We examine the relationship between income inequality and corporate demography in regional labor markets and specify two mechanisms through which the number and diversity of employers in a labor market affect wage dispersion. Vertical differentiation, or variation in the ability of organizations of a particular kind to benefit from labor inputs, amplifies inequality through quality sorting, as the most productive employees in a particular domain pair with the most productive employers. Increasing horizontal differentiation—variation in the kinds of organizations—reduces inequality as individuals can more easily find firms interested in their distinctive attributes and talents. Our analysis of Danish census data provides support for each thesis. Increased numbers of organizations operating within an industry in a region, a proxy for vertical differentiation, increases wage dispersion in that industry-region. Variation in wages, however, declines with increased horizontal differentiation among employers; this is measured by the diversity of industries offering employment within a region and the variance in firm sizes in an industry-region.


In this dissertation, light-emitting-diode (LED) drivers are investigated for efficiency issues related to driving Red-Green-Blue (RGB) pixels and multiple LED strings in parallel. A high-efficiency digitally controlled RGB LED driver was designed for driving a 3x3 RGB LED display panel. A multiplexer was used to sense the voltage drop across the current controllers. This driver maintained a minimum drive voltage across the RGB LED pixels required to keep it in regulation leading to a reduction of unwanted power losses in the RGB LED pixels by selecting the minimum drop across the current-controllers as the reference voltage of the digital controller. Additionally, analog dimming was implemented to dim each individual LED in a 3x3 RGB LED display panel. Efficiencies of 85.6 %, 93.3 %, and 91.1 % were experimentally obtained for red, green, and blue LEDs, respectively at the rated output current. For comparison, efficiencies of 38.3% for the red LED, 66.2 % for the green LED, and 64.5 % for the blue LED at the nominal current of 20mA using a 5 V supply were achieved in conventional LED drivers. For parallel connected LED strings, a current controller is required for each string to maintain the desired current with the drive voltage provided by a switch-mode power converter (SMPC). A novel analog/digital LED driver controller was designed for driving a two-string LED load with three white LEDs in each string for backlight application in liquid-crystal-displays (LCDs). In this implementation, an analog controller was used to control the output voltage of the SMPC while a digital controller was used to achieve the minimum drive voltage across the output LED strings, leading to an efficiency of 89 % at the rated output current. A phase shifted pulse width modulation (PSPWM) dimming was implemented to reduce load stresses, improve electromagnetic-interferences (EMI) and increase system efficiency. A mathematical model, based on multirate simulation technique, for merging the analog and digital controllers was proposed. Finally, a LED driver chip was designed and fabricated using a 0.5 micron CMOS process to reduce size of the overall LED driver system. The integrated circuit consisted of a 16channel analog multiplexers, five current controllers, and buffer circuits. The LED driver chip function was experimentally verified using a SMPC to drive a five-string LED load in parallel with a single green LED in each string for display panel applications by maintaining a minimum drive voltage across the LED strings, thus leading to an efficiency of 75 % at the rated output current. This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. Dissertation Director:


Requiring only category names as user input is a highly attractive, yet hardly explored, setting for text categorization. Earlier bootstrapping results relied on similarity in LSA space, which captures rather coarse contextual similarity. We suggest improving this scheme by identifying concrete references to the category name's meaning, obtaining a special variant of lexical expansion.


Purpose To clarify the concept of fragmentation of chronic care and contribute to the international debate on how to reform systems to better address the needs of people with a chronic disorder. Theory In a system wherein care of health and cure of disease get managed, differentiation or the division of work is its very essence and strength. If reducing differentiation is not a realistic option, the level of integration shall have to be increased to reduce unwanted fragmentation. However, with significantly less attention in the scientific literature for fragmentation of chronic care, we have found ourselves implementing solutions before sufficiently understanding the problem. Methods Twenty experts from the US (9), the UK (3), Australia (2), Canada (2), the Netherlands (2), Denmark (1), Germany (1) were interviewed by phone or face-to-face between November 2008 and February 2009. The proceedings were audio-taped and transcribed and transcripts were examined by authors to identify emergent themes. These were agreed by discussion and the data were categorized independently by both authors, who subsequently agreed an overall classification. Results Fragmentation of chronic care was referred to as 'a disconnection that has to matter for a particular person on an individual level'. Experts addressed fragmentation from two perspectives: user of care and provider of care. For each perspective various forms of fragmentation were mentioned (e.g. professional, organizational, financial, informational). Fragmentation was characterized as a multi-factorial problem having a mixture of consequences ranging from less severe to very severe. Experts mentioned various drivers of fragmentation on multiple levels. In minimizing fragmentation needs of patients should be taken as a starting point when addressing the drivers in a coordinative and/or integrative fashion. This should be done by a multi-stakeholder coalition. Measures should be selected from a predefined set to assess the impact on fragmentation. Conclusion From the interviews with experts a framework was derived which aims to enable stakeholders in chronic care to: more structurally assess fragmentation, indentify areas for improvement, and select measures to assess the impact on fragmentation of chronic care. Support for this research was provided by The Commonwealth Fund. The views presented here are those of the authors and should not be contributed to The Commonwealth Fund or its directors, officers, or staff.


Abstract Well test rates are measured with test separators operating at varying pressure and temperature during initial production tests for a new well and during periodic tests used to monitor well performance and allocate multi-well production separator rates. Converting test separator gas and oil volumetric rates to a common (fixed) set of surface separator conditions is useful to ensure consistent history matching and rate allocation, development of valid inflow performance relations, and correlating well performance changes over time. This paper provides a method to convert reported test rates to a molar compositional wellstream rate. This compositional wellstream will exactly reproduce the reported test rates at the separator conditions prevailing when rates were measured. The compositional wellstream rate can then be re-processed through a fixed set of separator conditions to provide total surface gas and stock-tank oil rates. The requirements for converting test rates to a compositional wellstream include: (1) an appropriate EOS model, (2) an estimate of the wellstream composition – the "seed feed", (3) test separator volumetric rates, and (4) test separator conditions of pressure and temperature. The seed feed is usually the previously-determined wellstream composition from an earlier test. The seed feed is flashed at test separator pressure and temperature, resulting in equilibrium gas and equilibrium oil compositions. These equilibrium compositions are recombined in a ratio that yields exactly the test separator gas-oil ratio with the EOS model, thereby yielding wellstream composition. Properties of the separator phases are used to convert separator volumes to moles and thereby wellstream molar rate. Sometimes a similar conversion is needed for volumetric gas and oil rates resulting from a multi-stage separation process. An important example is conversion of black-oil rates to compositional wellstreams, where the black-oil PVT tables have been generated from a multi-stage separation process. Finally, we discuss the processing of compositional wellstreams through a higher-level (group, field, or asset) process facility that takes into account the total feed composition of the process facility, and how to back-allocate well contributions of total product rates.


The propagation of a square beam and a Gaussian beam along the interface of two photorefractive crystals is studied theoretically. Both of the crystals have a diffusion nonlinearity of the gradient type (with a sign opposite that of the diffusion nonlinearity), which is able to balance the self-bending of the beams and hence to produce a photorefractive surface wave. A comparison of this wave with the symmetrical and antisymmetrical surface waves propagating along the photorefractive crystals' interface is also given.


This paper explores the role of meso- and macro-context in the interpretation of text, on the basis of our research on the text of Greek laws.The use of the grammatical categories of tense, aspect and modality in these texts deviates from everyday use (Panaretou 2005, Moser and Panaretou 2009). The study is based on a comparison of native speakers' judgements (elicited through questionnaires and interviews and subjected to qualitative analysis) on law texts and everyday contexts containing the performance of the same type of speech act as the law: a mother setting a rule for her children and delineating the consequences of breaking this rule. Uses judged unanimously as ungrammatical and unacceptable in the latter context, went unnoticed in law texts. Our conclusion is that what licenses deviant uses is not the type of speech act, but the genre of law texts; it is argued that, as a form of meso-context, the genre of law texts, by virtue of being highly institutionalized within the cognitive and socio-cultural context in which it is embedded (Fetzer 2004, 2007), creates a cognitive frame so powerful as to impose specific interpretations even to grammatical forms which would be unacceptable in different (con)texts.


For years, researchers have been puzzled by why so few people purchase fixed, immediate, lifetime annuities for their retirement portfolios. Rational theories have been proposed, but none can fully explain the small size of the actual market. Very recently, academics have turned their attention to possible psychological reasons for the low demand. Interestingly, despite the well-established role psychology plays in other important retirement decisions — for example, 401(k) participation — the behavioral finance aspects of the retirement distribution phase have been largely understudied. In addition, finance researchers are realizing how much can be learned from the established field of marketing, where the role of psychological biases in all types of decisionmaking has been long understood. This brief discusses how marketing, and in particular the framing of the message, can affect a purchaser's decision to buy an annuity. This decision is becoming increasingly important given the shift to 401(k) plans, as individuals will need to determine how best to manage their accumulated nest egg in retirement.


The paper starts by reviewing the composite damage types, both due to fatigue and degradation under normal operation condition and due to accidental barely visible damage (BVD) events. Next, the paper reviews two major composites structural health monitoring (SHM) concerns: (a) impact damage detection; (b) in service fatigue. Examples are given of damage sensing techniques with a variety of sensors: piezo transducers, fiber optics, strain gages, composite electrical properties, etc. Finally, the paper summarizes the major challenges for composites SHM and identifies research opportunities.


One-to-One is transforming our world--here' s how you can join the Revolution What would your organization do with a technology that lets you crowdsource instantly and effortlessly and reach people who WANT to hear from you wherever they happen to be? Such a tool already exists and it's in billions of mobile devices worldwide: SMS, or text messaging. However, there's more to messaging than simply broadcasting texts. To succeed with mobile messaging in the long term--without disrupting your business or distracting your customers--you need to understand the bigger movement that's underway. The Mobile Marketing Revolution gives you the framework to listen to, empower, inform, engage, and enlist the very people on which your success depends. From fundraising to polling to selling products and services, this book shows how to use mobile messaging to turn even the briefest initial interaction into a permanent engaged relationship. Better still, you can achieve all this without expanding overhead or building campaigns from scratch, but instead by integrating mobile into your organization's existing processes and practices.


by Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer. New York: Bloomsbury, 2000. 304 pp. $27.50.These are reflections some 60 years later on formative experiences in childhood and youth. The speakers, Jewish under Hitler's racial laws, fled perilous conditions in Germany, Austria, or Czechoslovakia and travelled to Britain in the ten months between the pogrom of Kristallnacht and the outbreak of the European war. They were admitted to Britain thanks to Neville Chamberlain's government, and their journeys and receptions were organized by Jewish and Quaker organizations. Their parents stayed behind in often desperate circumstances in spite of huge pressures to force their emigration because of the difficulty of finding a country that allowed them entry. Many of the children lost their parents in the final solution.The trains (and a few boats) on which the children travelled are called "Kindertransports"; the children themselves are called "Kinder" (in the singular, "Kind"). These expressions specialize the usual German meaning of these words. The book under review consists mainly of interviews with Kinder. It also contains interviews with several of their mothers and two men who helped to arrange the Kindertransports. The book covers the childhood of the Kinder in their home countries but concentrates on their lives in England. Their stories range from the harrowing to the uplifting. The most surprising relate the efforts by some Kinder to obtain coveted entry visas to England for their parents, and the successes that were achieved. There is also the excellent terse introduction by David Cesarani which gives the historical context. The final section is a tribute by Deborah Oppenheimer to her mother, a Kind, which is one of the very moving parts of this book written from the point of view of a member of the next generation.The movie on which the book is based has most of this material, and in addition has contemporary footage which evokes Britain at war as well as anything I recall. It fully deserves its Oscar.Contradictory as the quotations are at the head of this review, they express some of the deeper effects of being uprooted: unhappiness and attachment to the country that gave shelter, a not infrequent combination in the same person. This, and much else, is well documented in many variations in Harrison and Oppenheimer's book.Ethnic harassment, temporary or permanent separation from their parents, and the challenges of living in a foreign country, these are experiences common to almost all Kinder. There must be many others who had to face one of these hazards but few who were confronted with all three at a comparable age. Obviously all had some effect on the future characters and lives of the Kinder. But one may ask: which of these factors is the most significant? …


In countries such as Britain and the US, court witnesses must declare they will provide truthful evidence and are often compelled to publicly choose between religious ("oath") and secular ("affirmation") versions of this declaration. Might defendants who opt to swear an oath enjoy more favourable outcomes than those who choose to affirm? Two preliminary, pre-registered survey studies using minimal vignettes (Study 1, N = 443; Study 2, N = 913) indicated that people associate choice of the oath with credible testimony; and that participants, especially religious participants, discriminate against defendants who affirm. In a third, Registered Report study (Study 3, N = 1821), we used a more elaborate audiovisual mock trial paradigm to better estimate the real-world influence of declaration choice. Participants were asked to render a verdict for a defendant who either swore or affirmed, and were themselves required to swear or affirm that they would try the defendant in good faith. Overall, the defendant was not considered guiltier when affirming rather than swearing, nor did mock-juror belief in God moderate this effect. However, jurors who themselves swore an oath did discriminate against the affirming defendant. Exploratory analyses suggest this effect may be driven by authoritarianism, perhaps because high-authoritarian jurors consider the oath the traditional (and therefore correct) declaration to choose. We discuss the real-world implications of these findings and conclude the religious oath is an antiquated legal ritual that needs reform.


Abstract Weed seedbanks have been studied intensively at local scales, but to date, there have been no regional-scale studies of weed seedbank persistence. Empirical and modeling studies indicate that reducing weed seedbank persistence can play an important role in integrated weed management. Annual seedbank persistence of 13 summer annual weed species was studied from 2001 through 2003 at eight locations in the north central United States and one location in the northwestern United States. Effects of seed depth placement, tillage, and abiotic environmental factors on seedbank persistence were examined through regression and multivariate ordinations. All species examined showed a negative relationship between hydrothermal time and seedbank persistence. Seedbank persistence was very similar between the two years of the study for common lambsquarters, giant foxtail, and velvetleaf when data were pooled over location, depth, and tillage. Seedbank persistence of common lambsquarters, giant foxtail, and velvetleaf from October 2001 through 2002 and October 2002 through 2003 was, respectively, 52.3% and 60.0%, 21.3% and 21.8%, and 57.5% and 57.2%. These results demonstrate that robust estimates of seedbank persistence are possible when many observations are averaged over numerous locations. Future studies are needed to develop methods of reducing seedbank persistence, especially for weed species with particularly long-lived seeds. Nomenclature: Common lambsquarters, Chenopodium album L. CHEAL; giant foxtail, Setaria faberi Herrm. SETFA; velvetleaf, Abutilon theophrasti Medik. ABUTH.


Descripción del virreinato del Perú, en particular de Lima was written in Spanish during the first half of the 17th century by an unknown author. The manuscript was found in Paris and presented by Riva Agüero in 1914. Underlying the 2009 and 2013 editions is the thesis that the anonymous author would have been a Portuguese New Christian who travelled through the Spanish empire during the period of union between the Iberian thrones in parallel with the established legal separation. Just as Pratt used the Andean manuscript of Guaman Poma de Ayala in applying the concepts of "contact zone", this article utilises her theories to try to understand why this supposed Portuguese individual used the Spanish language in his description of the territory of ancient Peru.


Recent work on comparative variation has highlighted two major syntactic environments encouraging the choice of the more explicit more -variant, a) the use of non-attributive rather than attributive adjectives and b) the use of complemented rather than uncomplemented (non-attributive) adjectives (cf., e.g., Mondorf 2009). The present article shows that throughout the Modern English period these environments have also favoured the choice of the more explicit suffixed variant in dual form intensifiers. In addition, the paper briefly assesses some important theories that have been or could be invoked to account for these findings. Specifically, it is shown that the prosodic (sub)type of the intensifier itself does not play a decisive role in selecting the suffixed or suffixless variant.


In the past decade, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research has been focused on the acquisition of physiological and biochemical information noninvasively. Probably the most notable accomplishment in this general effort has been the introduction of the MR approaches to map brain function. This capability, often referred to as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, is based on the sensitivity of MR signals to secondary metabolic and hemodynamic responses that accompany increased neuronal activity. Despite this indirect link to neurotransmission, recent studies demonstrate that under appropriate conditions, these fMRI maps have accuracy at the scale of submillimeter neuronal organizations such as the orientation columns of the visual cortex, and are directly proportional in magnitude to electrical signals generated by the neurons. High magnetic fields have been critical in achieving such specificity in functional maps because they provide advantages through increased signal-to-noise ratio, diminishing blood-related contributions to mapping signals, and enhanced sensitivity to microvasculature. Equally important is MR spectroscopy studies, which, at high magnetic fields, provide for the first time the opportunity to measure local metabolic correlates of human brain function and neurotransmission rates. Together, these MR methods provide a complementary set of approaches for probing important aspects of the nervous system.


Background: Men and older women have been shown to be at higher risk of adverse COVID-19 outcomes. Animal model studies of SARS-CoV and MERS suggest that the age and sex difference in COVID-19 symptom severity may be due to a protective effect of the female sex hormone estrogen. Females have shown an ability to mount a stronger immune response to a variety of viral infections because of more robust humoral and cellular immune responses. Objectives: We sought to determine whether COVID-19 positivity increases in women entering menopause. We also aimed to identify whether premenopausal women taking exogenous hormones in the form of the combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP) and post-menopausal women taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) have lower predicted rates of COVID-19, using our published symptom-based model. Design: The COVID Symptom Study developed by Kings College London and Zoe Global Limited was launched in the UK on 24th March 2020. It captured self-reported information related to COVID-19 symptoms. Data used for this study included records collected between 7th May - 15th June 2020. Main outcome measures: We investigated links between COVID-19 rates and 1) menopausal status, 2) COCP use and 3) HRT use, using symptom-based predicted COVID-19, tested COVID-19, and disease severity based on requirement for hospital attendance or respiratory support. Participants: Female users of the COVID Symptom Tracker Application in the UK, including 152,637 women for menopause status, 295,689 for COCP use, and 151,193 for HRT use. Analyses were adjusted for age, smoking and BMI. Results: Post-menopausal women aged 40-60 years had a higher rate of predicted COVID (P=0.003) and a corresponding range of symptoms, with consistent, but not significant trends observed for tested COVID-19 and disease severity. Women aged 18-45 years taking COCP had a significantly lower predicted COVID-19 (P=8.03E-05), with a reduction in hospital attendance (P=0.023). Post-menopausal women using HRT or hormonal therapies did not exhibit consistent associations, including increased rates of predicted COVID-19 (P=2.22E-05) for HRT users alone. Conclusions: Our findings support a protective effect of estrogen on COVID-19, based on positive association between predicted COVID-19 and menopausal status, and a negative association with COCP use. HRT use was positively associated with COVID-19 symptoms; however, the results should be considered with caution due to lack of data on HRT type, route of administration, duration of treatment, and potential comorbidities. Trial registration: The App Ethics has been approved by KCL ethics Committee REMAS ID 18210, review reference LRS-19/20-18210


This paper studies few-shot relation extraction, which aims at predicting the relation for a pair of entities in a sentence by training with a few labeled examples in each relation. To more effectively generalize to new relations, in this paper we study the relationships between different relations and propose to leverage a global relation graph. We propose a novel Bayesian meta-learning approach to effectively learn the posterior distribution of the prototype vectors of relations, where the initial prior of the prototype vectors is parameterized with a graph neural network on the global relation graph. Moreover, to effectively optimize the posterior distribution of the prototype vectors, we propose to use the stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics, which is related to the MAML algorithm but is able to handle the uncertainty of the prototype vectors. The whole framework can be effectively and efficiently optimized in an end-to-end fashion. Experiments on two benchmark datasets prove the effectiveness of our proposed approach against competitive baselines in both the few-shot and zero-shot settings.


Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a multisystem connective disorder in which endothelial damage leads to fibrotic reactions through platelet hyperaggregability and inappropriate release of platelet-derived growth factors. With other colleagues, I have previously reported that melatonin seems to have a direct favorable effect on endothelium (stopping of bleeding symptoms in thrombocytopenic patients). Furthermore, melatonin has been described as performing an antiaggregating activity, and ACTH and vitamin E have been described as increasing melatonin effects. This provided the rationale to treat 5 SSc patients with melatonin plus ACTH and vitamin E. Patients received the treatment for 1 month. The therapy was continued for 2 additional months in patients with stable or responding disease. After 3 months, the stable or responding patients continued the therapy for 2 months and longer. All patients had a partial response after 1 month. Continuing with the treatment, none of the 5 patients had disease progression (average follow-up time of 16.6 months; range, 7-44 months). Toxicity was lacking, with the only side effect being drowsiness. Our experience suggests that the combination of melatonin-ACTH-vitamin E may be safe and effective in patients with SSc.


Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) is the challenge of finding machine learning models with high predictive performance without the need for specialized data scientists. Existing approaches optimize a pipeline of pre-processing, feature engineering, model selection and hyperparameter optimization, and assume that the user is fully aware of the choice of the underlying metric (such as precision, recall or F1-measure). However, end-users are often unaware of the actual implications of choosing a metric, as the resulting models often significantly vary in their predictions. In this work, we propose a framework to personalise AutoML for individual end-users by learning a designated ranking model from pairwise user preferences and using the latter as the metric function for state-of-the-art AutoML systems. Given a set of possible metrics, we generate candidate models by repeatedly running AutoML with combinations of the former and have the user choose between pairs of resulting models. We use RankNet to learn a personalized ranking function for the end-user, which is used as loss function for final run of a standard AutoML system. To evaluate our proposed framework we define three preferences a user could pursue and show that a ranking model is able to learn these preferences from pairwise comparisons. Furthermore, by changing the metric function of AutoML we show that a personalized preference is able to improve machine learning pipelines. We evaluated the ability of learning a personalized preference and the entire framework on several OpenML multi-class classification datasets.


This IBM Redbooks publication is an IBM and Cisco collaboration that articulates how IBM and Cisco can bring the benefits of their respective companies to the modern data center.It documents the architectures, solutions, and benefits that can be achieved by implementing a data center based on IBM server, storage, and integrated systems, with the broader Cisco network.We describe how to design a state-of-the art data center and networking infrastructure combining Cisco and IBM solutions. The objective is to provide a reference guide for customers looking to build an infrastructure that is optimized for virtualization, is highly available, is interoperable, and is efficient in terms of power and space consumption. It will explain the technologies used to build the infrastructure, provide use cases, and give guidance on deployments.


Accumulation of aggregated amyloid-beta peptide (Abeta) in the brain is a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD). In vitro studies indicate that the 40- to 42-residue Abeta peptide in solution will undergo self-assembly leading to the transient appearance of soluble protofibrils and ultimately to insoluble fibrils. The Abeta peptide is amphiphilic and accumulates preferentially at a hydrophilic/hydrophobic interface. Solid surfaces and air-water interfaces have been shown previously to promote Abeta aggregation, but detailed characterization of these aggregates has not been presented. In this study Abeta(1-40) introduced to aqueous buffer in a two-phase system with chloroform aggregated 1-2 orders of magnitude more rapidly than Abeta in the buffer alone. The interface-induced aggregates were released into the aqueous phase and persisted for 24-72 h before settling as a visible precipitate at the interface. Thioflavin T fluorescence and circular dichroism analyses confirmed that the Abeta aggregates had a beta-sheet secondary structure. However, these aggregates were far less stable than Abeta(1-40) protofibrils prepared in buffer alone and disaggregated completely within 3 min on dilution. Atomic force microscopy revealed that the aggregates consisted of small globules 4-5 nm in height and long flexible fibers composed of these globules aligned roughly along a longitudinal axis, a morphology distinct from that of Abeta protofibrils prepared in buffer alone. The relative instability of the fibers was supported by fiber interruptions apparently introduced by brief washing of the AFM grids. To our knowledge, unstable aggregates of Abeta with beta-sheet structure and fibrous morphology have not been reported previously. Our results provide the clearest evidence yet that the intrinsic beta-sheet structure of an in vitro Abeta aggregate depends on the aggregation conditions and is reflected in the stability of the aggregate and the morphology observed by atomic force microscopy. Resolution of these structural differences at the molecular level may provide important clues to the further understanding of amyloid formation in vivo.


A mass‐balance model for Lake Superior was applied to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and mercury to determine the major routes of entry and the major mechanisms of loss from this ecosystem as well as the time required for each contaminant class to approach steady state. A two‐box model (water column, surface sediments) incorporating seasonally adjusted environmental parameters was used. Both numerical (forward Euler) and analytical solutions were employed and compared. For validation, the model was compared with current and historical concentrations and fluxes in the lake and sediments. Results for PCBs were similar to prior work showing that air‐water exchange is the most rapid input and loss process. The model indicates that mercury behaves similarly to a moderately‐chlorinated PCB, with air‐water exchange being a relatively rapid input and loss process. Modeled accumulation fluxes of PBDEs in sediments agreed with measured values reported in the literature. Wet deposition rates were about three times greater than dry particulate deposition rates for PBDEs. Gas deposition was an important process for tri‐ and tetra‐BDEs (BDEs 28 and 47), but not for higher‐brominated BDEs. Sediment burial was the dominant loss mechanism for most of the PBDE congeners while volatilization was still significant for tri‐ and tetra‐BDEs. Because volatilization is a relatively rapid loss process for both mercury and the most abundant PCBs (tri‐ through penta‐), the model predicts that similar times (from 2 ‐ 10 yr) are required for the compounds to approach steady state in the lake. The model predicts that if inputs of Hg(II) to the lake decrease in the future then concentrations of mercury in the lake will decrease at a rate similar to the historical decline in PCB concentrations following the ban on production and most uses in the U.S. In contrast, PBDEs are likely to respond more slowly if atmospheric concentrations are reduced in the future because loss by volatilization is a much slower process for PBDEs, leading to lesser overall loss rates for PBDEs in comparison to PCBs and mercury. Uncertainties in the chemical degradation rates and partitioning constants of PBDEs are the largest source of uncertainty in the modeled times to steady‐state for this class of chemicals. The modeled organic PBT loading rates are sensitive to uncertainties in scavenging efficiencies by rain and snow, dry deposition velocity, watershed runoff concentrations, and uncertainties in air‐water exchange such as the effect of atmospheric stability.


A small number of firms hold significant market power in a wide variety of sectors of the economy, leading commentators across the political spectrum to call for a reinvigoration of antitrust enforcement. But the antitrust agencies have been surprisingly timid in response to this challenge, and when they have tried to assert themselves, they have often found that hostile courts block their ability to foster competitive markets. In other areas of law, Congress delegates power to agencies, agencies make regulations setting standards, and courts provide deferential review after the fact. Antitrust doesn't work this way. Courts – made up of non-expert, unaccountable judges – set much of antitrust policy. This report provides a set of recommendations to take antitrust away from the courts – to restructure the antitrust laws and agencies in order to enhance the government's ability to enforce antitrust laws more effectively and more transparently.


Drinking water distribution systems pose the potential to transport biological and chemical contaminants to the consumers' tap that can be responsible for widespread waterborne disease outbreaks (WBDO). A need exists to improve the ability to monitor contaminants that can attach to the distribution system's interior surfaces and to obtain samples for diagnosing both the cause of a WBDO and the extent of contamination within the system. In this study, a porous media reactor colonized with a mixed-species drinking water biofilm was used to study the capture of Salmonella typhimurium as a model pathogen. Parallel reactors were operated under constant flow (CF) and constant head (CH) to compare flow-regime induced spatial variations in biofilm accumulation and the resulting pathogen capture. Parallel test reactors were operated with 0.5 mg/L supplemental carbon until the accumulation of biofilm in the CH reactor reduced the flowrate to the target sampling point (CF flowrate). Both test reactors were then inoculated with slug doses of approximately 3x10 CFU S. typhimurium. Effluent water samples were collected for five pore-volumes, followed by the destructive sampling of the reactor. Plate counts were used to enumerate S. typhimurium present in effluent samples and captured within the reactor. Cell counts in effluent samples displayed an accelerated breakthrough compared with a non-reactive tracer. Compared with uncolonized control reactors (0.13%), colonized reactors (0.96%) captured significantly more cells. Despite spatial variations in biofilm accumulation, colonized CH and CF reactors captured comparable amounts of S. typhimurium. Increasing sampling duration to twenty pore volumes demonstrated greater retention of captured cells in the colonized reactors over the control reactors. S. typhimurium transport and capture was also observed in a 0.9 mm square flowcell packed with 100 μm beads using a confocal microscope. Interception and straining were responsible for capture on clean beads while biofilm accumulation narrowed pore throats sufficiently to allow for mechanical filtration to occur. This study demonstrates that using biofilm colonized porous media may be an effective tool to capture pathogens for monitoring drinking water distribution systems.


A dose-finding study was performed with respect to the clinical applicability and tolerability of three different concentrations of propolis special extract GH 2002 in a lip balm (0.1%, 0.5% and 1%). The trial was designed as a double-blind, randomized dermatological study in 150 outpatients with Herpes labialis. The primary parameter was the duration in days until painless incrustation in 50% or 90% of the patients (observable in 121 patients). Secondary parameters were local pain (assessed on a visual analogue scale), itching, burning and tension/ swelling on a verbal rating scale, and tolerability. Visits were performed on days 2/3, 5/6 and 8/9. Best efficacy results with shortest healing time (3.4 and 5.4 days in the 50th and 90th percentile, respectively; p = 0.008 vs. 1% and 0.09 vs. 0.1%) and good tolerability were observed with the 0.5% concentration. All three concentrations achieved highly significant therapeutic results in comparison with baseline values (p < 0.0005) for all secondary parameters as early as day 2/3. Analgesia was the most prominent effect for the patients. Conclusion: The 0.5 % concentration of propolis special extract GH 2002 in a lip balm was found to have the best risk-benefit ratio for the treatment of Herpes labialis.


An adaptive system having 70,400 wave-front control channels has been experimentally analyzed. Wave-front control is based on the diffractive-feedback principle and requires neither a reference wave nor direct wave-front measurements. The key system elements are a liquid-crystal television used as a phase modulator, a CCD camera, and an optoelectronic feedback loop. Experiments demonstrated efficient suppression of wave-front distortions belonging to a bandpass spectral domain. Results demonstrate the system's potential as a secondary high-resolution adaptive feedback system for adaptive optics applications.


Beethoven's Chamber Music in Context provides professional and amateur musicians, and music lovers generally, with a complete survey of Beethoven's chamber music and the background to each individual work - the loyalty of patrons, musicians and friends on the one hand; increasing deafness and uncertain health on the other. Attention is paid to the influence of such large-scale compositions as the Eroica Symphony and Fidelio on the chamber music of his middle years and the Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony on his late quartets. The author also lays stress on Beethoven's ever-increasing freedom of form - largely a result of his mastery of improvisation and a powerful symbol of the fusion of classical discipline with the subversive spirit of romantic adventure which characterises his mature music. Beethoven's friends were not shy about asking him what his music meant, or what inspired him, and it is clear that he attached the greatest importance to the words he used when describing the character of his compositions. 'The tempo is more like the body,' he wrote when commending Malzel's invention of the metronome, 'but these indications of character certainly refer to the spirit.' Angus Watson, a violinist and conductor, has been Director of Music at Stowe School, Winchester College and Wells Cathedral School, one of Britain's specialist music schools. From 1984-1989 he was Dean of Music at the newly founded Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.


Consumer communications and entertainment services, including broadcast TV and VoIP, require service providers to meet stringent availability and latency constraints. When a packet technology, such as IP, is used to transport these services, this also poses stringent packet loss requirement on the network. This aspect of IPTV, where impairments have consumer-visible impact and potential public relations consequences, creates new challenges in protocol design, as well as network management. The key to operating an effective network is to expand to a more comprehensive network management approach to be able to better anticipate and manage potential network problems. This paper describes network management techniques deployed in a production IPTV network with over 2 million customers.


Mark Bowden's hypertext Blackhawk Down (1997) is a paradigmatic example of literary journalism. In this essay, I shall demonstrate that the performative power of Bowden's hypertext is erected upon a number of textual signals that can be rendered intelligible with the help of analytical tools provided by narratology. I seek to shed light on the genre- and media-specific structures that serve as ways of cultural worldmaking as well as the ethical and epistemological functions of narratological categories that Bowden uses in order to advance narration so that it becomes a process of relating. The most urgent need in the context of a Critical Ethical Narratology (CEN) is to find a way to talk about the formal properties of hybridized (fictual) genres and to combine this discussion with a consideration of their ideological and ethical implications. The analytical framework of CEN promises to give insights into literary journalism as a genre that is heavily involved in the representation, construction and dissemination of ethical values and norms.


SOCIETY OF THE 21ST CENTURY AGAINST THE THREAT OF ISLAMIC TERRORISMThe subject matter includes the issue of transformation in the consciousness of the societies of European Union countries, but also communities in other areas of the world, perception of the phenomenon of migration to the territories of native countries, mainly in the European Union. The period of rapid socio-political changes in Islamic states, as well as the outbreak of civil war in 2011 in Syria, was the largest stimulator of migration movements from the Middle East, especially those covered by military operations in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of migrants continued to reach EU countries. Germany widely opened the door of its state and accepted the largest number of migrants. Some countries, such as Poland or Hungary, refused to accept migrants from countries with an Islamic origin. Migration on such a mass scale caused many social problems. The perceived sense of security of the community has deteriorated considerably in the EU countries where the most migrants came. The decline in the sense of security included areas not only of safety for life and health, but also concerns about reducing the level of social status or increasing unemployment. However, the biggest threat to the community of the EU countries, and many other countries in the world was ahuge increase in terrorist attacks, where the attackers came from orthodox Islamist groups. It should be added that the majority of migrants were Muslims. Another phenomenon also affecting the reduction of the level of perceptible security of European societies was the reactivation of political groups that in their ideologies presented the slogans of populism, nationalism, racism, or even fascism. There has been a clear polarization of Western societies, where until now they were arefuge of democracy, tolerance and values for which they fought for years. Undoubtedly, the politics of Erdogan, the president of Turkey, and the president of Russia, Putin, also influencedthestate of security of societies, and tried to influence EU decisions with their actions. Russia, let the annexation of Crimea and activities in Ukraine be left in peace, and Turkey, to force the EU to acceleratethe admission of this country to the EU. Also calling up the so-called Islamic state posed a huge threat to the security of the communities of European Union countries with attacks inspired by this terrorist group.


In this article I argue against Ronald Dworkin's rejection of the labour auction in his 'Equality of Resources'. I criticize Dworkin's claims that the talented would envy the untalented in such an auction, and that the talented in particular would be enslaved by it. I identify some ways in which the talent auction is underdescribed and I compare the results for the condition of the talented of different further descriptions of it. I conclude that Dworkin's deviation from the 'envy test' criterion results in an inequality between the talented and the untalented which cannot be justified in egalitarian terms.


This article examines the funding of public pension plans through 2019. Particular attention is paid to the impact of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board's Standard No. 68. It addressed (1) discount rates, (2) amortization periods, (3) asset valuation and smoothing, and (4) the actuarial cost method used. The combined effect of these measures has been to increase the amount of public pension underfunding significantly. The actuarial funded ratio of the 126 plans in the Public Plans Database went from 101.9 in 2001 to 71.9 in 2019, on the eve of the COVID-19 recession. It will no doubt continue to worsen in the years ahead. The extent of that likely worsening is also explored.


We provide a potential explanation for the absence of, and unwillingness to create, centralized power in the hands of a national state based on the political agenda effect. State centralization induces citizens of different backgrounds, interests, regions or ethnicities to coordinate their demands in the direction of more general-interest public goods, and away from parochial transfers. This political agenda effect raises the effectiveness of citizen demands and induces them to increase their investments in conflict capacity. In the absence of state centralization, citizens do not necessarily band together because of another force, the escalation effect, which refers to the fact that elites from different regions will join forces in response to the citizens doing so. Such escalation might hurt the citizen groups that have already solved their collective action problem (though it will benefit others). Anticipating the interplay of the political agenda and escalation effects, under some parameter configurations, political elites strategically opt for a non-centralized state. We show how the model generates non-monotonic comparative statics in response to the increase in the value or effectiveness of public goods (so that centralized states and public good provision are absent precisely when they are more beneficial for society). We also suggest how the formation of a social democratic party may sometimes induce state centralization (by removing the commitment value of a non-centralized state), and how elites may sometimes prefer partial state centralization.


This paper examines issues pertaining to standard setting in an increasingly interconnected world. It is argued that many present day accounting standards are flawed, generally because of inherent compromises welded into their structure, yielding needless complexity and sometimes absurd results. Using examples drawn from contemporary practice, including pension accounting, financial instruments and lease accounting, an argument for a move towards more simplified, principles based accounting is made. Some of the potential gains from such a project are discussed, as well as potential barriers and how these might be avoided in the quest for better accounting.


The flexible piezoelectric energy harvester (FPEH), as an effective strategy for long-term power supply of implantable and wearable electronics, requires high areal output energy density, low mechanical stiffness, and high energy efficiency, simultaneously. The widely adopted sandwich FPEH, consisting of one relatively hard substrate sandwiched between two piezoelectric films, can provide a high areal output energy density, but also high mechanical stiffness and low energy efficiency due to its energy-wasting deformation of the hard substrate. Here, we propose a novel optimal soft-substrate sandwich FPEH with designs of sufficient length and optimized Young's modulus of the substrate, which is much smaller than that of the piezoelectric film. A sandwich beam model considering both the bending and shearing of the soft substrate and the one-way coupling of the piezoelectric effect was adopted for the theoretical analysis and optimal design. The optimal soft-substrate sandwich FPEH exhibits greatly improved overall performance with a 33% increase in areal output energy density, a 51% reduction in mechanical stiffness, and a 177% increase in energy efficiency, simultaneously. Systematic theoretical analysis is performed to illustrate the mechanism and guide the optimal design. The novel optimal soft-substrate sandwich FPEH is then applied to harvesting energy from various living subjects. This optimal design can be extended to other types of mechanical energy harvesters with a similar laminated structure.


The approaches to obtaining desired intensity or phase modulation by twisted-nematic liquid crystal display (TN-LCD) have been extensively studied based on the knowledge of the LCD's internal structure parameters. Generally, the TN-LCD placed between two linear polarizers (P) produces coupled intensity and phase modulation. To obtain the commonly used phase-only modulation, quarter wave plates (QWPs) are often used in front of and/or behind the LCD. Here we present a method to optimize the optical modulation properties of the TN-LCD to obtain phase-only modulation in the configuration of P-QWP-LCD-QWP-P each with proper orientation. Our method is based on the macroscopical Jones matrix descriptions for the LCD, the QWPs, and the linear polarizers. Through Jones matrix calculations, the orientations of the polarizers and QWPs can be optimized to satisfy differently desired modulation demands. In contrast to the traditional method, which requires knowledge of the LCD's internal structure parameters, our method simplified the complicated theory analysis and can work in the absence of information on the LCD's internal structure parameters, which are usually not available for the commercial products.


Psychological experiments and analyses have been done to investigate quantitatively how the ideas of a musician are conveyed to the audience. The musician performed 1 minute of the beginning of the first movement of Mendelssohn9s Violin Concerto with 10 different nuances: weak, powerful, bright, sad, sophisticated, beautiful, dreamy, fashionable, simple, and deep. Sixteen listeners, including the violinist, were asked to give their impressions of each of the 10 performances by the semantic differential method. The data obtained were analyzed by Kruskal9s multidimensional scaling technique. The results revealed that, on the whole, the player9s intention and the listener9s impression, although there were individual discrepancies, were in general agreement.


Philip Pullman's thrilling fantasy comes alive in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation. A breathtaking epic, the award-winning "His Dark Materials" trilogy spans a multitude of worlds. The second instalment, "The Subtle Knife", introduces Will Parry - a young boy in search of his long-lost explorer father. Will's discovery of an extraordinary 'window in the air' near the Oxford ring road leads him out of our world and into the strange and unsettling Cittagazze. There he meets Lyra, a girl who is herself searching for something: the secret of the mystical substance Dust. Moving back and forth through the portal, Will and Lyra join forces in their quest. As they make allies and enemies along the way, they also learn of the subtle knife. An object which many would kill to possess, the knife has incredible powers, and Will finds himself reluctantly in a fight for its possession. Ray Fearon, Emma Fielding, Peter Marinker and Jack Klaff are amongst the cast in this gripping dramatisation.


This paper presents a current sharing method to actively balance the output currents of a parallel dc–dc converters' (PDCC) system regarding the demanded power. First, the operating principle of the PDCC system with parallel-connected bidirectional converters is studied. To regulate the output voltage in dc bus and share the output currents of the individual converters, a dual-loop control architecture comprising an outer voltage control loop and multiple inner current control loops is designed based on the automatic master–slave control scheme. Moreover, a feedback-type two-degree-of-freedom proportional-integral-derivative (FB2PID) controller is introduced to obtain the pulse-width modulation control signals for the converters. In order to improve the dynamic response and robustness of the active current-sharing control performances of the FB2PID controlled PDCC system, a bat algorithm (BA)-optimized FB2PID control system is further proposed to concurrently and dynamically optimize the control parameters of the FB2PID controller in the current control loop. Thus, the output current of each converter can be controlled to share the demand power equally in the presence of uncertainties. Finally, the simulation and experimental results reveal that the proposed BA-optimized FB2PID control system outperforms the conventional PID and FB2PID control systems with regard to the voltage regulation and current sharing performances under the time-varying electric load condition.


Ilyobacter polytropus Stieb and Schink 1984 is the type species of the genus Ilyobacter, which belongs to the fusobacterial family Fusobacteriaceae. The species is of interest because its members are able to ferment quite a number of sugars and organic acids. I. polytropus has a broad versatility in using various fermentation pathways. Also, its members do not degrade poly-β-hydroxybutyrate but only the monomeric 3-hydroxybutyrate. This is the first completed genome sequence of a member of the genus Ilyobacter and the second sequence from the family Fusobacteriaceae. The 3,132,314 bp long genome with its 2,934 protein-coding and 108 RNA genes consists of two chromosomes (2 and 1 Mbp long) and one plasmid, and is a part of the GenomicEncyclopedia ofBacteria andArchaea project.


Cohesion is an important part of effective team performance. Previous research has focussed on cross-sectional self-report measures in business settings. However, in extreme environments where contextual factors (e.g., weather conditions) can vary considerably from day to day, micro-variations in cohesion could influence daily performance. In small teams under pressure, such variations may be moderated by personality traits. The current study presents a diary methodology to explore variation in cohesion in five expedition teams – tracking temporal changes in cohesion and daily events over twenty days. Pre-expedition personality measures were used to explore the impact of team composition on variations in cohesion. Findings demonstrated that events significantly predicted fluctuations in cohesion across teams. Having more extraverted team members had a negative impact on cohesion. These results offer valuable insight to how this method can track changes in cohesion over time and subsequently enhance understanding of how to mitigate cohesion breakdowns.


This essay examines cultural trauma, memory, gender, and performance in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and documentary sources, this feminist analysis of cultural trauma and memory examines how an emergent, womencentered group, Women of the Storm, engaged in performative political practices aimed at increasing government support for Gulf Coast recovery efforts. The author argues that the group modified place-based practices related to ritual acts of mourning and remembrance, appropriated and transformed disaster-related symbol systems, and aimed to establish new forms of moral responsibility as part of its collective actions.


This panel focus on new challenges for the alliance of research communities and service institutions which emerge from new data formats, vocabulary standardization efforts, and collaborative practices. In particular, we focus on semantic web technologies and the adoption of Linked (Open) Data principles in humanities research. We zoom into practices of data curation during research (curating the data for the present) and in the aftermath of research projects (curating data for the future). The panel addresses intriguing pending questions about the long-term preservation of Linked Data datasets as complex digital and objects. It enables a discourse on higher level principles of working with and preserving Linked Data in the humanities based on reports of concrete experiences on the work floor, with the ultimate goal to making Linked Data FAIR.


This study is concerned with the historical development and perpetuation of the leisure class in the Colombian society. The study is based on Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. The main purpose of this study is to analyze in terms of the evolution of social institutions the problems that the Colombian society faces today. Spanish values and traditions are analyzed, as well as more recent values and modes of behavior adopted by the leisure class. Institutions such as the church, the educational, employment and political apparatus are analyzed in terms of how they contribute to the perpetuation of elites. This study concludes that as long as there is economic surplus in society, a leisure class will exist. The elites forming the leisure class may be displaced by counter-elites, which in turn will conform a new leisure class.


"Context: The prevalence of Post natal depression in India ranges from 12 – 23 %. It has substantial impact on mother, father, family and thereby cognitive and emotional development of child. Therefore the post natal depression screening should be given foremost importance. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) is a reliable tool used in many countries. The study conducted to validate the Marathi version of EPDS
Method: All the mothers with history of delivery in last six months but not less than six weeks were included in study. Lin-guistically validated Questionnaire was posed by interviewer and recorded. To test the reliability, mothers were revisited after a pe-riod of 2 weeks to administer same questionnaire and assessed by expert.
Statistical analysis: SPSS 17 was used to know the floor and ceiling effect, exploratory factor analysis, receiver and operating curve, cronbach's alpha, intraclass correlation coefficient.
Result: Total mean score was 10.3 ± 4.1. No floor and ceiling effect seen. Three factors were extracted. Best cut off point was 12 with 95 % sensitivity and specificity. Depression was associated with birth of female child, pregnancy complications and health of new-born.
Conclusion: The findings of study indicates that Marathi version of EPDS has good validity, internal consistency and adequate reliability"


A hybrid method combining the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method and Lanczos algorithm is proposed for efficiently obtaining the steady-state response for closed systems. With the Lanczos algorithm, modes of the FDTD operator can be easily extracted to reconstruct the steady-state response at any time by an analytic formula. With the aid of the time-reversal technique, existing FDTD codes are preserved. Numerical results show that with only very few Lanczos iterations, results of good agreement can be achieved between the proposed method and brute-force FDTD.


The protective role of high density lipoproteins (HDL) on the development of vascular calcifications with atheromatous and medial forms of calcium deposits have been recently suggested. Vascular calcification shares several features with skeletal bone formation at the cellular and molecular levels. Lack or decreasing of serum HDL leads to higher vascular calcification in general population and perhaps even more severely it happens to patients with chronic renal failure where the lipid metabolism is frequently disturbed. Another supposed factor for arterial calcification is the presence of inflammation. The high rate of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in haemodialysis (HD) patients and the special importance of presence of vascular calcification in that pathology initiates this study, which has set a goal to establish whether there is a relation between: a). lipid profile and inflammation, accounting C-reactive protein as one of its typical markers, and: b). both lipid profile and inflammation and vascular calcification rate in a group of HD patients, comparing HD group with a group of healthy volunteers. Hippokratia 2006; 10(1):35-38


ELPUB can look back on a track record of a steadily growing number of conference papers. From a longterm perspective, access to this body of knowledge is of great interest to the community. Beyond this, extended preoccupation with the collected scientific work in the area of digital publishing has to be mentioned. Naturally, the authors are particularly focussed on the individual paper itself and possible connections with related efforts. Typically, conferences amplify and enhance opportunities of "gettingtogether". A well-stocked repository may, however, serve in this respect as a fruitful complementary addition. In this contribution, the implementation of persistent identifiers on the existing ELPUB.scix.netbase is elaborated in detail. Furthermore, the authors present the result of efforts related to the harvesting of ELPUB-metadata and to the creation of a citation index. The paper concludes with an outlook on future plans.


This study introduces an overall framework for radio frequency identification (RFID) applications in product lifecycle management (PLM). Recently, with emerging technologies related to product identification and wireless mobile tele-communication, PLM provides a new environment that enables lifecycle actors to gather and analyse product lifecycle information, and make efficient decisions without spatial and temporal constraints. However, previous research has paid little attention to how to apply the emerging technologies into PLM. To cope with this limitation, in the current study, RFID applications in PLM are dealt with from technical and business viewpoints. To this end, an overall framework for RFID applications in PLM is proposed. It contains the definition of a product embedded information device (PEID) that uses RFID technology, its specification and operation scenarios for each application. Furthermore, application issues and their overall procedures are introduced for each lifecycle phase.


Introduction Death anxiety is a concept with greater importance among the elderly as they approach inevitability of death. Identifying the correlates of death anxiety among old people is important in order to reduce the burden of this problem. Therefore, the present study was performed with the aim to examine the association between spiritual experiences and life satisfaction with death anxiety in this stage of life. Method This cross-sectional study with descriptive-analytical design included 190 elderly people visiting the health and medical centers of Neyshabur city, Iran, during fall and winter, 2016. Participants were asked to complete three questionnaires including a 16-item spiritual experiences scale, life satisfaction index proposed by Wood and Shifor with 13 items, and a 27-item death anxiety scale developed by Aminpour. Analytical statistics (Spearman's correlation coefficient, Pearson's correlation coefficient) were conducted using SPSS software version 22. Results Fifty-eight percent of participants were in younger elderly age group with mean age of 68.18±7.13 years and the number of men and women was the same (95). A significant positive association between spiritual experiences and life satisfaction (r=0.2, p<0.05), a significant negative association between spiritual experiences and death anxiety (r=−0.184, p< 0.05) and a significant negative relationship between life satisfaction and death anxiety (r=−0.2, p<0.05) was found. Conclusion Based on results, it seems that reducing stressors in this stage of life including reduction of death anxiety, is possible through use of spiritual experiences and increasing life satisfaction.


PURPOSE
Prothymosin-alpha and ERp57 were previously identified as markers for gastric metaplasia in a mouse model of Helicobacter-induced gastric metaplasia and neoplasia. In this paper we assess whether the expression of these putative biomarkers in humans is correlated with gastric metaplasia and adenocarcinoma and clinical outcomes.

METHODS
Eight tissue microarrays, containing 749 paraffin-embedded tissue cores from 164 gastric cancer patients, were stained for prothymosin-alpha and ERp57 by horseradish peroxidase immunohistochemical techniques. The proportion of stained cells per core was quantitated using the Ariol SL-50 automated image analysis system.

RESULTS
Prothymosin-alpha stained a significantly higher percentage of nuclei in cancer and metastases compared with normal gastric mucosa. ERp57 staining was significantly decreased in cancer and metastases compared with both normal gastric mucosa and metaplasias. ERp57 expression also correlated with greater depth of tumor invasion and advanced stage of disease. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis determined that tumors with the highest quartile of ERp57 expression were statistically associated with longer postoperative survival. A Cox proportional hazard analysis showed that maintenance of ERp57 expression was associated with longer postoperative survival.

CONCLUSIONS
These results suggest that although prothymosin-alpha is overexpressed in gastric adenocarcinoma, it is not associated with alterations in survival. In contrast, loss of ERp57 expression correlated with more aggressive disease and could provide useful prognostic information for gastric cancer patients.


Writing assessment and social justice rely largely on success-trajectory narratives, which sideline productive failure as a means of resisting normative futurity-based modes of education and policy. This essay offers an alternative perspective on failure in writing assessment and social justice by illustrating how relying on rhetoric as a hope and means for positive change can undermine aims of social justice and a critical education. By examining the queer (non)possibilities for assessment and acceptance without dependence on constant improvement and success, instructors may find more inclusive ways of thinking about the value of rhetoric's role in a generative acceptance of difference.


"A rare combination of deep insight and helpful research, and an important book. Relevant and timely. Smart and helpful guidance for leaders about today's pressing problems." -Stephen R. Covey and Stephen M. R. Covey, bestselling authors and father and son (from the Foreword) "It's been more than thirty years since the sport of kings last saw a Triple Crown. We can't wait that long for the triple crown of leadership--the stakes are too high and the need too urgent. It's time to embrace this vision of lasting, ethical leadership." -Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind "The Vanoureks have written the new leadership manifesto...It is a gift to all of us who believe in the power of purposeful leadership." -Richard Leider, bestselling author of Repacking Your Bags and The Power of Purpose "A clarion call for anyone striving to create an enduring organization with lasting positive impact." -David Gergen, Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and CNN Senior Political Analyst, and Christopher Gergen, founder and CEO of Forward Ventures, father and son "A powerful case for leaders who simultaneously combine ethics and excellence to create enduring organizations." -Bill George, Harvard Business School Professor and Former CEO, Medtronic "An extremely timely and practical book about the complex art and practice of leadership. Every leader of tomorrow must read this book today." -James O'Toole, leadership author and professor "An inspiring call to action, a challenging mandate, and a compelling road map for leaders across the public, private, or nonprofit sector. A must read." -Marty Linsky, Harvard Kennedy School Faculty and cofounder, Cambridge Leadership Associates "In a crowded marketplace of books on leadership, this one stands out. A book of wisdom and practical advice." -Barry Z. Posner, coauthor, The Leadership Challenge In today's fiercely competitive world, it takes more than "business as usual" to stay strong and stay ahead of the curve. It takes Triple Crown Leadership. Inspired by the most elusive championship in sports, the Triple Crown of horseracing, this compelling road map isdesigned for leaders at all levels, from supervisors to CEOs. If you want to win, you'll want this book. Triple Crown Leadership provides helpful toolsfor any leader seeking a better way. The book shows you how to: Be excellent (achieve exceptional performance), ethical (do the right thing), and enduring (stand the test of time) Align your organization for peak performance Instill a culture of character Lead with both "steel" and "velvet" Achieve impact and sustainability while maintaining high performance. Turn your company around after a breakdown. Based on the authors' experience and interviews with over sixty organizations in eleven countries, this book provides compelling leadership lessons from an array of enterprises, including Zappos, Google, eBay, Infosys, Xerox, Spotify, Mayo Clinic, KIPP, Ashoka, and more. Executives Bob and Gregg Vanourek--a dynamic father and son team--show you how to achieve high performance, integrity, and sustainability. In horseracing, it takes more than speed for a horse like Secretariat to win the Triple Crown. In organizations, it takes both head and heart, commitment to an inspiring cause, steel and velvet leadership, stewardship, and alignment--the practices of triple crown leadership. Triple Crown Leadership also provides hard-hitting, practical advice on leading turnarounds, startups, and social ventures--and addresses the leadership needed from CEOs, boards, senior managers, and even people without authority.


Objective: To investigate the genetic etiology of a patient diagnosed with leukoencephalopathy, brain calcifications, and cysts (LCC). Methods: Whole-exome sequencing was performed on a patient with LCC and his unaffected family members. The variants were subject to in silico and in vitro functional testing to determine pathogenicity. Results: Whole-exome sequencing uncovered compound heterozygous mutations in EARS2, c.328G>A (p.G110S), and c.1045G>A (p.E349K). This gene has previously been implicated in the autosomal recessive leukoencephalopathy with thalamus and brainstem involvement and high lactate (LTBL). The p.G110S mutation has been found in multiple patients with LTBL. In silico analysis supported pathogenicity in the second variant. In vitro functional testing showed a significant mitochondrial dysfunction demonstrated by an ∼11% decrease in the oxygen consumption rate and ∼43% decrease in the maximum respiratory rate in the patient's skin fibroblasts compared with the control. EARS2 protein levels were reduced to 30% of normal controls in the patient's fibroblasts. These deficiencies were corrected by the expression of the wild-type EARS2 protein. However, a further unrelated genetic investigation of our patient revealed the presence of biallelic variants in a small nucleolar RNA (SNORD118) responsible for LCC. Conclusions: Here, we report seemingly pathogenic EARS2 mutations in a single patient with LCC with no biochemical or neuroimaging presentations of LTBL. This patient illustrates that variants with demonstrated impact on protein function should not necessarily be considered clinically relevant. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT00001671.


An independent heat source inside the system "Earth + atmosphere", in addition to Earth's heating by solar radiation, is required to account for differences between the measured and calculated values of Earth's average surface temperature. A mathematical model of thermo-balance for Earth's heat fluxes is used for the calculations reported here. Using well-known data (albedo of the Earth's surface, constant of the heat radiation from the Sun, etc.), it is shown that the process of heating only by solar activity would yield an average value for Earth's surface temperature of circa eighteen degrees below zero (Celcius scale). Since this calculated value of Earth's surface temperature is cooler than the observed value, there must exist others, inner sources of heating for the Earth. The main source of such an internal heat generation within the system "Earth + atmosphere" is, of course, the Greenhouse effect. Besides, the dynamics of the Earth's surface temperature is proved to be determined by the proper elliptical integral. Thus, by obtaining of the re-inverse dependence of a solution from the time-parameter t we could present the temperature T(t) as a set of periodic cycles.


The paper presents a performance case study of parallel jobs executing in real multi user workloads. The study is based on a measurement based model capable of predicting the completion time distribution of the jobs executing under real workloads. The model constructed is also capable of predicting the effects of system design changes on application performance. The model is a finite state, discrete time Markov model with rewards and costs associated with each state. The Markov states are defined from real measurements and represent system/workload states in which the machine has operated. The paper places special emphasis on choosing the correct number of states to represent the workload measured. Specifically, the performance of computationally bound, parallel applications executing in real workloads on an Alliant FX/80 is evaluated. The constructed model is used to evaluate scheduling policies, the performance effects of multiprogramming overhead, and the scalability of the Alliant FX/8O in real workloads. The model identifies a number of available scheduling policies which would improve the response time of parallel jobs. In addition, the model predicts that doubling the number of processors in the current configuration would only improve response time for a typical parallel application by 25%. The model recommends a different processor configuration to more fully utilize extra processors. The paper also presents empirical results which validate the model created. >


Herein we report on integrated photoelectrolysis of water employing organic metal halide (OMH) perovskite material. Generic OMH perovskite material and device architecture are highly susceptible to degradation by moisture and water. We found that decomposition of perovskite devices proceeds by water ingress through pinholes in upper layers and is strongly affected by applied bias/light and electrolyte pH. It was also found that a pinhole-free hole transport layer (HTL) could significantly enhance the stability of the perovskite photoelectrode, thereby extending the photoelectrode lifetime to several tens of minutes, which is an unprecedented record-long operation. Furthermore, a carbon nanotube (CNT)/polymer composite layer was developed that can effectively protect the underlying perovskite layer from electrolyte molecules.


The name "Helots" evokes one of the most famous peculiarities of ancient Sparta, the system of dependent labour that guaranteed the livelihood of the free citizens. The Helots fulfilled all the functions that slaves carried out elsewhere in the Greek world, allowing their masters the leisure to be full-time warriors. Yet, despite their crucial role, Helots remain essentially invisible in our ancient sources and peripheral and enigmatic in modern scholarship. This book is devoted to a much-needed reassessment of Helotry and of its place in the history and sociology of unfree labour. The essays deal with the origins and historical development of Helotry, with its sociological, economic and demographic aspects, with its ideological construction and negotiation.


Static power converters are used for many applications, such as general power supplies. This paper analyzes the performance of single phase AC-DC-AC converter, where the converter consists of two parts, an AC to DC controlled rectifier cascaded with a DC to AC multilevel inverter, so as to increase the number of voltage levels of the inverter to reduce the filter size of the output voltage of the DC-AC converter. Multilevel converter technology has recently emerged as an important alternative in the area of high-power applications. The topology configuration consists of multilevel three single-phase H-bridge inverters connected in series each of which is fed from an unequal DC voltage through a multi-limb output transformer via full controlled thyristor bridges, whose control signals are generated from a closed loop control circuit to maintain constant load voltage for different load conditions. In the literature, several modulation methods have been applied to multilevel inverters where higher switching frequency reduces filter size but increases switching losses. The Selective Harmonic Elimination, SHE modulation method is presented where additional notches are introduced in the multilevel output voltage. These notches eliminate harmonics at the low order/frequency and shifts it a higher order/frequency and hence the filter size is reduced without increasing the switching losses and cost of the system. The proposed modulation method is verified through simulation and also validated practically.


Librarians have often questioned the usefulness of the proceedings of biomedical meetings. Because articles in proceedings are similar to journal articles, the usefulness of the two were compared. Thirty-two monographic cardiovascular proceedings were compared to thirty-five cardiovascular journals, all published in 1978. Citations to the articles in these samples were counted for the years 1978, 1979, and 1980, and an impact factor was calculated for each proceedings and journal. The mean impact factor of the journals (3.86) was significantly higher than the mean impact factor of the proceedings (0.98, p less than .001). A short delay in publication of a proceedings was not associated with a higher impact factor. There were no differences in impact factors between U.S. and non-U.S. meeting sites. Proceedings of "hot" topics were not associated with higher impact factors, and multiple-index coverage of proceedings was only weakly associated (tau = 0.27) with higher impact factors. While camera-ready proceedings had a significantly higher mean impact factor (2.37) than typeset proceedings (0.66, p less than .02), selection based on printing method is not recommended. It is concluded that most libraries can safely forego the purchase of monographic proceedings. If a library needs monographic proceedings, it should purchase only those recommended by subject specialists.


IEC 61850, which is the leading standard for the substation automation, can be used to develop smarter schemes of automation and protection for the other areas of power systems. This paper presents an approach of using GOOSE to address the distribution protection problem in a smart grid. It is shown that how an adaptive overcurrent element setting of a healthy distribution feeder can be used to solve the sympathetic tripping problem caused by faults on the other feeders. Detection of relay operation due to a fault on the adjacent feeder is used to adjust the relay sensitivity settings during current inrush. The appropriate Logical Nodes are introduced. A logic equation to avoid sympathetic tripping along with an editable logic solution and a PLC based logic diagram are also provided.


For the legions of Paper Magazine fans, and anyone who's interested in Where Style Starts. This stunning portrayal of the last 20 years is a wonderful commemorative look at the life and times of the era. Following introductions and commentary by a virtual who's who of popular culture, 20 Years of Style charts just how style has evolved over the past twenty years, illustrating the huge influence that underground cultures from the worlds of art, music, film, sports and urban street life ultimately have played on mainstream fashion. Laid out by year starting in 1984 and continuing through the present, this star-studded journey cannot be described by words alone. Adding to this visual feast are essays and commentary from Paper Magazine founders and co-editors Kim Hasreiter and David Hershkovits, as well as celebratory tributes to Paper Magazine from dejay and musicologist Moby; rap icon Fab 5 Freddy; artist/designer Todd Oldham; and style historian Harold Koda.


The Dutch overestimate their English speaking skills. Their pronunciation is not always convincing, and certain pronunciation mistakes are easily recognised as being typical for Dutch speakers of English. Although intelligibility cannot exist without adequate pronunciation, teaching English pronunciation at Dutch secondary schools is often absent from the EFL teaching curriculum. Focussing on the most prominent pronunciation difficulties, often caused by the mother tongue (L1), will benefit the non-native speaker's pronunciation and intelligibility. In order to provide teachers with a time-efficient approach to teach English pronunciation, preliminary research is needed to identify the most prominent error types in the English pronunciation of secondary school pupils and bachelor students in the Netherlands. Research shows that fifty percent of the subject group makes seven types of pronunciation mistakes in more than fifty percent of the cases that such mistakes could be made. The conclusion discusses a general approach for addressing the kind of pronunciation problems we identified


Utah Mental Health Professionals' Recommendations for Working with Youth at Risk for Suicide Amy Paskett Stillman Department of Counseling Psychology and Special Education, BYU Educational Specialist Suicide has immediate and long-term negative effects on surviving family members and adverse effects in the school and community. Suicide rates for children and adolescents have increased in the United States since 2009. As part of suicide prevention efforts, information about risk factors and warning signs are typically addressed in schools, private organizations, and communities. In addition to academic literature for professional audiences, various therapeutic resources are available to assist those who grieve the suicide of a loved one. In particular, practical and easy-to-implement interventions are needed by those who offer support to suicidal individuals and survivors of suicide. Practical resources are needed to address suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention needs. This study is based on a questionnaire that was given to 250 registered individuals at an annual state suicide prevention training conference. Of those attending, 60 (24%) completed the questionnaire. Participants who did not have experience working with suicidal youth did not participate, so the actual participation rate was influenced by this factor. Questions explored the recommendations of mental health professionals (N=60) who worked with (a) suicidal youth, (b) siblings of youth who completed suicide, and/or (c) youth whose parent completed suicide. More specifically this study investigated specific strategies and resources for working with these three specific groups of survivors. Findings from this study indicated that mental health professionals recommend a variety of suicide prevention resources and strategies such as implementing evidenced-based prevention programs, accessing community resources, offering individual and group counseling for survivors, involving or creating support systems, and listening to the affected youth. Also, recommended therapeutic approaches should include an action plan where students are able to receive appropriate mental health services. Based on this study, mental health professionals may be more effective as they acquaint themselves with available resources such as counselors, school psychologists, and community services to comprehensively care for struggling individuals. Mental health professionals, educators, and staff members should obtain relevant information and utilize effective intervention models in order to better address the prevention, intervention, and postvention needs of surviving individuals. Recommendations are made for future research in identifying the combination of resources that are most helpful. Recommendations are also made regarding specific content and training strategies to more effectively prepare and equip professionals to engage more fully in effective and supportive suicide prevention efforts.


With progress in fabrication technology, integrated photonics plays an increasingly important role in highspeed optical communications, from monolithic transmitters and receivers for advanced optical modulation formats to on-chip subsystems for optical signal processing. We review our recent work on the highly tailorable physical properties of silicon waveguides for communication and signal processing applications, using slot structures. Controllable chromatic dispersion, nonlinearity, and polarization properties of the waveguides are presented, and the enabled wideband wavelength conversion, optical tunable delay, and signal processing of polarization-multiplexing data channels are discussed. OCIS codes: 060.4510, 130.0130, 130.4310, 130.5440. doi: 10.3788/COL20100809.0909.


OBJECTIVE
To assess associations between infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis (IBK) diagnosed at weaning and production traits in yearling beef calves.

DESIGN
Retrospective population-based cohort study.

ANIMALS
1,882 Angus calves.

PROCEDURES
Angus calves from 1 farm were evaluated over 7 years. The association between yearling body production traits and detection of IBK lesions at weaning was evaluated.

RESULTS
Yearlings that had evidence of IBK at weaning had less 12th rib fat depth, ribeye area, and body weight than did cohorts without evidence of IBK. Average daily gain was greater in cattle that had IBK lesions at weaning, but this did not offset lower body weight at weaning.

CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE
The associations between IBK at weaning and production variables persisted well into the postweaning period, and there appeared to be a relationship between decreased body composition traits at yearling evaluation and IBK infection before weaning.


Periodic alternating nystagmus consists of involuntary oscillations of the eyes with cyclical changes of nystagmus direction. It can occur during infancy (e.g. idiopathic infantile periodic alternating nystagmus) or later in life. Acquired forms are often associated with cerebellar dysfunction arising due to instability of the optokinetic-vestibular systems. Idiopathic infantile periodic alternating nystagmus can be familial or occur in isolation; however, very little is known about the clinical characteristics, genetic aetiology and neural substrates involved. Five loci (NYS1-5) have been identified for idiopathic infantile nystagmus; three are autosomal (NYS2, NYS3 and NYS4) and two are X-chromosomal (NYS1 and NYS5). We previously identified the FRMD7 gene on chromosome Xq26 (NYS1 locus); mutations of FRMD7 are causative of idiopathic infantile nystagmus influencing neuronal outgrowth and development. It is unclear whether the periodic alternating nystagmus phenotype is linked to NYS1, NYS5 (Xp11.4-p11.3) or a separate locus. From a cohort of 31 X-linked families and 14 singletons (70 patients) with idiopathic infantile nystagmus we identified 10 families and one singleton (21 patients) with periodic alternating nystagmus of which we describe clinical phenotype, genetic aetiology and neural substrates involved. Periodic alternating nystagmus was not detected clinically but only on eye movement recordings. The cycle duration varied from 90 to 280 s. Optokinetic reflex was not detectable horizontally. Mutations of the FRMD7 gene were found in all 10 families and the singleton (including three novel mutations). Periodic alternating nystagmus was predominantly associated with missense mutations within the FERM domain. There was significant sibship clustering of the phenotype although in some families not all affected members had periodic alternating nystagmus. In situ hybridization studies during mid-late human embryonic stages in normal tissue showed restricted FRMD7 expression in neuronal tissue with strong hybridization signals within the afferent arms of the vestibulo-ocular reflex consisting of the otic vesicle, cranial nerve VIII and vestibular ganglia. Similarly within the afferent arm of the optokinetic reflex we showed expression in the developing neural retina and ventricular zone of the optic stalk. Strong FRMD7 expression was seen in rhombomeres 1 to 4, which give rise to the cerebellum and the common integrator site for both these reflexes (vestibular nuclei). Based on the expression and phenotypic data, we hypothesize that periodic alternating nystagmus arises from instability of the optokinetic-vestibular systems. This study shows for the first time that mutations in FRMD7 can cause idiopathic infantile periodic alternating nystagmus and may affect neuronal circuits that have been implicated in acquired forms.


Humans come into physical contacts with various machines such as robots in daily life. This leads to the underlying issue of guaranteeing safety during such human-robot interactions. Thus, many devices and methods have been studied for impact damage reduction. A safety joint mechanism (SJM) using four-bar linkages has been highlighted as an impact cutoff device owing to its capabilities of nonlinear load transfer. This paper focuses on a new design and testing for a kinematic element of an SJM based on four-bar linkages to improve the impact cutoff performances. In the present work, a set of variable-length floating link designs is proposed, and the mechanism is implemented by mechanical contact surface profile shaping between the cams and followers. The performance of the cam-follower mechanism is evaluated depending on the variable length of the floating link, by using equivalent stiffness method, which successfully quantifies the performance of the proposed mechanism. Based on this design and analysis, two SJMs having symmetrical arrangements for four numbers of cam-follower mechanisms are fabricated: one SJM has fixed-length floating links and the other has variable-length floating links. The effect of the new kinematic elements on the performance improvement is verified by comparing the absorbed impact rates of the two SJMs by impact hammer-like drop tests. Consequently, it is confirmed that the rapid length change of the floating link is the core element for improving the performance of the safety mechanism.


Why is he poor? Why is she failing academically? Why is he so generous? Why is she so conscientious? Answers to such everyday questions—social explanations—have powerful effects on relationships at the interpersonal and societal levels. How do people select an explanation in particular cases? We suggest that, often, explanations are selected based on the individual's pre-existing general theories of social causality. More specifically, we suggest that over time individuals develop general beliefs regarding the causes of social events. We refer to these beliefs as social explanatory styles. Our goal in the present article is to offer and validate a measure of individual differences in social explanatory styles. Accordingly, we offer the Social Explanatory Styles Questionnaire (SESQ), which measures three independent dimensions of social explanatory style: Dispositionism, historicism, and controllability. Studies 1–3 examine basic psychometric properties of the SESQ and provide positive evidence regarding internal consistency, factor structure, and both convergent and divergent validity. Studies 4–6 examine predictive validity for each subscale: Does each explanatory dimension moderate an important phenomenon of social cognition? Results suggest that they do. In Study 4, we show that SESQ dispositionism moderates the tendency to make spontaneous trait inferences. In Study 5, we show that SESQ historicism moderates the tendency to commit the Fundamental Attribution Error. Finally, in Study 6 we show that SESQ controllability predicts polarization of moral blame judgments: Heightened blaming toward controllable stigmas (assimilation), and attenuated blaming toward uncontrollable stigmas (contrast). Decades of research suggest that explanatory style regarding the self is a powerful predictor of self-functioning. We think it is likely that social explanatory styles—perhaps comprising interactive combinations of the basic dimensions tapped by the SESQ—will be similarly potent predictors of social functioning. We hope the SESQ will be a useful tool for exploring that possibility.


Divers use decompression schedules that provide a stepped ascent to the surface from their maximum depth to help prevent the occurrence of decompression illness. The risk of decompression illness resulting from these schedules varies across different dives and the models used to generate them. The diver is unaware of this variance in risk. This thesis describes an investigation into the feasibility of producing optimised isoprobabilistic decompression schedules that minimise the time it takes for the diver to reach the surface from maximum depth. In particular, 1.3 bar constant partial pressure of oxygen in helium dives are considered. The US Linear Exponential Multi-gas (LEM) model is used to describe the risk of decompression illness for a given dive. The Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) method is used to minimise the ascent time given non-linear risk constraints and a maximum dive time constraint. Two approaches to describing the ascent profile have been investigated. The first scheme finds the stop times at each possible stop depth to produce optimised schedules. The total time for decompression is a function of the sum of the stop times. The second scheme defines the ascent profile as a three parameter hyperbolic tangent equation. The SQP method finds the three parameters that produce optimised decompression schedules once the curve is converted to a schedule of decompression stops. The schedules produced by the SQP method, using a curve to describe the ascent profile, show that it is feasible to produce optimised iso-probabilistic tables that are operationally practical given an acceptable physiological risk model. Comparison with the QinetiQ 90 tables with a nominal 2% operational risk of decompression illness show that the method could provide reductions in the ascent time subject to manned testing.


Objective: In the United States of America (USA), sickle cell disease (SCD) occurs in 1:375 African-American births. However, published data from the Caribbean have revealed higher numbers for some Caribbean islands. St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) is a multi-island nation in the Caribbean, and there are currently no data on the incidence or prevalence of the disease in this population. The objective of this study was to obtain birth prevalence estimates for SCD in SVG. Methods: A retrospective review of haemoglobin electrophoresis test results at the laboratory of the main hospital in SVG for the period of October 1, 2005 to December 31, 2013 was done. Test results and demographic data were extracted to determine the estimated birth prevalence of SCD. Results: The estimated birth prevalence of SCD was found to be 1:172 live births, and 86% of the patients were diagnosed after one year of age. Conclusion: The birth prevalence of SCD in SVG was higher than those in the USA, but was similar to the numbers in other Caribbean populations.


This paper estimates the effect of corporate governance provisions on shareholder value and long-term outcomes in S&P1500 firms. We apply a regression discontinuity design to shareholder votes on governance proposals in annual meetings. A close-call vote around the majority threshold is akin to a random outcome, allowing us to deal with prior expectations and the endogeneity of internal governance rules. Passing a corporate governance provision generates a 1.3% abnormal return on the day of the vote with an implied market value per provision of 2.8%. We also find evidence of changes in investment behavior and long-term performance improvements.