This thesis is concerned with the emergence of sustainable decommissioning practice for buildings situated on nuclear sites within the United Kingdom. It reports on developments within the Civil Nuclear Sector that have enabled sustainable practices to become embedded in current business functions.
The history of civil nuclear sites is traced from the 1940's up to the present day, to provide a background to the industry. Many organisations have been involved with nuclear generation (a low CO2 power source itself) and reprocessing of spent fuel, so the work identifies the question of whether or not this activity was viewed as sustainable.
The current focus in the nuclear sector is on decommissioning the legacy of civil nuclear facilities and reprocessing nuclear waste. It is envisaged that decommissioning may take up to 150 years to conclude.
This thesis demonstrates historical examples and recent cases where decommissioning and demolition of UK Civil nuclear buildings, through following good practice has been sustainable, whereby building materials were reused or recycled, and thus reduced sentence to a registered nuclear repository. It establishes business benefit for this practice and considers environmental, social and economic factors. Descriptions of case studies are provided.
The author suggests the term "sustainable decommissioning" and investigates if the phrase truly reflects the practices of those organisations who work in nuclear decommissioning. A Literature review helps to show how sustainable nuclear decommissioning has developed. By conducting interviews with key people in the nuclear industry, including deliverers, advisors and Regulators, the thesis has established the gradual development of key features of sustainability in practice on United Kingdom nuclear sites.
This thesis examines one selected key feature in more detail: the extent to which best practice publications have, or are, influencing actual site practice at Sellafield; and extending to the topical issue of "free release". Addressed in particular is the extent to which knowledge of (i) Nuclear Industry Code of Practice (NICOP) and (ii) Site decommissioning: Sustainable practices in the use of construction resources (SD:SPUR) is permeating, and has potential to influence, the nuclear decommissioning industry.
The thesis concludes with the author's findings on sustainable decommissioning in the nuclear industry, how it's implemented and its success and impacts on the economy, social life and the environment. The main conclusion is that decommissioning of nuclear waste, including building materials can be done sustainably and described as "sustainable decommissioning", a term not previously been identified with nuclear activities. Implementation has come from both within and outside the industry, particularly from environmental (SD: SPUR) and stakeholder (NICOP) sources. Socially, sustainable decommissioning has
provided initiatives for encouraging "free release" of materials into the local community.


This project envisages a Buck dc – dc converter mathematical analysis and simulation. This power regulator is made up of some vital circuit elements such as inductor, freewheeling diode, filter capacitor and electronics power switch. The circuit is analysed based on two modes of operation namely: continuous current conduction mode and discontinuous current mode. Ansoft Simplorer software is used to carry out the circuit simulation under the two modes of operation which aided in verifying the calculated results. Both calculated and simulated waveforms are displayed. The results obtained are very similar. KeywordsBuck converter, Continuous current conduction mode, Discontinuous current conduction mode Pulse Width Modulation, Power regulator.


The land use regulatory system has been criticized for causing or failing to solve social problems and for perceived inherent defects, such as inefficiency, inequality, and environmental harm. These criticisms fail to understand the land use re gulatory system in the United States as a dynamic, functional, adaptive system. This paper systematically analyzes the: 1) functions; 2) location and scale; 3) components; 4) processes; and 5) values of the land use regulatory system in the United Sta- tes. If we are to improve our land use practices to be fairer, more efficient, and more ecologically responsible, we must understand how land use planning and regulation function and change over time. Particular attention is given to the role of land use regulation as a mediator between people and places, between communities and power, and between freedom and boundaries. Additional attention is given to the broad array of forces shaping land use decisions, the "thinness" of land use law as a set of rules and limits (contrasted with its role as a source of tools, authority, and discretion), and the "patchiness" of land use regulatory authority in the United States. This paper also examines a specific issue of law and policy: the extent to which the land use regulatory system can value and conserve ecosystem services - the humanly beneficial services that nature provides. The paper explores both barriers to and opportunities for accounting for ecosystem services in land use planningand regulation.


This revised and expanded edition of "Art Photography Now" builds on the hugely successful first edition (2005), which traced the developments in art photography since the mid-nineteenth century and profiled world-famous artists such as Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin and Martin Parr. The book retains its seven themed sections Portrait, Landscape, Narrative, Object, Fashion, Document, and City each of which begins with an introduction followed by the work of individual photographers featured in sequence. Each photographers work is accompanied by the author's commentary and quotes from the artist, offering valuable insights into the making and meaning of the images. New and recent work by established artists such as Candida Hofer, Gabriel Orozco and Wolfgang Tillmans has been added, bringing the book up to date and making it as definitive and authoritative as when it first appeared. A new final chapter, Transitions, showcases work by today's emerging artists such as Viviane Sassen, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Leigh Ledare. It explains how art photography has grown and adapted to the burgeoning international interest in photography during the first decade of the twenty first century, as well as dramatic and fast-paced technological change.


Abstract:This essay reviews the 2013 Human Life International (HLI) propaganda video, Central America and Mexico: Fighting for Life, Faith, and Family, which, we argue, illustrates the well-orchestrated counteroffensive against reproductive and sexual rights movements occurring in the region. First we summarize the film's key themes, including the assertion that Catholicism is fundamental to Mexican and Central American identities and that the international "pro-abortion movement" is waging war against Catholics. Second, we note the development of a new strategic alliance between Catholics and evangelicals that relies on lay religious activists working in the fields of medicine, bioethics, law, and government. Third, we show how the video appeals to HLI donors by asking them to support crisis pregnancy centres, homes for unwed mothers, adoption programs, and "natural" fertility assistance. We argue that the film conspicuously ignores the consequences of abortion bans already in place in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, and does not consider that what it terms "international pressures" also includes treaty obligations with the United Nations and Organization of American States. This essay offers insights into the strategies used by opponents of reproductive and sexual rights movements in Mexico and Central America.


In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court held that corporate political speech could not be regulated on the basis of corporate status alone. In support of that conclusion, the majority characterized corporations as mere "associations of citizens." The dissent, meanwhile, viewed corporations as state-created entities that "differ from natural persons in fundamental ways" and "have been effectively delegated responsibility for ensuring society's economic welfare." I have argued previously that these two competing conceptions of the corporation implicate corporate theory, with the majority adopting an aggregate/contractarian view, and the dissent an artificial entity/concession view. Even if one understands Citizens United to be primarily about listeners' rights, this stark contrast of competing theories of the corporation is difficult to ignore. At the very least, what the majority and dissent thought about corporate speakers was relevant to the question whether the campaign finance restrictions challenged in Citizens United should fall within that narrow class of speech restrictions justified on the basis of the speaker's identity due to "an interest in allowing governmental entities to perform their functions." Somewhat surprisingly, however, the majority was silent, and the dissent expressly disavowed, any role for corporate theory. I have previously offered some explanations for this apparent inconsistency, and concluded that an active "silent corporate theory debate" was indeed integral to the outcome of Citizens United - despite protestations to the contrary. In this project, I examine the key Supreme Court cases leading up to Citizens United to see whether a similar silent corporate theory debate is evident in those cases. I find that there is indeed such an on-going debate, and proceed to argue that in future cases involving the rights of corporations the justices should make their views regarding the proper theory of the corporation express. This will allow for a more meaningful discussion of the merits of those decisions, and impose an additional layer of intellectual accountability on the jurists


Although earlier studies revealed much about software process improvement (SPI) in software small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), no earlier research set out to determine the full extent of SPI being implemented in software SMEs. Therefore, this study was designed from the outset to elicit all instances of SPI, which we term SPI events – no matter how small or informal. We make the important new discovery that SMEs initiate a considerable amount of SPI, albeit in varying quantities in different organisations. No earlier study reported that the practice of SPI was so widespread in software SMEs, and this is perhaps related to the extensive scope of the enquiry adopted in this study. Our study also finds that the significant majority of SPI in software SMEs is minor or moderate in nature, sometimes leveraging the human capital via improvements in tacit knowledge. Software development is an intrinsically human intensive activity, and it therefore follows that the maximisation of the human capital in an organisation is a source of competitive advantage. However, contemporary process maturity frameworks and quality management standards do not fully exploit the capacity of human capital and may therefore diminish rather than improve the competitive advantage of software SMEs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In this immersive ethnography, Tony Tian-Ren Lin explores the reasons that Latin American immigrants across the United States are increasingly drawn to Prosperity Gospel Pentecostalism, a strand of Protestantism gaining popularity around the world. Lin contends that Latinos embrace Prosperity Gospel, which teaches that believers may achieve both divine salvation and worldly success, because it helps them account for the contradictions of their lives as immigrants. Weaving together his informants' firsthand accounts of their religious experiences and everyday lives, Lin offers poignant insight into how they see their faith transforming them both as individuals and as communities.
The theology fuses salvation with material goods so that as these immigrants pursue spiritual rewards they are also, perhaps paradoxically, striving for the American dream. But after all, Lin observes, prosperity is the gospel of the American dream. In this way, while becoming better Prosperity Gospel Pentecostals they are also adopting traditional white American norms. Yet this is not a story of smooth assimilation as most of these immigrants must deal with the immensity of the broader cultural and political resistance to their actually becoming Americans. Rather, Prosperity Gospel Pentecostalism gives Latinos the logic and understanding of themselves as those who belong in this country yet remain perpetual outsiders.


The examination here yields eight business models that describe more or less comprehensively the commercial approaches to online news. Using the models, I review the secondary literature to see what has worked, what trends have emerged, and what the experts expect. Approximately 300 articles were reviewed, based on a search of those stories that appeared in the business and trade press in hardcopy and online in the past five years. Surprisingly, a consensus opinion exists among experts who predict that the interactive model offers the most promise of eventually capturing the majority of online news consumers. My intent is to develop the models to facilitate further empirical study of which news websites are most likely to survive and succeed in the dot-com shakeout beyond spring 2000.


Aquatic prey species respond to predators with fast (developmental) and slow (selective) feedbacks. Natural selection is assumed to fashion details of induction and to modify baseline morphology, but only rarely do we catch the slower (multi‐generation) process in action. Laboratory experiments with Bosmina detected predatormediated induction and estimated spine heritability (h2 5 0.2‐0.5). Third Sister Lake, Michigan, U.S.A., Bosmina exhibited induction to resident (Mesocyclops) and to two nonresident, neighborhood predators (Epischura and Leptodora). However, the magnitude of induction in Third Sister Lake Bosmina to nonresident predators (Epischura, Leptodora) was muted, when compared with induction and final spine lengths in Epischura‐Leptodora lakes. Inadvertent escape of Leptodora into Third Sister Lake in 1987 created a long‐term (multiyear), whole‐lake experiment, where resident Bosmina populations fell under intense size selection. During the interval, Leptodora suppressed a late‐season smaller, short‐featured species (B. freyii), favored seasonal expansion of an overwintering long‐featured species (B. liederi), and selected for longer features in the latter species. Before local extinction, defensive spines of B. liederi achieved lengths comparable to populations that co‐occur with Epischura and Leptodora.


This theoretical contribution explores the role of political actors in the social construction of collective insecurity. Two parts comprise the article. The first one briefly defines the concept of collective insecurity and the second one bridges existing sociological and political science literatures relevant for the analysis of the politics of insecurity. This theoretical framework articulates five main claims. First, although interesting, the concept of moral panic applies only to a limited range of insecurity episodes. Second, citizens of contemporary societies exhibit acute risk awareness and, when new collective threats emerge, the logic of "organized irresponsibility" often leads citizens and interest groups alike to blame elected officials. Third, political actors mobilize credit claiming and blame avoidance strategies to respond to these threats in a way that enhances their position within the political field. Fourth, powerful interests and institutional forces as well as the "threat infrastructure" specific to a policy area create constraints and opportunities for these strategic actors. Finally, their behavior is proactive or reactive, as political actors can either help push a threat onto the agenda early, or, at a later stage, simply attempt to shape the perception of this threat after other forces have transformed it into a major political issue.


Understanding molecular mechanisms of neurotransmitter release and short-term synaptic plasticity is one of the central questions in neuroscience. Sakaba et al. studied the roles of SNARE proteins in neurotransmitter release using clostridial neurotoxins. A detailed kinetic analysis of the action of several toxins revealed that the kinetics of transmitter release differs, depending on which SNARE proteins were cleaved. Toxins cleaving synaptobrevin and syntaxin reduced the number of fusion-competent vesicles without changing the Ca2+ sensitivity of the release apparatus of remaining vesicles. In contrast, toxins cleaving the C terminal of SNAP-25 reduced intracellular Ca2+ sensitivity of vesicle fusion, which suggests that the C terminal is important for driving rapid fusion. Furthermore, toxins cleaving synaptobrevin lead to a modification of the coupling between Ca2+ channels and release-competent vesicles. T. Sakaba, A. Stein, R. Jahn, E. Neher, Distinct kinetic changes in neurotransmitter release after SNARE protein cleavage. Science 309, 491-494 (2005). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Stable isotope labelled internal standards (SIL ISs) are often used when legal and illegal drugs are analysed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Ideally an IS behaves identically as its corresponding analyte during sample preparation and LC-MS/MS analysis. However, isotope effects (IEs) may cause differences in the behaviour between the SIL IS and its analyte. In reversed phase (RP) LC-MS/MS separations deuterium (2H) labelled ISs often elutes slightly earlier than their corresponding analytes, something that reduces the ISs possibility to correct for ion suppression/enhancement effects. There is a greater difference in physico-chemical properties between hydrogen isotopes than between isotopes of other elements. Therefore, ISs labelled with 13C, 15N and/or 18O are expected to behave more similarly to their analytes than 2H labelled ISs. The availability of high quality 13C-SIL IS will improve accurate quantification of narcotics and drugs in biological samples. Thus, the synthesis of some of the most important misused drugs and metabolites was undertaken to detect and control misuse and monitor administration in clinical settings. Ten [13C6]-labelled phenethylamine derivatives, namely: amphetamine, methamphetamine, 3,4- methylenedioxyamphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, 3,4- methylenedioxy-N-ethylamphetamine, 4-methoxyamphetamine, 4- methoxymethamphetamine, 3,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine 4-bromo-2,5- dimethoxyphenethyl-amine and 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodo-phenethylamine, was synthesized. [13C6]-Phenol proved to be an excellent starting material for making 13C-labelled narcotic substances, and a developed Stille type coupling enabled an efficient synthesis of the 3,4- methylenedioxy and 4-methoxy derivatives. (-)-Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol is the principal psychoactive component of the cannabis plant and also the active ingredient in the prescribed drug Dronabinol™. Reference samples of the native drug [13C4]-Δ9- tetrahydrocannabinol and the most important metabolite [13C4]-11-nor-9-carboxy-Δ9- tetrahydrocannabinol were developed via [13C4]-olivetol. Starting from [13C4]-olivetol the synthesis of [13C4]-11-nor-9-carboxy-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol was shortened from three to two steps by employing nitromethane as a co-solvent in condensation with (+)- apoverbenone. The illegal use of opiates and (-)-cocaine is a challenge World-wide, but some derivatives are also valuable pharmaceuticals. Reference samples of the native drugs and their metabolites are needed. Thus, the synthesis of [13C4]-heroin, [13C5]-heroin, [13C3]-6- acetylmorphine, [13C2]-codeine, [13C6]-(-)-cocaine, [13C6]-(-)-benzoylecgonine, [13C6]-(-)- norcocaine, and [13C6]-(-)-cocaethylene was undertaken to provide such reference materials. The 13C-labelled opiates and cocaine derivatives were made from the corresponding natural products. The synthetic work in this thesis has focused on identifying 13C atom efficient routes towards the SIL IS. This has been accomplished by finding atom efficient routes, shortening existing methods or starting by chemical manipulation of the natural products. Thus, to provide internal standards for more accurate quantification and for identification purpose the final SIL ISs were tested for their efficiency. 13C-SIL ISs proved in some cases to be superior over existing reference materials based on 2H.


Revegetation with perennial plants is a well-accepted tool in salinity control across the agricultural regions of southern Australia but the scale on which revegetation must be undertaken in order to have significant impact on salinity has become clear only recently. This scale is so large that it must involve extensive change in the commercial plant base of agriculture. Hence, an array of profitable perennial plants must be developed to complement existing annual crops. Apart from their role in salinity control, new perennial plant crops can bring a range of other benefits to agricultural areas, including improved erosion control, protection of biodiversity (and in some cases its enhancement), diversification of farm incomes, and regional development resulting from local processing of perennial plant products. This paper discusses some issues relevant to the development of new industries based on woody perennial crops. They include size of markets, using the whole plant to make multiple products, crop rotation length, temporal and spatial integration of perennial crops into agriculture, the financial consequences for farmers growing woody crops, and the desirability of deriving new crops from native species. These issues provide useful guidelines for the objective selection of potential new commercial crop species. From this foundation, a selection and development project called 'Search' has evolved, to systematically assess potential new large-scale tree crops and processing industries based on native species, select those with high potential for commercial development, and take the first steps towards their development. The genus Acacia provides considerable potential for the development of new perennial crops. Acacia species appear to be especially suited for use as phase crops in rotation with conventional annual crops, or as low cost, direct-seeded coppice crops. A large number of Acacia species occur naturally in the Western Australian wheatbelt and several have attributes that may make them suitable for commercial development. Potential products include solid wood, panel board, paper, gum, tannin, fodder, edible seed, and large-scale generic products such as solid fuel for electricity production, liquid transport fuel and charcoal products.


Oliver Bullough's "Let Our Fame be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant Peoples of the Caucasus" is the extraordinary untold story of the inhabitants of the Caucasus and their unbreakable spirit. The Caucasus mountains are a land of jagged peaks and rugged people, who for over 200 years have rebelled against Russia's attempts to add them to its empire. Oliver Bullough's extraordinary debut tells their story for the first time. Travelling from remote village to refugee camp, rocky mountain gorge to forgotten massacre site, he discovers exiles, fighters, lost sects, defiant survivors - and an unbreakable spirit. "With this impassioned volume Bullough has struck a blow for the glory of the Caucasus and helped to give voice to the voiceless". (Justin Marozzi, "Financial Times"). "Gripping stories that tell of the terrible things that happen to people caught up in constant warfare...Now their stories are sung by a champion and will resound beyond their boundaries". ("The Times"). "A haunting portrait of a people blown to the winds by a forgotten storm". ("Economist"). "Wonderful, moving". (Norman Stone). "Brilliant...Bullough draws you irresistibly into his narrative, fusing reportage, history and travelogue in colourful, absorbing prose. ..The book is a pleasure". ("Spectator"). "Grand, furious". ("Sunday Times Books of the Year"). "Let its fame be great". (Scotsman Oliver). Bullough (b. 1977) studied modern history at Oxford University and moved to Russia in 1999. He lived in St Petersburg, Bishkek and Moscow over the next seven years, working as a journalist first for local magazines and newspapers, and then for Reuters news agency. He reported from all over Russia and the former Soviet Union, but liked nothing more than to work among the people and mountains of the North Caucasus.


The microstructure and composition of water and KOH activated hardened pastes of commercial neat white Portland cement (WPC) and blends with 30% fly ash (PFA) have been characterised using a multi-technique approach, With particular emphasis on the nature of the C-S-H phase. The neat and fly ash blended pastes were activated with water or a 5M KOH solution and cured for one year at 25'C, one month at 55'C and one month at 85'C. The mean length of the aluminosilicate anion structure of C-S-H (29 Si MAS NMR) increased with age and it was higher in the fly ash blended systems. Formulae were presented for the average structural units in the C-S-H present in the systems analysed by TEM-EDX. SEM micrographs showed that as hydration occurred,
the microstructure became denser because outer product C-S-H was formed in the water filled spaces and additional C-S-H resulted from the pozzolanic reaction. The chemical
composition of C-S-H could not be determined by SEM-EDX because of intermixing with other phases; TEM-EDX was necessary. Inner product C-S-H morphology was fine and homogeneous and that of outer product C-S-H was fibrillar in the water activated systems and foil-like with alkali activation. Fly ash replacement did not change the morphology of lp and Op C-S-H. Small fully hydrated cement and PFA particles were filled with a less dense lp C-S-H with morphology very similar to the foil-like one. TEM-EDX showed that, in general, the mean Ca/(AI+Si) atomic ratio was lower in the water activated blends than that in the neat cement pastes due to the fly ash reaction. The composition- structure data were discussed in terms of models for the nanostructure of C-S-H.

Higher curing temperature accelerated the rate of the cement hydration. The mean length of the aluminosilicate of the C-S-H anions was much higher than that of C-S-H formed at lower temperatures, and it was also higher in the blended pastes than with neat cement. Backscattered electron images showed that the grey level of C-S-H in the
systems cured at 55T and 85T was in places quite similar to that of the calcium hydroxide: that is, it was brighter than in pastes cured at lower temperature. SEM also showed that the microstructure of the systems cured at higher temperature exhibited non uniform porosity. Inner product C-S-H with a fine scale, homogeneous morphology,
was abundant in all systems cured at 55'C and 85'C. Op C-S-H was generally fibrillar with Nvater, and foil-like with alkali. However, the higher temperature curing did result
in coarser fibrillar morphology (water activated systems) than that formed at lower temperatures.

The C-S-H gel formed in the commercial WPC-30% PFA blended paste hydrated for one year at 25'C and water leached for twelve weeks was also characterised in this work. A matrix effect was clearly observed by 29 Si MAS NMR. Cross-linking of the aluminosilicate anion structure of C-S-H occurred after leaching the sample for four weeks. Formulae were also presented for the average structural units in the C-S-H
present in the unleached and four weeks water leached systems analysed by TEM-EDX. lp C-S-H morphology was fine and homogeneous and Op C-S-H had fibrillar morphology. There were many areas in the microstructure of the leached sample where Op C-S-H with foil-like morphology coexisted with fibrillar Op C-S-H.


Australia has recently had to address the structure of corporate law and regulation as a result of decisions in two High Court cases, namely Re Wakim; Ex Parte McNally (1999) 198 CLR 511 and R v Hughes (2000) 171 ALR 155. The constitutional problems posed by these two cases have currently been resolved using a referral of powers by the states to the Commonwealth. However, this agreement was not reached without difficulty, and uncertainty persists due to a five year sunset clause. The intense debate surrounding these events shed light on the continuing diversity in political and legal culture in the Australian states, and on the perception of business, government and academia concerning globalisation and its' impact of the structure of law. On the other side of the world, the European Union is facing similar challenges, albeit on a different scale. The recent adoption of the Regulation on the European Company follows a history of thirty years of little progress. The impetus for the sudden adoption of this Regulation appears to have been due to the impact of economic globalisation, and the desire to increase competitiveness of the EU in a global economy. However, in order to achieve agreement of the Member States to the Regulation, the key issue of worker participation had to be addressed, an issue going to the heart of the issues of cultural diversity in the corporate law of Member States. This paper will consider the structure of law and its relationship to diversity of legal culture in federal or quasi-federal systems of government. The issues posed by the structure of corporate law are relevant to other areas of law, and the challenges faced by Australia and the European Union now will arise again in the future in the context of other 'unions', perhaps in the Australasian region.


AIM
The aim of this double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical study was to evaluate the analgesic effects of preoperative/postoperative ibuprofen and acetaminophen use after bonding and to find a relation between the pain level and the amount of prostaglandin released.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Forty-eight patients were included and randomly divided to three equal groups that received either ibuprofen, acetaminophen or placebo for pain relief. The pain levels were measured before bonding, after bonding, at first, second, third, and seventh days on a 100 mm visual analogue scale (VAS) and gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) samples were collected at the same time intervals to measure the amount of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) released. PGE2 levels were determined with ELISA test. The results were evaluated with Wilcoxon and Kruskal–Wallis tests with Bonferroni correction.

RESULTS
Acetaminophen and placebo groups showed similar pain levels during the first 2 days, whereas ibuprofen group showed lower pain levels during the first day after bonding. PGE2 levels did not show statistically significant difference in time within the analgesic groups. No significant relation between the pain perceived and PGE2 released was found.

LIMITATIONS
The biggest limitation of this study is the subjective nature of pain and its method of evaluation.

CONCLUSIONS
The perception of pain by patients taking ibuprofen and acetaminophen at pre/post appliance placement was not different from patients taking placebo. No time-related differences in PGE2 level were found between the groups and no significant correlation was found between the perception of pain and PGE2 levels.


This study examined the effect of goal setting on injury rehabilitation, specifically, differences in personal goal setting, self-efficacy, self-satisfaction, and performance between injured and noninjured subjects. Two experimental groups (32 women with knee injuries and 29 noninjured women) and one control group (n = 30) were used. Subjects performed four trials of a knee extension task on an isokinetic dynamometer. Prior to the third and fourth trials, subjects in the experimental groups set personal goals and completed self-efficacy and self-satisfaction scales. There were significant performance improvements for the two experimental groups; correlation coefficients between self-efficacy, self-satisfaction, goal setting, and performance were significant at the .001 level Personal goal setting was affected by level of ability and in turn had a direct effect on performance. Self-efficacy and self-satisfaction were affected by ability or performance but had no significant effect on personal goals or perf...


High attrition rates among new teachers are of concern to teacher educators. Support mechanisms may help teachers feel less isolated in their new profession. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies can connect novice teachers in ways that are both time and place independent. Most research on asynchronous online discussions has focused on achieving formal learning goals through highly structured scaffolds for reflective thinking and cognitive presence. Less attention is being paid to how novice teachers who are already accustomed to participating in online communities turn to these online spaces for the support they need. This case study examined whether and how eight preservice teachers completing English education internships at professional development schools chose to use an asynchronous discussion forum in the absence of a tightly structured or controlled communication task. The interns chose to use the online space for just-in-time informal learning and for psychological support on complex issues that were not easy to discuss face to face. The interns regularly responded to each others' requests, thoughts, and concerns. The authors propose that highly structured online forums are not the only way CMC can be used for teacher support, particularly now that CMC is no longer a novelty, nor should formal learning be the only purpose for providing such online spaces to novice teachers.


Several organizations have large databases which are growing at a rapid rate day by day, which need to be regularly maintained. Content based searches are similar searched based on certain features that are obtained from various multi media data. For various applications like multimedia content retrieval, data mining, pattern recognition, etc., performing the nearest neighbor search is a challenging task in multidimensional data. The important factors in nearest neighbor search (kNN) are searching speed and accuracy. Implementation of kNN on GPU is an ongoing research from last few years, focusing on improving the performance of kNN. By considering these aspects, our research has been started and found a gap in this research area. This master thesis shows e ective and e cient parallelism on multi-core of CPU and GPU to compare the performance with single core CPU. This paper shows an experimental implementation of kNN on single core CPU, Mutli-core CPU and GPU using C, Pthreads and CUDA respectively. We considered di erent levels of inputs (size, dimensions) to evaluate the performance. The experiment shows the GPU outperforms for kNN when compared to CPU single core with a factor of approximately 5.8 to 16 and CPU multi-core with a factor of approximately 1.2 to 3 for di erent levels of inputs.


The Ilan Basin of northern Taiwan forms the western limit of the Okinawa Trough, where the trough meets the compressional ranges of central Taiwan. Apatite fission-track ages of 1.2 ± 0.5 Ma and 3.5 ± 0.5 Ma, measured north and south of the basin, respectively, indicate faster exhumation rates in the Hsuehshan Range to the north (>1.6 mm/yr) than in the Backbone Range to the south (0.7 mm/yr). Reconstructed subsidence rates along the northern basin margin are also faster than in the south (6–7 compared with 3–5 mm/yr). Global positioning system (GPS) and active seismological data indicate motion of the southern basin margin to the east and southeast. We propose that the Ilan Basin is being formed as a result of extension of northern Taiwan, largely controlled by a major southeast-dipping fault, modeled at ∼30° dip, and mapped as a continuation of the Lishan Fault, a major thrust structure in the Central Ranges. Flexural rigidity of the lithosphere under the basin is low, with elastic thickness ∼3 km. A southwest-migrating collision between the Luzon Arc and southern China, accompanied by subduction polarity reversal in the Ryukyu Trench, has allowed crustal blocks that were previously held in compression between the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates to move trenchward as they reach the northern end of the collision zone. Subduction polarity reversal permits rapid extension and formation of the Ilan Basin and presumably, at least, the western Okinawa Trough, as a direct consequence of arc-continent collision, not because of independent trench rollback forces. This conceptual model suggests that migrating arc-continent collision causes the rapid formation of deep marginal basins that are then filled by detritus from the adjacent orogen, and that these should be common features in the geologic record.


Learning by teaching is a broadly used methodology in human learning and shows great effectiveness in improving learning outcome: a learner deepens his/her understanding of a topic by teaching this topic to others. We are interested in investigating whether this powerful learning technique can be borrowed from humans to improve the learning abilities of machines. We propose a novel machine learning approach called learning by teaching (LBT). In our approach, the teacher creates a pseudo-labeled dataset and uses it to train a student model. Based on how the student performs on the validation dataset, the teacher re-learns its model and re-teaches the student until the student achieves great validation performance. We propose a multi-level optimization framework to formulate LBT which involves three learning stages: teacher learns; teacher teaches student; teacher and student validate themselves. We develop an efficient algorithm to solve the LBT problem. We apply our approach to neural architecture search on CIFAR-100, CIFAR-10, and ImageNet, where the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.


"Precisely the kind of book that Western economists have been waiting for."--John Presley, former professor of economics, University of LoughboroughA systematic and rigourous exposition of various aspects of the economics of Islam. These essays not only provide an overview of the various dimensions of Islamic economics but also convincingly establish the viability of the application of these concepts in the contemporary set-up. The analysis presented in this book also establishes the amenability of Islamic economics to scientific investigation and hence its conclusions and analysis directly comparable with what is known as the science of Economics.The scope of this book as well as the analytical and rigorous approach used in presenting Islamic economics makes this a useful and perhaps the only book so far available that can be utilized as teaching material in graduate programs in universities both in the East and the West where this subject is taught. It fulfills the need of graduate students of economics in that it provides rigorous reading material to assist them in their course work or in pursuing their own research on the subject.M. Fahim Khan is the president of the Islamic Society of Institutional Economics at the International Institute of Islamic Economics, Islamabad, Pakistan, and is the author of ten monographs on Islamic economics.


Towards the end of Lower Carboniferous times, sedimentation, accompanied by widespread igneous activity, proceeded in a tectonically active, unstable and constricted basinal zone. Viséan flysch and olistostromic sequences were generated in front of an advancing deformation front which caused erosion of submarine rises and heralded the beginning of the Hercynian orogeny in this region. Between Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor, Upper Devonian basin and rise facies sediments were thrust northwards over both Upper Devonian and Lower Carboniferous northern equivalents which were themselves incorporated onto the allochthon. The tectonic deformation history began in the late Viséan and early Namurian with the gravity sliding (Dl) of the bulk of the Lower Carboniferous northwards to form the Greystone Nappe. Subsequently the main thrusting event (D2) from late Lower Namurian times onwards led to the successive overthrusting and emplacement of the Heathfield, Petherwin and Tredorn Nappes. Towards the end of the Namurian and in the Westphalian the intrusion of the granite batholith caused the fold belt to tighten, which resulted in the formation of numerous low angle normal faults (D3) offsetting earlier thrusts to the N. Overall the regime is one of very thin-skinned thrust and nappe tectonics with the allochthon probably not exceeding 1 km in thickness.


Liberal democracy has become the predominant political regime in the 21 century even in countries that have little or no history of 'democratic structures and practices'. However, it seems as though setting up a functional, stable, and viable democratic state is harder than overthrowing autocratic rulers. This rhetorical criticism explores gridlocks that hamper the development of universal liberal democratic values by emphasizing the Western hegemonic status of defining what liberal democracy is. It is pertinent to look into this dominant role considering that it is through these values that actions, policies, and other values are to be construed and judged. This paper aims to (1) highlight the role of moral cosmopolitanism as the initial step of Western hegemony, (2) identify the paradox of defining liberal democracy as universal but treating it as a particular, and (3) discuss the ironies of democratic imperialism and its hindrance to self-determination. This paper hopes to shed some light in the importance of various interpretations, definitions, and adaptations of liberal democratic values depending on the context of the society incorporating, its culture, its values, and its identity, in order to find a more comprehensive definition of democracy.


The gravitation process of market prices towards production prices is here presented by means of an analytical framework where the classical capital mobility principle is coupled with a determination of the deviation of market from normal (natural) prices which closely follows the description provided by Adam Smith: each period the level of the market price of a commodity will be higher (lower) than its production price if the quantity brought to the market falls short (exceeds) the level of effectual demand. This approach also simplifies the results with respect to those obtained in cross-dual literature. At the same time, anchoring market prices to effectual demands and quantities brought to the markets requires a careful study of the dynamics of the 'dimensions' along with that of the 'proportions' of the system. Three different versions of the model are thus proposed, to study the gravitation process: i) assuming a given level of aggregate employment; ii) assuming a sort of Say's law; iii) and on the basis of an explicit adjustment of actual outputs to effectual demands. All these cases describe dynamics in which market prices can converge asymptotically towards production prices.


When selecting a resource to exploit, an insect colony must take into account at least two constraints: the resource must be abundant enough to sustain the whole group, but not too large to limit exploitation costs, and risks of conflicts with other colonies. Following recent results on cockroaches and ants, we introduce here a behavioral mechanism that satisfies these two constraints. Individuals simply modulate their probability to switch to another resource as a function of the local density of conspecifics locally detected. As a result, the individuals gather at the smallest resource that can host the whole group, hence reducing competition and exploitation costs while fulfilling the overall group's needs. Our analysis reveals that the group becomes better at discriminating between similar resources as it grows in size. Also, the discrimination mechanism is flexible and the group readily switches to a better suited resource as it appears in the environment. The collective decision emerges through the self-organization of individuals, that is, in absence of any centralized control. It also requires a minimal individual cognitive investment, making the proposed mechanism likely to occur in other social species and suitable for the development of distributed decision making tools.


Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are carcinogenic and mutagenic pollutants that settle in sediments, and disrupt the biology of sealife. This study took sediment samples from Glacier Bay, and measured the amount of PAHs present. Comparison samples from Puget Sound were also analyzed. No PAHs were found in Glacier Bay, while one site in Puget Sound, Pier 61, was heavily contaminated. A follow-up study would analyze Glacier Bay sediments after the cruise ship season had been underway for some months.


The use of quantitative structure‐activity relationships (QSARs) in assessing potential toxic effects of organic chemicals on aquatic organisms continues to evolve as computational efficiency and toxicological understanding advance. With the ever‐increasing production of new chemicals, and the need to optimize resources to assess thousands of existing chemicals in commerce, regulatory agencies have turned to QSARs as essential tools to help prioritize tiered risk assessments when empirical data are not available to evaluate toxicological effects. Progress in designing scientifically credible QSARs is intimately associated with the development of empirically derived databases of well‐defined and quantified toxicity endpoints, which are based on a strategic evaluation of diverse sets of chemical structures, modes of toxic action, and species. This review provides a brief overview of four databases created for the purpose of developing QSARs for estimating toxicity of chemicals to aquatic organisms. The evolution of QSARs based initially on general chemical classification schemes, to models founded on modes of toxic action that range from nonspecific partitioning into hydrophobic cellular membranes to receptor‐mediated mechanisms is summarized. Finally, an overview of expert systems that integrate chemical‐specific mode of action classification and associated QSAR selection for estimating potential toxicological effects of organic chemicals is presented.


With the continuous growth of traffic in Internet Protocol (IP) networks, the issue of energy consumption in these networks has been growing in importance. "Next-generation networks" have been predicted as having a potential to reduce energy consumption of packet switched IP networks; however, these predictions have generally not been quantified. This paper provides a demonstration of how these energy savings could be achieved, through architectures including the appropriate application of both circuit switching and packet switching network layers. In this paper, we show that energy savings of around 70% could be achieved through a coordinated cross-layer aggregation and bypass process which can be conveniently implemented by network technologies such as automatically switched optical networks, and generalized multi-protocol label switching, compared to a network using full IP routing at each node.


Community treatment orders are a legal mechanism to extend powers of compulsion into outpatient mental health settings in certain circumstances. Previous ethical analyses of these powers have explored a perceived tension between a duty to respect personal freedoms and autonomy and a duty to ensure that patients with the most complex needs are able to receive beneficial care and support that maximises their welfare in the longer-term. This empirical ethics paper presents an analysis of 75 interviews with psychiatrists, patients and family carers to show how these ethical considerations map onto the different ways that community treatment orders are used and experienced in practice. A complex and nuanced account of how the requirements to respect patients' autonomy, to respect patients' liberty and to act beneficently should be interpreted in order to make judgements about the ethics of community treatment orders is presented. The article argues that, due to such complexity, no general ethical justification for community treatment orders can be provided, but a justification on the basis of the promotion of patients' autonomy could provide an ethical reason for community mental health practitioners to make use of a community treatment order in some limited circumstances.


We examine the extent to which the gender wage gap may depend on the fact that dual-earner couples must jointly choose a place to live and work. If couples systematically locate in places better suited for the advancement of the husband's career than to the wife's, those choices would then tend to depress the wages of married women relative to married men. Examining data from Denmark, our results suggest (i) that Danish couples weight men's potential wage gains much more heavily than women's in their decisions of whether to and where to move, (ii) that these intra-couple preferences may account for as much as 36% of the gender wage gap in Denmark, and (iii) that, ultimately, these differential weightings appear to reflect gender roles, to a large extent inherited from the wife' parents. We therefore demonstrate that systematic gender inequality can emerge from unexpected places and processes.


Support by brothel leaders and the promotion of a conducive environment for HIV prevention programs within brothel establishments are important to promote a safe working environment for Brothel-Based Female Sex Workers (BB FSWs). This study assesses the effects of a cluster randomized pilot trial examining the use of brothel leaders to improve consistent condom use by FSWs residing in brothels and also assessed the feasibility of implementing a similar intervention on a broader scale. Ten brothels in Abuja, Nigeria were randomized and exposed to the experimental (n=5) and control (n=5) arms of the intervention. The feasibility of the intervention and consistent condom use outcomes by FSWs with different partner types as well as condom negotiation self-efficacy were measured. Condom use outcomes and condom negotiation self-efficacy outcomes were analysed using multi-level mixed regression models. A total of 243 FSWs were recruited into the study (control n=66 and experimental n=177) and 107 of them (44%) were available at 16 weeks follow-up. The intervention demonstrated feasibility and positive outcomes for consistent condom use with boyfriends, casual partners and clients of FSWs were obtained. The interaction effect between condition and time indicated increased consistent condom use with boyfriends in the experimental condition (p=0.02). Adherence to the intervention by the FSWs was moderate with the mean sessions attended at 4.4(SD=2.0). The attrition rate during the intervention was high due to mobility of the FSWs. The intervention showed feasibility and effect outcomes indicate promise in enhancing condom use with steady partners of BB FSWs. The design of HIV prevention interventions may benefit from the inclusion of gatekeepers in the promotion of condom use within the brothel, but an adequately powered phase III trial is needed to inform large-scale implementation of this approach.


Prohibiting false patent marking on various products and goods is not a new concept in intellectual property law. For the last 170 years, laws have been on the books to prevent individuals and manufacturers from deceiving the public, inventors, and other manufacturers into believing that an item or its design retains certain patent rights by law. But in passing the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, a monumental piece of patent legislation on numerous levels, sweeping changes were made to long-standing false marking law and its concepts. This Comment takes a step back to explore the recent explosion of false marking litigation after the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit interpreted these long-standing principles of false patent marking law prior to the passing of the America Invents Act, in which triggered a massive "false marking troll" revolution of sorts. It sorts out how this explosion of litigation came to be and analyzes these principles in conjunction with the constitutional provisions in which they were subsequently challenged by those warding off the trolls. With this background in mind, this piece then dives into the sweeping changes of false marking law that Congress invoked in passing the America Invents Act with an edge toward highlighting the caveats of these changes in relation to the Act's original and historical purposes. This Comment then attempts to provide the reader with additional fixes to current false marking law under the America Invents Act to address the law's shortcomings, keeping in mind both the potential for future troll problems and the original purposes of the Act. Overall, this writing looks to provide, if not concrete solutions to the law's shortcomings in the false marking context, food for thought in the false patent marking arena and the new patent law reform paradigm.


Our main focus in this thesis is on providing guidelines, methods, and tools for design, configuration, and analysis of configurable and reusable real-time software, developed using a combination of aspect-oriented and component-based software development. Specifically, we define a reconfigurable real-time component model (RTCOM) that describes how a real-time component, supporting aspects and enforcing information hiding, could efficiently be designed and implemented. In this context, we outline design guidelines for development of real-time systems using components and aspects, thereby facilitating static configuration of the system, which is preferred for hard real-time systems. For soft real-time systems with high availability requirements we provide a method for dynamic system reconfiguration that is especially suited for resourceconstrained real-time systems and it ensures that components and aspects can be added, removed, or exchanged in a system at run-time. Satisfaction of real-time constraints is essential in the real-time domain and, for real-time systems built of aspects and components, analysis is ensured by: (i) a method for aspectlevel worst-case execution time analysis; (ii) a method for formal verification of temporal properties of reconfigurable real-time components; and (iii) a method for maintaining quality of service, i.e., the specified level of performance, during normal system operation and after dynamic reconfiguration. We have implemented a tool set with which the designer can efficiently configure a real-time system to meet functional requirements and analyze it to ensure that non-functional requirements in terms of temporal constraints and available memory are satisfied. In this thesis we present a proof-of-concept implementation of a configurable embedded real-time database, called COMET. The implementation illustrates how our methods and tools can be applied, and demonstrates that the proposed solutions have a positive impact in facilitating efficient development of families of realtime systems.


Let me introduce you to the Symthe household - there's me Samantha, my husband, John the Second and our two children, Bennie and Jamie. And then there's my eldest son Edward from my first marriage. I love my family to bits but I do sometimes wonder if a non-nuclear family can ever be a 'real' family. Every now and then I lose my cool and start shouting like a mad woman until John has to take me upstairs and calm me down. Being a mum is never easy and last summer it all got a whole lot more complicated when my ex-husband John the First, turned up at our house for the first time in three years. The real reason for his unexpected appearance was Edward. John wanted to get to know him better and Edward in turn thought it was marvellous that he now had two dads living with him. I on-the-other-hand, began to feel that I was slowly disappearing out sight. Suddenly, our chaotic but loving home was teetering on the verge of collapse...


Abstract Many Tertiary species of Crassostrea appear to have inhabited shallow-marine environments where they produced extremely large and thick shells. In contrast, living Crassostrea species are restricted primarily by marine predation to brackish, hypersaline, and intertidal environments where they produce comparatively smaller and thinner shells. If Crassostrea populations have used estuarine environments as a refuge from predation since the Cretaceous, then their presence in fully marine environments after the Cretaceous is puzzling. In order to interpret differences in environment and shell size, I examined the paleoecology and sclerochronology of two marine and two estuarine populations. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that thicker shells in Tertiary Crassostrea titan deterred increased exposure to fully marine predation. Life spans and growth rates estimated from annually formed growth increments show that C. titan grew significantly faster in shell thickness, as well as lived two to three times longer, than Quaternary Crassostrea virginica. Similar or lower valve-height growth rates in C. titan, as well as thinner shell walls in the attachment area, are consistent with exposure to marine predation, but not with alternative factors, such as higher salinity or alkalinity. Thicker valves in C. titan resulted from the successive addition of chalky deposit layers, in contrast to C. virginica valves, which contain significantly less of this unusual shell structure. A high incidence of incomplete drill holes in juvenile C. titan shells demonstrates that their thick valves were successful in deterring muricid predation. The association of C. titan with other large suspension feeders (barnacles and pectenids), as well as with phosphatic-pellet sediments, suggests that elevated planktic productivity may have supported this reefal community and enabled C. titan to grow thicker shells. The occurrence of both shallow-marine and estuarine Crassostrea since the Cretaceous raises the possibility that estuaries have served as refugia from which populations have dispersed into fully marine environments multiple times through the Cenozoic.


The Ena/VASP family proteins are important regulators of the cytoskeleton that are recruited to sites of actin remodeling during cell adhesion, polarization, and migration. Within locations such as focal adhesions and lamellipodia, Ena/VASP proteins alter local actin dynamics through their interactions with actin and profilin, as well as through their associations with proteins that bind to their proline-rich protein interaction domain, EVH1. Less well understood is how Ena/VASP proteins locally alter actin dynamics in response to specific cell signals. Two related adaptor proteins have now been identified as Ena/VASP binding partners that could provide the link between localized membrane-based signaling events and cytoskeletal remodeling. Krause et al. have determined that mammalian Lamellipodin (Lpd), whose C. elegans ortholog, Mig-10, controls neuronal migration, binds to Ena/VASP proteins. Lpd and Ena/VASP proteins colocalized at the tips of lamellipodia in a variety of mammalian cell types and were isolated in a protein complex from primary cortical neurons. However, Lpd localization did not depend on the presence of Ena/VASP. Rather, Lpd directed Ena/VASP protein localization, a recruitment dependent on the EVH1-binding motifs within Lpd. A Ras-association (RA) and lipid-binding PH domain in Lpd were required for targeting to the leading edge of lamellipodia. The PH domain specifically associated with PI(3,4)P2, a phosphoinositide involved in cell polarization. Overexpression of Lpd also increased lamellipodia protrusion velocity in fibroblasts, an effect that required Ena/VASP expression. Knockdown of Lpd by RNA interference reduced actin polymerization in lamellipodia and impaired lamellipodia formation. Similar in Lpd, Rap1-interacting adaptor molecule (RIAM) was identified by Lafuente et al. as another Ena/VASP interacting protein. Both RIAM and Lpd exhibit similar protein domain structure, comprising a new family of adaptor proteins called MRL (Mig-10/RIAM/Lpd). In activated T cells, RIAM associated with activated Rap1, a Ras superfamily member that localizes to the plasma membrane to control cell adhesion and spreading. RIAM was also required for activated Rap1 to localize to the plasma membrane and stimulate integrin-mediated adhesion in T cells. RIAM was distributed throughout the leading edge of lamellipodia, and its overexpression induced cell adhesion. Knockdown of RIAM expression by RNA interference reduced the cellular content of polymerized F actin and adhesion. Although RIAM and Lpd are both found in the leading edge of lamellipodia, Lpd did not bind to activated Rap1 and did not localize to focal adhesions, which suggests that the two adaptors may couple Ena/VASP to distinct signaling pathways within similar subcellular locations. The two adaptor proteins may integrate signals from both phosphoinositides and Ras superfamily proteins and direct actin through association with Ena/VASP. M. Krause, J. D. Leslie, M. Stewart, E. M. Lafuente, F. Valderrama, R. Jagannathan, G. A. Strasser, D. A. Rubinson, H. Liu, M. Way, M. B. Yaffe, V. A. Boussiotis, F. B. Gertler, Lamellipodin, an Ena/VASP ligand, is implicated in the regulation of lamellipodial dynamics. Devel. Cell 7, 571-583 (2004). [Online Journal] E. M. Lafuente, A. A. F. L. van Puijenbroek, M. Krause, C. V. Carman, G. J. Freeman, A. Berezovskaya, E. Constantine, T. A. Springer, F. B. Gertler, V. A. Boussiotis, RIAM, an Ena/VASP and profilin ligand, interacts with RAP1-GTP and mediates Rap1-induced adhesion. Devel. Cell 7, 585-595 (2004). [Online Journal]


Alcohol Use and HIV Risk in the iPrEx Study Vanessa Margaret McMahan Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Associate Professor Emily C. Williams Health Services Introduction: HIV acquisition continues to be a critical global health concern even with existing effective prevention strategies. Men who have sex with men (MSM) are disproportionately affected by the epidemic. Unhealthy alcohol consumption is prevalent in certain MSM populations and has been shown to be a risk factor for HIV infection. The objective of this study is to describe the association between unhealthy alcohol use over time and HIV acquisition in the iPrEx (Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Initiative) study, which was an HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trial in MSM enrolled in 6 countries. Methods: Data for this study were obtained from the iPrEx study, which was a phase III, randomized placebo-controlled trial that evaluated the safety and efficacy of daily, oral FTC/TDF for HIV PrEP in initially HIV-uninfected MSM. Alcohol use and sex behavior data were collected quarterly throughout follow-up and HIV laboratory assays were performed monthly. Cox proportional hazards models were used to assess the association between timevarying average volume of alcohol consumed and HIV acquisition. The Cox models were sequentially adjusted in order to ensure adequate control for measured confounders. Results: The analytical sample included 2,361 participants of whom 139 became HIV infected during the study. The mean age of the sample was 27 years old, and the range of follow-up time was between 3 months and 3.3 years (median = 1.8). At baseline, the majority of the cohort reported drinking (87%), and over half reported typically drinking 1-4 drinks or 5 or more drinks (52%). There was a positive, but not statistically significant association between HIV acquisition and reporting an average of 1-4 drinks or 5 or more drinks, relative to no drinking, in all of the models. There was a significant association between sharing large bottles/pitchers of beer and HIV acquisition compared to not drinking alcohol in the model adjusting for site and treatment assignment, (adjusted hazard ratio [AHR] 2.01, 95% CI: 1.03, 3.90); however, this finding was no longer significant after further adjustment for demographic characteristics and sex behavior (AHR 1.83, 95% CI: 0.94, 3.56). Conclusions: In this diverse but select cohort of MSM, we did not observe a statistically significant association between average volume of drinking and HIV acquisition. In the model only adjusted for site and treatment assignment we did find a significant association between reporting sharing of bottles/pitchers of beer. While this association was attenuated after adjustment for additional demographic and behavioral characteristics, findings related to shared bottles/pitchers are hypothesis-generating and may warrant further investigation.


Cyber-physical systems, orchestrating computing, networking, and physical processes, are coupled, hybrid systems characterized by heterogeneous, interconnected subsystems. In civil engineering, the most common applications of cyber-physical systems are associated with structural health monitoring (SHM) and structural control. Given the complexity and heterogeneity of cyber-physical systems designed for structural health monitoring and control applications, it is hardly possible to reliably assess the quality of a cyber-physical system (CPS), which is needed for increased availability and for identifying potential sources of faults in a CPS. This conceptual paper proposes a metamodeling approach that can be used as a basis to model cyber-physical systems in order to assess the CPS quality based on category theory. Category theory is a mathematical theory that allows formalizing concepts of high-level abstractions on a meta level. Using the CPS metamodeling approach presented in this paper, each subsystem of a CPS can be modeled and assessed individually, entailing a holistic quality assessment of a CPS and its subsystems. However, since this paper is conceptual, it is intended to devote additional future research efforts to metamodeling and assessing cyber-physical systems, achieving a complete conceptual modeling framework for cyber-physical systems applied in structural health monitoring and control.


Steel reinforcing bar (rebar) corrosion due to chlorine ingress is the primary degradation mechanism for bridge decks. In areas where rock salt is used as a de-icing agent, salt water seeps into the concrete through cracks, causing corrosion of the rebar and potentially leading to catastrophic failure if not repaired. This project explores the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags as low-cost corrosion sensors. RFID tags, when embedded in concrete, will fail due to corrosion in the same manner as rebar after prolonged exposure to salt water. In addition, the presence of salt water interferes with the ability to detect the tags, providing a secondary mechanism by which this method can work. During this project, a fieldable RFID equipment setup was constructed and tested. In addition to a number of laboratory experiments to validate the underlying principles, RFID tags were embedded and tested in several actual bridge decks. Two major challenges were addressed in this project: issues associated with tags not functioning due to being in close proximity to rebar and issues associated with portland concrete coming in direct contact with the tags causing a detuning effect and preventing the tags from operating properly. Both issues were investigated thoroughly. The first issue was determined to be a problem only if the tags are placed in close proximity to rebar. The second issue was resolved by encapsulating the tag. Two materials, polyurethane spray foam and extruded polystyrene, were identified as providing good performance after testing, both in the lab and in the field.


The rule against perpetuities, it will be remembered, (a) fixed a permissible perpetuity period, namely, the duration of lives in being plus twenty-one years plus (where relevant) the period of gestation, and (b) prescribed that every contingent interest in property is void ab initio if there is any possibility that the contingency may occur after the perpetuity period has expired. A contingent gift or interest is one which depends upon the happening of some event which may never happen—e.g., a gift "to the first child of Elsie who shall swim the Channel." In this example two contingencies are involved: (i) being born and (ii) swimming the Channel. But (i) is bound to happen, if at all, within Elsie's lifetime; and so (unlike (ii)) it cannot cause the gift to be void for perpetuity.


We consider the denaturation process as an alteration in ordered organization of tissue structure and study the threshold and kinetics of laser-induced denaturation in cartilage and cornea undergoing irradiation from a free electron laser (FEL) in the wavelength range 2.2 - 8.5 (mu) . Light-scattering by cartilage samples was measured in real- time during FEL irradiation using a 630-nm diode laser and a diode array with time resolution of 10 ms. We found that denaturation threshold is slightly lower than that for cartilage, and both depend on laser wavelength. A strong inverse correlation between denaturation thresholds and the absorption spectrum of the tissue is observed. Only for the wavelength region near the 3 (mu) water absorption band was the denaturation threshold not inversely proportional to the absorption coefficient. We believe this was because the radiation penetration depth was very small in this high- absorption region, so tissue denaturation occurred only in a layer too thin to produce significant light scattering. ATR spectra of 2.4 mm thick cartilage samples was measured before and after irradiation at 6.0 and 2.2 (mu) . At 6.0 (mu) , where the absorption is high, the spectrum of the irradiated (front) surface showed changes, while the spectrum of the back surface was identical to that before irradiation. This difference results from dramatic denaturation (with chemical bond breaking) at the front surface due to laser heating in a small absorption depth. For 2.2 (mu) irradiation, where the absorption is small, the spectra of the front and back of the irradiated sample were unchanged from before irradiation, while light scattering alteration shown the denaturation process began, for laser fluences above the denaturation threshold. This indicates that the absorption is too small to produce deep denaturation of the tissue with dramatic alteration of structure. Thus, we have shown that light scattering is useful for measuring denaturation thresholds and kinetics for biotissues except where the initial absorptivity is very high.


METALINGUISTICS The term "metalinguistics" was devised to cover aspects of linguistic science dealing with the relation of linguistic behavior (language) to other human behavior. It presupposes the thorough formal analysis of a language - the microlinguistic analysis of its structure. Metalinguistics is dependent upon the existence of this and similarly thorough analyses of such phases of human behavior as patterning in movements, material objects and their uses, philosophical orientation, relations between persons, etc. Like language, all of these constitute systems of learned and patterned behavior (including the products of behavior), and comprise what anthropologists call the totality of culture. For each society, the total culture and all its subdivisions must be analyzed as closed systems, having no necessary resemblance to or connection with those of any other society. As yet, metalinguistics is a field whose study is only begun; this is because only now has microlinguistics reached a point where it can furnish complete enough descriptions of languages to establish definite limits between micro- and metalinguistics. Microlinguistics concerns itself only with differential meaning, that is, whether utterance fractions are the same or different. Metalinguistics, however, which may be described as the study of what people talk (or write) about and why, and how they react to it, is concerned with meaning on all levels. Where microlinguistics stops with the consideration of the structure of the sentence, metalinguistics deals also with the organization of sentences into discourse and the relation of the discourse to the rest of the culture. Whorf anticipated an important phase of metalinguistics - the analysis of the interrelationships of linguistic structure and those other structurings of experience expressed in language which may be called the world-view of the speakers of a language. It must be realized that the speakers of a language, as members of one culture, are unaware that their system of logic is not "natural" or universal, but is principally the result of this sort of interaction. HENRY LEE SMITH, JR., AND GEORGE L. TRAGER "FOREWORD TO SPECIAL ISSUE ON METALINGUISTICS" Students of general semantics who had the privilege of attending the late Alfred Korzybski's lectures and seminars will recall that he urged upon his hearers the reading of material - especially articles by Benjamin Lee Whorf - which today constitutes some of the basic literature of what is here called metalinguistics. Korzybski made available to his students reprints of Whorf's articles, and it was due to his influence that Whorf's essay, "Science and Linguistics," was included as a supplementary reading in Hayakawa's Language in Action (1941) and that "Languages and Logic" was included in Lee's anthology, The Language of Wisdom and Folly (1949). The reasons for Korzybski's interest in the comparative study of the structures of different languages are indicated in such passages as the following from his Science and Sanity (1933): That languages, as such, all have some structure or other is a new and, perhaps, unexpected notion. Moreover, every language having a structure, by the very nature of language, reflects in its own structure the world as assumed by those who evolved the language. In other words, we read unconsciously into the world the structure of the language we use (pp.59-60). For no "facts" are ever free from "doctrines": so whoever fancies he can free himself from "doctrines," as expressed in the structure of the language he uses, simply cherishes a delusion, usually with strong affective components (p. 87). We do not realize what tremendous power the structure of an habitual language has. It is not an exaggeration to say that it enslaves us through the mechanism of semantic reaction and that the structure which a language exhibits, and impresses on us unconsciously, is automatically projected upon the world around us (p. …


In the article the author presents functional strategies like the lowest level of strategies' hierarchy. Therefore, they play exceptional role in the implementation on institution objectives. The role of institution's personnel department is stressed mostly: it has to adjust function of personnel management to strategic objectives of institution and implement everyday operations. There are five fields of personnel management identified in the article: personnel selection and employment, remuneration for work, evaluation, and personnel carrier planning. It is shown that creation of financial strategy depends on services' alternatives (mutual agreement, contract services, subsidies or control). Exceptional attention is given to search of alternative financing sources, prediction and flexibility of resources, and paradoxes of their growth and autonomy. Marketing is treated as social and management process. The most important aspects of marketing strategic management are held to be perception of marketing goal, allocation of resources and marketing function formation. In the article there are reasons that stop innovations in public sector institutions described; the author pays the biggest attention to the problem of implementation of cost reducing innovations, proofs of innovations' usefulness, their multi-usage, and innovations' commercial and symbolic importance.


As a final exam preparation tool, the CCSP IPS Quick Reference provides a concise review of all objectives on the new CCSP IPS exam (642-533). This digital Short Cut provides you with detailed, graphical-based information, highlighting only the key topics in cram-style format.With this document as your guide, you will review topics on implementing the Cisco IPS product. These fact-filled Quick Reference Sheets allow you to get all-important information at a glance, helping you to focus your study on areas of weakness and to enhance memory retention of essential exam concepts.


Analysis of 670 trawl, seine and marsh net samples collected from July 1971 through June 1973 provided data on the distribution and abundance of blue crabs in Mississippi Sound. Highest average catches were associated with salinities between 5.0 and 15.0 ppt (parts per thousand) and temperatures between 20.0 and 25.OoC. Young crabs congregated in dredged navigational channels and in the marshes that fringe the bays and coastline. Maximum numbers were captured over soft mud bottoms. Peak numbers of zoeae occurred in the summer and fall. Megalopae were collected in all months. Early crab stages appeared throughout the year. Width-frequency distributions suggested rapid growth. Crabs tagged and released in Lake Borgne, La. during the fall of 1971 moved into Mississippi Sound in the vicinity of Cat Island to overwinter. Recoveries of crabs released in the St. Louis Bay, Biloxi Bay and Pascagoula River estuarine systems indicated little movement between estuaries during the spring and summer. Identified parasites included a new microphallid trematode. Commercial landings of blue crabs averaged 1,712,000 pounds for the 20-year period 1953-1972. Catch per unit of effort (pounds/pot day) was low during the spring and fall, peaking in the summer. Rises in the catch per unit of effort closely followed the migration of female crabs into Mississippi Sound.


Insurance affects a substantial number of the Nigerian population who take out insurance cover for protection against fortuitous risks or as a form of financial investment and security. This has led to a growing insurance industry in Nigeria. Over the years, a number of common law principles developed in the English courts have been adopted and applied by courts in Nigeria in the settlement of disputes arising from insurance contracts. Certain aspects of these principles and insurance practice are in need of reform as they tend to defeat the expectation of insurance consumers. As such, the legal principles have undergone significant statutory reforms in different countries including Nigeria. It is against this background that the thesis examines some aspects of the common law principles as applied in Nigeria and the impact which indigenous enactments and recent statutory reforms have on them. The work, though not primarily intended as a comparative study, draws from the approach to insurance reform in other common law countries, and recommendations on further reform in Nigeria are made where appropriate. The thesis is mainly directed at the protection of the insured and potential insured, an aspect of what is often known as consumer protection in insurance contracts. Thus, it is those aspects of the law affecting the insured that are mainly examined. These include the formation and documentation of insurance contracts, the role of insurance intermediaries, and the law governing warranties, conditions, non-disclosure and misrepresentations in insurance. The work concludes with an examination of judicial control and governmental regulation of insurance.


Treatment with the resistance priming inducer hexanoic acid (Hx) protects tomato plants from Botrytis cinerea by activating defence responses. To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying hexanoic acid-induced resistance (Hx-IR), we compared the expression profiles of three different conditions: Botrytis-infected plants (Inf), Hx-treated plants (Hx) and Hx-treated + infected plants (Hx+Inf). The microarray analysis at 24 h post-inoculation showed that Hx and Hx+Inf plants exhibited the differential expression and priming of many Botrytis-induced genes. Interestingly, we found that the activation by Hx of other genes was not altered by the fungus at this time point. These genes may be considered to be specific targets of the Hx priming effect and may help to elucidate its mechanisms of action. It is noteworthy that, in Hx and Hx+Inf plants, there was up-regulation of proteinase inhibitor genes, DNA-binding factors, enzymes involved in plant hormone signalling and synthesis, and, remarkably, the genes involved in oxidative stress. Given the relevance of the oxidative burst occurring in plant-pathogen interactions, the effect of Hx on this process was studied in depth. We showed by specific staining that reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation in Hx+Inf plants was reduced and more restricted around infection sites. In addition, these plants showed higher ratios of reduced to oxidized glutathione and ascorbate, and normal levels of antioxidant activities. The results obtained indicate that Hx protects tomato plants from B. cinerea by regulating and priming Botrytis-specific and non-specific genes, preventing the harmful effects of oxidative stress produced by infection.


In recent years, the study of surface appearance has been greatly facilitated by computer graphics and electronic display technologies that enable experiments in which images of surfaces with complex geometric, reflectance and illumination properties can be rendered and displayed with great fidelity. However, a significant limitation of current methods is that these images are typically presented statically or in pre-calculated motion sequences that are passively viewed by experiment observers. Under real-world conditions, to understand surface properties, observers often engage in complex behaviors that involve active manipulation and dynamic viewpoint changes. To support these kinds of interactions, we have developed a novel display system that supports both active manipulation and dynamic viewing of computer graphics simulations. The system is based on an off-the-shelf laptop computer that contains an accelerometer and a webcam as standard components. Through custom software that integrates these devices, we are able to actively sense the 3d orientation of the laptop's display and dynamically track the observer's viewpoint. We use this information to drive a physically-based illumination-map rendering algorithm that generates an accurately oriented and realistically shaded view of a surface to the laptop's display. The user experience is akin to holding a physical surface in one's hands and being able to actively tilt it and observe it from different directions to see the changing patterns and properties of environmental surface reflections. The system provides a powerful research tool that allows anyone with a compatible laptop computer to use more natural modes of interaction in their surface appearance studies.


Constraints on the current stress regime of the actively extending northern Basin and Range province are provided by deformation data (focal mechanisms and fault slip studies), hydraulic fracturing in situ stress measurements, borehole elongation ("breakouts") analyses, and alignment of young volcanic vents. The integrated data indicate significant variations both in principal stress orientations and magnitudes. An approximately E-W least principal stress direction appears to characterize both the eastern and western margins of the Basin and Range province, whereas in the active interior parts of the province extension occurs in response to a least principal stress oriented NW to N60oW. The contrast in stress orientations between the province boundaries and in the interior suggests that along the margins the least principal stress direction may be locally controlled by the generally northerly trending profound lithospheric discontinuities associated with these margins. Active deformation along the southeastern and western province margins is characterized by a combination of strike-slip and normal faulting. Focal mechanisms along northeastern province margin (Wasatch front) and in central Nevada indicate a combination of normal and oblique-normal faulting. Temporal, regional, and depth-dependent variations in the relative magnitudes of the vertical and maximum horizontal stresses can explain much of the observed variations in deformation styles. However, some depth variation in faulting style inferred from focal mechanisms may be apparent and simply a function of the attitude of fault planes being reactivated. Evidence for significant temporal variation (or multiple cycles of variation) in relative stress magnitude comes from the Sierran front-Basin and Range boundary region where recent earthquakes are predominantly strike slip, whereas the profound relative vertical relief across the Sierra frontal fault zone in the last 9-10 m.y. implies a normal faulting stress regime. Using the best data on stress orientation, relative stress magnitudes are constrained from slip vectors of major earthquakes and young fault displacements. Analysis of well-constrained slip vectors in the Owens Valley, California, area indicate that large temporal variations in the magnitude of the approximately N-S oriented maximum horizontal stress are required to explain dominantly dip-slip and strike-slip offsets on subparallel faults. Similar faulting relations are observed throughout much of the boundary zone between the Basin and Range-Sierra Nevada (including the Walker Lane belt). Along the eastern province margin in the Wasatch front area in Utah, available data suggest that the maximum and minimum horizontal stresses may be approximately equal at depths of <4-5 km. Earthquake focal mechanisms in this area suggest more variability in relative magnitude of the two horizontal stresses with depth. Furthermore, superimposed sets of young fault striae along a segment of the Wasatch fault also indicate temporal variations of relative stress magnitudes. Sources of regional and temporal variations in the stress field may be linked to variable shear tractions applied to the base of the brittle crust related to intrusion, thermally induced flow, and the influence of the San Andreas plate boundary. Although difficult to date accurately, the fault slip data suggest that the temporal variations in relative magnitudes stress may occur on the time scale of both a single major earthquake cycle (1000-5000 years) and multiple earthquake cycles (10,000+ years).


The Jammu and Kashmir state is stretched between 32°17'-37°03'N latitude 72°03,-80°20°E longitude, with an average annual rainfall of 60-80cm. The state exhibits varied climatic and topographic conditions and provide a congenial environment for the luxurious growth of diverse groups of plants and fungi. However, information regarding the macro-fungal inventorization from this state is limited. In this backdrop, a systematic study of mushroom diversity from Western Kashmir Himalaya was undertaken. During the course of field survey from March 2009 to December 2010, two new species Mutinus caninus (Huds.) Fr. and Gyromitra sphaerospora (Peck) Sacc. were reported from the surveyed area. These species were identified on the basis of macro and microscopic characteristics and are first records from Kashmir Himalya.


Observing Earth's Magnetotail Magnetic reconnection is a process that converts magnetic energy to kinetic energy, thermal energy, and particle acceleration. The process operates in Earth's magnetotail, the narrow and elongated region of the magnetosphere that extends away from the Sun, and is believed to power Earth's auroras and other space physics phenomena. Angelopoulos et al. (p. 1478) present an observational study of energy conversion in the magnetotail and the associated transport of magnetic flux during a geomagnetic substorm. Data from various satellites in Earth's magnetotail clarify where and how electromagnetic energy conversion occurs. Earth's magnetotail contains magnetic energy derived from the kinetic energy of the solar wind. Conversion of that energy back to particle energy ultimately powers Earth's auroras, heats the magnetospheric plasma, and energizes the Van Allen radiation belts. Where and how such electromagnetic energy conversion occurs has been unclear. Using a conjunction between eight spacecraft, we show that this conversion takes place within fronts of recently reconnected magnetic flux, predominantly at 1- to 10-electron inertial length scale, intense electrical current sheets (tens to hundreds of nanoamperes per square meter). Launched continually during intervals of geomagnetic activity, these reconnection outflow flux fronts convert ~10 to 100 gigawatts per square Earth radius of power, consistent with local magnetic flux transport, and a few times 1015 joules of magnetic energy, consistent with global magnetotail flux reduction.


BACKGROUND
Proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) and clopidogrel are frequently coprescribed, although the benefits and harms of their concurrent use are unclear.

OBJECTIVE
To examine the association between concurrent use of PPIs and clopidogrel and the risks for hospitalizations for gastroduodenal bleeding and serious cardiovascular disease.

DESIGN
Retrospective cohort study using automated data to identify patients who received clopidogrel between 1999 through 2005 after hospitalization for coronary heart disease.

SETTING
Tennessee Medicaid program.

PATIENTS
20,596 patients (including 7593 concurrent users of clopidogrel and PPIs) hospitalized for myocardial infarction, coronary artery revascularization, or unstable angina pectoris.

MEASUREMENTS
Baseline and follow-up drug use was assessed from automated records of dispensed prescriptions. Primary outcomes were hospitalizations for gastroduodenal bleeding and serious cardiovascular disease (fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction or sudden cardiac death, stroke, or other cardiovascular death).

RESULTS
Pantoprazole and omeprazole accounted for 62% and 9% of concurrent PPI use, respectively. Adjusted incidence of hospitalization for gastroduodenal bleeding in concurrent PPI users was 50% lower than that in nonusers (hazard ratio, 0.50 [95% CI, 0.39 to 0.65]). For patients at highest risk for bleeding, PPI use was associated with an absolute reduction of 28.5 (CI, 11.7 to 36.9) hospitalizations for gastroduodenal bleeding per 1000 person-years. The hazard ratio associated with concurrent PPI use for risk for serious cardiovascular disease was 0.99 (CI, 0.82 to 1.19) for the entire cohort and 1.01 (CI, 0.76 to 1.34) for the subgroup of patients who had percutaneous coronary interventions with stenting during the qualifying hospitalization.

LIMITATIONS
Unmeasured confounding and misclassification of exposure (no information on adherence or over-the-counter use of drugs) and end points (not confirmed by medical record review) were possible. Because many patients entered the cohort from hospitals with relatively few cohort members, the analysis relied on the assumption that after adjustment for observed covariates, PPI users from one such hospital could be compared with nonusers from a different hospital.

CONCLUSION
In patients with serious coronary heart disease treated with clopidogrel, concurrent PPI use was associated with reduced incidence of hospitalizations for gastroduodenal bleeding. The corresponding point estimate for serious cardiovascular disease was not increased; however, the 95% CI included a clinically important increased risk.

PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.


The effects of Salmonella Enteritidis on the colonization and development of the intestinal tract, feed conversion and weight gain were evaluated. A total of 135 day old turkeys were assigned to three treatments: control; turkeys from eggs inoculated with Salmonella Enteritidis via shell and turkeys challenged with drinking water with Salmonella Enteritidis. At 10, 20 and 28 days, the performance variables were evaluated and samples were collected to perform bacterial assessment, biometrics and histomorphometry. On days one, 15 and 28, samples of meconium/excreta were collected from all birds. The intestinal colonization increased during the initial phase when Salmonella was inoculated via eggshell. The intestine showed greater weight on the first, tenth and 28th days when Salmonella was present, with no differences regarding the intestine length. Salmonella Enteritidis was able to colonize the intestinal tract, establish infection, reduce bird performance and modify the cellular structures of the intestine. Contamination of the eggshell before hatching generated birds susceptible to infection at birth and the frequency of isolation of Salmonella Enteritidis persisted until 28 days of age. Salmonella inoculation by drinking water generated infected birds, but with less recovery of the pathogen with age increase. Inoculated birds showed inferior performance, confirming the potential damage to poultry production.


Understanding the intent behind a user's query can help search engine to automatically route the query to some corresponding vertical search engines to obtain particularly relevant contents, thus, greatly improving user satisfaction. There are three major challenges to the query intent classification problem: (1) Intent representation; (2) Domain coverage and (3) Semantic interpretation. Current approaches to predict the user's intent mainly utilize machine learning techniques. However, it is difficult and often requires many human efforts to meet all these challenges by the statistical machine learning approaches. In this paper, we propose a general methodology to the problem of query intent classification. With very little human effort, our method can discover large quantities of intent concepts by leveraging Wikipedia, one of the best human knowledge base. The Wikipedia concepts are used as the intent representation space, thus, each intent domain is represented as a set of Wikipedia articles and categories. The intent of any input query is identified through mapping the query into the Wikipedia representation space. Compared with previous approaches, our proposed method can achieve much better coverage to classify queries in an intent domain even through the number of seed intent examples is very small. Moreover, the method is very general and can be easily applied to various intent domains. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method in three different applications, i.e., travel, job, and person name. In each of the three cases, only a couple of seed intent queries are provided. We perform the quantitative evaluations in comparison with two baseline methods, and the experimental results shows that our method significantly outperforms other methods in each intent domain.


Background of the Study: A study was conducted to assess the risk factors of suicide among adolescents and evaluate the knowledge on suicide prevention in selected colleges of Goalpara district, Assam. Aims: Aims of the study were to reduce suicide rate among adolescents by creating awareness, provide knowledge on risk factors of suicide and suicide prevention. Objectives: 1.To assess the risk factors of suicide among adolescents in control and experimental group before intervention. 2.To assess the knowledge on suicide prevention among adolescents in control and experimental group before and after intervention. 3.To evaluate the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on increasing knowledge suicide prevention among adolescents of experimental group. Materials and Methods: It was a quantitative approach, quasi experimental study with pre test-post test and control group design. Purposive non random sampling technique was used to select the sample. The study was conducted in two colleges with 80 students, 40 in each control and experimental group. Adolescents selected for the study were the students between the age group of 16-19 years and were studying higher secondary standard. Self administered structured questionnaire was used which consist of three part related to socio-demographic data, risk factors of suicide and knowledge on suicide prevention. Structured teaching programme was conducted to the experimental group which included knowledge on suicide prevention. Results: There was significant difference ('t'=14.607, p=0.000) between control and experimental group in the post test of knowledge on suicide prevention. The overall post test knowledge score on suicide prevention showed that majority of the respondents acquired good knowledge in experimental group. The results indicated that adolescents suicide can be prevented by increasing knowledge, awareness and developing positive attitude.


We examine the consequences of lobbying and vote buying, assuming this practice were allowed and free of stigma. Two lobbyists compete for the votes of legislators by offering up-front payments to the legislators in exchange for their votes. We analyze how the lobbyists' budget constraints and legislators' preferences determine the winner and the payments. When lobbyists are budget constrained then the preferences of all legislators can matter, and a lobbyist's relative strength increases more steeply with a budget increase than with an increase of equal magnitude to the legislators' original preferences for this lobbyist's positio. When lobbyists are not budget constrained then only the preferences of near median legislators matter and the preferences of these legislators and the budget enter equally in determining the winner.


A modified Schwarzschild imaging spectrometer utilizing three nonconcentric aspheric mirrors and a plane grating is designed that can handle low F-number, long slit, and broad spectral range. Based on the geometrical aberration theory and Rowland circle condition, the astigmatism-correcting method of the Schwarzschild imaging spectrometer is analyzed. The design procedure of initial parameters is programmed using Matlab software. As an example, a modified Schwarzschild imaging spectrometer operating in 400-1000 nm waveband with F-number of 2.5 and slit length of 13 mm is designed, and good imaging quality is obtained.