Functional languages have been used with great success in the domain of web programming. The use of reactive programming approaches to deal with time-varying data reduces the need for callbacks, and allows web applications to be written in a more declarative style. In spite of advances in functional reactive web programming, various issues remain with integrating reactive data into web pages. Portions of presentation-layer code are typically written in the functional language and imperatively added to a container section on a page, fragmenting design and requiring developers to work around the lack of proper and safe integration between the data, client and server tiers of their applications. In this paper, we investigate the use of F# compile-time metaprogramming techniques to enable developing type-safe, reactive client-server applications with seamless server-side persistence using WebSharper, a mature F# web framework. Next to the two-way binding between client-side data models and their corresponding presentation, the reactive data models in our work can also express the details of server-side persistence and synchronization, using a modular approach and a strongly-typed communication channel over web sockets with communicating agents between the two tiers. The work presented also enables using annotated HTML markup templates, translated by an F# type provider to our statically-typed reactive data models. This way, the design artifacts can be externalized into native HTML that designers can easily work with, and markup changes are checked against the F# code base at compile time. We demonstrate the combination of these techniques with a data-aware single-page client-server chat application, expressed entirely in F#. We find that type safety, the uniform F# programming model, and the reactive design around data binding, synchronization, and persistence greatly enhances developer productivity.


1. Birds of marine environments have specialized glands to excrete salt, the saltglands. Located on the skull between the eyes, the size of these organs is expected to reflect their demand, which will vary with water turnover rates as a function of environmental (heat load, salinity of prey and drinking water) and organismal (energy demand, physiological state) factors. On the basis of inter- and intraspecific comparisons of saltgland mass (msg) in 29 species of shorebird (suborder Charadrii) from saline, fresh and mixed water habitats, we assessed the relative roles of organism and environment in determining measured msg species. 2. The allometric exponent, scaling dry msg to shorebird total body mass (mb), was significantly higher for coastal marine species (0 88, N = 19) than for nonmarine species (0 43, N = 14). Within the marine species, those ingesting bivalves intact had significantly higher msg than species eating soft-bodied invertebrates, indicating that seawater contained within the shells added to the salt load. 3. In red knots (Calidris canutus), dry msg varied with monthly averaged ambient temperature in a U-shaped way, with the lowest mass at 12 5 degrees C. This probably reflects increased energy demand for thermoregulation at low temperatures and elevated respiratory water loss at high temperatures. In fuelling bar-tailed godwits (Limosa lapponica), dry msg was positively correlated with intestine mass, an indicator of relative food intake rates. These findings suggest once more that saltgland masses vary within species (and presumably individuals) in relation to salt load, that is a function of energy turnover (thermoregulation and fuelling) and evaporative water needs. 4. Our results support the notion that msg is strongly influenced by habitat salinity, and also by factors influencing salt load and demand for osmotically free water including ambient temperature, prey type and energy intake rates. Saltglands are evidently highly flexible organs. The small size of saltglands when demands are low suggests that any time costs of adjustment are lower than the costs of maintaining a larger size in this small but essential piece of metabolic machinery.


Heat stress is associated with numerous health effects that potentially harm workers, especially in a warming world. This investigation occurred in a setting where laborers are confronted with occupational heat stress from physically demanding work in high environmental temperatures. Collaboration with a major Nicaraguan sugarcane producer offered the opportunity to study interventions to prevent occupational heat-stress-related kidney disease. Two aims for this study of a rest-shade-water intervention program were: (1) describe the evolving intervention, summarize findings that motivated proposed improvements, assess impact of those improvements, and identify challenges to successful implementation and (2) extract primary lessons learned about intervention research that have both general relevance to investigations of work-related disease prevention and specific relevance to this setting. The learning curve for the various stakeholders as well as the barriers to success demonstrate that effectiveness of an intervention cannot be adequately assessed without considerations of implementation. Designing, effectively implementing, and assessing both health impacts and implementation quality is a resource-intensive endeavor requiring a transdisciplinary approach. Both general and specific lessons learned are presented for decisions on study design and study elements, implementation assessment, and management engagement in understanding how productivity and health can be successfully balanced and for building effective communication between investigators and all levels of management.


Although many people believe that the role of business is to maximize shareholder value, corporate executives and board members can no longer ignore their companies' human rights impacts on other stakeholders. Over the past four years, the role and responsibility of non-state actors such as multinationals has come under increased scrutiny. In 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the "UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights," which outline the State duty to protect human rights, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and both the State and corporations' duties to provide remedies to parties. The Guiding Principles do not bind corporations, but dozens of countries, including the United States, are now working on National Action Plans to comply with their own duties, which include drafting regulations and incentives for companies. In 2014, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution to begin the process of developing a binding treaty on business and human rights. Separately, in an effort to address information asymmetries, lawmakers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and California have passed human rights disclosure legislation. Finally, dozens of stock exchanges have imposed either mandatory or voluntary non-financial disclosure requirements, in sync with the UN Principles.Despite various forms of disclosure mandates, these efforts do not work. The conflict lies within the flawed premise that, armed with specific information addressing human rights, consumers and investors will either reward "ethical" corporate behavior, or punish firms with poor human rights records. However, evidence shows that disclosures generally fail to change behavior because: (1) there are too many of them; (2) stakeholders suffer from disclosure overload; and (3) not enough consumers or investors penalize companies by boycotting products or divesting. In this Article, I examine corporate social contract theory, normative business ethics, and the failure of stakeholders to utilize disclosures to punish those firms that breach the social contract. I propose that both stakeholders and companies view corporate actions through an ethical lens, and offer an eight-factor test to provide guidance using current disclosures or stakeholder-specific inquiries. I conclude that disclosure for the sake of transparency, without more, will not lead to meaningful change regarding human rights impacts.


Phosphate glass with additions of sodium, magnesium and/or calcium were investigated for their potential to be used as the reinforcing phase in a completely degradable long fibre composite. Glasses were prepared from phosphate salts as opposed to oxides and melted under air in platinum/gold crucibles. The effect of cation addition on the material properties and biocompatibility was investigated. Glasses were characterised using a number of complimentary techniques, including: XRD, XPS, DSC, IR and EDX. The findings from these techniques were used to explain the observed thermal and dissolution properties.

The thermal and dissolution properties were found to be dependant on both the thermal history and composition of the phosphate glass. For a phosphate glass with low cation content, the temperature and length of time held at that temperature increased the Tg by 10 C for sodium phosphate glass and slightly improved the durability of sodium phosphate glass containing 10 mol.% MgHPO4, as phosphate chain growth was greater under those conditions. Addition of divalent cations increased the Tg of phosphate glasses from 295 C for sodium phosphate glass by up to 150 C with the addition of 50 mol.% MgHPO4. The dissolution rate was decreased exponentially with the addition of calcium phosphate or magnesium phosphate to sodium phosphate glass. Rates as low as 1x10-7 g/(cm2.h) were achieved with the addition of 50 mol.% divalent cation phosphates. The divalent cations inhibited phosphate chain growth but formed a new network based upon divalent cation/non bridging oxygen cross-links. These cross-links were found to exert greater influence over the material properties then the phosphate chain length.

Cell culture assays were used to establish the biocompatibility of phosphate glasses with different compositions. Preliminary tests were conducted with craniofacial derived osteoblast like cells cultured on glass surfaces. Initial assays performed showed that the most durable glasses sustained the greatest amount of proliferation and differentiation over a seven day period. The most promising glass compositions, 40 Ca, 40 Mg, 30 Mg/20 Ca and 20 Mg/30 Ca, and were selected for longer term osteoblast culture and short term macrophage culture. Long term osteoblast culture showed that cells were able to attach, spread and proliferate throughout the 28 day duration of the study. Assays performed on the culture showed that cells were differentiating, producing specific osteoblast markers for each of the three differentiation phases of proliferation, matrix maturation and mineralisation. ECM production and mineralisation was confirmed on all surfaces tested via type I collagen staining and alizarin red staining respectively. Over the 28 day period, it was found that the composition did not have a significant effect on the production of the osteoblast markers, namely alkaline phosphatase, collagen, osteocalcin and mineral deposition. Immunological studies show that macrophages are not activated by the presence of phosphate glass. This demonstrated that phosphate glass has shown potential for use a biomaterial.


It is well known that the isothermal compression is an ideal process to consume least power for compressor. The isothermal compression can't be really reached, but can be approached by decreasing the discharge temperature during compression. For this purpose, a cooling system has been built in the paper. Firstly, an innovative circulation system has been built to absorb the heat generated by compression, which is segregated from the refrigeration circulation system. The principle and the structure are introduced. Then, the experimental has been conducted. Based on the experimental, the following results has be obtained: The cooling capacity increased by 1.3%; for the experimental condition, discharge temperature of the gas reduced by 10°C, input power reduced by 4.1%, and COP increased by 5.2%.


Magma flow in dykes is still not well understood; some reported magnetic fabrics are contradictory
and the potential effects of exsolution and metasomatism processes on the magnetic
properties are issues open to debate. Therefore, a long dyke made of segments with different
thickness, which record distinct degrees of metasomatism, the Messejana–Plasencia dyke
(MPD), was studied. Oriented dolerite samples were collected along several cross-sections
and characterized by means of microscopy and magnetic analyses. The results obtained show
that the effects of metasomatism on rock mineralogy are important, and that the metasomatic
processes can greatly influence anisotropy degree and mean susceptibility only when rocks
are strongly affected by metasomatism. Petrography, scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
and bulk magnetic analyses show a high-temperature oxidation-exsolution event, experienced
by the very early Ti-spinels, during the early stages of magma cooling, which was mostly
observed in central domains of the thick dyke segments. Exsolution reduced the grain size
of the magnetic carrier (multidomain to single domain transformation), thus producing composite
fabrics involving inverse fabrics. These are likely responsible for a significant number
of the 'abnormal' fabrics, which make the interpretation of magma flow much more complex.
By choosing to use only the 'normal' fabric for magma flow determination, we have
reduced by 50 per cent the number of relevant sites. In these sites, the imbrication angle of the
magnetic foliation relative to dyke wall strongly suggests flow with end-members indicating
vertical-dominated flow (seven sites) and horizontal-dominated flow (three sites).


Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) is a prominent field of applied mathematics using object-attribute relationships to define formal concepts - groups of objects with common attributes - which can be ordered into conceptual hierarchies, so-called concept lattices. We consider the problem of satisfiability of membership constraints, i.e., to determine if a formal concept exists whose object and attribute set include certain elements and exclude others. We analyze the computational complexity of this problem in general and for restricted forms of membership constraints. We perform the same analysis for generalizations of FCA to incidence structures of arity three (objects, attributes and conditions) and higher. We present a generic answer set programming (ASP) encoding of the membership constraint satisfaction problem, which allows for deploying available highly optimized ASP tools for its solution. Finally, we discuss the importance of membership constraints in the context of navigational approaches to data analysis.


The discovery of high-Tc superconductivity in the cuprates, and the observation that strong correlations are important in connection with these compounds has led to a tremendous interest in understanding the physics of strongly correlated electronic models. In particular the two simplest models for strongly correlated electrons, namely the Hubbard and t–J models, have been the subject of intensive studies. In a milestone paper of 1987, P.W. Anderson proposed that a resonating valence bond (RVB) wave-function, which consists of a superposition of valence-bond states, contains the ingredients to account for a consistent theory of the Hubbard and t–J models. Motivated by the success of variational Monte- Carlo to describe some of the peculiar properties of the cuprates, we propose in this dissertation, on one hand, to extend the method to further strongly correlated models to describe other compounds such as graphene, carbon nanotube or the cobaltite compounds, and on the other hand we propose to focus on the pseudo-gap phase of the cuprates, which is still prompting for a consistent theory. In particular, the issue of checkerboard spatial modulations in the density of states in the low temperature regime of the cuprates is addressed. Finally, we have studied the possibility for spontaneous orbital currents in the cuprates, that might play a key role in the theory of high Tc superconductors.


Innovative technologies use in the daily nurse practice makes their work more professional, comfortable, ensures safety and convenience of performing basic professional duties, reduces labor costs, and allows to quickly and efficiently ensure the implementation of new diagnostic and treatment process. Aim: analysis of the experience in the development and implementation of SOPs for nurses for 2018–2019. in Central City Clinical Hospital № 6, Yekaterinburg. Methods. The work analyzed reporting documents (SOP implementation logs for each subdivision of Central City Clinical Hospital № 6, Yekaterinburg during 2018–2019 period), characterizing the number, type of developed SOPs, depending on their purpose, the timing of their implementation. Results. During 2018–2019 period there have been all main nomenclatures SOPs developed and implemented into the nursing practice. The main stages of the development of SOPs are analyzed, illustrative examples are given. Encountered by the staff of the medical institution SOPs development and implementation related difficulties are discussed. Main prospective activity directions in the field are determined. Conclusion. On the basis of municipal Central City Clinical Hospital № 6, Yekaterinburg, SOPs development and implementation for various types of nursing activities have been successfully carried out.


Chronic exposure to bacterial endotoxin protects against allergy through the enzyme A20. People who grow up on dairy farms only rarely develop asthma or allergies. This is probably because, as children, they breathe air containing bacterial components, which reduce the overall reactivity of the immune system. Schuijs et al. chronically exposed mice to bacterial endotoxin before the mice received an allergic stimulus. The protocol protected them from developing an allergic response. Protection relied on a particular enzyme: A20. In humans, a variant of A20 correlates with increased susceptibility to asthma and allergy in children growing up on farms. M. J. Schuijs, M. A. Willart, K. Vergote, D. Gras, K. Deswarte, M. J. Ege, F. Branco Madeira, R. Beyaert, G. van Loo, F. Bracher, E. von Mutius, P. Chanez, B. N. Lambrecht, H. Hammad, Farm dust and endotoxin protect against allergy through A20 induction in lung epithelial cells. Science 349, 1106–1110 (2015). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Moniliophthora pod rot (MPR) is one of the main factors limiting cocoa production in Latin America. Currently insufficient information on the biology and epidemiology of the pathogen limits the development of efficient management options to control MPR. The purpose of this study was to identify meteorological and production variables as epidemiological predictors of the MPR disease and, coupled with the existing evidence on the MPR-cacao pathosystem, to develop a conceptual model. Information obtained is strategic for better understanding of the pathosystem, to guide researchers to define new studies and to improve control methods. The research began with a historical data analysis to determine the influence of the meteorological, productive and genetic resistance variables on the disease over time. This analysis revealed that the resistance of the highly resistant clones is considerably stable and possibly durable; however, for the rest of the clones, disease reaction was shown to be significantly influenced by the environment. Also, temperatures during January, April and May are the only climatic variables that have a significant effect over MPR incidence. A field trial was then carried out to explain MPR development, onset of symptoms of the disease and fungal sporulation, studying different microclimatic variables for three cacao clones in a range of incomplete resistance. We concluded that water-related variables (positively linked) and temperature (minimum temperature negatively linked while maximum temperature presented a threshold) determine symptom expression for the susceptible clones, while, for the resistant clone CATIE-R4, only temperature (minimum temperature negatively linked and maximum temperature positively linked) showed up as an explicative variable, due to low numbers of CATIE-R4 pods showing symptoms. Differences in resistance among these clones possibly lie in the number of resistant genes accumulated; however, the resistance of the three may be affected by certain environmental conditions. To separate the microclimatic effects on the infection and the symptoms onset, we studied the relationship between the MPR infection process and the onset of symptoms of three different cacao clones through artificial inoculations. We determined that symptoms/signs onset is close enough to the infection moment that the influence of the microclimate over onset of the symptoms could be extrapolated to the time of infection. (Resume d'auteur)


BACKGROUND
Young patients with stroke are typically the economic support of their families and societies, and their return to work (RTW) is crucial to maintaining their quality of life. However, the identification of RTW-related factors of different aspects is complicated and a systematic analysis of these factors is lacking.

AIM
To develop a core set from the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) for return to work (RTW) among patients with stroke.

DESIGN
Three-round Delphi-based consensus.

SETTING
University-based hospital.

PARTICIPANTS
Thirty experts in stroke-related domains from different institutions.

METHODS
A five-point Likert scale was used to rate the importance of each item. Consensus of ratings was analyzed using Spearman's rho and semi-interquartile range indices. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health core set for return to work among patients with stroke was based on a high level of consensus and a mean score of ≥4.0 in the third round of the Delphi.

RESULTS
The ICF core set comprised 58 categories distributed as follows: 16 body function, 30 activities and participation, 10 environmental factor, and 2 personal factors.

CONCLUSIONS
Our ICF core set for RTW among patients with stroke can inform effective rehabilitation strategies and goal setting for RTW among patients with stroke. However, further validation is warranted.

CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT
ICF core set could provide information on rehabilitation strategies setting for RTW of stroke patients.


Using a surface integral equation approach based on the tangential Poggio–Miller–Chang–Harrington–Wu–Tsai formulation, we present a full wave analysis of the resonant modes of 3D plasmonic nanostructures. This method, combined with the evaluation of second-harmonic generation, is then used to obtain a better understanding of their nonlinear response. The second-harmonic generation associated with the fundamental dipolar modes of three distinct nanostructures (gold nanosphere, nanorod, and coupled nanoparticles) is computed in the same formalism and compared with the other computed modes, revealing the physical nature of the second-harmonic modes. The proposed approach provides a direct relationship between the fundamental and second-harmonic modes in complex plasmonic systems and paves the way for an optimal design of double resonant nanostructures with efficient nonlinear conversion. In particular, we show that the efficiency of second-harmonic generation can be dramatically increased when the modes with the appropriate symmetry are matched with the second-harmonic frequency.


The advertising industry is often seen as adaptable and flexible, and its work organization and diverse project ecologies are assumed to nurture creativity, learning and innovation. The advertising industry in Oslo is currently going through a restructuring process of adapting to the Internet as an emerging media channel for marketing, but struggles to benefit from collective learning. The established advertising agencies have been reluctant regarding the new opportunities in Internet-based advertising, which has allowed for a set of smaller and specialized web agencies to emerge, and who now possess the best skills within interactive advertising. The paper argues that there are two parallel epistemic communities in the localized advertising industry. It is shown that the advertising industry seems to have been caught in a path-dependent technological trajectory, and that in order for collective learning to unfold geographical proximity needs to be supplemented by cultural and epistemic proximity and compatibility.


Traditional data mining applications consider the problem of mining a single relation between two attributes. For example, in a scientific bibliography database, authors are related to papers, and we may be interested in discovering association rules between authors. However, in real life, we often have multiple attributes related though chains of relations. For example, authors write papers, and papers concern one or more topics. Mining such relational chains poses additional challenges. In this paper we consider the following problem: given a chain of two relations R/sub 1/ (A, P) and R/sub 2/(P, T) we want to find selectors for the objects in T such that the projected relation between A and P satisfies a specific property. The motivation for our approach is that a given property might not hold on the whole dataset, but it might hold when projecting the data on a selector set. We discuss various algorithms and we examine the conditions under which the a priori technique can be used. We experimentally demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods.


A design procedure for spherical lens antennas is described. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is coupled to a mode matching technique based on spherical wave expansion to analyze the lens antennas. The proposed methodology is applied to three optimization problems using real‐number and binary PSO. First, the maximization of the directivity of Luneburg lens antennas is addressed. Then, amplitude shaped radiation patterns are synthesized by optimizing both amplitude and position of each element of an array that illuminates a lens. Finally, a dual‐beam reconfigurable lens antenna is optimized. By only switching properly the elements of an array, the lens antenna radiates either a directive or a sectoral beam. Numerical comparisons with a full wave commercial software successfully validate the proposed design procedure. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52: 1655–1659, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.25278


Exploring Critical Success Factors for Sustainable Togolese-Owned Small businesses in the United States by Folly Somado Hemazro MBA, Kaplan University, 2012 ML, University of Lome, 1996 BS, University of Lome, 1995 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Business Administration Walden University September 2016 Abstract In the United States, although foreign-born individuals are more than twice as likely to start new ventures, immigrant-owned businesses often fail within the first 5 years. The purpose of this single case study was to explore the strategies that U.S.-based Togolese small business owners who were engaged in entrepreneurial activities in Togo. The Schumpeterian entrepreneurship theory underpinned the study and served as a theoreticalIn the United States, although foreign-born individuals are more than twice as likely to start new ventures, immigrant-owned businesses often fail within the first 5 years. The purpose of this single case study was to explore the strategies that U.S.-based Togolese small business owners who were engaged in entrepreneurial activities in Togo. The Schumpeterian entrepreneurship theory underpinned the study and served as a theoretical reference. Interview data were collected from 20 successful Togolese small business owners who resided in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, who were engaged in entrepreneurial activities in Togo, and who had been in business for more than 5 years. Data analysis involved using coding techniques and word clustering, with the invocation of qualitative data analytical software. The use of methodological triangulation enabled deeper analysis and added to the rigor of the study. The 4 key themes emerging from the coding and thematic analysis of interviews included (a) entrepreneurial motivation and attributes, (b) overcoming financial hardship, (c) leveraging information technologies, and (d) addressing challenges in the dual business environment. The findings of the study may advance contribution to positive social change as immigrant business owners may use the knowledge to improve business success, which could lead to the creation of jobs and improvement in the standard of living of U.S.-based Togolese entrepreneurs. The discoveries from the research may also contribute to positive social change for local communities in Togo, as the diaspora flow of investments and remittances from the United States may increase. Exploring Critical Success Factors for Sustainable Togolese-Owned Small businesses in the United States by Folly Somado Hemazro MBA, Kaplan University, 2012 ML, University of Lome, 1996 BS, University of Lome, 1995 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Business Administration


Background: Lichen planus pigmentosus (LPP) is considered an infrequent variant of Lichen planus (LP) clinically characterized by insidious onset of discrete, ill-defined, and dark brown or slate gray macules, primarily appearing over sun-exposed areas and flexures. Materials and method: This was a cross-sectional study conducted over a period of 1 year from July 2017 to July 2018 among the patients attending the OPD of the Department of Dermatology, Government Medical College, Kota, India. This study evaluated the LPP and its association with metabolic syndrome and cutaneous manifestations. Serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol (HDL-C) and triglycerides (TG) were measured with enzymatic procedures. Plasma glucose was measured using hexokinase method. Results: There were 16 (32.0%) males and 34 (68.0%) females affected with LPP. Majority of the patients were in the age group of 40 to 49 years [15 (30.0%)] and above 50 years [16 (32.0%)]. Diabetes mellitus type 2 was reported among 17 (34.0%), hypertension among five (10.0%), and obesity among five (10.0%) patients. Increased low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and very LDL was found among 15 (30.0%) patients and decreased HDL was found among 19 (38.0%) patients. Conclusion: A 34.0% prevalence of metabolic syndrome was found in patients with LP. Central obesity, increased fasting blood sugar (FBS), and low HDL-C were the metabolic syndrome parameters found to be more common in patients with LP in our study.


We report the comprehensive spectroscopic results of AlN thin films deposited on the A-, R- and C-surfaces of sapphire substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering. The optical and structural properties of the epitaxial-grown AlN films were characterized using various techniques of high-resolution x-ray diffraction spectroscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Raman scattering spectroscopy, spectroscopic ellipsometry and associated analytical tools. Our large number of measurement results clearly show that sapphire substrates of different polarities have effects on the surface roughness, dislocation density, grain size, microstrain, and surface oxygen binding capacity of the film grown on its surface. The results obtained from Ellipsometry measurements show that the thickness, band gap and roughness of AlN films grown on C-plane sapphire are the smallest among the three samples. After careful analyses of the variable temperature Raman spectra, as the temperature rises from 80 K to 800 K, the AlN film has always exhibited tensile stress. In the same temperature range, the tensile stress of the AlN film grown on the C-plane sapphire has the greatest effect with temperature. The lifetime of E2 (high) phonons gradually decays with the increase of temperature.


This work presents development and testing of image processing algorithms for the automatic detection of landmarks within ultrasound images. The aim was to automate ultrasound analysis, for use during the process of epidural needle insertion. For epidural insertion, ultrasound is increasingly used to guide the needle into the epidural space. Ultrasound can improve the safety of epidural and was recommended by the 2008 NICE guidelines (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence). Without using ultrasound, there is no way for the anaesthetist to observe the location of the needle within the ligaments requiring the use of their personal judgment which may lead to injury. If the needle stops short of the epidural space, the anaesthetic is ineffective. If the needle proceeds too deep, it can cause injuries ranging from headache, to permanent nerve damage or death. Ultrasound of the spine is particularly difficult, because the complex bony structures surrounding the spine limit the ultrasound beam acoustic windows. Additionally, the important structures for epidural that need to be observed are located deeper than other conventional procedures such as peripheral nerve block. This is why a low frequency, curved probe (2-5 MHz) is used, which penetrates deeper but decreases in resolution. The benefits of automating ultrasound are to enable real-time ultrasound analysis on the live video, mitigate human error, and ensure repeatability by avoiding variation in perception by different users.


İstanbul underwent great changes to its urban texture as a result of the period of westernization that took place in the 19th Century. Beyoğlu and Galata, which represented the occidental and cosmopolitan face of the city, were among the settlements most influenced by these changes. This study aims to examine the spatial effects of these changes through the integration of old city maps of Beyoğlu and Galata with modern Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The maps of G. d'Ostoya (1858-1860), R. Huber (1887-1891) and Charles E. Goad (1904-1906) are the documents which are used in this context. The maps have been coordinated with GIS software and the items (such as buildings, roads, empty spaces) which they included as raster data have been transformed into vector data to make comparisons and superpositions possible within the GIS environment. Thus, the transformation of urban space can be revealed, and conclusions about how Galata was exposed to changes in the 19th Century can be drawn.


Resin transfer molding is a widely used composite material manufacturing process that produces high-strength and lightweight parts for various industrial applications. In order to manufacture defect-free parts with consistent material properties, it is important to control process parameters throughout the entire volume of the molded part. Usually a curing schedule includes a pre-warming to the resin viscosity reaches a minimum, further applying of pressure, and finally consolidation of resin at elevated temperature to its full polymerization. To ensure the uniformly state of the composites across the thick-walled products, we propose a model-based approach to the problem of optimal control synthesis using a mathematical model for curing an epoxy-based composite structure with varied thickness. The PDE system linking a kinetic equation with heat transfer equation takes into account an exothermic heat, a phase transition of resin from liquid to gel and further to the solid state, and well describes the cure process which is controlled by independent heat sources. To synthesize the multi-objective optimal control law, we perform the transient analysis of the developed model to calculate the coordinates of Pareto points in the 8-dimensional space of design variables. An efficiency of such approach in the manufacturing applications we demonstrate on example of cured glass-epoxy composite part with a varied thickness. Key-Words: Composite material; Curing process; Optimal control; Kinetic equations; PDEs in connection with control and optimization, Finite element modeling – FEM, Pareto frontier


The back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle has become the Achilles Heel of nuclear power. After more than 50 years of effort, there are, at present, no operating nuclear waste repositories for the spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants or for the high-level waste from the reprocessing of spent fuel. The articles in this issue of Elements describe the status of geological disposal in salt, crystalline rock, clay, and tuff, as presently developed in five countries.


The Swartkrans Cave is situated in the Sterkfontein valley, a World Heritage site and the 'Cradle of Humankind'. Public interest in the discoveries there resulted in a revised second edition to the edition first published in 1993. Additional chapters were added in which early hominid bone tools have been reinterpreted and new techniques for the estimation of the numbers of animals that contributed to the bone assemblages have been applied. Seven years of excavation results have been evaluated. The lower bank which yielded stone artefacts sugggested that the outer caves were visited by hominid bands as hominid hand and foot bones were also found there. Burnt bones were excavated and suggested that fires were repeatedly made over thousands of years. Hominid remains are descriptionbed together with dated bone and stone artefacts.


Researchers may describe different aspects of past scientific publications in their publications and the descriptions may keep changing in the evolution of science. The diverse and changing descriptions (i.e., citation context) on a publication characterize the impact and contributions of the past publication. In this article, we aim to provide an approach to understanding the changing and complex roles of a publication characterized by its citation context. We described a method to represent the publications' dynamic roles in science community in different periods as a sequence of vectors by training temporal embedding models. The temporal representations can be used to quantify how much the roles of publications changed and interpret how they changed. Our study in the biomedical domain shows that our metric on the changes of publications' roles is stable over time at the population level but significantly distinguish individuals. We also show the interpretability of our methods by a concrete example.


In recent years the term behavioral economics has arisen in consequence of the growing effort of a significant set of economists to import psychological methods and findings into economics. This body of work issues strong challenges to the use economists have made of rationality in economics. Unfortunately, this recent work illustrates unnecessary and misguided creativity. Vilfredo Pareto explored the same analytical territory nearly a century ago, and to superior analytical effect. Pareto recognized that the substantive content of action depends on the environment in which action occurs. Some environments elicit logical action while other environments elicit non-logical action. Both types of action are species of rationality, only they are recognizably different. In this paper we explain why Pareto's approach to human action points toward a superior analytical agenda than does the present orientation of behavioral economics.


Abstract Although history standards generally aim at developing historical consciousness among secondary school students, there is not much research-based knowledge to support making connections between the past, the present, and the future in history teaching. This study examines the effects of teaching analogous cases of an enduring human issue in 2 experimental conditions: 1 in which grade 10-12 students (n = 460) were actively encouraged to compare cases and to draw analogies with the present and 1 in which students studied cases without making comparisons or drawing analogies with the present (n = 273). Set against the results of a group of students who followed the usual history curriculum (n = 289), multilevel regression analyses on the collected data revealed that both experimental conditions positively affected students' appraisals of the relevance of history, more so in the case-comparison condition than in the separate-case condition. Students in the case-comparison condition also deemed the lesson course more valuable and experienced less difficulty with the applied pedagogical approach than students in the separate-case condition. Case comparison did not negatively affect the acquisition of historical factual knowledge. Implications for further research are discussed.


Abstract. One of the major evolutionary transitions of the mammaliaform lineage was the origin of a typicallymammalian pattern of growth. This is characterized by rapid juvenile growth followed by abrupt cessation of growth at adult size and may be linked with other important mammaliaform apomorphies of dental replacement and morphology. Investigation of growth patterns in the tritylodontid cynodont Oligokyphus and the basal mammaliaform Morganucodon provides insight into this crucial transition. We collected mandibular depth measurements from large samples of Morganucodon and Oligokyphus and constructed distributions of mandibular depth versus frequency for each species. These were compared with distributions from species from three different growth classes of extant amniote: testudines + crocodilians, mammals + birds, and lepidosaurs. Discriminant function analysis was used to differentiate between known growth classes by using different combinations of three measures of mandibular depth distribution shape (skew, kurtosis, and coefficient of variation) as proxies for different juvenile and adult growth patterns. Classification of the fossil species showed that Morganucodon closely resembled extant placental mammals in having rapid juvenile growth followed by truncated, determinate adult growth. Oligokyphus showed intermediate growth patterns, with more extended adult growth patterns than Morganucodon and slightly slower juvenile growth. This suggests a gradual evolution of mammalian growth patterns across the cynodont to mammaliaform transition, possibly with the origin of rapid juvenile growth preceding that of truncated, determinate adult growth. In turn, acquisition of both these aspects of mammalian growth was likely necessary for the evolution of diphyodont tooth replacement in the mammaliaform lineage.


Objective It is unclear whether psychological stress is associated with increased risk of multiple sclerosis (MS). We studied the association between major stressful life events and MS in a nationwide cohort study using death of a child or a spouse or marital dissolution as indicators of severe stress. Methods We created two study cohorts based on all Danish men and women born 1950–1992. One cohort consisted of all persons who became parents between 1968 and 2010, and another cohort consisted of all persons who married between 1968 and 2010. Members of both cohorts were followed for MS between 1982 and 2010 using data from the National Multiple Sclerosis Registry. Associations between major stressful life events and risk of MS were evaluated by means of MS incidence rate ratios (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) obtained in Poisson regression analyses. Results During approximately 30 million person-years of follow-up, bereaved parents experienced no unusual risk of MS compared with parents who did not lose a child (RR=1.12 (95% CI 0.89 to 1.38)). Likewise, neither divorced (RR=0.98 (95% CI 0.89 to 1.06)) nor widowed (RR=0.98 (95% CI 0.71 to 1.32) persons were at any unusual risk of MS compared with married persons of the same sex. Conclusions Our national cohort study provides little evidence for a causal association between major stressful life events (as exemplified by divorce or the loss of a child or a spouse) and subsequent MS risk.


Mixtures of 10, 20 and 30 wt. % of tungsten carbide powder and aluminum powder were ball milled for 2, 4 and 8 hrs to investigate the effect of percentages of the reinforcement and mechanical alloying time on microstructural properties of the produced composite powders. Finer particles were tried to obtain in ductile matrix. The milled powders were analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD). Nano/micro particle size and distribution (PSD) technique was used to measure particle size and distribution. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was also performed to observe particle morphology.


It is well known that cigarette smoking and physical activity have significant impacts on cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality and morbidity. Meanwhile, it is of interest to understand whether physical activity protects against CVD for smokers in a similar manner as it does for non-smokers. The present study examined how leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) is associated with the prevalence of CVD in relation to smoking status among adult Nevadans, using data from the 2010 Nevada Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Of the 3,913 survey respondents, 8.5% self-reported that they had ever been diagnosed with CVD. People with a history of CVD were significantly less likely to engage in LTPA than those with no history of CVD (p < 0.05). After adjusting for common sociodemographic variables, it was revealed that people with CVD were twice more likely to not engage in LTPA than their counterparts independent of smoking status. Without taking LTPA into account, the odds of having CVD for current and former smokers was 1.87–2.25 times higher than the odds for non-smokers. Interestingly, however, if LTPA was accounted for, there was no significant difference in the odds of having CVD between current and non-smokers. These results indicate that LTPA is inversely associated with the prevalence of CVD independent of smoking status, and that regular physical activity may protect against CVD for smokers as well as for non-smokers. Physical activity, along with smoking cessation, should be promoted to better prevent and control CVD among smokers.


This paper presents an approach for generating photorealistic video sequences of dynamically varying facial expressions in human-agent interactions. To this end, we study human-human interactions to model the relationship and influence of one individual's facial expressions in the reaction of the other. We introduce a two level optimization of generative adversarial models, wherein the first stage generates a dynamically varying sequence of the agent's face sketch conditioned on facial expression features derived from the interacting human partner. This serves as an intermediate representation, which is used to condition a second stage generative model to synthesize high-quality video of the agent face. Our approach uses a novel L1 regularization term computed from layer features of the discriminator, which are integrated with the generator objective in the GAN model. Session constraints are also imposed on video frame generation to ensure appearance consistency between consecutive frames. We demonstrated that our model is effective at generating visually compelling facial expressions. Moreover, we quantitatively showed that agent facial expressions in the generated video clips reflect valid emotional reactions to behavior of the human partner.


Introduction: Scrotal orchidopexy for palpable undescended testicle (UDT) has received attention in the last decade due to its lower morbidity. This study was conducted to determine the frequency and factors related to the use of the scrotal approach in the surgical treatment of palpable UDT among surgeons. Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was carried out using an online survey, which was sent to different pediatric urologists, pediatric surgeons, and urologists groups. The survey consisted of questions on demographics as well as surgeons opinions and experience toward scrotal orchidopexy. Results: Of 163 respondents, 57 (35.0%) were pediatric surgeons, 98 (60.1%) were pediatric urologists, and 8 (4.9%) were urologists. There were 86 respondents (52.8%) who used the scrotal orchidopexy approach for UDT at any time in their practice. Pediatric urologists tended to use the scrotal orchidopexy approach for UDT more significantly than others (P < 0.001). There were significantly more scrotal orchidopexies for UDT performed by the pediatric urologists throughout their practice and per year compared to others, respectively (P < 0.001). Fifty-two respondents (31.9%) claimed that scrotal orchidopexy is not a good option for their patients, while seven respondents (4.3%) claimed that the procedure was hard to perform. Discussion: Based on the results of this study, we believe that there is a discrepancy in the reported advantages and success rate of scrotal orchidopexy in the published literature and the utilization of such an approach among surgeons managing palpable UDT in children. Conclusion: Scrotal orchidopexy is an underutilized approach in the management of palpable UDT in children. Only 52.8% of our respondents used it for UDT. One of the main reasons why scrotal orchidopexy is underutilized is due to the surgeons' perception that scrotal orchidopexy is not the procedure of choice for their patients and their unfamiliarity with the procedure.


1. Sham-operated and bilaterally nephrectomized rats were injected intravenously with glycyl-L-leucine, glycylglycine and glycylsarcosine, and the concentrations of these dipeptides in plasma and muscle, liver, renal cortex (in the sham-operated rats) and intestinal mucosa at various intervals were determined. 2. Initially the plasma concentrations of glycyl-leucine and glycylglycine were higher in nephrectomized than in control rats but later the concentrations were similar in both groups of rats. The disappearance of these two dipeptides from plasma was almost complete within 20 min, and their plasma half-lives were not changed remarkably by nephrectomy. In contrast, nephrectomy markedly impaired disappearance of glycylsarcosine from plasma and prolonged its half-life from 7-6 min to 52-0 min. 3. Glycyl-leucine and glycylglycine were not detected in tissues of control rats injected with these dipeptides, but glycylsarcosine was recovered from all four tissues examined. Nephrectomy resulted in greater accumulations of glycylsarcosine in tissues and the appearance of glycylglycine in the remaining three tissues and glycyl-leucine in muscle. 4. Enterectomy did not have a remarkable effect on plasma half-life of glycylglycine but it allowed recovery of this dipeptide from renal cortex, liver and muscle. 5. It is concluded that kidneys amd small intestine are involved in the disposition of circulating dipeptides, but in their absence other tissues may assume a greater role in this regard. However, renal clearance appears to be an important route for the disposition of dipeptides which are poorly hydrolysed by body tissues.


From the last 40 years, the design of the physical environment in supporting dementia residents has been frequently mentioned in the research literature. The environmental design research literature has outlined the importance of social interaction and social network as one of the therapeutic goals to maintain the quality of life (QoL) for people experiencing dementia. Although several previous studies have conducted the empirical literature review to understand the physical environment and associated QoL in long-term care facilities (LTCF), no single study concentrated on the role of spatial design in social interaction. For elderly people with dementia, changes in their social or physical environment, or manifestations of dementia may have an influence on their social interaction and therefore, it is imperative to understand the factors associated with the physical environment, social interaction and thereby the improved quality of life (QoL). This study aimed to fill this gap and contribute to a better understanding of how 'social interaction', the most important determinants to measure QoL for people experiencing dementia could be influenced under different spatial design and environmental characteristics. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the published evidence from diversified sectors such as medical and health literature, environmental psychology, architecture, interior design, and evidence-based design literature. By reviewing relevant literature and discussing environmental design factors associated with social interaction as a determinant of QoL, this paper outlines several critical spatial design characteristics and a comprehensive set of spatial design overview for LTCF that shown to affect positive social interaction and QoL of the residents, staff and their caregivers. The summary of this review could influence the future design of care facilities and provide designers the effectiveness or the weaknesses of their design decisions. As an expected outcome, this applied research could enhance the value and professional practice knowledge of memory care design that have a positive ripple effect in the healthcare design industry.


This paper tests the existence of Gibson paradox using the traditional and modern time series techniques in the case of a developing country, Turkey. Even though the results from the traditional Gibson paradox regression suggested a positive relationship between the interest rates and the prices levels in Turkish data, subsequently it was proven to be spurious. On analyzing the time series properties of the variables and the results from the Johansen cointegration procedure, we reveal that there is no support of the Gibson paradox in Turkish data.


A control system for flocculation, used in water and wastewater treatment operations is being developed. The approach is based on detailed particle size distribution measurements of influent and effluent streams and dynamic models for the particle size distribution. The models are developed herein based on a population balance approach. Initial experimental work is underway to verify the validity of the particle size distribution dynamic models. The ultimate objective is to use detailed particle size distribution measurements and the dynamic models of particle flocculation to analyze and develop control laws for the flocculation process. The control laws will by necessity be adaptive due to the difficulty in identifying all process model parameters theoretically and due to the changing process dynamics. Identification algorithms are presented herein.


There has been a tremendous amount of work on incorporation of time in computation for modeling and implementing real-time systems. Most efforts incorporate time by discretizing it. Discretizing means that time is represented through finite time intervals. As a result, infinitesimally small time intervals cannot be represented or reasoned about in these approaches . In practical real-time systems, e.g., a nuclear reactor, two or more events can occur within an infinitesimally small interval. In this dissertation, we develop techniques for including continuous time in computations. These techniques result in frameworks for modeling and verification of real-time systems. Our proposed framework is based on logic programming (LP) extended with constraints and coinduction. To build the theoretical foundations necessary for this work, we present a new programming paradigm, co-constraint logic programming (co-CLP for brevity), that merges two programming paradigms: constraint logic programming and coinductive logic programming. Constraint logic programming (CLP) has been proposed as a declarative paradigm for merging constraint solving and logic programming. Coinductive logic programming, on the other hand, has been proposed as a powerful extension of logic programming for handling infinite (rational) objects and reasoning about their properties. Since CLP's declarative semantics is given in terms of a least fixed-point, i.e., it is inductive, it cannot be directly used for reasoning about infinite and cyclical objects and their properties. Coinductive logic programming does not include constraints. Co-CLP combines both constraint logic programming and coinduction and enables us to reason about infinite (rational) structures in the presence of constraints.
In this dissertation, we investigate incorporation of continuous time in various domains of computer science. In particular we study the extension of ω-grammars with continuous time (timed ω-grammars) and also continuous time extension of π-calculus (timed π-calculus). We present the implementation of these formalisms in co-CLP and show how these co-CLP-based realization can be used for modeling and verifying real-time systems. We also present a co-CLP framework for modeling hybrid automata, of which pushdown timed automata and timed automata are instances; we use this logic programming realization of hybrid automata to develop a framework for modeling and verification of cyber-physical systems, including real-time systems.


Glucose, like oxygen, is of fundamental importance for any living being and it is the major energy source for the fetus and the neonate during gestation. The placenta ensures a steady supply of glucose to the fetus, while birth marks a sudden change in substrate delivery and a major change in metabolism. Hypoglycemia is one of the most common pathologies encountered in the neonatal intensive care unit and affects a wide range of neonates. Preterm, small for gestational age (GA) and intra-uterine growth restricted neonates are especially vulnerable due to their lack of metabolic reserves and associated co-morbidities. Nearly 30-60% of these high-risk infants are hypoglycemic and require immediate intervention. Preterm neonates are uniquely predisposed to developing hypoglycemia and its associated complications due to their limited glycogen and fat stores, inability to generate new glucose using gluconeogenesis pathways, have higher metabolic demands due to a relatively larger brain size, and are unable to mount a counter-regulatory response to hypoglycemia. In this review we will discuss the epidemiology; pathophysiology; clinical presentation; management and neurodevelopmental outcomes in affected infants and summarize evidence to develop a rational and scientific approach to this common problem.


Reward behaviors induced by cocaine involve activation of the GTPase Rap1 in medium spiny neurons of the striatum. Cocaine activates reward pathways in the brain involving dopaminergic neurons in the striatum. Nagai et al. and Cahill et al. both discovered that Rap1, a guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase), mediated cocaine-induced signaling events that alter synaptic activity of medium spiny neurons in the nucleus accumbens. Using mouse striatal slice preparations exposed to either a dopamine type 1 receptor (D1R) agonist (SKF81297) or an activator of adenylyl cyclase (forskolin) to increase cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) concentrations, Nagai et al. applied a phosphoproteomic approach in which proteins phosphorylated on serine or threonine residues were enriched by affinity purification with 14-3-3–coupled beads and then analyzed by mass spectrometry. This analysis identified 47 proteins that exhibited an increase in phosphorylation in response to both stimuli, and included the Rap1 guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) Rasgrp2. In vitro kinase assays with protein kinase A (PKA) confirmed that Rasgrp2 was a direct PKA substrate. Exposure of striatal slices to either SKF81297 or forskolin increased the amount of GTP-bound (active) Rap1, consistent with phosphorylation of Rasgrp2 stimulating its GEF activity. Giving mice a single dose of cocaine also increased Rasgrp2 phosphorylation and GTP-bound Rap1 in the nucleus accumbens. Viral-mediated expression of a constitutively active form of the catalytic subunit of PKA or an active form of Rap1 specifically in D1R-expressing neurons increased neuronal excitability and increased reward behavior (conditioned place preference after 3 consecutive days of cocaine injections). Localized knockout of Rap1 in the nucleus accumbens reduced neuronal excitability and cocaine-induced reward behavior. The microRNAs miR-132 and miR-212 are induced by cocaine, and Cahill et al. identified PDZ-RhoGEF, which is a GEF for RhoA, as a top predicted target of this pair of miRNAs. Knocking down these miRNAs both enhanced cocaine-induced reward behavior and increased the abundance of PDZ-RhoGEF. In nucleus accumbens isolated from mice 24 hours after cocaine injection or self-administration for 7 days, the amount of PDZ-RhoGEF in the crude cytosolic fraction decreased and the amount in the crude nuclear fraction increased. In contrast, 4 weeks after the last dose of cocaine, PDZ-RhoGEF was more abundant in the cytosolic fraction than the nuclear fraction of the nucleus accumbens. Twenty-four hours after the 7-day cocaine injection paradigm (24-7), GTP-bound RhoA in the nuclear fraction was increased, which was associated with an increase in the binding of the serum response factor (SRF) coactivator MAL to filamentous actin in the nucleus, an indicator of increased SRF-mediated transcription. Rap1b was among the SRF-MAL target genes that exhibited increased expression in the nucleus accumbens in response to cocaine in the 24-7 paradigm. Cocaine induced an increase in Rap1b, which was diminished in mice with a nucleus accumbens–specific knockdown of SRF and was absent 2 weeks after the mice received the last cocaine dose. Rap1 activates phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) and Rap1 coimmunoprecipitated with PI3K in the nucleus accumbens, even in mice not exposed to cocaine. Consistent with Rap1b activating PI3K, which then stimulates the kinase Akt and the translation-promoting complex mTORC1, phosphorylation of Akt and mTOR increased in the nucleus accumbens of mice administered cocaine (24-7 paradigm) and also in mice overexpressing Rap1b in the nucleus accumbens. Rap1 overexpression in the nucleus accumbens produced an increase in the number of thin spines (considered immature), an effect blocked by coexpression of dominant-negative Akt. Furthermore, expression of dominant-negative Akt or viral-mediated knockout of Rap1 in the nucleus accumbens inhibited cocaine-induced increase in thin spines. This Rap1-PI3K-Akt-mTORC1 pathway also contributed to cocaine-induced reward behavior and locomotor activity. This pair of studies examines the early signaling events associated with short-term cocaine administration and the later events associated with long-term cocaine administration. Nagai et al. connected D1R signaling through cAMP and PKA to increased activation of Rap1 through Rasgrp2 in response to acute cocaine administration. Cahill et al. connected long-term cocaine-induced changes in gene expression to an increase in Rap1b that altered spine morphology through the PI3K-Akt-mTORC1 pathway. The Rap1-dependent changes reported by Cahill et al. eventually reversed several weeks after the last cocaine dose. T. Nagai, S. Nakamuta, K. Kuroda, S. Nakauchi, T. Nishioka, T. Takano, X. Zhang, D. Tsuboi, Y. Funahashi, T. Nakano, J. Yoshimoto, K. Kobayashi, M. Uchigashima, M. Watanabe, M. Miura, A. Nishi, K. Kobayashi, K. Yamada, M. Amano, K. Kaibuchi, Phosphoproteomics of the dopamine pathway enables discovery of Rap1 activation as a reward signal in vivo. Neuron 89, 550–565 (2016). [PubMed] M. E. Cahill, R. C. Bagot, A. M. Gancarz, D. M. Walker, H. Sun, Z.-J. Wang, E. A. Heller, J. Feng, P. J. Kennedy, J. W. Koo, H. M. Cates, R. L. Neve, L. Shen, D. M. Dietz, E. J. Nestler, Bidirectional synaptic structural plasticity after chronic cocaine administration occurs through Rap1 small GTPase signaling. Neuron 89, 566–582 (2016). [PubMed]


ImmunoChemistry Technologies' cell viability assays include a large range of fluorescent whole-cell assays for intracellular apoptosis detection and cellular analysis. ICT's line of assay kits can detect apoptosis, necrosis, intracellular caspase activity, cell-mediated cytotoxicity, activated serine proteases, autophagy, oxidative stress, mitochondrial membrane permeability, and more! These kits are designed for use in whole, living cells – no lysing of the cells is required. Whether you're a long time user of our popular FLICA probe or a new customer, we offer quality fluorescent products and top notch customer and technical support. BRIGHT MINDS, BRIGHT SOLUTIONS.TM CELL VIABILITY CATALOG immunochemistry.com 1


Mental disorders are among the top most demanding challenges in world-wide health. A large number of mental disorders exhibit pathological rhythms, which serve as the disorders characteristic biomarkers. These rhythms are the targets for neurostimulation techniques. Open-loop neurostimulation employs stimulation protocols, which are rather independent of the patients health and brain state in the moment of treatment. Most alternative closed-loop stimulation protocols consider real-time brain activity observations but appear as adaptive open-loop protocols, where e.g., pre-defined stimulation sets in if observations fulfil pre-defined criteria. The present theoretical work proposes a fully-adaptive closed-loop neurostimulation setup, that tunes the brain activities power spectral density (PSD) according to a user-defined PSD. The utilized brain model is non-parametric and estimated from the observations via magnitude fitting in a pre-stimulus setup phase. Moreover, the algorithm takes into account possible conduction delays in the feedback connection between observation and stimulation electrode. All involved features are illustrated on pathological α- and γ-rhythms known from psychosis. To this end, we simulate numerically a linear neural population brain model and a non-linear cortico-thalamic feedback loop model recently derived to explain brain activity in psychosis.


Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remains the primary indication for admission to paediatric intensive care units and accounts for significant mortality, morbidity and resource utilization. Respiratory infections, in particular pneumonia and severe bronchiolitis, are the most common causes of respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation in infants and children. This paper reviews the pathophysiology of ARDS and the management of paediatric patients with acute lung injury. Data indicate that adoption of a lung protective ventilation with low tidal volumes and of an open-lung ventilation strategy, characterized by sufficient positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) to avoid atelectasis, provides the greatest likelihood of survival and minimizes lung injury. The relative benefits of strategies such as high frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFOV), inhaled nitric oxide (iNO), recruiting manoeuvres and prone position are also considered. Moreover this article examines exogenous lung surfactant replacement therapy and its efficacy in the treatment of paediatric ARDS. In infants and children with acute lung injury the endogenous surfactant system is not only deficient, as observed in preterm infants, but altered via a variety of other mechanisms like inhibition and dysfunction. All factors contribute to the altered physiology seen in ARDS. The role of exogenous surfactant in lung injury beyond the neonatal period is therefore more complex and its limited efficacy may be related to a number of factors, among them inadequacy of pharmaceutical surfactants, insufficient dosing or drug delivery, poor drug distribution or, simply, an inability of the drug to counteract the underlying pathophysiology of ARDS. Several trials have found no clinical benefit from various surfactant supplementation methods in adult patients with ARDS, however some studies have shown that this therapy can improve oxygenation and decrease mortality in some specific clinical conditions of paediatric ARDS. Further studies in the paediatric field are therefore needed to clarify aspects of drug composition, dosage, dilution and timing of delivery and new researches must be carried out on development of more robust pharmaceutical surfactants. Proceedings of the 10 th International Workshop on Neonatology · Cagliari (Italy) · October 22 nd -25 th , 2014  · The last ten years, the next ten years in Neonatology Guest Editors: Vassilios Fanos, Michele Mussap, Gavino Faa, Apostolos Papageorgiou


Ordovician strata of the Mohawk Valley and Taconic allochthon of New York and the Humber margin of Newfoundland record multiple magmatic and basin-forming episodes associated with the Taconic orogeny. Here we present new U-Pb zircon geochronology and whole rock geochemistry and neodymium isotopes from Early Paleozoic volcanic ashes and siliciclastic units on the northern Appalachian margin of Laurentia. Volcanic ashes in the Table Point Formation of Newfoundland and the Indian River Formation of the Taconic allochthon in New York yield dates between 466.16 ± 0.12 and 464.20 ± 0.13 Ma. Red, bioturbated slate of the Indian River Formation record a shift to more juvenile neodymium isotope values suggesting sedimentary contributions from the Taconic arc-system by 466 Ma. Eight ashes within the Trenton Group in the Mohawk Valley were dated between 452.63 ± 0.06 and 450.68 ± 0.12 Ma. These ashes contain zircon with Late Ordovician magmatic rims and 1.4 to 1.0 Ga xenocrystic cores that were inherited from Grenville basement, suggesting that the parent magmas erupted through the Laurentian margin. The new geochronological and geochemical data are integrated with a subsidence model and data from the hinterland to refine the tectonic model of the Taconic orogeny. Closure of the Iapetus Ocean by 475 Ma via collision of the peri-Gondwanan Moretown terrane with hyperextended distal fragments of the Laurentian margin is not clearly manifested on the autochthon or the Taconic allochthon other than an increase in sediment accumulation. Pro-foreland basins formed during the Middle Ordovician when these terranes were obducted onto the Laurentian margin. 466 to 464 Ma ashes on the Laurentian margin coincide with a late pulse of magmatism in both the Notre Dame arc in Newfoundland and the Shelburne Falls arc of New England that is potentially related to break-off of an east-dipping slab. Following slab reversal, by 455 Ma, the Bronson Hill arc was established on the new composite Laurentian margin. Thus, we conclude that Late Ordovician strata in the Mohawk Valley and Taconic allochthon of New York and on the Humber margin of Newfoundland were deposited in retro-foreland basins.


The integration between BIM (Building Information Modeling) and GIS (Geographic Information System) is currently a highly debated research topic. However, the effective integration of the two workflows in a unique information system is still an open research field, especially when dealing with Cultural Heritage (CH). The paper describes an ongoing research on the development of a web information system able to integrate BIM and GIS data, with particular focus on the analysis of the historicized city and its main buildings over time. Three main aspects, in particular, are considered more relevant: (i) conceptual data organization to integrate GIS and BIM in a single environment; (ii) integration of data belonging to different historical periods for analyses over time (4D); (iii) integration into the system of datasets already structured in pre-existing HGIS and HBIM. Most (if not all) of the attributes must be linked with both 2D and 3D entities. The system should be queryable and with the possibility to edit the information regardless of the actual focus of the current user, either if he is more BIM or GIS oriented. This is one of the main requirement for the system not to be just a simple viewer of BIM and GIS data in a unique software environment. The system can manage, from a spatial point of view, different scales of detail, allowing the connection between data from the architectural scale to the territorial one and, from a temporal point of view, data belonging to different periods. All these features have been designed to meet, in particular, the requirements of CH and realize a Historical BIM-GIS system. Besides, the web architecture allows sharing information even between actors with different digital skills, without the need for specific software installed, and ensures portability and access from mobile devices.


A striking aspect of cortical neural networks is the divergence of a relatively small number of input channels from the peripheral sensory apparatus into a large number of cortical neurons, an over-complete representation strategy. Cortical neurons are then connected by a sparse network of lateral synapses. Here we propose that such architecture may increase the persistence of the representation of an incoming stimulus, or a percept. We demonstrate that for a family of networks in which the receptive field of each neuron is re-expressed by its outgoing connections, a represented percept can remain constant despite changing activity. We term this choice of connectivity REceptive FIeld REcombination (REFIRE) networks. The sparse REFIRE network may serve as a high-dimensional integrator and a biologically plausible model of the local cortical circuit.


Abstract Background: A 71-year-old female presented on 3 occasions with escalating pain in a congenitally blind eye. Examination revealed hypertensive uveitis with morning glory optic disc dysplasia and absence of a crystalline lens. There was no previous intraocular surgery or trauma. Intensive anti-hypertensive agents and topical steroids did not control intraocular pressure (IOP) or inflammation. Results: Dilated fundus examination on the third clinical review revealed a luxated cataractous lens on the retina. Pars plana vitrectomy and fragmatome lensectomy controlled inflammation and IOP, with resolution of ocular pain. Discussion: This is an exceptional case of phacogenic uveitis with secondary glaucoma occurring years after spontaneous crystalline lens luxation in a patient with morning glory syndrome. The embryological pathogenesis of morning glory syndrome and the significance of accelerated cataractogenesis and zonular weakness are discussed. Hypertensive uveitis with unexplained absence of a crystalline lens in a blind eye must prompt suspicion of delayed phacogenic uveitis following asymptomatic lens luxation.


Order-preserving sub matrices are an important tool for the analysis of gene expression data. As finding large order-preserving sub matrices is a computationally hard problem, previous work has investigated both exact but exponential-time as well as polynomial-time but inexact algorithms for finding large order-preserving sub matrices. In this paper, we propose a novel exact algorithm to find maximum order preserving sub matrices which is fixed parameter tractable with respect to the number of columns of the provided gene expression data. In particular, our algorithm is based on solving a sequence of mixed integer linear programs and it exhibits better guarantees as well as better runtime performance as compared to the state-of-the-art exact algorithms. Our empirical study in benchmark datasets shows large improvement in terms of computational speed.


In "TalkTalk" E. L. Konigsburg presents a selection of speeches she has given over a period of 25 years. In her introduction to the first speech, and to the book as a whole, she explains:"While each of my books has been written because I had a story I wanted to tell, these speeches were written because I had something I wanted to say. The audience for the former is children; for the latter, adults.... I recognize -- with a measure of amused detachment -- that some were written as a reaction to trends; others, to fads.I have given these talks in cafetoriums, auditoriums, and the public rooms of Holiday Inns. Even though I have not always been on a stage when addressing an audience, I have tried to set the stage. Between talk and talk, I have written passages connecting the speeches to the time in which they were written and to one another. And that is "TalkTalk.""Always a thought-provoking speaker, she has chosen nine speeches that capture the essence of her years as a writer for children. When brought together, they enrich one another and provide a chance to look back at what children's books have been, to observe where they are now and to offer an insightful look at what books may continue to mean to children in the years to come. Written by an outstanding author, these speeches, individually and together, represent a vision of the need for books and the role books have played and should continue to play in the lives of children.


Conservation of soil water resulting from
decreases in stomata conductance under atmospheric
high vapor pressure defi cit (VPD) conditions
is a possible approach for enhanced
tolerance of water defi cit by crops. Water defi cit
is usually a concern in peanut (Arachis hypogea
L.) since it is frequently grown on sandy soils
with low water-holding capacity. Seventeen peanut
genotypes were studied to determine the
response of their transpiration rates (TR) to VPD.
The results of this study demonstrated variation
among peanut genotypes with nine genotypes
exhibiting a breakpoint in their VPD response
at about 2.2 kPa, above which there was little
or no further increase in TR. Therefore, these
genotypes with a breakpoint have the possibility
of soil water conservation when VPD exceeded
2.2 kPa. The remaining eight genotypes had a linear
response in TR over the whole range of tested
VPD. Also, the 17 genotypes could be separated
into groups with differing rates of increasing TR
at low VPD. The change in TR with increasing
VPD may be important in determining the rate at
which soil water is used under fi eld conditions.


During 2001, investors, politicians, regulatory agencies, and the media have voiced a common sentiment: Wall Street has a credibility problem. Specifically, can the investing public trust the research analysis and recommendations they receive from Wall Street analysts? At issue is the independence and objectivity of sell-side analysts, a term applied to analysts that work for brokerage firms. Spring of 2001 brought media attacks on these analysts, with newspaper headlines such as The Financial Times' "Shoot All the Analysts" and The Wall Street Journal's "Outlook for Analysts: Skepticism and Blame". Fortune even made analyst credibility a cover story with the title: "Can We Ever Trust Wall Street Again?" This paper attempts to address the question: What should we make of this brouhaha and what remedies are appropriate? It is quite clear that the major players, namely the brokerage firms, Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR), feel that something should be done and have already taken a number of actions. Several proposals have already been made through the trade association, the Securities Industry Association; and some individual brokerage firms have already unilaterally changed policies to stem the criticisms of ostensible conflicts of interest. Will the proposals offered by the brokerage industry fix what is broken? And perhaps more importantly, we should ask the important first question: What if anything is broken? We argue that at the heart of the credibility controversy are the disparate incentives of investment banks' clients: while brokerage clients ("investors") want unbiased research, most corporate financing clients ("issuers") benefit from optimistic research. As corporate financing revenues dwarf brokerage commissions, investment banks face large incentives to maintain policies that favor issuers over investors. Furthermore, the managements of the corporations, the subjects of brokerage research, provide an additional incentive to analysts: issue positive research and maintain direct access to valuable future information or risk being shut out by management entirely. We conclude that while the fixes proposed and already undertaken may improve credibility, they are unlikely to be substantial remedies because they do not address the critical issue of these misaligned incentives. We also conclude that institutional investors, aware of analysts' conflicts of interest, are able to de-bias the brokerage research they receive, and consequently maintain their own in-house research staffs and purchase independent research services. The disenfranchised are largely the individual investors, who lack the awareness or education necessary to adequately filter brokerage research recommendations. We begin our examination by providing background on the controversy. We next summarize the evidence from relevant academic work that demonstrates the value brokerage research can have for investors and the limitations of that value. We then discuss explanations for optimism biases that have been documented for brokerage earnings forecasts and recommendations, including incentives by and pressures from the analyst's employer, from the companies the analyst reports about, and from institutional investors. Next, we analyze a number of proposals and actions that attempt to increase brokerage research objectivity and independence. Finally, we conclude by raising several issues that we believe are most critical to understanding the credibility controversy, and we cast doubt on the success of recently proposed fixes.


This study presents results of a survey about social network website (SNW) usage that was administered to university students in China, Egypt, France, Israel, India, Korea, Macao, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States. The offline and online social ties of SNW users were examined by nationality, levels of individualism-collectivism (I-C), gender, SNW usage, age, and access location. Contrary to existing literature, we found no differences in the number of offline friends between individualist and collectivist nations. Similarly, there was not a difference in the number of online social ties between individualist and collectivist nations. However, members of collectivist nations had significantly more online social ties never met in person. Heavy SNW users in individualist nations maintained significantly higher numbers of offline social ties; however, heavy SNW users in collectivist nations did not have higher numbers of offline social ties. Related implications and recommendations are provided.


The application of exergy analysis to aerospace systems requires proper analysis of the entropy generated during the wake equilibration process. Early studies of exergy analysis applied to aerospace systems focused on hypersonic vehicles and these studies revealed the significance of the wake contribution to the overall exergy loss. This current study focuses on exergy analysis at lower speeds and includes analysis of a ramjet and a single spool turbojet engine. Another focus of this study is on the transient exergy analysis of propulsion systems. With the use of an analytical model, this study reveals that, as in the case of hypersonic vehicles, the wake contribution to the overall entropy generation remains significant. Specifically, the rate of entropy generation in the wake region of a turbojet engine operating at cruse conditions is up to three times the rate of entropy generation inside the engine. In the next portion, a quasi-one-dimensional flow solver is used to model transient throttling maneuvers in a ramjet and a turbojet engine. This work indicates that for the fast throttling maneuvers in the case of the ramjet, the unsteady entropy generation terms are significant. However, due to the slow shaft dynamics, a quasi-steady exergy analysis (i.e. where the unsteady entropy generation terms are neglected) can accurately predict the performance of a gas turbine engine during transient maneuvers.


Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology is a powerful tool that can support decision-making in all the facets of disaster risk management. Being at the centre of all disaster risk management functions, GIS activities such as data acquisition, processing, analysis and visualisation should be seamless from planning to prediction, preparation, response and recovery. A case study of devastating wildfires that destroyed thousands of hectares of agricultural land during August 2011 in the North-West province, South Africa, identifies the lack of a comprehensive framework within which information-based disaster impact assessments are undertaken and which is integrated with the larger context of disaster risk management. Problems relating to the availability, quality and integration of data are typical of the ad hoc approach to the implementation of information technologies, indicating the need for an integrated and coordinated approach. The aim of this paper is to establish a framework for rapid impact assessment, with specific reference to geospatial data management. The framework is put into the theoretical context of disaster risk management and information management, with data acquisition and processing functions being anchored in the principles of information systems theory.


Dirty-paper codes have been used extensively as the basis for new code design for digital image watermarking due to their interference rejection property. Random bending attacks still pose a great danger to watermark survival and the theoretical basis for the assessment of their impact on decoder performance is yet to be laid. Meanwhile, past research results point out to the use of a new channel model named additive white Gaussian noise and jitter (AWGN&J) channel as a means to assess the impact of imperfect synchronization in the performance of the watermark decoder. In this paper, we show that the capacity of the ideal Costa scheme is greatly reduced in the presence of imperfect synchronization and that its host signal interference rejection property does not hold anymore in the presence of such attack. Moreover, we show that arbitrarily increasing watermark power does not help to mitigate the effect of imperfect synchronization.


A new finite element modal frequency method is presented and shown to be advantageous for the analysis of microwave filters. The method analyzes a finite-element model of a filter by first computing the eigenmodes of the three-dimensional (3-D) structure. The computed eigenvalues are shown to reliably determine all of the resonant frequencies in a frequency range; the filter design can be changed until the desired resonant frequencies are computed. Finally, the eigenvectors are used as basis functions to compute the frequency response of the filter, thereby achieving a speedup that increases with the number of frequencies analyzed. Two filters analyzed in this paper show speedups ranging from 1.39 to 4.01, and their computed S-parameters agree closely with measurements.


The first chapter, joint with Dominik Thaler, is a New Keynesian model of how monetary policy can influence the risk-taking behaviour of banks. Lower interest rates change bank incentives, making them prefer riskier investments. This mechanism alters the tradeoff faced by the monetary authority, affecting optimal policy conduct. After estimating the model, we find that the monetary authority should react less aggressively to inflation, trading off more inflation volatility in exchange for less financial market distortions. The second chapter, written with Prof. Massimiliano Marcellino, investigates whether modelling parameter time variation and stochastic volatility improves the forecasts of three major exchange rates vis-a-vis the US dollar. We find that modelling time-varying volatility significantly refines the estimation of forecast uncertainty through an accurate calibration of the entire forecast distribution at all forecast horizons. Similar empirical tools are employed in the third chapter, where I show that the inclusion of default risk and risk aversion measures improves the forecasts of key activity and banking indicators. The bulk of forecast improvement takes place during the 2001 and 2008 recessions, when credit constraints were arguably binding. A structural VAR further reveals that an unexpected credit spread increase in 2010 causes an output contraction that lasts for about two years, and explains up to 35% percent of output variation. The final project, joint with Sandra Eickmeier, Prof. Massimiliano Marcellino and Wolfgang Lemke, investigates the changing international transmission of financial shocks over 1971-2012. A time-varying parameter FAVAR shows that global financial shocks, measured as unexpected changes in a US financial condition index, strongly impact growth in the nine countries considered. In addition, financial shocks in 2008 explain approximately 20% of the GDP growth variation in the 9 countries, as opposed to an average of 5% percent before the crisis.


Wikis represent the next natural and logical development in the 'history of writing'. They were first introduced over 10 years ago as a fully editable writing tool to facilitate collaboration through the use of networked computer systems. Since their introduction by Ward Cunningham in 1994, wikis have been used for a variety of teaching and learning applications. This paper outlines and illustrates some of the attractive features of the wiki genre of software as tools for the creation and management of electronic knowledge within the context of the teaching and learning activities that take place within a higher-education environment.


Buddhism is indisputably gaining prominence in the West, as is evidenced by the growth of Buddhist practice within many traditions and keen interest in meditation and mindfulness. In The Lotus and the Lion, J. Jeffrey Franklin traces the historical and cultural origins of Western Buddhism, showing that the British Empire was a primary engine for curiosity about and then engagement with the Buddhisms that the British encountered in India and elsewhere in Asia. As a result, Victorian and Edwardian England witnessed the emergence of comparative religious scholarship with a focus on Buddhism, the appearance of Buddhist characters and concepts in literary works, the publication of hundreds of articles on Buddhism in popular and intellectual periodicals, and the dawning of syncretic religions that incorporated elements derived from Buddhism. In this fascinating book, Franklin analyzes responses to and constructions of Buddhism by popular novelists and poets, early scholars of religion, inventors of new religions, social theorists and philosophers, and a host of social and religious commentators. Examining the work of figures ranging from Rudyard Kipling and D. H. Lawrence to H. P. Blavatsky, Thomas Henry Huxley, and F. Max Muller, Franklin provides insight into cultural upheavals that continue to reverberate into our own time. Those include the violent intermixing of cultures brought about by imperialism and colonial occupation, the trauma and self-reflection that occur when a Christian culture comes face-to-face with another religion, and the debate between spiritualism and materialism. The Lotus and the Lion demonstrates that the nineteenth-century encounter with Buddhism subtly but profoundly changed Western civilization forever.


Gay men in sport are currently at a historic crossroads. On the one hand, the sport industry has never been more accepting and inclusive of sexual minorities than it is today. On the other hand, however, the sociocultural norms and organizational practices within sport that have traditionally stigmatized gay men and influenced their career choices—both in pursuit of and persistence within careers in sport—continue to exist. Drawing from life course theory, the purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore the experiences of 12 gay men working in the sport industry and understand how their awareness (or lack thereof) of the stigma associated with being gay shaped their career decisions. Findings suggest that historical/social context, organizational practices, personal and professional relationships, and the interplay between these factors inform how gay men navigate their stigmatized identities while working in sport.


In recent years the laws and policies on asylum of the EU and its Member States have converged towards greater restriction and raise concern as to the commitment of the EU to protect the right to seek refugee status within its territory and uphold this fundamental right beyond its borders. This book analyses the implications of the EU asylum policy for the right to seek refugee status within the meaning of the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. The author contends that the development of other forms of international protection does not erode the relevance of the Convention, which remains a cornerstone of refugee protection. Relevant EU legislation and proposals for future legislation are measured against the standards set out in international refugee and human rights law with a view to making law reform proposals for the protection of the right to seek refugee status within the EU. Substantive and procedural issues are examined to this end. Refugee protection presents considerable challenges for the EU, its Member States and the international community at large. It is critical that adherence to international standards remains central to the shaping of the EU asylum policy if the EU is to face up to its responsibilities and obligations.


Methods for deep learning based medical image registration have only recently approached the quality of classical model-based image alignment. The dual challenge of both a very large trainable parameter space and often insufficient availability of expert supervised correspondence annotations has led to slower progress compared to other domains such as image segmentation. Yet, image registration could also more directly benefit from an iterative solution than segmentation. We therefore believe that significant improvements, in particular for multi-modal registration, can be achieved by disentangling appearance-based feature learning and deformation estimation. In contrast to most previous approaches, our model does not require full deformation fields as supervision but rather only small incremental descent targets generated from organ labels during training. By mapping the complex appearance to a common feature space in which update steps of a first-order Taylor approximation (akin to a regularised Demons iteration) match the supervised descent direction, we can train a CNN-model that learns interpretable modality invariant features. Our experimental results demonstrate that these features can be plugged into conventional iterative optimisers and are more robust than state-of-the-art hand-crafted features for aligning MRI and CT images.


Fully self-organized mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) represent complex distributed systems that may also be part of a huge complex system, such as a complex system-of-systems used for crisis management operations. Due to the complex nature of MANETs and its resource constraint nodes, there has always been a need to develop lightweight security solutions. Since MANETs require a unique, distinct, and persistent identity per node in order for their security protocols to be viable, Sybil attacks pose a serious threat to such networks. A Sybil attacker can either create more than one identity on a single physical device in order to launch a coordinated attack on the network or can switch identities in order to weaken the detection process, thereby promoting lack of accountability in the network. In this research, we propose a lightweight scheme to detect the new identities of Sybil attackers without using centralized trusted third party or any extra hardware, such as directional antennae or a geographical positioning system. Through the help of extensive simulations and real-world testbed experiments, we are able to demonstrate that our proposed scheme detects Sybil identities with good accuracy even in the presence of mobility.


David Barker is the man who "anticipated" the existence of babies by focusing attention on the importance of the fetus and what takes place during intrauterine life. Barker was one of the physicians who in the last decades brought about the greatest changes in medicine, changes so important as to represent a veritable revolution in medical thought. According to Barker's studies, the embryo obviously has a genetic complement coming from the mother and father, but from the very first stages of development it begins to undergo the influence of the outside environment, just as occurs for adults whose biological, psychological and pathological aspects are influenced by the environment to a not well-established percentage between genetic complement and epigenetics. Much of our future lives as adults is decided in our mothers' wombs. If Barker's discovery was revolutionary from the cultural standpoint, it was even more so from the strictly medical one. Barker's research method was rigid from the methodological standpoint, but innovative and speculative in its working hypotheses, with a humanistic slant. Barker's idea has another practical corollary: it is evident that the role of obstetricians, perinatologists and neonatologists is more and more relevant in medicine and future prevention. Unquestionably, besides the enormous merits of his clinical research, among the benefits that Barker has contributed there is that of having helped us to see things from new points of view. Not only is the neonate (and even more so the fetus) not an adult of reduced proportions, but perhaps the neonate is the "father" of the adult person.