Introduction Tissues can be soft like brain, bone marrow, and fat, which bear little mechanical stress, or stiff like muscle, cartilage, and bone, which sustain high levels of stress. Systematic relationships between tissue stiffness, protein abundance, and differential gene expression are unclear. Recent studies of stem cells cultured on matrices of different elasticity, E, have suggested that differentiation is mechanosensitive, but the molecular mechanisms involved in particular tissues remain elusive. Tissue micromechanics correlate with abundance of collagens and nuclear lamins, which influence cell differentiation. (Left) Collagen and lamin-A levels scale with E, consistent with matching tissue stress to nuclear mechanics. (Right) Matrix stiffness in tissue culture increases cell tension and stabilizes lamin-A, regulating its own transcription and that of stress fiber genes, enhancing differentiation. RA, retinoic acid, i.e., vitamin A; RARG, YAP1, and SRF, transcription factors. Methods We developed quantitative mass spectrometry algorithms to measure protein abundance, stoichiometry, conformation, and interactions within tissues and cells in relation to stiffness of tissues and extracellular matrix. Manipulations of lamin-A levels with small interfering RNA, overexpression, and retinoic acid or antagonist were applied to stem cells cultured on different matrices to assess lamin-A's role in mechanosensitive differentiation. To characterize molecular mechanisms, promoter analyses, transcriptional profiling, and localization of transcription factors were complemented by measurements of nuclear mechanics and by modeling of the core gene circuit. Results Proteomic profiling of multiple adult solid tissues showed that widely varied levels of collagens in extracellular matrix and of lamin-A in nuclei followed power-law scaling versus E. Scaling for mechanoresponsive lamin-A conformed to predictions from polymer physics, whereas lamin-B's varied weakly. Tumor xenograft studies further demonstrated that matrix determined tissue E, whereas lamin-A levels responded to changes in E. In tissue culture cells, both lamin-A conformation and expression were mechanosensitive, with phosphorylation and turnover of lamin-A correlating inversely with matrix E. Lamin-A knockdown enhanced mesenchymal stem cell differentiation on soft matrix that favored a low-stress, fat phenotype. Lamin-A overexpression or transcriptional induction with a retinoic acid (RA) antagonist enhanced differentiation on stiff matrix toward a high-stress, bone phenotype. Downstream of matrix stiffness, the RA pathway regulated lamin-A transcription, but feedback by lamin-A regulated RA receptor (RARG) translocation into nuclei. High lamin-A levels physically impeded nuclear remodeling under stress but also coregulated other key factors. These factors included both serum response factor (SRF), which promoted expression of stress fiber–associated proteins involved in differentiation, and a Hippo pathway factor (YAP1) involved in growth. Discussion The characteristic stress in normal tissue favors collagen accumulation and a characteristic stiffness that cells transduce through nuclear lamin-A to enhance tissue-specific differentiation. Tension-inhibited turnover of rope-like filaments of lamin-A provides sufficient mechanochemical control of a core gene circuit to explain the steady-state scaling of lamin-A with E. High lamin-A physically stabilizes the nucleus against stress and thereby stabilizes the nuclear lamina and chromatin, with implications for epigenetic stabilization and limiting of DNA breaks. Moreover, lamin-A levels directly or indirectly regulate many proteins involved in tissue-specific gene expression, and, because lamin-A levels can vary by a factor of 10 or more downstream of tissue mechanics, an important fraction of tissue-specific gene expression depends on tissue mechanics, which changes in development, injury, and many diseases. Lamins and Tissue Stiffness Microenvironment can influence cell fate and behavior; for example, extracellular matrix (ECM) stiffness increases cell proliferation, and ECM rigidity induces disorders in tissue morphogenesis by increasing cell tension. Swift et al. (1240104; see the Perspective by Bainer and Weaver) used proteomics to identify molecules that are mechanical sensors for tissue elasticity in the nucleus and discovered that expression of lamin-A levels apparently functions as a "mechanostat." Tissues that need to remain stiff under stress rely on lamin-A to keep the cell nucleus whole. [Also see Perspective by Bainer and Weaver] Tissues can be soft like fat, which bears little stress, or stiff like bone, which sustains high stress, but whether there is a systematic relationship between tissue mechanics and differentiation is unknown. Here, proteomics analyses revealed that levels of the nucleoskeletal protein lamin-A scaled with tissue elasticity, E, as did levels of collagens in the extracellular matrix that determine E. Stem cell differentiation into fat on soft matrix was enhanced by low lamin-A levels, whereas differentiation into bone on stiff matrix was enhanced by high lamin-A levels. Matrix stiffness directly influenced lamin-A protein levels, and, although lamin-A transcription was regulated by the vitamin A/retinoic acid (RA) pathway with broad roles in development, nuclear entry of RA receptors was modulated by lamin-A protein. Tissue stiffness and stress thus increase lamin-A levels, which stabilize the nucleus while also contributing to lineage determination.


[1] The 20th century regional and global sea level variations are estimated based on long-term tide gauge records. For this the neural network technique is utilized that connects the coastal sea level with the regional and global mean via a nonlinear empirical relationship. Two major difficulties are overcome this way: the vertical movement of tide gauges over time and the problem of what weighting function to choose for each individual tide gauge record. Neural networks are also used to fill data gaps in the tide gauge records, which is a prerequisite for our analysis technique. A suite of different gap-filling strategies is tested which provides information about stability and variance of the results. The global mean sea level for the period January 1900 to December 2006 is estimated to rise at a rate of 1.56 ± 0.25 mm/yr which is reasonably consistent with earlier estimates, but we do not find significant acceleration. The regional mean sea level of the single ocean basins show mixed long-term behavior. While most of the basins show a sea level rise of varying strength there is an indication for a mean sea level fall in the southern Indian Ocean. Also for the the tropical Indian and the South Atlantic no significant trend can be detected. Nevertheless, the South Atlantic as well as the tropical Atlantic are the only basins that show significant acceleration. On shorter timescales, but longer than the annual cycle, the basins sea level are dominated by oscillations with periods of about 50–75 years and of about 25 years. Consequently, we find high (lagged) correlations between the single basins.


Historically, the major Library and Information Science (LIS) research-producing centres of the world have largely been the universities and information institutions of North America, the United Kingdom and Europe. This is changing with the growth of Asian economies, universities and information industries. Library and Information Science Research in Asia-Oceania: Theory and Practice presents evolving and emerging research and development in the field of library and information science (LIS) in diverse countries in Asia-Oceania as the region continues to develop. This book is intended as a useful resource for LIS researchers, scholars, students, professionals and practitioners and is an appropriate text for courses in LIS. In addition, anyone interested in understanding the LIS field in the region will find this book a fascinating and enlightening read.


IntroductionConsistent with World Health Organization (WHO) advice [1], Public Health England (PHE) recommends that healthcare workers (HCWs) caring for patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) should use fluid resistant surgical masks type IIR (FRSMs) as respiratory protective equipment (RPE), unless aerosol generating procedures (AGPs) are being undertaken or are likely, when a filtering face piece 3 (FFP3) respirator should be used [2]. In recent guidance, an FFP3 respirator is recommended if "an unacceptable risk of transmission remains following rigorous application of the hierarchy of control" [3]. Conversely, guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that HCWs caring for patients with COVID-19 should use an N95 or higher level respirator [4]. WHO guidance suggests that a respirator, such as FFP3, may be used for HCWs in the absence of AGPs if availability or cost is not an issue [1].A recent systematic review undertaken for PHE concluded that: "patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection who are breathing, talking or coughing generate both respiratory droplets and aerosols, but FRSM (and where required, eye protection) are considered to provide adequate staff protection" [5]. Nevertheless, FFP3 respirators are more effective in preventing aerosol transmission than FRSMs, and observational data suggests that they may improve protection for HCWs [6]. It has therefore been suggested that respirators should be considered as a means of affording the best available protection [7], and some organisations have decided to provide FFP3 (or equivalent) respirators to HCWs caring for COVID-19 patients, despite a lack of mandate from local or national guidelines [8].Data from the HCW testing programme at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUHNFT) during the first wave of the UK severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic indicated a higher incidence of infection amongst HCWs caring for patients with COVID-19, compared with those who did not [9]. Subsequent studies have confirmed this observation [10, 11]. This disparity persisted at CUHNFT in December 2020, despite control measures consistent with PHE guidance and audits indicating good compliance. The CUHNFT infection control committee therefore implemented a change of RPE for staff on "red" (COVID-19) wards from FRSMs to FFP3 respirators. In this study, we analyse the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in HCWs before and after this transition.


A telephone survey of United States consumers' views on tobacco biopharming indicates widespread support for developing the technology when it generates a socially beneficial application. Perceptions of risks associated with the technology, however, are split: Most respondents either hold concerns in every risk area presented or in none of them. Willingness to purchase a bio-tobacco-based medicine is bimodal as well. These polarized perceptions point to the challenges faced by policy makers who attempt to implement regulatory oversight of biopharming by balancing the broad-based concerns of the public against the potentially significant benefits of the technology.


For the last two decades the European Commission (EC), and in particular the Directorate General Information Society and Media, has been strongly supporting the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in healthcare. ICT is an enabling technology which can provide various solutions in the healthcare sector, ranging from electronic patient records and health information networks to intelligent prosthetics and robotised surgery. The EC funded the present study with the aim to investigate the potential of robotics in healthcare. Robotics for healthcare is an emerging field which is expected to grow in the face of demographic change (ageing), expected shortages of healthcare personnel, calls for improving quality of life for the elderly and disabled, and the need for even higher quality care, for example high precision surgery. All these factors stimulate innovation in the domain of Robotics for Healthcare. Several programs and networks dedicated to research on robotics are already focusing part of their efforts on applications in healthcare.


The development of branding is a neglected theme in business history. This article examines the emergence on a large scale of the unique product brand name – distinct from a company name or product descriptor – in the UK in the later nineteenth century. It looks at the interaction of branding strategies and UK trade mark law, which is shown to have accorded property rights in word-based marks only gradually and shaped the development of branding in the UK. Trademark application data from the 1870s to the 1920s is cited to illustrate the widespread take-up of the brand name in the UK from the 1880s, and to consider its use by different types of consumer goods firms. The article then analyses the effects of such branding into the twentieth century, including its contribution to competitive advantage, the introduction of brand architecture, and the problem of brand genericisation. It is argued that the adoption of the brand name marked a major shift in brands, from descriptions of origin to objects of artifice.


We use state‐level panel data on life insurance in force in the United States and find that a $1 increase in government debt, at either the state or federal level is associated with a $0.96 increase in the face value of the average life insurance holdings per capita for a household in the average state. This increase represents an intention to save that would almost completely offset the government debt in specific states of the world (i.e., if the insured dies). Because this state of the world is rare, the immediate increase in actual savings is only about $0.03, the cost of the additional insurance. We find, in addition, that this response occurs mainly on the intensive margin, meaning that the size of the average life insurance policy increases when government debt increases. Along the extensive margin, we find the number of policies in force falls slightly with federal debt, and rises slightly with state debt increases. The results show altruistic planning in response to changes in government debt that are consistent with Ricardian Equivalence and the long‐run neutrality of government debt.


Abstract. We have studied the hydration of sulfuric acid – ammonia and sulfuric acid – dimethylamine clusters using quantum chemistry. We calculated the formation energies and thermodynamics for clusters of one ammonia or one dimethylamine molecule together with 1–2 sulfuric acid and 0–5 water molecules. The results indicate that dimethylamine enhances the addition of sulfuric acid to the clusters much more efficiently than ammonia when the number of water molecules in the cluster is either zero, or greater than two. Further hydrate distribution calculations reveal that practically all dimethylamine-containing two-acid clusters will remain unhydrated in tropospherically relevant circumstances, thus strongly suggesting that dimethylamine assists atmospheric sulfuric acid nucleation much more effectively than ammonia.


This Article presents a critical review of the behavioral analysis of crime control. It shows that although behavioral studies have offered many insights as to the way humans behave, they do not offer clear predictions as to the way criminals are expected to behave. The indeterminacy of behavioral analysis stems from three distinct factors. First, the cognitive biases upon which behavioral analysis is built are often ill-defined. Second, for many cognitive biases, there exist "counter biases" that function in an opposing manner. Finally, social forces, such as norms and culture, interact in an unpredictable fashion with cognitive biases. In light of these problems, the Article suggests a new research agenda for scholars who wish to develop an accurate model of criminal behavior.


Summary This paper surveys time-series methods developed and used in the fields of statistics, engineering, operation research and economics. It will describe each of the major methods now in existence and synthesize them into an integrated whole by pointing out similarities and differences existing among them. The applicability of the different methods to various real-life requirements will be discussed and further research needs will be raised.


An accumulation of stress and lack of coping resources can contribute to a higher incidence of mental and physical health disparities. Homeless adults are one of the most vulnerable subgroups who utilize Enterprise Resource Center, a peer-run day-center in Marin County. Because stress from multiple factors was identified in this transient and high-risk population, an intervention for stress reduction and management was explored. The findings from the needs assessment suggested that there was a need for an integrated approach for stress reduction and management. The challenge of sustaining a program was also highlighted during the needs assessment. A brief mindfulness meditation program was piloted as an evidence-based intervention for its feasibility and potential effectiveness at the day-center. The peer-facilitation model was also explored in order to fit the model and culture of the center. The pilot meditation group was conducted over a six-week period with seven group sessions. The total of nine different individuals participated over the duration of the program. The most common feedbacks received from participants included feelings of calmness and relaxation after meditating for 20 minutes in a group. This suggests that a brief meditation program may be added to the regular programming to create a more integrated approach to manage mental, physical, and emotional comorbidity seen in this highly vulnerable population. Further research should be done to explore the safety of meditation programs especially for vulnerable adults as there is currently no guideline for screening individuals for risks for adverse effects of meditation.


Religion, in promoting outlandish beliefs and costly rituals, increases ingroup trust but also may increase mistrust and conflict with outgroups. Moralizing gods emerged over the last few millennia, enabling large-scale cooperation, and sociopolitical conquest even without war. Whether for cooperation or conflict, sacred values, like devotion to God or a collective cause, signal group identity and operate as moral imperatives that inspire nonrational exertions independent of likely outcomes. In conflict situations, otherwise mundane sociopolitical preferences may become sacred values, acquiring immunity to material incentives. Sacred values sustain intractable conflicts that defy "business-like" negotiation, but also provide surprising opportunities for resolution.


/ This paper explores Konami's horror videogame franchise Silent Hill according to recent discussions of immersion, alienation and critical simulation. Silent Hill constitutes an extremely selfreflexive series, frequently acknowledging its videogame status and interrogating the medium as experience and text. This, paradoxically, produces an experience of simultaneous critical distance and intensified engagement. Clumsy controls, grotesque imagery and deterministic gameplay disrupt player immersion. The digital emulation of analogue media and its distortion denies technological transparency. Silent Hill invites comparisons to Brechtian theatre and filmmaking through its estranged protagonists, multiple `alternative' spaces, and pervasive `unpleasure'. Yet while encouraging critical engagement with the videogame process, these aspects also contribute to the games' horror affect. Anti-immersive elements rely upon repellent audiovisuals. Analogue disintegration is employed to signify evil, corruption and contamination. Contradicting assumptions that emphasizing construction and enunciation disrupts identification, immersion and illusion, such aspects are fundamental to Silent Hill's operation as horror text.


Abstract. Carbon monoxide (CO) simulation in atmospheric chemistry models is frequently used for source–receptor analysis, emission inversion, interpretation of observations, and chemical forecasting due to its computational efficiency and ability to quantitatively link simulated CO burdens to sources. While several methods exist for modeling CO source attribution, most are inappropriate for regions where the CO budget is dominated by secondary production rather than direct emissions. Here, we introduce a major update to the linear CO-only capability in the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model that for the first time allows source–region tagging of secondary CO produced from oxidation of non-methane volatile organic compounds. Our updates also remove fundamental inconsistencies between the CO-only simulation and the standard full chemistry simulation by using consistent CO production rates in both. We find that relative to the standard chemistry simulation, CO in the original CO-only simulation was overestimated by more than 100 ppb in the model surface layer and underestimated in outflow regions. The improved CO-only simulation largely resolves these discrepancies by improving both the magnitude and location of secondary production. Despite large differences between the original and improved simulations, however, model evaluation with the global dataset used to benchmark GEOS-Chem shows negligible change to the model's ability to match the observations. This suggests that the current GEOS-Chem benchmark is not well suited to evaluate model changes in regions influenced by biogenic emissions and chemistry, and expanding the dataset to include observations from biogenic source regions (including those from recent aircraft campaigns) should be a priority for the GEOS-Chem community. Using Australasia as a case study, we show that the new ability to geographically tag secondary CO production provides significant added value for interpreting observations and model results in regions where primary CO emissions are low. Secondary production dominates the CO budget across much of the world, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, and we recommend future model–observation and multi-model comparisons implement this capability to provide a more complete understanding of CO sources and their variability.


Low Salinity Water Flooding (LSWF) is an emergent technology developed to increase oil recovery. Many laboratory tests of LSWF have been carried out since the 1990's, but modelling at the reservoir scale is less well reported. Various descriptions of the functional relationship between salt concentration and relative permeability have been presented in the literature, as have the differences in the effective salinity range over which salt content takes effect. This paper focuses on these properties and their impact on the fractional flow of LSWF. We present observations that help characterise the flow behaviour in a more general form, simplifying the interpretation of results. We explain how numerical or physical diffusion of salt affects the velocity of the waterflood front, and how this can be predicted from fractional flow analysis.
 We have considered various linear and non-linear shapes of the function relating salinity to relative permeability and different effective salinity ranges using a numerical simulator applied at the reservoir scale. The results are compared to fractional flow theory in which both salt and water movement is assumed to be shock-like in nature.
 We observe that diffusion of the salt front is an important process that affects the fractional flow behaviour depending on the effective salinity range. The simulator solution matches the analytical predictions from fractional flow analysis under the condition that the mid-point of the effective salinity range is at the mid-point between the formation and injected salt concentrations. However, an effective behaviour similar to adsorption/desorption occurs when these mid-point concentrations are not coincidental. The outcome is that the fronts representing high and low salinity water travel with altered velocities and at different saturations.
 We find that we can predict this behaviour from the input data alone as an augmented form of the fractional flow theory including the concept of retardation or acceleration as occurs for adsorption and desorption for other injectants. We use the analytical solution to the advection-diffusion equation and find that the changes in behaviour depends on the Peclet number.
 The result of our work is that we have produced an updated form of the fractional flow model of LSWF, to include the impact of salt front diffusion on the movement of fluids. A new factor is introduced, similar to adsorption in polymer flooding. We have developed a new mathematical formula, empirically, to estimate the magnitude of this factor. The new form can be used to modify the effects that numerical or physical diffusion have on the breakthrough times of high and low salinity water fronts during LSFW. This will improve predictive ability and also reduce the requirement for full simulation.


Chemotaxis is the movement of an organism in response to an external chemical stimulus. This system enables bacteria to sense their immediate environment and adapt to changes in its chemical composition. Bacterial chemotaxis is mediated by chemoreceptors, membrane proteins that bind an effector and transduce the signal to the downstream proteins. From a synthetic biology perspective, the natural chemotactic repertoire is of little use since bacterial chemoreceptors have evolved to sense specific ligands that either benefit or harm the cell. Here we demonstrate that using a combined computational design approach together with a quantitative, real-time, and digital detection approach, we can rapidly design, manufacture, and characterize a synthetic chemoreceptor in E. coli for histamine (a ligand for which there are no known chemoreceptors). First, we employed a computational protocol that uses the Rosetta bioinformatics software together with high threshold filters to design mutational variants to the native Tar ligand binding domain that target histamine. Second, we tested different ligand-chemoreceptors pairs with a novel chemotaxis assay, based on optical reflectance interferometry of porous silicon (PSi) optical transducers, enabling label-free quantification of chemotaxis by monitoring real-time changes in the optical readout (expressed as the effective optical thickness, EOT). We found that different ligands can be characterized by an individual set of fingerprints in our assay. Namely, a binary, digital-like response in EOT change (i.e. positive or negative) that differentiates between attractants and repellants, the amplitude of change of EOT response, and the rate by which steady state in EOT change is reached. Using this assay, we were able to positively identify and characterize a single mutational chemoreceptor variant for histamine that mediated chemotaxis comparably to the natural Tar-aspartate system. Our results demonstrate the possibility of not only expanding the natural chemotaxis repertoire, but also provide a new quantitative assay by which to characterize the efficacy of the chemotactic response.


The authors have constructed a table of the 26440 nonconjugate totally real cubic number fields of discriminant D < 500000 thereby extending the existing table of fields with D < 100000 by I. 0. Angell (1). Serious defects in Angell's table are pointed out. For each field, running number, discriminant, coefficients of a generating polynomial, integral basis, class number, and a fundamental pair of units are listed. The article contains statistics about the following subjects: distribution of class numbers; fields in which every norm-positive unit is totally positive; nonconjugate fields with the same discriminant; fields with noncyclic class group. The fields are tabulated by means of a method due to Davenport and Heilbronn (7), (8) which leads to a unique normalized generating polynomial. The given units are chosen so that the fundamental parallelogram of the unit lattice determined by the corresponding vectors in the logarithmic space is reduced.


Competition has been widely discussed as a process that may structure communities of plants and animals. Its role in insect communities is less clear, especially as many insect species do not appear to compete for resources. However, such communities could still be structured by "apparent competition" where the species interact through shared natural enemies. We explore recent attempts to assess whether apparent competition may structure herbivorous insect communities. Communities can be described by quantitative food webs from which the potential for apparent competition can be inferred. We illustrate both the construction of a diverse quantitative food web and a field experimental test of apparent competition using our work on leaf-miner communities in Belize. We consider how a spatial perspective may be incorporated into our leaf-miner community research, and speculate about the shape of apparent competition kernels and their relevance for the structure of herbivorous insect communities.


The relation between plasma temperature and properties of graphene nanosheet layer deposited on Si/SiO2 substrate by decomposition of ethanol in microwave plasma torch discharge at atmospheric pressure was investigated in dependence on delivered microwave power and gas flow rates. Plasma modelling was carried out using COMSOL Multiphysics software with delivered microwave power, gas flow rates and experimental reactor geometry as input parameters. Results of the heat flow and fluid dynamics modelling were compared with substrate temperature measured by thermocouple integrated in quartz tube substrate holder. The graphene nanosheets layer was characterized by SEM, Raman spectroscopy and 4-point probe method. The layers were severals tens of μm thick and their sheet resistance varied from 2 to 40 kΩ/sq. The properties of individual graphene nanosheets, 2D/G and D/G Raman band ratio, as well as the sheet resistance of their conductive network were correlated with the increase of plasma temperature with increasing microwave power. The substrate temperature increased linearly with delivered microwave power and the layer sheet resistance was decreasing with increasing microwave power and saturated at 2 kΩ/sq and D/G ratio of 0.6.


The processes controlling tufa deposition along the River Mesa (NE Spain) were studied from April 2003 to September 2009, based on six-monthly monitoring of physical and chemical parameters of the river water and sedimentological characteristics, including deposition rates on tablets. With a mean annual discharge around 1.5m3/s, the sedimentation rate (mean 2mm/yr) recorded important spatial, seasonal and interannual variations. The river waters are of the calcium bicarbonate type. In this study, three distinct river stretches were distinguished based on the steady groundwater inputs, some of low-thermal nature. Groundwater discharges controlled the water chemical composition, and some sedimentation features too. At each stretch, an increase in pCO2 and conductivity was measured around the spring sites. Decreasing trends in conductivity or alkalinity with high enough saturation values with respect to calcite were only clearly observed in the intermediate stretch, which had higher tufa deposition rates than the other two. Tufa deposition rates were higher in cool (autumn+winter) than in warm (spring+summer) periods. In some low-rainfall warm periods, tufa deposition was inhibited or limited due to the low flow –mainly from groundwater inputs– and to the dryness of some river sites, which indeed favoured erosion during flooding. A decrease in yearly deposition rates from April 2006 onwards paralleled an important reduction in the river discharge. Groundwater inputs, drought periods and flood events should therefore be considered to understand fluvial tufa sedimentation in semi-arid conditions.


The increase in the TARGET2 balance for the Bundesbank has led to a debate in Germany about the appropriate interpretation and policy response, if any. In this paper we review the evidence for the current account financing interpretation, and find it wanting in explaining the data in 2012. BIS international banking data, by contrast, point to the importance of TARGET2 balances as a symptom of a reduction by core European banks of credit previously extended to borrowers in peripheral Europe. These same data suggest that banks headquartered outside the euro area, particularly UK banks, boosted TARGET2 balances by hedging redenomination risk. As such, TARGET2 balances reflect not only concern regarding actual credit exposures but also potential currency exposures.


Abstract. Given the increased attention on resilience strengthening in international humanitarian and development work, there is a growing need to invest in its measurement and the overall accountability of resilience strengthening initiatives. The purpose of this article is to present our framework and tool for measuring community-level resilience to flooding and generating empirical evidence and to share our experience in the application of the resilience concept. At the time of writing the tool is being tested in 75 communities across eight countries. Currently 88 potential sources of resilience are measured at the baseline (initial state) and end line (final state) approximately 2 years later. If a flood occurs in the community during the study period, resilience outcome measures are recorded. By comparing pre-flood characteristics to post-flood outcomes, we aim to empirically verify sources of resilience, something which has never been done in this field. There is an urgent need for the continued development of theoretically anchored, empirically verified, and practically applicable disaster resilience measurement frameworks and tools so that the field may (a) deepen understanding of the key components of disaster resilience in order to better target resilience-enhancing initiatives, and (b) enhance our ability to benchmark and measure disaster resilience over time, and (c) compare how resilience changes as a result of different capacities, actions and hazards.


As with many other antibiotics, pacidamycins are produced as a suite of related compounds. Unlike most other secondary metabolites, however, this diversity is not solely the result of the substrate promiscuity of the biosynthetic enzymes but also arises from a gene duplication event (Pac21, Pac21h) and control of the precursor pool (PhhA). We are demonstrating the ability to harness these three levels of control in order to direct the selective production of specific members of this family of metabolites in a "dial-a-molecule" fashion. Furthermore, PhhA is shown to be a phenylalanine 3-hydroxylase, the first of the iron- and tetrahydropterin-dependent aromatic amino acid hydroxylases to be characterised with this regioselectivity.


In the last two decades, the reliance upon "licensing" strategies as a source of revenue for intellectual property ("IP") rights holders has seen a dramatic increase. Put simply, in return for an adequate remuneration (typically a royalty, but there may be other forms of consideration), innovators (licensors) grant to other firms (licensees) the right to use their proprietary technology to manufacture products for sale in downstream markets. IP licensing strategies are not only pursued by organizations without manufacturing capabilities (e.g., university research centres). IP holders active in downstream product markets (hereafter, "vertically-integrated" firms) may be licensing their technologies to reap additional profits from their research and development ("R&D") expenditures, but also to obtain access to other firms' technologies through cross-licensing agreements. Licensing agreements typically benefit licensors and licensees. The licensee gains access to new technologies, which it will use to improve its manufacturing operations or embed in its products to increase their functionalities. The licensor accrues revenues from his initial R&D expenditures that can be invested in the development of new technologies, which will in turn lead to additional revenues, hence creating a virtuous circle of innovation. Licensing agreements are generally heavily negotiated between licensors and licensees, which in the vast majority of the cases reach mutually satisfactory agreements. Yet, tensions may arise between licensors and licensees over the terms of their IP licensing deals. The diverging incentives of licensors (eager to obtain a fair level of compensation for the investments made in developing their IP) and licensees (eager to minimize the cost of acquiring proprietary technologies) may generate disputes over royalty levels and other forms of consideration. Such disputes are particularly likely to arise when licensing agreements have the potential to be worth hundreds of millions of Euros and small variations in terms and conditions can be financially significant for both parties. Potential licensees may also insist on obtaining a license on terms that are identical, or at least equivalent, to those obtained by licensees with which they compete. Licensors may, however, resist such requests insofar as differing licensing terms are justified by the particular circumstances of each specific agreement. Additional tensions may arise when the IP in question is essential to a standard. Some have argued that once a proprietary technology has become part of a standard, its owners will be able to extract royalties in excess of those they could have charged before the adoption of such standard (the so-called "hold up" theory). Although, as will be seen, this theory has clear limitations it has contributed to the belief that royalty rates charged by IP holders are too high. Another claim that has been made is that in circumstances where a standard comprises essential IP held by numerous patent holders, the aggregation of the rates charged by such holders (even if individually reasonable) may lead to a royalty burden of a level such that the standard will be too costly to implement (the so-called "royalty stacking" theory). The proponents of such theories argue that some form of control should be placed on the royalties that can be charged by essential patent holders. While differences of views between licensors and licensees are generally ironed out through negotiations, there will be situations where licensees may be tempted to rely on competition rules to seek redress against what they perceive as unfair licensing terms. Against this background, this paper explores the extent to which Article 82(a) and 82(c) of the EC Treaty, which respectively prohibit as abusive for dominant firms from "directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions" to their customers, and to "applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties, thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage", can be relied on by licensees unhappy with the deals they have obtained from licensors. These issues are particularly important at a time where economic growth is increasingly dependent on innovation. This paper is divided in five parts. Part II discusses the specific challenges raised by market definition and the assessment of dominance in high-technology markets with a specific focus on technology licensing. Part III discusses the application of Article 82(a) EC to licensing agreements. It explains the significant conceptual and practical difficulties of applying this provision of the Treaty in the field of technology licensing and argues that competition authorities should refrain from seeking to control prices or rates in dynamic industries. Part IV explores the issue of price/rate discrimination in IP licensing agreements. It argues that while non-vertically integrated licensors have no incentives to discriminate against their licensees, vertically-integrated firms have strong incentives to offer more favourable licensing terms to their downstream operations that to other downstream firms with which they compete. The case is made that the enforcement of Article 82 EC in this field should therefore focus on preventing vertically-integrated firms from raising their downstream rivals' costs through discriminatory licensing fees. Part V contains a short conclusion.


Background/Context Trends in district and metropolitan school segregation over the past several decades have been well documented, but less attention has focused on the racial/ethnic composition changes at individual schools that generate aggregate trends. These shortcomings limit our ability to understand complex and dynamic patterns of racial/ethnic change within schools, which may in turn prevent policy interventions that could increase school diversity and direct needed educational resources to schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study identifies distinct trajectories of racial/ethnic change occurring in public elementary schools between 2000 and 2015 and describes the characteristics and prevalence of each trajectory. In addition, the study examines how initial levels of school poverty are associated with membership in different trajectories. Research Design This secondary data analysis relies on data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data (CCD) and employs latent class growth analysis. Findings/Results Despite the rapidly changing demographics of the overall student population, approximately 45% of all public elementary schools in the sample had stable racial compositions between 2000 and 2015. Close to half of the remaining schools, about 25% overall, experienced racial change at such a pace that they will be completely minority isolated within the next several decades if the pace continues. In the remaining schools, the pace of racial change is sufficiently slow to maintain diverse schools for many decades. Schools experiencing rapid Hispanic growth tend to have initially higher proportions of low-income students, indicating where racial change may likely occur and where schools will become racially and socioeconomically isolated without proactive policies in place. Conclusions/Recommendations Results suggest that absent intentional interventions that target the type of change trajectories being experienced at the school level, the overall increasing diversity of the student population will not likely lead to sustainably diverse schools for the majority of students. Providing the benefits of a non-racially isolated education for all children is possible, but we must first identify the school trajectories of change and stability, then determine the most appropriate strategy for improving school diversity, and finally provide the resources and policies needed to foster and maintain diverse schools that are inclusive of all students.


After more than 40 years of focus on a single related technology platform, XYZ Corp. had begun trying to foster an entrepreneurial climate within the organization. Its goal? To develop vibrant new ventures through a program called Growing Green Businesses. As XYZ's main product lines were becoming commoditized and several billion dollars in free cash flow became available, the timing seemed right for this new initiative. Yet efforts thus far have failed to create a robust portfolio of new businesses. How can management transform a highly successful, but large and somewhat reluctant Fortune 500 into a truly entrepreneurial firm?


Five new species belonging to the Empis (Coptophlebia) hyalea-group are described, namely E. (C.) neesoonensis, new species, E. (C.) producta, new species, E. (C.) tortuosa, new species, E. (C.) triseta, new species and E. (C.) verruca, new species. A key to all known species of the group is provided for Singapore and Southern Malaysia.


Background Achieving high levels of patient satisfaction requires hospital management to be proactive in patient-centred care improvement initiatives and to engage frontline clinicians in this process. Method We developed a survey to assess the attitudes of clinicians towards hospital management activities with respect to improving patient satisfaction and surveyed clinicians in four academic hospitals located in Denmark, Israel, the UK and the USA. Results We collected 1004 questionnaires (79.9% response rate) from four hospitals in four countries on three continents. Overall, 90.4% of clinicians believed that improving patient satisfaction during hospitalisation was achievable, but only 9.2% of clinicians thought their department had a structured plan to do so, with significant differences between the countries (p<0.0001). Among responders, only 38% remembered targeted actions to improve patient satisfaction and just 34% stated having received feedback from hospital management regarding patient satisfaction status in their department during the past year. In multivariate analyses, clinicians who received feedback from hospital management and remembered targeted actions to improve patient satisfaction were more likely to state that their department had a structured plan to improve patient satisfaction. Conclusions This portrait of clinicians' attitudes highlights a chasm between hospital management and frontline clinicians with respect to improving patient satisfaction. It appears that while hospital management asserts that patient-centred care is important and invests in patient satisfaction and patient experience surveys, our findings suggest that the majority do not have a structured plan for promoting improvement of patient satisfaction and engaging clinicians in the process.


Cell switch-off (CSO) is recognized as a promising approach to reduce the energy consumption in the next-generation cellular networks. However, CSO poses serious challenges not only from the resource allocation perspective but also from the implementation point of view. Indeed, CSO represents a difficult optimization problem due to its NP-complete nature. Moreover, there are a number of important practical limitations in the implementation of CSO schemes, such as the need for minimizing the real-time complexity and the number of on-off/off-on transitions and CSO-induced handovers. This paper introduces a novel approach to CSO based on multiobjective optimization that makes use of the statistical description of the service demand (known by operators). In addition, downlink and uplink coverage criteria are included and a comparative analysis between different models to characterize intercell interference is also presented to shed light on their impact on CSO. The framework distinguishes itself from other proposals in two ways: 1) the number of on-off/off-on transitions as well as handovers are minimized and 2) the computationally-heavy part of the algorithm is executed offline, which makes its implementation feasible. The results show that the proposed scheme achieves substantial energy savings in small cell deployments, where service demand is not uniformly distributed, without compromising the quality-of-service or requiring heavy real-time processing.


Recent studies on fully dielectric multilayered metamaterials have shown that the negligibly small nonlocal effects (spatial dispersion) typically observed in the limit of deeply subwavelength layers may be significantly enhanced by peculiar boundary effects occurring in certain critical parameter regimes. These phenomena, observed so far in periodic and randomly disordered geometries, are manifested as strong differences between the exact optical response of finite-size metamaterial samples and the prediction from conventional effective-theory-medium models based on mixing formulae. Here, with specific focus on the Thue-Morse geometry, we make a first step toward extending the studies above to the middle-ground of aperiodically ordered multilayers, lying in between perfect periodicity and disorder. We show that, also for these geometries, there exist critical parameter ranges that favor the buildup of boundary effects leading to strong enhancement of the (otherwise negligibly weak) nonlocality. However, the underlying mechanisms are fundamentally different from those observed in the periodic case, and exhibit typical footprints (e.g., fractal gaps, quasi-localized states) that are distinctive of aperiodic order. The outcomes of our study indicate that aperiodic order plays a key role in the buildup of the aforementioned boundary effects, and may also find potential applications to optical sensors, absorbers and lasers.


In Estonian theatre, the experience of World War I found expression somewhat belatedly, in the early 1920s, when Expresssionist plays, mainly by contemporary German playwrights – Ernst Toller, Walter Hasenclever, Georg Kaiser et al – were staged in the Estonia Theatre, in the Drama Theatre and in the amateur Hommikteater (Morning Theatre, 1921–1924). The article examines the most significant Expressionist stage productions, focusing on the relations between their ideological, affective and stylistic dimensions. Critical and audience receptions of Expressionist plays are discussed as well. In the Estonia Theatre, a group of young actors and directors (Ants Lauter, Erna Villmer, et al) sought to innovate theatrical language by making use of new, Expressionist devices. In contrast, the amateur Hommikteater (led by August Bachmann and Nigol Andresen) placed emphasis on spreading the ideals of new humanity and social justice, which reflected the left-wing sympathies of the troupe, but their work was also distinguished by an inventive style and a strong emotional impact on audiences. The members of the literary group Tarapita (who promoted Expressionism themselves) enthusiastically supported Hommikteater. This little theatre became highly influential in the process of theatre innovation, despite its very small audiences. However, the key ideas and ideals of postwar Expressionism (including a strong anti-war pathos) had rather little effect on Estonian theatre in general. Expressionism mainly contributed to the 315 widening of the stylistic palett e of Estonian theatrical art. This can be partly explained by the social situation of the 1920s: victory in the War of Independence and the subsequent building of the independent Estonian state raised nationalist spirits and made people less sensitive to the destructive experiences of World War I as reflected in postwar German Expressionism. Keywords World War I, Hommikteater, Estonia, Drama Theatre


The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the time when literature in Latin written by professors and students of Jesuit colleges flourished in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This trend was the outcome of the Jesuit educational model. The main disciplines in colleges were poetics and rhetoric. The classes of these two disciplines not only aimed at teaching theoretical rules, acquainting the students with the prevailing literary canon, and pointing out the differences between genres, but also encouraged students' individual creative work, as it was independent writing that was a proof of students' ability to apply theory in practice. Student writing was strongly influenced by the theory of imitation, which was very popular at the time. Resorting to manuscript material from the colleges of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the article focuses on varying degrees of influence of the imitation theory on students' individual creative work: it shows the relation between imitation and the literary tradition, the rules of rhetoric, and imitation of canonical authors; it also places emphasis on the quest for individual expression. The author observes that some texts composed by students are on a par with the best poetic works of the well-known poets of that time.


Currently, there is no standard bench-scale dead-end ultrafiltration (UF) testing system. The aim of the present study was to design and build a bench-scale hollow fiber UF system to assess the impact of operational parameters on membrane performance and fouling. A bench-scale hollow fiber UF system was built to operate at a constant flux (±2% of the set-point flux) and included automated backwash cycles. The development of the bench-scale system showed that it is very difficult to maintain a constant flux during the first minute of the filtration cycles, that digital flow meters are problematic, and that the volume of the backwash waste lines should be minimized. The system was evaluated with Ottawa River water, which has a relatively high hydrophobic natural organic matter content and is typical of Northern Canadian waters. The testing using different permeate fluxes, filtration cycle duration and backwash cycle duration showed that this system mimics the performance of larger systems and may be used to assess the impact of operating conditions on membrane fouling and alternative pretreatment options. Modeling the first, middle, and last filtration cycles of the six runs using single and dual blocking mechanisms yielded inconsistent results regarding the controlling fouling mechanisms.


Antitrust is a prohibiting set of arrangements-laws, courts, and enforcement agencies-that indicate the "rules of the game" designed for business decision makers to follow in their quest for profits or other goals. However, these three arrangements may be in conflict with one another. This author discusses the sources and nature of this conflict in a particular antitrust situation. Laws, Courts, and Enforcement Agencies Laws U. S. antitrust policy is based on three principal laws. The Sherman Act of 1890 prohibits any agreements in restraint of trade (e.g., collusion) or any attempt to monopolize a market. The Clayton Act of 1914 outlaws certain kinds of market conduct such as price discrimination, tying contracts and exclusive dealerships, horizontal mergers, and interlocking directorates. The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 established the administrative agency, the Federal Trade Commission (hereinafter FTC), to investigate "unfair methods of competition." In general terms, the Sherman Act operates in a curative manner, whereas the Clayton and FTC Acts operate in a preventive manner (and as correctives of the Sherman Act). The general intent of the U. S. Congress in passing the antitrust laws is a matter of dispute. Two broad classifications of economic explanations are offered for why these laws were passed.' The first approach suggests that U. S. antitrust laws were designed to promote the public interest. According to this approach, the antitrust laws, by facilitating greater competition, reduce, if not eliminate, the wedge or gap between price and marginal cost and reduce or eliminate any discrepancy between marginal rates of substitution of consumers and the marginal rate of transformation of producers. The purpose is not to eliminate monopolists' profits, which may not even exist if costs are high and demand is weak. Thus, public-interest theory emphasizes that the antitrust laws attempt to improve market performance by regulating market structure and conduct (behavior) and by protecting, preserving, and promoting competition crucial to the success of a market economy in promoting efficiency and delivering the ensuing benefits to consumers. That is, competition generally forces producers to contain costs and respond to consumer demands by developing innovative products that are distributed at low prices. However, if significant externalities are' involved, society may be worse off if competition is pushed, in which case regulations are needed.2 Thus, the problem may not be just a lack of competition. The second, or private-interest approach, argues that U. S. antitrust laws were designed to help some special-interest group other than consumers' Since the government, like the market, is imperfect, the passage and enforcement of antitrust laws may be controlled or guided by private interests. Thus, when businesses use the political marketplace for their own goals, their rentseeking worsens the public interest in the classic prisoners' dilemma sense.3 While proponents of the U. S. antitrust acts claim they serve the public interest, some empirical results suggest that they appear as susceptible to the influence of special-interest groups as is any public policy. This same possibility of private-interest domination applies to the courts and antitrust enforcement agencies. Courts' The three-tiered structure of the federal courts consists of district courts, courts of appeals, and the Supreme Court. The decisions of the Supreme Court are binding on all federal courts in the United States. Each state has a court system that is usually tripartite, also. These generally consist of trial courts, appellate courts, and state supreme courts. The decisions of state supreme courts are binding on all the courts in that state. Some antitrust cases are restricted to state jurisdictions since the laws are state-createdand-enforced statutes and these cases are not treated uniformly throughout the nation. …


Did California's great "deregulation" experiment fail? Was it flawed in the first instance as most economists argue? Or was the deregulation of a public "good" (such as energy) and as such a civic "trust"? What role does public policy play in economic decisions? No matter what the opinions about the causes of the energy crisis, the result is the same the crisis has created a "challenge" for all 34 million Californians. In fact, the challenge is for all US citizens, as it is in other countries as well. The reasons are clear: can energy, like water, waste or the environment, be subject to market forces? Or are these sectors qualitatively different from telecom, transportation, or manufacturing sectors? California has had to confront this basic issue directly since the energy crisis erupted in the summer of 2000. The actual causes of the energy crisis may never be really uncovered even after protracted lawsuits, but three issues became clear in the "challenge": understanding that a "higher" public good, hence a role for government in certain infrastructure sectors such as energy, exists; second, leaving such public good infrastructures to the "free market" is both naive economics and flawed logic - the fact that only a few power generation companies control the flow of energy into California demonstrates the faculty of free markets equals more competition; and finally, California has embarked on a journey with immeasurable consequences. For the first time in modern history, a nation's state must take control of its own destiny. Sustainable development will now be defined over the next few years of the New Millennium. The paper will focus on the economic and business issues surrounding energy with specific recommendations on "sustainable development" drawn from the California challenge.


The association between depression and coronary artery disease has implications for the management of myocardial infarction. There is an important role for antidepressant medication and newer antidepressants have made this a much safer option. In the wider biopsychosocial approach, however, successful rehabilitation is more likely to be achieved if patients with relevant psychological and social problems are identified and offered additional support and treatment.


Using images connected with the art and craft of weaving, Christine Smith discusses the special vision that women bring to the task of preaching. She looks at the significance of feminist theology, psychology, and philosophy in terms of their impact on the preaching of all men and women. Among other topics, she considers the authority of the preacher, God language, and global feminism.


MD, CDE, FACP, FACE Guillermo E. Umpierrez, MD, CDE, FACP, FACE, is a professor of medicine in the Division of Endocrinology and clinical director of the Diabetes and Metabolism Center at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga. Dr. Umpierrez additionally serves as director of the diabetes and endocrinology section and clinical research unit at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards for Best Clinical Teacher and Best Mentor of Endocrine Fellows and Junior Faculty at Emory University and has received national awards from the American College of Physicians, American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE), and American Diabetes Association (ADA). Dr. Umpierrez is a member of the Diabetes Scientific Council and Board of Directors of AACE and of the ADA Professional Practice Committee. He is editor of ADA's Therapy for Diabetes Mellitus and Related Disorders, 6th ed.; has published more than 300 scientific manuscripts and book chapters; and has presented more than 280 abstracts at national and international scientific meetings.


Hydrogen peroxide, a reactive oxygen species, causes damage to the neuromuscular junction by inhibiting synaptic transmission. Nitric oxide is a chemical that has been tested in conjunction with hydrogen peroxide and can either react with hydrogen peroxide to form peroxynitrite, which will further harm the cell, or bind with hydrogen peroxide and prevent it from negatively affecting the neuromuscular junction. We hypothesized that the addition of nitric oxide to hydrogen peroxide will impair the crayfish neuromuscular junction and diminish the excitatory junction potential. We tested this idea by using a dull suction electrode to stimulate the motor nerve to extensor muscles in the crayfish tail with the specimen submerged in three different solutions: Ringer's saline (control), hydrogen peroxide, and hydrogen peroxide with nitric oxide. We found that the excitatory junction potential decreases significantly compared to the control when the crayfish is submerged in hydrogen peroxide, and the excitatory junction potential decreases further when nitric oxide is added.


The widespread use and abuse of antibiotics in human and animal medicine has produced a reservoir of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) which persist and spread within many environments including natural and wastewater systems. This paper reports the first investigation into the effect of advanced oxidation technologies, photocatalysis, on the potential to induce antibiotic resistant gene transfer within sub-lethally injured ARB. The impact of photocatalytic disinfection (PCD) treatments on three strains of Escherichia coli, an antibiotic sensitive strain (K12) and two antibiotic resistant strains (J-53R (rifampicin resistant) and HT-99 (chloramphenicol resistant), within an immobilised titanium dioxide stirred tank reactor. When suspended in distilled water, viable cell numbers (CFU mL−1) of both ARB declined from 3 log10 to 0.5 log10 with 180 min PCD treatment. However, subsequent recovery to 3 log10 of both ARB was observed during post treatment incubation at 37 ◦C for 24 h. No E. coli K12 were recovered immediately after 150 min treatment, or after post treatment incubation. These observations suggest that the ARB are less sensitive to the oxidative stresses involved in PCD treatment than the antibiotic sensitive strain. Gene pair conjugant numbers in PCD treated mixtures of J-53R and HT-99 cells (a 9:1 ratio) were calculated to be four-fold greater than in the (no treatment) control experiments. Both surviving bacterial cell numbers and conjugant pair numbers were lower when ARB were PCD treated in final effluent from an urban wastewater treatment plant. In conclusion, the results of this study confirm the efficacy of PCD, but also highlight the importance of applying PCD treatment "long enough" to avoid post treatment recovery from sub-lethal injury and the highly undesirable transfer of antibiotic resistant genes amongst bacteria during wastewater treatment. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


Maintenance of soil carbon stocks is vital for the environment at large and for maintenance of soil chemical, physical and biological fertility. Tonga represents a country in agricultural transition from subsistence to commercial production and whilst this is good for the national economy the impact on soil resources is less clear. The major cropped soils, fallow vegetation types and forest systems of Tonga were identified in each island group and samples of representative soils (0.15 m depth) from each land use unit were taken. Total carbon (CT) and δ13C were measured and labile carbon (CL) determined by oxidation with 333 mm KMnO4. These data were used to determine the carbon management index (CMI) and the proportion of carbon from C4 species in the CT pool. Relative to primary forest, the soil CT and CL generally declined with changes in vegetation and more intense mechanical tillage. The contribution of C4 plants to soil C increased with intensity of mechanical tillage and the prevalence of C4 guinea grass (Panicum maximum Jacquin) fallow. The changes in soil C were reflected in the CMI, and CL was a more sensitive indicator of change than CT. These data indicates that all land use systems have experienced a large net loss of soil C relative to the forest systems. Soil mean weight diameter (MWD) decreased significantly with increased intensity of mechanical tillage and to a lesser extent with the intensity and length of cropping. The relationship between soil MWD and soil C was similar with soil CT and CL. Grass fallow was as effective as permanent vegetation systems in improving soil MWD and lowering the micro‐aggregate (<125 μm) fraction.


A number of trends are changing the nature of social risks and increase the importance of human capital, adaptability and flexibility. This chapter discusses the usefulness of a life-course perspective in developing proactive social policies that better fit the changing life cycles of individuals who combine formal work with other activities on transitional labour markets. It pays special attention to the accumulation and maintenance of human capital over the life course and stresses that reconciliation of work and family goes beyond child-care facilities and parental leave, and involves the entire life course. In particular, longer and deeper involvement in paid employment allows people to exploit their longer life to reconcile the two ambitions of, first, investing in the next generation as a parent and, second, pursuing a fulfilling career in paid work in which one keeps learning. Greater flexibility of working time over the life course requires more individual responsibility for financing leave. Moreover, rather than shielding older insiders through employment protection, labour-market institutions should enable parents of young children to easily enter and remain in the labour market. Finally, more activating social assistance and in-work benefits should replace the passive income support for breadwinners that results in high minimum wage floors.


Background and aims British alcohol consumption and abstinence rates have increased substantially in the last 3 decades. This study aims to disentangle age, period and birth cohort effects to improve our understanding of these trends and suggest groups for targeted interventions to reduce resultant harms. Design Age, period, cohort analysis of repeated cross-sectional surveys using separate logistic and negative binomial models for each gender. Setting Great Britain 1984–2009. Participants Annual nationally representative samples of approximately 20 000 adults (16+) within 13 000 households. Measurements Age (eight groups: 16–17 to 75+ years), period (six groups: 1980–84 to 2005–09) and birth cohorts (19 groups: 1900–04 to 1990–94). Outcome measures were abstinence and average weekly alcohol consumption. Controls were income, education, ethnicity and country. Findings After accounting for period and cohort trends, 18–24-year-olds have the highest consumption levels (incident rate ratio = 1.18–1.15) and lower abstention rates (odds ratio = 0.67–0.87). Consumption generally decreases and abstention rates increase in later life. Until recently, successive birth cohorts' consumption levels were also increasing. However, for those born post-1985, abstention rates are increasing and male consumption is falling relative to preceding cohorts. In contrast, female drinking behaviours have polarized over the study period, with increasing abstention rates accompanying increases in drinkers' consumption levels. Conclusions Rising female consumption of alcohol and progression of higher-consuming birth cohorts through the life course are key drivers of increased per capita alcohol consumption in the United Kingdom. Recent declines in alcohol consumption appear to be attributable to reduced consumption and increased abstinence rates among the most recent birth cohorts, especially males, and general increased rates of abstention across the study period.


The gummy shark (Mustelus antarcticus) is a major target species in two substantial shark fisheries that operate in temperate Australian waters. Data on the reproductive biology of M. antarcticus in the waters off south-western Australia were obtained from samples collected by commercial vessels operating from Albany to Esperance, Western Australia. The samples contained a ratio of four females to one male. M. antarcticus is a viviparous, aplacental species. Males mature at a smaller size than females. Since the overwhelming majority of sharks sampled were mature, it was not possible to estimate precisely the mean size at which sexual maturity was attained. Examination of seasonal changes in the development of ova and testes, in uterine contents, and in embryo growth established that the period of parturition, mating and ovulation occurred over the 3 months between early November and early February. The gestation period was 11-12 months. Full-term embryos ranged in size from 30 to 36 cm total length and occurred in a sex ratio of one male to one female. The ovarian and gestational cycles proceed concurrently, with reproduction occurring annually. Only one of the 224 females analysed for uterine content was considered to be in a true post-partum condition. The number of embryos (N) per mother increased with the length of the mother (L) according to the regression N = exp(-4.13398 + 0.049171L). The reproductive biology of females collected off Albany and Esperance differed in some respects from that of females collected off south-eastern Australia.


Deep neural networks (DNNs) have been applied to various industries. In particular, DNNs on embedded devices have attracted considerable interest because they allow real-time and distributed processing on site. However, adversarial examples (AEs), which add small perturbations to the input data of DNNs to cause misclassification, are serious threats to DNNs. In this paper, a novel black-box attack is proposed to craft AEs based only on processing time, i.e., the side-channel leaks from DNNs on embedded devices. Unlike several existing black-box attacks that utilize output probability, the proposed attack exploits the relationship between the number of activated nodes and processing time without using training data, model architecture, parameters, substitute models, or output probability. The perturbations for AEs are determined by the differential processing time based on the input data of the DNNs in the proposed attack. The experimental results show that the AEs of the proposed attack effectively cause an increase in the number of activated nodes and the misclassification of one of the incorrect labels against the DNNs on a microcontroller unit. Moreover, these results indicate that the attack can evade gradient-masking and confidence reduction countermeasures, which conceal the output probability, to prevent the crafting of AEs against several black-box attacks. Finally, the countermeasures against the attack are implemented and evaluated to clarify that the implementation of an activation function with data-dependent timing leaks is the cause of the proposed attack.


Abstract The past two decades have seen an escalating struggle among the tobacco industry, the government, and antismoking organizations in Canada. Increasingly, the marketing and the consumption of tobacco products have been constrained. After the passage of the Tobacco Products Control Act and the Non-smokers' Health Act in 1988, Canada was said to have among the world's strongest tobacco promotion and smoking regulations. Now that key provisions of the Tobacco Products Control Act have been struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada and new legislation has been introduced in Parliament, it seems appropriate to examine the history of the regulation of tobacco products marketing and the control of smoking in this county. This paper provides a snapshot of tobacco sales since the 1960s and outlines the chronology of past attempts to govern the marketing of cigarettes and to constrain smoking. Based on this experience it is recommended that a new organizational approach be examined. A quasi-crown corporation staffed by experts in consumer package goods marketing is suggested as a way to counter the sophisticated tactics and strategies of the tobacco industry. In many important tobacco markets, there is a current running in favour of more stringent control of the advertising and promotion of cigarettes. The Canadian government banned all tobacco advertising and restricted sponsorships in 1988. Having now lost key sections of that legislation in the courts, the government recently introduced a new tobacco control law to Parliament. In the United States, the Federal Drug Administration has released new restrictions on the marketing of tobacco products. Some American states are considering legislation to disallow tobacco advertising as an expense for tax purposes. France has legislation designed to prohibit tobacco advertising in all media. Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Portugal have banned the advertising of tobacco products. Similar bans were introduced in nine Eastern European countries, but have since been repealed (Toxic Substances Board, 1989, p. xxxiii). Sweden, Singapore, and Italy have legislated bans. The European Parliament, which has legislated an interdiction on tobacco advertising on television, is tightening up the regulation of cigarette advertising on other media. New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand have passed legislation that bans tobacco advertising, requires health warnings on packages, and increases tobacco taxes. Japan and South Africa are said to be considering the elimination of cigarette advertising. Typically, new conclusions from research by health authorities or the response of anti-smoking lobby groups to cigarette advertising initiatives revives the seemingly dormant movement to curtail cigarette marketing. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pronouncement that second-hand tobacco smoke can cause cancer created a stir. Joe Camel's antics have raised the ire of antismoking lobbyists and health authorities. The Uptown campaign aimed at African Americans resulted in a storm of protest. In Canada, during the time that the legislation banning tobacco advertising was under appeal, the tobacco companies infuriated the health lobby by placing discount stickers over the health warnings on cigarette packages and using promotional messages inside packages to attract customer responses through 1-800 numbers. Since the late 1970s there has been a growing conflict between anti-tobacco advocates and the tobacco industry, with the federal government (and provincial and local governments) being buffeted by both parties as it attempted to find legislative solutions. This article examines the history of the regulation of the marketing of tobacco products and the control of smoking with a view to recommending an alternative organizational arrangement for the demarketing of tobacco products and smoking in Canada. The Historical Context Canadian cigarette consumption. …


Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality is widely used throughout the social sciences to analyse the state, liberalism, and individual subjectivity. Surprisingly, what remains ignored are the repeated claims made by Foucault throughout his seminal Security, Territory, Population lectures (2007) that governmentality depends more fundamentally on a specific form of time, than on the state or the subject. By paying closer attention to Foucault's comments on political temporality, this article reveals that governmentality emerged from, and depends upon, a very specific cosmological order that experiences time as indefinite: what Foucault calls our modern 'indefinite governmentality'. This is elaborated here in three ways. First, by reviewing the transformation from a linear Christian cosmology to our modern indefinite governmentality through what Foucault calls the 'de-governmentalization of the cosmos'. Second, by arguing that our experience of indefinite temporality was concretised by the geological discovery of 'deep time'. Third, by engaging a contemporary geological concept that returns humanity to its lost cosmological centrality, thereby re-governing the cosmos: the Anthropocene, or the 'human epoch'. Analysed using indefinite governmentality, Foucault's forewarning of an 'end of history' is implicit in the new concept of the Anthropocene's origins and ends. If it is the paradigm shift its proponents claim, then it threatens to end the temporality of the state, the subject, and governmentality itself.


The liberalisation of the South African airline industry through economic deregulation established competitive domestic and international markets. Sustainability of air transport, subject to these liberalisation effects, depends on efficient management information such as total-factor productivity, which necessitates comprehensive financial and operational information. Total-factor productivity in general, however, is not utilised by airlines as a key performance indicator since the measuring thereof is complex and regarded as tedious. Changes in air transport total-factor productivity can be measured in two ways. First, an index approach can be adopted that shows the proportional change in the inputs in relation to a proportional change in output. Secondly, a production function can be determined (econometric approach) that shows a change of productivity as a shift in the production curve. The research on which the article is based, exploited the theory, selection and application of an appropriate approach to determine changes of total-factor productivity of an individual airline to assist/support efficient decisionmaking by management.


In a prospective cohort study, clinical and biologic factors that contribute to maternal-child transmission of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) were studied. HIV-infected pregnant women and their infants were evaluated prospectively according to a standardized protocol. Of 204 evaluable women, 81% received zidovudine during their pregnancy. The infection rate among the 209 evaluable infants was 9.1%. By univariate analysis, histologic chorioamnionitis, prolonged rupture of membranes, and a history of genital warts were significantly associated with transmission. Additional factors associated with transmission that approached significance included a higher maternal virus load at delivery and the presence of cocaine in the urine. In a logistic regression model, histologic chorioamnionitis was the only independent predictor of transmission. Despite a significantly higher transmission rate at one site, no unique viral genotype was found at any site. Thus, chorioamnionitis was found to be the major risk factor for transmission among women receiving zidovudine.


Abstract The aim of this research was to assess the content and composition of the pollutants emitted by domestic central heating boilers equipped with an automatic underfeed fuel delivery system for the combustion chamber. The comparative research was conducted. It concerned fuel properties, flue gas parameters, contents of dust (fl y ash) and gaseous substances polluting the air in the flue gases emitted from a domestic CH boiler burning bituminous coal, pellets from coniferous wood, cereal straw, miscanthus, and sunflower husks, coniferous tree bark, and oats and barley grain. The emission factors for dust and gaseous air pollutants were established as they are helpful to assess the contribution of such boilers in the atmospheric air pollution. When assessing the researched boiler, it was found out that despite the development in design and construction, flue gases contained fly ash with a significant EC content, which affected the air quality.


Sensor stream data, particularly those collected at the millisecond of granularity, have been notoriously difficult to leverage classifiable signal out of. Adding to the challenge is the limited domain knowledge that exists at these biological sensor levels of interaction that prohibits a comprehensive manual feature engineering approach to classification of those streams. In this paper, we attempt to enhance the assessment capability of a touchscreen based ratio tutoring system by using Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) to predict the strategy being demonstrated by students from their 60hz data streams. We hypothesize that the ability of neural networks to learn representations automatically, instead of relying on human feature engineering, may benefit this classification task. Our RNN and baseline models were trained and cross-validated at several levels on historical data which had been human coded with the task strategy believed to be exhibited by the learner. Our RNN approach to this historically difficult high frequency data classification task moderately advances performance above baselines and we discuss what implication this level of assessment performance has on enabling greater adaptive supports in the tutoring system.


Performance of any search engine relies heavily on its Web crawler. Web crawlers are the programs that get webpages from the Web by following hyperlinks. These webpages are indexed by a search engine and can be retrieved by a user query. In the area of Web crawling, we still lack an exhaustive study that covers all crawling techniques. This study follows the guidelines of systematic literature review and applies it to the field of Web crawling. We used the standard procedure of carrying out a systematic literature review on 248 studies from a total of 1488 articles published in 12 leading journals and other premier conferences and workshops. Existing literature about the Web crawler is classified into different key subareas. Each subarea is further divided according to the techniques being used. We analyzed the distribution of various articles using multiple criteria and depicted conclusions. Various studies that use open source Web crawlers are also reported. We have highlighted future areas of research. We call for an increased awareness in various fields of the Web crawler and identify how techniques from other domains can be used for crawling the Web. Limitations and recommendations for future are also discussed. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2017, 7:e1218. doi: 10.1002/widm.1218


ABSTRACT This paper examines the interrelationship between law and lifestyle sports, viewed through the lens of parkour. We argue that the literature relating to legal approaches to lifestyle sport is currently underdeveloped. Law is viewed as a largely negative presence, seen particularly in terms of the ways in which counter-cultural activities are policed and regulated, where such activities are perceived to be transgressive and undesirable. We argue that this is a somewhat unsophisticated take on how the law can operate, with law constructed as an outcome of constraints to behaviour (where the law authorises or prohibits), distinct from the legal contexts, environments and spaces in which these relationships occur. We examine specifically the interrelationship between risk and benefit and how the law recognises issues of social utility or value, particularly within the context of lifestyle sport. A case study is provided of the employment of claims to social value present in the advancing institutionalisation of parkour in the United Kingdom. Through the case study, the paper seeks to foreground a more nuanced position that moves away from user-centred constructions of law as an imposition toward an appreciation of how the law can be used to support and extend claims to space.


Research into the sociology of intellectual life reveals numerous appeals to the public conscience of intellectuals. The way in which concepts such as 'the public intellectual' or 'intellectual life' are discussed, however, conceals a long history of biased thinking about thinking as an elite endeavour with prohibitive requirements for entry. This article argues that this tendency prioritizes the intellectual realm over the public sphere, and betrays any claims to public relevance unless a broader definition of what counts as intellectual life is introduced. By calling for a shift from the notion of public intellectuals to Jane Jacobs' (1961) idea of the 'public character', a publicly situated and affect-laden conception of intellectual life is articulated with the aim of redefining intellectual life as an ordinary, collective pursuit, rather than the prerogative of a few extraordinary individuals, as well as restoring the role of the senses in theoretical discussions on the life of the mind. The theoretical scope of this article therefore is to cast the net wider in the search for meanings of what public intellectual life is, can or may be in a larger context than 'intellectualist' discussions currently allow.


This paper, prepared for UNCTAD's initiative on responsible sovereign lending and borrowing, considers concrete strategies for implementing the Principles. It draws on studies in soft law and new governance, and on the recent experience in promoting best practices in international finance, including project finance, extraction revenue management, foreign aid, sovereign investment, and sovereign borrowing in the capital markets. It recommends maintaining the current non-binding character of the Principles, while embedding implementation in multi-stakeholder arrangements for ongoing disclosure, assessment, interpretation, and adaptation. This strategy has the best chance of changing behavior in sovereign lending and borrowing by creating constituencies for implementation and sustained compliance.


In this article, the author looks at the issue of the impartiality of chairs of the House of Commons
standing committees during the 41st Parliament. He explains the importance of the Standing
Orders of the House of Commons, constitutional conventions on responsible government and the
disciplinary mechanisms influencing the behaviour of committee members. He suggests reforms
to improve the operation of Canada�s House of Commons by examining the situation in the
United Kingdom and the way in which the Standing Orders of the House of Commons have
evolved over time.


It has been well established that air pollution is associated with health impacts. This study investigated the relationship between exposure to air pollutants and potential biomarkers of health effects. The research project was conducted in 2 separate study locations and cohorts.
Study 1: An Evaluation of Children's Exposures to Respirable Particulates, Environmental PM2.5, PAHs and Metal Compounds in The South West of Western Australia. A cross sectional study to evaluate the exposures of children (n=18), and controls (n=15) to respirable particulates PAHs and metal compounds in the South West of Australia during 2011. Ambient particulate matter (PM2.5) samples were found to be significantly higher in Collie as compared to Dalyellup. However, personal PM2.5 concentrations between locations were not significantly different and both PAH and heavy metals were below the levels of detection. Urinary levels of 1-hydroxypyrene (1-OHpy) were below the level of detection. Copper, selenium and nickel were present in urine samples and these were not significantly different between locations, nor was there any correlation with residential areas within study locations. Urinary nickel concentrations were higher than expected for nonoccupational cohorts and although statistically insignificant, mean values of urinary nickel were highest for homes using gas as a fuel source.
These data endorse current views that the reconstruction of PM2.5 exposures and related respiratory health effects based simply on the mass of airborne particulate matter alone is not sufficient in providing an insight to the respiratory health of susceptible subgroups such as children. The presence of certain urinary heavy metals suggests possible accumulation in participants via alternative routes of entry, probably a dietary source. Studies that rely purely on data accrued from ambient PM2.5 mass, and/or general health data might not detect or underestimate significant relationships between certain components of PM2.5.
Study 2: Urinary levels of malondialdehyde and 8-deoxyguanosine as biomarkers of oxidative DNA damage induced by exposure to nickel and cobalt in metal refinery workers. Metal mining and refinery workers in Australia have the potential to be occupationally exposed to quantities of heavy metals that may be associated with health impacts affecting major organ and immune systems. Current regulatory and internal company policies and guidelines require regular monitoring of occupational exposures of employees through a combination of air borne sampling as well as biological monitoring for heavy metals.
Toxic levels of heavy metals accumulated in the body have been shown to elicit inflammatory responses linked to exacerbated health effects impacting the respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous systems. There are many studies that have established a significant link between heavy metal exposure and increased oxidative stress. In light of these observations, this study investigated urinary levels of nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) and Malondialdehyde (MDA)…


Spectral clustering has been widely adopted because it can mine structures between data clusters. The clustering performance of spectral clustering depends largely on the quality of the constructed affinity graph, especially when the data has noise. Subspace learning can transform the original input features to a low-dimensional subspace and help to produce a robust method. Therefore, how to learn an intrinsic subspace and construct a pure affinity graph on a dataset with noise is a challenge in spectral clustering. In order to deal with this challenge, a new Robust Single-Step Spectral Clustering with Intrinsic Subspace (RS3CIS) method is proposed in this paper. RS3CIS uses a local representation method that projects the original data into a low-dimensional subspace through a row-sparse transformation matrix and uses the `2,1-norm of the transformation matrix as a penalty term to achieve noise suppression. In addition, RS3CIS introduces Laplacian matrix rank constraint so that it can output an affinity graph with an explicit clustering structure, which makes the final clustering result to be obtained in a single-step of constructing an affinity matrix. One synthetic dataset and six real benchmark datasets are used to verify the performance of the proposed method by performing clustering and projection experiments. Experimental results show that RS3CIS outperforms the related methods with respect to clustering quality, robustness and dimension reduction.


Other than that new exporters account for a large part of aggregate export growth, we know little else. We document that aggregate export growth in Chile is driven by only a few new exporters. These exporters are new business entities, operate new plants, and behave much like experienced exporters: they start large and have high survival rates. Moreover, 70 percent of these new firms are owned by existing businesses and are likely the by-product of either domestic spin-offs or foreign direct investment (24 percent). By focusing on the average new exporter, the existing models of new exporter dynamics miss these key features of export growth. (JEL F14, F23, L22, L60, M13, O14, O19)


The research concentrates on the design, development and calibration of a high performance Electrical Impedance Mammography (EIM) system for early detection of breast cancer at the macro and micro scale (at an early stage applicable for different breast sizes and shapes). The enhancement of the Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) system focuses on developing electrical and electronic instrumentations and improving the current source topologies to make them operate at multiple frequencies for the purpose of measuring permittivity and conductivity of different breast tissues. The calibration, assessment systems have employed current calibration in the EIT to evaluate the impedance distribution. This facilitates the acquisition of accurate impedance images to enable images of the internal structure of the breast to be constructed. A constraint on EIT systems is that the current injection system suffers from the effects of stray capacitance having a major impact on the hardware subsystem as the EIT is an ill-posed inverse problem which depends on the noise level in EIT measured data and regularization parameter in the reconstruction algorithm. This research aims are to prevent this problem by using a capacitance cancellation method based on a General Impedance Converter (GIC) implemented by operation of a second generation of current conveyor called OCCII-GIC and calibration methods to facilitate operation in the high frequency range. An EIT system based on a planar 85-electrode channel and using a Microcontroller unit (MCU) for addressing control between 85 electrodes and implementing calibration methods has been constructed. In EIT systems, assessment, validation of the performance and calibration of systematic errors in the electrical field generated inside of the interrogated volume is important. Evaluation of the EIT system will be assessed using a realistic electronic phantom (E-phantom). This enables the evaluation of the different conductivity values of the tissue, which has been created and evaluated based on the RSC circuit model for the different electrical conductivities and electrical impedivities in breast tissue.


We measure the total-risk-adjusted (as opposed to factor-risk-adjusted) performance of hedge fund indices in well-diversified portfolios. Alpha is defined as the difference between, on the one hand, the average return on a mean-variance efficient portfolio containing exclusively traditional market assets (such as stocks and bonds) and, on the other hand, the average return on a mean-variance efficient portfolio containing traditional market assets and the new asset (such as a hedge fund index), where both portfolios carry the same risk. Alpha is conditioned on this risk level. Outlier-robust mean-variance efficient portfolios are constructed by using Minimum Volume Ellipsoid (MVE) estimates of location and scatter. We find that, between July 1995 and December 2005, the broad Credit Suisse/Tremont hedge index did not deliver statistically significant alpha.


Abstract
 A total of 96 epiphyllous liverwort species and 2 infraspecific taxa were collected, of which 18 are new to Malaysia, one is new to the Asian mainland and one variety is new to science: Cololejeunea magnilobula var. falcidentata. New synonymy of Cololejeunea stylosa and Cololejeunea papulosa is established. Illustrations for Cololejeunea magnilobula var. falcidentata and several taxa new to Malaysia are provided.


The creation and configuration of the universe depends on the imagination of a "Journey" in the existence realms. This journey contains Source/Beginning, Direction, and the Destination which can make the main structure of the existence to organize the "place". Using this cosmetic place, there will be a place created for the "life's flow"; the life in which people experience the existence. Accepting these ideas, one can argue that "place" as "center" is rooted in the philosophy of being. Both Isfahan school of thought and Heidegger, separately, introduce some basic ideas according to the concept of "Existence/Existing" from which we come up with scope of the co-existence among the concepts of "universe", "place", "life", and "center". In this article, referring to the above mentioned ideas, we will try to find out what would the real meaning of the center be. This task leads to the using of the hermeneutic in an adaptive approach in terms of research method, although structure basics are rooted in the realm of Logical reasoning. The subjects that will be considered in this article will adapt the grounded ontological points of views in both schools which interpret universe, human being, and the world. Based on the findings from these considerations we will search for the meaning of center in those areas. The findings of this research can help us to have the clearer understanding of the concept of the meaning of center in a historical realm which will lead to a better understanding of this concept in our time. Knowing this aspect, the meaning of center from an ontological scope to the biological one can be transformed.


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