements with environmental advantages, is analyzed. Welcome to the new "smart" grid with its pending legal and regulatory issues.


1] Artification is mostly approached from a contextualist perspective where "art" refers to objects that are presented and appreciated within socially recognized art institutions. Artification then means that the notion of art is extended to non-art areas. Yet it can be argued that contextualism is circular, since it starts with an unquestioned assumption about what art is. Another weakness of contextualism is that by privileging theory it tends to downplay the role of creative and appreciative practices. Alternative approaches are possible, and this article explores in a preliminary way what a naturalist approach could mean for how we see art and artification processes. The naturalist approach developed here considers the arts first of all as cultural practices that evolve together with discourse, but where discourse is not privileged over practice. As Wittgenstein suggested, understanding (and skillfully practicing) any art is about socially mediated, longterm engagement. By analyzing the evolutionary and ontogenetic origins of art and its function in all human cultures, and by describing the criteria of art as a cluster, naturalism opens the border between art and non-art. With naturalism, we can ask whether some of the changes described as artification allow us to recognize art outside institutionally legitimized art worlds. It allows us to ask to what extent something is art; it provides a perspective where phenomena can be studied case by case; and it re-introduces the relevance of evaluative criteria in the process of identifying or recognizing art.


For some polycrystalline materials such as austenitic stainless steel, magnesium, TATB, and HMX, twinning is a crucial deformation mechanism when the dislocation slip alone is not enough to accommodate the applied strain. To predict this coupling effect between crystal plasticity and deformation twinning, we introduce a mathematical model and the corresponding monolithic and operator splitting solvers that couple the crystal plasticity material model with a phase field twining model such that the twinning nucleation and propagation can be captured via an implicit function. While a phase field order parameter is introduced to quantify the twinning induced shear strain and corresponding crystal reorientation, the evolution of the order parameter is driven by the resolved shear stress on the twinning system. To avoid introducing an additional set of slip systems for dislocation slip within the twinning region, we introduce a Lie algebra averaging technique to determine the Schmid tensor throughout the twinning transformation. Three different numerical schemes are proposed to solve the coupled problem, including a monolithic scheme, an alternating minimization scheme, and an operator splitting scheme. Three numerical examples are utilized to demonstrate the capability of the proposed model, as well as the accuracy and computational cost of the solvers.


There have been edited books on the archaeology of nomadism in various regions, and there have been individual archaeological and anthropological monographs, but nothing with the kind of coverage provided in this volume. Its strength and importance lies in the fact that it brings together a worldwide collection of studies of the archaeology of mobility. This book provides a ready-made reference to this worldwide phenomenon and is unique in that it tries to redefine pastoralism within a larger context by the term mobility. It presents many new ideas and thoughtful approaches, especially in the Central Asian region.


This book chapter discusses some trends in critical theory and activist aesthetics in contemporary feminist performing arts in Sweden. The 2000s have witnessed at least two "turns" in feminist theory, namely the affective turn and the social, or as it is called here, the solidarity turn. The status of poststructuralist theory has been widely debated and Marxist, class-based analyses have returned to the political and aesthetic agenda in Sweden. The focus has shifted – once again – from individual art making to collectives who have chosen to work and fight together. The backdrop of this discussion is the shift from a social democratic welfare state to a neoliberal one. In civil society the distinction between neoliberal and social democratic lies in the extent of personal freedom(s), including sexual and reproductive rights, and whether interpersonal engagements are marked by commercialisations and inequality or by mutuality and equality. (Less)


Abstract Policy and research on European cyber-security remains formative compared to leaders in the field like China and the United States. This article evaluates the European Union (EU) as a cyber-security actor, asking fundamental questions concerning the EU's combination of prominence and obscurity, especially its limitations and prospects. Who and what is going to dominate the European response to cyber-security in the future? These questions are examined within the larger framework of liberal intergovernmentalism. The EU also is compared to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a point of reference to further understand the limitations and challenges ahead for the EU. Two major factors limit the EU as a cyber-security actor: its intergovernmental character, and the lack of collective vision on cyber-security with the EU and between member states. To play an important role in shaping cyberspace and cyber-security, the EU cannot treat the internet as simply a communication tool or trading platform. Cooperation and capacity-building measures are needed to allow EU member states to surpass mere coordination of their respective national cyber-security strategies. To succeed as a cyber-power, the EU should adapt new and different forms of cyber-power, from the compulsory through the institutional, to the structural and productive. Otherwise, coordination of national strategies for cyber-security of EU member states is the most the EU as an actor can aim for.


Natural processes associated with meandering river systems have been shown to lead to degradation of channel beds, erosion on channel banks, and bend migration. Attempts at mitigating the local instability associated with meandering systems, such as transverse and longitudinal structures, armor protection, and bio-engineering techniques have been utilized worldwide. One type of structure, bendway weirs, are rock structures placed in series along the outer bank of a bend in an effort to alleviate stresses, as well as create habitat. Many aspects associated with the bendway weir indicate the structure to be a viable alternative to longitudinal stone toe for controlling migration and bank erosion. While bendway weirs have been successfully used in many applications, quantifiable design guidance has not been available. Past projects utilizing bendway weirs have relied heavily on field experiences, site-specific flume studies, and engineering judgment, but have lacked general design guidelines. To accurately model flow conditions resulting from the placement of bendway weirs, an undistorted 1:12 Froude scale, hard boundary model was constructed at the Hydraulics Laboratory of the Engineering Research Center at Colorado State University. The model contained two bends, which exhibited unique geometric characteristics representative of those found in the Middle Rio Grande reach. Three-dimensional velocities and water surface profiles were recorded for a series of tests including variations of weir length, spacing, and angle. Using the data obtained from the test series, a relationship of the reduction of velocities relative to pre-weir conditions, due to the variation of bendway weir characteristics, was developed. The location of the strongest eddies found in a bend as a function of weir length was also examined. Bendway weir testing resulted in the creation of design criteria. Utilization of a known set of baseline conditions for a given bend and design parameters for bendway weirs, a designer is enabled to predict maximum velocities found in the bend after the installation of bendway weirs.


This paper is based on previous research carried out on the topic of oral hygiene. In this literature review, various studies have been considered, some from outside of India as well as some from within India, which is the origin of our research. This was done to obtain a global view of the topic and also to be able to compare how Indian oral hygiene and awareness compares with the same for the rest of the world. In a study conducted in 2011 that pertained to the oral health practices was conducted in the rural areas of the Kanchipuram District in Tamil Nadu, India. The participants were children between the ages of 5 and 10. The mean age of the children was 8.5 years and there were a total of 81 participants. The aim of this survey was 'to evaluate the awareness and knowledge among the rural children on the dental health problems, their oral hygiene practices and the pattern of practices of dental treatment.' A number of results pertained to the oral health practices of the participants. A number of results pertained to the oral health practices of the participants were found in the study by authors VC Punita, P Sivaprakasam, in the rural children of Kanchipuram in the year 2011.14 Out of the 81 children participating, only 51 children used toothbrushes while the rest used their fingers as a tool to clean their teeth. That accounts to only 62.96% brushing their teeth with brushes. This is attributed to the children coming from a 'very low socioeconomic background'. It was reported that 92.59% of the participants brushed their teeth once a day and 7.40% brushed twice a day. Moreover, only 45 out of the 81 children used toothpaste (55.55%) while the rest used twigs of the Azadirachta indica plant, traditionally known as datum, in combination with chalk powder, charcoal or sand. From the children who used brushes, 50.98% of them changed their brush when it got worn out, 27.44% of the participants changed their brush every 3 to 6 months. While the rest did not know how often they changed their brush. The author concludes that 'by giving adequate information, motivation and practice of the measure to the subject' this situation can be improved. In recent study done in 2012 authors Mehta A and Kaur G, it was found that 71.4% of the participants used a toothbrush with toothpaste, which is significantly higher than the 62.69% used by participants in the previously described study.18 Moreover, in this study, only 1.4% of participants used the Azadirachta indica twigs to clean their teeth, which is a significantly better result than the previous study. In this study, 25% of participants brushed their teeth more than once a day, which is a major improvement over the 7.40%, reported in the previous experiment. In a study conducted by Amin and Al-Asad on the 'Oral hygiene practices, dental knowledge, dietary habits and their relation to caries among male primary school children in 10.5005/jp-journals-10022-1039 Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia' (2008). This study showed similar results in Saudi Arabia to those in the first study discussed. A total of 24.5% of the students brushed their teeth more than twice a day. However, 44.6% of the students used Malwak which is similar to the Azadirachta indica used in the first and second studies. Another important segment of our study is tobacco use. Tobacco is classified in two forms, one which is smoked and the other which is used in forms other than being smoked. Smoked tobacco includes cigars, cigarettes, pipes, hookahs, bidis and kreteks. Smokeless forms of tobacco include betel nut, pan, pan masala and snus. Another important study was conducted in Bangalore, which focused on various oral practices and oral health in missionary schools in Bangalore. They studied the oral health of school children of the age 11to 12-year-old.19 From all the participants studied, 5.4% of them smoked cigarettes at least once a week while 3.9% of the chewed tobacco at least once a week. These results are eye opening as the children who took part in the experiment were 11 to 12 years old and tobacco use at such a young age is extremely harmful. The other articles lacked knowledge about tobacco use in the participants. Another aspect of our study is the diet of our participants. A study was conducted to compare oral habits and oral health knowledge in American school students living in Amritsar and Indian school children living in the same city.20 It was concluded that the diets of the school students compared was found to be 'comparable.' (Grewal and Kaur (2007). This was attributed to the urbanization of cities in India. However, the hygiene practices in the group of Indian participants was different from that of the American participants. The author suggests the hygiene practices in the group of Indian participants have not changed over time. The last aspect of our study is oral health knowledge. In the study conducted in the Panchkula district, it was found that 83.2% of participants knew the importance of brushing regularly.18 Moreover, 69.5% of participants stated that the importance of visiting a dentist regularly, which is to maintain healthy teeth. Around 17.6% of the participants knew the benefit of using toothpaste which contained fluoride. Lastly, 41.8% of the participants knew that the consumption of sugary foods can result in dental caries.


The standard specifications generally used for hot mix asphalt (HMA) are those published by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) or the American Association of State Highway and Transportation officials (AASHTO). Physical property measurements are made to determine specification compliance with these standards. However, little is known or understood as to how physical properties relate to performance of asphalt cements. Current studies funded by the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP) are attempting to identify those meaningful characteristics of asphalt cement that relate to performance. This paper addresses the various specifications and focuses on those properties that are currently considered to be most important regarding performance.


This Occasional Paper uses the reforms of agriculture in New Zealand to offer pointers to the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. New Zealand's agricultural reforms have been some of the most radical and successful anywhere, and suggest a way out of the cycle of waste, inefficiency and corruption that characterize agriculture in Europe. Executive Summary New Zealand is one of the few countries which has embarked on free trade for agriculture. New Zealand farmers were heavily protected by price supports and other measures in the 1970s and early 1980s but protection was greatly reduced in the economic reforms of the mid-1980s. Experience in New Zealand shows that '...agricultural markets do adjust by themselves and that farmers do not bear all the costs of reforms.' Farmers' incomes dropped after the reforms were introduced but farmers then adapted to their new environment. Adjustment in product and factor markets took about six years. Farm land prices fell after the reforms but have now returned to '...a normal relationship with product earnings.' New Zealand would like to see similar reforms in countries whose subsidised output competes with its own. It is also concerned about the growth of 'environmental' obstacles to trade. The Common Agricultural Policy is '...damaging to the interests of consumers and taxpayers in the EU' and burdensome to farmers outside the EU. EU farm protection has been increasing. The 'nominal tariff equivalent' in the EU is now 82 per cent, compared to 1 per cent in New Zealand. The CAP costs a family of four about AGBP1000 per year. The CAP has encouraged higher output and environmental damage. But farmers' incomes have fallen sharply in recent years. Although past EU reform efforts have been ineffective, a '...free market agriculture would be perfectly feasible ...'. The New Zealand example should be emulated.


We have investigated public preferences for use intensity and visual quality of forest recreational infrastructure. Forest infrastructure covers five classes, along a continuum from unmarked paths to paved walkways. Altogether, 39 sites were categorized into the five classes and measured with automatic counters. A sample of 545 respondents living in southeastern and middle Norway were asked to rate 15 forest scenes and 35 preconceptions of recreational settings. The path scenarios were depicted as digitally calibrated photos that systematically displayed physical path feature in boreal, semi-natural settings. Survey participants showed a clearly greater preference for photos and preconceptions of forests settings containing minor elements of forest infrastructure; unmarked paths received the highest score and forest roads/walkways/bikeways the lowest. We identified a clear mismatch between public preferences for forest infrastructure and the intensity of use; the less appreciated infrastructure was the most used. Planning and management has to consider these different needs for recreational infrastructure, and we propose an area zoning system that meets the different segments of forest visitors.


The paper discusses the connection between regional development policy priorities and sustainable development goals in contemporary world. Sustainable development is considered as an organizing principle in the efforts to sustain the ability of natural systems to provide resources and services for economy and society. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, is analyzed in the context of the perspectives for regional development policy in next years in Europe. EU regional policy is presented as targeted to EU regions and cities for encouraging economic growth and enhancing life quality through strategic investments and as an active form of solidarity focused on the support of less developed regions. Conclusion and recommendations are provided regarding the priorities of EU regional policy funding: research and innovation, information and communication technology, competitiveness of small and medum-size enterprises and low-carbon economy.


Proper installation of flexible ac transmission systems (FACTS) in existing transmission networks can improve transmission system loading margin (LM) to a certain degree and reduce network expansion cost. In the paper, under each contingency with high risk index (RI) value, the modal analysis (MA) technique is used to determine which buses need static var compensator (SVC) installation, and with maximum LM and minimum SVC installation cost composed into the multi-objective function the optimal LM enhancement problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem (MOP) and solved by using the fitness sharing multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) algorithm for a Pareto front set. In the Pareto front set for each considered contingency, the solution with the biggest performance index value is determined for SVC installation. Finally, an SVC installation scheme derived from the union of the SVC installations for all considered contingencies is recommended for LM enhancement. The proposed method is validated on the IEEE 24-bus reliability test system (RTS) and a practical power system.


This paper examines the following question: given a collection of man-made shapes, e.g., chairs, can we effectively explore and rank the shapes with respect to a given human body-in terms of how well a candidate shape fits the specified human body? Answering this question requires identifying which shapes are more suitable for a prescribed body, and how to alter the input geometry to better fit the shapes to a given human body. The problem links physical proportions of the human body and its interaction with object geometry, which is often expressed as ergonomics guidelines. We present an interactive system that allows users to explore shapes using different avatar poses, while, at the same time providing interactive previews of how to alter the shapes to fit the user-specified body and pose. We achieve this by first constructing a fuzzy shape-to-body map from the ergonomic guidelines to multi-contacts geometric constraints; and then, proposing a novel contact-preserving deformation paradigm to realize a reshaping to adapt the input shape. We evaluate our method on collections of models from different categories and validate the results through a user study.


Innovations in technology are changing not only everyday
life for many individuals around the world but are also influencing the
expansion of online learning opportunities at an accelerated rate (Collins
& Halverson, 2018; Mah, 2016). Online learning
platforms allow for scalability, flexibility, greater global access, and
innovative and new ways to deliver education (Goodman, Melkers, & Pallais,
2019; Kizilcec et al., 2019). Enrollments in online learning programs and
opportunities have seen significant growth in recent years (Seaman, Allen,
& Seaman, 2018; U.S. Department of Education, 2018) with continued and
steady growth expected into the future.
The ubiquity and newness of new online learning formats present a
challenge in linking research and practice.
Through three separate academic papers, the following dissertation discusses
and considers key questions and topics with regards to the use of digital
badges and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), two types of emerging online
innovations and platforms, and aspects of their efficacy. The three papers respectively 1) identify and
discuss the theoretical and empirical foundations digital badges use in
specific learners groups by reviewing current literature; 2) highlight the
application of a use case in which digital badges have been implemented as a
means to offer training; and 3) explore the perceptions of MOOC instructors
toward quality learning in their courses in a case study. Conclusions are drawn and solutions as well
as potential future directions for research and practice of discussed.


In recent decades the surface water temperature and salinity in the Labrador Sea have been influenced by atmospheric circulation patterns, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), as well as a trend to increasingly warm atmospheric temperatures in recent years. These changes are concerning, given the important role that temperature and salinity have on deep convection in the Labrador Sea. Yet, due to the shortness of available records, the long-term patterns of climate variability in the region are not clear. Here, a diatom-based reconstruction of summer sea-surface temperature (SST) developed from Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, provides insight into variations of SST since 7.2 cal ka BP in the southwestern Labrador Sea. The results show that the Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM) lasted until c. 5.2 cal ka BP, which was followed by a gradual cooling trend overprinted by centennial temperature fluctuations of 1–2°C. Long-term cooling was likely the result of declining Northern Hemisphere orbital summer insolation, potentially amplified by long-term changes in surface and bottom water salinity, which led to a gradual reduction in the stratification of the water column. Centennial fluctuations in temperature vary in-phase with reconstructed variations in the NAO, supporting a consistent relationship between atmospheric circulation and SST over centennial-millennial timescales. Other factors influencing the SST variability may have been solar forcing during the mid-Holocene and variations in the strength of the subpolar gyre during the late-Holocene. The most prolonged cool period at 5.2–4.1 cal ka BP coincides with sharply reduced salinity in the Labrador Sea and a weakening of deep ventilation in the northeast Atlantic, highlighting a period with altered ocean surface conditions and circulation across the northern North Atlantic.