The aim of this research is to investigate the main weaknesses of the banking sector in Montenegro and, more generally, in Central and Eastern Europe. By contributing to the understanding of banking sector fragility, we seek to help regulatory authorities craft more effective regulations and policy interventions in order to minimize the costs that could arise from banking instability. The review of previous research suggests that an increase in the incidence of non-performing loans indicates increasing fragility of the banking sector and/or the lack of efficient banking supervision. Thus, the ratio of non-performing loans is taken as the key indicator of banking vulnerability. To examine the determinants of non-performing loans we use data at the individual bank level. We investigate whether in these countries the ratio of non-performing loans is driven predominantly by macroeconomic developments (i.e. similar factors to those recognized in the theory of financial crises) or by transition-specific factors, such as inadequate risk-assessments, the high risk appetite of banks' management and the high concentration in the banking sector. This empirical analysis initially focuses on the sensitivity of the ratio of non-performing loans to macroeconomic and bank-specific factors in Montenegro. Subsequently, the analysis is extended to Central and East European countries. Bearing in mind the large presence of foreign banks in these countries, a particular feature of this analysis is that non-performing loans are modelled to capture differences between banks based on ownership structure. In order to account for time persistence in the structure of non-performing loans, a dynamic panel approach is used. However, in the Montenegrin model, given that the lack of cross sectional units precludes GMM Estimators, we investigate the use of FE estimation adjusted to take account of dynamic misspecification. The empirical findings suggest that strong performance in the real economy results in a lower ratio of non-performing loans but there is also a significant positive effect of past rapid loans growth in the second year after the end of the credit boom. The latter finding suggests that aggressive lending coincides with more reckless risk taking. Moreover, the empirical evidence suggests that some bank-specific features, which reflect banks' management policies, affect the evolution of non-performing loans. The multi-national study suggests that foreign banks are likely to have lower ratios of non-performing loans. Based on our findings, regulatory authorities should expand their monitoring framework to include both macroeconomic and bank-specific indicators when assessing the stability of the banking system. In addition, regulators should be more concerned about any loosening of bank lending criteria in an upturn, since our results suggest a delayed effect of loans growth on the incidence of non-performing loans.


Dioxins are fat-soluble environmental pollutants that disrupt the endocrine system of humans (see Harper). The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) binds dioxins; interacts with the AhR nuclear-translocator protein (ARNT) and sex hormone steroid receptors, such as estrogen receptor α (ERα) and androgen receptor (AR); and promotes hormone-independent transcriptional activation. In addition, dioxins also inhibit sex steroid signaling, and Ohtake et al. show that one mechanism for this inhibition is by promoting the proteasome-mediated degradation of the steroid hormone receptors. Exposure of mammary tumor cells (MCF-7) or prostate cancer cells (LNCaP) to various dioxin chemicals decreased the abundance of ERα or AR, respectively. Ubiquitinated ERα was detectable in MCF-7 cells treated with dioxin and in which the proteasome was inhibited. Five dioxin-induced flag-tagged AhR-containing complexes were isolated from HeLa cells, and the "B" complex also contained ubiquitinated components. Complex B, which the authors name CUL4BAhR, contained the ubiquitin ligase components cullin 4B (CUL4B), damaged DNA binding protein (DDB1), and Rbx1; the proteasomal 19S regulatory particle; ARNT; transducin-β-like 3 (TBL3); and ligand-bound AhR. The complete complex was only formed in the presence of AhR dioxin ligand (in vivo detected by coimmunoprecipitation and in vitro by assembly of isolated constituents). The E3 ubiquitin ligase activity of CUL4BAhR for ERα required dioxin but did not require estrogen. When components of CUL4BAhR were knocked down, dioxin-induced ubiquitination and degradation of ERα were diminished. Injection of dioxin into mice reduced ERα (females) or AR (males) abundance regardless of whether sex steroids were present or absent. Dioxin had no effect in mice deficient for AhR. Thus, AhR appears to trigger the formation of a ligand-induced E3 ubiquitin ligase complex, with AhR serving as the substrate adaptor allowing this complex to target sex steroid receptors. This ligand-dependent E3 ubiquitin ligase is similar to that seen in plants for the auxin receptor, and it will be interesting to see whether there are endogenous ligands for AhR that trigger the formation of this CUL4BAhR E3 ubiquitin ligase. F. Ohtake, A. Baba, I. Takada, M. Okada, K. Iwasaki, H. Miki, S. Takahashi, A. Kouzmenko, K. Nohara, T. Chiba, Y. Fujii-Kuriyama, S. Kato, Dioxin receptor is a ligand-dependent E3 ubiquitin ligase. Nature 446, 562-566 (2007). [PubMed] J. W. Harper, A degrading solution to pollution. Nature 446, 499-500 (2007). [PubMed]


This thesis focuses on recent disputes between Canada and the United States about appropriate policies for free trade in cultural goods. It argues that the Canadian and American positions on free trade and culture can best be understood as normative positions, stemming from different perceptions of the nature of culture, the role of culture in social relations, the appropriate criteria for 'good' public policy, and the ideal relationship between culture and free trade. In this context, the relative validity of the different approaches to trade and culture is presented as a choice between competing values, the analysis of which is most appropriately located within the broad tradition of political theories of justice. On this basis, the thesis critically engages with the two positions (free trade and cultural protectionism), drawing out their ethics and showing the ways in which they can only partially comprehend the moral relevance of culture. The thesis takes the position that a normatively justifiable approach to culture and trade is one that begins from the ontological primacy of culture in the constitution of identity. This starting point is developed by drawing on the work of Charles Taylor. He rejects an atomist social ontology and develops instead a theory of identity as inseparable from qualitative judgements of worth. In turn, such judgements make no sense outside of a 'background language' that itself can only be developed in dialogue. As the thesis notes, Taylor's work presents numerous problems. However, his ontology can nonetheless be taken as a starting point for an analysis of culture and trade. Building on Taylor's theory, the thesis draws on Iris Marion Young's work on social justice to develop an ethics which is founded in respect for other cultural forms. This ethics stresses social equality, but broadens it beyond distributive concerns to include primarily the 'full participation and inclusion of everyone in society's major institutions, and the socially supported substantive opportunity for all to develop and exercise their capacities and realize their choices' (1990, p. 173). On this basis, the thesis makes specific suggestions for the revision of Canadian magazines policy.


ABSTRACT Research question: The purpose of this paper is to create knowledge on board-selection processes and their outcomes in terms of board composition. We address two research questions: (1) What evaluative criteria are at play in board-selection processes; and (2) what hierarchies of criteria are formed when evaluative criteria are ranked? The significance of the study lies in contemporary considerations of good governance, in sport members' (un)equal access to positions of power, and in how issues of representation relate to the legitimacy of sport governance systems and to broader societal patterns of representation, influence, and democracy. Research methods: Nomination committees are increasingly used worldwide to further good governance in sport organizations. Our analysis builds on interviews with representatives of 61 out of 71 Swedish national sport organizations' nomination committees. Results and Findings: Our study shows that trade-offs are made not between gender and merit, as previously suggested, but between and among a wide variety of representation criteria and a wide variety of efficiency criteria. We show how tensions between criteria result in trade-offs that imply a ranking of criteria into seven types of hierarchies, only one of which prioritizes a representation-based board composition. Implications: Because rankings of multiple evaluative criteria impact any single criterion of interest (e.g. gender), future studies should take into account the range of evaluative criteria at play. For sport management and policy practitioners alike, we provide a tool to understand and address (in)adequate representation but also an imperative to consider the meaning of adequate representation.


The structural, electronic and phonon properties of the LaP and LaAs compounds in NaCl (B1) and CsCl (B2) structures are studied by means of density functional theory within the generalized gradient approximation. The calculated lattice constants, static bulk modulus and first-order pressure derivative of the bulk modulus are reported in both B1 and B2 structures and compared with previous experimental and theoretical calculations. Band structure and density of states calculations are carried out for LaP and LaAs. Then, a linear-response approach to the density functional theory is used to derive the phonon frequencies and density of states.


CONTEXT
The development of thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO) is associated with self-immune dysfunction. Recent findings in TAO and Graves' disease indicate that IL-17A may also be involved in the autoimmunity of TAO.

OBJECTIVE
We sought to investigate the pathogenic function of IL-17A-producing T cells in TAO.

DESIGN/SETTING/PARTICIPANTS
Blood samples and orbital fibroblasts (OFs) were collected from TAO patients and healthy subjects.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Flow cytometry, real-time PCR, cytokine-specific ELISA, and Western blotting were performed.

RESULTS
Here, we showed a significantly higher proportion of IL-17A-producing T cells in TAO patients and the recruitment of both CD4(+) and CD8(+) T cells in TAO orbits. TAO orbital tissues expressed more IL-17A receptor, IL-17A, and its related cytokines, with severe fibrotic change compared with normal controls. Furthermore, we validated that IL-17A could enhance the proinflammatory function of OFs and stimulate the production of extracellular matrix proteins in OFs but not eyelid fibroblasts. The mechanisms involved in this enhancement mainly relied on MAPK activation. Finally, we observed that the deubiquitinase inhibitor vialinin A could down-regulate retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor-γt expression and decrease IL-17A level in TAO patients.

CONCLUSION
Our observations illustrate the potential pathogenic role of IL-17A-producing T cells in the inflammatory response and fibrosis of TAO. The effect of vialinin A on the reduction of retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor-γt level implicates its potential role as a novel therapeutic agent for TAO and other autoimmune disorders in the future.


Agriculture and rural life in the Middle East have gone through several changes in the past few decades. The region is characterized by high population growth, urbanization, and water scarcity, which poses a challenge to maintaining food security and production. This paper investigates agricultural and rural challenges in the Duhok governorate of Iraqi Kurdistan from biophysical, political, and socio-economic perspectives. Satellite data is used to study land use and productivity, while a review of government policies and interview data show the perspectives of the government and the local population. Our results reveal that these perspectives are not necessarily in line with each other, nor do they correspond well with the biophysical possibilities. While the government has been trying to increase agricultural productivity, satellite data show that yields have been declining since 2000. Furthermore, a lack of services in rural areas is driving people to cities to seek better opportunities, which means that the local population's incentive to increase agricultural activity is low. Governmental plans suggest land extensification to increase production and self-sufficiency, but the land use classification shows little available land. Instead, we recommend supporting small-scale traditional agriculture development as a more sustainable and feasible alternative. Additionally, more resources need to be focused on improving rural infrastructure and services to increase access to education and health care as a means of gaining support from the local population.


Summary In Central Western France, as in many other areas, traditional apiculture has been replaced by more intensive practices to compensate for colony losses and current decreasing honey yields. One neglected aspect concerns the choice by professional beekeepers of apiary sites in intensive agrosystems, with regard to landscape features, a choice which appears to be largely empirical. ECOBEE is a colony monitoring scheme specifically intended to provide beekeepers and researchers with basic ecological data on honeybees in intensive agrosystems, as well as colony population dynamics. ECOBEE was launched in 2008 as a long-term ecological project with three specific aims: 1. to monitor seasonal and inter-annual population dynamic parameters of honeybee colonies in a heterogeneous farming system; 2. to provide relevant and robust datasets to test specific hypotheses about bees such as the influence of landscape planning, agricultural inputs or human pressure; and 3. to offer opportunities for assessing the effectiveness of agro-environmental schemes or the effects of changes in agricultural policies on honey bee wellbeing. Here we present an overview of ECOBEE, the type of datasets collected over the first four years of monitoring, and their possible application and use. We found that colony dynamics were largely influenced by the phenology of the main mass-flowering crops foraged by bees, namely oilseed rape and sunflowers. Furthermore, we detected a sharp food shortage period in late spring between the flowering of oilseed rape and sunflowers, possibly temporarily constraining colony sustainability. We further discuss the research perspectives offered by ECOBEE, especially with regard to spatial ecotoxicology.


Electroreception is an ancient sense found in many aquatic animals, including sharks, which may be used in the detection of prey, predators and mates. Wobbegong sharks (Orectolobidae) and angel sharks (Squatinidae) represent two distantly related families that have independently evolved a similar dorso-ventrally compressed body form to complement their benthic ambush feeding strategy. Consequently, these groups represent useful models in which to investigate the specific morphological and physiological adaptations that are driven by the adoption of a benthic lifestyle. In this study, we compared the distribution and abundance of electrosensory pores in the spotted wobbegong shark (Orectolobus maculatus) with the Australian angel shark (Squatina australis) to determine whether both species display a similar pattern of clustering of sub-dermal electroreceptors and to further understand the functional importance of electroreception in the feeding behaviour of these benthic sharks. Orectolobus maculatus has a more complex electrosensory system than S. australis, with a higher abundance of pores and an additional cluster of electroreceptors positioned in the snout (the superficial ophthalmic cluster). Interestingly, both species possess a cluster of pores (the hyoid cluster, positioned slightly posterior to the first gill slit) more commonly found in rays, but which may be present in all benthic elasmobranchs to assist in the detection of approaching predators.


Much of the existing literature employing the framework of controversy focuses on the science-policy interface. However a clear gap exists regarding the way(s) in which controversy may fundamentally shape the production of scientific knowledge itself. This research uses the debate about climate change as a case study to understand the impact of controversy on the production of scientific knowledge, focusing in particular on the interrelated elements of scientific practice and the agency of individual scientists. Based on 63 research interviews with climate scientists, 'sceptical voices' about climate change and others, it finds that whereas the majority of climate scientists do not consider sceptical voices to have an impact on scientific practice, the vast majority do identify impacts on scientific agency. The predominant type of agency-related impact is increased caution, followed by disruption, a greater focus on communication, defensiveness and reluctance to publicly engage. It is argued that scientists' ability to distinguish between impacts on agency and practice is both a performative expression of Gieryn's (1999) notion of boundary work and a function of controversy, with the greater the impact of controversy, the less fluid and contingent the boundary between the two. Boundary work is thus a more active and explicit process under conditions of public scientific controversy, as scientists work to ensure the independence and unassailability of their cognitive authority in contested domains. Potential implications for epistemological norms and the social value of science are also identified.


We report recent mapping of Spiess Ridge with the Hawaii-MR1 sidescan sonar. Spiess Ridge is an unusual elongate 90 by 50 km volcanic feature on the slow spreading Southwest Indian Ridge near the Bouvet hotspot. The northwest half of the ridge has a narrow ∼7-km neovolcanic zone in MR1 sonar images and a simple magnetic anomaly sequence including possible anomalies C1n and C2n. In contrast, the southeast half shows extrusive volcanism over >40 km with distributed eruption sites, a broadened central magnetic anomaly with no anomaly C2n, and a volcanic ridge radiating from the summit of Spiess Ridge, oblique to the spreading orthogonal trend. The images show no evidence for large-offset normal faults or an axial rift valley typical of slow spreading ridges. Overall, Spiess Ridge has an appearance very unlike that of either fast or slow spreading ridges and more transitional between a spreading ridge and a seamount. We compare the morphology of Spiess Ridge to other large volcanic structures in oceanic rifts. Spiess Ridge and Bouvet Island represent localized zones of excess melting along the Southwest Indian Ridge and we discuss their origin in the light of current ideas on ridge-hotspot interaction.


Objectives To compare the proportion of stage I lung cancer and population mortality in China to those in U.S. and Europe where lung cancer screening by low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) has been already well practiced. Methods The proportions of stage I lung cancer in LDCT screening population in U.S. and Europe were retrieved from NLST and NELSON trials. The general proportion of stage I lung cancer in China was retrieved from a rapid meta-analysis, based on a literature search in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure database. The lung cancer mortality and prevalence of China, U.S. and Europe was retrieved from Globocan 2012 fact sheet. Mortality-to-prevalence ratio (MPR) was applied to compare the population survival outcome of lung cancer. Results The estimated proportion of stage I lung cancer in China is merely 20.8% among hospital-based cross-sectional population, with relative ratios (RRs) being 2.40 (95% CI 2.18–2.65) and 2.98 (95% CI 2.62–3.38) compared by LDCT-screening population in U.S. and Europe trials, respectively. MPR of lung cancer is as high as 58.9% in China, with RRs being 0.46 (95% CI 0.31–0.67) and 0.58 (95% CI 0.39–0.85) compared by U.S. and Europe, respectively. Conclusions By the epidemiological inference, the LDCT mass screening might be associated with increasing stage I lung cancer and therefore improving population survival outcome. How to translate the experiences of lung cancer screening by LDCT from developed counties to China in a cost-effective manner needs to be further investigated.


Author(s): Park, Hyun-chul | Advisor(s): Rodwell, Mark J. W. | Abstract: With the development of (sub) THz transistor technologies, high speed integrated circuits up to sub-THz frequencies are now feasible. These high speed and wide bandwidth ICs can improve the performance of optical components, coherent optical fiber communication, and imaging systems. In current optical systems, electrical ICs are used primarily as driving amplifiers for optical modulators, and in receiver chains including TIAs, AGCs, LPFs, ADCs and DSPs. However, there are numerous potential applications in optics using high speed ICs, and different approaches may be required for more efficient, compact and flexible optical systems.This dissertation will discuss three different approaches for optical components and communication systems using high speed ICs: a homodyne optical phase locked loop (OPLL), a heterodyne OPLL, and a new WDM receiver architecture.The homodyne OPLL receiver is designed for short-link optical communication systems using coherent modulation for high spectral efficiency. The phase-locked coherent receiver can recover the transmitted data without requiring complex back-end digital signal processing to recover the phase of the received optical carrier. The main components of the homodyne OPLL are a photonic IC (PIC), an electrical IC (EIC), and a loop filter. One major challenge in OPLL development is loop bandwidth; this must be of order 1 GHz in order for the loop to adequately track and suppress the phase fluctuations of the locked laser, yet a 1 GHz loop bandwidth demands small (l100 ps) propagation delays if the loop is to be stable. Monolithic integration of the high-speed loop components into one electrical and one photonic IC decreases the total loop delay. We have designed and demonstrated an OPLL with a compact size of 10 × 10 mm2, stably operating with a loop bandwidth of 1.1 GHz, a loop delay of 120 ps, a pull-in time of 0.55 μs and lock time of l10 ns. The coherent receiver can receive 40 Gb/s BPSK data with a bit error rate (BER) of l10-7, and operates up to 35 Gb/s with BER 10-12.The thesis also describes heterodyne OPLLs. These can be used to synthesize optical wavelengths of a broad bandwidth (optical wavelength synthesis) with narrow linewidth and with fast frequency switching. There are many applications of such narrow linewidth optical signal sources, including low phase noise mm-wave and THz-signal sources, wavelength-division-multiplexed optical transmitters, and coherent imaging and sensor systems. The heterodyne OPLL also has the same stability issues (loop delay and sensitivity) as the homodyne OPLL. In the EIC, a single sideband mixer operating using digital design principles (DSSBM) enables precisely controlled sweeping of the frequency of the locked laser, with control of the sign of the frequency offset. The loop's phase and frequency difference detector (PFD) uses digital design techniques to make the OPLL loop parameters only weakly sensitive to optical signal levels or optical or electrical component gains. The heterodyne OPLL operates stably with a loop bandwidth of 550 MHz and loop delay of l200 ps. An initial OPLL design exhibited optical frequency (wavelength) synthesis from -6 GHz to -2 GHz and from 2 GHz to 9 GHz. An improved OPLL reached frequency tuning up to 25 GHz. The homodyne OPLL exhibits -110 dBc/Hz phase noise at 10 MHz offset and -80 dBc/Hz at 5 kHz offset.Finally, the thesis describes a new WDM receiver architecture using broadband electrical ICs. In the proposed WDM receiver, a set of received signals at different optical wavelengths are mixed against a single optical local oscillator. This mixing converts the WDM channels to electrical signals in the receiver photocurrent, with each WDM signal being converted to an RF sub-carrier of different frequency. An electrical IC then separately converts each sub-carrier signal to baseband using single-sideband mixers and quadrature local oscillators. The proposed receiver needs less complex hardware than the arrays of wavelength-sensitive receivers now used for WDM, and can readily adjust to changes in the WDM channel frequencies. The proposed WDM receiver concept was demonstrated through several system experiments. Image rejection of greater than 25 dB, adjacent channel suppression of greater than 20 dB, operation with gridless channels, and six-channel data reception at a total 15 Gb/s (2.5 Gb/s BPSK × 6-channels) were demonstrated.


The genes encoding three lipoproteins of Vibrio cholerae were identified by a combination of DNA sequence analysis and [3H]palmitate labeling of hybrid proteins encoded by TnphoA gene fusions. The expression of these three lipoproteins, TagA, AcfD, and TcpC, was controlled by ToxR, the cholera toxin transcriptional activator. The involvement of other bacterial lipoproteins in conferring resistance to the bactericidal effects of complement prompted us to examine this possibility in V. cholerae. Remarkably, mutations in toxR and tcp genes (including tcpC), involved in the biogenesis of the toxin coregulated pili, rendered V. cholerae about 10(4)-10(6) times more sensitive to the vibriocidal activity of antibody and complement. Since V. cholerae is a noninvasive organism and toxR and tcp mutants are highly defective in intestinal colonization in animals and humans, these results raise the possibility that resistance to a gut-associated, "complement-like" bactericidal activity may be a major virulence determinant of V. cholerae and other enterobacterial species.


Introduction: Postoperative shivering is one of the common problems following general anesthesia and may lead to multiple complications. This study aimed to compare the impact of Ketamine and Pethidine on postoperative shivering. Methods: In a randomized clinical trial, one hundred and thirty-five patients undergoing elective abdominal surgery were recruited for the study. The patients were randomly divided to groups received Normal Saline, Ketamine or Pethidine at the end of surgery. The frequency of shivering was determined immediately after surgery, and at 10. 20. And 30 minutes, postoperatively. Results: In zero time the rate of shivering was more severe than other times in the three groups. Also the rate of postoperative shivering was significance less different in the pethedine and Ketamine groups than the Normal Saline group. However, no significant difference was seen between the pethedine and Ketamine groups. Conclusions: The result of this study showed that exactly after operation, the rate of postoperative shivering was more severe than other times in 3 groups. Ketamine and Pethidine might reduce postoperative shivering with no significant difference.


Microstrip antenna plays a vital role in wide range of communication systems applications. microstrip antenna is the equipment connecting two are more devices by means of wireless connecting medium. in this manuscript, rectangular patch with circular slot antenna is presented, for ku band applications. Analysis of proposed antenna is carried out on HFSS 13.0 Simulator. Proposed antenna is designed on FR4 Epoxy substrate. The experimental result confirms the proposed antenna operates over the frequency of 13.99GHz to 16.61GHz with the impedance bandwidth of 18.3%.far field of proposed radiator are stable and confirms its better performance in this frequency range.


Abstract. The response of a case of thin, warm marine-boundary-layer (MBL) clouds to preindustrial (PI) and present-day (PD) conditions is simulated by a cloud-system resolving model (CSRM). Here, both the aerosol conditions and environmental conditions match those of a general circulation model (GCM). The environmental conditions are characterized by the initial condition and the large-scale forcings of humidity and temperature, as well as the surface fluxes. The response of the CSRM is compared to that simulated by the GCM. The percentage increase of liquid-water path (LWP) due to a change from the PI to PD conditions is ~3 times larger in the CSRM than that in the GCM due to the formation of cumulus clouds. The formation of cumulus clouds is controlled by a larger increase in the surface latent-heat (LH) flux in the PD environment than in the PI environment rather than by the change in aerosols. However, the aerosol increase from the PI to PD level determines the LWP response in the stratocumulus clouds, while the impacts of changes in environmental conditions are negligible for stratocumulus clouds. The conversion of cloud liquid to rain through autoconversion and accretion plays a negligible role in the CSRM in the response to aerosols, whereas it plays a role that is as important as condensation in the GCM. Also, it is notable that the explicit simulation of microphysics in the CSRM leads to a smaller LWP in the CSRM than that in the GCM using heavily parameterized microphysics for stratocumulus clouds. The smaller LWP in the CSRM is closer to an observed LWP than the LWP in the GCM for stratocumulus clouds. Supplementary simulations show that increasing aerosols increase the sensitivity of the cloud responses to the PI and PD environmental conditions. They also show that aerosol effects on clouds depend on the cloud type. The LWP of warm cumulus clouds is more sensitive to aerosols than that of stratocumulus clouds.


In everyday life, and particularly in the modern workplace, information technology and automation increasingly mediate, augment, and sometimes even interfere with how humans interact with their environment. How to understand and support cognition in human-technology interaction is both a practically and socially relevant problem. The chapters in this volume frame this problem in adaptive terms: How are behavior and cognition adapted, or perhaps ill-adapted, to the demands and opportunities of an environment where interaction is mediated by tools and technology? The authors draw heavily on the work of Egon Brunswik, a pioneer in ecological and cognitive psychology, as well as on modern refinements and extensions of Brunswikian ideas, including Hammond's Social Judgment Theory, Gigerenzer's Ecological Rationality and Anderson's Rational Analysis. Inspired by Brunswik's view of cognition as "coming to terms" with the "casual texture" of the external world, the chapters in this volume provide quantitative and computational models and measures for studying how people come to terms with an increasingly technological ecology, and provide insights for supporting cognition and performance through design, training, and other interventions. The methods, models, and measures presented in this book provide timely and important resources for addressing problems in the rapidly growing field of human-technology interaction. The book will be of interest to researchers, students, and practitioners in human factors, cognitive engineering, human-computer interaction, judgment and decision making, and cognitive science.Please visit this website for additional materials:http://www.humanfactors.illinois.edu/resources/OtherResourses/LensModel.aspx


If the core mortgage lending functions, loan servicing has been automated the most. Mortgage servicing systems have been available since the mid 1970s, either through in-house implementation or by service bureau contract. As figure 1 shows, essentially all (97.3%) loan servicers have automated their operations (90.5% of commercial banks respondents service mortgages and 98.1% of these are automated.) There has been widespread automation of servicing since 1992. Loan origination and secondary marketing systems, however, are not so common. Approximately one in five mortgage firms operates without a loan production system today, down from one in two, in 1988. Since then, the proportion of first-time users of origination systems has grown, on average per year. Conversely, secondary marketing automation has declined since 1994. This may reflect sellers increased use of investors' automated underwriting systems, which also automate secondary marketing. Only 50% of all originators, and 40% of commercial banks have automated secondary marketing. This indicates that loan sales decisions are quite often being made without formal decision support. This is somewhat surprising given that 91% of all originators (93.7% of which are commercial banks) sell loans on the secondary market. Of these, 16% of the group (and 15% of commercial banks) sell their entire portfolio to one or another of the government-sponsored housing finance agencies. These companies, essentially correspondents of the agencies, do not require systems support to analyze best execution for loan sales. Among the other 84% of sellers, 51.2% lack an automated secondary marketing system. They are selling to competing investors without the benefit of a system for comparing pricing and sales execution. The relative lack of decision support technology underlies our conclusion that the industry is broadening its use of technology, but not necessarily using it to the greatest advantage. If the mortgage industry is falling short in its employment of technology the explanation might partly be found in lenders' attitudes toward technology. Since the first MORTECH survey was fielded in 1988, there have been clear signals that lenders have come to regard technology as more important to their businesses than they used to. The reevaluation, however, is far from complete. Figure two (on the next page) shows that, today, slightly more than 20% of mortgage players characterize their technology use as strategic. Even this smallish proportion represents a doubling (since 1988) of those who invest in technology to improve their business position. The problem is that the balance of the industry remains consumed by day-to-day pressures and takes an operational view of technology. They report funding technology on an asneeded basis. (MORTECH asked respondents to describe their technology attitude as "strategic", "tactical," or "operational," correlating, in MORTECH's view, with a long-term, mid-term, or short-term focus, respectively. However, surveyors left the terms open to respondents' own definitions.) TECHNOLOGY OBJECTIVES While technology is becoming more widely recognized as critical to business success, its implementation severely lags its perceived importance. We find that only 5.0% of lenders perceive themselves as being at the leading edge in applying technology. This suggests lenders must (1) update their technology and (2) use their existing technology more effectively. Asked what their major technology objective is, a third of lenders said standardizing what they have while another quarter said modernizing it. Throughout the decade, demand for new core banking systems has been high. Every two years since 1988, an average of 28.2% of MORTECH respondents said they were shopping for a new origination system (typically 71.3% of these were replacing an existing system). Today, the level of those seeking a new origination system has risen to exceed 33. …


Following the publication in 1969 of Berlin and Kay's "Basic Color Terms. Their Universality and Evolution", studies on colour vocabulary in individual languages have repeatedly attempted to answer the question of whether the number of basic colour terms could be greater than eleven. The debated status of the Russian terms "sinij" ('dark blue') and "goluboj" ('light blue') has ignited an interesting discussion among linguists, psychologists and anthropologists and stimulated a vast number of specific studies focused on the BLUE, RED and BROWN areas in several languages. The availability of new lexicographic resources and of large searchable corpora now makes it possible to expand the study of the distribution of the nearest counterparts of brown in "Italian", i.e. "bruno", "marrone", "castano" and "moro", from both a diachronic and a synchronic perspective. Our study focuses on changes in the semantic relations between these terms from Old Italian to present day Italian. We also consider their eligibility as bases for derived and compound colour terms.


We consider reliability optimization in optical networks. We present both a general view and our recent results in the field. It is shown that monitoring of the optical signal can significantly improve network reliability performance and, in some cases, can be considered as a cost effective alternative for achieving a certain level of connection availability. Finally, the presented sensitivity analysis gives a guideline for improving network reliability in a cost effective way.


Variational Quantum Circuits (VQCs), or the so-called quantum neural-networks, are predicted to be one of the most important near-term quantum applications, not only because of their similar promises as classical neural-networks, but also because of their feasibility on near-term noisy intermediate-size quantum (NISQ) machines. The need for gradient information in the training procedure of VQC applications has stimulated the development of auto-differentiation techniques for quantum circuits. We propose the first formalization of this technique, not only in the context of quantum circuits but also for imperative quantum programs (e.g., with controls), inspired by the success of differentiable programming languages in classical machine learning. In particular, we overcome a few unique difficulties caused by exotic quantum features (such as quantum no-cloning) and provide a rigorous formulation of differentiation applied to bounded-loop imperative quantum programs, its code-transformation rules, as well as a sound logic to reason about their correctness. Moreover, we have implemented our code transformation in OCaml and demonstrated the resource-efficiency of our scheme both analytically and empirically. We also conduct a case study of training a VQC instance with controls, which shows the advantage of our scheme over existing auto-differentiation for quantum circuits without controls.


This paper presents the first qualitative user study focusing on composers' experiences in working with musical robots. Increasingly complicated mechatronic musical instruments have resulted in an increasing number of expressive affordances exposed to users. As the mechatronic instruments grow more complicated, they potentially become more difficult to use, necessitating some form of mapping scheme. This paper seeks to evaluate the mapping schemes employed by a number of parametrically-rich musical robots (including a two mechatronic chordophones, a mechatronic harmonium, and a high degree-of-freedom mechatronic drum player). The user study's findings indicate that multiple mappings must be made available for each instrument, allowing for both rapid compositional prototyping and for finer-grained control over musical nuance of these electronic artworks.


Meta-analyses of population-based genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in adults have recently led to the detection of new genetic loci for obesity. Here we aimed to discover additional obesity loci in extremely obese children and adolescents. We also investigated if these results generalize by estimating the effects of these obesity loci in adults and in population-based samples including both children and adults. We jointly analysed two GWAS of 2,258 individuals and followed-up the best, according to lowest p-values, 44 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) from 21 genomic regions in 3,141 individuals. After this DISCOVERY step, we explored if the findings derived from the extremely obese children and adolescents (10 SNPs from 5 genomic regions) generalized to (i) the population level and (ii) to adults by genotyping another 31,182 individuals (GENERALIZATION step). Apart from previously identified FTO, MC4R, and TMEM18, we detected two new loci for obesity: one in SDCCAG8 (serologically defined colon cancer antigen 8 gene; p = 1.85×10−8 in the DISCOVERY step) and one between TNKS (tankyrase, TRF1-interacting ankyrin-related ADP-ribose polymerase gene) and MSRA (methionine sulfoxide reductase A gene; p = 4.84×10−7), the latter finding being limited to children and adolescents as demonstrated in the GENERALIZATION step. The odds ratios for early-onset obesity were estimated at ∼1.10 per risk allele for both loci. Interestingly, the TNKS/MSRA locus has recently been found to be associated with adult waist circumference. In summary, we have completed a meta-analysis of two GWAS which both focus on extremely obese children and adolescents and replicated our findings in a large followed-up data set. We observed that genetic variants in or near FTO, MC4R, TMEM18, SDCCAG8, and TNKS/MSRA were robustly associated with early-onset obesity. We conclude that the currently known major common variants related to obesity overlap to a substantial degree between children and adults.


This essay adopts an ecocritical lens to explore the major similarities in ecology in the works of William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy. Much of the scholarship involving both of these authors either compares them in regard to their philosophical structures or their Southern Gothic themes, or examines the ecology of each author individually. However, both Faulkner and McCarthy address environmental issues concerning landowning, anthropocentrism, and imbalance in the relationship between humans and the land. Each author also depicts what human society looks like when the Oikos—the Greek root word of ecology, literally meaning household, but on a larger scale, habitat or environment—disintegrates. In Faulkner's text Go Down, Moses, and in McCarthy's works Child of God and Suttree, the decaying moral quality of human society mirrors the destruction of the environment. The findings of this essay conclude that Faulkner and McCarthy's ecologies match in ways too similar to consider them members of entirely separate ecological traditions in southern literature. Based on this conclusion, when employing an ecocritical theoretical framework, a comparative approach to Faulkner's literature and McCarthy's southern works effectively addresses the environmental and socioeconomic concerns of the American South.


Organisations are increasingly using strategy tools such as workforce scorecards to keep track of human resource management related change processes that have been implemented and the effects of these on business unit performance. However, in this area, the challenge of finding appropriate indicators, establishing temporal relationships and providing useful management information still remains. Using longitudinal archival data from 171 branches of a large financial service organisation, this study examines to what extent employee surveys can serve as a predictor of better financial performance at the branch level. Results from a series of models in AMOS (Analysis of Moment Structures) showed that a significant part of branch profits could be predicted using employee surveys after correcting for prior profits. Based on extrapolation to all branches of this organisation, the changes in employee survey scores predict higher yearly profits of 178 million euros (17.9 per cent of the total yearly profits) across the entire company. Implications for research and practice are discussed.


The standard content-based attention mechanism typically used in sequence-to-sequence models is computationally expensive as it requires the comparison of large encoder and decoder states at each time step. In this work, we propose an alternative attention mechanism based on a fixed size memory representation that is more efficient. Our technique predicts a compact set of K attention contexts during encoding and lets the decoder compute an efficient lookup that does not need to consult the memory. We show that our approach performs on-par with the standard attention mechanism while yielding inference speedups of 20% for real-world translation tasks and more for tasks with longer sequences. By visualizing attention scores we demonstrate that our models learn distinct, meaningful alignments.


Shell foundations have been considered as the best shallow foundations for transferring heavy load to weak soils, where a conventional shallow foundation undergoes excessive settlement. Due to its economic competitiveness or advantage in areas having high materialtolabor cost ratio, using shell foundations as an alternative to conventional foundations have gained acceptance or adoption in many
countries. As it is not economical to study experimentally the geotechnical behaviour
of various types of shell footing with different variables, an attempt was made to
propose a 2D nonlinear finite element (FE) model by using a commercially available package to assess the geotechnical behaviour of shell footings. Due to configuration complexity of isolated pyramidal and conical shell footings, 3D
nonlinear FE models have been proposed. Fullscale tests on shell footings under vertical load were judiciously planned to validate the proposed FE models for modified triangular strip shell footings. Present study also developed equation to estimate the ultimate bearing capacity of inverted triangular shell footings.
2D and 3D FE finite element (FE) models for different types of shell footings
namely flat footings, triangular strip shell footings, inverted triangular strip shell
footings, conical shell footing and pyramidal shell footings have been developed.
Elastoplastic behaviours of soil and foundation have been modelled by DruckerPrager yield criterion and modified Von Mises Criterion. Comparative study between the proposed FE models and published data has been conducted on different existing types of strip shell footings. An experimental work on field has been conducted to study the real behaviour of the proposed shell footings (inverted triangular strip shell footings, triangular strip shell footing and flat footing) under the effects of load transferred from double story residential house. A theoretical model to predict the ultimate bearing capacity equation of the proposed inverted triangular strip shell footings has been developed using theoretical derivations and rupture surface obtained from the FE results. Based on 2D and 3D results obtained, a modified shell footings (inverted triangular strip shell footings) has been proposed and found to be 15 % higher load carrying capacity compared to triangular shell footings. Results also showed that pyramidal shell footings have higher load carrying capacity by 20 % compared to the conical shell footings. The field test results showed that contact pressure of inverted triangular strip shell footings have better distributions when compared to triangular strip shell footings. The stress caused by inverted shell was 20% less than that obtained for triangular shell. An equation for predicting the ultimate bearing capacity of inverted triangular shell footings has been developed. The obtained results have been found in good agreement between FE simulations and field test results. The results of this study suggest that shell footings should come into wider use in the geotechnical field as a serious alternative to shallow and even deep foundations.


In all eukaryotes, histone variants are incorporated into a subset of nucleosomes to create functionally specialized regions of chromatin. One such variant, H2A.Z, replaces histone H2A and is required for development and viability in all animals tested to date. However, the function of H2A.Z in development remains unclear. Here, we use ChIP-chip, genetic mutation, RNAi, and immunofluorescence microscopy to interrogate the function of H2A.Z (HTZ-1) during embryogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans, a key model of metazoan development. We find that HTZ-1 is expressed in every cell of the developing embryo and is essential for normal development. The sites of HTZ-1 incorporation during embryogenesis reveal a genome wrought by developmental processes. HTZ-1 is incorporated upstream of 23% of C. elegans genes. While these genes tend to be required for development and occupied by RNA polymerase II, HTZ-1 incorporation does not specify a stereotypic transcription program. The data also provide evidence for unexpectedly widespread independent regulation of genes within operons during development; in 37% of operons, HTZ-1 is incorporated upstream of internally encoded genes. Fewer sites of HTZ-1 incorporation occur on the X chromosome relative to autosomes, which our data suggest is due to a paucity of developmentally important genes on X, rather than a direct function for HTZ-1 in dosage compensation. Our experiments indicate that HTZ-1 functions in establishing or maintaining an essential chromatin state at promoters regulated dynamically during C. elegans embryogenesis.


Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive condition that often requires specialist care for a variety of motor and nonmotor symptoms. These symptoms arise from the disease process and also the medications that are used to manage the disease. A small group of patients appear to compulsively use dopaminergic medications well beyond the dose needed to optimally control their motor disability. This destructive behaviour occurs in the face of a mounting number of resulting harmful physical, psychiatric and social sequelae and is encompassed under the term dopamine dysregulation syndrome (DDS).

DDS has been linked to punding, and a variety of impulse control disorders (ICDs) such as gambling and hypersexuality. ICDs in particular also occur in relation to dopamine agonist use and in the absence of compulsive dopaminergic drug use. In this thesis, the mechanisms through which dopaminergic treatment of PD may lead to these behavioural changes were explored. It was found that chronic treatment with dopaminergic drugs in PD was able to cross-sensitise to the euphoriant effects of an acute challenge with methylphenidate and L-dopa as well as generally enhance reward responsivity. Regular dopaminergic drug therapy also led to sensitisation to the motor effects of L-dopa.

A study to identify drug-induced complex stereotyped motor behaviours (punding) in patients with PD was carried out and found that these behaviours were underrecognised. These behaviours were often socially disabling and the chosen activity tended to reflect the premorbid interests of the patient. They were more common in patients exhibiting other core features of the DDS.

This research was driven by the need for more accurate patient characterization. The relative rarity of DDS provides testament to the low addictive liability of dopaminergic drugs used to treat PD but also suggests that it should be possible to identify which individuals about to start dopaminergic therapy are vulnerable to becoming addicted to it. Impulsive sensation seeking personality traits relevant to epidemiological studies of substance dependence and other substance use were found to be highly predictive in the DDS patients as well as an independent association of depressive mood symptoms. Impulsive sensation seeking traits have subsequently been demonstrated to be relevant to individual susceptibility to the emergence of ICDs with treatment with dopamine agonists. The findings propose mechanisms by with patients with the syndrome may be identified and managed early. :

DDS patients report and were found to display an aversive drug withdrawal state akin to the withdrawal state with drugs of addiction. The nature of the medication-withdrawal state was characterised in a group of DDS patients after overnight drug withdrawal. In the withdrawal state, DDS patients had more motor Parkinsonism, reduced positive affect, and reported a broader range of affective nonmotor symptoms compared to control patients. With the L-dopa challenge, DDS patients had a greater reduction in the motor UPDRS, number of affective nonmotor symptoms, and a greater increase in reward responsivity and positive affect. In 'ON', DDS patients reported increased drug 'wanting' but did not 'feel' or 'like' drug effects more than controls. They had more disabling dyskinesias and showed enhanced reward responsivity. :
A novel clinical paradigm of drug dependence was investigated using a two-scan ^{11}C-Raclopride protocol. The results of this study have provided the first human evidence that drug-induced sensitisation of ventral striatal-circuitry mediates compulsive drug 'wanting' and is sufficient for the development of substance dependence in humans. These findings are relevant to a broad range of compulsive disorders in general.

These observations indicate a pivotal role for dopamine in behavioural addictions, drug-induced stereotypies and drug addiction; and that the brain systems that mediate the transition from drug-use to compulsive drug-taking and craving overlap with systems hat mediate behavioural addictions and the development of drug-induced stereotypies.


Purpose It is increasingly common for health care professionals from developed countries to travel to developing regions of the world to learn or teach. This project aimed to describe the perceptions held by health care professionals in a developing region toward those who visit their communities to learn or teach. Method Semistructured interviews were conducted in July, 2011, with nine health care professionals from the University of Namibia School of Medicine. Questions revolved around participants' perceptions of benefits, harms, and ethical impressions of a health care professional visiting from a developed country. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed qualitatively using an inductive, iterative approach. Results The interview analysis identified three main narratives that shaped participant perceptions of visits: (1) culture, context, and concern, (2) expectations, intentions, and miscommunications, and (3) partnership and the desire to share and gain knowledge. Conclusions Participants' comments supported actively seeking out information regarding cultural and environmental context before visiting, completing a needs assessment to ensure that activities are needed and relevant, attempting to formulate long-term sustainable relationships, and traveling with the appropriate attitude. These themes provide valuable insight into how international educational collaborations can be created in order to be mutually beneficial.


Films of Si3N4 on Si substrates were prepared by both sputtering and low pressure chemical vapor deposition. Infrared transmission measurements of the strong 800–900 cm−1 Si-N absorption show large (up to 50 cm−1) shifts as a function of film thickness in the range ∼0.1 to 1.2 μm. The agreement between experimental spectra and simulated spectra calculated from parallel layer optical theory indicates that these shifts can be attributed primarily to optical dispersion distortion effects. However, there is some discrepancy between experiment and theory at the extreme ends of the thickness range for the sputtered films which suggests small intrinsic structural changes of these films may arise as a function of deposition thickness. These results point out the importance of considering optical effects in the interpretation of thin film spectra.


Large-scale discovery of thousands of vulnerable Web sites has become a frequent event, thanks to recent advances in security research and the rise in maturity of Internet-wide scanning tools. The issues related to disclosing the vulnerability information to the affected parties, however, have only been treated as a side note in prior research. In this paper, we systematically examine the feasibility and efficacy of large-scale notification campaigns. For this, we comprehensively survey existing communication channels and evaluate their usability in an automated notification process. Using a data set of over 44,000 vulnerable Web sites, we measure success rates, both with respect to the total number of fixed vulnerabilities and to reaching responsible parties, with the following high-level results: Although our campaign had a statistically significant impact compared to a control group, the increase in the fix rate of notified domains is marginal. If a notification report is read by the owner of the vulnerable application, the likelihood of a subsequent resolution of the issues is sufficiently high: about 40%. But, out of 35,832 transmitted vulnerability reports, only 2,064 (5.8%) were actually received successfully, resulting in an unsatisfactory overall fix rate, leaving 74.5% of Web applications exploitable after our month-long experiment. Thus, we conclude that currently no reliable notification channels exist, which significantly inhibits the success and impact of large-scale notification.


Rhode Island Hospital (RIH) is currently striving to attain Magnet® status; specialty certification of registered nurse (RN) staff plays an important role in achieving that goal. Unit based nursing leadership and RN staff identified neuroscience certification as both important and desirable. One of the barriers identified by the staff RNs was the lack of a study support program to assist in preparation for the certification exam. A certified neuroscience registered nurse (CNRN) exam review program motivates and supports the RN staff to seek certification and successfully sit for the exam. The primary purpose of this program was to increase the number of CNRNs on the neuroscience units at RIH, with a secondary goal of CNRN staff participation throughout the initiative. The development of a formalized process allowed the program to be repeated biannually and helped to establish a unit culture where certification is the standard to which to aspire.


The pluriactivity phenomenon has been more studied in Brazil in the 1990's, when increased the papers about it in many regions of the country. The main issue related with the pluriactivity theme is the relevant unit of analyses. In according to the international literature, this article defends the idea that the family, and not the production unit, should be the north of the studies of pluriactivity in the Brazilian family farming.


PURPOSE
A recent ionization chamber intercomparison in the US, which addressed questions of consistency arising from use of the IAEA TRS-398 dosimetry protocol, has brought increased attention to the need for a national dose-to-water standard for proton beams that would enable direct calibration of chambers and the determination of associated beam quality coefficients, kQ. The present study compares measurements from four of the chambers used in the intercomparison with measurements from a water calorimeter developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), taken in a double-scattered proton beam.

METHODS
The water calorimeter was transported to the Hampton University Proton Therapy Institute (HUPTI) for irradiation in a vertical, 10 cm × 10 cm double-scattered beam at a water depth of 11 cm with a residual range of 5.8 cm. The four chambers - one thimble and one parallel plate ionization chamber from each of the two institutions (HUPTI and NIST) - were then substituted for the calorimeter vessel and exposed to the same beam conditions. Measurements at NIST in 6 MV x-rays, immediately before and after the trip to HUPTI, were done to verify calorimeter stability.

RESULTS
Calorimeter results derived from 23 exposures in the HUPTI beam were obtained with good precision, exhibiting a standard error of the mean (SEM) of 0.51%, and both sets of 6 MV measurements exhibited excellent agreement (within 0.2%) of historical values. However, a small but significant systematic difference was found between the calorimeter Result and the chamber results, with three of the chamber results lying between 1-2 SEM above the calorimeter Result.

CONCLUSION
Further studies involving the calorimeter and these chambers are planned, both to address the present discrepancy but also to obtain direct, experimental kQ coefficients for the ionization chambers.


Genes, synapses, and hallucinations In a schizophrenia mouse model, Chun et al. found that an abnormal increase of dopamine D2 receptors in the brain's thalamic nuclei caused thalamocortical synapse deficits owing to reduced glutamate release. Antipsychotic agents or a dopamine receptor antagonist reversed this down-regulation. The defect was associated with the loss of a component of the microRNA processing machinery encoded by the dgcr8 gene. Science, this issue p. 1178 In mice, dopamine D2 receptor up-regulation in the thalamus is responsible for auditory hallucinations. Auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia are alleviated by antipsychotic agents that inhibit D2 dopamine receptors (Drd2s). The defective neural circuits and mechanisms of their sensitivity to antipsychotics are unknown. We identified a specific disruption of synaptic transmission at thalamocortical glutamatergic projections in the auditory cortex in murine models of schizophrenia-associated 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS). This deficit is caused by an aberrant elevation of Drd2 in the thalamus, which renders 22q11DS thalamocortical projections sensitive to antipsychotics and causes a deficient acoustic startle response similar to that observed in schizophrenic patients. Haploinsufficiency of the microRNA-processing gene Dgcr8 is responsible for the Drd2 elevation and hypersensitivity of auditory thalamocortical projections to antipsychotics. This suggests that Dgcr8-microRNA-Drd2–dependent thalamocortical disruption is a pathogenic event underlying schizophrenia-associated psychosis.


With the current aim for a low carbon economy in Scotland, it becomes imperative to ensure that there are adequate workforce skills available to support meeting this aspiration. As such, the Scottish Government has developed a low carbon skills agenda that emphasizes rapidly developing and delivering specialist skills that are needed to enable the adoption of new technologies. Developing and delivering specialist skills are arguably not possible without having an understanding of what these skills are. This paper thus reports on the successful trial of an innovative Canadian insulation technology in a historic listed building in Aberdeenshire with a particular emphasis on providing insights into workforce skills needs. The trial was funded by the Scottish Government and the European Regional Development Fund. An 'insulation job' worksheet is developed as a result of the project, which can aid effective project management of insulation jobs in the future. It is evident that the current skills in the industry could be made adaptable to the skills needs for insulating historic listed buildings. Multi-skilling [in particular for small–medium size enterprise (SMEs)] may become inevitable if the size of the project is small as it was the case with the project presented in this paper. Providing learning support for local SMEs, who are still building-up their capability in insulation technologies, is thus essential. Indeed knowledge sharing and dissemination of case studies for successful retrofitting (e.g. insulation) of buildings, in particular historic ones, can inform future development of 'Low Carbon Skills' policy and action.


Human interaction with a service robot requires a shared representation of the environment for spoken dialogue and task specification where names used for particular locations are depending on personal preferences. A question is how such human oriented models can be tied to the geometric robotic models needed for precise localisation and navigation. We assume that this integration can be based on the information potential users give to a service robot about its working environment. We further believe that this information is best given in an interactive setting (a "guided tour") in this particular environment. This paper presents a pilot study that investigates how humans present a familiar environment to a mobile robot. The study is set up within our concept of human augmented mapping, for which we assume an initial "guided tour" scenario to teach a robot its environment. Results from this pilot study are used to validate a proposed generic environment model for a service robot


In this paper, I sketch the CP layer in main and embedded
 clauses in the history of English. The Modern English main clause is not as
 easily expandable as the Old English one, but the reverse is true in the
 subordinate clause, where Modern English has a more flexible embedded CP than
 Old English. I focus on the developments of the embedded CP. It has been claimed
 that Old English lacks an embedded split CP and therefore lacks embedded V2 and
 a host of other embedded root phenomena. I show this to be true for complements
 to both assertive and non-assertive verbs. In contrast, the Modern English
 matrix verb has an effect on the strength of the C-position. Assertive verbs in
 Modern English allow main clause phenomena in subordinate clauses whereas
 non-assertives typically do not. The main point of the paper is to chronicle the
 changes that 'stretch' the embedded clause and the changing role of main verbs.
 It is descriptive rather than explanatory, e.g., in terms of changes in
 phase-head status.


The globin gene disorders including the thalassemias are among the most common human genetic diseases with more than 300,000 severely affected individuals born throughout the world every year. Because of the easy accessibility of purified, highly specialized, mature erythroid cells from peripheral blood, the hemoglobinopathies were among the first tractable human molecular diseases. From the 1970s onward, the analysis of the large repertoire of mutations underlying these conditions has elucidated many of the principles by which mutations occur and cause human genetic diseases. This work will summarize our current knowledge of the α-thalassemias, illustrating how detailed analysis of this group of diseases has contributed to our understanding of the general molecular mechanisms underlying many orphan and common diseases.


Europe has responded to the crisis with strengthened budgetary and macroeconomic surveillance, the creation of the European Stability Mechanism, liquidity provisioning by resilient economies and the European Central Bank and a process towards a banking union. However, a monetary union requires some form of budget for fiscal stabilisation in case of shocks, and as a backstop to the banking union. This paper compares four quantitatively different schemes of fiscal stabilisation and proposes a new scheme based on GDP-indexed bonds. The options considered are - (i) A federal budget with unemployment and corporate taxes shifted to euro-area level; (ii) a support scheme based on deviations from potential output;(iii) an insurance scheme via which governments would issue bonds indexed to GDP, and (iv) a scheme in which access to jointly guaranteed borrowing is combined with gradual withdrawal of fiscal sovereignty. Our comparison is based on strong assumptions. We carry out a preliminary, limited simulation of how the debt-to-GDP ratio would have developed between 2008-14 under the four schemes for Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and an 'average' country.The schemes have varying implications in each case for debt sustainability.


Editorial Heritable neuromuscular disorders (NMDs) encompassing congenital muscular dystrophies (CMDs) and myopathies are a group of primary muscular diseases in which independent walking, breathing and feeding/swallowing abilities are variably compromised together with associated extramuscular manifestations. The next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have played a significant role in uncovering the genes of such genetically heterogeneous group of monogenetic diseases. The clinical features of CMDs/NMDs largely overlap; therefore, a battery of clinical investigations involving muscle magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electrophysiology are very helpful in clinical diagnostics. Muscle biopsy despite an invasive procedure can be very informative in diagnosing metabolic myopathies. Gene testing remains mandatory to reach the molecular diagnosis and enables accurate genetic and premarital counseling in high-risk families. NMDs are broadly classified into AHC, neurogenic, NMJ, myofibrils and metabolic related diseases. Phenotypic classification entails the distribution of muscular involvement that describes the groups of limb girdle muscular dystrophies (LGMDs), which define variable involvements of shoulder and pelvic girdles, distal dystrophies that affect mainly the distal extremities or facial dystrophy labelled facial muscle weakness and wasting. Recent NMDs nomenclature shifted to name the disease-phenotype linked to the specific altered protein. Congenital forms of muscular diseases (congenital dystrophies and myopathies) are of particular interest since its at-birth or infantile-onset manifestations of generalized hypotonia, respiratory failure, or failure to thrive mandates the urgent and timely NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) incubation. Intensive care accommodation of certain CMDs like SMA-type 1 in the Qatar healthcare system can be extendable for several years. When patients with congenital myopathies/dystrophies grow in childhood, adolescence or become adults, the medical care at the intermittently visited PICU (Pediatric- ICU), complex care facilities, intervention pulmonary and oral feeding clinics and the outpatient clinics of rehabilitation, orthopedics, neurology and cardiology became frequently busy for a long period with these patients. The huge medical care expense is worth being considered when discussing the value of a tailored newborn screening program in high-risk NMD families. The notion of rare diseases may stand against such screening plans. However, the economy, community and family burdens as well as the high rate diseases from the concept of being "rare" genetic disorders strongly support the need for tailored screening programs, whenever possible. This CMDs/NMDs Precision Medicine Conference, organized by Weill Cornell Medicine Qatar (WCMQ), sponsored by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF)-Conference & Workshop Sponsorship Program (CWSP) and held at the National Convention Center on 11-13 January 2020 was the first in Qatar to gather a team of distinguished international and national physicians and scientists to speak about their experiences and the most up to date information concerning CMD/NMD research, diagnostics, and evolving therapeutics. The interactive meeting's discussion was truly valuable in underlying what we do need to introduce or improve in our daily practice. The ten questions highlighted in the presentation of the director of the Public Health Department, Ministry of Public Health in Qatar, proposed an actionable plan that can be taken forward. The discussion input by the director of Clinical Research and Affairs, Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) in Qatar, highlighted the obvious interest to maximize their role in supporting the early detection of candidate patients. The senior Pediatric Neurologist and conference Co-Chair, Dr. Mahmoud Elsaid, emphasized the importance of establishing a multidisciplinary clinic dedicated to NMDs at Sidra Medicine, Qatar. The unique complex care facilities and the prevention program at Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) were brought up as being ones of the prominently qualified services in Qatar. We are truly interested in extending the dimensions of our contribution to the field of myology and having an impactful outcome. At the forefront of translational research, the QNRF grant's program "Path Towards Precision Medicine (PPM)" has funded in its first cycle, a study at WCMQ, the first to address the clinical, genomic and proteomic characteristics of NMDs in Qatar. The study identified the prevalence of LAMA2-congenital muscular dystrophy in Qatar, which was higher than that reported in the UK and Italy. The high rate of consanguineous marriages and a specific founder mutation are the likely contributors. The study highlighted the unique characteristics of NMDs in Qatari patients: The nonexistence, at most, of the group of myotonic dystrophies among our patients, particular lower incidence of X-linked DMD in Qatari patients compared to that reported worldwide, presence of collagen IV- related muscular dystrophy only in patients of non-Qatari ethnic background and presence of specific founder mutations are examples of such population-specific features. These outcomes, largely uncover the molecular defects of NMDs in national patients. PPM1 study pointed out the urgent need to introduce muscle imaging as routine NMD diagnostics and to carefully investigate candidate genes for mitochondrial and yet uncharacterized myopathies. Population data of the national programs of Qatar Biobank and Qatar Genome Programme established a good opportunity to further grow and evolve in uncovering new elements of the molecular circuit of muscle diseases. In order to drive our seat in the field of myology in Qatar, we believe we need to advance our workforce further in all levels of specialization and data sharing. Planning additional NMD-related educational events in Qatar, inviting graduates, postgraduates, healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies to participate from all over the world will promote our regional and international integration and recognition. Summer school and master classes on NMD's topics are such educational examples that are globally well perceived. Initiatives for patients' representative groups will highly impose our community profile and support informative decision making that benefits NMD-patients in various aspects. Establishing a Qatar Muscle Society and Qatar Institute of Myology or Neuromyology are our ambitious plans that we look forward to accomplishing. A nationally designated body in myology will empower international collaboration and put Qatar on the landscape of evolving clinical trials for the treatment of CMDs and NMDs


This fascinating exploration of French women's fashion during World War I is the first in-depth consideration of the role that fashion played in the upheaval of French society between 1914 and 1918. As the fashion industry—the second largest industry in the country—mobilized to help the war effort, Parisian couture houses introduced new styles, aggressively disseminated information through magazines, and strengthened their propaganda efforts overseas. Women of all social classes adapted their garments to the wartime lifestyle, and practicality was increasingly introduced in the form of pockets and "sportswear" textiles like jersey.

While women were heralded for contributing to the war effort, the clothes they wore while doing so often provoked debates, particularly when their attire was seen as too masculine or militaristic. With focused studies of wartime garments such as skirt suits, nurse's uniforms, work overalls, and mourning clothes, this volume brings to life the passionate debates that roiled the French fashion industry and reveals the extent to which fashion was a hotly contested topic and a barometer for social tensions throughout this tumultuous era.


Methods are described here that can be used to determine expressions for the second-order properties (with respect to a particular ray—the base ray) of any system composed of individual homogeneous, isotropic regions. Since asymmetric systems cannot be expected to form the best image when the object and image planes are normal to the associated base ray segments, the significance of object and image tilts, to second order, is also considered. With these results, it is possible to determine constraints on a system's configuration that ensure a given set of second-order imaging properties. As an illustrative example, constraints on the configuration of a single interface—either refracting or reflecting—are determined when sharp, second-order imagery is required. It is shown that the only nontrivial solutions are spherical refracting surfaces, and, for a given spherical surface, the basal object and image points must correspond to aplanatic points associated with the sphere.


An ad-hoc network encompasses the cooperative engagement of a collection of mobile nodes that are free to move and communicate with each other wirelessly without the required intervention of any centralized access point or existing infrastructure. The advantage of such a network lies in it's robustness, adaptiveness, the fact that its self-configurable and that it becomes somewhat indestructible due to it's decentralized nature. But such a network layout simultaneously introduces many complex network management issues which are normally taken care of inherently by a rigid network architecture. The biggest challenge faced by any such protocol is the fact that it needs to be scalable, must maintain a decent stable data throughput, all whilst performing it's own continuous network management and associated routing algorithms. These mobile nodes need a complex, scalable, compact and essentially realtime algorithm for maintaining an up to date representation of the overall network layout, yet without clogging the system's communications channels with too much overhead traffic, and drastically lowering the effective data throughput. Since each mobile node only has a limited communications range each node also needs very advanced routing capabilities which will allow it to track who is currently within communications range, and at the same time allow the node to create multihop paths to distant destination nodes, thus connecting nodes which cannot directly communicate. This report follows the development process of both the software needed to successfully conceptualize, simulate and test the protocol, as well as the hardware needed as proof of concept. It highlights and discusses the various design choices / considerations made in development of such a protocol, the strongand weakpoints of the developed protocol, as well as providing several possibilities to further evolve the developed protocol.


The geology of Toronto area is somewhat complex due to the series of advances and retreats of the glaciers. The overburden deposits consist of materials laid down during the Wisconsinan and Illinoian Ice Ages. The underlying bedrock is shale belonging to the Georgian Bay Formation. Downtown Toronto is built up with large skyscrapers, which also necessitate large volumes of underground parking. In some of the newer tall buildings, up to 7 levels of basements are being installed with rock excavation exceeding 9 m. The paper presents a number of case histories, and describes the geology of downtown Toronto, as well as the geotechnical, chemical and mineralogical properties of the bedrock.


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A noncooperative game is formulated on a transportation network with congestion. The players are associated with origin-destination pairs, and are facing demand functions at their respective destination nodes. A Nash-Cournot equilibrium is defined and conditions for existence and uniqueness of this solution are provided. The asymptotic behavior of the Nash-Cournot equilibrium is then shown to yield (under appropriate assumptions) a total flow vector corresponding to a Wardrop equilibrium.


Introduction The search for a unified identity of the younger women's movement is no new topic of discussion. Early on in the New Millenium several young feminist scholars organized to begin planning a conference to raise questions on the future of the women's movement. In fact, this future was so uncertain that they acknowledged they were unsure of what questions even needed to be raised, but that someone must begin asking questions. (1) So, they began preliminary plans for a conference in which the main agenda was to decide on determining a theme for the future of feminism. This type of struggle to identify and maintain focus in what is now more popularly called third wave feminism is not unique to this conference. Since the early suffragists began calling for equal rights for women to be educated and to vote, the exact identity of women's rights has had an ebb and flow over the centuries. Most scholars identify this fluidity with gender equality movements as coming in "waves." (2) The first wave began in the eighteenth century with women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth calling for the right to education and to vote for women. The second wave emerged in the middle twentieth century in the United States with the leadership of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. During this second wave, women's political rights were questioned again: the private becoming political as a theme and a rallying point for the movement. However, the beginning and focus of the third wave is exactly the place of concern in this paper. Some scholars today do not recognize this description of the three waves of feminism. (3) The question of the identity of the latest form of feminism is nuanced in reason and manifestation. Some thinkers attribute this to the reluctance of younger women today to identify themselves as feminist, while holding to the ideas of and enjoying the privileges of the women's movement. Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, prominent third wave feminists, compare issues of the second wave of feminism with fluoride in the water. Feminism has become such a common part of Western thinking and identity that it is simply in the water, we scarcely notice its existence. (4) There also are a variety of forms and names of newer types of feminisms. Eco-feminists exist for those primarily concerned with the environment. (5) Marxist feminists, Muslim feminists, Chicana feminists, and womanists are all various forms of feminism with unique concerns and strategies. (6) There also is the issue of feminists who hold diverse places in society. During the second wave, women who contributed to the formation of feminist thought were largely in the academy. (7) With third wave feminism, however, this is no longer the case. All young women, no matter their job or social status are encouraged to take action and live out their feminism through daily activism. The quandary for these women, however, is the focus for their activism. Should they defend the rights of religious freedom; lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender sexuality; AIDS/HIV awareness; universal healthcare; abortion; access to education; and the list goes on and on. (8) Some have suggested that this plurality of issues and concerns for third wavers is related to the problems and concerns of mass culture today. Anxieties related to terrorism, natural disasters, technology, and globalization alone give rise to questions pertaining to individual identity as well as cultural identity. Therefore, the reasoning for the lack of identity and focus for third wave feminism is complex on many levels. There is one concern that spans the three waves, however. It is the right to equal opportunities for education for girls and boys. When Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, she formed her argument for education around the basic human right to learn and to think. Today, the right to equal education in developing countries is still one of the foremost needs of women. …


Tabtoxinine-β-lactam (TβL) is a phytotoxin produced by plant pathogenic strains of Pseudomonas syringae. Unlike the majority of β-lactam antibiotics, TβL does not inhibit transpeptidase enzymes but instead is a potent, time-dependent inactivator of glutamine synthetase, an attractive and underexploited antibiotic target. TβL is produced by P. syringae in the form of a threonine dipeptide prodrug, tabtoxin (TβL-Thr), which enters plant and bacterial cells through dipeptide permeases. The role of β-lactamases in the self-protection of P. syringae from tabtoxin has been proposed, since this organism produces at least three β-lactamases. However, using in vitro and cellular assays and computational docking we have shown that TβL and TβL-Thr evade the action of all major classes of β-lactamase enzymes, thus overcoming the primary mechanism of resistance observed for traditional β-lactam antibiotics. TβL is a "stealth" β-lactam antibiotic and dipeptide prodrugs such as tabtoxin from P. syringae represent a novel antibiotic therapeutic strategy for treating multi-drug resistant Gram-negative pathogens expressing high levels of β-lactamase enzymes.


Public opinion polls have consistently demonstrated the public's willingness to "tradeoff" economic growth for environmental protection. The absence of a middle ground position in these polls raises questions as to whether or not respondents view economic growth and environmental protection as necessarily inimical. Furthermore, little research has examined whether these tradeoff preferences actually relate to how individuals view environmental problems at the local level. This research examines the tradeoff problem in light of a current resource conflict, forest management, using a statewide probability telephone survey. Most respondents prefer to see that "both the environment and the economy" are important in the case of forestry management, but favor weighting the balance in favor of environmental protection. Furthermore, general tradeoff preferences correlate with specific value choices (relating to private property), definitions of the current forestry situation for the state, and attitudes toward development of forest resources. At least in the case of forest management, how individuals conceptualize the economy/environment tradeoff is central to how they think about forest problems more generally. Introduction A central question in environmental debate today is how environmental protection and economic growth interrelate. As Schnaiberg (1980) notes, economic growth is dependent on "biospheric withdrawals" and a "treadmill of production" that does not easily accommodate environmental protection. The complexity of the environmental-economic relationship, however, doesn't lend itself to simple generalizations. There is a great deal of evidence that environmental protection and economic growth aren't necessarily antithetical (Schug & Western, 1997) and even that economic growth is necessary for pollution abatement (Byrne, 1997). Some analysts have begun to make headway in decoupling these issues. For example, Lovins, Lovins, and Hawken (1999) argue that reducing demand for energy (e.g., through energy efficient motors) may be essential for continued economic growth. As Hertsgaard (1998, p. 300) notes, environmental innovations that save money (and resources) will become an important way to generate new jobs. In short, it is not unreasonable to assert that economic systems can be made more both more environmentally benign and more profitable. Increasing resource efficiency in the future, however, may be entirely offset by the growth and expansion of human population with its attendant demand for resources. Pollsters have attempted to tap public loyalties in this debate through the so-called "trade-off" question. The typical form of this question has been to present respondents with dichotomous alternatives between favoring environmental protection or favoring economic growth or jobs. Longitudinal trends in the United States (as documented in publications such as Cambridge Reports Trends & Forecasts by Cambridge Reports, Inc.) indicate growing support for the environmental choice implying, for many, decreasing commitment to traditional economic and materialistic values (Inglehart, 1995). The public's apparent willingness to promote environmental quality over economic growth is often viewed as evidence of deepening environmentalism (Dunlap, 1991). While trade-off questions provide some indication of changing public values about the environment, their abstract as well as dichotomous format raises many issues regarding how the public views the relationship between economic growth and environmental protection. Are they seen as necessarily inimical, requiring that we trade off one against the other? Conversely, might the public see a healthy economy and a healthy environment as desirable end-states of social policy, both of which can be equally maximized? Furthermore, do trade-off questions implicate how individuals think about environmental problems? Do individuals think of the relationship in the same way when dealing with local conflicts between the environment and the economy? …


ABSTRACT INVESTIGATIONS were carried out studying diSturbance effects of auger-stirring 11.3 percent moisture corn with a 51-mm (2-in.) diameter stirring auger. Bulk density effects and the shape of the disturbed volume were defined for auger travel rates from 0 to 10.3 mm/s (24.3 in./min). Kernel orientations inside and outside the disturbed region were compared. Auger stirring devices are in wide use in bin-type corn-drying systems. These devices typically consist of one or more open 51-mm (2-in.) diameter, right-hand augers suspended from the bin roof and widewall and extending to near the bin floor. The augers rotate clockwise (viewed from above) and simultaneously travel horizontally. They lift grain from near the bin floor toward the top of the grain mass. H. A. Kalke of Rockford, Iowa was issued United States patent 3,156,541 for an auger stirring apparatus he invented during 1959-61. An auger stirring device was first commercially marketed in 1962. (Murphy, David M., 1977. Personal communication. David Manufacturing Co., Mason City, IA.) Auger stirrers are used with two kinds of bin-drying systems: the in-storage layer-fill system, in which corn is dried and stored in the same bin to a depth of 5 to 6 m (16 to 20 ft), and the bin-batch system, in which corn is placed for drying and cooling and then is removed to storage. In both these systems, the stirrer offers significant management advantages. A stirrer in an in-storage layer system allows the use of air temperatures as high as 60 °C (140 °F) resulting in faster drying and faster filling. If a stirring device is not used, an air temperature rise greater than about 11°C (20 °F) may result in moisture contents of less than 10 percent in the bottom layers of corn. Use of a stirrer with a bin-batch system permits doubling of the normal 0.75 to 1.2-m (2.5 to 4-ft) grain depth without an excessive moisture content variation from bottom to top at the completion of drying (Brooker etal.,1974). Two prior studies dealt with disturbance effects of auger stirring. Toms(1968) pictorially defined the region disturbed by a stirring auger as it rotated without hori-zontal movement in a plexiglas-windowed box with a horizontal cross-section 100 mm by 1.8 m (4 in. by 6 ft), containing corn to a depth of 1.8 m (6 ft). After about 15 min of operation, the disturbed region assumed a constant volume having a top width of 790 to 960 mm (31to 38 in.) and a bottom width of 150 mm (6 in.). This volume appeared thoroughly mixed. Hall and Beaty (1970) studied the mixing action of a stirring auger on wheat in a model bin at various horizontal travel rates and rotational speeds. For thorough blending of the 305-mm (12-in.) grain depth, traverse paths of the auger had to be adjacent, or spaced apart and repeated several times. Blending effectiveness improved as rotational speed increased and as horizontal travel rate decreased. This paper reports on a study undertaken to define the boundaries of the region disturbed by a moving stir-ring auger and to investigate effects of auger-stirring on corn bulk density and kernel orientation (Bern, 1973).


We study local aggregation and graph analysis in distributed environments using the message passing model. We provide a flexible framework, where each of the nodes in a set $S$--which is a subset of all nodes in the network--can perform a large range of common aggregation functions in its $k$-neighborhood. We study this problem in the CONGEST model, where in each synchronous round, every node can transmit a different (but short) message to each of its neighbors. While the $k$-neighborhoods of nodes in $S$ might overlap and aggregation could cause congestion in this model, we present an algorithm that needs time $O(|S|+k)$ even when each of the nodes in $S$ performs a different aggregation on its $k$-neighborhood. The framework is not restricted to aggregation-trees such that it can be used for more advanced graph analysis. We demonstrate this by providing efficient approximations of centrality measures and approximation of minimum routing cost trees.


We derive bounds for the average of math and language scores of elementary school students in Italy correcting for pervasive score manipulation. Information on the fraction of manipulated data is retrieved from a natural experiment that randomly assigns external monitors to schools. We show how bounds can be tightened imposing restrictions on the measurement properties of the manipulation indicator developed by the government agency charged with test administration and data collection. We additionally assume that manipulation is more likely in those classes at the lower end of the distribution of true scores. Our results show that regional rankings by academic performance are reversed once manipulation is properly taken into account.


Description: The UNESCO Nairobi Office organised the second in a series of consultations on HIV/AIDS and education at the Nile Conference Centre in Kampala, Uganda, from 16th to 18th June 2003. This was convened upon recommendation of the first consultation on HIV/AIDS and education organised by UNESCO Nairobi that took place in Kigali, Rwanda, in March 2003. A key recommendation of the Kigali consultation was to bring together the heads of the education and teachers' service commissions from the cluster countries, namely, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, to review how the HIV/AIDS pandemic is affecting the quality of the teaching service. The Kampala consultation, therefore, convened heads of Education and Teachers' Service Commissions, those responsible for human resources in education, finance departments, leaders of teachers' unions and UNESCO representatives from the cluster. Also participating in the consultation were members of the Mobile Task Team on HIV and Education the MTT.The purpose of the consultation was to enhance the understanding on how HIV/AIDS is influencing the education service and the provision of quality education and how those responsible for teacher management can sustain the quality of education provision in the face of HIV/AIDS. The consultation had three main objectives. The first was to increase awareness among educator management authorities about the principal challenges imposed by HIV/AIDS to the quality of the teaching service. The second was to enhance commitment among senior management of teaching services and ministries of education to respond appropriately to the impact of HIV/AIDS on the teaching service, on quality of education and on individual educators as employees. The third objective was to identify priority actions within the management of education service commissions and within education human resource management generally and to come up with action plans.


R. Scott Braithwaite, Elizabeth R. Stevens and Arthur Caplan argue that some risk stratifications—that is, "employing patient characteristics to reduce the uncertainty that a future event will occur"—amount to profiling and, thus, invidious discrimination.1 These are forms of risk stratification "in which there is concern that ethical harms exceed likely or proven benefits for a group, and in the case of health care, involves any differential treatment in response to a personal characteristic that may cause an unwanted consequence for that person or for other persons with that characteristic". Braithwaite et al recognise the potential benefits of (increasingly fine-grained) risk stratification: "It can make the provision of therapies safer…[and] improve diagnostic accuracy… Additionally, it can promote the efficient utilization of resources". However, risk stratification also involves 'ethical harms', which must be weighed against the benefits, that is, it can (1) stigmatise groups; (2) violate privacy; (3) increase distributive injustice, for example, by making an already unjustly disadvantaged group suffer further disadvantages relative to a 'counterfactual situation of no risk stratification'; and (4) imperil autonomy.

Roughly, their position on the moral permissibility of risk stratification is captured by the risk stratification principle :Risk stratification is morally permissible if, …