The aim of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of the commercial progesterone to maintain the pregnancies in noncyclic recipient mares and if it helps to decrease the early embryonic death when used in cyclic pregnant recipient mares. A total of 199 mares were used during February to April of the 2008 breeding season at Burns Ranch. The mares were assigned to groups according to their reproductive status. Noncyclic (n = 42) mares were prepared as embryo transfer recipients using our standard protocol with estradiol cypionate (3 days, 10/6/4 mg, Wickliffe, USA) and long action progesterone (P4LA, 1500 mg, BET Labs, Lexington, KY, USA), and 157 naturally cyclic mares were used from Day 3 to 8 after ovulation as embryo transfer recipients. After embryo transfer, 134 of the 157 cyclic mares got pregnant at 15 days. Some of the pregnant mares (n = 43) were assigned to a progesterone-supplemented group; these mares were administered P4LA (1500 mg) after the first pregnancy diagnosis at around 15 days and repeated 7 days later. The remaining mares were placed in a control group (n = 91), with no treatment, in order to compare the embryonic loss rates for the 3 groups. Recipients were evaluated for the presence of the embryonic vesicle between 13 and 16 days (embryo age), and pregnancies were monitored at 30 and 45 days to determine the early embryonic loss. Statistical analyzes were performed using the chi-square test with 5% defined as significance. Pregnancy rates at 13 to 16 days were not different (P = 0.336) for noncyclic and cyclic recipients (39/42, 90.7% and 134/157, 85.4%, respectively). The embryonic loss was evaluated in the 3 groups as follows: control group; 7 of 91 pregnancies were lost between 15 and 30 days (7.69%) and 2 of 84 were lost between 30 and 45 days (2.38%); the progesterone-supplemented group had lost 4 of the 43 pregnancies between 15 and 30 days (9.30%); and the noncycling progesterone mares had lost 2 of the 39 between 30 and 45 days (5.13%). Rates of embryo loss before 45 days of gestation were not different for the control mares with no progesterone supplementation (9.89%), progesterone-supplemented cyclic mares (9.3%), and noncyclic recipients (5.13%). The noncyclic recipients maintain gestation with the supplemental progesterone with no influence on embryo loss. These results demonstrate no advantage in the use of exogenous progesterone to supplementation for cyclic embryo recipients. Burns Ranch Inc., Menifee, California, USA.


The efficacy of transferred fresh embryos was evaluated. Donors were superovulated on day 10 of the estrous cycle with 8, 7, 5 e 4 mg (48 mg) or 7, 6,4 e 3 mg (40 mg) of follicle stimulating hormonepituitary (FSH-P) twice a day, during four days. Analogue prostaglandin (cloprostenol) was injected on day 12 of the cycle and inseminations with frozen semen two or three times were performed, each 12 hours. Nonsurgical recovery of the embryos was performed with "Neustad a.d. Aisch" catheter, introducing the medium into the uterine horns with syringes. The uterine horns were flushed with modified Dulbecco's phosphate buffered saline (PBS) enriched with 1% of foetal calf serum at 36 °C. After the recovery, the embryos were morphologically evaluated under a stereomicroscope at 16x and 70x magnifications. The embryos transfers were surgically conducted through flank incision and pregnancy diagnosis made through rectal palpation on day 45-60after transfer. Two hundred twenty one embryos from Holstein cows and thirty seven from Simmental were transferred to two hundred fifty eight cross bred heifers. Pregnancy rates for fresh embryo transfer from Holstein and Simmental cows were 73.3% and 83.3%the values were not statistically different.


Einkorn and emmer wheat are still cultivated in the mountainous areas of Turkey. They are resistant to biotic and abiotic stress conditions and are routinely used as food stuffs due to reasonable dietary fiber rate and vitamin and micronutrient content. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the feed potential of einkorn and emmer wheat populations. A total of 17 hulled wheat populations collected from different provinces of Turkey were studied during the years 2012 and 2013. Experiments were carried out in randomized complete block design with 3 replications to investigate grain yield, harvest index, chemical composition, and gas and methane production of the grain. Grain yield varied between 2.477 and 4.617 t ha-1 , harvest index between 27.55% and 36.03%, crude protein (CP) between 6.69% and 16.22%, neutral detergent fiber (NDF) between 25.99% and 31.99%, acid detergent fiber (ADF) between 14.35% and 19.05%, crude oil (CO) between 1.33% and 2.05%, crude ash (CA) between 4.23% and 5.22%, metabolizable energy (ME) between 2.58 and 2.25 Mcal kg-1 DM, organic matter digestibility (OMD) between 65.59% and 72.73%, and gas production (GP) between 46.01 and 52.22 mL. While einkorn populations had higher ME, OMD, CP, and CO content values, emmer wheat populations had higher ADF and NDF rates. Moreover, there were significant variations in gas and methane production in all hulled wheat populations. Genotype-trait biplot analysis clearly indicated the variation limits of NDF, ADF, CP, OMD, ME, methane, GP, CO, and CA of hulled wheat populations. There were also significant linear relationships between CP and ME (0.585) and OMD (0.613); between CO and GP (0.513); and between GP and ME (0.623) and OMD (0.696). It was concluded that with regard to higher yield and digestibility, these hulled wheat populations could be used as basic germplasm for breeding of new einkorn and emmer wheat cultivars to be used as alternative feedstuff.


Informed by the OECD's well-being framework, this Working Paper considers how the experience of civic engagement and governance is being transformed and explores how governments can harness the potential of digital technologies and data to develop better outcomes for better lives. The paper proposes that in order to maximise the relationship between digital government activity and citizen well-being, government focus should be on benefits that are not only material in terms of the quality of services, but that reflect the intellectual and emotional benefits derived from a different approach to government interactions with its constituents. The paper suggests that the relationship between digital government and citizen well-being is best encapsulated by the outcomes which follow from a government that is responsive, protective and trustworthy.


Through independent mechanisms, TLR9 increases stress tolerance in nonimmune cells while initiating inflammation in immune cells after tissue injury. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) initiate the inflammatory response in immune cells. TLR9 is present in immune cells and some nonimmune cells, including cardiomyocytes and neurons, and it recognizes DNA from either bacterial cells or injured host cells. Shintani et al. found that TLR9 may function in an alternate, noninflammatory signaling pathway in cardiomyocytes and neurons to protect them from damaging inflammation. Administration of CpG oligodendronucleotide (CpG-ODN), a synthetic TLR9 ligand, into ex vivo beating hearts from wild-type or TLR9-deficient mice rapidly reduced cardiac contractility and energy metabolism markers and increased the activity of adenosine monophosphate–activated protein kinase (AMPK) only in wild-type hearts. Similar metabolic changes were seen in a differentiated neuronal cell line as well as in the hearts of mice deficient in MyD88 (myeloid differentiation primary response gene 88), an adaptor protein that is required for TLR9 signaling in immune cells. Furthermore, markers of the canonical inflammatory response, including activation of NF-κB (nuclear factor κB) and mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling, were detected in a macrophage cell line in response to CpG-ODN but not in cardiomyocytes. The expression of Unc93b1, a gene encoding a key molecule that translocates TLR9 from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the endosomes to initiate inflammatory signaling with MyD88, was decreased in cardiomyocytes compared with macrophages, and both the endosomal translocation of TLR9 and its interaction with MyD88 were detected only in macrophages. Depletion of Unc93b1 in macrophages treated with CpG-ODN reduced the inflammatory response and increased the activation of AMPK, whereas the overexpression of Unc93b1 in cardiomyocytes induced the translocation of TLR9, enhanced inflammatory signaling, and decreased the activity of AMPK. In wild-type cardiomyocytes, CpG-ODN translocated from endosomes to the ER through retrograde signaling to bind to TLR9. Treatment with Retro-2, an inhibitor of retrograde transport, restricted the localization of CpG-ODN to the endosomes and reduced the TLR9-dependent activation of AMPK both in cardiomyocytes and in Unc93b1-deficient macrophages. Together, these findings suggest that after tissue injury the same TLR9-ligand interaction can independently induce either inflammation or a protective reduction in metabolism depending on cell-type–specific trafficking. Y. Shintani, A. Kapoor, M. Kaneko, R. T. Smolenski, F. D'Acquisto, S. R. Coppen, N. Harada-Shoji, H. J. Lee, C. Thiemermann, S. Takeshima, K. Yashiro, K. Suzuki, TLR9 mediates cellular protection by modulating energy metabolism in cardiomyocytes and neurons. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 5109–5114 (2013). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Direct detection strategies are proposed for dark matter particles with MeV to GeV mass. In this largely unexplored mass range, dark matter scattering with electrons can cause single-electron ionization signals, which are detectable with current technology. Ultraviolet photons, individual ions, and heat are interesting alternative signals. Focusing on ionization, we calculate the expected dark matter scattering rates and estimate the sensitivity of possible experiments. Backgrounds that may be relevant are discussed. Theoretically interesting models can be probed with existing technologies, and may even be within reach using ongoing direct detection experiments. Significant improvements in sensitivity should be possible with dedicated experiments, opening up a window to new regions in dark matter parameter space.


One key component of the energy demand in the built environment is the thermal energy required for domestic hot water preparation. Currently, fossil fuels are mostly used to meet the thermal energy demand in the built environment, lately, solar thermal systems have been increasingly implemented, mainly for domestic hot water preparation, enhancing the building's sustainability. A case study is presented in the paper for a solar thermal system with six flat plate ‒ and three evacuated tube solar thermal collectors installed on the rooftop of the Renewable Energy Systems and Recycling Research Centre, in the Colina Campus of the Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania. In 2017, this system provided 17,412 kWh of thermal energy to prepare domestic hot water for a Solar House and for the Sports Hall locker rooms. Evacuated tube solar thermal collectors showed better specific thermal output than flat plate ones.


Mobile home residents experience higher fatality rates from tornadoes than "fixed home" residents. Yet, research on how mobile home residents understand and respond to tornado warnings is lacking. Such research can help meteorologists and their partners better communicate tornado risk. We conducted four surveys with residents of the southeastern United States. This region has the highest concentration of tornado fatalities and killer tornadoes, in part because of the high density of mobile homes. Findings reveal that today's tornado warning system inadequately prepares mobile home residents to respond safely to tornadoes. The study offers recommendations for how to improve tornado communication for mobile and fixed home residents.


The recently published book, Policing Humanitarianism: EU Policies Against Human Smuggling and their Impact on Civil Society, examines the ways in which European Union policies aimed at countering the phenomenon of migrant smuggling affects civil society actors' activities in the provision of humanitarian assistance, access to rights for irregular immigrants and asylum seekers. It explores the effects of EU policies, laws and agencies' operations in anti-migrant smuggling actions and their implementation in the following EU Member States: Italy, Greece, Hungary and the UK. The book critically studies policies designed and implemented since 2015, during the so called 'European refugee humanitarian crisis'.


We examine the propagation of surface-plasmon polaritons on textured surfaces. Specifically, we look at how a grating surface produces a band gap in the propagation of this mode and how the band gap depends on the propagation direction of the mode. This naturally leads to a discussion of a surface profile suitable for blocking surface mode propagation in all directions. By using a diffractive-optics-based theoretical modeling approach we examine the requirements for such a surface. We then confirm these expectations experimentally by producing a surface exhibiting a band gap for surface-plasmon polariton modes in all directions in the energy range 1.91–2.00 eV.


The overarching goal of Unidata's Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services (THREDDS) is to provide students, educators and researchers with coherent access to a large collection of real-time and archived datasets from a variety of environmental data sources at a number of distributed server sites. The datasets will be conveniently accessible from a collection of THREDDS-enabled data analysis and display tools. THREDDS will provide real-time data delivery via reliable, event-driven "push" technology as well as transparent access to datasets using "pull" systems that make it possible to access data on remote servers as if they were on the user's own computer. The system will be built on a set of software components and data servers that are already in operation or under development. The heart of THREDDS is metadata contained in publishable inventories and catalogs (PICats). The creation, publication and distribution of PICats will be facilitated by the discovery system and services provided by DLESE. For example, sites receiving real-time environmental data can create PICats describing data products automatically as they arrive using decoders and crawlers. On the other hand, since PICats do not have to reside on the server with the data, researchers will be able to create PICats for online publications that point to datasets residing on several data servers. Similarly, educators will incorporate PICats of illustrative datasets into modules that also include tools for data analysis and visualization, and students will be able to use PICats to point to datasets related to their research projects, just as they now use URLs to point to relevant documents. This paper presents an overview of THREDDS and an update on the current status.


For determining functionality dependencies between two proteins, both represented as 3D structures, it is an essential condition that they have a matching structure. As 3D structures for proteins are large, complex and constantly evolving, it is very time-consuming to identify possible locations and sizes of such a matching structure for a given protein against a large protein database. In this paper, we introduce a novel representation model and apply a transformation and formalization to this problem. We then propose a database solution by using innovative high dimensional indexing mechanisms. Experimental results demonstrate a promising performance of the high dimensional indexing to this biologically critical but previously computationally prohibitive problem.


This paper investigates how wireless communication and vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) based technologies can be applied in relation to road construction work sites to improve safety and increase efficiency and sustainability. It discusses how to design the flow of data for a number of functions and how to operate the functions at the work site even at low VANET penetration rates. The applications described identify the potential in increased productivity at a road construction site and how increased visibility of site activities impact on traffic and improved road safety. It also highlights important implementation considerations and the need of availability and utilization of open standards for this purpose.


We report a focal-length tunable liquid lens based on thermopneumatically driven fluidic pressure. The fluidic pressure is generated by deformation of an elastomeric diaphragm induced by thermopneumaticity from a laterally integrated microheater sealed within an air chamber. The pressure is transmitted by a confined liquid to a lens diaphragm through an internal fluid channel. The liquid filling under the lens diaphragm functions as a liquid lens for dynamic focusing with properties depending on the curvature of the deformed diaphragm. The diaphragm area of the air chamber is designed five times larger than that of the lens cavity to yield high focal-length tunability by amplified deflection of the lens diaphragm. With our method, we achieved excellent focal-length tunability from infinity (without an input current) to 4 mm (with an input current of 12 mA) with a lens aperture diameter of 2 mm.


Among first-time expectant mothers, the risk of vaginal bleeding early in pregnancy is greater for those who have had a medication abortion than for those who have never had any type of abortion, according to a prospective cohort study of Chinese women.' The risk was especially elevated among women whose medication abortion resulted in curettage or complications (odds ratios, 1.6 and 2.0, respectively). The risk of vaginal bleeding early in pregnancy did not differ between women who had had a first-trimester medication abortion and those who had had a first-trimester surgical abortion. Vaginal bleeding is a sign of a high-risk pregnancy and has been associated with past surgical abortion. To explore whether a similar association exists for nonsurgical abortions, this study compared rates of vaginal bleeding among pregnant women who had had a medication abortion and those who had had a surgical or no abortion. From 1998 to 2001, investigators recruited women who were 4-16 weeks pregnant from 83 antenatal clinics in Beijing, Chengdu and Shanghai. Women were eligible for the study if they were aged 20-34, had riot given birth before and had previously undergone one first-trimester abortion (surgical or medication) or no abortion. Participants completed questionnaires at enrollment, at 28-30 weeks and at delivery, providing information on their reproductive and medical history, including the current pregnancy. Women's reports of vaginal bleeding were examined overall and for two periods of pregnancy: before enrollment (the first period) and during follow-up (the second period). Log binomial regression analysis was used to calculate the relative risk of vaginal bleeding while controlling for study center, age, income, residence, season at conception and history of chronic disease. A total of 14,399 women participated of whom 4,841 had had a medication abortion, 4,705 a surgical abortion and 4,853 no abortion. The mean age at recruitment was 26. Most of the women had at least a high school degree; lived in a city; and were industrial or service workers, or farmers. Levels of tobacco and alcohol use, as well as of chronic disease, were low. On average, women in the three groups enrolled in the study at 10-11 weeks' gestation and had their initial follow-up at 29 weeks. Up to the first follow-up, rates of vaginal bleeding among women with a history of medication abortion, surgical abortion and no abortion were 17%, 17% and 14%, respectively. After adjustments for potential confounders, the risk of vaginal bleeding was significantly higher for women who had had a medication abortion than for those who had had no abortion (relative risk, 1.2). When the relationship between medication abortion and vaginal bleeding was examined according to period of pregnancy, the increased risk was observed only in the first period (1. …


Learning "the wiki way", learning through wikis is a form of self-regulated learning that is independent of formal learning settings and takes place in a community of knowledge. Such a community may work jointly on a digital artifact to create new, innovative and emergent knowledge. We regard wikis as a prototype of tools for community-based learning, and point out five relevant features. We will present the co-evolution model, as introduced by Cress and Kimmerle [3][4], that may be understood as a framework to describe learning in the wiki way. This model describes collaborative knowledge building as a co-evolution between cognitive and social systems. To investigate learning the wiki way, we have to consider both individual processes and processes within the wiki, which represent the processes that are going on within a community.
 This paper presents three empirical studies that investigate learning the wiki way in a laboratory setting. We take a look at participants' contributions to a wiki indicating processes within the wiki community, and measure the extent of individual learning at the end of the experiment. Our conclusion is that the model of co-evolution has a strong impact on understanding learning the wiki way, may be helpful to designers of learning environments, and serve as framework for further research.


Background : Allergic rhinitis is the inflammation of the nasal mucosa. It will be resulting in nasal itching, sneezing, discharge, or blockage which occurs for more than an hour on most days. Allergens such as plant pollens, fungi, animal allergens, and dust mites are the factors which initiate allergic rhinitis. There are many risk factors for allergic rhinitis, such as family history of atopic disease, asthma, age, gender and others. Besides, overweight is also considered one of the risk factors for developing allergic rhinitis. Thus, this study was conducted to investigate the correlation between allergic rhinitis and body mass index. Methods : This study involved a cross-sectional analytic study. Seventy three respondents both male and female medical students of Universitas Padjadjaran completed a questionnaire, and had their height and weight measured by a trained researcher. This study was carried out from September to October 2015. Statistical analyses were performed included the Rank Spearman test. Results : There was no significant relationship between allergic rhinitis and body mass index. Conclusions : There is no correlation between severity of allergic rhinitis and body mass index. [AMJ.2017;4(1):20–4] D OI:  10.15850/amj.v4n1.1018


Network-based mobility management enables IP mobility for a host
without requiring its participation in any mobility-related signaling.
The network is responsible for managing IP mobility on behalf of the
host. The mobility entities in the network are responsible for
tracking the movements of the host and initiating the required
mobility signaling on its behalf. This specification describes a
network-based mobility management protocol and is referred to as Proxy
Mobile IPv6. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Self-assembled dielectric microlenses are used for focusing of the fluorescent signal emitted from a surface-based immunoassay, performed on silane micropatterns as assay substrates, to enhance the detection signal. In our model system, a fluorescent immunocomplex is formed on (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) microstructures, and then carboxyl-functionalized melamine microparticles with two different sizes are electrostatically self-assembled on the microstructures. Mouse IgG diluted in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) is used as model target antigen and easily detected down to a concentration of 2 ng/mL. We also present a detailed two-dimensional numerical study using the Finite Element Method (FEM).


The co-operative movement has played a notable role in the retail, wholesale, productive, political, educational and cultural life of Britain. As a movement it has consciously represented consumer interests and has carried out work in the arena of consumer protection. However, its study has suffered relative neglect when compared to research into the Labour Party, trade unions and the wider politics of retail and consumption. This book reassesses the impact of the co-operative movement on various communities in Britain during the period 1914-1960, providing a comprehensive account of the grass roots influence of co-operatives during both war and peace. This is a national study with a local dimension. It considers how national directives and perspectives were locally applied, if indeed they were applicable within the context of individual societies. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of the co-operative movement by examining various societies in England, Scotland and Wales. Particular attention is paid to the midlands, due to the movement's expansion here during the interwar period, with consideration also given to comparative developments in Europe. The author explores: the movement's relationship with other labour organizations; its cultural and social aspects (including the role sport played in co-operative societies); the politicization of the movement and local response to the formation of the Co-operative Party; the education of co-operators; what co-operative membership entailed and how co-operative ideology was expressed; the economic impact membership could have on families (including the provision of financial assistance and credit); and the co-operative movement's development alongside consumer activism. The book is a major national study of the growth of Co-operation during this crucial period of British social, economic and consumer history. Given the few modern scholarly works on Co-operation, it is a timely and much needed reassessment.


Background The currently accepted diagnostic criteria for inclusion body myositis (IBM) comprise pathological and clinical elements. However, the pathological features are not specific to IBM and in many clinically typical cases may be absent. A variety of proteins more commonly associated with neurodegenerative diseases have been found to accumulate in muscle fibres in IBM. The benefit of staining for these proteins in the diagnosis of IBM is unknown. We propose that these protein accumulations may assist in the diagnosis of IBM and help in differentiating it from other myopathies. Aims To identify the most sensitive histochemical technique available to UK diagnostic pathology laboratories for detecting such protein inclusions and to determine their sensitivity and specificity for the diagnosis of IBM. Methods We identified six cases of pathologically definite IBM according to the current criteria and six normal control cases. All cases had been assessed clinically and had undergone a biopsy at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. A number of neurodegenerative proteins and inflammatory markers were identified that may be of diagnostic significance. Antibodies to these proteins were optimised using control tissue known to contain the protein of interest. Initial results Protein inclusions found in IBM were labelled with an antibody to p62, an adaptor protein which binds ubiquitin and regulates signalling cascades through ubiquitination. These inclusions were not found in the normal controls. Further work to quantify the abnormalities in IBM and disease controls will be undertaken before any of these markers can be recommended for diagnostic use.


During the last decades, wage inequality in Germany has considerably increased both within and across regions. Building on concepts of the task-based approach, this paper studies whether and to what extent these developments are driven by technological change. We present novel evidence that technological change is positively related to intra-regional wage inequality. This is driven by increases in the compensation for non-routine cognitive tasks that are prevalent at upper percentiles of the wage distribution combined with decreases in the compensation for non-routine manual tasks, which are located at lower percentiles. Because there exists substantial variation in the degree of technology exposure across German regions, technological change can also explain part of the rise in inter-regional wage inequality.


Macroperipatus torquatus feeds nocturnally on crickets and a few other invertebrates on the floor of the Trinidadian rain forest. Prey are inspected by gentle application of the antennae and, if suitable, are captured by entangling them in proteinaceous glue squirted from the oral papillae. Entangled prey are bitten through an arthrodial membrane and immobilized by injected saliva, which may also partly digest the flesh. Ingestion of the flesh takes several hours, comprising some 90% of total handling time, and normally only one prey item is eaten per night. The deplected carcass is discarded. Fully charged glue reserves amount to about 11% of body mass and after exhaustion are replenished in about 24 days. The quantity of glue used in an attack increases up to about 80% of reserve capacity for larger prey. Glue adhering to the prey is ingested, but some attached to the substratum is always lost. Squirting glue may therefore be costly for two reasons. Firstly, depleted glue reserves render peripatus less capable of attacking further prey or of defending themselves; secondly, unrecovered glue together with the metabolic cost of glue secretion will detract from the energetic yield of the prey. Small prey will scarcely repay the cost of glue used whereas larger ones are more likely to escape; consequently the energetically optimal prey are relatively large, but somewhat smaller than those potentially available. Accordingly, adult peripatus preferred larger prey and grew better when fed on them in the laboratory, whereas juveniles grew better on smaller prey. The size distribution of prey in the forest was heavily biased towards smaller types and it seemed likely that the productivity of large peripatus would be limited by the availability of profitable prey.


— We first give a short historical introduction to the fundamentals of atom interferometry with internal excitation, based on density matrix diagrams and a Liouville space approach. Then, a new framework is proposed to compare and unify photon and atom optics, which rests on the quantization of proper time. A common wave equation written in five dimensions reduces both cases to 5D optics of massless particles. The ordinary methods of optics (eikonal equation, Kirchhoff integral, Lagrange invariant, Fermat principle, symplectic algebra and ABCD matrices. . . ) are used to solve this equation in practical cases. The various phase shift cancellations, which occur in atom interferometers, are then easily explained. A general phase-shift formula for interferometers is derived in five dimensions, which applies to clocks as well as to gravito-inertial sensors. This contribution is an update of a previous presentation of 5D matter-wave optics and interferometry. Electromagnetic interactions are explicitly added in the 5D metric tensor in complete analogy with Kaluza's work. The 5D Lagrangian is rederived and an expression for the Hamiltonian suitable for the parabolic approximation is presented. The corresponding equations of motion are also given. The 5D action is shown to cancel for the actual trajectory which is a null geodesics of the 5D metric. This presentation is mainly devoted to the classical aspects of the theory and only general consequences for the quantum phase of matter-waves are outlined. The application to Bordé-Ramsey interferometers is given as an illustration.


The search for effective strategies to prevent and mitigate accidental releases of aqua- culture fishes is on-going. To test a new recapture strategy and evaluate the individual dispersal behaviour of escaped farmed Atlantic salmon Salmo salar L. at the northern limit of its range, 39 adult salmon (mean ± SD fork length and weight: 85.5 ± 5.0 cm and 7.4 ± 1.4 kg, respectively) were implanted with depth-sensing acoustic tags and released in a north Norwegian fjord during the spring of 2007. The fish were released from 2 aquaculture sites in the Altafjord system and tracked using both mobile and fixed receivers. The coastal marine bag-net fishery, in combination with in- river angling, was tested as a potential recapture strategy. Immediately following the simulated escape event, the fish dove to near-bottom depths, subsequently returning to surface levels within the following days. The fish dispersed rapidly (9.5 ± 19.2 km d -1 ), traveling outward to coastal waters along the edges of the fjord. The bag-net fishers and anglers recaptured 79% of the escaped fish within 1 mo post-release, 90% of which were from bag nets. While most of the fish left the fjord, 7 tagged fish (18%) entered the Alta River estuary (3 of which later migrated up the Alta River), and 1 returned to the Altafjord the following year, presumably to spawn. The results showed that recapture efforts need to be immediate and widespread to mitigate farm-escape events. Coastal bag nets were effective at recapturing escaped farmed salmon, compared to previously tested methods, and would be especially useful in areas where gill-netting is not permitted.


Every administration since President Reagan has used compliance delays to postpone the implementation of midnight rules promulgated by the outgoing administration. Recent cases involving the Trump Administration's delay of Obama Administration rules have reinvigorated courts' interests in whether such delays require notice and an opportunity for comment under the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA"). Some scholars have written about why incoming administrations use compliance delays to prevent implementation of the previous administration's "midnight rules." These delays are often cast as a precursor to repeal, engendering fears that the now-postponed final rule will be reversed. Yet a more overarching discussion of compliance delays is largely absent from the literature.
This Article seeks to fill the literary void with two arguments. First, I argue that compliance delays serve a healthy role in the regulatory process. Part I provides a case study of the Food and Drug Administration's ("FDA") Menu-Labeling Rule. Using this case study and other examples, Part II builds a typology of five justifications used by agencies when implementing compliance delays. Part III recognizes that an agency's justification may not equate to its reason for delay and, therefore, briefly examines how external pressures may distort these justifications. In a brief interlude, I conclude that compliance delays are a valuable procedural tool that leads to additional transparency and responsive governance.
Second, I consider what procedures agencies should be required to use to delay compliance dates. Part IV presents two options — "delay rules" and "enforcement delays" — and the drawbacks of each. Delay rules officially amend compliance dates. However, recent case law suggests that delay rules must be implemented through notice-and-comment rulemaking. In contrast, an agency using an enforcement delay will allow the compliance date to elapse but choose not to enforce the rule for a certain period of time. Courts are critical of enforcement delays, which may lead agencies to implement the policy secretly, only allowing its existence to be leaked in ex parte communications. Part IV concludes by suggesting that agencies will choose enforcement delays over delay rules to avoid the resource costs of notice-and-comment rule-making.
The conclusion synthesizes these two arguments and suggests that the choice between delay rules and enforcement delays is one of procedure or transparency. If agencies select enforcement delays, the benefits of increased transparency and responsive governance disappear. I argue in favor of transparency, concluding that delay rules should be exempt — in one form or another — from APA rulemaking requirements.


This study designs a positive–intrinsic–negative (PIN)-diode-like gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) for a full-cell graphite|electrolyte|LiFePO4 lithium ion battery to facilitate interfacial ion transfer at both the anode and cathode. The diode-like GPE comprises an intrinsic poly(acrylonitrile-co-methylacrylate)-hosted electrolyte layer, as well as positive and negative layers that are synthesized by doping the intrinsic layer with TiO2 and SiO2 nanoparticles, which respectively exhibits positive and negative zeta potentials. The positive layer that adsorbs PF6− anions is in contact with the LiFePO4 cathode of the battery to facilitate the transfer of Li+ cations across the interface. The negative layer, which is in contact with the graphite anode, adsorbs Li+ cations to suppress accumulation and prevent the intercalation of solvated Li+ into the graphitic framework. The intrinsic layer acts as a neutralization zone to lower the current-rectification effect of the p–n junction. This PIN-configuration design for electrolytes enhances the ultimate capacity of the full-cell battery, exhibits high rate capacity retention, and increases the lifespan (87% capacity retained after 500 charge–discharge cycles).


Abstract. Radiosonde observations (RAOBs) have provided the only long-term global in situ temperature measurements in the troposphere and lower stratosphere since 1958. In this study, we use consistently reprocessed Global Positioning System (GPS) radio occultation (RO) temperature data derived from the COSMIC and Metop-A/GRAS missions from 2006 to 2014 to characterize the inter-seasonal and interannual variability of temperature biases in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere for different radiosonde sensor types. The results show that the temperature biases for different sensor types are mainly due to (i) uncorrected solar-zenith-angle-dependent errors and (ii) change of radiation correction. The mean radiosonde–RO global daytime temperature difference in the layer from 200 to 20 hPa for Vaisala RS92 is equal to 0.20 K. The corresponding difference is equal to −0.06 K for Sippican, 0.71 K for VIZ-B2, 0.66 K for Russian AVK-MRZ, and 0.18 K for Shanghai. The global daytime trend of differences for Vaisala RS92 and RO temperature at 50 hPa is equal to 0.07 K/5 yr. Although there still exist uncertainties for Vaisala RS92 temperature measurement over different geographical locations, the global trend of temperature differences between Vaisala RS92 and RO from June 2006 to April 2014 is within ±0.09 K/5 yr. Compared with Vaisala RS80, Vaisala RS90, and sondes from other manufacturers, the Vaisala RS92 seems to provide the most accurate RAOB temperature measurements, and these can potentially be used to construct long-term temperature climate data records (CDRs). Results from this study also demonstrate the feasibility of using RO data to correct RAOB temperature biases for different sensor types.


Summary Given a randomized treatment Z, a clinical outcome Y, and a biomarker S measured some fixed time after Z is administered, we may be interested in addressing the surrogate endpoint problem by evaluating whether S can be used to reliably predict the effect of Z on Y. Several recent proposals for the statistical evaluation of surrogate value have been based on the framework of principal stratification. In this article, we consider two principal stratification estimands: joint risks and marginal risks. Joint risks measure causal associations (CAs) of treatment effects on S and Y, providing insight into the surrogate value of the biomarker, but are not statistically identifiable from vaccine trial data. Although marginal risks do not measure CAs of treatment effects, they nevertheless provide guidance for future research, and we describe a data collection scheme and assumptions under which the marginal risks are statistically identifiable. We show how different sets of assumptions affect the identifiability of these estimands; in particular, we depart from previous work by considering the consequences of relaxing the assumption of no individual treatment effects on Y before S is measured. Based on algebraic relationships between joint and marginal risks, we propose a sensitivity analysis approach for assessment of surrogate value, and show that in many cases the surrogate value of a biomarker may be hard to establish, even when the sample size is large.


The term "blood relatives" exists as an accepted and understood part of our English lexicon. It is only recently that anthropologists focusing on kinship studies have leveled a critique against the uni- versal application of the metaphor of "blood" as a substance that establishes kinship relatedness. Adam Kuper, for example, argues that the notion of blood relatedness is culturally constrained, a uniquely European concept that finds its fullest articulation within British imperialism, an era that coincides with the development of the field of anthropology in Europe. 1 Likewise, Edouard Conte, who examines concepts of relatedness within Arab cultures, posits that the notion of kinship being determined by "blood" is a par- ticularly western phenomenon and does not fit the self- understanding of Arabs. 2 He argues that Classical Arab physicians deal little with blood and do not see blood as passing on hereditary attributes.


Environmental Technologies to Treat Nitrogen Pollution will provide a thorough understanding of the principles and applications of environmental technologies to treat nitrogen contamination. The main focus will be on water and wastewater treatment, with additional coverage of leachates and off-gasses.

The book will bring together an up-to-date compilation of the main physical, chemical and biological processes demanded for the removal of nitrogenous contaminants from water, wastewater, leachates and off-gasses. It will include a series of chapters providing a deep and broad knowledge of the principles and applications required for the treatment of nitrogen pollution. Each chapter will be prepared by recognized specialists across the range of different aspects involved in the removal of nitrogenous contaminants from industrial discharges.

Environmental Technologies to Treat Nitrogen Pollution will be the first book to provide a complete review of all the different processes used for the global management of nitrogen pollution. It will also contain updated information about strategies to achieve nitrogen recovery and reuse in different industrial sectors. Several case studies will document the application of different environmental technologies to manage nitrogen pollution.

This book will be of interest to lecturers and graduate students in the following subject areas: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Biotechnology, wastewater treatment plant design, water pollution control, contaminants recovery and reuse. The book will also be an attractive reference for environmental engineering consultants.

This title belongs to Integrated Environmental Technology Series .

ISBN: 9781843392224 (Print)

ISBN: 9781780401799 (eBook)


Software engineering researchers have long been interested in where and why bugs occur in code, and in predicting where they might turn up next. Historical bug-occurence data has been key to this research. Bug tracking systems, and code version histories, record when, how and by whom bugs were fixed; from these sources, datasets that relate file changes to bug fixes can be extracted. These historical datasets can be used to test hypotheses concerning processes of bug introduction, and also to build statistical bug prediction models. Unfortunately, processes and humans are imperfect, and only a fraction of bug fixes are actually labelled in source code version histories, and thus become available for study in the extracted datasets. The question naturally arises, are the bug fixes recorded in these historical datasets a fair representation of the full population of bug fixes? In this paper, we investigate historical data from several software projects, and find strong evidence of systematic bias. We then investigate the potential effects of "unfair, imbalanced" datasets on the performance of prediction techniques. We draw the lesson that bias is a critical problem that threatens both the effectiveness of processes that rely on biased datasets to build prediction models and the generalizability of hypotheses tested on biased data.


Measurements have been made of the temperature profile along the stainless steel neck of a 25
litre commercial dewar for the storage of liquid nitrogen. The temperature profile of the boundary
layer of the effluent gas was also measured. The major heat inleak into the liquid nitrogen bath is due
to the sold heat conduction down the neck wall and to the vapour recirculation process. These two
sources contributed about 80% of the total heat inleak. The solid heat conduction was due to the fact
that the neck was short and as such the refrigerative value of the cold effluent gas was not fully utilised.
The vapour recirculation process is due to the reverse mass flux of the warmer gas into the bath.


In this long-awaited book (already a major bestseller in Italy), Ginsborg has created a fascinating, sophisticated and definitive account of how Italy has coped, or failed to cope, with the past two decades. Contemporary Italy strongly mirrors Britain - the countries have roughly the same extent, population size and GNP - and yet they are fantastically different. Ginsborg sees this difference as most fundamentally clear in the role of the family and it is the family which is at the heart of Italian politics and business. Anyone wishing to understand contemporary Italy will find it essential to have this enormously attractive and intelligent book.


American legal culture, tracking the trend within the media culture as a whole, has become inherently more visual. Visual competency is now required for effective persuasion in the courtroom and in a variety of other advocacy settings. The central thesis of this Article is that visual advocacy is here to stay, but that there is a large knowledge gap that prevents advocates from being able to evaluate the professionalism of their own visual arguments and properly respond to the visual arguments submitted by their opposing counsel. Accordingly, this Article offers a detailed outline of the knowledge bases that attorneys need in order to become professional visual advocates. There are two visual advocacy related subjects that all law advocates should gain some understanding of: the brain science of human perception and visual rhetoric. Attorneys should gain a working knowledge of how the mind processes visual information because visual processing differs so markedly from the processing of traditional legal arguments, which are text-based and logo-centric. For instance, with visual information, there is great potential for the mind to rapidly jump to conclusions and be unconsciously influenced by emotion and bias. Recent research on implicit bias and perception only compounds the potential for prejudice within visual arguments. The other discipline that informs visual advocacy is visual rhetoric, a newly emerging area of study that focuses on how images persuade. The Article looks at some common visual rhetoric devices and how they are used in the courtroom, drawing upon well-known cases, such as the Rodney King Assault trial and the Michael Skakel murder trial as well as lesser known cases involving visual advocacy that are just now being reported. After examining the brain science of human perception and visual rhetoric, the Article analyzes the professional issues that arise within visual advocacy. Recent cases have raised some troubling issues with respect to the potential for prejudice within visual arguments. But one reason we are seeing these issues is that attorneys on the other side of visual arguments are not well prepared to counter them. In other words, when one side effectively uses visual advocacy and the other does not, we see unbalanced results. For visual advocacy to flourish, we need a truly adversarial system. However, to develop a professional adversarial system for visual advocacy, the knowledge base for this subject area must expand. Part I of this Article explains the increasing role that visuality is playing in American legal culture. Part II details certain aspects of the brain science that relates to human visual processing. Part III introduces a few basic principles of visual rhetoric, focusing on common visual rhetorical devices and visual logical fallacies. Part II's explanation of how humans process visual images and Part III's introduction to visual rhetoric provides the foundation for Part IV of the Article, which summarizes the positive and negative attributes of visual arguments and identifies strategies to encourage a consistent level of balance and professionalism in visual arguments.


The decolonization of nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the late 20th century made possible the arrival of postcolonial academics who engaged in a critical and thoroughgoing analysis of the ways in which colonial histories have affected and continue to influence not only our understanding of phenomena, such as culture, but have influenced the very frames and processes of the creation and dissemination of knowledge about phenomena such as culture. While this work was initiated by postcolonial scholars of literature, postcolonial theory and frameworks have been adopted by several allied fields, including the communication field. Since the 1990s, communication scholars have been using postcolonial frameworks to deconstruct the colonial and neocolonial representations and tropes present in news and popular culture discourses. They have also brought communication theory to bear upon key concepts within postcolonial study, such as hybridity and diaspora. In the mid-1990s communication scholars joined the larger debate on the continued relevance of the postcolonial framework, and as with postcolonial scholars in other fields, they have continued to insist that the interruptive and political impetus of postcolonial theory provides an important entry point for the study of a world still shot through with colonial and neocolonial power relations. Although there is still a lot of scope to make the postcolonial approach more central to the communication field and its subfields, communication scholars have continued to use postcolonial theory to shed important insight on several vital communication issues. Feminist scholars of communication have been at the forefront of the effort to increase awareness and use of postcolonial frameworks for the study of communication.


In his article "Peking Opera and Grotowski's Concept of 'Poor Theatre'" Yao-kun Liu presents a comparative study of Peking opera and Western theatre with special attention to Grotowski's concept. Explaining Peking opera's dramatic elements (such as gesture and bodymovement) and theatrical devices (such as stage-setting, costume, and conventions) Liu elaborates on the universality and distinctions between Eastern and Western aesthetics of drama. As an attempt to reveal the speciality and uniqueness of Peking opera, Liu employs Jerzy Grotowski's notion of "poor theatre" in a context of Constantin Stanislavski's concept of empathy, Antonin Artaud's dramatic prophecy, and Peter Brook's notion of "deadly theatre." Liu comes to the conclusion that opposite to the spiritual and individual approaches of poor theatre, Peking opera in its long history and contemporary practice satisfies a social need for contact with culture and thus Peking opera is both educational and functional. Besides the purpose of entertainment, it is an instrument to transmit the attitudes, concepts, and knowledge of Chinese society and to instruct the audience about values and morals derived from Chinese ethics and philosophy. Yao-kun Liu, "Peking Opera and Grotowski's Concept of 'Poor Theatre'" page 2 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 12.1 (2010):


VTDIRECT95 is a Fortran 95 implementation of D. R. Jones' deterministic global optimization algorithm called DIRECT, which is widely used in multidisciplinary engineering design, biological science, and physical science applications. The package includes both a serial code and a datadistributed massively parallel code for different problem scales and optimization (exploration vs. exploitation) goals. Dynamic data structures are used to organize local data, handle unpredictable memory requirements, reduce the memory usage, and share the data across multiple processors. The parallel code employs a multilevel functional and data parallelism to boost concurrency and mitigate the data dependency, thus improving the load balancing and scalability. In addition, checkpointing features are integrated into both versions to provide fault tolerance and hot restarts. Important algorithm modifications and design considerations are discussed regarding data structures, parallel schemes, error handling, and portability. Using several benchmark functions and real-world applications, the software is evaluated on different systems in terms of optimization effectiveness, data structure efficiency, parallel performance, and checkpointing overhead. The package organization and usage are also described in detail.


Qatargas and Total Research Center Qatar (TRC-Q) established a collaboration to study Predictive Emissions Monitoring (PEMS) algorithms for pilot application on a Qatargas gas turbine to predict NOx emissions. This pilot study was intended to demonstrate to local authorities that PEMS could be a reliable technique in both an alternative and complimentary capacity to Continuous Emissions Monitoring Systems (CEMS). PEMS is an emerging algorithmic solution utilizing process and turbine operational data to estimate emissions from combustion units. Consequently, PEMS do not require routine maintenance and calibration, thus reduced costs, higher availability than CEMS. The approach adopted for the study was a blind-benchmarking comparison of three main PEMS algorithms (first principle, statistical and neural networks). The study was comprised of two phases. Phase 1 was PEMS model development and validation using turbine operational data and corresponding NOx data. Phase 2 involved PEMS model testing, where a different set of only operational data were used to predict NOx emissions. Predicted results of models were then assessed by comparing with corresponding NOx data from CEMS. The study continues, and this paper provides an overview of preliminary study results, challenges encountered and key lessons learned with regard to PEMS development. The initial study results indicated that there is no one specific PEMS algorithm that can be regarded as 'best-suited' to gas turbines that is able to cover a wide range of turbine operational conditions. Preliminary study results for the pilot turbine suggest that PEMS are best suited to predict NOx emissions within the operational range they have been trained for. Hence it is critical to have high quality and reliable turbine operational and monitored NOx data which covers the required range of likely operating conditions. Based on these initial results, the first principle and feed-forward neural network algorithms were found to perform better than the statistical algorithm. The full study results, incorporating improvements based on the above lessons learned, will be discussed in a future paper.


Introduction and Objectives Monitoring longitudinal sputum microbiology in adults with non-CF bronchiectasis (nCF-Br) is a key strategy in guiding targeted antibiotic therapy. There is minimal published data on the microbiological profile over time in bronchiectasis.1 2 Similar to CF, greater pathogen diversity is now being observed; hence we have revisited this area. Methods 12 years of previous sputum culture results obtained from 143 nCF-Br patients attending a specialist clinic were retrospectively reviewed. 'Colonisation' (organism cultured ≥2 occasions, 3 months apart within 1-year period) and 'isolation' (organism cultured ≥1) were recorded. Results 88F, 55M patients; average age 60.6 (range 16–90); average FEV1 65% predicted (SD ± 26%). The most common pathogens were Haemophilus influenzae (52% isolated and 33% colonisation; 8% were beta-lactam producing) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (43% isolated and 35% colonisation) whilst 20% patients had no pathogens cultured. 81 patients (57%) have never had Pseudomonas. Of 62 patients (43%) isolating Pseudomonas, 12 patients (8%) had single isolates, 8 (6%) had colonisation with successful eradication therapy. Streptococcus pneumoniae (34%), Coliforms (30%), Moraxella catarrhalis (27%), Staphylococcus aureus (24%) were other common isolates. Rarer pathogens include Aspergillus sp. (9%), S.maltophilia (8%), non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM 3%; M. terrae, M. avium and M. simiae), MRSA(3%), Acinetobacter sp. (3%) and Achromobacter xylosoxidans (3%). Conclusions We note similar rates of H. influenzae colonisation as previously (33% vs 40%1) but higher rates of Pseudomonas colonisation (35% vs 18%1 and 24%2). Including those with any prior Pseudomonas, the rates of Pseudomonas isolation reach as high as 43% (higher than reported at 31%2). Our unit receives referrals from the local immunodeficiency centre and other respiratory units but this is not felt to account for the high Pseudomonas rates. Ongoing surveillance of individual and geographically local microbiological profiles is important in managing patients with nCF-Br.Abstract P240 Table 1 Longitudinal study of sputum microbiology in adult non-CF bronchiectasis Isolated* Colonising† Organism n (%) n (%) Haemophilus influenzae 75 (52) 47 (33) Pseudomonas aeruginosa 62 (43) 50 (35) Streptococcus pneumoniae 42 (30) 13 (9) Coliforms (including Klebsiella sp, Serratia sp, Proteus sp, E. Coli and Enterobacter cloacae) 42 (30) 13 (9) Moraxella catarrhalis 39 (27) 9 (6) Staphylococcus aureus 34 (24) 12 (8) Aspergillus sp. 13 (9) 3 (2) Stenotrophomonas maltophilia 12 (8) 2 (1) MRSA 5 (3) 3 (2) Acinetobacter sp. 5 (3) 3 (2) Achromobacter xylosoxidans 4 (3) 2 (1) Non-tuberculous mycobacteria 4 (3) 1 (0.7) Comamonas testosteroni 2 (1) 1 (0.7) Others 9 (6) 1 (0.7) No organism isolated 28 (20) * Organism isolated from a patient one or more times within a 1-year period.† Organism cultured on at least two occasions, 3 months apart within a 1-year period.


Flow over topography has been shown to generate finite amplitude internal waves upstream, over the topography and downstream. Such waves can interact with the viscous bottom boundary layer to produce vigorous instabilities. However, the strength and size of such instabilities depends on whether viscosity significantly modifies the wave generation process, which is usually treated using inviscid theory in the literature. In this work, we contrast cases in which boundary layer separation profoundly alters the wave generation process and cases for which the generated internal waves largely match inviscid theory. All results are generated using a numerical model that simulates stratified flow over topography. Several issues with using a wave-based Reynolds number to describe boundary layer properties are discussed by comparing simulations with modifications to the domain depth, background velocity, and viscosity. For hill-like topography, three-dimensional aspects of the instabilities are also discussed. Decreasing the Reynolds number by a factor of four (by increasing the viscosity), while leaving the primary two-dimensional instabilities largely unchanged, drastically affects their three-dimensionalization. Several cases at the laboratory scale with a depth of 1 m are examined in both two and three dimensions and a subset of the cases is scaled up to a field scale 10-m deep fluid while maintaining similar values for the background current and viscosity. At this scale, increasing the viscosity by an order of magnitude does not significantly change the wave properties but does alter the wave's interaction with the bottom boundary layer through the bottom shear stress. Finally, two subcritical cases for which disturbances are able to propagate upstream showcase a set of instabilities forming on the upstream slope of the elevated topography. The time scale over which these instabilities develop is related to but distinct from the advective time scale of the waves. At a non-dimensional time when instabilities have formed in the field scale case, no instabilities have yet formed in the lab scale case.


Abstract The 2019 Aguas Zarcas CM2 meteorite is the most significant carbonaceous chondrite CM2 fall since Murchison in 1969. Samples collected immediately following the fall and studied here provide the rare opportunity to analyze the bulk mineralogy of a CM2 largely free of terrestrial contamination. Bulk samples were analyzed by powder X‑ray diffraction (XRD), thermal gravimetric (TG) analysis, evolved gas analysis (EGA), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with an electron-probe micro-analyzer (EPMA). Water-extracted salts were analyzed by XRD. In hand specimen, the stones are brecciated and dominated by chondrule-rich and chondrule-poor lithologies, and locally, a matrix-rich lithology. Powder XRD patterns from multiple stones are dominated by reflections from serpentine group minerals, on which are superimposed reflections for ferrotochilinite, 1:1 regularly interstratified ferrotochilinite/cronstedtite, anhydrous silicates, calcite, pentlandite, pyrrhotite, and minor phases. Reflections for magnetite are present only from a metal-rich breccia clast. The serpentine XRD reflections from the chondrule-rich and chondrule-poor lithologies match those from 1T cronstedtite, whereas those from the matrix-rich lithology match the 1M polytype. Patterns with the 1M polytype also show a distinct low-angle scattering to the serpentine basal reflection centered near 8.6 Å, the origin of which is obscure. Further matching of the known serpentines to the Aguas Zarcas data shows that cronstedtite accounts for a subordinate amount of the clays, and at least three other chemically and structurally distinct serpentines are likely present. A typical fragment of Aguas Zarcas yielded 0.6 wt% water-extractable salts. The powder XRD pattern of the dried water extract shows reflections for halite = NaCl; chlorartinite = Mg2(CO3)(OH)Cl·2H2O; thenardite = Na2SO4; and sodium chlorate = NaClO4. The TG mass losses of 11.4 to 14.7 wt% are consistent with other CM2 chondrites. The gases detected by EGA are dominated by H2O and CO2, largely derived from the dehydroxylation and decomposition of serpentine and calcite, respectively. Also detected are gases with masses matching SO2/S2 and H2S, which are primarily released below 480 °C, and a mass of 30, which matches the molecular weight of formaldehyde and ethane, shows a maximum at 376 °C. These organic gases likely derive from the pyrolysis of indigenous organic matter. Taken together, the millimeter-scale mineralogical study of Aguas Zarcas reveals a complex breccia dominated by CM2-like clasts. The detailed study of this meteorite, together with similar studies from a range of carbonaceous chondrites, provides the foundations for studying and interpreting the samples returned from the NASA OSIRIS-REx and JAXA Hayabusa2 missions.


Summary: Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) is quickly becoming a powerful tool for high-throughput transcriptomic analysis of cell states and dynamics. Both the number and quality of scRNA-Seq datasets have dramatically increased recently. So far, there is no database that comprehensively collects and curates scRNA-Seq data in humans. Here, we present scRNASeqDB, a database that includes almost all the currently available human single cell transcriptome datasets (n= 36) covering 71 human cell lines or types and 8910 samples. Our online web interface allows user to query and visualize expression profiles of the gene(s) of interest, search for genes that are expressed in different cell types or groups, or retrieve differentially expressed genes between cell types or groups. The scRNASeqDB is a valuable resource for single cell transcriptional studies. Availability: The database is available at https://bioinfo.uth.edu/scrnaseqdb/. Contact: email@example.com


This work details CipherGAN, an architecture inspired by CycleGAN used for inferring the underlying cipher mapping given banks of unpaired ciphertext and plaintext. We demonstrate that CipherGAN is capable of cracking language data enciphered using shift and Vigenere ciphers to a high degree of fidelity and for vocabularies much larger than previously achieved. We present how CycleGAN can be made compatible with discrete data and train in a stable way. We then prove that the technique used in CipherGAN avoids the common problem of uninformative discrimination associated with GANs applied to discrete data.


Glaucoma causes damage to the retinal ganglion cells and their axons, and this damage can be detected with both structural and functional tests. The purpose of this study was to better understand the relationship between a structural measure of retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and the most common functional test, behavioral sensitivity with static automated perimetry (SAP). First, a linear model, previously shown to describe the relationship between local visual evoked potentials and SAP sensitivity, was modified to predict the change in RNFL as measured by optical coherence tomography. Second, previous work by others was shown to be consistent with this model.


The distributions of "time of flight" (time spent by a single fluid particle between two crossings of the Poincare section) are investigated for five different three dimensional stationary chaotic mixers. Above all, we study the large tails of those distributions and show that mainly two types of behaviors are encountered. In the case of slipping walls, as expected, we obtain an exponential decay, which, however, does not scale with the Lyapunov exponent. Using a simple model, we suggest that this decay is related to the negative eigenvalues of the fixed points of the flow. When no-slip walls are considered, as predicted by the model, the behavior is radically different, with a very large tail following a power law with an exponent close to −3.


We consider the problem of entity tagging: given one or more named entities from a specific domain, the goal is to automatically associate descriptive phrases, referred to as etags (entity tags), to each entity. Consider a product catalog containing product names and possibly short descriptions. For a product in the catalog, say Ricoh G600 Digital Camera, we want to associate etags such as "water resistant", "rugged" and "outdoor" to it, even though its name or description does not mention those phrases. Entity tagging can enable more effective search over entities. We propose to leverage signals in web documents to perform such tagging. We develop techniques to perform such tagging in a domain independent manner while ensuring high precision and high recall.


The conidia and resting hyphae of the northern anthracnose pathogen of Trifolium species, Kabatiella caulivora, were effectively carried by, and maintained long-term viability on, a range of materials, including metals, fabrics, woods and plastics. Conidia and hyphae became thick-walled and melanized with time. There were significant (P < 0.001) differences in conidia/resting hyphae survival between carrier materials and between temperature regimes. At 23 °C/8 °C day/night, conidia and resting hyphae remained viable on steel, corrugated iron, galvanized steel, all tested fabrics, wood and random mixed materials for up to 8 months. At 36 °C/14 °C day/night, conidia and resting hyphae remained viable for up to 8 months, but only on cotton, denim, fleece, silk, leather, paper, plastic and all wood materials. At 45 °C/15 °C day/night, conidia and resting hyphae remained viable up to 8 months only on fleece wool, Eucalyptus marginata (jarrah wood) and paper. There were significant differences between carrier materials in their abilities to retain conidia and resting hyphae after washing (P < 0.001). Metabolic activity was confirmed for conidia and resting hyphae recovered after 8 months and K. caulivora colonies successfully re-established on potato dextrose agar. Findings confirmed the critical importance of materials as long-term carriers of viable K. caulivora conidia and resting hyphae, highlighting the potential for spread of a highly virulent K. caulivora race within and outside Australia via farming equipment, clothing and other associated materials. Results also have wider biosecurity implications for the transportation of fungal-infested carrier materials previously considered as low risk.


Chest physiotherapy involves the use of a package of techniques directed at a variety of problems including those experienced by patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). Positioning forms an integral part of chest physiotherapy; yet the role of positioning has rarely been investigated. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of prone positioning with the effects of a physiotherapy package within an alternating single case design in a patient with CF.Measurements of oxygen saturation (SaO2,) and sputum production were recorded over a 5 day period during both physiotherapy and prone positioning sessions. Both physiotherapy and prone positioning improved SaO2 values. Readings of SaO2 within each session during prone positioning showed more improvement than those recorded during physiotherapy; however, mean SaO2, and sputum production were significantly greater during physiotherapy. The implications for clinical practice are discussed.


There are many mechanisms for concurrency control in high-level programming languages. In Java, the original mechanism for concurrency control, based on synchronized blocks, is lexically scoped. For more flexible control, Java 5 introduced non-lexical operators, supporting lock primitives on re-entrant locks. These operators may lead to run-time errors and unwanted behavior; e.g., taking a lock without releasing it, which could lead to a deadlock, or trying to release a lock without owning it. This paper develops a static type and effect system to prevent the mentioned lock errors for non-lexical locks. The effect type system is formalized for an object-oriented calculus which supports non-lexical lock handling. Based on an operational semantics, we prove soundness of the effect type analysis. Challenges in the design of the effect type system are dynamic creation of threads, objects, and especially of locks, aliasing of lock references, passing of lock references between threads, and reentrant locks as found in Java.


The research investigates into the relationship between the company's innovation inputs and its performance. The research was carried out on the sample of 2503 Slovenian companies from manufacturing and selected service sectors. The results indicate a correlation between the revenues arising from innovations and the company's performance in terms of the financial ratios, in particularly ROE and growth of revenues from sales. Furthermore, it is shown that the distribution of innovation expenditures is related to the company's innovation performance. The financial inputs related to external sourcing of ideas and knowledge (open innovation) have a positive correlation with the innovation performance.


Five case reports of perianal cellulitis caused by group A beta-hemolytic streptococci are presented. These reports illustrate delays in diagnosis and therapy of this condition that may present as chronic diaper dermatitis, perirectal fissures, painful defecation, fecal hoarding behavior, or proctocolitis. One patient had associated guttate psoriasis. In children especially, guttate psoriasis should alert physicians to culture perirectal as well as pharyngeal sites for group A streptococci.


The advent of statutory copyright in eighteenth-century England raised questions about ensuring access to the materials that writers need to produce new books. The public domain did not spring into being as the obverse of the rights afforded by the Act of Anne (1710), nor was it created by nineteenth-century doctrines such as fair use; rather, it developed out of practices and assumptions predating the Act of Anne, and others that emerged in the statute's wake. To explore these ideas, the essay considers booksellers' and authors' conceptions of copyright as property, the metaphors proposed by advocates of anti-piracy measures, arguments about copyright's duration and its basis in the common law, and analogies between copyright and patent law during this period. Finally, the essay discusses the booksellers' strategic litigation in the equity courts, where pleading could rely on imaginative premises that, in some respects, rival those of contemporaneous novelists.


Model investigations have been executed in using irregular waves acting on smooth sloping structures inclined 1:3. Analyzing composite spectra in front of the structure the following results are found: (1) A set of partial standing waves is present in front of the structure at the same time. (2) Each partial Clapotis is composed of a number of bound frequency components disposing of an anomalous dispersion property. (3) Reflection coefficients increase with the frequency decreasing. (4) Component Clapotis waves are shifted in the upslope direction with frequency increasing. (5) Relative shift of superimposed component Clapotis is in accordance with increasing asymmetry of breaking waves.


Industry studies and public policy (IS&PP) is a research domain that seeks to further our understanding of industrial practices and managerial challenges by explicitly considering contextual details in the design and interpretation of studies. These details can also be vital considerations when shaping public policies. This article reviews a sample of IS&PP publications and analyzes the content of 180 selected papers - 85 papers published in the Production and Operations Management (POM) journal and 95 research papers published in related journals between 1992 and 2014. Analysis of the sampled data set and examination of exemplar papers provide four findings. First, studies in different industries emphasize different themes of operational decisions. This difference in emphasis reveals potential research opportunities, especially for conducting inter-industry studies. Second, our analysis reveals a shift in focus. Earlier studies contain a mix of benchmarks and inter-industry comparisons, while the later studies tend to focus on context specific, single-industry studies. This trend highlights the potential for developing new measures and multi-method approaches. Third, we report on empirics-analytics-empirics cycles that reveal gaps for building novel theories. Finally, we observe that the relationship between POM decisions and public policy is bi-directional. This highlights the need to jointly examine operational decisions with policy considerations, especially in information goods, healthcare, sustainable operations and high-tech manufacturing industries.


Quetiapine is an atypical antipsychotic drug with a high permeability, moderate solubility and defined as a Biopharmaceutics Classification System class ll compound. The pharmacokinetics (PK) of the quetiapine immediate‐release (IR) formulation has been studied in both adults and children, but the quetiapine extended‐release (XR) formulation has only been conducted in adults. The purpose of the current study was to use physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling (PBPK) quantitatively to predict the PK of the XR formulation in children and adolescents. Using a 'learn and confirm' approach, PBPK models were developed employing in vitro ADME and physicochemical data, clinical PK data of quetiapine IR/XR in adults and clinical PK data of quetiapine IR in children. These models can predict well the effects of CYP3A4 inhibition and induction on the PK of quetiapine, the PK profile of quetiapine IR in children and adults, and the PK profile of quetiapine XR in adults. The AUC and Cmax ratios (children vs adults) for the different age groups were in reasonable agreement with the observed ratios. In addition, the PBPK model predicted that children and adolescents are likely to achieve a similar exposure following administration of either the XR formulation once daily or the IR formulation twice daily at similar total daily doses. The results from the study can help inform dosing regimens in pediatrics using the quetiapine XR formulation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


We present a novel framework for the automatic generation of tourist brochures that include routing instructions and additional information presented in the form of so‐called detail lenses. The first contribution of this paper is the automatic creation of layouts for the brochures. Our approach is based on the minimization of an energy function that combines multiple goals: positioning of the lenses as close as possible to the corresponding region shown in an overview map, keeping the number of lenses low, and an efficient numbering of the lenses. The second contribution is a route‐aware simplification of the graph of streets used for traveling between the points of interest (POIs). This is done by reducing the graph consisting of all shortest paths through the minimization of an energy function. The output is a subset of street segments that enable traveling between all the POIs without considerable detours, while at the same time guaranteeing a clutter‐free visualization.


Several provisions of the TCJA of 2017 affect Code Sec. 1031. The final regulations under Code Sec. 199A and the proposed bonus deprecation regulations provide guidance regarding the interaction of those provisions and Code Sec. 1031. This article explores those interactions, explaining how the final regulations under Code Sec. 199A use a step-in-the-shoes approach for both the unadjusted basis in the replacement property and its depreciable period. The proposed bonus depreciation regulations apply to Code Sec. 1031, but the application will be limited. As the article explains, Code Sec. 1031 only applies to real property, and the bonus depreciation generally only applies to MACRS property with a recovery period of 20 years or less that is original-use property or that satisfies the used property acquisition requirement. Some exchange property will fall within that intersection of the two provisions, but most will not. The article discusses the limited application the bonus depreciation to Code Sec. 1031 replacement property for those instances to which it applies. Finally, the article considers whether the tax benefits under the new qualified opportunity fund (QOF) regime provide planning opportunities for partnerships that would otherwise consider doing a drop-swap cash-out. For instance, a typical drop-swap cash-out under Code Sec. 1031 might include a partnership distributing an undivided interest in its property to one partner who will sell that interest for cash while the other partners remain in the partnership and cause it to exchange the remaining interests in the property as part of a Code Sec. 1031 exchange. The QOF regime now allows partners to consider reinvesting gain proceeds in a QOF instead of doing a Code Sec. 1031 exchange while also cashing out other members. The article presents ways in which partners may such structure such drop-swap cash-outs with QOFs, which by definition hold property in qualified opportunity zones.


Communicating Uncertainty: Media Coverage of New and Controversial Science. Sharon Friedman, Sharon Dunwoody, and Carol Rogers, eds. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999. 277 pp. $79.95 hbk., $32.50 pbk. For every Ph.D., the ironic adage goes, there is an equal and opposite Ph.D. Nowadays the public, journalists, and policymakers regularly confront scientific studies that contradict previous studies and experts who disagree over how to interpret scientific data. This book addresses the fuzzy, perplexing nature of communicating and understanding contemporary science. Chapters address such contested issues as AIDS, biotechnology, global warming, dioxin, cold fusion, and the possibility of life on Mars. However, the book is not organized around issues. Rather, the issues serve as examples of how scientists, reporters, and the public interact in the science communication process. The editors have organized the book into three parts: Interpreting Uncertainty, Science in the Public Arena, and Beyond the Basics. Each of these themes is the subject of both contributed chapters and a panel discussion. Contributed chapters are chiefly written by communication scholars. Panel discussants are mostly science journalists or scientists. Discussants vary on each panel; they include the director of the National Science Foundation, two Pulitzer winners, a Nobel laureate, and a MacArthur Foundation grant winner. This mix of academics, journalists, and scientists adds breadth to the book. Hence Communicating Uncertainty could serve as supplementary reading for advanced courses in science journalism, public journalism, or public policymaking. Communication scholars will find it useful as well; chapter contributors usually offer in-depth reviews of the academic literature on their topic. These topics include how journalists and scientists represent uncertainty, how the public responds to uncertainty, the meaning of uncertainty, understanding audiences, and using systematic thinking to evaluate science. As with most multi-contributor volumes, the reader will find some ideas repeated from chapter to chapter. Several contributors and panel discussants use the global warming controversy to illustrate the dysfunction of the media's equal-coverage doctrine. They note that such coverage gives equivalent weight to the position of a small minority of dissenting scientists who deny that harmful climate change is happening. Other chapter contributors show that media coverage can also give readers the mistaken impression that scientific consensus is solid when it is not. …


For implants utilising traditional metal-on-polymer articulations, wear of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) remains an import design concern due to potential problems of osteolysis and mechanical failure. Early first-generation wear concepts [1] have been widely supplanted by a range of second-generation models specific to UHMWPE, reflecting the 'cross-shear' dependency associated with multi-directional sliding [2]. However, these models have limited predictive power [3]; they are acausal and scale-independent. We propose a more robust third-generation framework for implementing wear algorithms. This model is flexible, to incorporate different concepts from existing wear theories, and could be applied to various wear-prediction scenarios from pin-on-disc (POD) testing to different implant devices such as hips, knees, shoulders, etc. In this model, wear is considered to be a function of the time-history of previous sliding events, and as such the sum-effect of previous time-steps must be progressively integrated. We achieve this by modelling a polar-vector array (PVA) to represent surface 'strain hardening'; each new sliding motion encountered is firstly evaluated to determine an instantaneous wear-rate contribution, and secondly evaluated to determine the corresponding 'modifier' strength term to re-shape the PVA. This gives a robust, causal and scale-sensitive basis for wear-prediction. Further, recognising that there is still much debate about the key influences affecting wear (e.g. the relationship between contact pressure and wear [4, 5]) we present this framework in a 'generic' form. It is possible to customise this generic third-generation framework around any of the different proposed second-generation theories, giving flexibility for ongoing investigations into the causes of UHMWPE wear. This allows our third-generation wear approach to build on, rather than discard, the learning from second-generation theories. We demonstrate this algorithm using POD test results from the literature [6, 7]. We compared predicted wear rates for conventional and cross-linked PE, and discovered that although the POD-derived constants give appropriate order-of-magnitude estimates for wear (~4.7mm³/MCycle predicted vs ~4.1mm³/MCycle experimental), they appear to exaggerate the differences observed in-vitro (with conventional PE wear ~2.5x higher) – suggesting additional factors are complicit under TKR loading conditions. Further work is needed to robustly verify these new theories – in particular extensive further testing against in-vitro test results from experimental wear simulators, similar to [3]. It is postulated that there are still phenomena outstanding which must be incorporated within this generic framework to further increase predictive power. However we hope that by providing this improved approach, other researchers in different areas can apply this framework to their existing models, so advancing the science of pre-clinical wear prediction.


In September 2011, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promulgated the first-ever federal regulations mandating fuel economy improvements for heavy-duty commercial vehicles. While the performance-based approach to these rules offers familiarity and assurances of fuel economy improvements, it also has some well-known weaknesses. In this paper, we describe fuel economy technologies for the trucking sector, its economic structure, the details of the new fuel economy regulations, and the controversies they sparked. We then address issues raised in reviewing the accompanying regulatory impact analysis. Next, we highlight some flaws of this form of regulation and suggests a variety of alternative, more market-oriented approaches that might work better.


Upscaling of soil water flow processes and soil hydraulic properties is one of the most important issues in vadose zone research. The difficulties in such upscaling come from the heterogeneity and nonlinearity of the soil properties. Sharing some common element with the multiscale methods, an upscaling method was previously proposed for a class of nonlinear parabolic equations including the Richards equation, which is often used for modeling flow processes in soils. To verify its applicability in more realistic and varied flow scenarios, in this study we applied the method to one‐ and two‐dimensional simulations of unsaturated water flow through heterogeneous soil profiles under different boundary conditions including infiltration, evaporation, and drainage. The Gardner–Basha model and the Mualem–van Genuchten model were used as the constitutive relations to close the Richards equation. Results show that the upscaling method can effectively capture the large‐scale structure of fine‐scale behavior in these realistic and varied scenarios. Note that in this study we pre‐calculated the effective hydraulic functions by solving the local problems outside the coarse‐scale simulation to avoid the expensive computation of upscaling these functions, which need to be updated at each time step on each coarse block. In our examples, we observed that, compared with the upscaling method that calculates the effective hydraulic functions by solving the fine‐scale problems during the coarse‐scale simulation, the upscaling method with pre‐calculation saved more than 83 and 90% of the central processing unit time in the one‐ and two‐dimensional simulations, respectively, without compromising accuracy.


Significance In this study we report the discovery of a previously unrecognized chemical class, dihydroxymagnesium carboxylates, [(HO)2MgO2CR]−, gained from nonterrestrial meteoritic analyses. The existence of such low-coordination organomagnesium anionic compounds expands our knowledge and understanding of extreme environments from which the early solar system emerged and has evolved. The appearance this CHOMg chemical class extends the previously investigated vast diversity of CHNOS groups in meteoritic soluble organics. Experimental evidence is given for the connection between the evolution of organic compounds and minerals. These thermostable compounds might have contributed to the stabilization of organic molecules on a geological time scale, which emphasizes their potential astrobiological relevance. The rich diversity and complexity of organic matter found in meteorites is rapidly expanding our knowledge and understanding of extreme environments from which the early solar system emerged and evolved. Here, we report the discovery of a hitherto unknown chemical class, dihydroxymagnesium carboxylates [(OH)2MgO2CR]−, in meteoritic soluble organic matter. High collision energies, which are required for fragmentation, suggest substantial thermal stability of these Mg-metalorganics (CHOMg compounds). This was corroborated by their higher abundance in thermally processed meteorites. CHOMg compounds were found to be present in a set of 61 meteorites of diverse petrological classes. The appearance of this CHOMg chemical class extends the previously investigated, diverse set of CHNOS molecules. A connection between the evolution of organic compounds and minerals is made, as Mg released from minerals gets trapped into organic compounds. These CHOMg metalorganic compounds and their relation to thermal processing in meteorites might shed new light on our understanding of carbon speciation at a molecular level in meteorite parent bodies.


Although scholars generally agree that satire cannot be defined in a categorical or exhaustive way, there is a consensus regarding its major features: satire is a mode, rather than a genre; it attacks historically specific targets, who are real; it is an intentional and purposeful literary form; its targets deserve ridicule on the basis of their behavior; and satire is both humorous and critical by its nature. The specificity and negativity of satire are what separates it from comedy, which tends to ridicule general types of people in ways that are ultimately redemptive. Satire is also rhetorically complex, and its critiques have a convoluted or indirect relation to the views of the author. Satire's long history, which is not straightforwardly linear, means that it is impossible to catalogue all of the views on it from antiquity through to modernity. Modern criticism on satire, however, is easier to summarize and has often made use of ancient satirical traditions for its own purposes—especially because many early modern theorists of satire were also satirists. In particular, modern satire has generated an internal dichotomy between a rhetorical tradition of satire associated with Juvenal, and an ethical tradition associated with Horace. Most criticism of satire from the 20th century onward repeats and re-inscribes this binary in various ways. The Yale school of critics applied key insights from the New Critics to offer a rhetorical approach to satire. The Chicago school focused on the historical nature of satirical references but still presented a broadly formalist account of satire. Early 21st century criticism has moved between a rhetorical approach inflected by poststructural theory and a historicism grounded in archival research, empiricism, and period studies. Both of these approaches, however, have continued to internally reproduce a division between satire's aesthetic qualities and its ethical or instrumental qualities. Finally, there is also a tradition of Menippean satire that differs markedly in character from traditional satire studies. While criticism of Menippean satire tends to foreground the aesthetic potential of satire over and above ethics, it also often focuses on many works that are arguably not really satirical in nature.


Retention bond guarantees that the contractor will carry out all necessary work to correct structural and/or other defects discovered immediately after completion of the contract, even if full payment has been made to the contractor. This research work assesses the effects of retention bond on construction project performance in Nigerian construction industry. Cost data were collected through the distribution of sixty (60) questionnaires of which fifty-seven administered questionnaires were retrieved. Data were analysed using correlation and regression methods of analysis. The findings from the study indicated that there is a significant relationship between retention bond and construction project performance in terms of cost and time. The study recommends that professional bodies should encourage the use of retention bond in the Nigerian construction industry by sensitizing professionals of its importance which is to enable effective delivery of projects within its initial cost and time. Also, contractors should encourage their clients to always include sum to cover up for retention bond in their contract sum.


Abstract Background Early career doctors (ECDs) are faced with many challenges due to their transition from undergraduate medical/dental studentship to being postgraduate doctors and being in an early phase of their career. The specific factors that affect ECDs in their careers and endeavors at the workplace range from poor remuneration, particularly in developing countries, to psychosocial problems (such as burnout [BO] syndrome). There is a dearth of information on BO among ECDs in Nigeria. This qualitative study aims to explore the opinions of ECDs in Nigeria on the causal/predisposing factors of BO, effects of BO, and strategies for mitigating BO among ECDs in Nigeria. Method Using purposive sampling method, two sessions of focus group discussions (FGDs) involving 14 ECDs (key informants) holding key leadership positions and who were delegates of other ECDs in Nigeria were conducted to explore their experiences on psychological issues among ECDs. Data collected were transcribed and analyzed thematically. Results BO is an issue of serious concern among ECDs in Nigeria. The causes of BO are diverse, some of which include low staff strength, prolonged work hours, wrong counseling, lack of job description and specification, and abuse of powers by trainers. In order to mitigate the issue of BO among ECDs, the respondents recommended that work policy review, medical workforce strengthening, stakeholder dialog on ECDs' welfare, regular psychological review of ECDs, and provision of free yearly medicals need to be looked into. Conclusion: Our findings revealed that the participants considered BO issues among ECDs to be common, and it affected their performance and the overall quality of care in Nigeria health system. Based on our findings, there is an urgent need to mitigate the problem of emotional exhaustion among ECDs in Nigeria.


Accurate estimation of the nitrogen (N) spatial distribution of rice (Oryza sativa L.) is imperative when it is sought to maintain regional and global carbon balances. We systematically evaluated the normalized differences of the soil and plant analysis development (SPAD) index (the normalized difference SPAD indexes, NDSIs) between the upper (the first and second leaves from the top), and lower (the third and fourth leaves from the top) leaves of Japonica rice. Four multi-location, multi-N rate (0–390 kg ha−1) field experiments were conducted using seven Japonica rice cultivars (9915, 27123, Wuxiangjing14, Wunyunjing19, Wunyunjing24, Liangyou9, and Yongyou8). Growth analyses were performed at different growth stages ranging from tillering (TI) to the ripening period (RP). We measured leaf N concentration (LNC), the N nutrition index (NNI), the NDSI, and rice grain yield at maturity. The relationships among the NDSI, LNC, and NNI at different growth stages showed that the NDSI values of the third and fourth fully expanded leaves more reliably reflected the N nutritional status than those of the first and second fully expanded leaves (LNC: NDSIL3,4, R2 > 0.81; NDSIothers, 0.77 > R2 > 0.06; NNI: NDSIL3,4, R2 > 0.83; NDSIothers, 0.76 > R2 > 0.07; all p < 0.01). Two new diagnostic models based on the NDSIL3,4 (from the tillering to the ripening period) can be used for effective diagnosis of the LNC and NNI, which exhibited reasonable distributions of residuals (LNC: relative root mean square error (RRMSE) = 0.0683; NNI: RRMSE = 0.0688; p < 0.01). The relationship between grain yield, predicted yield, and NDSIL3,4 were established during critical growth stages (from the stem elongation to the heading stages; R2 = 0.53, p < 0.01, RRMSE = 0.106). An NDSIL3,4 high-yield change curve was drawn to describe critical NDSIL3,4 values for a high-yield target (10.28 t ha−1). Furthermore, dynamic-critical curve models based on the NDSIL3,4 allowed a precise description of rice N status, facilitating the timing of fertilization decisions to optimize yields in the intensive rice cropping systems of eastern China.


Abstract:The outgoing U.K. Parliament tried to block a "hard" interpretation of the Brexit referendum outcome, and only authorized an early election when that seemed in place. But under the Westminster system a Parliament cannot bind its successor, and in December 2019 a purged hardline Conservative party won a decisive majority. There are wider lessons for contemporary democracies. Representative governments can add referendums to their existing electoral mechanisms, but that requires great care and foresight. National sovereignty can be a powerful mobilizer of opinion, but can jeopardize territorial unity. Although disengaging from external entanglements can seem liberating, it can also prove polarizing. Losers in a democratic contest must accept the verdict of the polls, but such defeats can still be bitterly resented and can cause lasting damage to political harmony.