Objectives: The objective of the study is to evaluate the surface roughness, nanomechancial properties the color stability of three brands of coated (rhodium, epoxy, and Teflon) nickel-titanium (NiTi) esthetic archwires. Materials and Methods: Three brands of coated (rhodium, epoxy, and Teflon) esthetic NiTi archwires and three brands of uncoated (NiTi) archwires from the same manufactures were evaluated for the surface roughness, nanomechanical properties, and color stability. The specimens with 20 mm length (n = 5) were cut from the straight buccal segments of the coated and uncoated archwires. The specimens with 20 mm length (n = 10) were subjected to color measurement after immersion in a coffee staining solution. The color measurement was evaluated after 7, 14, 21, and 28 days after immersion in staining solution using color eye 7000 spectrophotometer. The experimental data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, analyses of variance, and Tukey's post hoc test. Results: Epoxy (1.517 ± 0.071) and rhodium (0.297 ± 0.015) coated archwires showed the highest and lower value of surface roughness. All the intergroup comparisons showed a significant difference (P < 0.05) in surface roughness except between rhodium and control group (P = 0.998). There were significant differences between control and the experimental groups for both nanohardness and elastic modulus was observed. All the three NiTi-coated esthetic archwires demonstrated trace" (extremely slight change) color changes as measured by the National Bureau of Standards units after 4 weeks of immersion. Conclusion: Surface roughness of rhodium-coated archwires was almost similar to that of uncoated wires. Whereas Teflon and epoxy coated archwires showed a significant difference in surface roughness compared to uncoated archwires. Uncoated archwires showed higher nanohardness values compared to the coated archwires. Teflon-coated archwires demonstrated significantly slight color change after 4 weeks of immersion in staining solution.


BACKGROUND
Gentamicin, a widely used antibiotic for the treatment of bacterial infection, can cause nephrotoxicity. Tetramethylpyrazine (TMP) is a compound purified from the rhizome of Ligusticum wallichi (called chuanxiong in Chinese). Besides its protection against ischaemia-reperfusion injury and nephritis in mice, we previously reported that TMP reverses gentamicin-induced apoptosis in rat kidneys. Haem oxygenase-1 (HO-1) induction by TMP has also been shown to attenuate myocardial ischaemia/reperfusion injury in rats.

METHODS
We used rat renal tubular (NRK-52E) cells, transformed cells with HO-1 overexpression or knockdown, and an adenovirus carrying the HO-1 gene (Adv-HO-1) as gene therapy targeting murine kidneys to explore the role of HO-1 in protection by TMP against gentamicin-induced toxicity both in vitro and in vivo. We evaluated the protective effects of HO-1 on several apoptotic parameters induced by gentamicin: cleaved caspases-3 and -9, cycloxygenase-2 (Cox-2) and subcellular localization of nuclear factor kappa B-p65 (NF-kappaB-p65), Bcl-xl and HS-1-associated protein (Hax-1) in NRK-52E cells.

RESULTS
NRK-52E cells treated with TMP exhibited transcriptional upregulation of the HO-1 protein by approximately twofold. Overexpression of HO-1 in NRK-52E cells significantly increased mitochondrial protein levels of the antiapoptotic molecules, Bcl-xL and Hax-1, and markedly decreased the NADPH oxidase activity and proinflammatory molecules, NF-kappaB-p65 and Cox-2, which might decrease gentamicin-induced activation of caspases-9 and -3. Conversely, NRK-52E cells with HO-1 knockdown significantly exacerbated gentamicin-induced tubular cell apoptosis. Additionally, the concomitant HO-1 induction by TMP was also evident in vivo, and HO-1 therapy markedly attenuated gentamicin-induced renal apoptosis to a similar extent as TMP pretreatment.

CONCLUSIONS
Collectively, we suggest that HO-1 induced by TMP might, at least in part, protect against gentamicin-induced nephrotoxicity through antiapoptotic and anti-inflammatory mechanisms, and that it may have therapeutic potential for patients with renal disease. This is also the first demonstration that HO-1 increases Hax-1 mitochondrial localization.


Face recognition (FR) systems in real-world applications need to deal with a wide range of interferences, such as occlusions and disguises in face images. Compared with other forms of interferences such as nonuniform illumination and pose changes, face with occlusions has not attracted enough attention yet. A novel approach, coined dynamic image-to-class warping (DICW), is proposed in this work to deal with this challenge in FR. The face consists of the forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, and chin in a natural order and this order does not change despite occlusions. Thus, a face image is partitioned into patches, which are then concatenated in the raster scan order to form an ordered sequence. Considering this order information, DICW computes the image-to-class distance between a query face and those of an enrolled subject by finding the optimal alignment between the query sequence and all sequences of that subject along both the time dimension and within-class dimension. Unlike most existing methods, our method is able to deal with occlusions which exist in both gallery and probe images. Extensive experiments on public face databases with various types of occlusions have confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.


-Invasive species have had a major impact all over the world in their introduced ranges. In the U.S., none has been more obvious than the Asian carp species Bighead carp ( Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) and Silver carp ( Hypophthalmichthys molitrix ). Famous for their jumping abilities, these carp have also had a detrimental effect on many of our native fish species by out competing them for food sources. Asian carp are found in many of our central waterways and reside within the same range as one of our nation's endangered fish species, the Pallid sturgeon ( Scaphirhynchus albus ). This is why it is important to assess what kind of impacts these invasive carp might have on Pallid sturgeon. The thesis objective is to determine if Asian carp have any direct or indirect impacts on Pallid sturgeon. Previous studies were reviewed and the data was placed in a table and used to determine the diet overlap Asian carp might pose on sturgeon and its food sources. Four shared food sources or consumption of zooplankton by Asian carp of 25% or more of the amount the studied species were considered as an overlap. Parasites were determined by the chance of infecting sturgeon by being present in their waterways. If present in the range of Pallid sturgeon, the consumption of copepoda was determined as a possibility of being infected with the parasite Asian tapeworm ( Bothriocephalus acheilognathi ). What was found was Asian carp did not appear to pose much of a direct threat to sturgeon but could have an impact on some of its food fish. The parasite Asian tapeworm may also affect sturgeon and its food fish.


The THOR® fluidized bed steam reforming process has been successfully operated for more than 10 years in the United States for the treatment of low- and intermediate-level radioactive wastes generated by commercial nuclear power plants. The principle waste stream that has been treated is ion exchange resins (IER) and Dry Active Waste (DAW), but various liquids, sludges, and solid organic wastes have also been treated. The principle advantages of the THOR® process include: (a) high volume reduction on the order of 5:1 to 10:1 for IER and up to 50:1 for high plastic content DAW streams depending on the waste type and waste characteristics, (b) environmentally compliant off-gas emissions, (c) reliable conversion of wastes into mineralized products that are durable and leach-resistant, and (d) no liquid effluents for treatment of most radioactive wastes. Over the past ten years, the THOR® process has been adapted for the treatment of more complex wastes including historic defense wastes, reprocessing wastes, and other wastes associated with the fuel cycle. As part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) environmental remediation activities, the THOR® dual bed steam reforming process has successfully processed: (a) Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Sodium-Bearing Waste (SBW), (b) Savannah River Tank 48 High Level Waste (HLW), (c) Hanford Low Activity Waste (LAW), and (d) Hanford Waste Treatment Plant Secondary Waste (WTP-SW) liquid slurry simulants. The THOR® process has been shown in pilot plant operations to successfully process various simulated liquid, radioactive, nitrate-containing wastes into environmentally safe, leach-resistant, solid mineralized products. These mineralized products incorporate normally soluble ions (e.g. - Na, K, Cs, Tc), sulfates, chloride salts, and fluoride salts into an alkali alumino-silicate mineral matrix that inhibits the leaching of those ions into the environment. The solid mineralized products produced by the THOR® process exhibit durability and leach resistance characteristics superior to borosilicate waste glasses. As a result of this work, a full-scale THOR® process facility is currently under construction at the DOE's Idaho site for the treatment of SBW and a full-scale facility is in the final design stage for the DOE's Savannah River Site for the treatment of Tank 48 high level waste. Recent work has focused on the development of new monolithic waste formulations, the extension of the THOR® process to new waste streams, and the development of modular THOR® processes for niche waste treatment applications. This paper will provide an overview of current THOR® projects and summarize the processes and outcomes of the regulatory and safety reviews that have been necessary for the THOR® process to gain acceptance in the USA.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


This book provides readers with fundamental assembly language programming skills, an understanding of the functional hardware components of a microcontroller, and skills to interface a variety of external devices with microcontrollers. Chapter topics cover an introduction to the 68HC12, 68HC12 assembly language programming, advanced assembly programming, fuzzy logic, hardware configuration, exceptionresets and interrupts, the 68HC12 clock module and standard timer module (TIM), the 68HC12 memory system, analog-to-digital (ATD) converter, and 68HC12 communications systemmultiple serial interface. For electrical and computer engineers.


International treaties often reflect long-term agreements that are difficult to amend. For instance, we see the difficulty associated with amending the United Nations Charter, despite longstanding calls for institutional reform. We also see the stalemate with the Doha Round of trade negotiations, where disagreements between developed and developing countries have prevented amendment to WTO obligations to further reduce trade barriers. It is in this context that I suggest we look to treaty interpretation tools to adapt treaties to evolving circumstances. In particular, the conduct of treaty parties subsequent to the conclusion of a treaty allows an interpreter to gauge how the parties intend to apply treaty obligations to changing times and circumstances. My remarks address (1) the framework for interpreting treaties; (2) how treaty interpretation can be used to adopt an evolved interpretation of treaty terms; and (3) the distinction between an evolved treaty interpretation and treaty modification. FRAMEWORK FOR TREATY INTERPRETATION It is generally accepted that Articles 31-33 of the Vienna Convention reflect customary principles of treaty interpretation. Article 31(1) requires interpretation to be undertaken in good faith, in accordance with the ordinary meaning of the treaty terms in their context and in light of their object and purpose. Article 31(2) defines in further detail the meaning of "context." Article 31(3) requires that "together with the context" the interpreter take into account (a) any subsequent agreement between the parties regarding the interpretation of the treaty or the application of its provisions; (b) any subsequent practice in the application of the treaty which establishes the agreement of the parties regarding its interpretation; (c) any relevant rules of international law applicable in the relations between the parties. Within Article 31 there is no interpretative hierarchy. It was envisioned by the International Law Commission (ILC) that "the application of the means of interpretation in the article would be a single combined operation. All the various elements, as they were present in any given case, would be thrown into the crucible, and their interaction would give the legally relevant interpretation." (1) Of the provisions mentioned above, Articles 31(3)(a) and (b), in particular, offer the possibility to adopt an evolved interpretation of treaty terms. Both articles require an interpreter to take into account the subsequent conduct of treaty parties where such conduct demonstrates an agreement as to the interpretation of treaty terms. In this regard, the distinction between Articles 31(3)(a) and (b) is more formalistic than substantive. A formal written agreement between the parties agreeing to the meaning of an otherwise ambiguous term would likely fall within Article 31(3)(a). On the other hand, independent actions of both parties, temporally separated, that appear to demonstrate agreement between them on the meaning of the treaty are more likely to come within Article 31(3)(b). There is a spectrum of conduct between these two, and in this regard, Articles 31(3)(a) and (b) can be seen to be on a continuum, with the former requiring a higher evidentiary threshold. (2) That continuum also represents the weight to be accorded to the party agreement for the purposes of treaty interpretation. The stronger the case for the conduct to come within Article 31(3)(a), the more weight that should be given to the conduct as expressing an authentic interpretation of the text. EVOLUTIVE APPROACH TO TREATY INTERPRETATION Are there any boundaries to the parties' ability to agree to an evolved interpretation of treaty terms? In his work on the subject with the ILC, Professor Georg Nolte has noted that treaties can "change over time," "must adapt to new situations," and "evolve according to the social needs of the international community. …


President Obama has embraced what many in the international law community long-regarded as off limits: targeting war-sustaining capabilities, such as the economic infrastructure used to generate revenue for an enemy's armed forces. Although the weight of scholarly opinion has for years maintained that such objects are not legitimate military targets, the existing literature on this topic is highly deficient. Academic discussion has yet to grapple with some of the strongest and clearest evidence in support of the U.S. view on the legality of such targeting decisions. Indeed, intellectual resources may be better spent not on the question whether such objects are legitimate military targets under the law of armed conflict, but on second-order questions such as how to apply proportionality analysis and how to identify limiting principles to guard against unintentional slippery slopes. In this article, the author discusses the legal pedigree for the Obama Administration's war-sustaining targeting. The article then turns to identifying some of the most significant second-order questions and how the United States and the international community might begin to address them in ongoing and future armed conflicts.


A significant amount of research has been conducted in the Software Architecture field in the last few years. The focus of many of these studies is to find a representation system able to go beyond the informality of the traditional "box-and-line" diagram, but keeping a low complexity level, so it can be used as a communication tool between all the software project stakeholders. Computer systems engineers now may use Architecture Description Languages as a valuable tool for a more accurate representation of the system's architecture. However, most of these languages are very complex or purpose-specific. This article presents an UML-based scheme for software architecture representations. This novel scheme benefits from all the advantages of UML, and includes several structures that enable the representation of an ample variety of systems.


Background Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is frequently accompanied by lymphocytic thyroiditis (LT). Some reports claim that Hashimoto's thyroiditis (the clinical form of LT) enhances the likelihood of PTC; however, others suggest that LT has antitumor activity. This study was aimed to find out the relationship between the patterns of helper T cell (Th) cytokines in thyroid tissue of PTC with or without LT and the clinicopathological manifestation of PTC. Methods Fresh surgical samples of PTC with (13 cases) or without (10 cases) LT were used. The prognostic parameters (tumor size, extra-thyroidal extension of PTC, and lymph node metastasis) were analyzed. The mRNA levels of two subtypes of Th cytokines, Th1 (tumor necrosis factor α [TNF-α], interferon γ [IFN-γ ], and interleukin [IL] 2) and Th2 (IL-4 and IL-10), were analyzed. Because most PTC cases were microcarcinomas and recent cases without clinical follow-up, negative or faint p27 immunoreactivity was used as a surrogate marker for lymph node metastasis. Results PTC with LT cases showed significantly higher expression of TNF-α (p = .043), IFN-γ (p < .010), IL-4 (p = .015) than those without LT cases. Although the data were not statistically significant, all analyzed cytokines (except for IL-4) were highly expressed in the cases with higher expression of p27 surrogate marker. Conclusions These results indicate that mixed Th1 (TNF-α, IFN-γ , and IL-2) and Th2 (IL-10) immunity might play a role in the antitumor effect in terms of lymph node metastasis.


While farm income has long been an important driver of Midwestern economic activity, the influence of the agricultural sector had been waning until the boom in crop prices of 2004?13. More recently, a reversal in crop prices, along with other factors, has led incomes from crop farming to decline. Against this backdrop, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago held a conference on November 17, 2014, to examine the role of farm income in the Midwest economy.


In an ever-changing world of work, the promotion of the health and safety of the present and future workforce is crucial for guaranteeing a healthier, longer and more productive working life. In order to ensure the quality of work and employment in Europe, a well-coordinated approach to occupational safety and health research rising above regional and national boundaries is needed. Therefore, the PEROSH partners aim to coordinate and cooperate on European research and development efforts in occupational safety and health. The network comprises 13 Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) institutes, all playing key roles in their national affiliations to governments/authorities and health and accident insurance systems. Joint collaboration within PEROSH on fields of common interest is one of the key aspects of the network. It enables to create synergies and to efficiently use resources and knowledge from different countries to improve the effect of OSH research. Currently, the PEROSH members are involved in 8 joint research projects. PEROSH partners are strongly committed to maintain a proactive dialogue with the EU and other international and national OSH-partners to explore paths to optimize the added value to Europe of the research, dissemination and funding efforts in this field. By doing so, PEROSH aims to improve the quality of research and increase the EU-wide dissemination of results. The uniqueness and strength of PEROSH lies in the comprehensive interdisciplinary collaboration between leading OSH research institutes in Europe. PEROSH's advocates more attention to OSH in EU research programs and collaborates together in its own funded joint research programs of its members.


We combine self-collected historical data from 1867 to 1907 with CRSP data from 1926 to 2012, to examine the risk and return over the past 140 years of one of the most popular mechanical trading strategies — momentum. We find that momentum has earned abnormally high risk-adjusted returns — a three factor alpha of 1 percent per month between 1927 and 2012 and 0.5 percent per month between 1867 and 1907 — both statistically significantly different from zero. However, the momentum strategy also exposed investors to large losses (crashes) during both periods. Momentum crashes were predictable — more likely when momentum recently performed well (both eras), interest rates were relatively low (1867–1907), or momentum had recently outperformed the stock market (CRSP era) — times when borrowing or attracting return chasing "blind capital" would have been easier. Based on a stylized model and simulated outcomes from a richer model, we argue that a money manager has an incentive to remain invested in momentum even when the crash risk is known to be high when (1) he competes for funds from return-chasing investors and (2) he is compensated via fees that are convex in the amount of money managed and the return on that money.


We introduce hierarchically supervised latent Dirichlet allocation (HSLDA), a model for hierarchically and multiply labeled bag-of-word data. Examples of such data include web pages and their placement in directories, product descriptions and associated categories from product hierarchies, and free-text clinical records and their assigned diagnosis codes. Out-of-sample label prediction is the primary goal of this work, but improved lower-dimensional representations of the bag-of-word data are also of interest. We demonstrate HSLDA on large-scale data from clinical document labeling and retail product categorization tasks. We show that leveraging the structure from hierarchical labels improves out-of-sample label prediction substantially when compared to models that do not.


INTRODUCTION: First generation allosteric inhibitors of mTORC1 have shown clinical benefit for the treatment of pediatric low-grade gliomas (PLGG). MEK inhibition has shown great promise in early phase clinical trials for PLGG with the hypothesis that tumors carrying the KIAA1549:BRAF are particularly sensitive to such treatment. MLN0128, a second-generation, ATP-competitive, pan-mTOR kinase inhibitor, acts on both mTORC1 and mTORC2. Herein we investigate the effects of MLN0128 monotherapy as well as in combination with MEK inhibition in models of PLGG. METHODS: We used human glioma cell lines containing BRAFV600E (AM38), wild-type BRAF (LN229, TN98, SF188) and isogenic systems of KIAA1549:BRAF-expressing NIH3T3 cells. Signaling inhibitors included MLN0128, everolimus, BRAFV600E specific inhibitor PLX4720 and MEK specific inhibitors AZD6244 and GSK1120212. Cell proliferation was determined using an ATP-based assay. Biochemical effects were assessed using western blot analysis. In vivo activity of these inhibitors are ongoing using the BT40 PLGG xenograft mouse model. RESULTS: MLN0128 monotherapy shows stronger anti-proliferative effects compared to everolimus across cell lines independent of BRAF status. As expected, treatment with MLN0128 leads to down-regulation of p-AKT and p-4EBP1, whereas treatment with everolimus only reduces expression of p-S6. MEK inhibition with AZD6244 effectively decreases p-ERK expression in all lines; however, the addition of MLN0128 to AZD6244 causes a rebound in p-ERK expression in BRAFWT gliomas but not in gliomas expression BRAFV600E or KIAA1549:BRAF alterations. In cells carrying either the BRAFV600E or KIAA1549:BRAF alteration, combined treatment with MLN0128 and GSK1120212 or AZD6244 leads to synergistic anti-proliferative effects whereas such synergy is not present in BRAFWT gliomas. In vivo studies in the PLGG xenograft model BT40 are ongoing. CONCLUSION: MLN0128 has synergistic effects with MEK inhibition in gliomas bearing BRAFV600E or KIAA1549:BRAF. In BRAF wild-type cells such synergy is not present, perhaps due to rebound in p-ERK when MLN0128 is combined with AZD6244.


This paper presents the results of a survey-based experiment on the role of equity and efficiency for altruistic behavior. Using simple binary decisions for a representative pool of subjects, we find that both equity and efficiency are relevant for the decision to give. However, contrary to the findings in several laboratory experiments, our results indicate that equity plays a major role for altruistic behavior. Differences in relative payoffs have a significant effect on the decision to give. When giving is not costly, more than half of the subjects prefer equal payoffs to a socially efficient but unequal allocation. When giving is Pareto-improving, half the subjects choose to sacrifice a higher payoff in order to avoid payoff inequality. We also find that preferences, as revealed by experimental choices, are largely consistent with reported pro-social activities, while only weakly related to self-reported well-being.


B is for British It's traditional at the BMJ to worry about the B. It stands for British in case you didn't know. On the one hand we are very proud of it but sometimes it seems to stand between us and our international aspirations. A few years ago our editorial board seriously discussed changing the name to the Global or the World Medical Journal. Nothing happened so I guess the decision was no. Now I have a new worry. Have we become the English Medical Journal? So much of our coverage is about England, so little about the other parts of the UK. In the past month we ran four editorials and 19 news stories on the NHS. All except one were about the NHS in England. Perhaps there is nothing going on elsewhere in the UK, but I don't think so. I think we have defaulted to the same biases that afflict the UK government. A BMA briefing paper on UK devolution calls it "operating on an English-only basis" (www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/ ARM2006devolution). The paper is worth reading for an update on the implications of devolution for health policy across the UK. Briefly, the creation of national assemblies for Wales and Northern Ireland and a parliament for Scotland has given political autonomy across a range of healthcare issues. But the UK's House of Commons and its health select committee are primarily focused on England, and devolution has hardly impinged on English consciousness. This was clear at the last general election, when Tony Blair illustrated his government's achievements by comparing waiting times in England with those in Wales. I don't know whether readers in other parts of the UK take these biases in their stride, gnash their teeth, or have given up reading the BMJ because of them. One doctor in Wales told me that he is used to the assumption that primary care trusts and practice based commissioning exist in Wales and Scotland as well. For the absence of doubt, they do not. Other comparisons with England are illuminating. In Wales, says the paper, the emphasis is on tackling the causes of ill health rather than on managing the health system. Wales has retained community health councils and gone for free breakfasts for primary school children and free prescriptions for all. Scotland has reconfigured services but with broad support from the profession and the public. Northern Ireland has undergone only limited health system reform since its assembly was suspended. Overall, there is less appetite for market oriented solutions, more small scale piloting and evolution, and more consultation. The UK government is frustrated at the lack of reform in the devolved nations. But what's really happening is reform of a different kind. Devolution has created a natural experiment, with different approaches to healthcare policy and provision—even though one effect has been to make the collection of comparable data harder (bmj.com/cgi/content/full/ 331/7522/946). We could all do more to celebrate these differences and learn from them.


An imperative condition for the functioning of a power-grid network is that its power generators remain synchronized. Disturbances can prompt desynchronization, which is a process that has been involved in large power outages. In this talk I will first give a comparative review of three leading models of synchronization in power-grid networks. Each of these models can be derived from first principles under a common framework and represents a power grid as a complex network of coupled second-order phase oscillators with both forcing and damping terms. Since these models require dynamical parameters that are unavailable in typical power-grid datasets, I will discuss an approach to estimate these parameters. The models will be used to show that if the network structure is not homogeneous, generators with identical parameters need to be treated as non-identical oscillators in general. For one of the models, which describes the dynamics of coupled generators through a network of effective interactions, I will derive a condition under which the desired synchronous state is stable. This condition gives rise to a methodology to specify parameter assignments that can enhance synchronization of any given network, which I will demonstrate for a selection of both test systems and real power grids. These parameter assignments can be realized through very fast control loops, and this may help devise new control schemes that offer an additional layer of protection, thus contributing to the development of smart grids that can recover from failures in real time.


Dermatologists have at their disposal a wide range of products to recommend or prescribe to their patients, all of which are regulated in some way by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, the degree to which FDA has confirmed the safety and efficacy of a dermatological product can vary widely. Most prescription and some over‐the‐counter drugs and medical devices are approved by the FDA based on scientific data. Most over‐the‐counter drugs are marketed in compliance with FDA regulations based on expert medical review. The FDA clears most medical devices based on their substantial equivalence to other legally marketed devices. Cosmetics, medical foods, and dietary supplements are subject only to general postmarket prohibitions against adulterated and misbranded products, although the FDA may review ingredient safety and specific claims for dietary supplements. Some product information is available on FDA's Web site, but the prudent physician should supplement that information by reviewing available scientific literature.


Samoylov Island and its surrounding areas of the Lena River Delta serve as a baseline observatory for the validation and development of remote sensing products and climate models in the Arctic. The observatory is equipped with leading edge environmental monitoring systems. Furthermore, extensive validation studies on thermal remote sensing (MODIS LST), snow products (GlobSnow), land surface classification (Landsat), and microwave satellite products (ASCAT Soil Moisture, TerraSAR-X) were implemented successfully. Several ongoing and upcoming research projects which are related to permafrost modeling and remote sensing such as the EU-FP7 project PAGE21, the HGF young investigator group TEAM, and the ERC Starting Grant project PETA-CARB make use of the excellent data base and infrastructure of the Samoylov observatory. Further expansion of the infrastructure is fostered by the HGF Road Map project ACROSS which aims to establish state of the art monitoring stations for testing new satellite sensors, model schemes, and scaling techniques.


Abstract For low‐income families, homeownership represents an important strategy for promoting long‐term social and economic development. Individual Development Account (IDA) programs facilitate saving toward assets such as a home through matching, financial education, and case management. Using longitudinal experimental data from the American Dream Demonstration, this study examines the impact of IDA participation on homeownership rates and on clearing old debts. Low‐income participants were interviewed after 18 months (Wave 2) and after program completion at 48 months (Wave 3). Logistic regression results indicate that among those who were renters at baseline, IDA participation significantly increases the clearing of old debts at Wave 2 and homeownership rates at Wave 3. IDA participants with cleared debt activity had the highest probability of becoming homeowners at Wave 3 (32 percent), while those who were not IDA participants and did not have such activity had only a 9.6 percent probability.


Extracted from text ... IMIESA SEPTEMBER 2006 - 35
ENVIRONMENT
Every facet of the Tshwane waste management programme has
proven successful, leaving Tshwane residents revelling in the
joys of efficient and well-orchestrated waste removal. However,
the success story does not end here and continual inroads are
being made into improving service, learning from mistakes and using
this project as a foundation for further success.
One of the key areas that Gideon Jones from the Tshwane waste
management department highlights as important is the training of
drivers for its vehicles. IMIESA reported previously that Tshwane
converted from buying vehicles to acquiring them on an operating ..


The study used a case study approach and a survey questionnaire to collect data on farmers markets in the Alabama Black Belt. Specific objectives were to describe the current state of development of farmers markets, categorize the farmers markets, and make comparisons between and assessments of the various markets. The data were summarized and tabulated using descriptive statistics. A typology was developed with three categories and associated intervention policy or program attributes identified for farmers markets. It was found that there were three developed markets, all in urban areas; four developing markets, which had one market in the urban, two in the suburban, and one in the rural areas; and seven underdeveloped farmers markets, most of which were in rural areas. Consequently, it was recommended that for underdeveloped and developing farmers markets to move into the developed category, assistance must be provided with a mix of interventions that comprise facilities, proper organization, and efforts to strengthen the customer base. Such technical assistance will contribute to increased sales and economic activity in the communities.


In recent years, Azerbaijan–Israel relations have come to the foreground of politics in the Middle East and Caucasus region. Ties between Baku and Tel Aviv have been directly interlinked with their relations with Iran. The nature of the Azerbaijan–Israel partnership must be analysed in order to comprehend the balance of powers and energy security in the region. Even though there have been a number of works analysing the relationship by focusing on its role in regional military security, there is a gap in the discourse in terms of understanding the economic drivers of relations and the implications of the ties for regional energy security. Particular attention will be given to discussing Azerbaijan's emerging role as a major energy producer that has already made a profound impact on the region as an 'alternative' to Iran in the aftermath of the recently imposed sanctions on Tehran's energy exports. It will be argued that the Azerbaijan–Israel relationship is built on solid economic grounds and it would be reasonable to expect the strength of the ties to be further intensified in the future. The article will also demonstrate that new developments in the energy security of the wider Middle Eastern region will affect the evolution of Azerbaijan–Israel ties and their rivalry with Iran in the next decade.


Antibiotics may induce alterations in the commensal microbiota of the birth canal in pregnant women. Therefore, we studied the effect of antibiotic administration during pregnancy on commensal vaginal bacterial colonization at gestational week 36. Six hundred and sixty-eight pregnant women from the novel unselected Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood (COPSAC2010 ) pregnancy cohort participated in this analysis. Detailed information on oral antibiotic prescriptions during pregnancy filled at the pharmacy was obtained and verified prospectively. Vaginal samples were obtained at pregnancy week 36 and cultured for bacteria. Women who received oral antibiotics during any pregnancy trimester had an increased rate of colonization by Staphylococcus species in the vaginal samples as compared with samples obtained from women without any antibiotic treatment during pregnancy (adjusted OR 1.63, 95% CI 1.06-2.52, p 0.028). Oral antibiotic administration in the third trimester were also associated with increased colonization by Staphylococcus species (adjusted OR 1.98, 95% CI 1.04-3.76, p 0.037). These bacteriological changes were associated with urinary tract infection antibiotics. Women treated in the third trimester of pregnancy were more often colonized by Escherichia coli than women without antibiotic treatment in the third trimester (adjusted OR 1.91, 95% CI 1.04-3.52, p 0.038). This change was associated with respiratory tract infection (RTI) antibiotics. We did not observe any significant changes in vaginal Streptococcus agalactiae (group B streptoccocus) or Staphylococcus aureus colonization following antibiotic treatment in pregnancy. Antibiotic administration during pregnancy leads to alterations in the vaginal microbiological ecology prior to birth, with potential morbidity, and long-term effects on the early microbial colonization of the neonate.


During the past few decades, licensure, a state-enforced mechanism for regulating occupational entry, quickly became the most prevalent form of occupational closure. Broad consensus among researchers holds that licensure creates wage premiums by establishing economic monopolies. This article demonstrates that, contrary to established wisdom, licensure does not limit competition, nor does it increase wages. Results are based on a new occupational dataset, covering 30 years, that exploits interstate variability in licensure across the 300 census-identified occupations. I argue that licensure, instead of increasing wages, creates a set of institutional mechanisms that enhance entry into the occupation, particularly for historically disadvantaged groups, while simultaneously stagnating quality.


The U.S. Constitution left it notoriously ambiguous whether individuals could sue sovereign states for breach of contract in federal court. Within a few years, the issue had produced a constitutional crisis, famously acted out in the Supreme Court's determination that states were subject to suit, Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. 419 (1793), and the political reversal of that permission, the Eleventh Amendment. The essay reconstructs the context that gave rise to the suit, its determination, and its political reversal. Colonial Americans had created a constitutional order that located legislative authority over the economy as the essential channel to self-determination, popular sovereignty, and calibrated justice over shared resources. But both political economic practices and conceptions about sovereignty were changing. The Supreme Court's jurisdictional assertion was part of the movement towards an order that elevated judicial authority, locating it as the critical instrumentality in a liberal state where rights were supposed to exist independent of social and economic circumstance. The strategies adopted by the Chisholm claimant to define the obligations of contract and obtain a remedy showcase that transition. From Robert Farquhar's 1784 death at sea on his way to obtain relief to the state of Georgia's 1889 claim to reimbursement from the United States in the U.S. Court of Claims, the effort spanned more than a century. It took both individual and state claimants from executive officials and legislative committees to the increasingly ascendant courts.


In this study, a capillary zone electrophoretic method, in which l-alkyl-3-methyliinidazolium-hascd ionic liquids (IL) was used as the additive, was established to separate and identify six bioactive flavonoid-O-glycosides in Saussurea mongolica Franch. In order to investigate the traits of IL in capillary electrophoresis (CE), the influences of the alkyl group, the anionic part and the concentration of IL were investigated and discussed. Optimum separation was achieved with 20 mM borate buffer at pH 9.00 containing 5 mg/mL 1-ethal-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate. The applied voltage was 15 kV and the capillary temperature was kept constant at 25℃. The relative standard deviations (RSD) of the migration time and the peak area of cach peak for six replicate injections were 0.75%-1.45% and 3.18%-3.91%, respectively. Moreover, it was worth noticing that the mechanism of interaction between IL and analytes was investigated preliminarily.


Crowdsourcing innovation aims to solicit a large volume of diverse ideas but inherently increases demands on resources to assess those contributions. As a result, organizations may now crowdsource the assessment of the ideas as well. However, crowd assessment of crowd generated ideas may diverge from organizational objectives. We investigate crowd versus expert assessment in the context of a recurring innovation contest at a global technology company. Textual analysis of 14,697 submitted ideas reveals agency conflict between the two assessments. Experts focus on stated corporate objectives, while the preferences of the employee crowd negatively relate to corporate direction. Topic popularity and social concerns influence crowds of employees. While experts exhibit less agency conflict than employees relative to stated corporate objectives, they are far less numerous and potentially more expensive than employee resources. We identify hybrid mechanisms that balance use of constrained expert resources with the potential assessment biases of the crowd.


Twenty-four fungal feeding-line infections occurred in 17 patients during 1984-1992. Thirteen were receiving long-term home parenteral feeding and, in them, the first infection occurred after a median of 30 months (range 1-120) continuous feeding with a line that had been in situ for a median of 20 months (range 1-37). Four were receiving short-term feeding through a line that had been inserted 1-2 months previously. At the time of the first infection all patients were febrile and most were anaemic (15/16), however a leucocytosis was rare (three of 16). The fungi isolated were Candida albicans(6), Candida parapsilosis(5), Candida glabrata(2), Candida guillermondii(2) and other species (2). In 16 patients, the feeding-line was removed at the time of the first infection and no other treatment was given, and no other complications occurred in eight (50%) of these. In 11, the line was reinserted a median of 7 days after removal (range 1-11). Four patients (24%) developed a Candida infection of the eye 1-8 weeks after the diagnosis, uveitis (2) and endophthalmitis (2) which, in one patient, led to complete blindness in one eye. Two patients had recurrent infections which began within a month of dental therapy. In one, the infections stopped after dental extractions and, in the other, after a dental clearance. An ophthalmoscopic examination should be performed in all patients with a fungal feeding-line infection. Recurrent candidal infections may have a dental origin.


ABSTRACT Reappraisal of Brachyoxylon rotnaense Mathiesen, description of B. serrae n. sp. and stratigraphical implications for South-East Asia Early Cretaceous stratigraphy. The Mesozoic strata of Muang Phalan in southern Laos yielded fossils of terrestrial organisms (vertebrates, molluscs, wood). The latter was assigned to a species known from the Liassic strata of Denmark, Brachyoxylon rotnaense Mathiesen, whereas vertebrates are indicative of a late Early Cretaceous age. A revision of the type material for B. rotnaense and for its putative taxonomical synonym Simplicioxylon hungaricum Andreánszky, of the Lao material and of new material from Thailand allowed to: 1) confirm the taxonomical synonymy; 2) reject the assignment of the Lao material to the European species; and finally 3) to recognize a new species, here described as B. serrae n. sp., encompassing the Lao and Thai materials. This new species of Brachyoxylon is characterized by the occurrence, in the radial pitting, of clusters of much flattened contiguous pits and of pairs of opposite pits in otherwise long araucarian uniseriate rows. Our revision removed the stratigraphical ambiguity and confirmed the biogeographical peculiarity of Indosinian terrestrial biomes during the Early Cretaceous.


Despite the historic U.S.-North Korea summit in June, little progress was made on denuclearizing North Korea due to the clash between the U.S. and North Korea on the formula of denuclearization. Both sides are demanding the other to do its work upfront. Due to the inability to resolve this dilemma, North Korea's nuclear problem has gotten worse during the last three decades. In order to make a breakthrough, North Korea needs to come to the table as soon as possible recognizing that the political momentum for a negotiated solution in the U.S. may not last long due to President Trump's domestic problems. The U.S. needs to take a more pragmatic approach. While keeping the pressure with economic sanctions, it needs to take concrete measures of political engagement toward North Korea. This would contribute significantly to raising mutual trust and providing a more favorable political environment for negotiating a solution.


From Occupy Wall Street to 2011 England riots to Arab Spring to Mumbai 26/11 to the ethnic cleansing rumors in India and increasingly used by pedophiles, social media is a very powerful tool for pedophiles, troublemakers, criminals and even terrorists to target individuals and even to go against the establishment. On the other hand, social media can save lives in a disaster, and its a natural extension of community policing or engagement. Community engagement is a must-have strategy for any public safety and security agency. However, this strategy requires the removal of stovepipe processes and systems within an agency, allowing better process integration and information sharing, thereby offering improved services to all stakeholders. Improved information sharing within an agency is also a stepping stone towards cross-agency information sharing. Criminal and terrorist organizations do not follow and do not commit crimes and terrorism based on how public safety and security agencies are structured. They commit crimes based on maximum returns, be they financial ideological or to instill fear. This is why information sharing or intelligence fusion is crucial across agencies especially with more illicit use of technologies and social media by the 'bad guys'.


Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License.


Stratigraphic inversion of prestack seismic data allows the determination of subsurface elastic parameters (density, P and S-impedances). Based on a Bayesian approach, the problem is formulated as a non-linear least-squares local optimization problem. The objective function to be minimized is composed of two terms, the first one measures the mismatch between the synthetic seismic data (computed via a forward operator) and the observed seismic data, the second one models geological a priori information on the subsurface model. It is crucial to estimate the a posteriori uncertainties because the solution model of the inversion is only one solution among the range of admissible models that fit the data and the a priori information . The goal of this paper is to propose an optimized deterministic method to estimate a posteriori uncertainties in stratigraphic inversion. The proposed method is based on the hypothesis that the covariance matrices describing the uncertainties on the data and on the model are laterally uncorrelated (no cross correlation among parameters of different traces). Moreover, the covariance matrix on the data is also supposed laterally stationary. Application on 2D synthetic PP data illustrates the performances of the method. Extensions and limitations of the method are discussed.


The G551D cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) mutation is associated with severe disease in ∼5% of cystic fibrosis patients worldwide. This amino acid substitution in NBD1 results in a CFTR chloride channel characterized by a severe gating defect that can be at least partially overcome in vitro by exposure to a CFTR potentiator. In contrast, the more common ΔF508 mutation is associated with a severe protein trafficking defect, as well as impaired channel function. Recent clinical trials demonstrated a beneficial effect of the CFTR potentiator, Ivacaftor (VX-770), on lung function of patients bearing at least one copy of G551D CFTR, but no comparable effect on ΔF508 homozygotes. This difference in efficacy was not surprising in view of the established difference in the molecular phenotypes of the two mutant channels. Recently, however, it was shown that the structural defect introduced by the deletion of F508 is associated with the thermal instability of ΔF508 CFTR channel function in vitro. This additional mutant phenotype raised the possibility that the differences in the behavior of ΔF508 and G551D CFTR, as well as the disparate efficacy of Ivacaftor, might be a reflection of the differing thermal stabilities of the two channels at 37 °C. We compared the thermal stability of G551D and ΔF508 CFTR in Xenopus oocytes in the presence and absence of CTFR potentiators. G551D CFTR exhibited a thermal instability that was comparable to that of ΔF508 CFTR. G551D CFTR, however, was protected from thermal instability by CFTR potentiators, whereas ΔF508 CFTR was not. These results suggest that the efficacy of VX-770 in patients bearing the G551D mutation is due, at least in part, to the ability of the small molecule to protect the mutant channel from thermal instability at human body temperature.


Predicting the worst-case execution time (WCET) and best-case execution time (BCET) of a real-time program is a challenging task. Though much progress has been made in obtaining tighter timing predictions by using techniques that model the architectural features of a machine, significant overestimations of WCET and underestimations of GCET can still occur. Even with perfect architectural modeling, dependencies on data values can constrain the outcome of conditional branches and the corresponding set of paths that can be taken in a program. While branch constraint information has been used in the past by some timing analyzers, it has typically been specified manually, which is both tedious and error prone. This paper describes efficient techniques for automatically detecting branch constraints by a compiler and automatically exploiting these constraints within a timing analyzer. The result is significantly tighter timing analysis predictions without requiring additional interaction with a user.


Background and Objectives: Job satisfaction is a critical factor in attracting and retaining nurses. Although many studies have dealt with nurses' job satisfaction, rapid transformation of the community and health systems can alter the factors influencing this issue, hence calling for continuous monitoring of job satisfaction as perceived by nurses. Built on this necessity, the present study was conducted to identify factors contributing to job satisfaction of the nurses in an Iranian health system context. Method: A cross-sectional survey among 530 nurses was conducted in Shariati teaching hospital in Tehran. Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire was used to measure job satisfaction. T-test was used to compare job satisfaction between nurse groups of different age and work experience. Chi-square test was used to compare nurse groups of different sex, level of education and job status. Correlation of job satisfaction in nurses with their age, gender, work experience, job status, and level of education was examined using logistic regression analysis. Findings: A total of 424 nurses completed the questionnaires (response rate = 80%). Of the total respondents, 47.9% expressed satisfaction with their job. The highest satisfaction score was related to moral values (87.9%) followed by social services (76.1%). The lowest satisfaction score was obtained by compensations (91.8%) followed by professional advancement (84.1%). No significant difference in job satisfaction was found between demographic groups. In addition, no correlation was identified between job satisfaction in nurses and their age, gender, work experience, job status, and level of education. Our study also descriptively showed that nurses were mostly satisfied with intrinsic factors of their jobs when compared with the corresponding extrinsic factors. Conclusions: From a descriptive point of view, improving payments and offering opportunities for advancement are the prioritized factors in improving job satisfaction among the nurses. Lack of relationship between job satisfaction and conventional demographic and professional variables would indicate the changing nature of factors affecting job satisfaction among nurses, calling for further theoretical and empirical studies.


Stability investigation of car-trailer combinations (CTCs) based on time-frequency analysis (TFA) is the focus of this thesis. A state-of-the-art survey shows that very few research activities were performed to study the influence of the coupling between the vertical dynamics and horizontal dynamics, particularly for the system stability analysis.
Based on the theoretical foundation of the stability analysis for CTCs, a time-frequency analysis based parameter identification method (TFA-based PIM) is proposed, in which a linear single-track model (STM), a Moving-Time-Windowed-Fast Fourier transform (MTWFFT) analysis method and an evaluation algorithm for the instantaneous cornering stiffness and the instantaneous effective axle load are integrated. It aims to study the time varying vehicle dynamics characteristics under harmonic conditions. With this PIM, vehicle dynamics parameters can be estimated continuously in time domain with a high accuracy in case a suitable model representing the system (here is a linear STM) is available. Also, they can be cross-checked by the phases of the obtained complex values of the general parameters involved here.
For the analysis of the impact of the nonlinearity-induced harmonic dynamic axle load on the dynamic stability of CTCs, a complex driving dynamics simulation model of a CTC validated in the horizontal plane is utilized. With the PIM, the system characteristics of the simulation model are adjusted aiming for those delivered from the CTC applied in the road tests. To simulate the influence of the harmonic wheel load oscillations, a synthetic force generator is applied, which is synchronized to the phase of the yaw rate with a defined phase shift. Hence, the sensitivity analysis of the influence of the harmonic amplitude or phase of this force on the system dynamic stability is performed with a simulation model validated in the horizontal plane. Through this variation, the change of the system dynamic critical speed is actually determined and so is the reason why the temporal changes of the system dynamic stability can be explained by the fluctuations in the amplitude and/or the phase of the superimposed harmonic dynamic axle load.


Abstract Background: The objective of the study was to evaluate the potential role of transvaginal colour Doppler ultrasound (TVCDUS) in predicting response to chemoradiotherapy in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer. Method: TVCDUS was used in 56 patients with histologically proven cervical carcinoma (stage IIA–IIIB) before the start of chemoradiation, and after one and three months of therapy. Resistive index (RI) and pulsatality index (PI) were calculated using TVCDUS. Tumour response to chemotherapy was determined. Complete response was when no residual tumour was found, partial response if the tumour volume decreased by more than 50%, and no response when there was no appreciable change in the size of tumour, or the tumour volume decreased to less than 50% of the original volume. Results: A statistically significant increase in RI and PI was demonstrated with TVCDUS following treatment in patients who had a complete and partial response to chemoradiation, compared to those who had no response. Conclusion: TVCDUS is useful in predicting clinical response to concurrent chemoradiation in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer. Thus, it is recommended during the pretreatment evaluation and follow-up.


It seems like a day does not go by in the United States without hearing about immigration on televised news broadcasts, print news stories, radio talk shows, or Internet blogs. Immigration, more specifically "illegal immigration," is a hot topic in the U.S., perhaps fueled by the fact that 2008 is a presidential election year. Furthermore, since the issue of illegal immigration tends to divide constituents into two distinct camps (i.e., those opposed to it and those tolerant of it), political candidates for local school boards and county commission vacancies to gubernatorial and U.S. Congress and Senate seats continuously stir political debate with unfounded sound bites, and quick "facts." Consequently, much of the immigration rhetoric is anti-immigration. We contend that this anti-immigration sentiment is not a true fervor for the law, but instead is veiled racism. There is no doubt that the U.S. needs to address immigration through immigration reform, but the strong, and at times vitriolic, discussion is eerily similar to the anti-non-White, non-Protestant, rhetoric "discussions" of the past. This type of negative, hateful, sentiment has contributed to a 40% increase in the number of hate groups in the U.S. since 2000 (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2007).

http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/M_Shattell_Anit_2008 (MULTI UNCG AUTHORS).pdf


If the Treaty of Paris in 1763 secured the Hudson's Bay Company in its monopoly of Rupert's Land, it also, by the Cession of Canada, opened to British enterprise the river-and-lake routes, discovered by the French, from Montreal to the fur-rich country west of Hudson Bay. This instalment of our list covers the years of the Montreal traders' expansion into the North-west, their crossing of the Arctic watershed into the fur trader's Eldorado, the Athabasca district, their organization into the Hudson's Bay Company's formidable rival, the North West Company, and concludes with the climax of their north-westward surge, Alexander Mackenzie's arrival at the Arctic Ocean in 1789. This activity obliged the Hudson's Bay Company to change its policy of waiting for the Indians to bring their furs to posts on Hudson Bay and made them push inland to compete for furs with the pedlars from Montreal. In the meantime, the Moravians had established missions on the coast of Labrador, searches for a North-west Passage were directed away from Hudson Bay to the Pacific coast of North America, the first scientific expedition was sent to Hudson Bay, and the Indians were decimated by smallpox. Toward the end of this instalment, we begin to draw our southern boundary of "northern Canada" both westward and northward and to omit many expeditions and events of peripheral or minor importance, such as activities south of Saskatchewan River, or of regular occurrence, such as annual voyages northward from Churchill.


While much attention has been paid to the development of castles as the hallmark architectural symbol of the Middle Ages, less attention has been given to the changes in European defensive strategies that occurred between the 15th and 17th centuries. It was at this time when the modern nations of Europe began to take form, as sea-based trade between distant nations took precedence over land-based trade routes. This paper examines how this transformation manifested in the defensive structures of Sicily, Italy, where the hilltop castles of the Middle Ages gradually gave way to a more cohesive network of coastal towers around the island. Putting this transition in its historical context, presenting an anthropological model from which to view this transition, and using geospatial methods to track these changes, the results of this study indicate that as defensive towers began to dominate the Sicilian coast around the 16th century, their command over the environment was no greater than that of the feudal castles which were still in use. Yet, unlike the castles of feudal lords, these towers represented an island-wide system of defense and the beginning of an adherence to a more centralized power structure then seen previously.


About 10% of primary school students in developing countries have poor vision, but very few of them wear glasses. Almost no research examines the impact of poor vision on school performance, and simple OLS estimates are likely to be biased because studying harder often adversely affect one's vision. This paper presents results from a randomized trial in Western China that offered free eyeglasses to 1,528 rural primary school students. The results indicate that wearing eyeglasses for one year increased average test scores of students with poor vision by 0.15 to 0.22 standard deviations, equivalent to the learning acquired from an additional 0.33-0.50 years of schooling, and that the benefits are greater for under-performing students. A simple cost-benefit analysis suggests very high economic returns to wearing eyeglasses, raising the question of why such investments are not made by most families. We find that girls are more likely to refuse free eyeglasses, and that lack of parental awareness of vision problems, mothers' education, and economic factors (expenditures per capita and price) significantly affect whether children wear eyeglasses in the absence of the intervention.


We use molecular dynamics (MD) simulation with numerical characterisation and statistical analysis to study the mechanisms of damage evolution and p-type doping efficiency by aluminum (Al) ion implantation into 3C silicon carbide (SiC) with subsequent annealing. By incorporating the electronic stopping power for implantation, a more accurate description of the atomic-scale mechanisms of damage evolution and distribution in SiC can be obtained. The simulation results show a novel observation that the recrystallization process occurs in the region below the subsurface layer, and develops from amorphous–crystalline interface to the damage center region, which is a new insight into previously published studies. During surface recrystallization, significant compressive stress concentration occurs, and more structural phase transition atoms and dislocations formed at the damage-rich-crystalline interface. Another point of interest is that for low-dose implantation, more implantation-induced defects hamper the doping efficiency. Correspondingly, the correlation between lattice damage and doping efficiency becomes weaker as the implant dose increases under the same annealing conditions. Our simulation also predicts that annealing after high temperature (HT) implantation is more likely to lead to the formation of carbon vacancies (VC).


Jean Genet (1910–1986) resonates, perhaps more than any other canonical queer figure from the pre-Stonewall past, with contemporary queer sensibilities attuned to a defiant non-normativity. Not only sexually queer, Genet was also a criminal and a social pariah, a bitter opponent of the police state, and an ally of revolutionary anticolonial movements. In Disturbing Attachments , Kadji Amin challenges the idealization of Genet as a paradigmatic figure within queer studies to illuminate the methodological dilemmas at the heart of queer theory. Pederasty, which was central to Genet's sexuality and to his passionate cross-racial and transnational political activism late in life, is among a series of problematic and outmoded queer attachments that Amin uses to deidealize and historicize queer theory. He brings the genealogy of Genet's imaginaries of attachment to bear on pressing issues within contemporary queer politics and scholarship, including prison abolition, homonationalism, and pinkwashing. Disturbing Attachments productively and provocatively unsettles queer studies by excavating the history of its affective tendencies to reveal and ultimately expand the contexts that inform the use and connotations of the term queer .


Twenty-three infants and children aged 2½ months to 13 years with chronic diarrhoea and 6 patients without diarrhoea were investigated for lactose malabsorption with the hydrogen breath test (HBT) adapted for use in young infants and children. A further 8 children with proven or suspected coeliac disease were also investigated. The HBT was compared with the histology of the jejunal mucosa, mucosal lactase estimations, a lactose tolerance test, symptoms during the test, and follow-up after starting a lactose free diet. The 6 patients without diarrhoea showed no evidence of hypolactasia and the hydrogen (H2)* concentration on the HBT was below 7 parts per million (ppm), a level considered to be clinically nonsignificant. 12 of the 23 patients with diarrhoea had a breath H2 concentration greater than 24 ppm and this correlated well with their clinical symptoms during or after the test and with the remission of the diarrhoea after lactose withdrawal. Of the remaining 11 patients with diarrhoea whose breath H2 concentration was lower than 25 ppm, symptoms did not improve when a lactose-free diet was started in 3, while a further 4 improved on a full diet. There was poor correlation between the HBT and the findings on the jejunal mucosal specimens. All but one of the coeliac patients had an HBT less than 20 ppm and none of these required lactose withdrawal for remission of symptoms. The HBT is a noninvasive test particularly suitable for outpatients and it gives a useful prognostic guide to the efficacy of lactose-free diet in the treatment of chronic diarrhoea in children.


This project addresses the current hot topic in the field of education, of Multiple Intelligences. Howard Garner, psychologist and Harvard professor, believes there are multiple ways children learn. Through that belief he created the Multiple Intelligences Theory (MI) which states there are eight ways people learn or complete tasks. This project looked at the Theory of Multiple Intelligences and analyzed how it is applied in the classroom. Through research, direct observation, and interviews with teachers, it was found how this theory is practically applied in classrooms today. The following three questions were answered in this project. How are current teachers in the field applying the multiple intelligences theory in the classroom setting? (The traditional approach of using the Verbal/Linguistic and Logical/Mathematical learning styles has seemed to fade away.) Are the other Multiple Intelligences used as often in the classroom? And finally, do teachers know their students' Multiple Intelligences, and are they deliberately using those in their lessons, or is it unintentional?


Although food has been proposed as a possible factor on population regulation of small mammals, evidence of food restriction in field conditions is still lacking. Food restriction is generally thought to occur in high-density years of oscillating populations of small mammals. By using two body condition indices (muscle protein concentration and cleaned carcass index), we investigated variations of body condition of the greater long-tailed hamster (Tscherskia triton) and the striped hamster (Cricetulus barabensis) in the Raoyang County of the North China Plain during a population decline- and low-phase from 1998 to 2003. Our laboratory experiments showed that food restriction reduced muscle protein concentration and cleaned carcass index of greater long-tailed hamster. We found there were significant differences in body condition of hamsters over the six years. Both the muscle protein concentration and cleaned carcass index of T. triton were significantly and positively correlated with its yearly trap successes, which reflected yearly population densities. Muscle protein concentration of C. barabensis was positively correlated with the total yield of the wheat. This observation supported the hypothesis on the in-phase relation between food resources or availability and rodent abundances. During the four seasons, muscle protein concentration of two species was highest in autumn, and lowest in summer. These two body condition indices of wild T. triton in summer and in low phases were similar to 60% food restricted animals raised in the laboratory, but significantly lower than nonfood-restricted animals. Our results indicated that malnutrition occurred in summer when food was not abundant, and in low density years with low grain production (an index reflecting food abundance of rodents) in our study region. Therefore, we concluded that food limitation may play an important role in seasonal and inter-annual population fluctuation of these two hamster species.


Theories about the evolution of sex and the effects of inbreeding depend on knowledge of the mutation rate and dominance level of deleterious alleles affecting total fitness. In two species of largely self-fertilizing annual plants, minimal estimates of such mutation rates were found to be 0.24 to 0.87 per sporophyte genome per generation, but confidence intervals exceeded 1.0 in each of the four populations. Dominance levels were near zero in one species and intermediate (0.28 to 0.35) in the other. These results suggest that the detrimental effects of inbreeding are a result of new partially recessive mutations rather than overdominance.


In this paper, I present a general modeling framework for nonparametric models with endogenous regressors and heterogeneity. I show that many existing models in the literature can be derived from a structural equation with unobserved het- erogeneity by imposing constancy assumptions on the first and second deriva- tives. I consider a less restrictive model that imposes constancy assumptions on the second partial derivative of the structural equation. Assuming the existence of suitable instrumental variables, I provide identification results and show that the model can be estimated using a generalized control function approach. I consider an application to the estimation of the returns to education in Chile, exploiting variation across regions and cohorts in educational infrastructure and compul- sory schooling laws. Using penalized spline functions to approximate the com- ponents of the average structural function, I find that the local average returns to schooling are highly nonlinear and typically underestimated by flexible models that ignore the endogeneity of schooling. I also find evidence of credential effects for high school and college graduates, and limited evidence of comparative ad- vantage bias in the returns to certain levels of education. Keywords. Nonparametric regression, endogenous regressors, control function, endogenous treatment, returns to schooling. JEL classification. C14, C21, C31, J31.


A core tenet of the claim that international investment law promotes the rule of law is that it enhances legal certainty for foreign investors. The idea is that investment treaties function as credible commitments, which lessen the risk of arbitrary, discriminatory, or unfair State action, and enhance the predictability of the legal framework applicable to foreign investment. However, it turns out that the investment treaty regime itself suffers from systemic inconsistency – as interpreted across hundreds of published arbitral awards. The question is whether this regime thus recreates the same rule of law problems it purports to solve. While the extent of inconsistency in ISDS is glaring, this Chapter argues against analyzing the uncomfortable relationship between investment treaties and legal certainty in zero-sum terms. Consistency is one rule of law value among many, (such as fidelity, flexibility, and responsiveness). It is one which cannot be secured absolutely and should not be pursued at all costs. Drawing on the work of Lon Fuller, this Chapter seeks to distinguish between tolerable consistency deficiencies in investment treaty arbitration, and more structural inconsistencies that are inimical to the rule of law. I identify particular rule of law failures of the latter sort in the wide ranging arbitral inconsistency in the interpretation and application of key secondary rules governing applicable law, norm conflict, attribution, and interpretation.


Sustainable intensification is one of the greatest challenges facing the agri-food sector which needs to produce more food to meet increasing global demand, while minimising negative environmental impacts such as agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Sustainable intensification relates not just to primary production, but also has wider value chain implications. An input-output model is a modelling framework which contains the flows across a value chain within a country. Input-output (IO) models have been disaggregated to have finer granular detail in relation to agricultural sub-sectoral value chains. National IO models with limited agricultural disaggregation have been developed to look at carbon footprints and within agriculture to look at the carbon footprint of specific value chains. In this paper we adapt an agriculturally disaggregated IO model to analyse the source of emissions in different components of agri-food value chains. We focus on Ireland, where emissions from agriculture comprise nearly 30% of national emissions and where there has been a major expansion and transformation in agriculture since the abolition of milk quota restrictions. In a substantial Annex to this paper, we describe the modelling assumptions made in developing this model. Breaking up the value chain into components, we find that most value is generated at the processing stage of the value chain, with greater processing value in more sophisticated value chains such as dairy processing. On the other hand, emissions are in general highest in primary production, albeit emissions from purchased animal feed being higher for poultry than for other value chains, given the lower direct emissions from poultry than from ruminants or sheep. The analysis highlights that emissions per unit of output are much higher for beef and sheep meat value chains than for pig and poultry meat value chains.


Extension educators have explored different methods for collecting stakeholder input, but a suitable methodology has not been agreed on. The Michigan State University Extension dairy team works with an advisory board and also collected formal stakeholder input through ten regional partner group surveys in 1997. In 2007, the team decided to seek another round of broad-based and inclusive stakeholder input. The research team decided to employ issue identification groups at different locations throughout the state and a mail survey. This paper reports on the procedure developed for this purpose and its results.


This paper studies an intelligent technique for the healthmonitoring and prognostics of common rotary machine components, with regards to bearings in particular. During a run-to-failure experiment, rich unsupervised features from vibration sensory data are extracted by a trained sparse autoencoder. Then, the correlation of the initial samples (presumably healthy), along with the successive samples, are calculated and passed through a moving-average filter. The normalized output which is referred to as the auto-encoder correlation based (AEC) rate, determines an informative attribute of the system, depicting its health status. AEC automatically identifies the degradation starting point in the machine component. We show that AEC rate well-generalizes in several run-tofailure tests. We demonstrate the superiority of the AEC over many other state-of-the-art approaches for the health monitoring of machine bearings.


Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers continually seek higher resource utilization to better amortize capital costs. Higher utilization not only can enable higher profit for IaaS providers but also provides a mechanism to raise energy efficiency; therefore creating greener cloud services. Unfortunately, achieving high utilization is difficult mainly due to infrastructure providers needing to maintain spare capacity to service demand fluctuations. Graceful degradation is a self-adaptation technique originally designed for constructing robust services that survive resource shortages. Previous work has shown that graceful degradation can also be used to improve resource utilization in the cloud by absorbing demand fluctuations and reducing spare capacity. In this work, we build a system and pricing model that enables infrastructure providers to incentivize their tenants to use graceful degradation. By using graceful degradation with an appropriate pricing model, the infrastructure provider can realize higher resource utilization while simultaneously, its tenants can increase their profit. Our proposed solution is based on a hybrid model which guarantees both reserved and peak on-demand capacities over flexible periods. It also includes a global dynamic price pair for capacity which remains uniform during each tenant's Service Level Agreement (SLA) term. We evaluate our scheme using simulations based on real-world traces and also implement a prototype using RUBiS on the Xen hypervisor as an end-to-end demonstration. Our analysis shows that the proposed scheme never hurts a tenant's net profit, but can improve it by as much as 93%. Simultaneously, it can also improve the effective utilization of contracts from 42% to as high as 99%.


Objectives: This study was designed to explore nutritional status and behaviors in pregnancy and investigate the effects on preterm and term births. Methods: The study was conducted with 120 mothers who gave birth (60 preterm and 60 term deliveries) in a private hospital between November 2015 and December 2015 in Istanbul. A questionnaire to record the demographic characteristics of patients, smoking and alcohol use, nutritional habits, and food consumption frequency was administered in a face-to-face interview. Results: In all, 65% of the births were by cesarean section and 35% were vaginal delivery; 41.7% of the preterm deliveries were in women aged ≥35 years, whereas only 5% of term deliveries were in women aged ≥35 years. Statistically significant differences were found in terms of education, work status, income level, smoking, pregnancy nutrition, and psychological status between preterm and term delivery mothers (p<0.05). Gestational weight gain was ≤8 kg in 36.7% of mothers with preterm deliveries and ≥12 kg in 36.7% of mothers and 8-12 kg in 68.3% of the mothers with term deliveries. Compared with preterm delivery mothers, term delivery mothers had fewer nutritional problems during pregnancy and more regular meal consumption (p<0.05). Conclusion: Weight gain and nutrition in pregnancy are variables that affect preterm birth. Hence, nutritional training should be provided regularly to pregnant women, and their weight should be monitored.


Since ancient times, plants have been used as medicine, foods, Agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals by large number of tribes, rural and urban people. India has more than 300 tribal communities. The tribal region of Andhra Pradesh has not received proper attention of ethnomedicinal researchers. Therefore, a survey of ethnomedicinal plants used by Koya tribes of Medaram and Narlapura villages which are on the south of the Godavari River, Thadvai Mandal, Warangal District; Andhra Pradesh, India was undertaken. The information on plants was collected by interviewing the local tribal traditional practitioners. The present study revealed that the plants which are used in traditional systems are mostly collected from the wild resources. A total of 36 plant species (belonging to 24 families) of ethno botanical interest upon inquiries from these tribal informants' between the age of 35–78 were reported. They have been using these parts in the form of paste, powder, decoction, juice, infusion and also in crude form, with other additives like honey, curd, and urine and cow milk to get relief from different ailments like diabetes, inflammations, wounds, skin diseases, headache, indigestion, urinary infections, fever, snake bites, cough, and dental problems. This study therefore concludes, it is necessary that suitability requirements are needed in order to protect the traditional knowledge in a particular area with reference to medicinal plant utilization. The plants need to be evaluated through phytochemical investigation to discover potentiality as drugs.


Nowadays the Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology becomes popular and receives growing acceptance as a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) system. WiMAX has potential success in its line-of-sight (LOS) and non line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions which operating below 11 GHz frequency. There are going to be a surge all over the world for the deployment of WiMAX networks. Estimation of path loss is very important in initial deployment of wireless network and cell planning. Numerous path loss (PL) models (e.g. Okumura Model, Hata Model) are available to predict the propagation loss, but they are inclined to be limited to the lower frequency bands (up to 2 GHz). In this thesis we compare and analyze five path loss models (i.e. COST 231 Hata model, ECC-33 model, SUI model, Ericsson model and COST 231 Walfish-Ikegami model) in different receiver antenna heights in urban, suburban and rural environments in NLOS condition. Our main concentration in this thesis is to find out a suitable model for different environments to provide guidelines for cell planning of WiMAX at cellular frequency of 3.5 GHz.


Objective: Piroxicam is a long-acting potent nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) which has a very low solubility in Gastrointestinal (GI) fluids results in poor bioavailability after oral administration. The present investigation aimed to formulate and evaluate fast dissolving oral films containing piroxicam to overcome solubility and bioavailability problems thereby to facilitate the convenience of pediatric and geriatric patients. Method: The inclusion complexes of piroxicam with β-cyclodextrin were prepared. In vitro dissolution study was performed to fix the ratio with better dissolution rate. The selected inclusion complex was then utilized for the preparation of fast dissolving oral films by solvent casting method using sodium CMC/ chitosan as film-forming agents, sodium starch glycolate/crospovidone as super disintegrating agents. PEG 400 used as a plasticizer. Formulations (F1-F12) were prepared and evaluated for their physicochemical properties. In vitro disintegration, dissolution and permeation studies were also carried out. Results: Formulation F2 showed the minimum in vitro disintegration time (14.94±3.06 s), formulation F9 showed the maximum in vitro disintegration time (36.66±1.05 s). The formulations F6 and F4 showed better drug release of 94.4 % and 92.9 % respectively. Better drug permeation of 96.65 % was obtained from the formulation F6 in 40 s. Conclusion: The study concluded that the fast dissolving films achieved quicker onset of action compared to the conventional preparations. The formulation found promising to obtain better therapeutic efficiency. Key words: Fast dissolving film, Inclusion complex, β-cyclodextrin, Piroxicam.


Crust-penetrating multichannel seismic data imaged crustal features of late Tertiary extension in east Dixon Entrance, British Columbia. The data show grabens as much as 3 km deep, mid-crustal west-dipping refl ecting packages interpreted as normal sense shear zones, middle to lower crustal subhorizontal refl ecting horizons, a generally refl ective Moho, and arches of the Moho with relief of as much as 3 km (Moho depths 24.8‐ 27.5 km). Based on dated extension-related features reported for the region, east-west extension occurred between 40 and 20 Ma and may have been concentrated between 25 and 20 Ma. If the pre‐late Tertiary crustal thickness of east Dixon Entrance was the same as that of the mainland to the east (34 km), the minimum amount of crustal thinning in the study area was 30%. Thinning of the whole crust above a stronger mantle lithosphere is implied by the extension-related features that we describe from the brittle upper crust down through the ductile lower crust to the Moho. Our data confi rm and extend the interpretation of crustal extension by Lowe and Dehler and Dehler et al. for Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound. Integration of our results with the geologic history across the study area leads to a conclusion that preexisting zones of weakness may have controlled the pattern of crustal thinning during the extension.


The
focus on copper chalcogenide chemistry is experiencing continuous growth and interest
over last few decades owing to their novel properties and significant applications in materials
chemistry. The property of copper chalcogenides is mainly controlled by ch
alcogen sources.
For example, the recent works have also witnessed the active role of decade old ligand system
imidazolin
-
2
-
chalcogenones for this endeavor. Notably, imidazolin
-
2
-
chalcogenon ligands
have potential to serve as a ligand with copper in medici
ne. Some other potential applications
of these imidazolin
-
2
-
chalcogenone ligand supported copper included their use as precursor
for nanomaterial synthesis and co
-
ligand in catalysis. However, these recent efforts have not
answered the critical questions s
uch as, do "homoleptic two coordinated" key intermediates
exist in the catalytic process? How essential is "more π accepting imidazoline
-
2
-
selone" to
isolate the homoleptic two coordinated coinage metal derivatives? In order to address these
challenges
, th
is
thesis deals
with
the
t
hree
main aspects of
Imidazolin
-
2
-
chalcogenones
(ImC), su
c
h as
(1)
synthesis
o
f
soluble
copper(I)
chalcogenone
,
(2)
catalytic efficiencies of
ImC
‒
Cu complexes
, and
comparison
of
catalytic activity of
ImC‒Cu
with NHC
‒
Cu
(Chart
A)
.
Indeed,
twenty one new
structurally interesting
copper(I) chalcogenones have been
isolated and characterized by
CHN analysis, FT
-
IR, multinuclear NMR, TGA, UV
-
vis, and
single crystal X
-
ray diffraction techniques.
These
new molecules
are found to be very
active
catalysts in 'cabon
-
boron
'
,
'cabon
-
nitrogen' and 'carbon
-
silicon'
bond formation reactions.


In this thesis I investigate the interconnectedness of forgiveness as a narrative, as a philosophical, religious and cultural phenomenon, and the ways in which forgiveness is increasingly being used as a vehicle for improving health and psychological well-being. By threading together how scholars in a variety of fields have approached these areas of study, we can better understand the way the interdisciplinary nature of forgiveness grants access to heal not merely relationships with others, but also our bodies, our minds, and our relationship with ourselves. Important to my investigation is understanding that the life circumstances that prompt forgiveness consist of both the lived experiences, as well as the stories that we tell ourselves internally about these experiences. I emphasize that forgiveness is an essential healing process with both intrapersonal (internal) and interpersonal (external) moral relations. With a greater focus on the intrapersonal aspects of forgiveness, I explore the ways in which humans are storytelling beings, revealing the interconnectivity we experience with our shared histories, and the role of forgiveness in our ability to heal. Personal stories and narratives will come to be seen as vital ways for all to be able to forgive, which result in greater physical and mental health. By applying the following four elements to our internal narratives around traumas—Element 1: Speak your truth; Element 2: Let go of the alternative ending to the story; Element 3: Develop a compassionate story of the other; and Element 4: Share your forgiveness story as appropriate—I suggest that these intentional internal narratives play a key role in accessing the health benefits of forgiveness. Interdisciplinary in nature, my thesis includes research in narrative medicine, religion, philosophy, psychology, sociology, as well as health and healing.


Studies have shown that narrative is a valid tool to transmit science in a school context. We explored science theatre to promote earthquake knowledge and risk preparedness by readapting an old legend describing the 1908 Messina earthquake into a script, which was then performed in a primary school. We evaluated the experience designing a questionnaire inspired by the Düss Fairy Tales method and a semistructured questionnaire. Preliminary results strongly encourage science theatre as a means to transfer knowledge and open new opportunities to use this method as an agent of change in behavior before and during an earthquake.


The HUWY project is piloting a distributed discussion model for eParticipation in which young people?s discussions, on Internet policy issues, are networked together by "hub" websites. The HUWY pilot ran in Estonia, Germany, Ireland and the UK between 2009 and early 2011, using a combination of online and offline approaches. This Sustainability and Scalability Report aims to identify the possibilities and challenges in terms of future use of the HUWY model and technology. In order to do this, the strengths and weaknesses of the implementation are assessed. The distributed discussion model is outlined and the main challenges identified. The implementation of the pilot is described and assessed according to five major elements: 1. Online tools 2. Information provision 3. Supporting discussion groups 4. Involving policy-makers 5. European and transnational dimensions Each of these five elements is assessed using feedback and data gathered in the HUWY evaluation process, including input from young people, policy-makers and the HUWY teams, combined with quantitative data extracted from the online tools and technical assessments. This enables us to provide recommendations to anyone intending to implement a similar initiative, while providing valuable contextual information gathered from the pilots in four quite different countries. The report uses the experience of the HUWY teams and input from external interested parties to identify how the HUWY model (processes and technology) could be used in the future. Partners have talked with specific organisations and projects, interested in using the HUWY model and adapted tools. The report concludes with a series of recommendations for implementing distributed discussions with a mixture of online and offline elements. The recommendations are useful to those interested in using eParticipation to increase young people?s democratic engagement in a specific issue and particularly relevant to science and technology issues.


Filtrates of Treponema hyodysenteriae grown in rabbit serum broth supplemented with sodium ribonucleate (Na-RNA) 1.0% contained a haemolysin for sheep, rabbit, and pig erythrocytes. Haemolysin was not detected in the absence of Na-RNA. Haemolytic titres were highest when viable counts were maximal at the end of the logarithmic growth phase. Haemolysin could not be demonstrated in the spirochaete-free supernates of either centrifuged washings from blood-agar cultures, or centrifuged frozen-and-thawed cultures in semi-solid blood agar. In contrast, washed spirochaetes lysed sheep erythrocytes suspended in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) or PBS-cysteine, provided that bovine serum albumin (BSA) fraction V was present. Haemolysin was produced aerobically as well as anaerobically. Ultrasonically disrupted spirochaetes did not produce haemolysin. After incubation for 30 min at 37"C, haemolysin was present in supernate or filtrate from centrifuged suspensions of resting cells of T. hyodysenteriae in PBS containing glucose or maltose, cysteine hydrochloride, Mg2+, and Na-RNA or ribonucleic acid (RNA)-core. By analogy with its function as a non-specific carrier molecule for the oxygen-stable streptococcal haemolysin streptolysin S, ribonucleic acid can be regarded as a carrier substance for the treponemal haemolysin. RNA-core was a more efficient carrier than Na-RNA; BSA fraction V and Tween 80 were less efficient than Na-RNA. Haemolysin was not produced in the absence of a carrier. Haemolysin production occurred at temperatures up to 42"C, but was reduced at 18°C and below. The haemolysin was inactivated slowly at 37°C and 42"C, and more rapidly at 60°C. Titres also decreased slightly after 18 h at 4°C. Haemolysin was produced in only small amounts by resting cells of a weakly haemolytic porcine-intestinal spirochaete, and only during a restricted period in the logarithmic phase. A prozone was observed when this haemolysin was titrated. The demonstration that the treponemal haemolysin can be produced from resting cells will facilitate its purification and thus expedite studies on its interaction with other types of mammalian cell.


The objective of this study was to establish the effect of sire (n = 9) estimated breeding values (EBVs) and pasture-based nutritional systems (low and high quality and availability) from birth to slaughter on the metabolic characteristics and post-mortem pH changes in muscle of ~8-month-old lambs (n = 56). Nutritional restriction resulted in a general decrease in glycolytic capacity as indicated by the enzymes phosphofructokinase and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), suggesting greater metabolic efficiency. Alternatively, it also depressed oxidative capacity as indicated by myoglobin and isocitrate dehydrogenase, which aligns with the histological results suggesting a fast glycolytic fibre type characteristic of less mature animals. Increasing PEMD EBV resulted in a marked shift towards a metabolically more glycolytic muscle type as demonstrated by LDH, although this did not correspond strongly with an increase in the proportion of type 2B fibres based on histological assessment of myofibre type using immunostaining of myosin heavy chain isoforms. Myoglobin concentration aligned with this trend, decreasing in all muscles as PEMD EBV increased, suggesting that selection for muscling will lead to a whiter muscle appearance. Rate of pH decline was increased in the low nutrition lambs, and through selection for PEMD EBV, this response aligning with the metabolically more glycolytic muscle type.


This paper contains the law professors' brief in the landmark case of Warshak v. United States, the first federal appellate case to recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy in electronic mail stored with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). While the 6th circuit's opinion was subsequently vacated and reheard en banc, the panel decision will remain extremely significant for its requirement that law enforcement agents must generally acquire a warrant before compelling an ISP to disclose its subscriber's stored e-mails. The law professors' brief, co-authored by Susan Freiwald (University of San Francisco) and Patricia L. Bellia (Notre Dame) and signed by fifteen professors of electronic privacy and internet law, argues that stored e-mail should be protected by the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement notwithstanding the fact that it is accessible from third party ISPs. The brief refutes the government's argument that its agents must satisfy only a weak subpoena standard before compelling an ISP to disclose stored e-mails, and argues against a broad "third party rule." The 6th Circuit panel expressly referred to the law professors' brief (along with an amicus brief by civil liberties groups) when it held that stored e-mails are properly analogized to telephone calls. It found that when agents conduct electronic surveillance, the same Fourth Amendment protection available under Katz v. United States to telephone calls in transit should extend to e-mails in storage. In addition to containing the brief submitted to the 6th circuit panel, this paper provides legal and factual background to the Warshak case.


The impedance tube method is widely used for measuring sound absorption (or reflection) coefficients of acoustic materials as a function of frequency. However, the sound absorption coefficients obtained using the impedance tube method may have some variations due to the dimensions (limits) of an impedance tube, sample preparation and sample mounting. This paper assesses the performance of the two-microphone impedance tube method as a function of frequency for different tube dimensions and materials and presents suggestions for increasing the reliability and repeatability of impedance tube measurements. First, after summarizing a systematic way for measuring acoustic transfer functions, sound absorption coefficients of a variety of materials ranging from conventional absorbing acoustic materials to samples with thin films are measured using two tubes with different tube diameter and microphone spacing. Uncertainty of sound absorption coefficients for various materials is discussed, and the frequency limits of impedance tubes are assessed. Then, a method for minimizing uncertainty due to sample mounting is proposed and the main findings are discussed.