Author(s): Cowan, CP; Cowan, PA | Abstract: © 2018 National Council on Family Relations In this article, we examine family-based interventions designed to increase parenting effectiveness, fathers' positive involvement, and couple relationship quality, all with the goal of enhancing children's development. We focus on the fact that government funding policies, service delivery systems, and research evaluations of interventions to benefit children and families typically operate in separate silos. We provide a theoretical model, along with empirical evidence, to argue that a more integrated, collaborative perspective is likely to produce more optimal outcomes for parents and children than current siloed attempts to improve child and family well-being. We discuss some of the obstacles to using evidence to guide policy decisions. We offer suggestions for policy makers and service providers in an attempt to describe a more integrated approach to supporting family well-being, and to encourage the increased use of systematic data in making decisions about how to allocate scarce resources for family support.


A 37-year-old man had a sore throat and pyrexia since January 1999. He was treated at a nearby hospital, but not improved. Jaundice was indicated there, and the patient was referred transferred to our hospital, where he was admitted for treatment with a diagnosis of severe acute hepatitis with acute renal failure. Thereafter the patient was revealed to have had a past history of heavy drinking, and he underwent the treatment with a diagnosis of acute fulminant hepatitis due to hepatitis A virus (HAV). He showed a tendency toward improvement. During the course, however, viral associated hemophagocytic syndrome (VAHS) developed. Various treatments were conducted, but it was not improved, and the patient died on Hospital Day 66. On pathologic autopsy, remarkable hepatosplenomegaly associated with marked bone marrow abnormalities compatible with VAHS was observed. Aspergillus abscesses were also observed in many organs, and they were considered as an adverse reaction to potent immunosuppressive therapy. Since there have been only a few reports on HAV-related VAHS, discussing VAHS related to HAV, the present case was considered valuable.


Abstract. Field measurements from February 2003 to January 2004 in a humid (but dry in summer) crest heath wood-land (degraded laurel forest) in the National Park of Garajonay, Canary Islands (Spain), were combined to calculate water balance components. The water balance domain is at the surface of the catchment and is controlled by atmospheric processes and vegetation. This study found that annual water income (rainfall plus fog water) was 1440 mm year-1, half of which was occult (or fog) precipitation, while stand transpiration estimated from measurements of sap flow amounted, annually, to 40% of potential evapotranspiration calculated from measurements of meteorological variables. The positive role of crest laurel forests, which transpire less water than is incoming from rain and fog is emphasised. Keywords: laurel forest, fog interception, stand transpiration, sap flow, hydrological cycle


The Voltino Library is a part of the library network of the Tin Ujevic Libraries, all operating within the Zagreb City Libraries system. The Voltino Library is the only cultural center in our local community providing access to information, as well as various educational and cultural programs and workshops. Since 2014, the Voltino Library's Department for Children and Youth has been implementing a program titled "Kids Say - Science is Cool!", with goals of introducing basic principles and know-how of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)at a young age and stimulating use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) through fun activities. The introduction of robotics in 2017., additionally provided for several workshops focusing on basics of programming and new technologies using mBot and Cubetto robotic systems. In 2018, an opportunity to organize a LEGO Mindstorms workshop came to life through collaboration with American Corner Zagreb which enabled the Voltino Library to take part in FIRST LEGO League (FLL). The American Corner with its coordinator supported the program by providing all the necessary equipment with robotic kits and materials as well as promoting the robotics program in social media; the non-profit "Neki novi klinci" / "New Kids on the Block", provided a dedicated coach; the Library secured a place to meet and work. FLL is an international program aiming to inspire children's interest in science as well as curiosity, creativity, and teamwork. This year's competition was themed "Into the Orbit" and included children aged 9-16, across 96 countries worldwide. The Croatian competition was held on January 19, 2019, at the Faculty of Electronics and Computing, University of Zagreb. Our team "10 Volts" / "10 Volti" participated alongside fifteen other teams. Team "10 Volts" was preparing for the competition for four months: kids reviewed literature, video materials, attended a special lecture in the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum, and worked on building and programming LEGO Mindstorms robots. Our proposal, which we presented to the Competition Committee, called for establishing libraries of the future with communication centers which will provide earth-bound citizens contact with astronauts in outer space. Our team was recognized as the first and only public library team at this national competition; the committee highlighted the fact that public access to a library endorsing such projects also contributes to greater public sensibility for the aims and mission of the overall STEM project. This collaborative project with partners within the library community such as American Corner Zagreb, and a wider community such as a non-profit "Neki novi klinci" and the Koncar corporation helped establish the Voltino Library not only as a cultural center, but the Library reached out to a broader community to build partnerships.The children on a team found a creative, fun, and educational space to get together in their free time thus fulfilling the mission of a public library in contemporary society.


The natural range of shortleaf pine encompasses 22 states from New York to Texas, second only to eastern white pine in the eastern United States. It is a species of minor and varying occurrence in most of these states usually found in association with other pines, but it is the only naturally occurring pine in the northwestern part of its range in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. Over the whole of this area, it is apparent that shortleaf pine hybridizes with loblolly pine, including areas of species overlap (sympatry) and nonoverlap (allopatry). In this study, we used 25 DNA markers to measure the levels of hybridization and introgression in populations of juvenile and mature shortleaf pine from a wilderness area within the allopatric range of shortleaf pine that bordered loblolly pine plantings. Frequency of hybrids ranged from 9.2 to 24.0% among the populations sampled, and we found that levels of hybridization correlates with distances to the nearest loblolly pine plantations. However, the rates of hybridization and introgression apparently remained the same among the parent and juvenile populations.


The purpose of this book is to acquaint the student
with the engineering principles and fundamental
characteristics of a number of components used in the
implementation of many types of control systems. The
operation of each component is discussed and explained
in detail in order to illustrate the function and action
of each component in the composite system. Examples
are used wherever possible to illustrate the principles
discussed. Diagrammatic illustrations are used profusely
throughout the book to make the descriptive text
interesting and self-explanatory.
Although a large number of books dealing with the
theory of control engineering are available, most of them
do not deal with the varied range of components used
in modern control systems. This book is an attempt to
fill this need. It comprehensively covers many typical
components of primary interest to the control-system
engineer. A number of different types of electrical,
electromechanical, electronic, hydraulic and pneumatic
control devices, which form integral parts of open-loop
and closed-loop control systems, have been presented
to enable the students to understand all the types of
control systems or equipment that they may encounter
in different fields of industry.
This book is especially designed to cater to the need
of a one-semester course in Control System Components,
particularly for the undergraduate students of
Instrumentation and Control Engineering. It will also
be a highly useful text for the students of Electrical
Engineering and Mechanical Engineering during their
study of the theory of Control Engineering. This book
will teach them about the components required to build
practical control systems.


Summary The ubiquitously expressed glucocorticoid receptor (GR) is a major drug target for inflammatory disease, but issues of specificity and target tissue sensitivity remain. We now identify high potency, non-steroidal GR ligands, GSK47867A and GSK47869A, which induce a novel conformation of the GR ligand-binding domain (LBD) and augment the efficacy of cellular action. Despite their high potency, GSK47867A and GSK47869A both induce surprisingly slow GR nuclear translocation, followed by prolonged nuclear GR retention, and transcriptional activity following washout. We reveal that GSK47867A and GSK47869A specifically alter the GR LBD structure at the HSP90-binding site. The alteration in the HSP90-binding site was accompanied by resistance to HSP90 antagonism, with persisting transactivation seen after geldanamycin treatment. Taken together, our studies reveal a new mechanism governing GR intracellular trafficking regulated by ligand binding that relies on a specific surface charge patch within the LBD. This conformational change permits extended GR action, probably because of altered GR–HSP90 interaction. This chemical series may offer anti-inflammatory drugs with prolonged duration of action due to altered pharmacodynamics rather than altered pharmacokinetics.


Local adaptation reflects the fact that local populations tend to have a higher mean fitness in their native environment than in other environments and in other populations introduced in their home site. Starting in the 1920s a large number of reciprocal transplant and common garden experiments, as well as studies of populations along environmental clines, have demonstrated that local adaptation is widespread in plants. One remaining challenge is to understand how populations become locally adapted and to characterise the genes involved in this process. Theoretically, local selection at single loci will promote local adaptation and gene flow will decrease it. For quantitative traits, the situation is more complex, and strong local adaptation can even be established and maintained in the presence of higher gene flow. The genetic basis of local adaptation will evolve through time, and eventually trade-offs between alleles at a locus may occur in the different environments (antagonistic pleiotropy).

Key Concepts

Local adaptation is widespread in plants but its genetic basis is still poorly known.
Local adaptation is the property of a group of populations in a given set of environments.
Local adaptation depends primarily on the balance between selection and migration.
The genetic architecture of local adaptation, in particular the presence of trade-offs, is likely to be variable among species as it will depend, among other things, on the time since the populations diverged or the amount of gene flow between them.

Keywords:

local adaptation;
spatially variable selection;
migration–selection balance;
plants;
reciprocal transplants;
provenance tests;
breeding;
quantitative traits


It is my honor to have a chance to present my profile in this emerging scholar column. I hope it will help the readers of my entry better understand me, my academic journey as well as my research interests. My name is Daniel Leung, and I am currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). My main areas of research interest are electronic marketing, social media marketing, the impact of user generated content, and technology adoption. Besides conducting research relating to technology management, I am teaching various technology-related courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students. As an active member of the International Federation for IT and Travel and Tourism (IFITT), I have hosted and served as the Overall Chair of the IFITT Doctoral Summer School at MODUL University Vienna in 2015. Coming from a working-class family, I have never dreamed of becoming an academician until I met my first "coach" and lifelong teacher – Prof. Rob Law. During my Bachelor study at the PolyU, I had the great honor to work on my bachelor thesis under Rob's supervision. Throughout the compilation period, Rob shared a lot of his knowledge and advice with me in order to advance my work to the next level. He also introduced and asked many experienced researchers to help resolve the technical problems I encountered in my work. Under his great coaching and guidance, our completed work (titled "The Perceived Destination Image of Hong Kong on Ctrip.com") successfully achieved its objective of unveiling the positive and negative facets of Hong Kong in the eyes of Chinese travelers. We were glad that our work was recommended for publishing in a top-tier tourism journal. We were even more fascinated that some suggestions from our manuscript were later employed by the local tourism authority when they devised their destination marketing plan. That was the very first time I recognized the value of academic research and the joy of being a researcher. After having this positive research experience, I followed Rob's advice and pursued a master degree at the PolyU. In the subsequent two-year study period, I explored diversified topics (e.g., social media, website evaluation, technology adoption) together with graduate students and other eTourism professionals from the school. I also had the honor to co-author many high-quality journal articles, conference articles and book chapters with many local and international researchers. Among all the works I co-authored during that period, I am particularly proud of the one titled "Social media in tourism and hospitality: A literature review" because of two reasons. First, the research gaps identified from that paper provide a solid foundation for subsequent researchers to develop their meaningful research. Second, the abovementioned paper helped me earn my first research-related award - the Emerald Citations of Excellence Award 2016. Although my initial research journey at the PolyU was a fabulous one, I understood that I had to leave this "comfort zone" if I wanted to equip myself with better knowledge and skills. Hence, after earning my master degree at the PolyU, I moved to Vienna (Austria) to pursue my doctoral degree and continue my academic journey. Many people asked me why I chose to earn my doctorate at Vienna. In fact, Vienna is a place with many "hidden dragons". As not many people know, at least three fellows of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism are working actively in Vienna. Moreover, many renowned scholars in the field of marketing (e.g., Adamantios Diamantopoulos) and management information systems (e.g., Josef Mazanec) come from Vienna. As a young scholar who aspired to enrich his knowledge base with help from these legendary people, I strongly believed that Vienna was a natural and suitable choice. Throughout my four-study doctoral study at MODUL University Vienna, I met and exchanged research-related knowledge with numerous scholars from different areas (e.g., economics, social psychology, public governance). I also gained a lot of exposure and experience about how to manage a university. Apart from these, having my second "coach" and lifelong teacher – Prof. Astrid Dickinger – as my doctoral thesis advisor was the biggest reward I gained throughout my doctoral study. Unlike those monographs compiled by other PhD candidates, my doctoral thesis as a trilogy of three separate studies (including a systematic literature review study, a panel data study and an experimental study) which are designed to contribute to the growing stream of research on online reviews by investigating "what makes a useful online hotel review?" Astrid was in fact the one who proposed this design, because she believed that the three-paper design cannot only help demonstrate my all-rounded knowledge about the studied topic but also exhibit my ability to apply different research methodologies to answer a research question. Under her great leadership and guidance, I successfully defended my thesis in August 2017. We were very satisfied with our completed thesis, since the most recent ENTER conference selected our work as the Best PhD Thesis. We are currently submitting those three papers to different outlets for publication consideration. We sincerely hope our works will be published and shared with you very soon. Like other young scholars who have recently earned their doctorate, I am now facing the unprecedentedly high level of pressure to enrich my publication record. Apart from continuing the examination of those areas I am familiar with (e.g., social media marketing and user-generated content), I have started diversifying my research profile via exploring some emerging topics such as blockchain and robotics. I am also re-investigating some un-resolved questions through applying innovative methodological approaches like field experiments and simulations. These research projects, for which I am collaborating with different groups of local and international scholars, will be completed very soon. We also look forward to sharing our findings with the interested readers at upcoming academic conferences or in the form of journal articles. Should any reader of this entry be interested in exploring the areas I mentioned earlier together, please feel free to contact me in order to exchange ideas and knowledge with each other. I look forward to meeting and starting intellectual discourses with you all at different academic occasions!


In the last four decades, different programs have been carried out aiming at understanding the final fate of gravitational collapse of massive bodies once some prescriptions for the behaviour of gravity in the strong field regime are provided. The general picture arising from most of these scenarios is that the classical singularity at the end of collapse is replaced by a bounce. The most striking consequence of the bounce is that the black hole horizon may live for only a finite time. The possible implications for astrophysics are important since, if these models capture the essence of the collapse of a massive star, an observable signature of quantum gravity may be hiding in astrophysical phenomena. One intriguing idea that is implied by these models is the possible existence of exotic compact objects, of high density and finite size, that may not be covered by an horizon. The present article outlines the main features of these collapse models and some of the most relevant open problems. The aim is to provide a comprehensive (as much as possible) overview of the current status of the field from the point of view of astrophysics. As a little extra, a new toy model for collapse leading to the formation of a quasi static compact object is presented.


ABSTRACT Carvache-Franco, M.; Carvache-Franco, W.; Carvache-Franco, O., and Hernández-Lara, A.B., 2020. Analysis of push and pull motivations and the intentions to return and recommend a coastal or marine destination. Journal of Coastal Research, 36(6), 1313–1322. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Visiting coastal and marine destinations can be appealing for tourists depending on the on-site activities offered. This study analyzed push and pull motivations to establish their effect on visitors' intention to return and likelihood to recommend a tourist destination. The research was conducted in the city of Salinas in Ecuador, a renowned tourist destination with coastal and marine, natural, and cultural features. For the statistical procedure, factor analysis was used as a data reduction technique, and multiple regression analysis was conducted to select the motivational variables that predict the intentions to return and recommend the destination. The results show two push motivational factors, "escape and novelty," and "knowledge and experience," and two pull motivational factors, "active marine," and "static marine." The first pull motivational factor is related to marine sports, swimming in the ocean, and adventurous activities, and the second one is associated with clear water and fresh air enjoyment, walking along the beach, and beaches of scenic beauty. The push factor "escape and novelty" and the pull factor "static marine" were the most important predictors of the intentions to return and recommend a coastal and marine destination. These findings will help coastal and marine planners to implement sustainable development strategies according to the characteristics of the demand.


A regional production network (RPN) refers to a business cooperation system among firms in different countries involving a division of labor to develop, manufacture, and market specific commodities. This study focused on the trade flow relationships within the U.S. Textile and Apparel Regional Production Network (U.S. T&A RPN) and the impact of the 2006-2008 U.S.-China Textile Agreement on the U.S. T&A RPN. The study found that the more the United States imported apparel from China, the less the U.S. textile industry exported yarns and fabrics to Mexico and countries in the Caribbean Basin region, The study also found that the 2006-2008 U.S.-China Textile Agreement had a profound trade disruption effect on apparel imports from China to the United States, yet little or no impact on textile or apparel trade within the U.S. T&A RPN.


There are two main thrusts towards new permanent-magnet materials: improving extrinsic properties by nanostructuring and intrinsic properties by atomic structuring. Theory-both numerical and analytical-plays an important role in this ambitious research. Our analysis of aligned hard-soft nanostructures shows that soft-in-hard geometries are better than hard-in-soft geometries and that embedded soft spheres are better than sandwiched soft layers. Concerning the choice of the hard phase, both a high magnetization and a high anisotropy are necessary. As an example of first-principle research, we consider interatomic Mn exchange in MnAl and find strongly ferromagnetic intralayer exchange, in spite of the small Mn-Mn distances.


Magnetic beads were coated with RGD and adhered to primary human osteoblasts. During a 21-day culture, the osteoblasts plus adhered magnetic beads underwent a daily exposure to a cylical magnetic field via a permanent magnet thus applying a direct mechanical strain to the cells. After 21 days, preliminary results show that the cells plus magnetic beads were viable and had proliferated. A von-kossa stain showed a small amount of mineralized bone matrix produced at 21 days whereas the control groups showed no mineralized matrix production. RT-PCR at 21 days showed production of collagen 1 and GAPDH from each of the cell samples analysed. These preliminary results indicate that adherence of RGD-coated 4.5 micron ferromagnetic beads to primary human osteoblasts does not initiate cell necrosis up to 21 days in vitro. Also, mechanical stimulation of human osteoblasts by magnetic bead technology appears to have an influence on osteoblastic activity.


In numerical hologram reconstruction like in optical holography, there exist different diffraction orders, which many times produce difficulties for the image visualizations. In numerical reconstruction, the filtering of the DC term, or zero order diffraction, provides an improved utilization of the dynamic range of the visualization systems, which is needed for the right displaying purposes of reconstructed images. In the case of the in-line set-ups, the zero diffraction order has even more devastating effects because it does not allow reconstructing the images itself as in Gabor's holograms, so it is necessary to attempt a filtering of this DC term. In this work is shown a qualitative assessment of different techniques of DC term filtering applied to numerical reconstruction of Fresnel's holograms recorded by means of off-line set-ups.


India sits at the nub of the crisis of the current high carbon model of development. It is not responsible for this crisis and it can legitimately argue that it must not bear the costs of adapting and mitigating its consequences. However, it cannot escape the reality that it is amongst the most vulnerable nations to global warming. This paper identifies five factors that define the reality of India's energy sector and argues that these factors should be regarded as predetermined trends that will influence the shape of India's future energy profile, at least for the foreseeable future, irrespective of the specifics of policy. It underlines that the Indian government recognises the severity of the problem and has embarked on an ambitious programme to tackle the crisis on its own. However, it requires better alignment of the political, institutional and financial framework for implementation in a given time-frame. Further, the paper lays out five propositions that are necessary first steps towards a low carbon future.


Having an online assessment system that is secure, effective and efficient is a major problem for distance learning providers. At the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, the Criminal Justice Team (within the Social, Community and Health Studies) and the Department of Computer Science are two departments that deliver significant e-learning programmes. This paper describes the design development and evaluation of a secure system for verification of candidates' identities for use in online objective assessment, using video and chat. The findings of two studies are reported in the paper, a pilot study with expert evaluators and a study with a group of undergraduates. We were able to show that the method is acceptable to candidates and imposed little additional cognitive burden. We also measured the efficiency of the system developed and identify problems and limitations with the approach.


It seems that there is collision between the contemporary legal practices and philosophical views on the moral responsibility of psychopaths. A number of philosophers and psychologists argue that psychopaths lack certain qualities necessary for moral personhood and so can't be held responsible. On the other side courts often try these cases and find the psychopaths guilty. In this article the author examines the arguments about the responsibility of psychopaths and comes to the conclusion that they should be held responsible even in the basic desert sense. The conclusion is based firstly on the conviction that psychopaths actually do possess necessary capacities, in particular capacity to treat others as persons and they possess moral competency. Secondly, it is based on the observation of similarities between the psychopaths and repeat offenders. Both kinds of criminals have an ill will and immoral character. The lack of empathy that is typical for the psychopaths cannot serve as an excuse and reason to withdraw accountability. The author of the article examines several objections to this view, but finds them unconvincing. So he concludes that the punishment of psychopaths is justified.


In modeling individuals vaccination decision making, existing studies have typically used the payoff-based (e.g., game-theoretical) approaches that evaluate the risks and benefits of vaccination. In reality, whether an individual takes vaccine or not is also influenced by the decisions of others, i.e., due to the impact of social influence. In this regard, we present a dual-perspective view on individuals decision making that incorporates both the cost analysis of vaccination and the impact of social influence. In doing so, we consider a group of individuals making their vaccination decisions by both minimizing the associated costs and evaluating the decisions of others. We apply social impact theory (SIT) to characterize the impact of social influence with respect to individuals interaction relationships. By doing so, we propose a novel modeling framework that integrates an extended SIT-based characterization of social influence with a game-theoretical analysis of cost minimization. We consider the scenario of voluntary vaccination against an influenza-like disease through a series of simulations. We investigate the steady state of individuals' decision making, and thus, assess the impact of social influence by evaluating the coverage of vaccination for infectious diseases control. Our simulation results suggest that individuals high conformity to social influence will increase the vaccination coverage if the cost of vaccination is low, and conversely, will decrease it if the cost is high. Interestingly, if individuals are social followers, the resulting vaccination coverage would converge to a certain level, depending on individuals' initial level of vaccination willingness rather than the associated costs. We conclude that social influence will have an impact on the control of an infectious disease as they can affect the vaccination coverage. In this respect, our work can provide a means for modeling the impact of social influence as well as for estimating the effectiveness of a voluntary vaccination program.


My Ph.D. thesis consists of three research papers focused on actors' identity as social outcome, its intrinsic multidimensionality raised by multiple identity-shaping sources, and the relationship between identity dimensions and market performance. The first paper offers an overview of the literature on identity, social identity, and two identity-determining tools – social categories and network relations. It discusses how identity emerges from multiple identifying social forces that determines its multidimensionality. The second paper qualitatively explores the idea of multidimensionality in Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Through interviews with New York-based artists and producers, and secondary data analysis, EDM is unveiled as a field in which complex interrelations and exchanges occur among its actors. This complexity is then transferred to identity, and the word Sound emerges as vernacular term to refer to that multi-sided element that allows mutual recognition and collaboration – EDM actors' socially constructed, multidimensional identity. Finally, the third paper tests four hypotheses relating EDM releases' performance to external categorization, alliance portfolio, and their interaction. Regression models test: 1) the relationship between EDM releases' Grade of Generalism (the weighted number of spanned styles) and commercial performance, 2) the relationship between releasing artists' Relational Pluralism (the number of commercial partners) and releases' performance, and 3) the combined effect of Generalism and Pluralism on releases' performance. Results show a curvilinear relationship between both Generalism and Relational Pluralism and releases' performance, and statistically confirm the existence and relevance of identity multidimensionality, especially from an inter-temporal perspective. Overall, my Ph.D. dissertation introduces the idea of multidimensional identity, and explores it in qualitative and quantitative terms. Moreover, the dissertation presents and unveils Electronic Dance Music as novel and relevant context for organization research.


Studies conducted at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, have focused on assessing the effectiveness and reliability of novel approaches to nondestructive examination (NDE) for inspecting coarse-grained, cast stainless steel reactor components. The primary objective of this work is to provide information to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the effectiveness and reliability of advanced NDE methods as related to the inservice inspection of safety-related components in pressurized water reactors (PWRs). This report provides progress, recent developments, and results from an assessment of low frequency ultrasonic testing (UT) for detection of inside surface-breaking cracks in cast stainless steel reactor piping weldments as applied from the outside surface of the components. Vintage centrifugally cast stainless steel piping segments were examined to assess the capability of low-frequency UT to adequately penetrate challenging microstructures and determine acoustic propagation limitations or conditions that may interfere with reliable flaw detection. In addition, welded specimens containing mechanical and thermal fatigue cracks were examined. The specimens were fabricated using vintage centrifugally cast and statically cast stainless steel materials, which are typical of configurations installed in PWR primary coolant circuits. Ultrasonic studies on the vintage centrifugally cast stainless steel piping segments were conducted with a 400-kHzmore » synthetic aperture focusing technique and phased array technology applied at 500 kHz, 750 kHz, and 1.0 MHz. Flaw detection and characterization on the welded specimens was performed with the phased array method operating at the frequencies stated above. This report documents the methodologies used and provides results from laboratory studies to assess baseline material noise, crack detection, and length-sizing capability for low-frequency UT in cast stainless steel piping.« less


Rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) is a highly virulent lagovirus endemic in Europe and Australasian populations of the European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus. It has also caused several unexplained disease outbreaks in domestic European rabbits in North America. Non‐pathogenic spread of RHDV leading to persistent infection which later reactivated has recently been proposed as the cause of overt disease and death of a pet rabbit in Canada, the first confirmed case of Rabbit haemorrhagic disease in that country. We suggest that there is little evidence to support non‐pathogenic spread of virulent RHDV, some evidence that is contradictory, and evidence to support a simpler alternative hypothesis. RHDV can be spread over long distances between sparse rabbit populations by fomites or flying insects. Although highly pathogenic, RHDV can be limited in its spread within rabbit populations, or its presence masked by closely related but non‐pathogenic lagoviruses which can provide protection against acute disease. In the absence of any evidence from clinical studies to support reactivation of persistent RHDV infection, the simpler explanation seems more likely to be correct.


For over a decade, school‐based mentoring has been employed as a key strategy in initial teacher training programmes. The diversity apparent in training settings as well as trainees' backgrounds raises questions in relation to the mentoring practice and the knowledge base that underpins it. By adopting a phenomenological, social constructivist approach the study aims to investigate mentors' perceptions of the relationship between their professional practice and the knowledge that informs it. It seeks to construct a typology of mentors' professional knowledge in relation to Shulman's (1987) model of teacher knowledge and the statutory standards framework for initial teacher training and induction in England, which serves as a point of reference for all those involved in the assessment of professional competence during initial training and induction. The findings of this study suggest that in their work with trainee teachers and newly qualified teachers the majority of mentors draw on their teacher knowledge without sufficiently taking into account the specific aspects of adult learners and the generic principles underpinning mentoring.


Hyperbranched polyesters are among the most common hyperbranched polymers. One of the interesting features of hyperbranched polyesters is that they contain unreacted hydroxyl and carboxylic acid groups at the linear and terminal structural units, which can be postmodified to adjust thermal, solubility, or mechanical properties, or to prepare core-shell type architectures. This article reports on the synthesis of a novel class of hyperbranched polyesters via an A(2) + B-3 type Baylis-Hillman polymerization of 2,6-pyridinedicarboxaldehyde and trimethylolpropane triacrylate. Baylis-Hillman polymerization generates highly functional polyesters that contain not only unreacted aldehyde and/or acrylate groups at the linear and terminal structural units but also chemically orthogonal vinyl and hydroxyl groups along the polymer backbone. Using 3-hydroxyquinuclidine as the catalyst, hyperbranched polymers with number-average molecular weights up to 7500 g/mol and degrees of branching up to 0.81 were obtained. To demonstrate the versatility of these hyperbranched polyesters to act as platforms for further derivatization, the orthogonal postpolymerization modification of the hydroxyl, vinyl, and pyridine functional moieties with phenyl isocyanate, methyl-3-mercaptopropionate, and methyl iodide is presented. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 50: 25-34, 2012


In July 1988 the Police launched a National Motorway Safety Campaign to improve drivers' behaviour and help reduce motorway accidents. Previous campaigns were run in 1985 and 1986. The themes of the campaign were 'Keep your distance' and 'Watch your speed'. The campaign involved national and local publicity with the focus on Service Area Exhibitions. A policy of high police presence and enforcement was recommended during the campaign. Interview surveys and traffic data measures were taken before, during and after the campaign. Results showed that high awareness of the campaign was achieved by free national and local TV and radio coverage with more than two thirds of drivers having heard of the campaign. Exhibitions were far less effective in achieving awareness. Recall of the main themes was relatively poor, the prevalence of non-campaign themes (ie general road safety themes not selected for the campaign by the organizing committee) seemed to have interfered with recall. Less than half the drivers interviewed (33%) said that their behaviour would be affected by the campaign and most did not identify themselves as the target audience. Knowledge communication with regard to stopping distances was extremely poor. There was a slight increase in awareness of the police during the campaign though few drivers said this had influenced their driving. Behavioural measures suggest that the campaign had little effect on speed or close following. Overall the findings suggest that excessive speed and close following behaviour are extremely resistant to modification through traditional publicity techniques and alternative strategies need to be researched.


Many artists when representing an object try to convey its "essence." In an attempt to formalize certain aspects of depicting the essence of objects, the author proposes an art form called low-complexity art. It may be viewed as the computer-age equivalent of minimal art. Its goals are based on concepts from algorithmic information theory. A low-complexity artwork can be specified by a computer algorithm and should comply with two properties: (1) the drawing should "look right," and (2) the Kolmogorov complexity of the drawing should be small (the algorithm should be short) and a typical observer should be able to see this. Examples of low-complexity art are given in the form of algorithmically simple cartoons of various objects. Attempts are made to relate the formalism of the theory of minimum description length to informal notions such as "good artistic style" and "beauty."


Abstract Background: A reliable early marker is required for diagnosis of cobalamin deficiency. We calculated an appropriate holotranscobalamin (HoloTC) cut-off point for identifying cobalamin deficiency using an immunoenzymatic assay. Methods: Determination of the cut-off threshold and correlation between HoloTC and the other diagnostic parameters routinely used for vitamin B12 deficiency [total vitamin B12 (tB12), folate, homocysteine] were measured in 250 routine blood specimens from 107 men (mean age 59.0±18.8 years) and 143 women (mean age 54.2±23.1 years). The inclusion criterion was serum tB12 concentration ≤221 pmol/L. Results: Analytical performance results agreed with those reported by others. A weak correlation (R=0.42) was found between HoloTC and tB12. A 40 pmol/L cut-off threshold was chosen for HoloTC and the associated sensitivity and specificity was 0.86 and 0.66, respectively. Out of 250 tested samples, 126 showed tB12 concentrations 139–221 pmol/L (gray zone, GZ) and 124 had tB12 concentrations <139 pmol/L (low, L). Values less than the cut-off for HoloTC were present in 68.2% and 37.9% of cases in the GZ and L group, respectively (p<0.01), and in 53.2% of subjects. Conclusions: Our results confirmed the analytical reliability of the AxSYM HoloTC assay. The method is adequate for routine use and a cut-off threshold of 40 pmol/L is appropriate for assessing cobalamin deficiency in populations with reduced tB12 values. Clin Chem Lab Med 2010;48:249–53.


Alcohol interacts with the immune system in multiple ways that are not fully understood but which likely contribute to alcoholic pathologies and may be relevant to the study and treatment of alcohol dependence. Alcohol consumption permeabilizes the gut, allowing the release of lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an endotoxin that elicits the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines (protein signaling molecules produced by immune cells) including interleukin-6 (IL-6). As excessive inflammation may lead to shock, there exists a protective mechanism, endotoxin tolerance, that suppresses the inflammatory response to LPS after an initial exposure. Because of the phenomenon of endotoxin tolerance, we hypothesized that chronic alcohol exposure would result in the suppression of the IL-6 response to LPS. In this study, mice were treated with a single injection of LPS, repeated injections of LPS, or one injection of LPS after a period of chronic alcohol dinking, and then the levels of IL-6 were measured in order to assess the immune response. It was found that while mice given a single injection of LPS showed a significant increase in IL-6, those given repeated injections of LPS did not show any increase; they had developed tolerance to the multiple exposures of LPS. After 18 days of chronic voluntary intake of alcohol, the IL-6 response to LPS was also suppressed. This shows that chronic alcohol consumption produces an alteration in the immune system that could play a possible role in the development of alcohol dependence. Further research is necessary to determine if this area of study could lead to the better understanding and treatment of alcohol dependence.


This study investigates and maps supports which aim to facilitate the integration of beneficiaries of international protection into the Irish labour market. We examine what employment-related support measures are available to beneficiaries, and the extent to which these are targeted to the needs of the group. The study finds that Ireland has not developed a system of labour market integration supports, tailored to the needs of refugees. Access by refugees to mainstreamed employment supports is unrestricted. However the provision of targeted integration measures is important because refugees can face specific barriers to participation, including: experiences of trauma, the absence of a social network, gaps in employment and education, and a lack of documentation hindering the recognition of qualifications by employers. Refugees can face also challenges in navigating the system of mainstream service provision. The report is based on the Irish contribution to an EU-level, European Migration Network (EMN) study on Integration of beneficiaries of international/humanitarian protection into the labour market: policies and good practices in the EU, the synthesis report of which compiles 24 country studies.


Dynamic programming (DP) is a popular and efficient technique in many scientific applications such as computational biology. Nevertheless, its performance is limited due to the burgeoning volume of scientific data, and parallelism is necessary and crucial to keep the computation time at acceptable levels. The intrinsically strong data dependency of dynamic programming makes it difficult and error-prone for the programmer to write a correct and efficient parallel program. Therefore, this paper builds a runtime system named EasyPDP aiming at parallelizing dynamic programming algorithms on multicore and multiprocessor platforms. Under the concept of software reusability and complexity reduction of parallel programming, a DAG Data Driven Model is proposed, which supports those applications with a strong data interdependence relationship. Based on the model, EasyPDP runtime system is designed and implemented. It automatically handles thread creation, dynamic data task allocation and scheduling, data partitioning, and fault tolerance. Five frequently used DAG patterns from biological dynamic programming algorithms have been put into the DAG pattern library of EasyPDP, so that the programmer can choose to use any of them according to his/her specific application. Besides, an ideal computing distribution model is proposed to discuss the optimal values for the performance tuning arguments of EasyPDP. We evaluate the performance potential and fault tolerance feature of EasyPDP in multicore system. We also compare EasyPDP with other methods such as Block-Cycle Wavefront (BCW). The experimental results illustrate that EasyPDP system is fine and provides an efficient infrastructure for dynamic programming algorithms.


A recent report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists has called for greater parity between mental and physical health. Central to this call is the concept of inequity, and under funding for mental health, with a specific emphasis on access to care and a reduction in the ''mental health treatment gap''. Support for such a call is emphasized by data from a recently published study documenting trends in life expectancy for psychiatric patients compared to a non psychiatric population - specifically that the life expectancy gap has increased for both male and female psychiatric patients i.e. that years lived are less for a psychiatric population, with the gap increasing between the 1985 and 2005. These findings were noteworthy in that physical illness accounted for 77.7% of excess death in psychiatric patients, with suicide accounting for 13.9%. The suggestion is thus that resources for mental health need to include those for physical health.


The necessity to take into account the perturbations caused by a large number of asteroids on the terrestrial planets is fundamental in the construction of modern numerical ephemeris on the solar system. Therefore about 300 of the largest asteroids were taken into account in recent ephemeris. Yet, the uncertainty on the mass values of the great majority of these asteroids constitutes a crucial and the main limit of accuracy of this ephemeris. Consequently, it is important to conduct a specific and detailed study of their individual effects especially on the terrestrial planets, which are far more affected than the giant planets. This was already done explicitly, but only for Mars and for only two orbital elements (a and λ). We aim both to confirm these previous results and to extend the study to all orbital elements and to the other three terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus and the Earth), which are priori less affected by asteroid perturbations. Our methodology consists in several steps: we carried out precise computations of the orbital motions of the planets at short (100 y) and longer (1000 y) time scales with numerical integration. For that purpose we included the eight planets and also considered 43 of the most powerful asteroids. These were added to the numerical integrations once separately and once combined to determine their specific effects on the orbital elements of the Earth and the three other terrestrial planets. This procedure also allowed us to assess the spatial geocentric coordinates of the three terrestrial planets. We determined the signal that represents the effects by simple subtraction. Then we systematically analyzed this signal by FFT (fast Fourier transform), and finally we adjusted the signal with a set of sinusoidal components. We analyzed in detail the variations of the six orbital elements a, e, i, Ω, ω̃ and λ of Mercury, Venus, the Earth-Moon barycenter (EMB) and Mars that are caused by the individual influences of the set of our 43 selected asteroids. We compared our results for Mars with the analytical ones on the semi-major axis and the longitude. The tow studies agree very well. All our results, consisting of 1032 different curves (43 asteroids × 4 planets × 6 orbital elements) and the related tables that provide the fitted Fourier and Poisson components are gathered the ASETEP database (asteroid effect on the terrestrial planets). Moreover, we include in this database the influence of our sample of 43 asteroids on three fundamental parameters: the distance and the bidimensional orientation vector (α, δ) from the EMB to each of the other terrestrial planets. This database, which will be regularly updated by taking into account more asteroids with improved mass determinations, constitutes a precious tool for understanding specifically the influence of the large asteroids on the orbital motion of the terrestrial planets, and also for better understanding how modern ephemeris can be improved.


We divide the 102 historically developing countries (HDCs) into those with 'very weak', 'weak', 'middle', and 'strong' state capability. Analyzing the levels and recent growth rates of the HDCs' capability for policy implementation reveals how pervasively "stuck" most of them are. Only eight HDCs have attained strong capability, and since most of these are small (e.g., Singapore, UAE), less than 100 million (or 1.7%) of the roughly 5.8 billion people in HDCs currently live in high capability states. Almost half (49) of these countries have very weak or weak capability, and thus their long-run pace of acquiring capability is also very slow. Alarmingly, three quarters of these countries (36 of 49) have experienced negative growth in state capability in recent decades, while more than a third of all countries (36 of 102) have low and (in the medium run at least) deteriorating state capability. At current rates, the 'time to high capability' of the 49 currently weak capability states and the 36 with negative growth is obviously "forever". But even for the 13 with positive growth, only three would reach strong capability by the end of the 21st century at their current medium run growth.


This study compares differences in crisis preparation, information-seeking patterns, and media use on the basis of race in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Surveys are collected from 935 Katrina evacuees relocated in different areas of the United States. Results indicate differences in crisis preparation and information seeking on the basis of race. Results also demonstrate a continued need to create messages encouraging crisis preparation, especially among at-risk subpopulations.

http://cretscmhd.psych.ucla.edu/nola/volunteer/EmpiricalStudies/Crisis communication%2C race%2C and natural disasters.pdf


The experience of reality, in both perception and recall, is spatially and temporally coherent and in-register. Features are bound in entities, and entities are bound in events. The properties of these entities and events, however, are represented in many different regions of the brain that are widely separated. The degree of neural parcellation is even greater when we consider that the perception of most entities and events also requires a motor interaction on the part of the perceiver (such as eye movements and hand movements) and often includes a recordable modification of the perceiver's somatic state. The question of how the brain achieves integration starting with the bits and pieces it has to work with, is the binding problem. Here we propose a new solution for this problem, at the level of neural systems that integrate functional regions of the telencephalon.


This article investigates the Ultimate Fighting Championship's (UFC's) increasing efforts to market difference (including race, gender, sexuality, and nationality) across its mixed martial arts transmedia empire. More specifically, I examine the UFC's The Ultimate Fighter reality television show as an innovative transmedia marketing strategy to promote diverse fighters and attract fans from previously overlooked audience demographics. The UFC has used numerous methods of transmedia marketing to fold difference into various media ventures over the past several years. I highlight The Ultimate Fighter as an exemplary case study in the development of a "we are all different" discourse in UFC marketing. The UFC's deployment of reality television to market fighters produces a discourse that ambivalently homogenizes and essentializes difference—a phenomenon that girds gender, race, sexuality, and nationality to affective economies of cultural production.


Burgeoning interest in paleoclimatology has been spurred by growing awareness of the control of paleoclimates on the formation of economic deposits. In past studies, paleoclimatic patterns were derived empirically from biogeographic patterns, and to a lesser extent, from the distributions of sedimentary paleoclimatic indicators, such as coals. The problems with this approach are numerous. In early studies, the paleoclimatic patterns appeared to make very little sense because they were reconstructed on modern continental positions. Even after the acceptance of continental drift, problems arose when the paleoclimatic indicators were poorly dated or when geologists chose paleoclimatic indicators from too long a time period, during which major paleoclimatic changes could have occurred. More recently, qualitative and quantitative models of paleoclimate have proved useful for understanding the distributions of climatically significant geologic data. These models are founded on basic principles of atmospheric and oceanic circulation as applied to global paleogeography, including reconstructed plate positions. With climate models, geologists can formulate hypotheses about the paleoclimatic patterns that might be expected during the various intervals in Earth history and test those hypotheses with the paleoclimatic indicators.


An innovative study looking at UK census data through the lens of the household – or Jewish family – shows that only a quarter of all Jewish homes are comprised of the stereotypical married couple with children, and two out of three Jewish households in Britain have no children living in them at all. It further demonstrates that an estimated 17,600 Jews aged 65 or above live alone, the majority of whom are women.

The report, entitled Jewish families and Jewish households: Census insights into how we live, is the latest in a series of reports published by JPR that draw on data from the 2011 Census to understand key aspects of contemporary Jewish life in Britain. It is the most comprehensive report on these data published so far, and reveals a number of important insights, hitherto unknown.

Amongst these, it demonstrates that a third of all Jewish households have people living within them who are either not Jewish, or whose Jewish status is unclear. On the face of it, this represents little change over the decade since 2001, but close examination of the data indicate that there has been an increase in the number of Jews living with people who say they have no religion, alongside a decrease in the number of Jews living with people who have a different religion.

The report also investigates differences in household make-up between Jews and other religious and ethnic minorities, and demonstrates that Jews are far less likely than average to cohabit or to live in single parent families – a finding which indicates that the traditional Jewish family is holding up relatively well in the face of general changes in family formation habits in Britain. On the other hand, a higher proportion of Jewish households have people aged 65 or over living alone in them than British households in general, or for that matter, the households of almost every other minority group in the UK.

In addition, household data from the census provide valuable insights into the lives of students and young adults, revealing that there are more Jewish students based in Gateshead than any other city in the UK. Nottingham and Birmingham follow quite closely behind, and both Oxford and Cambridge feature among the top seven locations for Jewish students. One in five young adults aged 25-29 still live with their parents, and the proportion in that age group living alone declined by about a third between 2001 and 2011, probably due to issues around affordability.


Working time preferences of employees have been discussed in scientific and public debates more frequently. Yet, representative studies show controversial results regarding over- and underemployment for Germany. But these differences can only partially be explained by varying definitions of populations or sample selection. By means of data from the Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) this article highlights the importance of wording and positioning of questions regarding working time preferences. The empirical findings suggest that further methodological research is essential.


Today's gardeners have more plants and design ideas to choose from than ever before. But is there something missing in their gardens if they ignore their ties to the past? Denise Wiles Adams has written a remarkable book of history and horticulture that documents the changing plant palette of American gardens. From the colonial era to the pre-World War II period, no region of the country is neglected and no major plant group unrepresented. From a database of more than 25,000 plants and hundreds of antique nursery catalogs, she has distilled a unique survey of American ornamental gardens. Nobody concerned with historic homes and properties can afford to be without it. An important resource that will be consulted for generations, "Restoring American Gardens" is a vital link between gardeners and their predecessors throughout history.


Aspect-oriented programming is a new paradigm that complements the object-oriented technology. The premise of aspect-oriented technology is the separation of concerns. Certain system properties tend to cut across group of functional components such as concurrency, security, and fault tolerance are examples of these crosscutting concerns. Aspect orientation attempts to modularize these crosscutting properties in order to avoid the code-tangling phenomena. Objects are independent entities that cooperate together t0achieve a certain task, how can we mange object interaction without violating basic object orientation principles like abstraction, what triggers an object to perform its functionality, what constraints that an object must consider before performing its task(s) are, how an object behavior impacts other object(s) behavior, how we can model our aspect oriented system with all the above questions in mind using existing CASE tools and guarantee separation of concerns at the implementation (automatic code generation).

In this position paper presents a formal methodology that addresses the above questions and supports separation of concerns for system software. The paper demonstrates aspect-oriented framework applying at the design and implementation phase with separation of system properties. Our approach uses CASE tools supporting UML without any extensions to it. Rhapsody CASE tool has been used to model and automatically generate code since it supports UML diagrams which enable us to present different views using different UML diagrams (OMD, SD, Statecharts, and Use Case diagrams).


We consider a two-parameter family of spherically-symmetric wormhole spacetimes introduced by Konoplya and Zhidenko. Such wormholes belong to the more general Morris-Thorne class of traversable wormholes. We study timelike geodesics in this class of spacetimes and investigate the possibility of bound orbits. For Konoplya-Zhidenko wormholes, we show that there exists only an unstable circular orbit at the throat location. This particular class of wormhole spacetimes also admits eccentric bound orbits for a particular set of initial conditions (particle energy, initial radial position, wormhole throat and shape exponent, and the parameter p). We generalized our result to the generic Morris-Thorne class of traversable wormholes and demonstrated that this class does not permit stable circular orbit at the throat.


With the increasing growth in popularity of Web services, discovery of relevant Web services becomes a significant challenge. One approach is to develop semantic Web services where by the Web services are annotated based on shared ontologies, and use these annotations for semantics-based discovery of relevant Web services. We discuss one such approach that involves adding semantics to WSDL using DAML+OIL ontologies. Our approach also uses UDDI to store these semantic annotations and search for Web services based on them. We compare our approach with another initiative to add semantics to support Web service discovery, and show how our approach may fit current standards-based industry approach better.


In this paper, we investigate a novel slotted ALOHA-based distributed cognitive network in which a secondary user (SU) selects a random subset of channels for sensing, detects an idle (unused by licensed users) subset therein, and transmits in any one of those detected idle channels. First, we derive a range for the number of channels to be sensed per SU. Based on that, the analytical average system throughput is derived in both saturation and non-saturation networks. Second, the relationship between the average system throughput and the number of sensing channels is attained. We show that the optimal number of sensed channel in a given number of SUs is dependent on the number of licensed channels, the number of idle channels, and the transmission probability of each SU. Finally, the analytical results are validated by substantial simulations.


Newly available data indicate that dams fragment the fluvial system of the continental United States and that their impact on river discharge is several times greater than impacts deemed likely as a result of global climate change. The 75,000 dams in the continental United States are capable of storing a volume of water almost equaling one year's mean runoff, but there is considerable geographic variation in potential surface water impacts. In some western mountain and plains regions, dams can store more than 3 year's runoff, while in the Northeast and Northwest, storage is as little as 25% of the annual runoff. Dams partition watersheds; the drainage area per dam varies from 44 km2 (17 miles2) per dam in New England to 811 km2 (313 miles2) per dam in the Lower Colorado basin. Storage volumes, indicators of general hydrologic effects of dams, range from 26,200 m3 km−2 (55 acre‐feet mile−2) in the Great Basin to 345,000 m3 km−2 (725 acre‐feet mile−2) in the South Atlantic region. The greatest river flow impacts occur in the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, and the arid Southwest, where storage is up to 3.8 times the mean annual runoff. The nation's dams store 5000 m3 (4 acre‐feet) of water per person. Water resource regions have experienced individualized histories of cumulative increases in reservoir storage (and thus of downstream hydrologic and ecologic impacts), but the most rapid increases in storage occurred between the late 1950s and the late 1970s. Since 1980, increases in storage have been relatively minor.


The evidence from individual cases and from cross-country analysis supports the view that globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor countries. To determine the effect of globalization on growth, poverty, and inequality, the authors first identify a group of developing countries that are participating more in globalization. China, India, and several other large countries are part of this group, so well over half the population of the developing world lives in these globalizing economies. Over the past 20 years, the post-1980 globalizers have seen large increases in trade and significant declines in tariffs. Their growth rates accelerated between the 1970s and the 1980s and again between the 1980s and the 1990s, even as growth in the rich countries and the rest of the developing world slowed. The post-1980 globalizers are catching up to the rich countries, but the rest of the developing world (the non-globalizers) is falling further behind. Next, the authors ask how general these patterns are, using regressions that exploit within-country variations in trade and growth. After controlling for changes in other policies and addressing endogeneity with internal instruments, they find that trade has a strong positive effect on growth. Finally, the authors examine the effects of trade on the poor. They find little systematic evidence of a relationship between changes in trade volumes (or any other measure of globalization they consider) and changes in the income share of the poorest-or between changes in trade volumes and changes in household income inequality. They conclude, therefore, that the increase in growth rates that accompanies expanded trade translates on average into proportionate increases in incomes of the poor. Absolute poverty in the globalizing developing economies has fallen sharply in the past 20 years. The evidence from individual cases and from cross-country analysis supports the view that globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor countries.


ABSTRACT Drowning is the commonest cause of injury-related deaths among under-five children worldwide, and 95% of deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where there are implementation gaps in the drowning prevention interventions. This article reviews common interventions for drowning prevention, introduces a framework for effective implementation of such interventions, and describes the Saving of Lives from Drowning (SoLiD) Project in Bangladesh, which is based on this framework. A review of the systematic reviews on drowning interventions was conducted, and original research articles were pulled and summarized into broad prevention categories. The implementation framework builds upon two existing frameworks and categorizes the implementing process for drowning prevention interventions into four phases: planning, engaging, executing, and evaluating. Eleven key characteristics are mapped in these phases. The framework was applied to drowning prevention projects that have been undertaken in some LMICs to illustrate major challenges to implementation. The implementation process for the SoLiD Project in Bangladesh is used as an example to illustrate the practical utilization of the framework. Drowning interventions, such as pool fencing and covering of water hazards, are effective in high-income countries; however, most of these interventions have not been tested in LMICs. The critical components of the four phases of implementing drowning prevention interventions may include: (i) planning—global funding, political will, scale, sustainability, and capacity building; (ii) engaging—coordination, involvement of appropriate individuals; (iii) executing—focused action, multisectoral actions, quality of execution; and (iv) evaluating—rigorous monitoring and evaluation. Some of the challenges to implementing drowning prevention interventions in LMICs include insufficient funds, lack of technical capacity, and limited coordination among stakeholders and implementers. The SoLiD Project in Bangladesh incorporates some of these lessons and key features of the proposed framework. The framework presented in this paper was a useful tool for implementing drowning prevention interventions in Bangladesh and may be useful for adaptation in drowning and injury prevention programmes of other LMIC settings.


Subjective language is used to express attitudes and opinions towards things, ideas and people. While content and topic centred natural language processing is now part of everyday life, analysis of subjective aspects of natural language have until recently been largely neglected by the research community. The explosive growth of personal blogs, consumer opinion sites and social network applications in the last years, have however created increased interest in subjective language analysis. This paper provides an overview of recent research conducted in the area.


Ferroelectric oxides, such as lead zirconate titanate, have proved invaluable due to their excellent dielectric and piezoelectric properties. These classes of materials possess a large electric polarization below the Curie temperature. Regions of the crystal lattice having different directions of polarization are separated by nano-scale interfaces known as domain walls. These interfaces, which can be moved by electric and mechanical fields, are not only important for electromechanical properties but they also exhibit unique structural and electronic properties that may be exploited through novel application in nanoelectronics and photovoltaics. The mobility of domain walls is strongly dependent on the defect chemistry of the material due to defect-domain wall interactions. Indeed, aliovalent doping of these materials has been used to tune the properties of ferroelectric oxides for specific applications. In this work, we investigate the origin of the so-called "hard" and "soft" behavior in lead zirconate titanate. Experimental evidence suggests that small concentrations of donor dopants (such as niobium) results in enhanced domain wall motion while doping with acceptor dopants (such as iron) leads to an inhibited domain wall response. The microscopic origin of this phenomena is best investigated using first-principles simulations of the atomistic properties of defects and domain wall in these materials to bring to light novel structural and electronic properties. First, we show that polar defect complexes are likely to exist in both acceptor-doped and undoped PbTiO3 . These defects and defect associates are attracted to 180o domain walls and cause pinning of such interfaces. Donor- doped materials, on the other hand, do not show the presence of polar defect complexes. A closer investigation of the 180o domain wall in PbTiO3 reveals the presence of a "Bloch" component of polarization at the domain wall. In other words, due to polarization rotation, there exists a ferroelectric phase within the domain wall itself. We characterize the strain dependence of this phenomena and calculate the piezoelectric properties of such domain walls. A complete study of domain walls in PbTiO3 also entails looking closer at the properties of the ferroelastic "head-to-tail" 90o domain boundary. We show the presence of an asymmetry in the variation of the lattice parameter across the domain wall. This asymmetry is verified using high resolution aberration corrected electron microscopy. We look at the energy landscape of oxygen vacancies in the vicinity of these walls to explain the pinning effect in terms of random-bond and random-field defects. Next we look at the electronic properties of the recently discovered charged domain walls. We characterize the band bending phenomena in 90o head-to-head and tail-to-tail domain wall in PbTiO3 . We then look at the long range effects of clusters of oxygen vacancies in BaTiO3; especially in terms of the formation of 180o tail-to-tail domain wall. In parallel to the first priciples work, we also prepared high quality samples of PZT 50/50 with different concentrations of donor dopant. We characterized the microstructure and hysteresis loops as a function of donor dopant concentration. Based on experimental observations and ab initio calculations we propose ideas on the origins of hardening and softening in PZT.


Author(s): Fu, TM; Jacob, DJ; Palmer, PI; Chance, K; Wang, YX; Barletta, B; Blake, DR; Stanton, JC; Pilling, MJ | Abstract: We use a continuous 6-year record (1996 - 2001) of GOME satellite measurements of formaldehyde (HCHO) columns over east and south Asia to improve regional emission estimates of reactive nonmethane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs), including isoprene, alkenes, HCHO, and xylenes. Mean monthly HCHO observations are compared to simulated HCHO columns from the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model using state-of-science, "bottom-up" emission inventories from Streets et al. (2003a) for anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions and Guenther et al. (2006) for biogenic emissions (MEGAN). We find that wintertime GOME observations can diagnose anthropogenic reactive NMVOC emissions from China, leading to an estimate 25% higher than Streets et al. (2003a). We attribute the difference to vehicular emissions. The biomass burning source for east and south Asia is almost 5 times the estimate of Streets et al. (2003a). GOME reveals a large source from agricultural burning in the North China Plain in June missing from current inventories. This source may reflect a recent trend toward in-field burning of crop residues as the need for biofuels diminishes. Biogenic isoprene emission in east and south Asia derived from GOME is 56 ± 30 Tg yr-1, similar to 52 Tg yr-1 from MEGAN. We find, however, that MEGAN underestimates emissions in China and overestimates emissions in the tropics. The higher Chinese biogenic and biomass burning emissions revealed by GOME have important implications for ozone pollution. We find 5 to 20 ppb seasonal increases in surface ozone in GEOS-Chem for central and northern China when using GOME-derived versus bottom-up emissions. Our methodology can be adapted for other regions of the world to provide top-down constraints on NMVOC emissions where multiple emission source types overlap in space and time. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.


This study reports age and geochemical analyses of basaltic rocks dredged from volcanic seamounts offshore SW Taiwan. 40Ar/39Ar dating results of these rocks show them to be of the early Miocene age of ~22 -21 Ma. They are evolved alkali basalts that show OIB-type geochemical features similar to post-spreading seamount basalts (14-3.5 Ma) in the South China Sea (SCS) and Miocene intraplate basalts on the Penghu Islands (16-8 Ma) and NW Taiwan (23-9 Ma). Their Sr-Nd-Pb isotope data plot within the range of the SCS seamount basalts that show an EM2-like component in the mantle source. The age and overall geochemical characteristics of the dredged basalts are comparable to those of the Kungkuan basalts, NW Taiwan and Baolai basalts, SW Taiwan, suggesting an extensive alkali basaltic volcanism along the southeastern Eurasian continental margin during the early Miocene that resulted from regional lithospheric extension in association with seafloor spreading in the South China Sea.


This article argues that the transcendence and immanence of God amplified in Christ should influence African believers' private and public ethics. It accomplishes this by engaging transcendence and immanence of God in the traditional African worldview. The African traditional worldview in many respects believes the transcendent God whose immanence is mediated by lesser spiritual intermediary powers. In responding to this view of God's transcendence and immanence, we discuss the amplified transcendence and immanence of God in the Adamic incarnational Christological model. This model argues that in the incarnation, God's transcendence and immanence is amplified by his assumption of our human mode of existence as the New Adam for our redemption. That is, even though God has always been transcendent and present within his creation before the incarnation, his immanence within humanity is amplified by God becoming man in and through Jesus Christ as the New Adam. The ascension of Jesus Christ does not diminish God's presence within Christians. God continues to have his personal presence within believers through the dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit among them. The transcendence and immanence of God (amplified in Christ) therefore is brought to bear in the private and public ethics of Christians. In contrast to the limited immanence of human beings, God's immanence is infinite. That is, there is nothing human beings can do which is outside of God's reach and knowledge. It is from this perspective that African Christians are encouraged to live lives conscious of the infinite-immanent God, who sees both their private and public lives. The private and public life of believers should resemble God's character and behaviour demonstrated by Jesus Christ, God incarnate, in his earthly ministry. Thus, the transcendence and immanence of God amplified in Christ influences African believers to live as the true ambassadors of Christ who exhibit exemplary ethical behaviour within the public sphere. The article reflects on the role of theological ethics in informing public ethics. As such it is theologically intradisciplinary but focusing on intertheological disciplines and their relationship to public space regarding ethics. It seeks to engage and influence public ethical behaviour in a context corruption and disregard of other human beings' entitlements. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article challenges the privatisation of Christianity to take a public role in order to influence the public. This approach contributes to shifting African Christians from being passive in the context of unethical behaviours to being active agents who influence the public. As such, it contributes to public, practical theology and public ethics.


Abstract: In search of the molecular mechanisms underlying the broad substrate and inhibitor specificities of butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE), we employed site‐directed mutagenesis to modify the catalytic triad residue Ser198, the acyl pocket Leu286 and adjacent Phe329 residues, and Met437 and Tyr440 located near the choline binding site. Mutant proteins were produced in microinjected Xenopus oocytes, and Km values towards butyrylthiocholine and IC50 values for the organophosphates diisopropylfluorophosphonate (DFP), diethoxyphosphinylthiocholine iodide (echothiophate), and tetraisopropylpyrophosphoramide (iso‐OMPA) were determined. Substitution of Ser198 by cysteine and Met437 by aspartate nearly abolished activity, and other mutations of Ser198 completely abolished it. Tyr440 and Leu286 mutants remained active, but with higher Km and IC50 values. Rates of inhibition by DFP were roughly parallel to IC50 values for several Leu286 mutants. Both Km and IC50 values increased for Leu286 mutants in the order Asp < Gln < Lys. In contrast, cysteine, leucine, and glutamine mutants of Phe329 displayed unmodified Km values toward butyrylthiocholine, but up to 10‐fold decreased IC50 values for DFP, iso‐OMPA, and echothiophate. These findings add Tyr440 and Phe329 to the list of residues interacting with substrate and ligands, demonstrate plasticity in the active site region of BuChE, and foreshadow the design of recombinant BuChEs with tailored scavenging properties.


Introduction: X-ray crystallography provides the majority of our structural biological knowledge at a molecular level and, in terms of pharmaceutical design, is a valuable tool to accelerate discovery. It is the premier technique in the field, but its usefulness is significantly limited by the need to grow well-diffracting crystals. It is for this reason that high-throughput crystallization has become a key technology that has matured over the past 10 years through the field of structural genomics. Areas covered : The authors describe their experiences in high-throughput crystallization screening in the context of structural genomics and the general biomedical community. They focus on the lessons learnt from the operation of a high-throughput crystallization-screening laboratory, which to date has screened over 12,500 biological macromolecules. They also describe the approaches taken to maximize the success while minimizing the effort. Through this, the authors hope that the reader will gain an insight into the efficient design of a laboratory and protocols to accomplish high-throughput crystallization on a single-, multiuser laboratory or industrial scale. Expert opinion : High-throughput crystallization screening is readily available but, despite the power of the crystallographic technique, getting crystals is still not a solved problem. High-throughput approaches can help when used skillfully; however, they still require human input in the detailed analysis and interpretation of results to be more successful.


Incorporating external knowledge sources effectively in conversations is a longstanding problem in open-domain dialogue research. The existing literature on open-domain knowledge selection is limited and makes certain brittle assumptions on knowledge sources to simplify the overall task, such as the existence of a single relevant knowledge sentence per context. In this work, we evaluate the existing state of open-domain conversation knowledge selection, showing where the existing methodologies regarding data and evaluation are flawed. We then improve on them by proposing a new framework for collecting relevant knowledge, and create an augmented dataset based on the Wizard of Wikipedia (WOW) corpus, which we call WOW++. WOW++ averages 8 relevant knowledge sentences per dialogue context, embracing the inherent ambiguity of open-domain dialogue knowledge selection. We then benchmark various knowledge ranking algorithms on this augmented dataset with both intrinsic evaluation and extrinsic measures of response quality, showing that neural rerankers that use WOW++ can outperform rankers trained on standard datasets.


The enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) mechanism of the IEEE 802.11e standard provides quality-of-service (QoS) support through service differentiation by using different medium-access-control (MAC) parameters for different stations. The configuration of these parameters, however, is still an open research challenge, as the standard provides only a set of fixed recommended values that do not take into account the current wireless local area network (WLAN) conditions and, therefore, lead to suboptimal performance. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for EDCA that, given the throughput and delay requirements of the stations that are present in the WLAN, computes the optimal configuration of the EDCA parameters. We first present a throughput and delay analysis that provides the mathematical foundation upon which our algorithm is based. This analysis is validated through simulations of different traffic sources (both data and real time) and EDCA configurations. We then propose a mechanism to derive the optimal configuration of the EDCA parameters, given a set of performance criteria for throughput and delay. We assess the effectiveness of the configuration provided by our algorithm by comparing it against 1) the recommended values by the standard, 2) the results from an exhaustive search over the parameter space, and 3) previous configuration proposals, which are both standard and nonstandard compliant. Results show that our configuration outperforms all other approaches.


Although the profit loss from business resulting from queueing systems is quite difficult to estimate, this paper presents a creative and effective approach to formulating balking loss as waiting cost. The number of balking customers is estimated as the balking index θ multiplied by the expected queue length Lq and the mean arrival rate in that planning period λ. Estimating balking loss enables the decision maker to determine the optimal number of servers by minimising total cost, including service cost and balking loss. The practicality and the incurred benefits of this approach were analysed by using collected data from a fast food restaurant, using the SIPP M/M/S:(FCFS/∞/∞) queueing model. The results showed that this approach is an effective tool for aiding managers in formulating the optimal staffing policies of service systems.


Historic earthquakes generated by the New Madrid seismic zone represent some of the largest recorded in the United States, yet prehistoric events are recognized only through deformation in late-Wisconsin to Holocene-age, near surface sediments (liquefaction, monoclinal folding, and changes in river meanders). In this article, we show that speleothems in caves of southwestern Illinois and southeastern Missouri may constitute a previously unrecognized recorder of large earthquakes in the U.S. midcontinent region. The timing of the initiation and regrowth of stalagmites in southwestern Illinois and southeastern Missouri caves is consistent with the historic and prehistoric record of several known seismic events in the U.S. midcontinent region. We conclude that dating the initiation of original stalagmite growth and later postearthquake rejuvenation constitutes a new paleoseismic method that has the potential for being applied to any region around the world in the vicinity of major seismic zones where caves exist. Use of this technique could expand the geographical distribution of paleoseimic data, document prehistoric earthquakes, and help improve interpretations of paleoearthquakes.


For twenty-two years Judge Richard S. Arnold was a central figure in the Little Rock school desegregation cases. For the reasons elaborated in this article, it is probably not an exaggeration to refer to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in these cases as the Arnold court. The most critical and controversial decisions concerning desegregation in Little Rock by the Eighth Circuit bear Arnold's signature, or at least reflect his significant influence. Arnold's last opinion in the Little Rock school cases, written a few months before his death in September 2004, signaled the close of nearly fifty years of federal court involvement. The particular resolution of the Little Rock school cases is largely attributable to the influence of this one judge, however one may assess the success or failure of the litigation to desegregate the Little Rock public schools. Arnold sat on twenty-eight appeals of school desegregation issues, and would write sixteen opinions in these cases, all but one (a concurrence and dissent in an en banc opinion) for the panel majority. These opinions were never simply a rubber stamp for district court actions. Although Arnold has been described as a powerful liberal-leaning intellectual, it is not easy to characterize Arnold as either a liberal or a conservative in the Little Rock desegregation cases. Arnold refused to order consolidation in a case that, to some at least, seemed appropriate under U.S. Supreme Court precedent at the time. Instead, he preferred a political solution in a state that had demonstrated political resistance in the past. Arnold's opinions in the Little Rock school cases generated both praise and criticism, but they exhibit a unifying theme. Arnold adopted a particular view of public law litigation and the role of parties in working out remedies for constitutional violations in institutional reform cases. He was familiar with academic writing on the subject, in particular the work of Abram Chayes and Owen Fiss. Both wrote about what was then the relatively new phenomena of institutional reform class actions, pointing out that this public law litigation bore little resemblance to the traditional dispute-resolution model of judicial decision-making. Richard Arnold's synthesis was driven largely by pragmatism. What emerges is Arnold's strong preference for settlement by the parties rather than court-imposed constitutional criteria. This article suggests how Arnold's motivations related to both his particular view of the limitations of public law litigation and his own personal history.


Climate change, dwindling reserves of fossil fuels and shortage of electricity have prompted the government to give an impetus to renewable energy sources. Wind energy, with an average growth rate of 30%, is the fastest growing source of renewable energy in the world. India has a potential capacity of over 45,000 MW out of which 1869 MW has been extracted from this eco-friendly source. India stands at fifth position in the world in wind energy development. Policy initiatives and fiscal initiatives for realisation of the estimated potential already exist. This paper discusses an overview of wind assessment, monitoring, development and environmental impact in India. Financial interventions and state policies on commercialisation are also presented with a view to identifying the barriers for further commercialisation.


Traditional taxonomy in biology assumes that life is organized in a simple tree. Attempts to classify microorganisms in this way in the genomics era led microbiologists to look for finite sets of 'core' genes that uniquely group taxa as clades in the tree. However, the diversity revealed by large-scale whole genome sequencing is calling into question the long-held model of a hierarchical tree of life, which leads to questioning of the definition of a species. Large-scale studies of microbial genome diversity reveal that the cumulative number of new genes discovered increases with the number of genomes studied as a power law and subsequently leads to the lack of evidence for a unique core genome within closely related organisms. Sampling 'enough' new genomes leads to the discovery of a replacement or alternative to any gene. This power law behaviour points to an underlying self-organizing critical process that may be guided by mutation and niche selection. Microbes in any particular niche exist within a local web of organism interdependence known as the microbiome. The same mechanism that underpins the macro-ecological scaling first observed by MacArthur and Wilson also applies to microbial communities. Recent metagenomic studies of a food microbiome demonstrate the diverse distribution of community members, but also genotypes for a single species within a more complex community. Collectively, these results suggest that traditional taxonomic classification of bacteria could be replaced with a quasispecies model. This model is commonly accepted in virology and better describes the diversity and dynamic exchange of genes that also hold true for bacteria. This model will enable microbiologists to conduct population-scale studies to describe microbial behaviour, as opposed to a single isolate as a representative.


This thesis reports research undertaken to address the deficiencies that existing standardised cryptographic constructs exhibit when securing packet mode wireless communication in WSN. The aim of the research is to devise innovative cryptographic frameworks, which will facilitate design and implementation of light-weight symmetric cryptographic modular constructs. Four cryptographic frameworks have been devised and block cipher based light-weight constructs using the frameworks have been designed and benchmarked against contemporary standard constructs. The constructs introduced in this dissertation, proved to be better suited to providing secure packet mode data communication, in applications utilising wireless networks consisting of characteristically constrained nodes. The four proposed frameworks are:

- The Zone-based framework for data packet integrity and authentication security services is proposed and described. The Quicker Block Chaining (QBC) family of message authentication constructs designed using the framework, are shown, via software simulation, to operate with better efficiency (i.e. uses fewer instruction cycles) than similar contemporary standard constructs and with a comparable level of security.

- The Hybrid Encryption Mode (HEM) framework for data packet confidentiality security service is proposed and described. The HEM framework facilitated the design of constructs that provide probabilistic, randomising and tweakable encryption.

- The Joint Cypher Mode (JCM) framework for authenticated encryption with associated-data (AEAD) security service is proposed and described. The range of constructs designed using the JCM framework, are shown, via software simulation and practical deployment, to Design and Analysis of Light-weight Symmetric Cryptographic Frameworks and Constructs for Secure Packet Mode Wireless Communication operate with better efficiency (i.e. uses fewer instruction cycles) than contemporary standard constructs.

- The Joint Authenticated Combined Mode (JACM) framework for authenticate authenticated-encryption with associated-data (AAEAD) security service is proposed and described. The new AAEAD secure packet paradigm addresses a limitation and cryptographic protection failure of the standardised AEAD secure packet paradigm, in communication scenarios when untrustworthy intermediary forwarding nodes are utilised to authenticate and relay packets.

The outcomes of the research undertaken are relevant to practitioners and cryptographic engineers that require symmetric cryptographic light-weight constructs for providing secure packet mode communications. It is shown that the resulting light-weight symmetric cryptographic constructs are better suited to providing secure packet mode wireless networked communication.


PURPOSE
Although remission is the ultimate measure of seizure control in epilepsy, and epilepsy syndrome should largely determine this outcome, little is known about the relative importance of syndrome versus other factors traditionally examined as predictors of remission or of relapse after remission. The purpose of this study was to examine remission and relapse with respect to the epilepsy syndrome and other factors traditionally considered with respect to seizure outcome.

METHODS
A prospectively identified cohort of 613 children with newly diagnosed epilepsy was assembled and is actively being followed to determine seizure outcomes. Epilepsy syndrome and etiology were classified at diagnosis and again 2 years later. Remission was defined as 2 years completely seizure-free, and relapse as the recurrence of seizures after remission. Multivariable analysis was performed with the Cox proportional hazards model.

RESULTS
Five hundred ninety-four of the original 613 children were followed > or = 2 years (median follow-up, 5 years). Remission occurred in 442 (74%), of whom 107 (24%) relapsed. On multivariable analysis, idiopathic generalized syndromes and age at onset between 5 and 9 years were associated with a substantially increased remission rate, whereas remote symptomatic etiology, family history of epilepsy, seizure frequency, and slowing on the initial EEG were associated with a decreased likelihood of attaining remission. Young onset age (<1 year) and seizure type were not important after adjustment for these predictors. Relapses occurred more often in association with focal slowing on the initial EEG and with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. Benign rolandic epilepsy and age at onset <1 year were associated with markedly lower risks of relapse. About one fourth of relapses were apparently spontaneous while the child was taking medication with good compliance, and more than half occurred in children who were tapering or had fully stopped medication.

CONCLUSIONS
A large proportion of children with epilepsy remit. Symptomatic etiology, family history, EEG slowing, and initial seizure frequency negatively influence, and age 5-9 years and idiopathic generalized epilepsy positively influence the probability of entering remission. Factors that most influence relapse tend to be different from those that influence remission.


This article suggests some theoretical adjustments to Clarkson's (1991) work on groups and specifically to her correlation of Berne's (1963) work on group imagoes with Tuckman's (1965) work on stages of group development. The author suggests two additional phases of an individual's subjective experience of groups—the secondarily operative group imago and the historical group imago—as well as a realignment of Clarkson's (1991) own addition of the clarified group imago in order to offer a more consistent reading across the two models offered by Berne and Tuckman. The two additions as well as the complete developmental sequence are illustrated with three case examples. The author suggests that, while Berne's and Tuckman's two models represent different approaches to science, together they offer a comprehensive understanding of group development as well as individual development in and through the group.