Allergy is a common hypersensitivity disorder that affects 15% to 20% of the population and its prevalence is increasing worldwide. Its severity correlates with the degree of eosinophil infiltration into the conjunctiva, which is mediated by chemokines that stimulate the production of adhesion molecules like intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) on the endothelial cell surface. The α4β1 and α4β7 integrins are expressed in eosinophils and contribute to their activation and infiltration in AC through the binding to VCAM-1 or fibronectin, expressed on vascular endothelial cells. Blockade of α4 integrins might be a therapeutical achievement in allergic eye diseases. DS 70, that show an IC50 in the nanomolar range against α4β1 integrin in Jurkat cells and in the eosinophilic cell line EOL-1. This compound was able to prevent cell adhesion to VCAM-1 and FN in vitro. In a scintillation proximity assay DS70 displaced 125I-FN binding to human α4β1 integrin and, in flow cytometry analysis, it antagonized the binding of a primary antibody to α4β1 integrin expressed on the Jurkat cells surface as well. Furthermore, we analysed also its effects on integrin α4β1 signalling. In an vivo model of allergic conjunctivitis, topical DS70 reduced the clinical aspects of EPR (early phase reaction) and LPR (late phase reaction), by reducing clinical score, eosinophil accumulation, mRNA levels of cytochines and chemochines pro-inflammatory and the conjunctival expression of α4 integrin. In conclusion, DS70 seems a novel antiallergic ocular agent that has significant effects on both early and late phases of ocular allergy.


This paper investigates the possibility of controlling the response of typical portal frame structures to blast loading using a combination of semi-active and passive control devices. A one storey reinforced concrete portal frame is modelled using non-linear finite elements with each column discretised into multiple elements to capture the higher frequency modes of column vibration response that are typical features of blast responses. The model structure is subjected to blast loads of varying duration, magnitude and shape, and the critical aspects of the response are investigated over a range of structural periods in the form of blast load response spectra. It is found that the shape or length of the blast load is not a factor in the response, as long as the period is less than 25% of the fundamental structural period. Thus, blast load response can be expressed strictly as a function of the momentum applied to the structure by a blast load. The optimal device arrangements are found to be those that reduce the first peak of the structural displacement and also reduce the subsequent free vibration of the structure. Semi-active devices that do not increase base shear demands on the foundations in combination with a passive yielding tendon are found to provide the most effective control, particularly if base shear demand is an important consideration, as with older structures. The overall results are summarised as response spectra for eventual potential use within standard structural design paradigms.


This thesis aims to understand how public health evidence can be used better to inform
the development of food and agriculture policy. It sets out to achieve this by developing
and applying two methods that have been advocated for use in evidence-based policy
making: health impact assessment (IDA) of agriculture and food policy and calculation
of the burden of disease attributable to nutritional risk factors. Neither of the methods
had previously been used in this policy context. They were selected as they illustrate
two extreme models of evidence-based public health. The first consists of research based, investigator-led analysis producing generalisable, quantitative estimates. The
second involves a more contextual, participatory, inter-sectoral approach to collecting.
analysing and applying a broader range of data. The methods have been developed and
applied using the fruit and vegetable sector as a case study, with specific reference to
policies in the Republic of Slovenia, a country that was, during the course of this work,
acceding to the European Union and presented a unique political opportunity. This
thesis explores how these different evidence-based public health approaches are likely
to inform policy, in the light of what we already know about influences on policy
making.
This thesis finds the total worldwide mortality currently attributable to inadequate
consumption of fruit and vegetables is. estimated to be up to 2.635 million deaths per
year. Increasing individual fruit and vegetable consumption to up to 600 g per day (the
baseline of choice) could reduce the total worldwide burden of disease by 1.8%, and
the burden of disease in Slovenia by 2%. The greatest impact would be on reduction of
ischaemic heart disease and ischaemic stroke. However, such descriptive epidemiology
is an insufficient basis for policy formulation as the results say nothing about how
interventions are likely to reduce a problem The results of the health impact
assessment show that evidence demonstrating priorities for public health action will be
different from the type of evidence required for planning, policy implementation or evaluation.


There are a number of hazards associated with small stationary hydrogen and fuel cell applications. In order to reduce the hazards of such installations, and provide guidance to installers, consequence analysis of a number of potential accident scenarios has been carried out with the scope of the EC FP6 project HYPER. This paper summarises the modelling and experimental programme in the project and a number of key results are presented. The relevance of these findings to installation permitting guidelines (IPG) for small stationary hydrogen and fuel cell systems is discussed. A key aim of the activities was to generate newscientific data and knowledge in the field of hydrogen safety, and, where possible, use this data as a basis to support the recommendations in the IPG. The structure of the paper mirrors that of the work programme within HYPER in that the work is described in terms of a number of relevant scenarios as follows: 1. high pressure releases, 2. small foreseeable releases, 3. catastrophic releases, and 4. the effects of walls and barriers. Within each scenario the key objectives, activities and results are discussed. The work on high pressure releases sought to provide information for informing safety distances for high-pressure components and associated fuel storage, activities on both ignited and unignited jets are reported. A study on small foreseeable releases, which could potentially be controlled through forced or natural ventilation, is described. The aim of the study was to determine the ventilation requirements in enclosures containing fuel cells, such that in the event of a foreseeable leak, the concentration of hydrogen in air for zone 2 ATEX is not exceeded. The hazard potential of a possibly catastrophic hydrogen leakage inside a fuel cell cabinet was investigated using a generic fuel cell enclosure model. The rupture of the hydrogen feed line inside the enclosure was considered and both dispersion and combustion of the resulting hydrogen air mixture were examined for a range of leak rates, and blockage ratios. Key findings of this study are presented. Finally the scenario on walls and barriers is discussed; a mitigation strategy to potentially reduce the exposure to jet flames is to incorporate barriers around hydrogen storage equipment. Conclusions of experimental and modelling work which aim to provide guidance on configuration and placement of these walls to minimise overall hazards is presented.


Intraplate magmatism provides important constraints on the evolution, dynamics and composition of the Earth's mantle. Uncertainties remain, however, in understanding the mantle sources related to intraplate magmatism. For example, the influence or existence of mantle stratification, core-mantle interaction and recycling of subducted components are poorly understood. The extent to which geochemical signatures of intraplate magmas are modified during melt transportation, eruption and emplacement also requires better definition. This thesis employs He, O and Re-Os isotope systematics on selected volcanic and intrusive rocks from a number of oceanic and continental intraplate settings to address some of these key issues. New constraints on the effect of syn-eruptive degassing and post-emplacement mobility processes on intraplate magmas are presented. Ocean Island Basalts (OIB) from the Western Canary Islands and Coppermine Continental Flood Basalts (CFB) suggest that Re degassing for both modem and ancient alkaline and tholeiitic sub-aerially empted lavas are similar in extent. Crustal contamination is shown to explain some low δ(^18)O (≤5%(_0) in central Icelandic lavas and low (^3)He/'(^4)He ( 50 ppt) Western Canary OIB indicate that recycled oceanic crust forms part of the mantle source for these basalts, a theme also common to low δ(^18)O measured in central Icelandic glasses with (^3)He/(^4)He ratios similar to those of mid ocean ridge basalts. Decoupling of lithophile (Sr, Nd, Pb) and siderophile (Os) isotope tracers from He in both settings provides evidence for (^3)He-recharge with (^3)He/(^4)He up to 11.8R(_A) for the Western Canary Islands and 34.3R(_A) for central Icelandic lavas. There is evidence in Western Canary Island lavas, and in OIB globally, that a common or 'universal' mantle component is present with a near-chondritic (^187)Os/(^188)Os (≥0.127), mantle-like δ(^18)O (~5.2%(_0)) and elevated (^206)Pb/(^204)Pb (≥19.1) with respect to the depleted mantle; the so-called FOZO (Focus Zone), PHEM (Primary He mantle), or C (Common) components. Coppermine Re-Os isochron ages (1284 ± 13 Ma) are within error of the accepted 1270 ± 4 Ma U-Pb age for the Muskox Intrusion. γOs initials derived from both the Coppermine CFB (+2.0) and Muskox Intmsion (+1.3) lie on an enstatite or ordinary chondritic Os isotopic evolution curve for the Earth's mantle indicating derivation from a source similar to the universal component recognised in modem-day OIB. These results can be interpreted in the context of a veined or banded peridotite-pyroxenite mantle. Small amounts of partial melting of a heterogeneous mantle source leads to great isotopic variability whilst larger degrees of partial melting will lead to more homogeneous mantle-derived compositions. Pyroxenite sources might also explain the correlated isotopic and elemental compositions, including the possibility of (^186)Os-(^187)Os enrichment in OIB through high Re/Os and Pt/Os ratios. Ultimately, a universal mantle component appears to be present in all intraplate magmatism. This universal component is not always related to high (^3)He/(^4)He and appears to provide an endmember component to all intraplate mantle melting signatures from the Archaean to the present-day.


The author focuses on the interaction between wealth and happiness. She starts with the observation that there is a widespread belief that excessive affluence may spoil children, a condition exacerbated by inheritance taxes that do not favor substantial wealth transfers. She begins with an examination of the principal assumptions underpinning the concern that too much wealth spoils, pointing to three crucial questions: What is the effect of wealth on young people? What is the behavior of which we approve? What is a life that is well-lived? How does wealth affect the ability to live a good life? She then moves on to re-examining the meaning of work and to re-establishing its central role in the pursuit of happiness.


Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being increasingly implemented in a range of applications. Their low payload capacity and ability to overcome congested road networks enables them to provide fast delivery services for urgent high-value low-volume cargo. This work investigates the economic viability of integrating UAVs into urban hospital supply chains. In doing so, a strategic model that determines the optimal configuration of supporting infrastructure for urgent UAV delivery between hospitals is proposed. The model incorporates a tailored facility location algorithm that selects an optimal number of hubs given a set of candidates and determines the number of UAVs required to fulfill total demand. The objective is to minimize the total cost of implementation, computed as the sum of generalized, battery, vehicle, and hub establishment costs. The model is applied to a case study based on the establishment of a UAV delivery network for deliveries between National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in London. A baseline scenario is also developed using current NHS vehicles for delivery. Results demonstrate that UAV-based delivery provides significant reductions in operational costs compared with the baseline. Furthermore, the analysis indicates the location of hubs is more significant to the solution optimality than any increase in range or payload.


Google has come to symbolize the tensions between the benefits of innovative, information-dependent new services and the desire of individuals to control the contexts in which personal information is used. This essay reviews hundreds of newspaper articles where Google speaks about privacy in an effort to characterize the company's handling of these tensions, to provide context explaining the meaning of the company's privacy rhetoric, and to advance the privacy dialogue among policy makers, journalists, and consumers.

The dialogue surrounding these tensions is unfocused because many policy makers, journalists, and consumers concentrate the debate on whether the company violates its "you can make money without doing evil" corporate motto. This first observation flows to a second: Google's conception of "evil" is tied to the revolution the company brought about in advertising practices, practices that many think are mainstream now. Google is thus missing opportunities to remind the public that its advertising policies have several strong pro-consumer aspects, many of which are lost when "evil talk" is employed. Third, vague privacy rhetoric signals a weak commitment to technical or legal safeguards. Journalists are well suited to remedy this by exercising greater inquiry and skepticism in contexts where Google's privacy representations are non-substantive. Finally, Google heavily relies upon appeals to competition, arguing that those who adopt the company's services engage in meaningful tradeoffs. Quietly shifting practices, lock in, and lengthy data retention periods, however, mean that these tradeoffs must be continually reevaluated. Google should give voice to its competition and tradeoff rhetoric by creating data portability and deletion rights for consumers.


The variabilty of water isotopes (delta-O18 or delta-D) preserved in Alpine glaciers may provide mid-latitude temperature records supplementing respective proxy information from other archives. However, concerning long term records (i.e. exceeding 100 years) the limited glacier depth of suitable Alpine drill sites requires a relatively low accumulation rate. As a result, depositional noise is found to strongly challenge the interpretation of these isotope records in terms of net temperature change. Here we present results from our multi core array at the low accumulation Colle Gnifetti (CG) site (4450m asl, Swiss-Italian Alps) dedicated to assess the potential of long term ice core isotope records for paleoclimate reconstruction. To do so, a specific CG relevant temperature time series is synthesized from the high elevation stations of the instrumental HISTALP network considering among others the accumulation bias towards growing seasons. Within the last century (where dating and homogenity problems do not matter) dedicated time series analysis reveals a common signal in the decadal components of the temperature record and isotope records of four ice cores. Throughout the entire 250 year instrumental period, exceptions occur within the early instrumental period, as well as an unexpectedly high isotope-temperature sensitivity. An inter-core correspondence in the temperature related decadal trends can be revealed for two cores throughout the last 500 years. On a tentative basis, we discuss the delta O18-record of a new CG ice core dedicated to last 1000 years in view of constraints arising from varying time resolution, dating uncertainties and systematic glaciological up-stream effects.


Over the past few years, massive amounts of world knowledge have been accumulated in publicly available knowledge bases, such as Freebase, NELL, and YAGO. Yet despite their seemingly huge size, these knowledge bases are greatly incomplete. For example, over 70% of people included in Freebase have no known place of birth, and 99% have no known ethnicity. In this paper, we propose a way to leverage existing Web-search-based question-answering technology to fill in the gaps in knowledge bases in a targeted way. In particular, for each entity attribute, we learn the best set of queries to ask, such that the answer snippets returned by the search engine are most likely to contain the correct value for that attribute. For example, if we want to find Frank Zappa's mother, we could ask the query `who is the mother of Frank Zappa'. However, this is likely to return `The Mothers of Invention', which was the name of his band. Our system learns that it should (in this case) add disambiguating terms, such as Zappa's place of birth, in order to make it more likely that the search results contain snippets mentioning his mother. Our system also learns how many different queries to ask for each attribute, since in some cases, asking too many can hurt accuracy (by introducing false positives). We discuss how to aggregate candidate answers across multiple queries, ultimately returning probabilistic predictions for possible values for each attribute. Finally, we evaluate our system and show that it is able to extract a large number of facts with high confidence.


The main purpose of this article is to substantiate the proposition that mathematicians and architect-artisans had collaborated through special meetings, called conversazioni in the text, for the application of geometry to architecture in the Islamic world. A meeting reportedly attended by Omar Khayyam furnishes convincing evidence for this proposition. The study expands on the untitled treatise written by Omar Khayyam as a response to a question raised at this meeting. The treatise is about a problem that concerns an ornamental pattern, the story of which can be traced in two other works on geometry: Abu 9l-Wafa9 al-Buzajani9s book, What the Artisan Requires of Geometric Constructions, and an anonymous Persian treatise on ornamental geometry, On Interlocking Similar or Corresponding Figures. While these three works are analyzed in the article, the wider implications of the collaboration between mathematicians and artisans concerning the field of architecture are discussed.


Vaginitis is a vaginal infection which affects many women all over the world. The disorder is characterized by an infection of the vaginal area which can cause problems like abnormal vaginal discharge, itching and redness. The two most common causes of vaginitis are bacterial vaginosis and Candida vaginitis. The prevalence of bacterial vaginosis in Sweden is around 10-20 % and approximately 75 % of all women will once in their lifetime suffer from vaginal yeast infection. The clinical symptoms of vaginal infections are not specific and the diagnosis methods of bacterial vaginosis and Candida vaginitis are subjective and depended on the acuity of the clinician. Due to the lack of standardized and objective diagnostic tools, misdiagnosis and consequently incorrect treatment may occur. As vaginal infections and symptoms impact greatly of women ́s quality of life and vaginitis have been associated with serious public health consequences, it is essential to diagnose and treat the conditions correctly. Hence, there is a great need of better methods of diagnosing these conditions. The aim of this master thesis was to develop quantitative species-specific real-time PCR assays to use in diagnosing the two most common causes of vaginitis i.e. bacterial vaginosis and Candida vaginitis. Potential markers for bacterial vaginosis (Atopobium vaginae, BVAB2, Gardnerella vaginalis, Lactobacillus crispatus, Lactobacillus gasseri, Lactobacillus jensenii, Lactobacillus iners, Megasphaera type 1, Megasphaera type 2, Mobiluncus curtisii, Mobiluncus mulieris and Leptotrichia/Sneathia species) and Candida vaginitis (Candida albicans, Candida glabrata, Candida parapsilosis and Candida tropicalis) were chosen. Primers and probes were designed and tested on reference strains and vaginal samples. Singleand multiplex PCR reactions were successfully optimized with the designed oligonucleotides. Furthermore, standard curves with excellent linearity were created and covered more than five orders of magnitude. These developed quantitative speciesspecific real-time PCR assays will, in a prospective medical validation, quantify 300 vaginal samples from women visiting the RFSU Clinic in Stockholm.


Air pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues in many countries, including China. Finegrained PM2.5 particulate data can prevent people from long time exposure and advance scientific research. However, existing monitoring systems with PM2.5 stationary sensors are expensive, which can only provide pollution data at sparse locations. In this paper we demonstrate for the first time that camera on smartphones can be used for low-cost and fine-grained PM2.5 monitoring in participatory sensing. We propose a Learning-Based method to extract air quality related features from images taken by smartphones. These image features will be used to build the haze model that can estimate PM2.5 concentration depending on the reference sensors. We conducted extensive experiments over six months with two datasets to demonstrate the performance of the proposed solution using different models of smartphones. We believe that our findings will give profound impact in many research fields, including mobile sensing, activity scheduling, haze data collection and analysis.


This paper contributes to the debate on aid effectiveness by looking at the `how´ of aid effectiveness. In other words it provides an assessment of whether aid only filled a financing gap or whether it, in addition, helped influence the political economy in a way that engendered growth. Ghana provides a good case for an assessment of this question as it saw significant aid inflows over the last two and a half decades and also recorded significant growth and poverty reduction. The paper asserts that aid has impacted positively on growth, in part through the creation of an enabling environment for private sector-led growth. It also argues that aid has helped shape macroeconomic management in Ghana, identifying three channels through which aid has supported macroeconomic management. First, aid has supported both physical and social infrastructure and therefore growth. Second, aid has helped reduce fiscal instability by limiting domestic borrowing. Third, it helped shape the general policy direction in Ghana. It concludes by arguing that the aid-induced policy has helped in the operation of a more effective and efficient market system in Ghana today.


The Cross-fertilisation potential of the work being undertaken by both the Adaptive Hypermedia and Context-Aware communities is considerable. In particular, the benefits to Adaptive Hypermedia constitute a method for handling contextual influences without the need to extend deep models to accommodate axes of marginal interest or high complexity. The benefit to the field of Context-awareness lies in the opportunity to examine application areas where Context is not the only concern within the logic of the system, it is rather a set of influences on advanced, complex semantic structures. This project is concerned with an initial investigation of the mechanisms for creating Context-Informed Adaptive Hypermedia, specifically in the area of influencing an educational Adaptive Hypermedia . A definition of context is provided, along with the design, implementation and evaluation of an example architecture. The project was composed of three main phases: initially, a detailed survey of Adaptive Hypermedia and Context-Aware Systems was undertaken, this was followed by the outline of an architecture for Context-Informed Adaptive Hypermedia. Detailed design of the mechanisms for applying Contextual Axes to Adaptive Hypermedia was supplemented with the Prototyping and testing of these mechanisms with an extant eLearning Adaptive Hypermedia System. A Paper Presentation on this project was given to the Workshop on Advanced Context Modelling Managing and Reasoning at the Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing under the tile 'Context-Informed Adaptive Hypermedia' with authors Alexander O'Connor, Owen Conlan and Vincent Wade.


The construction industry has long been urged to innovate, but innovation has been elusive because of the inherent social and organizational complexity of construction. Therefore, developing insight into the practice of innovating is needed to better understand and perform innovation in construction. Focusing on the practice of innovating requires exploring the enabling capability of solutions for practitioners to establish novel ways of doing things for improvement, referred to as 'innovative capability.' Building information modeling (BIM) has been promoted as an enabler of innovation in construction design because of its data management capabilities and the opportunities for interdisciplinary work based on them. Nevertheless, previous work presents divergent results exploring what BIM technologies can do for people and what people can actually do in BIM-enabled design practices, which presents confusion about the innovative capability of BIM. This paper aims to establish the basis of this confusion as a necessary step in developing more realistic ways of assessing and exploiting this capability. A conceptual continuum is proposed based on the functionalist/technology-centered and nonfunctionalist/human-centered perspectives on BIM to consider divergent arguments about its innovative capability; this continuum is used to analyze empirical findings from BIM-enabled design practices. The analyses suggest that individuals use BIM but are confused about its innovative capability because they adopt different views of BIM depending on their job and perspective. Given this, innovation is held back by the unexpressed differences between the views of BIM adopted by various practitioners who have to work together. It is argued that recognizing these differences, and working toward their reconciliation, is the way forward in establishing and exploiting the innovative capability of BIM.


Emotional suffering in old age is largely caused by various psychiatric conditions, of which depression is the most common. Depression is associated with a decline in both well-being and daily functioning and reduces both morale and social capacity among the very old, which may produce high health and social costs for society. The overall aim of the thesis was to study the prevalence of depression among the very old, to identify factors associated with depression and to evaluate the prognosis of depression among the very old. In total, 363 people were evaluated for depression, 242 from an urban municipality in the year 2000 and 121 from five rural municipalities in 2002. In 2005, those still alive in the urban municipality were asked to participate again, and were therefore re-evaluated. The prevalence of depression was 27% in the urban municipality, 34% in the rural municipalities and 29% in the total sample. Of those depressed, about 67% were receiving antidepressive treatment, and of those, approximately 50% had responded to treatment. In the rural municipality, the depressed were less often treated with Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor medications, receiving instead Tri-Cyclic Antidepressants. In the rural municipalities, only 38% of the depressed had responded to treatment. A higher proportion of women were diagnosed as depressed, 33% vs. 19%, p=0.006, although the response rate was the same for men and women. Depression was twice as common among those with dementia, 44% vs. 23%. There were discrepancies concerning associated factors between the depressed participants with dementia and those without. Experiencing the death of a child during the preceding ten years was associated with depression and independently associated with depression among men and participants with dementia. In all the studies, the depressed were less often able to go outside independently and to visit others. They also received fewer visits from others and often experienced loneliness. The great majority of those who were depressed in 2000 died during the subsequent five years, only 13 out of 65, 22%, were still alive in 2005, compared to 41% of those who were not depressed, p=0.003. Of 13 who survived, only two had recovered. Twenty-four out of 70 non-depressed people, 34%, had developed depression during the five years (2000-2005), and the total prevalence in year 2005 was 42% (35 out of 83 participants). Ten out of the 24 who had developed depression were prescribed antidepressants. Of those ten, four were regarded as responders. In the group with persistent depression, nine out of eleven were receiving antidepressants and 67% were responders. In conclusion, a large proportion of the very old suffer from under-diagnosed and undertreated depression. The response rate to treatment seems to be low, and the quality of treatment and follow-up also seems to be poor. The mortality rate among the depressed was high. The spectrum of factors associated with depression in people with dementia is different from that associated with depression among non-demented. Depression among the very old clearly emerges as a common and serious public health problem, with probably the most serious impact on quality of life. More efforts have to be made to improve the quality of assessments, treatment and research regarding depression among the very old.


Using cameras for localization and mapping with mobile robots is appealing as these sensors are small, inexpensive, and ubiquitous. However, since every camera image provides hundred thousands of measurements, it poses a great challenge to infer structure and motion from this wealth of data in real-time on computationally constrained robotic systems. Furthermore, robustness becomes an important factor when applying computer vision algorithms to mobile robots that are moving in uncontrolled environments. In this case, nuisances such as occlusions, illumination changes, or low textured surfaces increase the difficulty to track visual cues, which is fundamental to enable camera-based localization and mapping.
The first contribution of this thesis is an efficient, robust, and accurate visual odometry algorithm that computes the motion of a single camera solely from its stream of images. Therefore, the use of direct methods that operate directly on pixel level intensities is investigated. The advantage of direct methods is that pixel correspondence between images is given directly by the geometry of the problem and can be refined by using the local intensity gradients. However, joint refinement of structure and motion by pixel-wise minimization of intensity differences becomes intractable as the map grows. Therefore, a novel semi-direct approach is proposed that establishes feature correspondence using direct methods and subsequently relies on proven feature-based methods for refinement. We further show how inertial measurements can seamlessly be integrated in the optimization of structure and motion. Therefore, the second contribution of this thesis is a preintegration theory that allows summarizing many inertial measurements between two frames into single relative motion constraints. We formally discuss the generative measurement model as well as the nature of the rotation noise and derive the expression for the maximum a posteriori state estimator. Experimental results confirm that our modeling efforts lead to accurate state estimation in real-time, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches.
Tracking salient features in the image results in sparse point clouds; however, for robotic tasks such as path planning, manipulation, or obstacle avoidance, a denser surface representation is needed. Previous work on dense reconstruction from images aim at providing high fidelity reconstructions. However, for robotic applications, the accuracy of the reconstruction should be governed by the interaction task. Furthermore, it is crucial to have a measure of uncertainty in the reconstruction, which aids motion planning and fusion with complementary sensors. This motivates the third contribution of this thesis, which is an efficient algorithm for probabilistic dense depth estimation from a single camera. Therefore, we combine a multi-view and per-pixel-based recursive Bayesian depth estimation scheme with a fast smoothing method that takes into account the estimated depth uncertainty.
While most computer vision approaches fuse depth-maps in a cost volume, care has to be taken in terms of scalability and memory consumption for robotic applications. Therefore, building upon the proposed dense depth estimation, the next contribution of this thesis is a robot-centric elevation mapping system that suits a flying robot with down-looking camera and can be applied on-board Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) for fully autonomous landing-spot detection and landing.
We further demonstrate the usefulness of dense depth-maps for localization of an MAV with respect to a ground robot. Therefore, we address the problem of registering the maps computed by two robots from distant vantage points, using different sensing modalities: a dense 3D reconstruction from the MAV is aligned with the map computed from the depth sensor on the ground robot.
The most exciting opportunity of computer vision for mobile robotics is that robots can exhibit control on the data acquisition process. This motivated the investigation of the following problem: given the image of a scene, what is the trajectory that an MAV-mounted camera should follow to perform optimal dense depth estimation? The last contribution of this thesis addresses this question and introduces a method to compute the measurement uncertainty and, thus, the expected information gain, on the basis of the scene structure and appearance. This results in the MAV to choose motion trajectories that avoid perceptual ambiguities inferred by the texture in the scene.


In this paper, we present a comparative study of three distributed strategies for task allocation in a multirobot system. The objective is to determine the course of action for each robot and the targets it needs to service. A theoretical section is provided to support the dynamics of these techniques and some of the results. The first technique is a neural network-based approach, known as self-organizing map (SOM), that assigns targets to the robot on the basis of competition. The second technique is a combinatorial technique, known as the Hungarian method for solving assignment problems. The third technique is an integer linear programming-based optimization approach that tries to minimize the cost of task allocation. By implementing these three techniques, we observed that SOM tends to yield better results in terms of cost of assignment and execution time, but suffers from lack of fairness and workload balancing. In contrast, the other two methods fulfill the two criteria, but at the expense of a relatively higher cost.


Three decades after the Sexual Revolution, women's power and status have begun to match men's, and women are finally making the rules in order to experience a more radical and truer form of liberation. Her Way demonstrates how and why 20- and 30-something women have evolved to act and think more like men sexually, while also creating their own distinct sexual patterns and appetites. Today's young women are now the leaders of an unreported but sweeping "Sexual Evolution," in which women take control of sex and redefine it from their perspective. In other words, do it "her way." Paula Kamen characterizes this Sexual Evolution according to two major developments that are setting sexual patterns for future generations of women: young women's sexual profiles are now remarkably similar to those of men, in terms of age of first intercourse, and numbers of sex partners and casual encounters. They also feel less guilt or shame about their behavior, from premarital sex to having a child out of marriage to coming out of the closet to cohabiting. Yet young women are not merely imitating men, but forging their own distinct sexual perspectives and asserting their own needs. In addition to discovering the pleasures of sex, young women are also exploring the dilemmas, challenging male-defined sexual scripts, and changing what actually goes on in bed. Based on more than one hundred lively, unfiltered and in-depth interviews with women across the country, Her Way cuts through the sensationalism and speculation of popular discussions about young women and sex. Kamen reports the real story of today's enhanced sexual expectations and choices.


A large number of vegetation indices have been developed and widely applied in terrestrial ecosystem research in the recent decades. However, a certain limitation was observed while applying these indices in research in dry areas due to their low sensitivity to low vegetation cover. In this context, the objectives of this study are to develop a new vegetation index, namely, the Generalized Difference Vegetation Index (GDVI), and to examine its applicability to the assessment of dryland environment. Based on the field investigation and crop Leaf Area Index (LAI) measurement, five spring and summer Landsat TM and ETM+ images in the frame with Path/Row number of 174/35, and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) LAI and vegetation indices (VIs) data (MOD15A2 and MOD13Q1), of the same acquisition dates as the Landsat images, were acquired and employed in this study. The results reveal that, despite the same level of correlation with the fractional vegetation cover (FVC) as other VIs, GDVI shows a better correlation with LAI and has higher sensitivity and dynamic range in the low vegetal land cover than other vegetation indices, e.g., the range of GDVI is higher than Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI),Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Wide Dynamic Range Vegetation Index (WDRVI), and Soil-Adjusted and Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index (SARVI), by 164%–326% in woodland, 185%–720% in olive plantation, and 190%–867% in rangeland. It is, hence, concluded that GDVI is relevant for, and has great potential in, land characterization, as well as land degradation/desertification assessment in dryland environment.


Sorting is a well interrogating issue in computer science. Many authors have invented numerous sorting algorithms on CPU (Central Processing Unit). In today's life sorting on the CPU is not so efficient. To get the efficient sorting parallelization should be done. There are many ways of parallelization of sorting but at the present time GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) computing is the most preferable way to parallelize the sorting algorithms. Many authors have implemented the some sorting algorithms using GPU computing with CUDA. This paper mentioned the roadmap of research direction of a GPU based sorting algorithms and the various research aspects to work on GPU based sorting algorithms. These research directions include the various sorting algorithms which are parallel (Merge, Quick, Bitonic, Odd-Even, Count, Radix etc.) sort algorithms using GPU computing with CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture). In this paper, we have tested and compared the parallel and sequential (Merge, Quick, Count and Odd-Even sort) using dataset. The testing of parallel algorithms is done using GPU computing with CUDA. The speedup is also measured of various parallel sorting algorithms. The results have depicted that, the count sort is the most efficient sort due to based on the key value. Future research will refine the performance of sorting algorithms in GPU architecture.


Recent developments in criminal legislation of the Republic of Lithuania among other significant novelties include the criminalization of illicit enrichment as criminal offence. Such offence presents new legal instrument for the law enforcement in dealing with individuals who acquire property in doubtful ways. The crime of illicit enrichment is rather a novelty within the context of criminal legislation. Such novelty was largely based upon the requirements of United Nations Convention against Corruption, which stipulates the implementation of such legal measure. According to the article Twenty of the convention, "Subject to its constitution and the fundamental principles of its legal system, each State Party shall consider adopting such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as a criminal offence, when committed intentionally, illicit enrichment, that is, a significant increase in the assets of a public official that he or she cannot reasonably explain in relation to his or her lawful income". While the convention was undoubtedly major factor for making grounds for said developments the need to widen the scope of confiscation of property and impound illegally acquired wealth were the driving forces behind the political will to support amendments to the Criminal Code. At same time the new offence of illicit enrichment presents significant challenges for the investigative bodies with the prosecution as well as the courts establishing such offences. First and foremost, the techniques of criminalization and legal wording of the offence are new and do not go well with the established principles of criminalization. Unnatural features of the corpus of the crime listed in the code (article No. 1891 of the Criminal Code of Lithuania) involve criminal act lacking attributes illegitimacy, complications regarding guilt of the accused. In addition, doubts and questions regarding the fundamental principles of criminal procedure, due process concerns, and problems of the balance of the rights of the accused with the right of the society to recover illicitly acquired wealth. The relationship of illicit enrichment to other criminal acts committed by the same accused is also of a great importance in establishing sources of such enrichment. As for the time of submission of present article, one hundred and seven interrogations on the illicit enrichment were on and lasting while only three simplified judgments and one proper court sentence were passed. The reasons for such slow implementation of the law are the ambiguities of the definition of law, as well as limitations of regulations, insufficiencies in asset declaration systems, lack of theoretical background and complete absence of court practice on such cases. Two of the existing convictions are analyzed from the point of view of establishment of guilt, the evidence set in the case, the grounds of adequacy of such convictions. The examples presented give basis to judge the adequacy of the new law an opportunity to predict the future rulings of the courts. Necessity of the improvements of the law becomes quite obvious on the basis of the analysis. Strong criticisms, various scientific suggestions on the improvements of the regulations, namely on the constitution of guilt, wording of the criminal act are presented by the author.


The Community Policing and Education Project was launched by VicRoads and Victoria Police in 2009 to reduce the likelihood of motorcycle crashes through a combination of enforcement and education countermeasures. The Centre for Automotive Safety Research at the University of Adelaide was chosen to evaluate the effectiveness of the Project using a range of methods. These methods include a process evaluation, analysis of crash data, on-road speed surveys, an online survey of motorcyclists, and roadside traffic observation. This paper provides a brief summary of the first round of roadside observations of motorcyclists, the first onroad speed surveys, and the early results of the online survey. The first round of roadside observations were focused on some of the areas included in the education component, including the use of headlights, helmets, protective gear and high conspicuity clothing by motorcyclists, analysed by type of motorcycle. The on-road speed surveys were conducted on regional Victorian roads. The online survey included sections on rider demographics, motorcycle characteristics, riding history, offences, crashes, exposure to enforcement, perceived likelihood of detection, views on road infrastructure, and on-road behaviour. The results provide insights into the issues that are of concern to motorcyclists, as well as motorcycle riding patterns, riding behaviour and use of protective clothing.


Eisenberg Human services nonprofit organizations are crucial partners to government and the private sector in developing and maintaining healthy communities and families. They are able to leverage multiple funding streams to create a greater capacity to deliver services than any single funding source could achieve on its own. Because they often have strong relationships with the people and neighborhoods where they work, nonprofits are wellpositioned to meet community needs. However, in the current economic climate, Washington-area human services nonprofits are being squeezed by rising demand, escalating costs, and increasing administrative tasks, all accompanied by only sluggish revenue growth. An analysis using survey results, tax documents, interviews, and local government budget data finds that these organizations have coped with fiscal stress in a variety of ways—many of which could lead to significant erosion in the quality and quantity of services provided to the community. There are models, though, to bolster nonprofits which should be considered by regional philanthropic organizations and government alike. But overall, the public and private sectors need to work with the nonprofit sector to jointly develop solutions that will meet the needs of community residents without overly burdening the resources of any one sector. Thin the Soup or Shorten the Line: Washington Area Nonprofits Adapt to Uncertain Times


We present fabrication and optical characterization of Si microstructure-ZnO nanowire (NWs) hierarchical structures for light management. Random and periodic hierarchical structures constituting Si micro pillar or micro pyramid arrays with overgrown ZnO NWs have been fabricated. Inexpensive colloidal lithography in combination with dry and wet chemical etching is used to fabricate Si microstructures, and ZnO NWs are grown by hydrothermal synthesis. The periodic Si micro pyramid-ZnO NWs hierarchical structure shows broadband antireflection with average reflectance as low as 2.5% in the 300-1000 nm wavelength range. A tenfold enhancement in Raman intensity is observed in this structure compared to planar Si sample. These hierarchical structures with enriched optical properties and high surface to volume ratio are promising for photovoltaic (PV) and sensor applications.


An urban population in a township in south India was screened for diabetes with an oral glucose tolerance test, every fifth person aged 20 and over registered at the local iron ore company's hospital being screened. Of 678 people (346 men and 332 women) who were tested, 34 (5%; 20 men and 14 women) had diabetes and 14 (2%; 8 men and 7 women) had impaired glucose tolerance. Thirteen subjects were already known to be diabetic. Diabetes was present in 21% (37/179) of people aged over 40. The peak prevalence (41%; 7/17) was in the group aged 55-64. A family history of diabetes was present in 16 of the 34 subjects with diabetes and nine of the 15 with impaired glucose tolerance. Diabetes was significantly related to obesity in women but not in men (57% (8/14) v 5% (1/20)). The plasma glucose concentration two hours after glucose loading was correlated to body mass index, age, and income in both sexes. The prevalence of diabetes was significantly higher in subjects whose income was above the mean. When the overall prevalence of diabetes was adjusted to the age distribution of the Indians living in Southall, London, and in Fiji it increased to 10% and 9%, respectively. The prevalence of diabetes is high among urban Indians and is comparable with the high prevalence seen in migrant Indian populations.


This article discusses experiences of postsocialist transformation in rural Poland. It is based on a year-long ethnographic fieldwork carried out in a peripheral region of southern Poland. Its inhabitants today face problems of unemployment and instability, as not only were state-owned farms closed but the new political-economic order and Poland's accession to the European Union have caused a radical reshaping of the agricultural sector. However, rather than being passive observers of these ongoing changes, people are determined to have some say and to shape their own lives and the place they inhabit. This article argues that a fruitful way of studying these processes is through a focus on local leaders and civil society activists. Examining new forms of social organization, cooperation, and leadership, it describes local people's ability to creatively draw on their socialist experiences, adapting them to new contexts and transforming them into innovative strategies for coping with new challenges. Beyond exploring local people's narratives of socialism and their assessments of present-day developments, the article also questions some widespread assumptions regarding the role of rural areas in the process of postsocialist transformation. In English, extended summary in Russian .


If you take even the slightest interest in the design of your toothbrush, the history behind your washing machine, or the evolution of the telephone, you'll take an even greater interest in this new book. Individual designers and design firms can be referenced directly via the A-Z of Industrial Design section. Here, you'll find the likes of Enzo Ferrari, Philippe Starck, Zanussi and Apple Computer, among many others. Exploding with color, aesthetic, and style, "Industrial Design" is both informative and fun. You'll have a hard time putting it down. This is an invaluable reference book!


Henry Friendly: As Brilliant as Expected but Less Predictable HENRY FRIENDLY: GREATEST JUDGE OF HIS ERA. By David M. Dorsen. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012. 512 pages. $35.00.We are fortunate that David Dorsen is Henry Friendly's biographer. Chronicling the life of a judge, in this case a longtime and hardly flamboyant private practitioner before he became a judge, could easily yield a product about which "wooden" would be a compliment. Dorsen is sophisticated, very smart and very wise, a fine lawyer, and a really good writer. He has produced a highly readable and truly interesting book. He combines astute analysis of the voluminous list of cases on which Judge Friendly sat with perceptive discussion of their political and social context and significance- both inside the court and in relation to the world outside. It is actually entertaining.I was Henry Friendly's third law clerk from 1961-1962, more than fifty years ago. For a variety of reasons, I did not follow closely his judicial output or other writings after that time, so for me that portion of Dorsen's book (which is most of it) was largely new and in many respects fascinating. The first part of the book covers quite well his family life, with which I was already quite familiar, and his earlier career as a practicing lawyer. This is all interesting and important to know to get some idea of Friendly the man outside the court. But it is when Dorsen turns to the judicial substance that I find myself enthralled. It was a totally pleasant surprise to discover how engaging the descriptions and backstories of the cases were.My experiences as Judge Friendly's law clerk bear out Dorsen's account, although almost entirely on the positive end of the continuum. He was rigorous and demanding but seldom if ever short with me in a hurtful way. I drafted only one opinion, a very short one toward the end of the year, and I distinctly remember feeling something close to ecstatic when he gave me the assignment. I had a similar rush earlier in the year when he allowed me to write a few paragraphs of the opinion in a fairly complicated case. And now and then he asked me to drafta textual footnote. Yes, those were special moments, too. Just out of law school, I thought this was how all judges functioned.Friendly's routine was largely as Dorsen describes. He rarely took more than a day to write an opinion. At 5:30 or so, ready to embark for home, he would emerge with a finished draftopinion, at which point (after his secretary, Mrs. Flynn, typed it) it would be my job to cite-check it.1 The draftoften contained citations to old English cases. How did he find them, I wondered. I knew he didn't have the original cases in his office. Did he have a secret door or escape hatch in his office from which he could get to a library that had the cases? There seemed to be two answers. One, he knew some of the citations by heart, and two, he found the citations in later cases and cited the earlier originals. Either way, my job was to check his work. Either way, it was impressive.Conversations in his office were brief. Whether I was asking or answering a question or putting forward an idea, the drill was largely the same. I would get half a sentence out and he would finish my sentence and then respond. Usually he had grasped instantly and correctly what I was trying to say. (Remember, he was brilliant, and that's an understatement.) I would be somewhat at my peril if I wanted to disagree or suggest that he had not understood what I was trying to say. Mostly he would say gruffly that he had heard me correctly the first time (although sometimes he hadn't) and occasionally I would get a second shot.(A parenthetical note: I had another boss whose modus operandi in office conversations was exactly the same-Robert Kennedy. Kennedy and Friendly were poles apart in many ways, but conversations in their offices about work issues were identical. Just like Friendly, Kennedy would jump in and finish my question or suggestion and then reply. …


Investigating if Multidisciplinary or Homogenous Teams Are More Innovative in a Higher Education Setting Blake Howard Hoover School of Technology, BYU Master of Science This study is derived from the claim that multidisciplinary groups are more innovative than homogeneous groups; a claim that has flooded the business industry and has become criteria for accreditation in higher education. However, the impact of disciplinary diversity in work groups is a growing area of research; therefore, it is yet to be thoroughly understood. The purpose of this study is to answer the question: are multidisciplinary teams more innovative than homogenous teams. To accomplish this university students from differing majors were sorted into multidisciplinary and homogeneous groups while participating in a two-day innovation course. The course taught the students about divergent thinking, and invited them to work as teams to develop an innovative product, system or service. Each groups' final product was independently judged by three experts using the Creative Solutions Diagnosis Scale (CSDS) measuring the innovativeness (functional creativity) of student work. The homogeneous groups out scored the multidisciplinary groups in every category. Group dynamics have been assessed as also playing a vital role in the successfulness of a diverse group. The Teamwork Quality Questionnaire (TWQ) was used to measure the quality of team interactions, student sentiments, and student attitude. These self-evaluations were used to assess if the group dynamics played a significant role in the functional creativity of the end product by checking for correlation with the results of the CSDS. The findings were inconclusive, meaning they did not correlate. Despite the findings not aligning with past research, they should be considered important. At a minimum, they describe a context and environment where multidisciplinary groups do not function at the same level as homogenous groups. Accordingly, there is a need to further investigate group formations and function in regards to innovation and creativity production. We recommend for future research performing a similar study on a larger scale to discover if the findings from this study would vary when tested under similar or varying contexts. It would also be important to analyze how the make up of the group is affecting the students understanding and learning.


The application of advanced technologies to point of sale systems is a promising and relatively unexplored field of study, in particular when considering the introduction of digital content and technologies allowing consumers to interact with products in new ways. Many e-retailers already exploit the opportunities offered by interactive technologies, such as 3D virtual models, in order to enhance consumers shopping experience. Their use in stores, however, is still limited. The development and use of new shopping assistants for supporting and influencing consumers during their shopping experience plays a key role for both retailers and researchers. Advanced Technologies Management for Retailing: Frameworks and Cases contributes to our understanding of applications of new technologies and their impact on the design and development of point of sale systems and on consumers' behavior. This volume covers a large range of topics that contribute to understanding consumers' behavior in new computer-aided retailing environments, and how this influences buying behavior while providing useful knowledge on the management of these new technologies and on the management of the digital contents as a reliable teaching resource for teachers and researchers.


The study of the DNA has found application beyond our understanding of its cellular function and into a variety of materials assembly and nucleic acid detection systems. The current research investigates double-stranded DNA probes in both a colloidal particle assembly and fluorescent assay format utilizing competitive hybridization events. In both contexts, the affinity of the dsProbes is tuned by the sequence design parameters of duplex length and complementarity. These systems were incubated with nucleic acid targets of interest and, based on the mechanism of competitive hybridization, were responsive to the presence of a high affinity competitive target. In the case of the particle assemblies, incubation with the competitive target resulted in observable disassembly of particle structures. In the case of fluorescently labeled dsProbes, incubation with competitive targets resulted in a quantifiable loss of fluorescence as determined by flow cytometry. Utilizing the fluorescently labeled dsProbe system, the kinetics of competitive hybridization was characterized for nucleic acid targets of varying specificity and strand context. The results indicate promise for the development of the competitive hybridization approach in nucleic acid detection systems providing advantages over current single-stranded probe designs. By utilizing a fluorescently labeled dsProbe approach, it is unnecessary to chemically modify the target of interest to impart a signaling mechanism. Additionally, as the process of competitive hybridization of dsProbes with targets of interest is an affinity driven process, discrimination of targets based on specificity is decoupled from standard measures such as elevated temperature protocols, an important step in translating nucleic acid technologies from the controlled laboratory environment to field applications.


Abstract White lupin is an important grain legume in the Ethiopian farming system. However, farmers' cultivars contain undesirable characters, such as high alkaloid level, are susceptible to diseases and low yielders. In order to ascertain the extent of these constraints with the farmers and document their experiences and practices on white lupin production and processing, detailed baseline survey was conducted in white lupin producing areas of north western Ethiopia. Household level survey data collected from 303 farmers is used for the analysis. The study showed that farmers have long experience in producing lupin on marginal lands for food, feed, soil fertility management, and to generate cash income from sale. It also indicated that majority of lupin farmers perform minimum crop management practices to grow lupin. High alkaloid level in traditional cultivars, prevalence of different lupin diseases and lack of improved varieties are among the top production constrains voiced by most surveyed farmers. The development of white lupin variety would help a lot in overcoming this undesirable feature and boosting grain productivity. Enhancing further research and development initiatives on lupin could help smallholder farmers living on marginal lands to generate better food for home consumption, feed for their livestock, cash income from sale, fix nitrogen for better soil fertility, and rehabilitation of degraded lands.


Abstract : Organizations are frequently designed and redesigned, often in efforts to improve performance or meet various managerial goals for coordination and communication. Such design is often done through the review of a few of options and the use of managerial and possibly personnel insight into how the new design might work. In contrast, we provide a systematic optimization based approach. In this approach, the user can pick one or more Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) metrics and then use one or more of the available optimizers to find a design that more closely meets this ideal. The optimizer utilizes heuristic based optimization procedures to generate an optimized organizational design given a particular mission. DNA metrics, such as Communication Congruence, Resource Congruence, Cognitive Load, and Actual Workload, serve to define criteria. The Optimizer can perform multi-criteria optimization in order to improve several metrics simultaneously. Two optimization methods can be used Monte Carlo and Simulated Annealing, both of which are statistical methods of finding a global optimum. DNA metrics used in the optimizations are computed by ORA. This report describes this optimizer.


This paper provides an overview of the cross-lingual expert search pilot challenge as part of the cross-lingual expert search (CriES) workshop collocated with the CLEF 2010 conference. We present a detailed description of the dataset used in the challenge. This dataset is a subset of an official crawl of Yahoo! Answers published in the context of the Yahoo! Webscope program. Further we describe the selection process of the 60 multilingual topics used in the challenge. The Gold Standard for these topics was created by human assessors who evaluated pooled results of submitted runs. We present data showing that the experts relevant for our chosen topics indeed speak different languages. This corroborates the fact that we need to design retrieval systems that build on a cross-lingual notion of relevance for the expert retrieval task. Finally we summarize the results of the four groups that participated in this challenge using standard evaluation measures. Additionally we also analyze the overlap of retrieved experts in the submitted runs.


In this paper we address the problem of extracting dynamics from multi-dimensional time-evolving data. To this end, we propose a linear dynamical model (LDS), which is based on the higher order decomposition of the observation data. In this way, we are able to extract a new descriptor for analyzing data of multiple elements coming from of the same or different data sources. Each sequence of data is modeled as a collection of higher order LDS descriptors (h-LDSs), which are estimated in equally sized temporal segments of data. Finally, each sequence is represented as a term frequency histogram following a bag-ofsystems approach, in which h-LDSs are used as feature descriptors. For evaluating the performance of the proposed methodology to extract dynamics from time evolving multidimensional data and using them for classification purposes in various applications, in this paper we consider two different cases: dynamic texture analysis and human motion recognition. Experimental results with two datasets for dynamic texture analysis and two datasets for human action recognition demonstrate the great potential of the proposed


The importance of microbial contamination of cadaver kidneys was assessed in 83 consecutively stored and transplanted kidneys. Fourteen kidneys had a single positive culture during storage and five had multiple positive cultures. Only one postoperative infection could be traced to kidney contamination during storage (Candida wound infection). In three of 64 patients who received noncontaminated kidneys, posttransplant wound infections developed. No wound infections occurred in 35 patients who received prophylactic antibiotics, whereas four wound infections occurred in 48 patients without antibiotic coverage. It is concluded that, although microbial contamination of stored cadaver kidneys occurs commonly, it is not an important source of infection in renal transplant recipients.


Thermoacoustic instability can appear in thermal devices when unsteady heat release is coupled with pressure perturbations. This effect results in excitation of eigen acoustic modes of the system. These instabilities are important in various technical applications, for instance, in rocket motors and thermoacoustic engines.

A Rijke tube, representing a resonator with a mean flow and a concentrated heat source, is a convenient system for studying the fundamental physics of thermoacoustic instabilities. At certain values of the main system parameters, a loud sound is generated through a process similar to that in real-world devices prone to thermoacoustic instability. Rijke devices have been extensively employed for research purposes. The current work is intended to overcome the serious deficiencies of previous investigations with regard to estimating experimental errors and the influence of parameter variation on the results. Also, part of the objective here is to account for temperature field non-uniformity and to interpret nonlinear phenomena. The major goals of this study are to deliver accurate experimental results for the transition to instability and the scope and nature of the excited regimes, and to develop a theory that explains and predicts the effects observed.

An electrically heated, horizontally oriented, Rijke tube is used for the experimental study of transition to instability. The stability boundary is quantified as a function of major system parameters with measured uncertainties for the data collected. Hysteresis in the stability boundary is observed for certain operating regimes of the Rijke tube.

An innovative theory is developed for modeling the Rijke oscillations. First, linear theory, incorporating thermal analysis that accurately determines the properties of the modes responsible for the transition to instability, is used to predict the stability boundary. Then, a nonlinear extension of the theory is derived by introducing a hypothesis for a special form of the nonlinear heat transfer function. This nonlinear modeling is shown to predict the hysteresis phenomenon and the limit cycles observed during the tests.

A new, reduced-order modeling approach for combustion instabilities in systems with vortex shedding is derived using the developed analytical framework. A hypothesis for the vortex detachment criterion is introduced, and a kicked oscillator model is applied to produce nonlinear results characteristic for unstable combustion systems.

The experimental system and the mathematical model, developed in this work for the Rijke tube, are recommended for preliminary design and analysis of real-world thermal devices, where thermoacoustic instability is a concern.


Mitochondria are essential organelles found in almost every cell in the human body. They host a number of important metabolic pathways and carry out essential biological functions such as ATP synthesis and regulating cell death. There is a slow decline in mitochondrial function associated with ageing and mitochondrial dysfunction is proposed to act causally in a number of diseases. Previously it has been difficult to measure the health of human mitochondria as tests have required tissue from invasive muscle biopsies. The Seahorse XF Analyser is a recent technological advance that enables researchers to test mitochondrial function in small numbers of live cells. Recently, using the Seahorse analyser, peripheral blood cells such as platelets, monocytes and lymphocytes have been shown to display individually distinct bioenergetic profiles. During circulation, these cells are exposed to metabolic or environmental stressors throughout the body, potentially allowing them to act as biomarkers of bioenergetic health and ageing. Different cell preparations were trialled to purify and isolate platelets, monocytes and lymphocytes from freshly drawn whole blood. These protocols succeeded in preparing platelet and T-lymphocyte samples for XF analysis, however inconsistent results indicated that the protocols need further development. The Seahorse XF analyser was used to measure bioenergetic function in human platelets and T-lymphocytes from healthy donors ranging from 21 to 56 years of age. Each cell type required optimisation experiments to determine the optimal inhibitor and substrate concentrations to generate a meaningful bioenergetic profile. Similarly, seeding densities were determined to ensure oxygen consumption values that were suitable to the instruments sensitivity. These cell types have elastic metabolic phenotypes, and appeared sensitive to metabolic switching during early stages of the XF assay. Platelets were particularly difficult to work with because of their inclination to cease using oxidative phosphorylation and switch metabolism to using purely glycolytic pathways. Platelet susceptibility for metabolic switching is undetermined at this point. Lymphocyte optimization experiments also indicated possible premature activation during the assay. Further work is needed to fine tune this protocol to ensure consistent and uniform measurements before accurate BHI values are calculated for donors of different ages.


Wildfire in the growing season is relatively frequent and interest is increasing in using growing-season fire in management of tallgrass prairie. However, the influence of fire in the growing season on forage production and species composition, especially in mid-successional tallgrass prairie, is largely unknown. Our objective was to compare vegetation composition and production on Loamy Prairie and Very Shallow ecological sites in mid-successional stages in response to late growing-season fire at different frequencies. We applied 4 burning treatments (no burn, or 1, 2, or 3 burns in 5 years) in the late growing season in southern Oklahoma during a series of years of above-average precipitation. The sites were dominated at the beginning of the study by early- and mid-successional species including prairie threeawn (Aristida oligantha (Michx)), a species indicating a disturbance history. After the initial burns in 1990, tallgrasses, little bluestem, and perennial grasses were reduced by burning on the Loamy site. Forbs were more productive on burned plots (1,980 kg ha-1) than on plots that were not burned (1,290 kg ha-1) averaged across sites. Total production was not reduced by burning in 1990. Growing-season burns in 2 consecutive years had little influence on species composition or production as compared to a single burn in 2 years. Warm-season perennial grasses other than tallgrasses and little bluestem increased on the Loamy site, but decreased on the Shallow site. Production of cool-season perennial grasses increased to almost 40% of total production on twice-burned plots averaged across sites. Other than the effect on cool-season perennial grasses, 2 burns over a two-year period had little effect beyond the first growing season after the second burn. Twice-burned plots and plots burned 3 times produced more forbs than either plots that were burned once or not burned. Production of perennial grasses was opposite that of forb production. Total production was not reduced on either site regardless of fire frequency. Results indicate managers may expect a short-term reduction in production of forage grasses and an increase in forbs following late growing-season fire in mid-successional tallgrass prairies.


As technology continues to grow as an essential component of small and large enterprises, an ever increasing demand is placed on cutting-edge designs for information systems.Sociotechnical Enterprise Information Systems Design and Integration covers multiple systems and developments in design for businesses and enterprises of all sizes. This publication not only highlights the advancing technology and research in this area, but it also proposes strategic approaches to manage risks and detect errors. Researchers, practitioners, and professionals wishing to expand their knowledge on the most up to date information systems and its designs will benefit from this comprehensive compilation of research.


Producing organic crops has become essential to satisfy the desires of the end consumer. To completely fulfill this task and meet the requirements of the National Organic Program in the U.S., the seeds planted must be organic. Seeds succumb to fungal infections without seed treatments. Organic seed treatments are not common. The purpose of this study is to test the ability of three organic oils (tea tree, coconut, and lemon) to act as organic seed treatments to inhibit fungal growth on soybean seeds that were badly infected with fungal disease. Each oil treatment was tested with three separate concentrations 10%, 50%, and 100%. The treatments were observed for 10 days and the results were recorded as a percentage of seeds infected with fungi. Both lemon oil and coconut oil at all concentrations failed to inhibit fungal growth. Tea tree oil at all three concentrations successfully prevented fungal infection on 100% of the seeds. The effective treatments show promise as organic seed treatments. Because of the positive results from the tea tree oil, it was further tested for germination and fungal inhibition on live soybean seeds at 2%, 5% and 10% concentrations. The treatments were observed for 12 days, and the results were recorded as a percentage of seeds infected with fungi. The germination rate and final germination percentage were also recorded. The 10% concentration inhibited a high percentage of fungi, but inhibited germination completely. The 2% and 5% concentrations had low germination percentages and mediocre fungal inhibition. The results from this research project show that there are still many options to explore in terms of organic seed treatments. Tea tree oil should be further tested in field studies, viability and vigor tests, and the germination study should be replicated at the 2% and 5% concentrations. Tea tree oil is effective against certain seed fungal contaminants, but also displays some phytotoxicity at low concentrations. Research should be completed to find tea tree oil's effect on seedling emergence and early seedling growth. Tea tree oil could be effective in conjugation with other organic seeds treatments. Other essential oils that are produced organically should be tested against fungal control, and tea tree oil should be thoroughly tested and considered for cost effectiveness and possible health effects to farm workers.


Plasma echo theory is revisited to apply it to a semi-bounded plasma. Spatial echoes associated with plasma surface wave propagating in a semi-bounded plasma are investigated by calculating the second order electric field produced by external charges and satisfying the boundary conditions at the interface. The boundary conditions are two-fold: the specular reflection condition and the electric boundary condition. The echo spots are determined in terms of the perpendicular coordinate to the interface and the parallel coordinate along which the wave propagates. This improves the earlier works in which only the perpendicular coordinate is determined. In contrast with the echo in an infinite medium, echoes in a bounded plasma can occur at various spots. The diversity of echo occurrence spots is due to the discontinuity of the electric field at the interface that satisfies the specular reflection boundary condition. Physically, the diversity appears to be owing to the reflections of the waves from the interface.


In this study of 380 students in a law school's 2011 graduating class, the data demonstrates a strong correlation between high performance in legal writing courses and high performance in non-legal writing courses. There is also a strong correlation at the opposite end: low performers in legal writing courses are low performers in non-legal writing courses. This article provides the hard data to support the significance of writing skills by demonstrating the correlation between performance in legal writing courses and performance in other law school courses by comparing grades and Grade Point Averages (GPAs). Of course grades and GPA data are not the sole measures of success, but as other research has indicated, good grades often translate to job interviews, job offers, and ultimately, jobs — the true measure of success these days.With the changing economy, declining employment statistics, downsizing legal employment market, increasing tuition at rates exceeding inflation, and a declining law school applicant pool, legal education cannot simply stand by and hope things get better. Information about how performance in legal writing correlates to law school performance outside of the legal writing course is nowhere close to curing any of these ills. Such information is, however, useful for schools in thinking about how to move forward. Slow as it may be to come or as difficult to manage, law schools must react to these and other changes; part of that reaction should include curricular reform that better prepares students for success — with success defined as after-graduation employment. To aid law schools in thinking about curricular reform, this article proves what legal writing professors and legal education reformers have known for a long time: legal writing courses are the linchpin of legal education.


We use balance sheet data and stock market data for the major U.S. banking institutions during and after the 2007-8 financial crisis to estimate the magnitude of the losses experienced by these institutions because of the crisis. We then use these estimates to assess the impact of the crisis under alternative, and higher, capital requirements. We find that substantially higher capital requirements (in the 20% to 30% range) would have substantially reduced the vulnerability of these financial institutions, and consequently they would have significantly reduced the need of a public bailout.


This working paper looks at some of the key issues to consider when transcribing multimodal interaction. Making a transcript is an invaluable analytical exercise: by forcing yourself to attend to the details of a strip of interaction you gain a wealth of insights into the situated construction of social reality, including insights in the collaborative achievements of people, their formation of identities and power relations, and the socially and culturally shaped categories through which they see the world. In this paper I reflect on the process of making a multimodal transcript. I discuss the following steps: (1) Choosing a methodological framework (Reviewing multimodal frameworks and Considering rhetorical status of the transcript); (2) Defining purpose and focus of transcript (Selecting episode and features to transcribe and Defining questions to address; (3) Designing the transcript (Creating a template, Defining transcription conventions and Filling in the template); (4) Reading the transcript (Annotating and Recounting the transcript); (5) Drawing conclusions (Addressing research questions and Making connections with other studies and theoretical constructs).


India accounts for approximately half of the global Plasmodium vivax cases, but information as to the presence of chloroquine (CQ) resistance is scarce. In an observational study in Mangaluru, south-western India, of 116 vivax malaria patients analyzed, 89.5% (102/114) had cleared parasitemia on days two or three of CQ treatment. Two remaining patients presented on days four and five without parasitemia. One hundred eight isolates of these 116 patients were successfully sequenced for pvmdr1 polymorphisms. Eight non-synonymous polymorphisms but no wild-type isolate were detected. Ten pvmdr1 haplotypes were observed with mutations T958M and F1076L occurring in all isolates, whereas the candidate CQ resistance marker Y976F was present in one isolate only. Pvmdr1 polymorphisms were not associated with early parasite clearance. The high proportion of early parasite clearance and the virtual absence of pvmdr1 Y976F and of sextuple pvmdr1 mutants suggest that CQ in the study area is still sufficiently effective. However, the abundance of pvmdr1 mutations in the local parasite population warrants monitoring.


Many national curricula at all grades suggest involving students in the manipulation of (real or virtual) materials. The current great diffusion of ICT in all aspects of everyday life pushes towards a massive use of such tools in the school. Their practices introduce an "experimental" dimension into mathematics, as well as a dynamic tension between the empirical nature of activities with them, which encompasses perceptual and operational components, and the deductive nature of the discipline, which entails a rigorous and sophisticated formalization. The talk illustrates the pedagogical possibilities offered by the tension between these two aspects when ICT are introduced into the classroom. Some short video clips from the classroom life make palpable this dynamic tension.


We report initial findings around the Facebook and Twitter adoption trends of 840 fire and police departments affected by Hurricane Sandy. The data show that adoption increased during the time period directly surrounding Hurricane Sandy. Despite this increase, the creation of new online accounts since that time has been declining and overall adoption rates seem to be stabilizing. Lastly, the data report Facebook to be significantly more popular than Twitter as a form of online communication for these fire and police departments.


The primary purpose of the investigation was to develop a functional shop and home mechanics course for junior high school girls. A secondary purpose was the determining of the grade level in which to present the course to junior high school girls. A questionnaire was used to gather data from seventy-two former girl students who had taken shop for at least one year during the school years 1952 through 1963. Fifty-two girls returned the questionnaire which was a response of 71.1 per cent. Eighty-five activities were included in the survey. This questionnaire was developed from a review of the literature in the industrial arts field. A review of the literature was used to establish the most opportune time for presenting the course. Criteria used to determine course content were: 1. Jobs which were checked by over 60 per cent of the former girl students should be in the course content. 2. Jobs which were selected by at least 40 per cent but by less than 60 per cent, of the former students, should be used as supplementary material at a later time. 3. Jobs chosen by less than 40 per cent of the former students should be dropped from the course list. On the basis of the data obtained, forty-two activities were selected for shop and home mechanics course material. The items chosen were in the following numerical rank: Upholstery, with three items; plumbing, with four items; finishing, seven activities; electricity, with four items; miscellaneous, with nine items; automobiles, seven items; and woodworking with seven activities. It was apparent from the replies received, that the former students considered shop an important part of the school curriculum. The respondents who were older seemed to prefer a more practical course of work. The younger members did not want the course curriculum to become too practical as they wished art and hobby crafts to be emphasized also. Nearly 60 per cent of the respondents thought the shop course should be a required course for at least one year. From a review of the literature and partial data from the respondents, it appeared that the shop course should be given during the eighth grade. Nearly 80 per cent of the respondents were in favor of giving grades for all shop work completed. Woodworking ranked last in order of popularity so it would seem that this phase should be emphasized less than other areas. A review of the literature seems to indicate a definite trend toward girls being more actively involved in the industrial arts program. School administrators are becoming more concerned with providing some type of industrial arts experience for junior high girls.


T cell differentiation is a progressive process characterized by phenotypic and functional changes. By transferring tumor-specific CD8+ T cells into tumor-bearing mice at various stages of differentiation, we evaluated their efficacy for adoptive immunotherapy. We found that administration of naive and early effector T cells, in combination with active immunization and IL-2, resulted in the eradication of large, established tumors. Despite enhanced in vitro antitumor properties, more-differentiated effector T cells were less effective for in vivo tumor treatment. Several events may underlie this paradoxical phenomenon: (a) downregulation of lymphoid-homing and costimulatory molecules; (b) inability to produce IL-2 and access homeostatic cytokines; and (c) entry into a proapoptotic and replicative senescent state. While the progressive acquisition of terminal effector properties is characterized by pronounced in vitro tumor killing, in vivo T cell activation, proliferation, and survival are progressively impaired. These findings suggest that the current methodology for selecting T cells for transfer is inadequate and provide new criteria for the generation and the screening of optimal lymphocyte populations for adoptive immunotherapy.


As highly productive and biologically diverse communities, healthy quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides; hereafter aspen) forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services across western North America. Western aspen decline during the last century has been attributed to several causes and their interactions, including altered fire regimes, drought, excessive use by domestic and wild ungulates, and conifer encroachment. Today's managers need science-based guidance to develop and implement strategies and practices to restore structure, processes, and resilience to the full range of aspen functional types across multiple spatial scales. In these guidelines, we detail a process for making step-by-step decisions about aspen restoration. The steps are: (1) assessment of aspen condition, (2) identification of problematic conditions, (3) determination of causal factors, (4) selection of appropriate response options, (5) monitoring for improvement, and (6) assessment and adaptation. We describe the need for reference areas in which the full range of natural environmental conditions and ecosystem processes associated with aspen can be observed and quantified, and provide a list of example sites for Utah. These guidelines provide a road map for decision makers to adaptively manage aspen in a time of increasing environmental stress and in anticipation of an uncertain future.


We have studied the role of a highly conserved tryptophan and other aromatic residues of the thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) receptor (TRH-R) that are predicted by computer modeling to form a hydrophobic cluster between transmembrane helix (TM)5 and TM6. The affinity of a mutant TRH-R, in which Trp279 was substituted by alanine (W279A TRH-R), for most tested agonists was higher than that of wild-type (WT) TRH-R, whereas its affinity for inverse agonists was diminished, suggesting that W279A TRH-R is constitutively active. We found that W279A TRH-R exhibited 3.9-fold more signaling activity than WT TRH-R in the absence of agonist. This increased basal activity was inhibited by the inverse agonist midazolam, confirming that the mutant receptor is constitutively active. Computer-simulated models of the unoccupied WT TRH-R, the TRH-occupied WT TRH-R, and various TRH-R mutants predict that a hydrophobic cluster of residues, including Trp279 (TM6), Tyr282, and Phe199 (TM5), constrains the receptor in an inactive conformation. In support of this model, we found that substitution of Phe199 by alanine or of Tyr282 by alanine or phenylalanine, but not of Tyr200 (by alanine or phenylalanine), resulted in a constitutively active receptor. We propose that a hydrophobic cluster including residues in TM5 and TM6 constrains the TRH-R in an inactive conformation via interhelical interactions. Disruption of these constraints by TRH binding or by mutation leads to changes in the relative positions of TM5 and TM6 and to the formation of an active form of TRH-R.


Mitochondria are known as the powerhouse of the cell due to their central role in energy generation and as the site of key metabolic pathways. Over the past 15 years, it has become unequivocally clear that most pro-apoptotic stimuli require a mitochondria-dependent step, involving the permeabilisation of the mitochondrial outer membrane to apoptogenic factors, such as cytochrome c and Smac/DIABLO. The release of these factors into the cytosol is tightly regulated by proteins of the Bcl-2 family and results in the activation of the caspase cascade, leading to cell death. This event is considered as a point of no return in the apoptotic pathway and is often inhibited in cancer.
Cardiolipin (CL) is a mitochondria-specific phospholipid that contains four acyl-chains. CL has been implicated in many of the mitochondria-dependent steps that lead to the release of apoptogenic factors including interaction with the Bcl-2 family protein tBid, Bax-dependant mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization and cytochrome c release. Despite this growing body of evidence, the mechanism by which CL and its fatty acyl chain composition regulate mitochondrial apoptotic pathways remains unresolved, mostly due to the lack of cellular model. Tafazzin is a mitochondrial enzyme, which is mutated in Barth syndrome (BTHS) and is involved in the maturation process of CL. In BTHS, loss of tafazzin activity results in a decrease in mature CL, making it a good model to investigate the role of CL in apoptosis.
Using BTHS patients-derived lymphoblastoid cells and HeLa cells in which tafazzin was stably knocked-down using RNA interference, this study provides the first evidence that mature CL are required for an efficient extrinsic apoptotic pathway in type II cells. Further investigation of the impaired apoptotic pathway revealed that the major block is in the activation of caspase-8. In this work, mature CL was identified as a crucial component of a mitochondrial platform required for caspase-8 translocation, oligomerization and activation following Fas signalling in type II cells. These results support a model in which once the first cleavage of procaspase-8 occurs at the DISC, the p43/p10 heteromer product translocates and inserts into the mitochondrial membrane in a CL-dependant manner. In the mitochondria, caspase-8 further oligomerizes and auto-cleaves to adopt its fully active form p18/p10. Additionally, it is shown here that mature CL is required for the physiological association of full-length Bid, the major caspase-8 cleavage substrate, with mitochondria. Thus, Bid is directly available for active caspase-8 on the mitochondrial surface where it cleaves into tBid, which in turn inserts into the mitochondrial outer membrane and induces cytochrome c release. Therefore, by tethering full-length Bid on mitochondria and by providing an activation site for caspase-8 following Fas signalling, CL brings together both the enzyme and its substrate and provides a platform from which the mitochondrial phase of apoptosis is launched.
In summary, the data presented in this thesis provide the first evidence that mature CL participates in a new mitochondrial associated platform, called the "mitosome", required for the activation of caspase-8 in type II cells.


Maternal infection and fever during pregnancy have been implicated in the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, studies have not been able to separate the effects of fever itself from the impact of a specific infectious organism on the developing brain. We utilized data from the Study to Explore Early Development (SEED), a case–control study among 2‐ to 5‐year‐old children born between 2003 and 2006 in the United States, to explore a possible association between maternal infection and fever during pregnancy and risk of ASD and other developmental disorders (DDs). Three groups of children were included: children with ASD (N = 606) and children with DDs (N = 856), ascertained from clinical and educational sources, and children from the general population (N = 796), randomly sampled from state birth records. Information about infection and fever during pregnancy was obtained from a telephone interview with the mother shortly after study enrollment and maternal prenatal and labor/delivery medical records. ASD and DD status was determined by an in‐person standardized developmental assessment of the child at 3–5 years of age. After adjustment for covariates, maternal infection anytime during pregnancy was not associated with ASD or DDs. However, second trimester infection accompanied by fever elevated risk for ASD approximately twofold (aOR = 2.19, 95% confidence interval 1.14–4.23). These findings of an association between maternal infection with fever in the second trimester and increased risk of ASD in the offspring suggest that the inflammatory response to the infectious agent may be etiologically relevant. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1551–1561. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


We recently identified RrmJ (alias FtsJ), the first encoded protein of the rrmJ-hflB heat shock operon, as an Um(2552) methyltransferase of the 23S rRNA. We now report that the rrmJ-deficient strain exhibits growth and translational defects compared to the wild-type strain. Growth rates of the rrmJ mutant are decreased at both low and high temperatures. Protein synthesis activity is reduced up to 65% when S(30) rrmJ mutant extracts are tested in a coupled in vitro transcription/translation assay. In vitro methylation of these extracts by RrmJ partially restores protein synthesis activity. Polysome profile analysis of the rrmJ strain reveals an increase in the proportion of free 30S and 50S subunits at both 30 and 42 degrees C. These results suggest that the RrmJ-catalyzed methylation of Um(2552) in 23S RNA strengthens ribosomal subunit interactions, increases protein synthesis activity, and improves cell growth rates even at non-heat shock temperatures.


Abstract. To study near-surface melt changes over the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) since 1979, melt extent estimates from two regional climate models were compared with those obtained from spaceborne microwave brightness temperatures using two different remote sensing algorithms. The results from the two models were consistent with those obtained with the remote sensing algorithms at both daily and yearly time scales, encouraging the use of the models for analyzing melting trends before the satellite era (1958–1979), when forcing data is available. Differences between satellite-derived and model-simulated results still occur and are used here to identify (i) biases in the snow models (notably in the albedo parametrization, in the thickness of a snow layer, in the maximum liquid water content within the snowpack and in the snowfall impacting the bare ice appearance in summer) and (ii) limitations in the use of passive microwave data for snowmelt detection at the edge of the ice sheet due to mixed pixel effect (e.g., tundra or rock nearby the ice sheet). The results from models and spaceborne microwave sensors confirm a significant (p-value = 0.01) increase in GrIS surface melting since 1979. The melt extent recorded over the last years (1998, 2003, 2005 and 2007) is unprecedented in the last 50 yr with the cumulated melt area in the 2000's being, on the average, twice that of the 1980's.