When treated with nerve growth factor (NGF), the rat PC12 pheochromocytoma cell line extends neurites and differentiates toward a sympathetic neuron-like phenotype, a process that involves activation of the small GTPase (guanosine triphosphatase) Rap1. PACAP (pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide) also activates Rap1 and elicits neurite outgrowth in PC12 cells. Rap1 activation by PACAP depends on PACAP's activation of a transmembrane adenylyl cyclase (tmAC), by way of the G protein-coupled receptor PAC1R, and the subsequent production of adenosine 3′,5′-monophosphate (cAMP). The possible role of cAMP in NGF signaling, however, has been controversial, and the route through which NGF might stimulate cAMP signaling has been unclear. Stessin et al. found that, in the presence of a phosphodiesterase inhibitor, NGF elicited an increase in the cAMP content of PC12 cells; chelating intracellular calcium eliminated this increase. Pharmacological inhibition of tmAC with 2′5′-dideoxyadenosine eliminated activation of Rap1 by PACAP but failed to have any effect on NGF-mediated stimulation of Rap1. Treatment with KH7 [which inhibits soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC)], however, or knockdown of sAC with RNAi, eliminated both the NGF-mediated increase in cAMP and NGF-mediated activation of Rap1 but not the increase in cAMP elicited by PACAP. Thus, the authors propose that NGF-mediated activation of Rap1, like PACAP-mediated activation of Rap1, depends on generation of cAMP but that, unlike PACAP, NGF stimulates cAMP formation through a process that requires sAC activation and is independent of tmAC. A. M. Stessin, J. H. Zippin, M. Kamenetsky, K. C. Hess, J. Buck, L. R. Levin, Soluble adenylyl cyclase mediates nerve growth factor-induced activation of Rap1. J. Biol. Chem. 281, 17253-17258 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Leakage from the top of a fire-extinguisher case, made of 1541 steel tubing and closed by spinning was observed during testing. Three small folds were observed on the surface by visual examination and one was sectioned. A very fine transverse fissure through the section was revealed. Streaks of ferrite were observed by metallographic examination. It was concluded that cracking of the top of the fire-extinguisher case was the result of ferrite streaks formed due to metal overheating. The temperature of the metal was recommended to be controlled so that the spinning operation is done at a lower temperature to avoid formation of ferrite streaks.


The focus of the study was to explore to what degree culturally sensitive HIV/AIDS curriculum and materials were perceived as important by African-American students. Students selected for the research (N=121) were from a high school in San Bernardino, California, an area that represents a multiethnic population. Frequency descriptions and bivariate corrrelations were conducted to analyze the data. Trends found in this study indicated African-Americans did not perceive cultural sensitivity as an important aspect of HIV/AIDS education, and correlations between the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) score of African-Americans and their perceptions of the need for culturally sensitive HIV/AIDS education materials were non-significant. Outcomes of this study suggest a more defined meaning of "cultural sensitivity" and "culturally sensitive" materials as it pertains to HIV/AIDS education.


Latino immigrants are moving to areas of the country that have not seen a major influx of immigrants. As a result of this influx, citizens of these formerly homogenous communities have become increasingly critical of federal immigration law. State and local legislatures are responding by passing their own laws targeting immigrants. While many legislators and city council members state that the purpose of the anti-immigrant laws is to restrict illegal immigration where the federal government has failed to do so, opponents claim that the laws are passed to enable discrimination and exclusion of all Latinos, regardless of their immigration status. In challenging one anti-immigration ordinance in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, the American Civil Liberties Union stated that "if the ordinance is allowed to stand, anyone who looks or sounds foreign – regardless of their actual immigration status – will not be able to participate meaningfully in life in Hazleton, returning to the days when discriminatory laws forbade certain classes of people from owning land, running businesses or living in certain places." This paper theorizes that state and local anti-immigrant laws lead to the segregation, exclusion, and degradation of Latinos from American society in the same way that Jim Crow laws excluded African Americans from membership in social, political, and economic institutions within the United States and relegated them to second-class citizenship status. To support this argument, the paper examines the tension that was present between local, state, and federal governments during Reconstruction, which led to the proliferation of Jim Crow laws, and compares it to modern day tension between the federal, state, and local governments over immigration policies, which has led to numerous anti-immigrant laws. Specifically, this paper contrasts and compares the legislative motives behind both Jim Crow and state and local anti-immigrant laws, noting in both instances that states and localities utilize their constitutional authority to regulate matters of state concern to mask discriminatory motives. A normative theme throughout this paper is how the law reifies race by legislating cultural norms that reinforce racial divisions and hierarchy in our country. In conclusion, the paper acknowledges that change in the perception on the status of Latino immigrants may only come from a change in public opinion along with proper federal government action on immigration reform.


This study combines insights from the socioemotional wealth perspective and institutional and resource-based theories to examine the earning quality of family and nonfamily firms operating in countries characterized by different levels of institutional development. Results based on a cross-sectional sample of firms from 12 European countries show that family status and a country's level of institutional development are positively related to earnings quality. They also show that institutional development moderates the relationship between family status and earnings quality. Comparing insider-oriented countries that are characterized by lower regulatory and financial development with outsider-oriented countries that are characterized by higher regulatory and financial development, we found that family firms have a higher earnings quality in insider-oriented countries than in outsider-oriented ones. Thus, our study finds support for a substitution effect, whereby family status compensates for the limited capacity of less developed regulations and markets to induce virtuous financial reporting behaviors.


Many firms anticipate that a cap on greenhouse gas emissions will eventually be imposed, either through an international agreement like the Kyoto protocol or through domestic policy, and have started to take voluntary actions to reduce their emissions. If agricultural producers participate in the emerging market for tradable C-credits, it must be possible to verify that actions farmers take do increase the amount of C in soils and this increase can be maintained over the length of the contract. In this paper we develop a prototype measurement and monitoring scheme for C-credits sequestered in agricultural soils and estimate its costs for the small grain-producing region of Montana using an econometric-process simulation model. Three key results emerge from the prototype framework. First, the efficiency of measurement and monitoring procedures for agricultural soil C sequestration depends on the price of C credits. Second, we find that at all price levels, costs of measuring and monitoring are largest in areas that exhibit the greatest heterogeneity in carbon values. Third, in a case study application of our prototype measurement and monitoring scheme, we find that if we assume similar error and confidence levels as forestry contracts, the upper estimate of measurement and monitoring costs associated with a contract that pays farmers per tonne of C sequestered is 3% of the value of a C-credit. This cost is small relative to the estimated net value of the contract. Thus we conclude that measurement and monitoring costs are not likely to be large enough to prevent producers from participating in a market for tradable credits.


Jose Galvan Amaro, a Mexican-American fieldworker in Watsonville, California, was interviewed in June 1977 by Meri Knaster, an editor at the Regional History Project, as part of a series on local agricultural and ethnic history. This oral history, conducted in Spanish on June 2 and June 6, 1977 at Amaro's home in Watsonville, California, focuses on Amaro's extensive experience as a laborer in California from the 1920s to the 1970s. The interview was conducted in Spanish and is provided here both as a verbatim transcript in Spanish and in English translation.


Abstract Little remains of the Broadwater Hotel and Natatorium except memories and stories.1 What once represented the great vision of its creator has become a field of rampant weeds and broken dreams. The site of the old Broadwater Hotel and Natatorium, on the west outskirts of Helena, Montana, for years has drawn the passerby's curious interest. For residents, the Hotel retains a mysterious aura. How could something so grand disappear so quickly and leave so little evidence of its existence? Colonel Charles A. Broadwater, a man of vision and hope, demonstrated an extraordinary faith in Helena.2 "Broadwater was very near to the best life of Helena, and his manner of expressing his faith in the city was as big and fluent as his name."3 The Colonel dreamed of constucting a grand hotel, reflecting Helena's elegance. Sadly, Broadwater's elaborate objective never would be fulfilled. Events and circumstances worked against the Hotel's success from the moment of its conception. Historian Bob Fletcher reflected, thirty years after the Hotel's demise, that despite the Colonel's faith in Helena and his dream, the "Hotel was never a financial success and opened and closed several times."4 No single event or person can be blamed for the failure of the grand resort. The Broadwater Hotel symbolized elegance second to none in the world. Yet much more underlies the Hotel than a mere dream, notably the man himself. A shrewd businessman, Broadwater invested his enthusiasm in various ventures. Wise and timely investments allowed for the pursuit of his grand dream. For these reasons, both the man directing the dream and his guiding visions reguire examination. Colonel Broadwater devoted a great deal of energy and time to the development of railroads in Montana. Contemporary historians cite Broadwater's railroad involvement as the driving force in the creation of the Hotel. Broadwater initially purchased the land to thwart rivals laying tracks in the area. The effort failed, however, and he looked for a lucrative alternative for the property. A clever businessman, the Colonel realized the potential of the location and utilized his land to create a first-class resort. The era in which the Broadwater Hotel and Hot Springs flourished became as critical to its existence as the man himself. A closer study of the "Gay Nineties," or Gilded Age will reveal the people, styles, and attitudes that shaped the elaborate Hotel. Changing times, attitudes, and values reshaped the function and purpose of the Hotel. As events unfolded, the Hotel could neither withstand nor adapt to widespread and drastic change. After Broadwater's death, the Hotel endured a series of alterations and changes of ownership. Inconsistencies in management and ownership created the ultimate tragedy leading to the final closure of the Hotel in the 1940s. The events that transpired after Broadwater's death in 1892 may shock and anger. As the reader will learn, the fairy tale that was the story of the Broadwater lacks the traditional happy ending. The events of Broadwater's life reflect the traditional rags-to-riches story. Hard work, perseverance, and a keen business sense resulted in success throughout his life.


In a challenging but little-studied article published in Architectura in 1985, David B. Brownlee argued that the religious concept of the development of doctrine influenced the belief of architects in the Anglican Church in the 1840s that they should attempt to "develop" architecture in a radical new direction. The result was the style we now call "High Victorian." This article takes up Professor Brownlee9s argument in two ways. First, it looks at how architects in the 1850s sought to create a progressive style by drawing on ideas and images from contemporary science, specifically geology, for which development was also a key word. Second, it addresses the question of why the idea of development fell so suddenly from favor in avant-garde architectural circles in the 1860s. It argues that as science and religion withdrew into their separate spheres, architects turned instead to an ideal based not on historical development but on the imitation of a stylistic paradigm. This approach was influenced by High Church belief that the sacraments, most importantly the Eucharist, were the material realization of a timeless supernatural reality. Changing attitudes to time and precedent had important consequences for the way architects viewed restoration, archaeology, and the use of historical models.


The thesis consists of two parts. The first one is connected
with the establishment of Preposition as a word class, and with that class of Prepositions whose association with the governing word is accounted for in a transformational generative grammar (TGG) either by a lexical redundancy rule or by a transformation, e. g. the prepositions
associating with the active and the passive participles deriving from transitive verbs. The second part on the other hand is interested in Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations: it tries to differentiate between
those whose verbal elements are in close construction with the Preposition-Noun Components, i. e. are prepositional verbs (PV), and those whose verbal elements are not, i. e. are non-PVs: true intransitive or intransitively used transitive verbs.

To make an accurate comparison between these two classes of Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations the discussion is confined to the clauses embracing them and nothing but the subjects of their verbal elements. However, the structural peculiarities of the Preposition-Noun components of the Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations embraced by other clauses
are discussed as long as they are identical with those of the Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations in the former clauses.

The thesis is that setting up an Arabic PV has nothing to do with the constituency break of the Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations: both classes of these combinations break into Verb/Preposition-Noun components; and in this respect Arabic Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations are different from their English counterparts.

A number of criteria including the co-occurrence restrictions related to the two classes of Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations are used to justify this thesis. With reference to the last criterion an attempt is made to incorporate into a TGG the co-occurrence restrictions
associated with Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations. Part of this attempt is connected with the Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations whose verbal elements are non-PVs, and the other with the Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations whose verbal elements are PVs.

In relation to both the first and the second part of this attempt an introductory evaluative examination is made of some previous transformational works on Verb-Preposition-Noun combinations and the restrictions related to them.

The thesis ends with a chapter about the characteristics of the prepositional object of PV, i. e. of the Preposition-Noun component with which PV associates. Such characteristics are proved to be the appropriate bases for recognizing PV and differefttiating it from its counterpart, i. e. the verbal element of the Veib-Preposition-Noun combination whose P-N component functions as Adjunct.


There are major trends to advance the functionality of search engines to a more expressive semantic level. This is enabled by the advent of knowledge-sharing communities such as Wikipedia and the progress in automatically extracting entities and relationships from semistructured as well as natural-language Web sources. Recent endeavors of this kind include DBpedia, EntityCube, KnowItAll, ReadTheWeb, and our own YAGO-NAGA project (and others). The goal is to automatically construct and maintain a comprehensive knowledge base of facts about named entities, their semantic classes, and their mutual relations as well as temporal contexts, with high precision and high recall. This tutorial discusses state-of-the-art methods, research opportunities, and open challenges along this avenue of knowledge harvesting.


This report contains three separate papers, each addressing selected issues concerning natural gas policy and security of gas supply in Europe. The over-arching themes are vulnerability (to supply disruptions, to supplier pricing power) and fragmentation; and measures designed to overcome them, namely interconnection and consolidation of bargaining power. The first paper contains a review of some of the economic effects of, and subsequent policy reactions to, the January 2009 cut of Russian gas supplies through the Ukraine Corridor, with a particular focus on Bulgaria and on EU policy. The second paper provides an analysis of the current state of gas relations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, with a focus on the Ukrainian perspective and on recent political developments in that country. The third paper provides an analysis of the case for consolidating buyer power in line with the concept of an EU Gas Purchasing Agency.


Objective To explore the importance of early life factors shared by siblings, such as parental socioeconomic position, parental practices, housing and neighbourhood, for the association between cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and mortality from CVD, ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and cerebrovascular disease. Methods Norwegian health surveys (1974–2003) were linked with data from the Norwegian Family Based Life Course Study and the Cause of Death Registry. Participants with at least one full sibling among survey participants (n=2 71 643) were included. Data on CVD risk factors, body mass index (BMI), height, systolic blood pressure (SBP) and total cholesterol (TC) were stratified into 'low', 'medium' and 'high' risk, and smoking to 'daily smoking' and 'not daily smoking'. Results Mean age of participants was 41 years, mean follow-up time was 19 years and during follow-up 2512 died from CVD. For each category of increased risk factor level, the per step HR of CVD mortality was increased by 1.91 (95% CI 1.78 to 2.05) for SBP, 1.67 (1.58 to 1.76) for TC, 1.44 (1.36 to 1.53) for BMI, 1.26 (1.18 to 1.35) for height and 2.89 (2.66 to 3.14) for smoking. In analyses where each sibship (groups of full siblings) had a group-specific baseline hazard, these associations were attenuated to 1.74, 1.51, 1.29, 1.18 and 2.63, respectively. The associations between risk factors and IHD mortality followed the same pattern. Conclusion Early life family factors explained a small part of the association between risk factors and mortality from CVD and IHD in a relatively young sample.


[trans-Cu(μ-OH)(μ-dmpz)]6 (1) exhibits six Cu(II) centers effectively coupled through a ligand mediated mechanism leading to a diamagnetic ground state over a wide temperature range. Here we investigate further magneto-structural correlations based on the possible free electron precession along such a copper-based ring-like nanocoil mediated by bridging ligands. We find that in 1, mediated antiferromagnetic coupling leads to characteristics that induce aromatic ring behavior through evaluation of both induced currents and shielding of cones from a relativistic density functional theory level. According to our gauge calculations including magnetically induced current densities and an induced magnetic field, a sizable ring current strength susceptibility is obtained for the cyclic Cu–N–N–Cu and Cu–O–Cu pathways, allowing a magnetic exchange between the copper centers. Our study suggests that [Cu6(dmPz)6(OH)6] consisting of an aromatic ring structure displays aromaticity and superexchange along the Cu–O–Cu and Cu–N–N–Cu backbones, which accounts for 80% and 20% of the overall ring current strength susceptibility, respectively. This reveals the presence of particular aromatic ring characteristics in coordination compounds without a direct metal–metal bond, where several formally paramagnetic centers are antiferromagnetically-coupled through supporting ligands. We envisage that our findings can be extended to other examples depicting ligand-mediated interaction between metal centers.


To investigate the possibility of a genotype x environment interaction in Bonsmara cattle, a cluster analysis was performed on weaning weight records of 72 811 Bonsmara calves, the progeny of 1 434 sires and 24 186 dams in 35 herds. The following environmental factors were used to classify herds into clusters: solution for herd effects corrected for year-season, sex, age of dam and age at weaning (indicative of the management level in a herd), herd size and average temperature and rainfall. Two different genetic analyses were performed. Breeding values obtained in a univariate analysis were used as basis for comparison to breeding values obtained from a multivariate analysis where weaning weight in each cluster was considered as a separate trait. Direct additive, maternal additive, permanent maternal environment and Herd-Year-Season x Sire (HYSxS) interaction were included as random effects in both analyses. The direct genetic correlations between the clusters varied between 0.51 and 1.00. The low correlation estimates between some of the clusters indicate a possible genotype x environment interaction. Substantial reranking of sires between clusters did occur. However, further research is needed to identify and prioritize variables that can describe the genetics, management and climate of each herd more accurately. Keywords : Bonsmara cattle, Genotype by environment interaction, weaning weight South African Journal of Animal Science Vol. 38 (1) 2008: pp. 51-57


While photopatterning is in widespread use for patterning inorganic semiconductors, patterning of widely-used gold-thiol organic self-assembled monolayers is typically done with contact methods. Through common atomic force microscope techniques and quantification of the energy impinging on the target surface, the energy required for UV-photooxidation of Au-Thiol SAMs can be determined. This quantification allows for the precise control of features using simple shadow masking from electron microscopy grids or other targets. Beyond characterizing the accuracy and resolution of features, the pattern stability of the resulting monolayers is examined indicating a drive toward phase segregation and increasing order of the mixed monolayers.


This short paper describes the trash attack which is effective against the majority of fullyverifiable election systems. The paper then offers a simple but counter-intuitive mitigation which can be incorporated within many such schemes to substantially reduce the effectiveness of the attack. This mitigation also offers additional benefits as it significantly improves the statistical properties of existing verifiable systems.


Peripheral resistance to insulin is a prominent feature of both insulin-dependent and non-insulin-dependent diabetes. Skeletal muscle is the primary site responsible for decreased insulin-induced glucose utilization in diabetic subjects. Glucose transport is the rate-limiting step for glucose utilization in muscle, and that cellular process is defective in human and animal diabetes. The transport of glucose across the muscle cell plasma membrane is mediated by glucose transporter proteins, and two isoforms (GLUT1 and GLUT4) are expressed in muscle. Insulin acutely increases glucose transport in muscle by selectively stimulating the recruitment of the GLUT4 transporter (but not GLUT1) from an intracellular pool to the plasma membrane. In skeletal muscles of streptozocin-induced diabetic rats, there is a decreased GLUT4 protein content in intracellular and plasma membranes. In these rats, insulin induced the mobilization of GLUT4 from the internal pool, but the incorporation of the transporter protein into the plasma membrane is diminished. Conversely, the content of the GLUT1 transporter increases in the plasma membrane of these diabetic rats. Normalization of glycemia with phlorizin fully restores the amount of GLUT1 and GLUT4 proteins to normal levels in the plasma membrane without altering insulin levels. This suggests that glycemia regulates the number of glucose transporters at the cell surface, GLUT1 varying directly and GLUT4 inversely, to glycemia. The regulatory role of glycemia also can be seen in diabetic dogs in vivo, where correction of hyperglycemia with phlorizin restores, at least in part, the defective metabolic clearance rate of glucose seen in these animals. In addition to acutely stimulating glucose transport in muscle, insulin controls exercise- and possibly stress-mediated glucose uptake in vivo, by preventing hyperglycemia and by restraining the effects of catecholamines on lipolysis and/or muscle glycogenolysis. Finally, we postulated a neural pathway that requires the permissive effect of insulin to increase glucose uptake by the muscle. Thus, insulin, glucose, and neural pathways regulate muscle glucose utilization in vivo and are, therefore, important determinants of glucoregulation in diabetes.


'Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!' This declamation by president Ronald Reagan when visiting Berlin in 1987 is widely cited as the clarion call that brought the Cold War to an end. The West had won, so this version of events goes, because the West had stood firm. American and Western European resoluteness had brought an evil empire to its knees. Michael Meyer, in this extraordinarily compelling account of the revolutions that roiled Eastern Europe in 1989, begs to differ. Drawing together breathtakingly vivid, on-the-ground accounts of the rise of Solidarity in Poland, the stealth opening of the Hungarian border, the Velvet Revolution in Prague, and the collapse of the infamous wall in Berlin, Meyer shows that western intransigence was only one of the many factors that provoked such world-shaking change. More important, Meyer contends, were the stands taken by individuals in the thick of the struggle, leaders such as poet and playwright Vaclav Havel in Prague; Lech Walesa; the quiet and determined reform prime minister in Budapest, Miklos Nemeth; and the man who realized his empire was already lost and decided, with courage and intelligence, to let it go in peace, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. Michael Meyer captures these heady days in all their rich drama and unpredictability, providing a thrilling chronicle of perhaps the most important year of the 20th century.


Abstract. In this paper, we present the identification of terrace field by using Feed-forward back propagation deep neural network in pixel-based and several cases of object-based approaches. Terrace field of Lao Cai area in Vietnam is identified from 5-meter RapidEye image. The image includes 5 bands: red, green, blue, rededge and nir-infrared. Reference data are set of terrace points and nonterrace points, which are generated by randomly selected from reference map. The reference data is separated into three sets: training set for training processing, validation set for generating optimal parameters of deep neural network model, and test set for assessing the accuracy of classification. Six optimal thresholds (T): 0.06, 0.09, 0.12, 0.14, 0.2 and 0.22 are chosen from Rate of Change graph, and then used to generate six cases of object-based classification. Deep neural network (DNN) model is built with 8 hidden layers, input units are 5 bands of RapidEye, and output is terrace and non-terrace classes. Each hidden layer includes 256 units – a large number, to avoid under-fitting. Activation function is Rectifier. Dropout and two regularization parameters are applied to avoid overfitting. Seven terrace maps are generated. The classification results show that the DNN is able to identify terrace field effectively in both pixel-based and object-based approaches. Pixel-based classification is the most accurate approach, achieves 90% accuracy. The values of object-based approaches are 88.5%, 87.3%, 86.7%, 86.6%, 85% and 85.3% correspond to the segmentation thresholds.


In modern air combat operations, the mental workload for fighter pilots is extremely high. The pilot has to make fast dynamic decisions under high uncertainty and high time pressure. This is hard to perform in Within Visual Range (WVR) combat operations, but becomes even harder in Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat operations where the on-board sensors of aircraft become the pilot's eyes and ears. Typically, the data received from multiple on-board and off-board sensors and sources is fused mentally by operators to produce a coherent air surveillance picture portraying tracks of airborne targets and their classification. Then the air surveillance picture is analyzed mentally to determine the behavior of each target with respect to the own ship and other targets in the region and assess the intent or threat that they pose or the impact they may have on the mission (situation assessment). As the number of targets grows or the situation escalates, the volume of available data from these sensors and sources may overload the operators. To assist them in such situations, it is desirable to automate some of the situation and threat assessment process. In this paper, a Fuzzy logic and Bayesian Network (BN) based hybrid technique is used to investigate the possibilities of design and implementation of an expert system named Intelligent System for Situation Assessment in Air-Combat (ISSAAC) as an aid to pilots engaged in air-combat. ISSAAC is a pilot-in-loop (PIL) simulator consisting of integration of platform models, sensor models, pilot mental models and data processing algorithms. The capability of ISSAAC is demonstrated by simulating an air-to-air combat scenario consisting of six targets.


Rehabilitation exoskeletons may make use of myoelectric control to restore in patients with significant motor impairment following a spinal cord injury (SCI) a sense of volitional control over their limb — a crucial component for recovery of movement. Little investigation has been done into the feasibility of using surface electromyography (sEMG) as an exoskeleton control interface for SCI patients, whose impairment manifests in a highly variable way across the patient population. We have demonstrated that by using only a small subset of features extracted from eight bipolar electrodes recording on the upper arm and forearm muscles, we can achieve high predictive accuracy for the intended direction of motion. Five healthy subjects and two SCI subjects performed voluntary isometric contractions while wearing an exoskeleton for the wrist and elbow joints, generating six distinct single and multi-DoF motions in a total of sixteen possible directions. Using linear discriminant analysis, classification performance was then evaluated using randomly selected holdout test data from the same recording session. Commonalities across subjects, both healthy and SCI, were analyzed at the levels of selected features and the values of commonly selected features. Future work will be to investigate group-specific classification of SCI subjects' intended movements for use in the real-time control of a rehabilitation exoskeleton.


The boards of all publicly traded companies are required to conduct a self-evaluation at least annually to determine whether they are functioning effectively. Research suggests that while many directors are satisfied with the job that they and their fellow board members do, board evaluations and boardroom performance fall short along several important dimensions. We review the current state of board evaluations, and summarize how they can improve.
We ask:
• Why do board evaluations fail to review the performance of individual directors? • What are the social and psychological barriers to conducting effective evaluations, and how can they be reduced? • What behaviors are required to be successful in a boardroom setting? • How important is boardroom culture, and how does it influence decision making?
The Closer Look series is a collection of short case studies through which we explore topics, issues, and controversies in corporate governance and executive leadership. In each study, we take a targeted look at a specific issue that is relevant to the current debate on governance and explain why it is so important. Larcker and Tayan are co-authors of the books Corporate Governance Matters and A Real Look at Real World Corporate Governance.


We report results from an extensive timing monitoring campaign of PSR JO537-6910, the 16-ms pulsar in the Large Magellanic Cloud, The source has been monitored using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer since January, 1999, and at least 18 glitches in its rotation rate have been seen. Despite this extreme activity, phase-connected timing solutions are maintained between the glitches. In addition to its high rotation rate and frequent large glitches, the pulsar has other unusual characteristics. First, a precursor is sometimes seen before the large glitches in which a large phase error is detected several days before the glitch. with no measurable change in pulsar frequency. Second, the size of a glitch is correlated with the time since the previous glitch. Third, phases measured during observations for several weeks after a glitch are often slightly below the extrapolation of best-fit model for the subsequent post-glitch data. It appears that a small fraction of the sudden increase in frequency decays with an e-folding time scale of about a week. We discuss the implications of these phenomena.


This paper describes a method for analyzing the controllability of duct systems for variable air volume (VAV) and how it has been implemented in simulation. An innovated control strategy of VAV system is presented based on the concept in view of the whole system.

Modeling methodology for global VAV system is developed, including the model of an air handle unit (AHU) connecting ductwork with all boxes, zones model and static pressure-correlation model. The model configuration is suitable for studying various optimal control strategies. The total air volume control strategy is presented that is not only expected to give good regulation of zone temperatures, but also minimize fan energy consumption.

The overall VAV system is decomposed into a fast (air flow) system and a slow thermal system, so a cascade control strategy is employed in its system level, which successfully solves optimal operation problems of VAV control puzzles.

According the obtained large-scale dynamic models and the cascade strategy presented we simulate the multizone VAV system to acquire the best control parameters.


The calibration of the TEXs6 (Ietra.§.ther indeX of tetraethers with 86 carbon atoms) paleotemperature proxy in lacustrine systems provides a new hydrologically independent paleothermometer, enabling high-resolution lake surface temperature reconstructions from large lakes. TEXs6 is based on the relative abundance of cyclopentane containing membrane lipids (glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers or GDGTs) of aquatic Crenarchaeota, a non-thermophilic Archaea. I have developed a calibration for the TEXs6 paleotemperature proxy from a climatically diverse suite of globally distributed lacustrine systems (N=15). The results of this calibration show a strong linear relationship between TEXs6 values and published mean annual and mean winter lake surface temperature. The TEXs6 index appears to work best in large lakes, which are typically the best integrators of regional climate variability. Methanogenic/methanotrophic and hydrothermal Archaea are capable of producing some of the same isoprenoid tetraethers, and in certain cases can confuse the TEXs6 signal. I have applied TEXs6 to lacustrine sediments from Lake Malawi, East Africa, to develop high-resolution paleotemperature records from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the present. I find a -4 °C overall warming since the LGM, with temperature reversals of more than 2 °C during the Younger Dryas (12.5 ka BP) and in the early Holocene (Fig.1), possibly associated with the 8.2 ka climate event. The onset of warming in the Lake Malawi basin coincides with the BYRD oxygen isotope record of warming in Antarctica. While the range of temperatures observed in this record is not surprising, the timing of post-glacial warming, the thermal response to the YD, and the Holocene history of warming and cooling trends are providing important new insights into tropical climate dynamics on centennial to millennial scales. Additionally I have produced a temperature record from Lake Malawi spanning the past 700 years at 50 year sampling resolution. This record shows an anti-phase relationship with solar forcing and primary productivity records ii through much of the record. In the past 100 years there is a strong coherence with solar irradiance and atmospheric C02 concentrations with the temperature record indicating a possible shift in tropical climate response to external forcing.


This paper explores monetary-macroprudential policy interactions in a simple, calibrated New Keynesian model incorporating the possibility of a credit boom precipitating a financial crisis and a loss function reflecting financial stability considerations. Deploying the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) improves outcomes significantly relative to when interest rates are the only instrument. The instruments are typically substitutes, with monetary policy loosening when the CCyB tightens. We also examine when the instruments are complements and assess how different shocks, the effective lower bound for monetary policy, market-based finance and a risk-taking channel of monetary policy affect our results.


Reservoir is an important part of water conservancy engineering system and an important infrastructure for economic and social development. However, with the increase of operating time, as well as the change of social demand and operating environment, the safety, function, benefit, cost, and other characteristics of the reservoir are also changing. Like living things, reservoirs also have a life cycle of "birth, old age, illness, and death." The retirement of a dam is an inevitable stage in the life cycle management, as well as a means of resource readjustment and rational utilization. Combined with dam retirement cases that caused severe impacts in history, generalized dam removal eco-environment influence factors are obtained from aspects of materializing, ecology, society, and economy. Based on economic rationality theory and flood consequence assessment, two decision-making methods of dam retirement are put forward. The flood consequence method is applied on the case of Heiwa reservoir; key evaluation indexes are compiled from the aspects of ecology, economy, and society; and the evaluation system based on single index is constructed.


Internet of things (IoT) applications aim to provide access to widespread interconnected networks of smart devices, services, and information. This can be achieved by integrating IoT and cloud computing (CC). By using cloud computing service composition (SC), multiple services from various providers can be combined to meet users' requirements. However, SC is known for its complexity and is classified as an NP-hard problem; such problems are usually approached using heuristics, such as bio-inspired algorithms. This paper aims at developing a bio-inspired algorithm that mimics the behavior of cuckoo birds (which examine the nests of other birds to find eggs similar to their own) to find a composite service that fulfills a user's request in a multi-cloud environment (MCE). Previous work on cuckoo-inspired algorithms has generally utilized metaheuristics, which try to fit a "good" solution to a general optimization problem. In contrast, we propose a problem-dependent heuristic that considers the SC problem and its particularities in MCE. The proposed algorithm, MultiCuckoo, was thoroughly evaluated based on a well-controlled experimental framework that benchmarks the performance of the new algorithm to other outstanding SC algorithms, including the all clouds combination algorithm, base cloud combination algorithm, and combinatorial optimization algorithm for multiple cloud service Composition. The results show that our algorithm is more efficient in terms of decreasing the number of examined services, the composed clouds, and the running time in comparison to the benchmark algorithms.


Background & Aim: Foreign body aspiration commonly involves very young children and taking a precise history and doing a careful physical examination can lead to diagnosis. If the extraction of the object is delayed beyond 24 hours, it will lead to complications such as pneumonia, abscess, and atelectasis. Therefore, the present study tries to investigate the duration and reasons of delayed diagnosis of airway foreign body aspiration in children admitted to pediatric Hospital in Tabriz. Patients and Method: This cross-sectional descriptive study was done over a period of 36 months, from 2001 to 2004, in the ENT Department of Children's Hospital in Tabriz. 155 cases who had been admitted for foreign body aspiration and had undergone successful bronchoscopic removal were studied. The information such as the history of choking, the gap between initiation of symptoms and admission (duration of delayed diagnosis), outpatient visits, the first diagnosis, and the results of bronchoscopy was all recorded in the checklists. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, and Excell 11.0 were used. Results: The mean age of the patients was 21.58 (±12.90) months. 81.3% were under 3 years of age and 18.7% were above 3. Protracted cough lasting beyond 3 weeks was the most common symptom found in 73.5% of the cases. The average interval between aspiration and admission was 24.71 (± 8.96) days. Only 24.5% arrived in the first 24 hours. The main causes of delayed diagnosis were lack of notice on the part of parents and incorrect diagnoses made by physicians. Conclusion: 75.5% of the cases with foreign body aspiration were referred after 24 hours and the duration of delayed diagnosis in the present study was longer than that mentioned in the reports of other centers. Parents' unawareness and physicians' insufficient training can delay the diagnosis of airway foreign body aspiration and cause serious complications. Thus, providing proper education is necessary to prevent them.


PURPOSE
To evaluate the effectiveness of Guglielmi detachable coils (GDCs) filled with collagen threads in the permanent treatment of experimental aneurysms.

METHODS
Seventeen side-wall aneurysms were surgically constructed in the canine common carotid artery; six were treated with conventional GDCs and 11 with collagen-filled GDCs. One aneurysms was removed at 1 week, the others were studied by digital subtraction angiography for a period of 8 to 12 weeks. Longitudinal sections of all aneurysms were examined by light microscopy.

RESULTS
Angiograms obtained throughout the follow-up period showed no significant difference between aneurysms treated with conventional GDCs and those treated with collagen-filled GDCs. Light microscopy revealed a dense meshwork of newly formed collagen and fibroblasts near the collagen-filled GDCs, whereas a loose cellular meshwork surrounded the conventional GDCs at 8 and 12 weeks after treatment.

CONCLUSION
Collagen threads within GDCs do not noticeably improve angiographic treatment of experimental aneurysms; however, these threads did induce local proliferation of fibroblasts and production of collagen within the aneurysmal cavities.


This study investigated the impact of external debt on economic growth of Tanzania for the period of 1990-2010. The study used time series data on external debt and economic performance. It is assumed that external debt helps developing countries to meet developing needs. While debt servicing seeks development by restoring credibility to existing and new creditors. The study collected data from Bank of Tanzania (BoT), Zanzibar branch, President's Office Finance, Economy and Development Planning in Zanzibar and Ministry of Finance (MoF), Tanzania. In addition, data were collected from the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) publications. The study revealed that there is significant impact of the external debt and debt service on GDP growth. The total external debt stock has a positive effect of about 0.36939 and debt service payment has a negative effect of about 28.517. Long run relationship the co-integration test shows that there is no long run relationship of the external debt and GDP. Conclusively, there is a need for further research to identify the impact of external debt on foreign direct investments and the impact of external debt on domestic revenues.


Conventional and genomic breeding values for clinical mastitis were estimated,based on a dataset of 15,905 cows (36,250 lactations) from 10 farms, calving years from 1996 to 2014. The number of genotyped bulls was 2647 and 799 of them had offspring among the surveyed cows. Pedigree consisted of 64,306 individuals. Analyzed trait was defined as the number of incidence of clinical mastitis per standard lactation. Parity was limited from 1 to 7. The highest proportion of mastitis disease was observed in early lactation and decreased with month of lactation, while there was an upswing of diseases with parity. Genetic trend for cows showed a deteriorating tendency for clinical mastitis. From 1992 to 2010 there was a rise in the relative values of breeding values from 88% to 112% (worsening). Relative breeding values of these bulls were on average above 100%. The correlations between classical genomic breeding values and the values were high: 93% for the whole sample, 81% to 48 young genomic bulls without daughters born in years 2011 and 2012.


REVIEW ARTICLE Introduction: Micro pollutants have become one of the most important environmental concerns around the world. These natural and synthetic compounds have been called Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) due to their interfere with the normal function of the endocrine system in humans and animals. They include natural and synthetic hormones and their metabolites, surfactant, insecticide, as well as some pharmaceuticals and health care products. Because of these compounds effects, importance of their monitoring in Iran is perceived like other countries. Materials and Methods: This paper was carried out on the basis of studies accomplished from 2000 to 2017 and also the ones published in databases such as Google Scholar, Elsevier, Scopus, Science direct, Magiran, and SID using hormone removal, micro pollutant removal, removal hormones from wastewater, sex hormones removal, steroidal hormones, hormone removal from wastewater, and removal efficiency of micro pollutants as the keywords. PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement was used for selecting articles. Results: Sexual reproduction of fish exposed to estrogenic compounds was changed. Phytoestrogens exist on a certain strain of clover which caused severe infertility in sheep grazing on them. Some studies have reported that a decrease in men's sperm and breast cancer in women are caused by exposure to estrogenic compounds. Conclusion: According to the current study, further studies are needed to determine the entry routes of steroid hormones into aquatic environment, the detection techniques and measurements, as well as the best removal method in Iran. Article History: Received: 10 January 2017 Accepted: 22 April 2017


Background: the aim of this study was to assess healthcare demand of specific groups of population and their costs borne by Italian Health System, using healthcare administrative databases.
Methods: demographic, clinical and economic data were obtained from datasets available at the Regional Health System, combined into a data warehouse (DENALI), using a probabilistic record linkage to optimize the data matching process. The study population consisted of more than 1 million people registered in 2005 at one Local Healthcare Unit of Lombardy. Eight different segments were identified. Costs occurring in 2005 for hospital admissions, drug prescriptions, outpatient medical specialist visits were quantified in each segment.
Results: healthy people accounted for 53% of the population and cost € 180 per-capita. Subjects with only one chronic disease made up 16% of the population and cost € 916 per-capita, those affected by several chronic diseases accounted for 13% and cost € 3 457 per-capita. Hospitalizations were the cost driver in five segments, ranging from 42% to 89% of total expenditures. Outpatient visits were the cost driver among healthy subjects (54%) and those with a possible chronic disease (42%), while drug costs ranged between 4% ("acute event") and 32% ("one chronic disease"). Overall, healthcare cost was € 809 per-capita.
Conclusions: healthcare costs were mainly determined by people affected by chronic conditions, even if "healthy people" ranked third for total expenditure. These costs need an appropriate identification of healthcare demand, that could be efficiently monitored through the use of administrative databases.


We surveyed health care professionals about their preparations to manage the clinical problems associated with patients exposed to hazardous substances, including weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Training for WMD is considered a key part of public health policy and preparedness. Although such events are rare, when they do occur, they can cause mass casualties. In many models of mass casualty management, anesthesiology personnel are responsible for treating patients immediately on arrival at the hospital. We studied the extent of training offered to anesthesiology personnel in the use of WMD protective gear and patient management in United States (US) anesthesiology residency programs. Information was obtained via an online survey to all program directors and chairpersons of anesthesiology programs. We polled all of the 135 US anesthesiology programs of which 90 (67%) responded. Only 37% had any form of training, and many of them did not repeat training after initial sessions. Twenty-eight percent of programs east of the Mississippi River reported some form of training whereas only 17% of programs west of it reported training available. The majority of anesthesia residency programs in the US that responded to our survey provided little or no training in the management of patients exposed to WMD.


Regulations that govern oversight of seclusion and/or restraint episodes (SREs) in the United States are relatively uniform and may assume that such events are normally distributed within the population generating them. This study illustrates that the distribution of patients who required one or more SREs within one state psychiatric hospital setting is heavy-tailed-that is, a small group of patients generated a disproportionate majority of the events: 20 percent of patients with the most SREs accounted for approximately 75 percent of the total number of SREs; 10 percent of patients accounted for 61 percent, and 1 percent of patients accounted for 21 percent. Characteristic features of heavy-tailed distributions are described and discussed in relation to the feasibility of eliminating SREs in mental health settings and the governance of SREs by uniform regulations. Attempts are made to model and subtype the distribution, and commentary is made as to potential clinical and policy relevance of the findings.


Very high unconjugated bilirubin plasma concentrations in neonates (neonatal hyperbilirubinaemia; NH) may cause neurologic damage (kernicterus). Both increased red blood cell turn-over and immaturity of hepatic glucuronidation contribute to neonatal hyperbilirubinaemia. The incidence of NH requiring phototherapy during the first week of life on the Thailand-Myanmar border is high (approximately 25%). On the Thailand-Myanmar border we investigated the contribution of genetic risk factors to high bilirubin levels in the first month of life in 1596 neonates enrolled in a prospective observational birth cohort study. Lower gestational age (<38 weeks), mutations in the genes encoding glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) and uridine 5′-diphospho-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) 1A1 were identified as the main independent risk factors for NH in the first week, and for prolonged jaundice in the first month of life. Population attributable risks (PAR%) were 61.7% for lower gestational age, 22.9% for hemi or homozygous and 9.9% for heterozygous G6PD deficiency respectively, and 6.3% for UGT1A1*6 homozygosity. In neonates with an estimated gestational age ≥ 38 weeks, G6PD mutations contributed PARs of 38.1% and 23.6% for "early" (≤ 48 hours) and "late" (49–168 hours) NH respectively. For late NH, the PAR for UGT1A1*6 homozygosity was 7.7%. Maternal excess weight was also a significant risk factor for "early" NH while maternal mutations on the beta-globin gene, prolonged rupture of membranes, large haematomas and neonatal sepsis were risk factors for "late" NH. For prolonged jaundice during the first month of life, G6PD mutations and UGT1A1*6 mutation, together with lower gestational age at birth and presence of haematoma were significant risk factors. In this population, genetic factors contribute considerably to the high risk of NH. Diagnostic tools to identify G6PD deficiency at birth would facilitate early recognition of high risk cases.


Reactivating memories during sleep by re-exposure to associated memory cues (e.g., odors or sounds) improves memory consolidation. Here, we tested for the first time whether verbal cueing during sleep can improve vocabulary learning. We cued prior learned Dutch words either during non-rapid eye movement sleep (NonREM) or during active or passive waking. Re-exposure to Dutch words during sleep improved later memory for the German translation of the cued words when compared with uncued words. Recall of uncued words was similar to an additional group receiving no verbal cues during sleep. Furthermore, verbal cueing failed to improve memory during active and passive waking. High-density electroencephalographic recordings revealed that successful verbal cueing during NonREM sleep is associated with a pronounced frontal negativity in event-related potentials, a higher frequency of frontal slow waves as well as a cueing-related increase in right frontal and left parietal oscillatory theta power. Our results indicate that verbal cues presented during NonREM sleep reactivate associated memories, and facilitate later recall of foreign vocabulary without impairing ongoing consolidation processes. Likewise, our oscillatory analysis suggests that both sleep-specific slow waves as well as theta oscillations (typically associated with successful memory encoding during wakefulness) might be involved in strengthening memories by cueing during sleep.


Aims: The present study aimed to assess the occupational health problems of municipal solid waste management workers. Material and Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among solid waste management workers of Kerala, India. All workers (408) were included the study of which 313 (77%) participated. Data were collected by direct interview and clinical examination using a structured questionnaire. The observed morbidity like respiratory diseases, eye diseases, dermatological problems and nail infections were elicited by clinical examination. The point prevalence of other occupational related health events present either during the study time or during 1 month recall period and that occurred ever after entry in present occupation was collected by self-reported complaints and doctors diagnoses. Results: The mean age was 42.5 ± 7.2 years. The observed morbidity like respiratory diseases, eye diseases, dermatological problems, nail infections were high ranged from 21% to 47%. The reported prevalence of occupation related morbidities like falls (63.6%), accidents (22%), injuries (73.2%), and water-vector borne disease (7.1%) were high. The current prevalence of musculoskeletal morbidities showing that all major joints are involved (17-39%). Conclusions: The work related health-problems were reported to be high. The prevalence of Respiratory, dermatological, eye problems and injury, musculoskeletal problems were reported to be high among municipal solid work handlers. Measures are needed to improve the work environment of waste handlers by ensuring availability protective gears based on ergonomic principles, clean drinking water and washing and sanitation facilities during working hours.


Visual media data such as an image is the raw data representation for many important applications, such as image retrieval (Mikolajczyk & Schmid 2001), video classification (Lin & Hauptmann, 2002), facial expression recognition (Wang & Ahuja 2003), face recognition (Zhao, Chellappa, Phillips & Rosenfeld 2003), etc. Reducing the dimensionality of raw visual media data is highly desirable since high dimensionality may severely degrade the effectiveness and the efficiency of retrieval algorithms. To obtain low-dimensional representation of visual media data, we can start by selecting good low-level features, such as colors, textures, and interest pixels (Swain & Ballard 1991; Gevers & Smeulders 1998; Schmid, Mohr & Bauckhage 2000). Pixels of an image may hold different interest strengths according to a specific filtering or convolution technique. The pixels of high interest strengths are expected to be more repeatable and stable than the pixels of low interest strengths across various imaging conditions, such as rotations, lighting conditions, and scaling. Interest pixel mining aims to detect a set of pixels that have the best repeatability across imaging conditions. (An algorithm for interest pixel mining is called a detector.) Interest pixel mining can be formulated into two steps: i) interest strength assignment via a specific filtering technique; and ii) candidate selection. The second step, candidate selection, plays an important role in preventing the output of interest pixels from being jammed in a small number of image regions in order to achieve best repeatability. Based on interest pixels, various image representations can be derived. A straightforward scheme is to represent an image as a collection of local appearances—the intensities of neighboring pixels—of interest pixels (Schmid & Mohr 1997). By ignoring the spatial relationship of interest pixels, this "unstructured" representation requires no image alignment, i.e., free from establishing pixel-to-pixel correspondence among imaging objects by image transformations such as rotation, translation, and scaling. Furthermore, the unstructured representation is very robust with respect to outlier regions in a retrieval application. However, the retrieval cost under unstructured representation is extremely expensive. In the context of face recognition, feature distribution is introduced to capture both global and local information of faces (Li, Ye & Kambhamettu 2006A). A limitation of feature distribution is the assumption of image alignment. A promising trend on interest pixel based representation is to build graph or tree representation for each image and measure the similarity of two images by the edit distance of their graphs or trees (Zhang & Shasha 1989). But as we will see in the later section, this trend is strongly supported by a recently proposed interest pixel mining method (Li, Ye & Kambhamettu 2008).


Abstract: Oxidative stress is implicated in HIV-infection. It has been suggested that plant antioxidants may offer protection from viral replication and cell death associated with oxidative stress in patients with HIV/AIDS . Because of inherent antioxidant properties of turmeric (T) and its derivatives, water-soluble extract turmerin (Tm) and lipid soluble curcumin (Cu), their potential efficacy as anti-HIV drugs were examined. Cell viability and p-24 antigen release by CEMss-T cells (1 x 10 5 cells/ml) infected with HIV-III B strain, used as an acute model of infection, were tested in the presence of 3'azido-3'deoxythmidine (AZT). Proliferative responses of human mononuclear cells derived from HIV patients (chronic model) stimulated with phyohemagglutinin (PHA), concanavalin A (ConA), and pokeweed mitogen (PWM) were also examined in the presence of AZT and Tm. In the infection assay, T, Tm and Cu individually did not reduce p-24 antigen release or improve cell viability. AZT (5µM) + Tm (800 ng/ml) inhibited infection by 37 % and increased cell numbers by 30%; whereas, Tm (80 ng/ml) inhibited infection by 26% and increased cell number by 60%. In the proliferation assay, lymphocytes from HIV-infected patients showed better inhibition of mitogen responsiveness to Tm (800 ng/ml) when compared to AZT at 5 µM or Tm at 80 ng/ml. Turmerin inhibited HIV-infected T-cell proliferation and, in combination with AZT, decreased T-cell infection and increased cell viability. These data provide evidence suggesting that efficacious anti-HIV therapy may be possible using lower, less toxic doses of AZT in the presence of turmerin.


Children who are forcibly uprooted from their homes experience enormous losses, increased exposure to violent conflict, and severe deprivation. Much research remains to be done concerning the impact of displacement related adversity on the mental health of children and adolescents. A psychometric screening tool, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), supplemented with anthropologically-informed research methods, was employed to appraise the mental health of 128 Afghan boys and girls, aged 11 to 16, attending four schools in Peshawar, Pakistan. Equal numbers of children were born in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and one third had no father living at home. Parents, teachers and children provided questionnaire data on mental health difficulties and prosocial behaviour, and children's projective drawings and open-ended interviews provided contextual information about life and future expectations in Peshawar. Informants were discrepant in their mental health ratings: 22% of sample children were 'probable' cases for a psychiatric disorder based on combined parent and teacher information, compared to just 5% based solely on information provided by parents. All children had normal prosocial abilities. Contrary to expectation, a purposive sample of children orphaned from one or more close relatives did not differentiate themselves in terms of mental health. Age and gender had no detectable impact on mental health ratings. Children whose fathers were not at home were 6 times more likely to receive abnormal mental health scores from both their parents and teachers (p<0.002). Children themselves reported more difficulties if they had large extended families (p=0.027). Children born in Afghanistan and Peshawar did not differ in their mental health. However, children who


When Philip wakes again it is dayhght; as window, wash-basin, chair and then rucksacks swim into focus, this time he knows where he is: in a room in a pensione in Florence, just a stone's throw from the bridge where Dante saw Beatrice, exams over, his girl beside him. Three months of travelling. Seeing. Voyage to Discovery. New World fmds Old. He turns his head; Alvie is still asleep. Sitting up carefully, he watches a pulse ticking in her neck. Her skin is pale, winter-pale, but across the pillow her hair is a copper fire. She has used the rinse she bought to try out her phrase book Italian. Her lips move; she is smiling. At what, he wonders, sliding out of the bed. What? This serial is available in Kunapipi: http://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol8/iss1/6


A six-month-old male entire golden retriever was presented with an umbilical mass noted by the owners four days before. Clinical examination revealed fever (39.7°C) and an umbilical fistulised abscess. Abdominal palpation revealed a solid mass in the caudal abdomen. The ultrasonographic study confirmed the presence of an abdominal mass (7 cm in diameter) adhered to several abdominal organs, mild localised peritonitis and an umbilical defect. The mass was compatible with an abscess or a granuloma potentially associated with an urachal remnant. An exploratory laparotomy confirmed the suspicion. The mass was removed and the urachal remnant corrected. Histopathology revealed the presence of a granuloma with multiple necrotic areas and basophilic structures suggestive of bacterial infection. Few days after surgery, all clinical signs resolved completely. Urachal remnants are rarely reported in small animals. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report describing such a severe presentation with complete resolution.


The modernization of agriculture has caused and continues to cause an increasing disconnection between farming, nature, and society, which has also created a series of social, economic, and ecological crises in the food chain. Case study research of farmers responding to this situation can show us what changes are required to encourage a reconnection between farming, nature, and society. This paper provides ethnographic case study research of two farms: one situated in a productive polder in the Netherlands, and the other in a disadvantaged mountainous area in Galicia, Spain. They both employ "novelty production," farmer-driven adaptations to the farm, seen as a socio-ecological system. These novelties change the input-output relations on farms and result in adaptations in different farming domains (technical, economic, and socio-organizational), which we see as "unfolding" farming practices. This paper examines how these farmers have sustained and improved the socio-ecological performance of their farms and how these changes have led to a shift in the farm as a socio-ecological system and changed the configuration and boundaries of the farms. In conclusion we look at prospects for this approach being supported at a wider level.


Information Architecture for the World Wide Web is about applying the principles of architecture and library science to web site design. Each website is like a public building, available for tourists and regulars alike to breeze through at their leisure. The job of the architect is to set up the framework for the site to make it comfortable and inviting for people to visit, relax in, and perhaps even return to someday.


"The Falling Sky" is a remarkable first-person account of the life story and cosmo-ecological thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon. Representing a people whose very existence is in jeopardy, Davi Kopenawa paints an unforgettable picture of Yanomami culture, past and present, in the heart of the rainforest--a world where ancient indigenous knowledge and shamanic traditions cope with the global geopolitics of an insatiable natural resources extraction industry.In richly evocative language, Kopenawa recounts his initiation and experience as a shaman, as well as his first encounters with outsiders: government officials, missionaries, road workers, cattle ranchers, and gold prospectors. He vividly describes the ensuing cultural repression, environmental devastation, and deaths resulting from epidemics and violence. To counter these threats, Davi Kopenawa became a global ambassador for his endangered people. "The Falling Sky" follows him from his native village in the Northern Amazon to Brazilian cities and finally on transatlantic flights bound for European and American capitals. These travels constitute a shamanic critique of Western industrial society, whose endless material greed, mass violence, and ecological blindness contrast sharply with Yanomami cultural values.Bruce Albert, a close friend since the 1970s, superbly captures Kopenawa's intense, poetic voice. This collaborative work provides a unique reading experience that is at the same time a coming-of-age story, a historical account, and a shamanic philosophy, but most of all an impassioned plea to respect native rights and preserve the Amazon rainforest.


It is imperative to consider the meaning of leprosy and everyday experiences of people affected by leprosy and key persons in the community if one aims to make leprosy services more effective, which appears necessary in Indonesia given the large numbers of new cases detected annually. However, little is written in the international literature about the experiences of people currently being treated for leprosy, those cured, or other key informants. This paper analyses the narratives of the people by drawing upon in-depth interviews with 53 participants and 20 focus groups discussions. The participants were purposively selected. We provide insights into the experiences of people and the meaning they give to leprosy and highlight aspect of aetiology, spirituality, religion, darkening of the skin, and sorcery. We also examine experiences of seeking care and focused on the impact of the disease in particular on the elderly and children. In conclusion, the continued need for implementation of leprosy services in Indonesia is very evident. The diversities in people's experiences with leprosy indicate a demand for responsive leprosy services to serve the diverse needs, including services for those formally declared to be "cured."


Computers and computer-assisted instruction are being used with increasing frequency in the area of undergraduate paramedic education. Paramedic students' attitudes towards the use of e-learning technology and computer-assisted instruction have received limited attention in the empirical literature to date. The objective of this study was to determine paramedic students' attitudes towards e-learning. A cross-sectional methodology was used in the form of a paperbased survey to elicit students' attitudes to e-learning using three standardised scales. Convenience sampling was used to sample a cross-section of paramedic students at five universities during semester 1 of 2009. The scales used were: the Computer Attitude Survey (CAS), the Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES), and the Attitude Toward CAI Semantic Differential Scale (ATCAISDS). There were 339 students who participated. Approximately onehalf (57.7%) were female and most (76.0%) were under 24 years of age. Moderate results were noted for the CAS general and education subscales. The CAS results were broadly corroborated by the OLES, although a statistically significant difference between participants preferred and actual results on the OLES Computer Usage subscale identified that participants would prefer to use computers less than they actually do. Similarly, the ATCAISDS found participants were largely ambivalent towards computers. As paramedic degree programs continue to emerge and develop, careful consideration should be given to the usability and utility of various e-learning approaches. Keywords: e-learning; paramedic; higher education DOI: 10.1080/21567069.2011.586679


This work aims to investigate the tensile and compression strengths of heat- cured acrylic resin denture base material by adding styrene-butadiene (S- B) to polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). The most well- known issue in prosthodontic practice is fracture of a denture base. All samples were a blend of (90%, 80%) PMMA and (10%, 20%) S- B powder melted in Oxolane (Tetra hydro furan). These samples were chopped down into specimens of dimensions 100x10x2.5mm to carry out the requirements of tensile tests. The compression strength test specimens were shaped into a cylinder with dimensions of 12.7mm in diameter and 20mm in length. The experimental results show a significant increase in both tensile and compression strengths when compared to control (standard) results for the preparation material.


Background/Context For many children, doing homework becomes an emotionally charged event and one of the most disappointing aspects of school life. It is surprising to note, however, that homework emotion management is noticeably absent from much contemporary homework literature. Purpose The primary propose of the present study was to propose and test empirical models of variables posited to predict homework emotion management at the secondary school level, with the models informed by (a) research and theory on emotion regulation and (b) findings from homework research that alluded to a number of factors that may influence homework emotion management. Another purpose of the present study was to examine whether homework emotion management is related to homework completion, one of the major outcome variables in the homework process. Research Design The study reported here used cross-sectional survey data. The participants were 1,895 students from 111 classes in the southeastern United States, including 1,046 eighth graders from 63 classes and 849 11th graders from 48 classes. Results Results from the multilevel analyses revealed that most of the variance in homework emotion management occurred at the student level, with grade level appearing as the only significant predictor at the class level. At the student level, the variation in homework emotion management was positively associated with teacher feedback, peer-oriented reasons for doing homework, arranging the environment, managing time, and monitoring motivation. Girls reported statistically significant higher scores in managing homework emotion than did boys. Follow-up analyses further revealed that homework emotion management was positively associated with homework completion. Conclusion As most of the variance in homework emotion management occurred at the student level rather than at the class level, homework emotion management was largely a function of individual student characteristics and experiences. The present study further suggests that monitoring motivation and managing time play a predominant role in homework emotion management (compared with other variables included in the present study). Consequently, there is a critical need to conceptualize these variables in the process of emotion regulation in general, and in homework emotion management in particular. In addition, there is a critical need for secondary schools to strategically engage students in the homework process to better manage their emotion while doing homework.


Background: Mother's own milk (MOM) is the best nutrition for preterm infants; however, milk from cytomegalovirus (CMV)-seropositive mothers may cause the transmission of the virus to the infants. As extremely preterm infants are at a risk of developing serious conditions due to CMV infection, even MOM is sometimes pasteurized. Previously, we demonstrated that microwave heating of 50 mL formula milk containing CMV at 500 W for 40s prevented CMV infection in living cells. However, we do not know if this is the case with reactivated CMV in human milk (HM). Therefore, we investigated if microwave heating of HM would be effective in preventing CMV infection in living cells. Methods: Twenty-three CMV-IgG-positive and four CMV-IgG-negative mothers who donated HM to the human milk bank during 6 to 16 weeks postpartum were enrolled. The HM was treated with microwave at 500 W. HFL-III cells were seeded in culture dishes. Aliquots of HM samples subjected to microwave was inoculated onto susceptible cell monolayers. Infectious vial titer was measured by the 50% median tissue culture infectious Dose (TCID50) assay. Results: The TCID50 assay was decreased in five out of eight 100-mL samples after microwave at 200W for 60 s. The CMV infectivity assay was negative in three, decreased in eight, and no change in six 100-mL samples, and negative in four and decreased in eight 50-mL samples. Conclusions: Microwave heating of HM at low settings could decrease CMV transmission through HM, however, to obtain entire prevention is difficult when loss of bioactive properties is considered.


We use a 10-year program of research centered on iterations of one elemen- tary science methods course as a vehicle for exploring three important and interrelated goals for the learning of beginning elementary teachers. These include learning about inquiry- oriented science teaching, using science curriculum materials effectively, and anticipating and working with students' ideas in instruction. For each goal we discuss how the literature informs our thinking, describe relevant aspects of our design of the course, and present find- ings of our research with regard to preservice teachers' experiences in and learning from aspects of the course. For each goal, we also highlight examples from our longitudinal work following the preservice teachers into their early years as elementary teachers, to provide a glimpse of teachers' trajectories related to each of the themes. We close with a discussion of implications for research and practice in elementary science teacher education. C � 2009


This paper reports on the modeling of arrayed-waveguide gratings (AWGs) by means of Fourier optics where the coupling between the grating waveguides and defocus of the star couplers is taken into account as well. Special interest is drawn to the geometrical modeling of AWGs. The paraxial approximation for the free-space propagation within the star couplers, the exact calculation of the coupling coefficients for the star couplers by an orthonormal basis (ONB) expansion, and the drawbacks due to the nonunitary transfer matrix provided by the Green's functions approach for the coupling between the grating waveguides, as well as possible improvements thereof, are identified as crucial points. An efficient orthonormalization procedure by means of an eigenvector decomposition is presented. A unitary approximation of the transfer matrix, which is in itself approximate but in general not unitary, introduced within the impulse response method, is obtained. The presented simulation technique allows for ab initio simulations, which do not fall back on any experimental input, for the spectral response of AWGs, which are found in good agreement with experimental results.


This Article explores the problems caused by the absolute assignment of rents in mortgage loan transactions, which have continued for more than a century, and discusses possible solutions. Rents are a significant part of the security for loans secured by income-producing properties such as office buildings, shopping centers, and apartments. Under present law in many states, the absolute assignment of rents is the only means by which lenders can create an effective security interest in the rents of mortgaged property. An absolute assignment of rents purports to transfer title to rents to the mortgage lender, although in substance it creates a security interest in rents. This Article explores the historical development of the absolute assignment of rents and discusses the confusion, unnecessary litigation, and in some cases, injustice that it causes under state law and federal bankruptcy law. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws has recently approved the new Uniform Assignment of Rents Act, which removes the necessity for absolute assignments of rents by creating a workable and comprehensive scheme for the creation of security interests in rents. This Article concludes by discussing the Act and recommending its adoption.


Financial institutions provide their customers a variety of unpriced services and cover their costs through interest margins - the interest rates they receive on assets are generally higher than the rates they pay on liabilities. In particular, banks pay below-public-market interest rates on deposits while charging above-public-market rates on loans. Various authors have suggested that this situation allows one to measure the real quantity of financial services provided without explicit prices as proportional to the real stocks of financial assets held by households. We present a general-equilibrium Baumol-Tobin model where households need bank services to purchase consumption goods. Bank deposits are the single medium of exchange in the economy. The model shows that financial services are proportional to the stocks of assets only under restrictive conditions, including the assumption that either all technologies are constant or banks' technology grows at the same rate as technology in the nonfinancial economy while relative technologies of other financial institutions possibly decline. In contrast, measuring real financial output by directly counting the flow of actual services is a robust method unaffected by unbalanced technological change.


The modern Chinese poet Feng Zhi (1905-1993) was deeply influenced by the German writer Goethe. Differing from his contemporaries who fell for the young Goethe, Feng Zhi was fascinated by the old Goethe, and focused his attention on Goethe's later writings. This paper aims to make a tentative proposal of the connection between Feng Zhi and the Goethe of his later years. It is divided into three parts: the first part discusses the discrepancies between Feng Zhi's understanding of Goethe and the general image of Goethe in the modern Chinese context; the second part examines the main intellectual characteristics of Feng Zhi's understanding of Goethe through detailed textual analysis; the third part explores the internal relationship between Feng Zhi and Goethe in the cultural context of the quarrel between the ancient and the modern. Summary


In January 1958, the townspeople of San Pedro de Buena Vista hunted down and killed peasant leader Narciso Torrico, sparking a wave of violence that provoked repeated state interventions in northern Potosí department, Bolivia. Encouraged by the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR) state's rightward turn, local elites had regrouped to challenge revolutionary change. Meanwhile, José Rojas—a powerful peasant leader and key MNR ally—faced a crucial crossroads. Repeatedly tapped by state authorities to pacify San Pedro de Buena Vista, Rojas vacillated between asserting political autonomy and acquiescing to state power. While previous scholarship has viewed Rojas's relationship with the revolutionary state as clear evidence of the MNR's co-optation of Bolivian peasants, the events of 1958 provide a powerful counterpoint to this narrative. I argue that crucial intermediaries like Rojas evaded state agents' control in spite of their public support for the MNR, thus challenging the historiographical portrayal of peasant leaders' passivity in the postrevolutionary years.


Human noroviruses (HuNoV) are recognized as the primary cause for non-bacterial acute gastroenteritis. The HuNoV outbreak was firstly identified at Norwalk, Ohio and formerly known as 'winter vomiting disease' due to the illness frequently strikes during winter season. Infection of HuNoV is estimated to affects all age groups in both developed and developing country, by presenting symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and low-grade fever. There are approximately seven genogroups of noroviruses have been identified in which genogroup II.4 is the dominant HuNoV causing disease to human. Despite their significant impact on the economic and health burden, noroviruses remain to be poorly characterized RNA virus due to the lack of reproducible in vitro culture system for the HuNoV propagation, thus hampering understanding of its pathogenesis. Several approaches including the cultivation trials and the discovery of murine Norovirus (MuNoV) as the model system have expanded our knowledge in Norovirus biology and life cycle. However, to date there are no reliable culture system for HuNoV has been reported. The development of 3D co-culture system has shown a promising future as the improvised system that can be utilized not only for HuNoV cultivation, but also to other viruses. In this review, various attempts to cultivate the HuNoV are discussed to emphasise the future strategy in obtaining reproducible culture system. This review aims to find the gaps in the search of a reliable and reproducible propagation system thus enhancing the understanding on HuNoV biology and pathogenesis for future development of accurate detection method and vaccine production.


Legionella pneumophila, the causative agent of Legionnaires' disease and Pontiac fever, replicates within and eventually kills human macrophages. In this study, we show that L. pneumophila is cytotoxic to HL-60 cells, a macrophage-like cell line. We demonstrate that cell death mediated by L. pneumophila occurred at least in part through apoptosis, as shown by changes in nuclear morphology, an increase in the proportion of fragmented host cell DNA, and the typical ladder pattern of DNA fragmentation indicative of apoptosis. We further sought to determine whether potential virulence factors like the metalloprotease and the macrophage infectivity potentiator of L. pneumophila are involved in the induction of apoptosis. None of these factors are essential for the induction of apoptosis in HL-60 cells but may be involved in other cytotoxic mechanisms that lead to accidental cell death (necrosis). The ability of L. pneumophila to promote cell death may be important for the initiation of infection, bacterial survival, and escape from the host immune response. Alternatively, the triggering of apoptosis in response to bacterial infection may have evolved as a means of the host immune system to reduce or inhibit bacterial replication.


Modern hyperspectral images, especially acquired in remote sensing and from on‐field measurements, can easily contain from hundreds of thousands to several millions of pixels. This often leads to a quite long computational time when, eg, the images are decomposed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) or similar algorithms. In this paper, we are going to show how randomization can tackle this problem. The main idea is described in detail by Halko et al in 2011 and can be used for speeding up most of the low‐rank matrix decomposition methods. The paper explains this approach using visual interpretation of its main steps and shows how the use of randomness influences the speed and accuracy of PCA decomposition of hyperspectral images.


Abstract The Thun-Hohenstein album, long-known as the Thun'sche Skizzenbuch, is a bound collection of 112 drawings that visualize armoured figures at rest and in combat, as well as empty armours arrayed in pieces. The collection gathers drawings that span the period from the 1470s to around 1590. While most of the images were executed in Augsburg during the 1540s, the album's three oldest drawings date to the late-fifteenth century. Two of these works, which form a codicological interlude between the first and second quires, find parallels in the illustrations of contemporaneous martial treatises. This article traces the pictorial lineages of these atextual images through comparative analyses of fight books produced in the German-speaking lands, and considers how the representational strategies deployed in martial treatises inflected the ways that book painters and their audiences visualized the armoured body. This exploration situates a manuscript from which one of the drawings derives, Peter Falkner's Art of Knightly Defense, now in Vienna, within the Augsburg book painters' workshops that would later give rise to the Thun album. Finally, this study considers how the transmission and representation of martial knowledge in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Augsburg contributed to the later depictions of armoured bodies that populate the album.


Abstract The emergence of ubiquitous computing offers new possibilities and opportunities for organizations attempting to improve their productivity and effectiveness. in particular, the promises of ubiquitous computing are attractive to organizations such as transport firms, in which coordination of diverse sets of mobile units is central to organizational performance. This article analyzes the use of ubiquitous transport systems in Swedish road haulage firms and discusses the opportunities and challenges for the early adopters. It pays specific attention to the mobile–stationary divide; that is, the set of challenges associated with integration of mobile and stationary people and systems into a seamless computing environment.


Objectives Despite recent increasing trends in cardiovascular morbidities and mortality in Asia, studies on short-term changes in cardiovascular risks remain limited. This study estimated 2-year incidence rates of hypertension in middle-aged Korean adults aged 40–69 years, and investigated the impact of baseline levels of blood pressure, body mass index, and other conventional risk factors on the progression to hypertension. Methods Blood pressures of participants were evaluated twice with a 2-year interval, measured by mercury sphygmomanometer according to the standardized protocol. Hypertension was defined when either the systolic and diastolic blood pressures were greater than 140 and 90 mmHg, respectively, or when a participant was treated with antihypertensive medications. Results The crude 2-year incidence (calculated per 100) of hypertension was 12.2; 13.0 for men and 11.6 for women. For those who had higher blood pressure at baseline examination, incidence rates were two-fold or five-fold higher compared with those with optimal blood pressure. Older age and overweight were also major predictors for hypertension, even in Koreans with a low serum cholesterol level. Conclusion This is the first investigation of short-term incidence rates of hypertension in Asia. The results are consistent with the recently reported increasing trends in cardiovascular mortality and morbidity in Asia.


Weathering and groundwater dispersion were studied at the North Miitel komatiite-hosted Ni sulphide deposit to understand the near-surface signature of this economically important mineralization style. Soil chemistry, regolith chemistry and groundwater chemistry show the secondary Ni enrichment is weak, limited primarily to the residual parent material and dispersed a few hundred metres laterally and only a few metres vertically above the water table. Partial extractions of soils did not enhance the visibility of the mineralisation to geochemistry. However, a subtle Ni anomaly was observed in the interface of the carbonate/clay accumulation at c. 30–40  cm depth. The results show weathering and hydromorphic dispersion by groundwater are responsible for the large geochemical halo related to mineralisation at a depth of 10–20 m. A second mechanism involving gases or vegetation is proposed for the subtle near-surface anomaly. To successfully explore through transported cover it is essential to understand how surface anomalies form, what metals move and which sample media will best represent the buried ore signature. Here, groundwater provides the largest multielement target (Ni, Co, Pt and Pd), residual regolith is most accurately able to locate the mineralisation using Ni, and Ni in the soil clay/carbonate interface presents the easiest to collect but subtle surface geochemical signature of the primary ore which is buried 400 m below surface.


ABSTRACT:This article uses a multigenerational lens to address the tangible and intangible embodiments of the US-Saudi oil empire in the lives of the three sister authors. This multisited intimate geography of empire challenges national categories and recognizes that mixing and migrations, forced or desired, shape and define all families. It explores the look, feel, and sounds of lifeworlds in the US imperial outpost of Aramco using an immense archive of family photographs and Fadia Basrawi's memoir, Brownies and Kalashnikovs: A Saudi Woman's Memoir of American Arabia and Wartime Beirut (2009). It considers the geopolitics of oil and the worlds it produced in the intimate relations and domestic quarters of the Aramco oil camp in the 1950s and 1960s, in the authors' childhoods in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war, which also involved US imperialism, and as embodied in their lives at present.


The DAWN (Diabetes Attitudes, Wishes and Needs) study was instigated by Novo Nordisk in order to assess the perceptions and attitudes of people with diabetes and health care providers to the management and care of diabetes. The study was conducted between August 2000 and September 2001 in 11 countries or regions: Australia, France, Germany, India, Japan, Poland, Spain, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) and the USA, with the focus on drivers of effective self-management amongst over 5400 people with diabetes and over 3800 diabetes health care providers (specialist doctors, GPs and nurses).

The objective of the DAWN study was to provide information of value in improving diabetes care and the well being of diabetic patients and to enhance and complement data derived from other reported psychosocial studies. To this end, the first Oxford DAWN International Summit met to consider its implications and resolve ways in which the findings of the DAWN study could be implemented. The interactive nature of the summit was enhanced by the use of computer-linked individual keypads, so that delegates could participate interactively and vote on a range of issues. Following presentations on the key issues surrounding DAWN, a series of participant workshops considered the issues that had been raised and produced their recommendations for future action.

Opening the Summit, Chairman Dr David Matthews (Chairman of the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Oxford, UK) commented on its multi-national and multi-disciplinary nature and how this was bringing together different stakeholder perspectives. Use of the keypads showed that Denmark, USA, Germany and the UK (in that order) were the best represented. Delegates included diabetologists, nurses, behavioural scientists, GPs, patients and health payors. These different perspectives would be important in arriving at conclusions. The DAWN study had endeavoured to discover the person behind the patient and to establish to what degree self-care management truly involved a partnership between patient and health care provider. Dr Matthews emphasised the psychosocial nature of the survey and the ways in which this aspect of care had perhaps been somewhat neglected in the past. DAWN represented an opportunity for change; this challenge should be welcomed. He hoped that the outcome of the summit would have a long lasting effect over the coming years. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


While globalization has led to what can – with reference to Karl Polanyi – be referred to as a disembedding of the labour market from its nationally segmented settings, recent decades bring about a development identifiable as a 'countermovement. As the text shows, drawing on the example of European Works Councils and International Framework Agreements, this process of 're-embedding' takes place through a network of different measures of labour regulation. It is for this reason that establishing a relational perspective on cross-border phenomena in the field of labour relations can count as a central future aim in this strand of research.


High productivity towards C2–C4 olefins together with high catalyst stability are key for optimum operation in high temperature Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (HT-FTS). Here, we report the fabrication of Fe@C/Al composites that combine both the outstanding catalytic properties of the Fe–BTC MOF-derived Fe catalyst and the excellent mechanical resistance and textural properties provided by the inorganic AlOOH binder. The addition of AlOOH to Fe–BTC followed by pyrolysis in N2 atmosphere at 500 °C results in composites with a large mesoporosity, a high Fe/Fe3O4 ratio, 10–35 nm average Fe crystallite size and coordinatively unsaturated Al3+ sites. In catalytic terms, the addition of AlOOH binder gives rise to enhanced C2–C4 selectivity and catalyst mechanical stability in HT-FTS, but at high Al contents the activity decreases. Altogether, the productivity of these Fe@C/Al composites is well above most known Fe catalysts for this process.