The capacity and the commitment to reflect are integral to the practice of medicine and are core components of most general practitioners (GP) training programmes. Teaching through the humanities is a growing area within medical education, but one which is often considered a voluntary 'add-on' for the interested doctor. This article describes an evaluation of a highly innovative pedagogical project which used photography as a means to enhance GP trainees' reflective capacity, self-awareness and professional development. Photography was used as a tool to develop GP trainees' skills in recognising and articulating the attitudes, feelings and values that might impact on their clinical work and to enhance their confidence in their ability to deal with these concerns/issues. We submit that photography is uniquely well suited for facilitating insight and self-reflection because it provides the ability to record 'at the touch of a button' those scenes and images to which our attention is intuitively drawn without the need for—or the interference of—conscious decisions. This allows us the opportunity to reflect later on the reasons for our intuitive attraction to these scenes. These photography workshops were a compulsory part of the GP training programme and, despite the participants' traditional scientific backgrounds, the results clearly demonstrate the willingness of participants to accept—even embrace—the use of art as a tool for learning. The GP trainees who took part in this project acknowledged it to be beneficial for both their personal and professional development.


Recent optical observations of aerosols in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere show significant amounts of extinction at altitudes above about 40 km where the stratospheric sulfate aerosol layer ends. Recent modeling of this region reveals that meteoritic smoke settling from the mesosphere and its interaction with the upper part of the sulfate aerosol layer is the origin of the observed extinction. Extinction in this region has major implications for the interpretation and analysis of several kinds of aerosol data (satellite and lidar). We compare observations from the SAGE II satellite and from NOAA's lidar located at Mauna Loa, Hawaii to extinction profiles derived from the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) coupled with the Community Aerosol and Radiation Model for Atmospheres (CARMA). Our results show that a major source of extinction exists in the region above about 30 km that must be addressed by all remote sensing instruments that have traditionally used the stratosphere above about 30 km as an aerosol free region to estimate the molecular component of their total extinction. It is also shown that meteoritic smoke not only contributes to but also becomes the dominant source of aerosol extinction above 35 km and poleward of 30 degrees in latitude, as well as above 40 km in the tropics. After addressing the concerns described here, current and past observations of this region could be reanalyzed to further our understanding of meteoritic dust in the upper stratosphere.


Abstract.  Much is known about invertebrate community traits in basins across Europe, but no comprehensive description of traits exists for the continental US. Little is known about the trait composition of invertebrates in reference or least-disturbed basins of the US, how trait composition varies among ecoregions, or how consistently traits respond to land use. These elements are essential to development of trait-based tools for conservation and assessment of biological integrity. We compared invertebrate traits of least-disturbed basins among ecoregions of the US. Benthic invertebrate data (presence/absence) from 1987 basins were translated into 56 binary traits (e.g., bivoltine, clinger). Basins were classified as least-disturbed, agricultural, or urban, and grouped into 9 ecoregions. Landuse, climatic, physiographic, and hydrologic data were used to describe ecoregions and to evaluate least-disturbed basin quality. The unique habitat template of each ecoregion selected for trait compositions in least-disturbed basins that differed among ecoregions. Among the traits examined, life-history (e.g., voltinism, development) and ecological traits (e.g., rheophily, thermal preference) differed most among ecoregions. Agricultural and urban land uses selected for trait compositions that differed from least-disturbed, but the extent of the differences depended on ecoregion and quality of the least-disturbed basins. No trait compositions unique to specific land uses were found. However, a disturbance syndrome was observed in that the magnitude and direction of trait responses to urban and agricultural land uses were consistent among ecoregions. Each ecoregion had a unique trait composition, but trait compositions could be used to aggregate ecoregions into 3 broad regions: Western Mountains, Plains and Lowlands, and Eastern Highlands. Our results indicate that large-scale trait-based assessment tools for the US will require calibration to account for regional differences in the trait composition of basins and in the quality of least-disturbed basins.


Here we test the hypothesis that winds have an important role in determining the rate of exchange of CO 2 between the atmosphere and ocean through wind stirring over the Southern Ocean. This is tested with a sensitivity study using an ad hoc parameterization of wind stirring in an ocean carbon cycle model, where the objective is to identify the way in which perturbations to the vertical density structure of the planetary boundary in the ocean impacts the carbon cycle and ocean biogeochemistry.

Wind stirring leads to reduced uptake of CO 2 by the Southern Ocean over the period 2000–2006, with a relative reduction with wind stirring on the order of 0.9 Pg C yr −1 over the region south of 45° S. This impacts not only the mean carbon uptake, but also the phasing of the seasonal cycle of carbon and other ocean biogeochemical tracers. Enhanced wind stirring delays the seasonal onset of stratification, and this has large impacts on both entrainment and the biological pump. It is also found that there is a strong reduction on the order of 25–30% in the concentrations of NO 3 exported in Subantarctic Mode Water (SAMW) to wind stirring. This finds expression not only locally over the Southern Ocean, but also over larger scales through the impact on advected nutrients. In summary, the large sensitivity identified with the ad hoc wind stirring parameterization offers support for the importance of wind stirring for global ocean biogeochemistry through its impact over the Southern Ocean.


This paper gives recommendations for selecting, implementing and sustainably operating ERP systems. We indicate special aspects which are important from our point of view. The paper addresses practitioners who are responsible for ERP systems, especially IT and project managers. The structure of the paper matches the three main phases of an ERP system's lifecycle within an enterprise: selection, implementation and operations. General process models are given for selection and implementation of ERP systems. Our suggestions stretch from project management, business process reengineering, system selection criteria, reporting and customizing to choosing key users, data migration, and user training. Operations of ERP systems are commented according to the views defined by the ARIS concept. We are focusing on organizational issues, but give also remarks on business process maintenance, exploitation of ERP functions, and data management. While other publications give rather general advice, recommendations in this paper are selected to be use-oriented and easy to apply. The recommendations do not depend on any particular ERP system.


The most prevalent severe manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus is nephritis, which is characterized by immune complex deposition, inflammation, and scarring in glomeruli and the tubulointerstitium. Numerous studies indicated that glomerulonephritis results from a systemic break in B cell tolerance, resulting in the local deposition of immune complexes containing Abs reactive with ubiquitous self-Ags. However, the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus tubulointerstitial disease is not known. In this article, we demonstrate that in more than half of a cohort of 68 lupus nephritis biopsies, the tubulointerstitial infiltrate was organized into well-circumscribed T:B cell aggregates or germinal centers (GCs) containing follicular dendritic cells. Sampling of the in situ-expressed Ig repertoire revealed that both histological patterns were associated with intrarenal B cell clonal expansion and ongoing somatic hypermutation. However, in the GC histology, the proliferating cells were CD138 2 CD20 + centroblasts, whereas they were CD138 + CD20 low/ 2 plasmablasts in T:B aggregates. The presence of GCs or T:B aggregates was strongly associated with tubular basement membrane immune complexes. These data implicate tertiary lymphoid neogenesis in the pathogenesis of lupus tubulointerstitial inflammation. The Journal of Immunology , 2011, 186: 1849–1860. clinical of are myriad and range from mild arthralgias and skin rashes to life-threatening nephritis


SiO/Graphite (Gr) composite has been regarded as one of the most promising anode materials for the next generation of high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). The heterogeneous composition of such an anode system brings in highly nonlinear and complex electrochemical behaviors compared to the single-material anode. The computational modeling provides an efficient and accurate way to explore the electrochemical behaviors of SiO/Gr composite anode. Herein, we propose a 3D model at the electrode level containing particle geometries based on a representative volume element (RVE) and study the electrochemical process of the half-cell charging. The effects of SiO proportion, charging rate, SiO distribution, and SiO particle size on the electrochemical performance are discussed. The results reveal that anode with higher SiO proportions performs a better rate capability. We also discover that moving SiO particles towards the separator and shrinking the SiO particle can benefit cell performance. Results provide an in-depth understanding of the electrochemical behaviors of the composite anode and guide the design for SiO/Gr anode materials in maximizing the theoretical capacity while maintaining better rate performance.


A recombinant virus from which the start codon and 53% of the UL20 open reading frame had been deleted was constructed and characterized. We report the following: (i) The UL20- mutant formed small plaques in 143 tk- cells but failed to form plaques in Vero cells. Virus yields were approximately 10- to 100-fold lower than those of wild-type virus in all cell lines tested. (ii) Electron microscopic examination of Vero cells infected with the UL20- mutant revealed that enveloped and unenveloped capsids accumulated in the cytoplasm, possibly in the space between the inner and outer lamellae of the nuclear membrane, and that virtually no virus was present in the extracellular space. (iii) Glycoproteins B, C, D, E, H, and I recovered from lysates of cells infected with the UL20- mutant could not be differentiated from those present in lysates of cells infected with the wild-type parent virus with respect to the electrophoretic mobility of mature and precursor forms. (iv) Repair of the deleted sequences restored the wild-type phenotype. (v) The gene product of the UL20 gene was shown to be associated with cellular membranes and to possess characteristics of integral membrane proteins. We conclude that the UL20 gene encodes an integral membrane protein with a hitherto unrecognized function in that it enables the transit of virions to the extracellular space. The function of the UL20 gene product is complemented by some cell lines but not by Vero cells. The vesicles which serve to transport virions may have an origin different from those associated with transport of normal cellular proteins.


The formation of a complex multi-cellular organism from a single fertilized egg is an intriguing yet highly complex process. It requires the generation of large numbers of cells, which at the appropriate times need to obtain specialized functions and morphologies, while assembling into well-defined structures, tissues, and organs. Most cells follow a gradual process of specialization with a final step, terminal differentiation, characterized by acquisition of a fully differentiated post-mitotic state. The temporal coupling between cell cycle withdrawal and differentiation is crucial for normal growth and development, as well as tissue homeostasis and cell replacement throughout life. In contrast, a failure to arrest proliferation and loss of differentiation can lead to a variety of diseases and are hallmarks of cancer cells. While obviously of great importance, it remains only partially understood how proliferation and differentiation are coordinated during development. In order to better understand these mechanisms, we use the small nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). C. elegans provides a very attractive model system for cell cycle studies because of its highly invariant pattern of cell division, the possibility of efficient genetics and its transparency which allows life imaging of all cells and cell divisions. Using C. elegans as a model system, we addressed what mechanisms control cell cycle exit, coordinate cell cycle arrest with differentiation and contribute to the maintenance of a non-proliferative state in terminally differentiated cells. We identified the negative cell cycle regulators Rb and FZR1 as the two critical downstream targets of CDK4-cyclin D in C. elegans and demonstrated that Rb and FZR1 act redundantly to control cell cycle exit both in C. elegans and human breast cancer cells. To further study the mechanisms required for cell cycle exit during differentiation, we developed a CRE-loxP-based conditional knockout and lineage tracing system for C. elegans. By combing cell-type-specific knockouts with genetic screening, we found that previously identified G1 regulators such as the above mentioned Rb and FZR1, act together with members of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex and lineage-specific transcription factors to ensure cell cycle exit during muscle differentiation in C. elegans. Combined inactivation of these regulators caused a failure in cell cycle exit and tumor growth. In addition, we examined the irreversibility of the post-mitotic state of terminally differentiated muscles and neurons. By overexpression of the G1 CDK-cyclins and inactivation of negative regulators of cell division we were able to induce partial cell cycle re-entry in both muscles and neurons. Moreover, micro-array analysis in these muscles provided insights in the transcriptional-program activated upon cell cycle re-entry in terminally differentiated cells. Experiments in rat-hippocampal neurons suggested that the mechanisms involved in maintenance of a non-proliferative state in terminally differentiated neurons may be conserved between C. elegans and mammals. Taken together, the work described in this thesis contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms that control cell cycle exit during differentiation which may be of great fundamental and clinical importance, both in terms of cancer biology and regenerative therapies.


Article presents a proposal for new systemic solutions permitting the overcoming of Poland's national demographic low that causes a persistent student deficit in Polish HEIs, through new methodologies of international programme offer expansion, which would permit access to new clients without their need to come to Poland. Current international expansion methods permitted by legislation (distance centres and international faculties) have sizeable limitations not only due to the formal requirements facing the Polish applicant institution from national ministries, but also the organisational, financial and infrastructural challenges. Franchising and validation are two separate Anglo-Saxon programme expansion methodologies based on the transfer of organisational, academic and financial efforts to the foreign partner institution, enabling the Anglo-Saxon university to focus on quality assurance of the academic process and supporting the partner in operating the programme. Their diversification allows for the creation in Poland of a system where different types of Polish HEIs (professional, academic, university), will be able to offer their degrees abroad, while their differing levels of development/status will subject them to differentiated levels of Ministerial oversight and severity of formal requirements. Validation and franchising allow for the delivery of Polish programs at a foreign partner institution, while the students are not required to visit Poland for their studies, which will allow for a dramatic increase in the number of foreign students interested in the Polish academic offer. Implementation of this proposal will entail changes to the laws regulating Polish higher education and will pose considerable challenges to the governmental oversight institutions.


The present research focuses on the conversion of cotton gin waste, a potential lignocellulosic biomass produced in cotton industry, to bioethanol. The major technological hurdle for utilizing this waste to bioethanol is the pretreatment process to release sugar components for ethanol fermentation. Even the most effective pretreatment method using dilute sulphuric acid suffers from several drawbacks such as the process is hazardous and produces toxic by-products which affect the growth of yeast during fermentation leading to lower bioethanol yield. Therefore, an alternative pretreatment strategy is essential for the removal of lignin, thereby releasing cellulose and hemicellulose as fermentable sugar components from cotton gin waste. In this context, pretreatment of biomass using organic acid might be attractive as it produces less toxic by-products and the method is environment-friendly. It is further reported that biological pretreatment is advantageous over chemical pretreatment methods because of the requirement of mild reaction conditions, low energy and formation of minimal toxic byproducts. Therefore, in the present research, pretreatment of cotton gin waste using both biological and organic acid treatment was performed and the results were compared with the most widely used dilute sulphuric acid pretreatment. Among the four organic acids, maleic acid pretreatment was found to be the most efficient yielding maximum pentosan sugar of 125.50±0.67 g/g (83% C5 sugar release) which was comparable to the most widely used sulfuric acid (132.08±1.06 g/g yield) pretreatment at optimum condition o130°C, 45 min and 500mM. However, the sulfuric acid pretreatment produced more toxic by-products in comparison to organic acids. The fermentation of 41.75 g/l mixed hydrolysate (C5 and C6) obtained from maleic acid pretreated biomass using sequential culture of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Pichia stipitis yeast strains achieved maximum 18.74 g/l ethanol concentration, 0.48 g/g ethanol yield, 2.25 g/l/h ethanol productivity, 88% maximum theoretical yield and 0.30 g/g biomass yield at 30°C, 200 rpm and 5.5pH in a bench top bioreactor. An effort was given to isolate fungi from the soil of dumping area of cotton gin waste generated in cotton mill. Among the isolated fungi, Aspergillus flavus (UNF1) was found to be most efficient fungal strain for the pretreatment of CGW achieving 67.04% lignin removal with the release of 66% and 74.5% of cellulose and hemicellulose at pH 4.5, 122
rpm and 35°C. Further, 34.83 g/l total sugar by enzymatic hydrolysis and 15.44 g/l ethanol concentration, 0.45 g/g yield, 1.74 g/l/h productivity, 0.35 g/g biomass yield were obtained by fermentation in the bioreactor.
Overall, it has been demonstrated that the pretreatment of cotton gin waste with maleic acid followed by delignification is comparatively more effective providing the maximum pretreatment efficiency with less time and finally bioethanol production than the fungal pretreatment method. A substantial bioethanol production was achieved by biological pretreatment using the Aspergilus flavus (UNF1) fungal strain isolated from the soil of the dumping area of cotton gin waste in the cotton industry as a new source. The biological pretreatment is favorable than the organic acid pretreatment from an economical point of view by avoiding an additional step of chemical delignification involved in organic acid pretreatment. Furthermore, the biological method may be a promising alternative to the widely used sulfuric acid pretreatment which requires additional delignification and detoxification steps. The higher pretreatment time required for biological pretreatment (24days) in comparison to the acid pretreatment (few hours) may be reduced by genetically modifying the isolated fungal strain thereby making the process more economically viable. Thus, it has been concluded that the delignification process using Aspergilus flavus UNF1 as pretreatment agent and the microbial system involving the sequential use of S. cerevisiae and P. stipitis yeast strains for fermentation may be an attractive option for large-scale bioethanol production from cotton gin waste in future.


We have shown that (a) purified T-helper cells induce cells of another T-cell set-, expressing the Ly123+Qa1+ surface phenotype, to exert potent suppressive activity, (b) this T-T interaction plays an important role in regulating in vivo immune responses, and (c) this interaction represents an important barrier to protocols intended to augment the immune status of individuals by adoptive (or active) immunotherapy. Our results also indicate that the Ly123+ T-cell set mediating feedback suppression in vivo is sensitive to both low doses of cyclophosphamide and removal of the thymus in adult life. The importance of this T-T interaction to normal, physiologic regulation of the immune system is emphasized by the finding that the major T-cell deficit of NZB mice (an inbred strain of mice that spontaneously develops an autoimmune disorder) is the absence or malfunction of an Ly123+ T-cell set responsible for feedback inhibition.


Populations of many species of Afro-Palearctic migrant birds, including the Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra), have shown severe declines over the last few decades. Habitat change on the breeding grounds, especially agricultural intensification, is thought to be the main driver of the decline in Whinchats. However, recent evidence also suggests that the decline may have a common source, such as low over-winter survival, which affects the whole UK population. To better understand the declines, this study investigated the key demographic parameters driving the breeding Whinchat population change on Salisbury Plain, UK, which is an area of agriculturally unimproved grassland where Whinchats are still relatively common. Territory settlement and nesting attempts of colour-ringed individual Whinchats were monitored intensively during 2012-2014. Pairs were significantly more likely to breed in sheltered valleys with long, grassy, structurally diverse vegetation and a high density of tussocks. Territories with an abundance of perches, for use in foraging, were also preferred. The first occupied territories, by returning birds in spring, tended to have higher invertebrate availability, and the order of territory occupancy was positively correlated between years, which suggests that territory quality was consistently perceived. Nestling starvation was rare because food availability did not limit reproductive output. Neither did the availability of suitable breeding habitat apparently limit the population, but nest productivity was lower than expected, mainly because of a high rate of nest failure due to nocturnal predators. Adult apparent survival was high relative to other open-nesting passerine migrants; however, the survival and recruitment of Whinchats in their first breeding year was low. This low apparent survival could partly be explained by natal dispersal, which was greater than breeding dispersal. From the reproductive output, survival and recruitment quantified in this study, it is apparent that the Salisbury Plain population is not currently self-sustaining.


Most of existing efforts in digital preservation have focused on extending the life of documents beyond their period of creation, without taking into account intentions and assumptions made. However, in a continuously evolving setting, knowledge about the context of documents is nearly mandatory for their continuous understanding, use, care, and sustainable governance. In this work we propose a method that considers the preservation of a number of interdependent digital entities, including documents, in conformance with context related information. A change that influences one of these objects can be propagated to the rest of the objects via analysis of their represented dependencies. We propose to represent dependencies not only as simple links but as complex, semantically rich, constructs that encompass context-related information. We illustrate how this method can aid in fine-grained contextually-aware change propagation and impact analysis with a case study.


The behaviour during long-term soaking of the California Bearing Ratio (CBR), the resilient modulus and the deformation of compacted Iraqi gypsiferous soil containing about 34% gypsum was studied. Sixteen (CBR) samples compacted at optimum moisture content and 95% of the maximum dry density of the modified AASHTO compaction test were prepared. Two samples each were soaked for periods of 0,4,7,15,30,60,120 and 180 days with 40 lb (178 N) surcharge load. The tests revealed that the soil swelled initially then it started to settle and the settlement process continued at a slow rate even after 180 days soaking. Directly after soaking and before carrying out the load-penetration test, each sample was subjected to a compressive wave as well as to a shear wave using the ultrasonic pulse velocity technique. The seismic determination of the shear and compression wave velocities allowed a good estimate of the resilient modulus of the gypsiferous soil tested. After the seismic test, the CBR test was completed and the TSS and gypsum content was determined. The tests revealed a marked drop in CBR and to a lesser extent in the resilient modulus MR with soaking period. The loss in CBR and MR took place at a high rate within the first week and at a decreased rate thereafter so that the soil strength became almost constant after about six months. The decrease of total soluble salts and gypsum content in soils with a longer soaking period is in full agreement with the loss in CBR and MR with soaking. The paper reveals that a soaking period of four days can lead to misleading and unsafe results regarding strength, stiffness and deformation of gypsiferous soils.


Distinguished historian of the Soviet period Robert V. Daniels offers a penetrating survey of the evolution of the Soviet system and its ideology. In a tightly woven series of analyses written during his career-long inquiry into the Soviet Union, Daniels explores the Soviet experience from Karl Marx to Boris Yeltsin and shows how key ideological notions were altered as Soviet history unfolded. The book exposes a long history of American misunderstanding of the Soviet Union, leading up to the "grand surprise" of its collapse in 1991. Daniels's perspective is always original, and his assessments, some worked out years ago, are strikingly prescient in the light of post-1991 archival revelations. Soviet Communism evolved and decayed over the decades, Daniels argues, through a prolonged revolutionary process, combined with the challenges of modernization and the personal struggles between ideologues and power-grabbers.


Bayesian statistical approaches to calibrating radiocarbon determinations can make a significant contribution to disaster studies by adding precision to the dating of both the environmental forcing agent and the consequent human responses. An archaeological case study in the Willaumez Peninsula region of New Britain, Papua New Guinea uses radiocarbon dating to examine the chronology of five major volcanic events and the timing and nature of recolonization. The results demonstrate the general applicability of Bayesian-based approaches for building a sound tephrochronology and for evaluating the impacts of volcanic hazards on human history.


Recent work in human motion perception has conceptualized motion detection in terms of filters selective for spatio-temporal (ST) energy. One class of such models are called "energy models." They code motion energy, not velocity as such, but we describe a velocity coding model based on the ST energy within given bands of spatial and temporal frequency. The motion energy computations appear at first to be quite different from the gradient-based computations that have been used in machine vision. But gradient systems that make appropriate use of confidence can be considered to derive velocity from opponent energy measures. We also note that in human vision, dynamic energy seems to be coded in a set of transformed axes, which are opponent motion energy (e.g. right left) and counterphase flicker energy. The flicker axis is often neglected, we note its possible utility in visual processing.


Sarcobatus Nees., a genus of North American halophytic shrubs, consists of 2 species: S. vermiculatus (Hook.) Torr. ( n = 18, 36), which is widespread in North America, and S. baileyi Cov ( n = 54), endemic to Nevada. Within S. vermiculatus , populations of n = 36 are widely distributed, whereas populations of n = 18 are found only in the Sonoran Desert, northern California, and northwestern Great Plains, locations at the periphery of the species range. Although the chromosome number of n = 18 is apparently a tetraploid, failure to form and n = 27 race intermediate to those of n = 18 and n = 36 suggests than n = 18 S. vermiculatus is of significant age and that it behaves chromosomally as a diploid. Sacrobatus has a long fossil pollen record and endured Pleistocene climatic extremes with little range displacement.


The Forum is intended to provide for dialogue and discussion among fire experts, scientists and consultants. Contributions to The Forum will not be refereed in the conventional sense, but will be subject to review by the Journal's Editorial Board relative to appropriateness, clarity, timeliness, and scope of interest. The Editorial Board will be the sole judge of those contributions to be published. Opinions expressed, however, are those of the authors and not of the Editors or Technomic Publishing Com pany, Incorporated.


Between the 'Black Death' in the mid-fourteenth century and the French invasions at the end of the fifteenth, artists such as Masaccio, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Leonardo, working in the kingdoms, princedoms, and republics of the Italian peninsula, created some of the most influential and exciting works in a variety of artistic fields. Yet the traditional story of the Renaissance has been dramatically revised in the light of new scholarship, and new issues have greatly enriched our understanding of the period. Emphasis has been placed on recreating the experience of contemporary Italians - the patrons who commissioned the works, the members of the public who viewed them, and the artists who produced them. In this book Evelyn Welch presents a fresh picture of the Italian Renaissance. Giving equal weight to the Italian regions outside Florence, she discusses a wide range of works, from paintings to coins, and from sculptures to tapestries, examines the issues of materials, workshop practises, and artist-patron relationships, and explores the ways in which visual imagery related to contemporary sexual, social and political behaviour.


It is argued that global illumination should be modeled separately from other incidents that change the appearance of objects. The effects of intensity variations of the global illumination are discussed and constraints deduced that restrict the shape of a function that maps the histogram of a template to the histogram of an image location. This approach is illustrated for simple pattern matching and for a combination with a PCA ( Eigenface) model of the grey-level appearance.


Elided VPs and their antecedent VPs can mismatch in voice, with passive VPs being elided under apparent identity with active antecedent VPs, and vice versa. Such voice mismatches are not allowed in any other kind of ellipsis, such as sluicing and other clausal ellipses. These latter facts appear to indicate that the identity relation in ellipsis is sensitive to syntactic form, not merely to semantic form. The VPellipsis facts fall into place if the head that determines voice is external to the phrase being elided, here argued to be vP; such an account can only be framed in approaches that allow syntactic features to be separated from the heads on which they are morphologically realized. Alternatives to this syntactic, articulated view of ellipsis and voice either undergenerate or overgenerate.


Background and aims : Low back pain is a prevalent musculoskeletal disorder associated with nursing profession. This study was conducted to compare the effects of Williams' Exercise and Walking on relief of non-traumatic low back pain in nurses. Methods : In this semi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design, 100 nurses with chronic and acute low back pain and working in Ayatollah Kashani and Hajar hospitals of Shahrekord were studied between March 2015 and June 2015. The patients were randomly assigned to two groups of 50 each. Group 1 were asked to perform Williams exercise once a day and group 2 was asked to walk for 20 min per day. The demographic characteristics, medical history, and (chronic and acute) pain severity were investigated before and after the interventions. The data were analyzed by SPSS 22. Results : In both groups, mean difference in pain severity was significant after the intervention (p=0.001). Walking caused the pain of the nurses with acute low back pain to relieve more notably than the pain of those with chronic low back pain, while regarding Williams exercise, the pain relief was more marked in the nurses with chronic low back pain. Conclusion : Walking is more effective on reluef of pain due to acute low back pain, and Williams exercise was more effective on relief of pain due to chronic low back pain. Combining these exercises and other approaches of complementary medicine may cause greater pain relief.


The role of milk serum proteins in the development of foam structure during the whipping of 38% fat cream was investigated. Proteins were removed from the aqueous phase by washing the cream with simulated milk ultrafiltrate. The natural protein complement was replaced with either casein or whey protein preparations. When creams with different protein compositions were whipped to a defined end point the structural properties of the foams were similar but removal of protein caused a 50% reduction in whipping time. Other creams were whipped for fixed times of between 30 and 180 seconds to investigate the development and formation of the foam structure. This was greatly influenced by the protein composition. The presence of whey protein resulted in an initial lag phase in structure development, which was not so apparent when the added protein was casein. The lag phase was attributed to differences in structure of globular and disordered proteins and their behaviour at interfaces.


This article sets out from an analysis of the pioneering work of Susan Buck-Morss to rethink, not only Hegel and Haiti, but broader questions surrounding dialectics and the universal brought to light by the Haitian Revolution. Reading through the lens of C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins , I seek to correct a series of ironic silences in her account, re-centering the importance of Toussaint's successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and underlining the dialectical importance of identitarian struggles in forging the universal. Finally, I offer Frantz Fanon's reformulation of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic—overlooked in Buck-Morss' account—as a corrective that allows us to truly rethink progress toward the universal in decolonized dialectical terms.


After examining seminal research related to functional literacy and the national assessments of adult literacy, seven key cognitive and linguistic demands are proposed that everyday literacy tasks (e.g. reading a drug label) make: read words, comprehend sentences, search text, identify computations, perform computations, infer meaning, and apply information. The distinctiveness of the five non-quantitative task demands and their progression in difficulty were subjected to verification via independent psychometric analyses using 252 functional literacy tasks and responses of 46,000 adults aged 16 and older residing in households and prisons in the United States. The results of multidimensional item respond theory (MIRT) modeling indicate delineation among three sets of task demands. Findings are illustrated through application to a common task involving an over-the-counter drug label. Keywords: adult literacy; cognitive demand; functional literacy; linguistic demand; health literacy; over-the-counter drug labels


Objective: To determine possible health trends compared to prior years among female members of Gateway Health who all delivered prematurely from 2014-2015. Preterm birth (PTB) is a relevant public health concern due to the short and long term health effects of children born prematurely. PTB is the leading cause in the U.S. for infant mortality and newborn health complications and rates are much higher here than other developed countries. Identifying similar health trends within the Gateway member population can aid program development and targeted interventions to eventually decrease the amount of premature births in Allegheny County. Not only would this improve maternal and child health statistics in the area but also decrease associated hospital and insurance costs associated with premature birth.
Methods: This paper analyzed 618 female members from Gateway Health via claims information submitted during prenatal visits and time of delivery. A total of 54,455 claims were utilized to identify leading indicators for spontaneous preterm birth amongst nulliparous (first time pregnant) women. Most important risk factors are noted under DX_1 and 2 claims and then sorted to find members who shared common risk factors indicating a possible health trend not already identified as high risk.
Findings: A large amount of members were found to have indicated tobaccos smoking, drug dependency, mental disorders, periodontal disease, and hypertension during at least one prenatal visits. Also the average age of preterm delivery is from ages 18-31 which is younger than previously expected.
Conclusions: Allegheny County has a higher than national average rate of prenatal care visits and yet still sees high rates of preterm births. Quality of prenatal care seems to be the main issue over quantity of visits seen. A cost effective solution on part of the Medicaid insurer would be to implement better detection strategies of women who may be at high risk for preterm birth. Low cost, non-invasive tests could be cervical measuring and cholesterol testing within the first trimester. Then utilization of progesterone 17 and other intervention therapies could help decrease the amount of PTB seen in Allegheny County amongst Medicaid women.


Floods and other climate hazards pose a widespread and growing threat to housing and infrastructure around the world. By incorporating climate risk into asset prices, markets can discourage excessive development in hazardous areas. However, the extent to which markets actually price these risks remains poorly understood. Here we measure the effect of information about flood risk on residential property values in the United States. Using multiple empirical approaches and two decades of sales data covering the universe of homes in the US, we find little evidence that housing markets fully price information about flood risk in aggregate. However, the price penalty for flood risk is larger for commercial buyers and in states where sellers must disclose information about flood risk to potential buyers, suggesting that policies to improve risk communication could influence market outcomes. Our findings indicate that floodplain homes in the US are currently overvalued by a total of $34B, raising concerns about the stability of real estate markets as climate risks become more salient and severe.


ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Foot problems are believed to reduce quality of life and are increasingly present. Even among young adults of university age, untreated foot problems can lead to postural and mobility problems. Accordingly, our aim here was to determine the relationship between foot health and quality of life and general health among male and female university students. DESIGN AND SETTING: Observational cross-sectional quantitative study conducted at the Podiatric Medicine and Surgery Clinic of the University of Coruña, Ferrol, Spain. METHODS: A sample of 112 participants of median age 22 years came to a health center, where self-reported data were registered, including professional activity, and scores obtained through the Foot Health Status Questionnaire (FHSQ) were compared. RESULTS: In Section One of the FHSQ, the university students recorded lower scores of 66.66 in the footwear domain and 60 in the general foot health domain and higher scores of 84.37 in the foot pain domain and 93.75 in the foot function domain. In Section Two, they obtained lower scores of 60 in the overall health domain and 62.50 in the vigor domain and higher scores of 100 in the physical activity and 87.50 in the social capacity domain. Differences between males and females were evaluated using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, which showing statistical significance (P < 0.05) regarding the dimensions of footwear and general foot health. CONCLUSIONS: These university students' quality of life relating to foot health was poor. This appears to be associated with the university period, regardless of gender.


Reaction of the bis-bidentate bridging ligand L(3), in which two bidentate chelating 3(2-pyridyl)pyrazole units are separated by a 3,3'-biphenyl spacer, with Co(II) salts affords tetranuclear cage complexes of composition [Co(4)(L(3))(6)]X(8)(X =[BF(4)](-), [ClO(4)](-), [PF(6)](-) or I(-)) in which four 6-coordinate Co(II) ions in an approximately tetrahedral array are connected by six bis-bidentate bridging ligands, one spanning each of the six edges of the Co(4) tetrahedron. In every case, X-ray crystallography reveals that the 'apical' Co(II) ion has a fac tris-chelate geometry, whereas the other three Co(II) ions have mer tris-chelate geometries, resulting in (non-crystallographic)C(3) symmetry for the cages; that this structure is retained in solution is confirmed by (1)H NMR spectroscopy of the paramagnetic cages. In every case one of the anions is located inside the central cavity of the cage, with the remaining seven outside. We found no clear evidence for an anion-based templating effect. The cage superstructure is sufficiently large to leave gaps in the centres of the faces through which the internal and external anions can exchange. Variable-temperature (19)F NMR spectroscopy was used to investigate the dynamic behaviour of the cages with X =[BF(4)](-) and [PF(6)](-) in MeCN solution: in both cases two separate signals, corresponding to external and internal anions, are clear at 233 K which have coalesced to a single signal at room temperature. Analysis of the linewidth of the minor signal (for the internal anion) at various temperatures below coalescence gave an activation energy for anion exchange of ca. 50 kJ mol(-1) in each case, a figure which suggests that anion exchange can occur via a conformational rearrangement of the cage superstructure in solution rather than opening of the cavity by cleavage of metal-ligand bonds.


Abstract A 33-year-old patient with known sickle-cell disease (SS) booked for antenatal care at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital at six weeks gestational age. She had been diagnosed with myasthenia gravis three years prior to presentation and placed on oral anticholinesterase and steroid therapy, but her compliance was poor. She had had an operative delivery six years previously, under a general anaesthesia relaxant technique. It had been complicated by delayed emergence and residual muscle weakness, necessitating postoperative ICU admission for mechanical ventilation. In the index pregnancy, she had an emergency Caesarean section with bilateral tubal ligation under a combined spinal-epidural technique. A level of sensory block of T6 was achieved with 2.8 mL of 0.5% hyperbaric bupivacaine administered intrathecally. Towards the end of surgery, analgesia was supplemented through the epidural catheter with injection of 25 μg fentanyl in 6 mL of 0.25% plain bupivacaine. Supplemental oxygen was administered via a Hudson mask at 4 L/min. A live male baby with Apgar scores of 9 and 10 at one and five minutes, respectively, was delivered. The intraoperative period was uneventful. Postoperatively, she was managed in the high care unit. Postoperative analgesia was achieved via the epidural catheter with 6 mL of 0.125% bupivacaine and 2 μg/mL fentanyl four hourly for 48 hours. Subsequent recovery was uneventful. She was discharged to the postnatal ward on the fourth day post- surgery, and home with her baby 10 days later.


In the marine environment, distance signaling based on water-borne cues occurs during interactions between macroalgae and herbivores. In the brown alga Laminaria digitata from North-Atlantic Brittany, oligoalginates elicitation or grazing was shown to induce chemical and transcriptomic regulations, as well as emission of a wide range of volatile aldehydes, but their biological roles as potential defense or warning signals in response to herbivores remain unknown. In this context, bioassays using the limpet Patella pellucida and L. digitata were carried out for determining the effects of algal transient incubation with 4-hydroxyhexenal (4-HHE), 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) and dodecadienal on algal consumption by grazers. Simultaneously, we have developed metabolomic and transcriptomic approaches to study algal molecular responses after treatments of L. digitata with these chemical compounds. The results indicated that, unlike the treatment of the plantlets with 4-HNE or dodecadienal, treatment with 4-HHE decreases algal consumption by herbivores at 100 ng.ml-1 . Moreover, we showed that algal metabolome was significantly modified according to the type of aldehydes, and more specifically the metabolite pathways linked to fatty acid degradation. RNAseq analysis further showed that 4-HHE at 100 ng.ml-1 can activate the regulation of genes related to oxylipin signaling pathways and specific responses, compared to oligoalginates elicitation. As kelp beds constitute complex ecosystems consisting of habitat and food source for marine herbivores, the algal perception of specific aldehydes leading to targeted molecular regulations could have an important biological role on kelps/grazers interactions.


In this study, we used Hidden Interface-Indirect Nanoplasmonic Sensing (HI-INPS) for real time monitoring of dye impregnation (adsorption–diffusion process) of mesoporous TiO2 electrodes of the kind used in dye-sensitized solar cells. We measured the dye percolation time (i.e. the time to diffuse to the bottom of a TiO2 photoelectrode film) for dye Z907 in a 1 : 1 volume mixture of acetonitrile and tert-butanol for different dye concentrations and for different thicknesses of the TiO2 film, while the total amount of adsorbed dye was simultaneously measured by optical absorption spectroscopy. The experimental data for the impregnation process were analyzed by employing a diffusion-front model, combining diffusion and Langmuir type adsorption, which allows extraction of the effective diffusion coefficient for the system. The latter value is about 15 μm2 s−1 for the combined adsorption–diffusion movement of dye molecules through the TiO2 structure, which is an order of magnitude or more smaller than that for "free" diffusion of dye molecules in bulk solvents.


Abstract:In progress at the University of Michigan and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this digital humanities project proposes a virtual writer's house-museum for James Baldwin (1924–1987)—a civil rights movement activist, a black queer intellectual who lived overseas and one of the most important twentieth-century American writers. "Archiving James Baldwin's House" focuses on documenting and making accessible to students, researchers, and fans "Chez Baldwin," the residence where he spent his last sixteen years and where he created his most enduring household. It argues that the remnants of lives we study often lead us outside our comfort zones and become sources of unexpected narrative and visual information; both material and digital, they become personal and physical presences in our lives, extensions of ourselves. Along with the house, "Archiving" showcases artifacts abandoned as debris and refuse that were central to Baldwin's daily life: his voluminous library, foreign editions of his works, research files, phone logs, photographs, journals and magazines, vinyl records, art pieces and posters, even one of his typewriters. These objects—the only surviving archive of Baldwin's life matter—demand preservation as evidence of his black queer dwelling practices that inflected his later works and his vision of late twentieth-century US national identity.


The paper describes morphology of erems, laboratory germination capacity and germination rate of the of Hyssopus officinalis plants grown under conditions of Zhytomyr Polissya. The research revealed insignificant differences between investigated hyssop varieties with respect to external structure, color, mass, and biometric indices of their erems. The mean mass index of 1000 erems for H. officialis 'Markiz' was 1.09 g, for 'Atlant' – 1.13 g, and for 'Vodograj' – 1.10 g. The length of erems was slightly higher (2.91 ± 0.06 mm) in 'Atlant', while the width and thickness of erems (1.09 ± 0.05 and 0.84 ± 0.03 mm respectively) were highest in 'Vodograj'. Laboratory germination capacity of H. officialis erems showed tendency to decrease during a storage period of 5 years, however the germination rate was stable for the first 4 years. 'Vodograj' demonstrated the highest germination rate (84 %) and germination capacity (98.5 %) in general.


of a dissertation at the University of Miami. Dissertation supervised by Professor Joy Lincoln. No. of pages in text. (110) Heart valve disease results in over 23,000 deaths annually in the United States, with calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) being the most prevalent (Go et al., 2014). To date, there are no pharmacological therapies to prevent or slow the progression of CAVD, and the only effective treatment involves surgical intervention (Beckmann et al., 2010). Mature aortic valve cusps are composed of a stratified trilaminar extracellular matrix (ECM) that provides the necessary biomechanical properties for function throughout life. It has been previously shown that several ECM proteins within these layers share molecular similarities with cartilage including the expression of type II collagen (Col2a1) and cartilage link protein (CLP) (Lincoln and Yutzey, 2011). The valvular connective tissue is interspersed with valve interstitial cells (VICs) and overlayed by a monolayer of valve endothelial cells (VECs) that seem to be important in sensing changes in the hemodynamic environment and communicating with the underlying VICs (Bosse et al., 2013; Butcher and Nerem, 2006; Gould et al., 2014; Richards et al., 2013; Walker et al., 2004). In contrast to healthy valves, calcified valves are characterized by a loss of ECM stratification and VEC disruption(Hinton et al., 2006; Lincoln and Yutzey, 2011; New and Aikawa, 2011; O'Brien, 2006). In addition, CAVD pathogenesis involves phenotypic changes in the VICs associated with increased expression of osteogenic genes including Spp1 and Runx2, and deposition of a mineralized bone-like matrix that leads to valve stiffening and incomplete opening (Hinton et al., 2006; Lincoln and Yutzey, 2011). Despite the clinical significance, the mechanisms the cartilage-like ECM and prevent CAVD in healthy valves are poorly understood. It has been previously shown that the SRY-transcription factor Sox9 is expressed in the valves beginning in early valvulogenesis and maintained throughout life, and is essential for ECM stratification and preventing calcification of adult valves (Akiyama et al., 2004; Lincoln et al., 2006; Lincoln et al., 2007). This is largely achieved by Sox9-mediated transcriptional activation of cartilaginous genes including Col2a1 and CLP (Lincoln et al., 2007; Peacock et al., 2010). Simultaneously, Sox9 prevents calcification by repressing osteogenic gene programs, although this mechanism of Sox9 action is poorly understood. In this current work, we aim to increase our understanding of the role of Sox9 in valve maintenance and disease by examining both upstream regulators and downstream targets of Sox9 in the valve, as well as mechanisms of regulation of Sox9 in calcification processes. To better define the repressive activity of Sox9 in preventing ectopic bone formation in the valve, we identify and characterize a novel target of Sox9 transcriptional regulation, the osteogenic transcription factor Spp1. Additionally, we identify a new risk factor for development of CAVD through investigations into upstream regulation of Sox9 by retinoic acid. Finally, we investigate the mechanisms of heart valve maintenance and prevention of CAVD by investigating molecular communications between the VICs and VECs to control the VIC phenotype and prevent progression to disease through Sox9 dependent mechanisms. Through these studies we further our understanding of the role of Sox9 in valve maintenance and the pathogenesis of CAVD, and highlight new potential targets for mechanism-based therapeutic


Anthropologists have been appearing as key expert witnesses in native title claims for over 20 years. Until now, however, there has been no theoretically-informed, detailed investigation of how the expert testimony of anthropologists is formed and how it is received by judges. This book examines the structure and habitus of both the field of anthropology and the juridical field and how they have interacted in four cases, including the original hearing in the Mabo case. The analysis of background material has been supplemented by interviews with the key protagonists in each case. This allows the reader a unique, insider's perspective of the courtroom drama that unfolds in each case. The book asks, given the available ethnographic research, how will the anthropologist reconstruct it in a way that is relevant to the legal doctrine of native title when that doctrine gives a wide leeway for interpretation on the critical questions: what is the relevant grouping, what can be counted as a traditional law and when has there been too much change of tradition? How will such evidence be received by judges who are becoming increasingly sceptical about experts tailoring their evidence to suit the party which called them? This book answers these questions by assuming that there is more at stake here than the mere performance of roles. Rather, there is a complex interaction of distinct social fields each with its own habitus, and individual actors are engaged in an active and constructive agency, however subtle, which the painstaking research for this book uncovers.


Purpose: The intravenous or intramuscular administration of epinephrine is recommended treatment in systemic anaphylaxis. The goal was to evaluate epinephrine plasma levels after intramuscular injection into the buccinator muscle in comparison to inhaled epinephrine. Methods: In this pilot study in humans, we measured plasma epinephrine concentrations before and after epinephrine administration by intramuscular injection, or by inhalation, with intramuscular saline and intravenous epinephrine as the negative and positive controls, respectively. Results: Peak plasma epinephrine concentrations were higher after epinephrine was injected intramuscularly with a maximum plasma epinephrine concentration of 3367.2 pg/ml. After administration by inhalation epinephrine peak level was 151.89 pg/ml. Conclusions: In cases of respiratory distress when anaphylaxis is a possible cause, at first the application of epinephrine by inhalation may be of value. Manifest major cardiovascular reactions according to anaphylaxis without availability of a venous access can only be treated by titration of epinephrine intramuscularly. The buccinator muscle is a useful site for dentists involved on treatment of anaphylaxis.


This paper reviews institutions offering Islamic financial services (IIFS) corporate governance challenges and suggests options to address them. It first points out the importance of corporate governance for IIFS, where it would require a distinct treatment from conventional corporate governance and highlights three cases of distress of IIFS. It then dwells on prevailing corporate governance arrangements addressing IIFS' needs to ensure the consistency of their operations with Islamic finance principles and the protection of the financial interests of a stakeholders' category, namely depositors holding unrestricted investment accounts. It raises the issues of independence, confidentiality, competence, consistency, and disclosure that may bear on pronouncements of consistency with Islamic finance principles. It also discusses the agency problem of depositors holding unrestricted investment accounts. The paper argues for a governance framework that combines internal and external arrangements and relies significantly on transparency and disclosure of market relevant information.


This submission draws on research from twelve publications, all addressing some aspect of the broad research question: "Can interactive computer-marked assessment improve the effectiveness of assessment for learning?"

The work starts from a consideration of the conditions under which assessment of any sort is predicted to best support learning, and reviews the broader literature of assessment and feedback before considering the potential of computer-based assessment, focusing on relatively sophisticated constructed-response questions, and on the impact of instantaneous, tailored and increasing feedback. A range of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies are used to investigate factors which influence the engagement of distance learners of science with computer-marked assessment and computer-generated feedback.

It is concluded that the strongest influence on engagement is the student's understanding of what they are required to do, including their understanding of the wording of assessment tasks and feedback. Clarity of wording is thus important, as is an iterative design process that allows for improvements to be made. Factors such as cut-off dates can have considerable impact, pointing to the importance of good overall assessment design, and more generally to the power and responsibility that lie in the hands of remote developers of online assessment and teaching.

Four of the publications describe research into the marking accuracy and effectiveness of questions to which students give their answer as a short phrase or sentence. Relatively simple pattern-matching software has been shown to give marking accuracy at least as good as that of human markers and more sophisticated computer-marked systems, provided questions are developed on the basis of responses from students at a similar level. However, educators continue to use selected-response questions in preference to constructed-response questions, despite concerns over the validity and authenticity of selected-response questions. Factors contributing to the low take-up of more sophisticated computer-marked tasks are discussed.

E-assessment also has the potential to improve the learning experience indirectly by providing information to educators about student engagement and student errors, at either the cohort or individual student level. The effectiveness of these "assessment analytics" is also considered, concluding that they have the potential to provide deep general insight and an early warning of at-risk students.


vii Summary It is often assumed that there is a strong correlation between entrepreneurship and economic development and a global movement to promote entrepreneurial action is quickly gaining momentum. In emerging economies entrepreneurship may be of crucial importance. It is believed that "entrepreneurship is the engine that will push the emerging economies forward as the states of the developing world quickly grow to be major economic forces" (Bruton et al., 2008, p. 2), so it is quite surprising that entrepreneurship remains woefully under-examined in this context. This is problematic due to the situated nature of entrepreneurship. Hence, context-specific studies are necessary to enhance entrepreneurship research and to develop more effective strategies to foster entrepreneurship. In this dissertation, I mainly focus on the entrepreneurial intentions of university students in an emerging economy context. I address the measurement issue of entrepreneurial intentions in a culturally heterogeneous society, as well as investigate widely held assumptions concerning the antecedents to entrepreneurial intentions, including the role of past entrepreneurial exposure and the influence of human, social and financial capital. These key variables have been hypothesized as having a positive influence on entrepreneurial intentions and have also been used to form the basis of entrepreneurship training intervention programs. Hence, knowledge of their functioning under different contextual conditions is important because it will allow researchers to fine-tune theories and to expand our theoretical understanding of entrepreneurship in general as well as provide practical guidelines for designing entrepreneurship teaching programs. viii In Paper 1, I explore the need for context-sensitive measures of entrepreneurial intentions. The study not only shows ethnic tribal differences in entrepreneurial intentions but also that tribal ethnicity moderated the relationship between the proximal variables and entrepreneurial intention; for example, the effect of perceived behavioural control was different when comparing the Kikuyu and Kamba tribes. I conclude that researchers should seek to unpack the cultural differences that exist within a society in order to gain more specific and representative measurements of entrepreneurial intentions and, in turn, gain a better understanding of some of the mechanisms through which entrepreneurial intentions are developed. In Paper 2, I investigate the influence of past entrepreneurial exposure on entrepreneurial intentions. I find a positive relationship between having conducted startup activities and entrepreneurial intentions. In contrast, exposure to family entrepreneurship had a negative association with intentions. The result supports to the argument that it is necessary to focus more on the context of emerging economies in order gain insights that can enhance our understanding of entrepreneurship in emerging economies. Further, it is necessary to adapt theories to reflect the specificity of the setting. In Paper 3, I review the impact of human, social and financial capital on entrepreneurial intentions. The study shows that, in our setting, human capital has no impact on intentions, social capital has a positive impact, and financial capital is negatively correlated with entrepreneurial intentions. I conclude that while having access to capital may be important for entrepreneurship, the belief and value system of the society has an important bearing on whether these capitals are turned into entrepreneurial activities. For example, financial capital will not transpose into entrepreneurship where entrepreneurship is not a valued socially valued activity. Thus, the study provides further proof of the need to conduct context-specific studies that opens the black box of entrepreneurial intention in emerging economies. Paper 4 departs from the entrepreneurial intention theme and uses a case study to explore an international curriculum development process spanning six universities across four countries in Africa. Using cultural-historical activity theory as an analytical framework, we explore the context of a curriculum development system and examine the contradictions within this system. The results show that the participatory curriculum process is inhibited by several factors, including difficulties in managing stakeholder relations, inadequate rules and organizational structures and resource deficiency. However, these issues suggest starting points for designing more efficient multi- stakeholders curriculum development activities. In summary, this dissertation responds to the call in the entrepreneurship literature for researchers to provide more in-depth study of individual emerging economies countries, keeping in mind their distinctive characteristics such as culture, history, munificence of their economies and their economic development paths, among others. It is recognized that there is a need to develop an understanding of these differences and their impacts. Thus, the studies included in this dissertation represent a significant contribution to the entrepreneurship literature and can stimulate discussion among entrepreneurship scholars about how we development measures and promote entrepreneurship within emerging economies.


The following paper considers the question, where to office property? In doing so, it focuses, in the first instance, on identifying and describing a selection of key forces for change present within the contemporary operating environment in which office property functions. Given the increasingly complex, dynamic and multi-faceted character of this environment, the paper seeks to identify only the primary forces for change, within the context of the future of office property. These core drivers of change have, for the purposes of this discussion, been characterised as including a range of economic, demographic and socio-cultural factors, together with developments in information and communication technology. Having established this foundation, the paper proceeds to consider the manner in which these forces may, in the future, be manifested within the office property market. Comment is offered regarding the potential future implications of these forces for change together with their likely influence on the nature and management of the physical asset itself. Whilst no explicit time horizon has been envisioned in the preparation of this paper particular attention has been accorded short to medium term trends, that is, those likely to emerge in the office property marketplace over the coming two decades. Further, the paper considers the question posed, in respect of the future of office property, in the context of developed western nations. The degree of commonality seen in these mature markets is such that generalisations may more appropriately and robustly be applied. Whilst some of the comments offered with respect to the target market may find application in other arenas, it is beyond the scope of this paper to explicitly consider highly heterogeneous markets. Given also the wide scope of this paper key drivers for change and their likely implications for the commercial office property market are identified at a global level (within the above established parameters). Accordingly, the focus is necessarily such that it serves to reflect overarching directions at a universal level (with the effect being that direct applicability to individual markets - when viewed in isolation on a geographic or property type specific basis – may not be fitting in all instances)


Abstract The effect of different extracts of leaves and fruits of Moringa oleifera. Lam. (Moringaceae) on gastric and duodenal ulcers was evaluated by using different gastric ulcer models and cysteamine-induced duodenal ulcer method. The leaf extracts (500 mg/kg, p.o.) of Moringa oleifera. showed gastric ulcer healing effect in acetic acid–induced chronic gastric ulcers. The acetone extract and methanol extract of the leaves produced gastric antisecretory effect in pylorus-ligated rats and showed gastric cytoprotective effect in ethanol-induced and indomethacin-induced gastric ulcers. The leaf extracts also produced a significant reduction of stress-induced gastric ulcers and cysteamine-induced duodenal ulcers. None of the extracts of the fruits showed any significant antiulcer effect. It was concluded that leaves of Moringa oleifera. increase healing of gastric ulcers and also prevent the development of experimentally induced gastric ulcers and duodenal ulcers in rats.


Structured pruning is an effective approach for compressing large pre-trained neural networks without significantly affecting their performance. However, most current structured pruning methods do not provide any performance guarantees, and often require fine-tuning, which makes them inapplicable in the limited-data regime. We propose a principled data-efficient structured pruning method based on submodular optimization. In particular, for a given layer, we select neurons/channels to prune and corresponding new weights for the next layer, that minimize the change in the next layer's input induced by pruning. We show that this selection problem is a weakly submodular maximization problem, thus it can be provably approximated using an efficient greedy algorithm. Our method is guaranteed to have an exponentially decreasing error between the original model and the pruned model outputs w.r.t the pruned size, under reasonable assumptions. It is also one of the few methods in the literature that uses only a limited-number of training data and no labels. Our experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in the limited-data regime.


We experimentally engineer Nanojets produced by dielectric spheres by varying the illumination and observe the effect with a high-resolution interference microscope (HRIM). Converging and diverging spherical wavefronts and Bessel- Gauss beams are considered. We find that the diverging wavefront pushes Nanojets away from the surface of the sphere without change of the spot size. This allows earning several micrometers of working distance contrary to the Nanojet confined at the sphere's surface. When the radius of curvature of the incident wavefront is greater than about 5 times the sphere size, the Nanojet moves back to the sphere surface like it is found for plane wave incidence. On-axis Bessel- Gauss beam illumination with the central lobe covering the whole sphere leads to the same results as the plane wave case. Off-axis Bessel beam illumination can generate multiple-spot Nanojets. We demonstrate the separation of such spots of about 220 nm at 642 nm. This separation is smaller than the feature sizes defined by the diffraction limit at this wavelength. We discuss briefly applications of engineered Nanojets for nano-lithography and near-field sensing.


Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials which are freely available and openly licensed. Repositories of OER (ROER) are platforms that host and facilitate access to these resources. ROER should not just be designed to store this content – in keeping with the aims of the OER movement, they should support educators in embracing open educational practices (OEP) such as searching for and retrieving content that they will reuse, adapt or modify as needed, without economic barriers or copyright restrictions. This paper reviews key literature on OER and ROER, in order to understand the roles ROER are said or supposed to fulfil in relation to furthering the aims of the OER movement. Four themes which should shape repository design are identified, and the following 10 quality indicators (QI) for ROER effectiveness are discussed: featured resources; user evaluation tools; peer review; authorship of the resources; keywords of the resources; use of standardised metadata; multilingualism of the repositories; inclusion of social media tools; specification of the creative commons license; availability of the source code or original files. These QI form the basis of a method for the evaluation of ROER initiatives which, in concert with considerations of achievability and long-term sustainability, should assist in enhancement and development. Keywords:  open educational resources; open access; open educational practice; repositories; quality assurance (Published: 24 July 2014) Citation : Research in Learning Technology 2014,  22 : 20889 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v22.20889


Highquality sportswear should meet certain criteria. Sportswear should be comfortable, which means to enable freedom of movement and a nice touch. The customer expects his clothing to be endurable, that is during its "existence", to remain the same dimension and be resistant to attrition. One of the main requirements about the sportswear is managing the moisture-fast evaporation and drying, so the body will feel dry and comfortable. The athletes who wear clothes with optimal comfort attain better results. Over the last few years, there has been growing interest in knitted fabrics due to its simple production technique, low costs and high level of clothing comfort. In this paper the influence of the structural properties and the raw content on the thermo physiological comfort, that is, influence on the air permeability, water vapour permeability and thermal characteristics were investigated, as well as the impact on physicalmechanical properties of knitted fabrics for sportswear. The results showed that every knitted structure has different characteristics concerning the thermo physiological comfort. The knitted structures with higher tightness factor and lower porosity have lower air permeability and water vapour permeability. Double jersey knitted structures, such as interlock and rib have remarkably higher values of thermal conductivity. Knitted structures with higher weight per unit area have higher values of thermal absorptivity. The raw material content has significant influence on the thermal characteristics and water vapour permeability, while its influence on the air permeability is lower concerning the structural characteristics. The results obtained showed that PES single jersey and rib 1:1 cotton knitted structure are marked with the best comfort for underwear; wool and PAN single jersey structures for outer wear against weather influences, and the two-layered knitted structures of cotton/PES will provide the best comfort for tracksuits.


Metabolic syndrome (MS) is a cluster of signs that increases the risk to develop diabetes mellitus type 2 and cardiovascular disease. In the last years, a growing interest to study the relationship between MS and psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety, has emerged obtaining conflicting results. Diet-induced MS rat models have only examined the effects of high-fat or mixed cafeteria diets to a limited extent. We explored whether an anxiety-like behavior was associated with MS in non-stressed rats chronically submitted to a high-sucrose diet (20% sucrose in drinking water) using three different anxiety paradigms: the shock-probe/burying test (SPBT), the elevated plus-maze (EPM) and the open-field test (OFT). Behaviorally, the high-sucrose diet group showed an increase in burying behavior in the SPBT. Also, these animals displayed both avoidance to explore the central part of the arena and a significant increase in freezing behavior in the OFT and lack of effects in the EPM. Also, high-sucrose diet group showed signs of an MS-like condition: significant increases in body weight and body mass index, abdominal obesity, hypertension, hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, and dyslipidemia. Plasma leptin and resistin levels were also increased. No changes in plasma corticosterone levels were found. These results indicate that rats under a 24-weeks high-sucrose diet develop an MS associated with an anxiety-like behavior. Although the mechanisms underlying this behavioral outcome remain to be investigated, the role of leptin is emphasized.


Controlled mixtures of novel Mg-based metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) were prepared, with H(+) or K(+) as counterions. A linear relation was found between synthesis pH and K/H ratio in the resultant mixture, establishing the tunability of the synthesis. Upon pyrolysis, these precursor mixtures yield nitrogen-doped, hierarchically porous carbons, which have good activity towards the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) at pH 13. The nitrogen content varies significantly along the homologous carbon series (>400%, 1.3 at% to 5.7 at%), to a much greater extent than microstructural parameters such as surface area and graphitization. This allows us to isolate the positive correlation between nitrogen content and electrocatalytic oxygen reduction ORR activity in this class of metal-free, N-doped, porous carbons.


Organizational and management sciences have continuously fail to replicate existing studies. Moreover, replication the hallmark of scientific inquiry is not investigated adequately. The few existing studies examine pertinent questions about scientific integrity since errors in publications are more commonplace rather than single instances. Since computational simulation modeling is increasingly employed in studies in organizational and management sciences, we investigate the replicability of simulation studies, especially of the system dynamics type. Based on a sample of 105 studies in scholarly management and organizational journals we conclude that fundamental limitations exist in replicating existing models. Only in 20% of the cases, is an identical replication possible. Often the necessary details to replicate the simulation are not available or the available details are incomplete. Most often, it seems, this incompleteness is a surprise to the original authors as well. We provide suggestions to improve the degree of replicability to ensure full replicability is a standard for system dynamics simulations models in organizational and management sciences.


A numerical design on the triangular photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based backward multi-pump Raman amplifier is presented. It is demonstrated that high flat Raman gain can be reached based on PCF. Influences of different geometric parameters and germanium doping concentrations on the Raman net gain, amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise and double Rayleigh backscattering (DRBS) of the signal have been analyzed. For optimizing crystal fiber Raman amplifier (FRA), there is tradeoff between the geometric parameter and germanium doping concentration of triangular PCF. The results show that PCF is an appropriate candidate for high gain Raman amplifiers.


In this paper the author explores certain fulfilling personal experiences that he describes as the presencing of space, i.e. the way in which an individual's spatial involvement may put him or her in contact with reality as a whole. These experiences are investigated from a phenomenological perspective, and the differences between them and other similar experiences, such as that of the sublime or topophilia, are highlighted. A neologism is introduced: topoaletheia (from the Greek topos , space understood as region, and aletheia , disclosure) to name a distinctive type of spatial experience. This concept may enrich the discussion about our involvement with space in our built environments.


The question of what counts as good education research has received a great deal of attention, but too often it is conceived principally as a methodological question rather than an ethical one. Good education research is a matter not only of sound procedures but also of beneficial aims and results; our ultimate aim as researchers and educators is to serve people's well-being. For their research to be deemed good in a strong sense, education researchers must be able to articulate some sound connection between their work and a robust and justifiable conception of human well-being. There is a good deal of history and convention against such a conception of researchers' work. We need to consider the conditions needed if that conception is to be realized. Among the conditions is a concerted and cooperative endeavor for moral education among researchers and the people with whom they work—a context where questions of well-being are foregrounded, welcomed, and vigorously debated.


Bitcoin provides two incentives for miners: block rewards and transaction fees. The former accounts for the vast majority of miner revenues at the beginning of the system, but it is expected to transition to the latter as the block rewards dwindle. There has been an implicit belief that whether miners are paid by block rewards or transaction fees does not affect the security of the block chain. We show that this is not the case. Our key insight is that with only transaction fees, the variance of the block reward is very high due to the exponentially distributed block arrival time, and it becomes attractive to fork a "wealthy" block to "steal" the rewards therein. We show that this results in an equilibrium with undesirable properties for Bitcoin's security and performance, and even non-equilibria in some circumstances. We also revisit selfish mining and show that it can be made profitable for a miner with an arbitrarily low hash power share, and who is arbitrarily poorly connected within the network. Our results are derived from theoretical analysis and confirmed by a new Bitcoin mining simulator that may be of independent interest. We discuss the troubling implications of our results for Bitcoin's future security and draw lessons for the design of new cryptocurrencies.


Recent discussions of the early modern public sphere have excluded the theater as a space where substantive political thinking occurred, focusing instead on print culture and on how high-ranking elites conjured a "public" in relation to political controversies. In this article, Doty argues that in Richard II, Shakespeare draws attention to how the commons see, judge, and participate, both cognitively and emotionally, in political life. Shakespeare raises these issues by transforming Bolingbroke into a figure of "popularity." By the mid-1590s, "popularity" was a controversial concept, signifying the cultivation of popular favor. It was also the term that elites used to talk about public opinion and fears about a public that, on the one hand, wanted to feel an intimacy with members of the ruling class, and on the other, wanted to evaluate, discuss, and read about political controversies. By exploring the contemporary phenomenon of popularity, Shakespeare invites his audience to explicate how they are positioned by elites through emotional appeals and public arguments about matters of state. In undertaking this act of explication—in which playgoers are invited to judge first Richard, Bolingbroke, and finally the commons—Shakespeare transforms the theater into a space in which playgoers could practice thinking about how power works in the political domain. Therefore, Richard II not only dramatizes the new phenomenon of popularity, but in its creation of a space in which private people explicated political content, enacts a type of popularity—or, in our critical terminology, a public sphere.


Recently, it became clear that undetectable equals untransmittable (U=U), stressing the importance of engaging in medical care and adhering to antiretroviral therapy. HIV testing and counselling (HTC) are offered in different settings and can be an opportunity to inform people. We aimed to understand if HIV testing history, including recency, place and, result, was associated with U=U knowledge.
 We used data from 2242 MSM living in Portugal participating in EMIS 2017 that answered if they already knew that "A person with HIV who is on effective treatment (called 'undetectable viral load') cannot pass their virus to someone else during sex", opting of 5 possible answers, dichotomized in "I already knew" vs. any other option. Regarding HIV testing history, participants were categorized as follows:1. HIV positive; 2. HIV negative and last test ≤12 months in a community setting; 3. HIV negative and last test ≤12 months in a medical setting, and 4. never tested for HIV or last test >12 months or tested in other settings (reference). Logistic regression models were fitted to estimate crude and city size and education-adjusted associations.
 The median (P25; P75) age of participants was 34 (25; 43) years. No significant statistical association was found with age or current occupation. Those with more years of education and living in a big or very big city were more likely to know that U=U (aOR:1.55; 95%CI:1.20-1.99 and aOR:1.26; 95%CI:1.04-1.53, respectively). Considering HIV testing history and diagnosis, men with diagnosed HIV (aOR:6.33; 95%CI:4.50-8.90), those who had the last test in community setting (aOR:2.44; 95%CI:1.87-3.17) and those who had the last test in a medical setting (aOR: 1.57; 95%CI:1.26-1.95) were more aware of U=U than those not tested in the last 12 months.
 Our results suggest that there is a gradient of U=U knowledge associated with HIV testing history among MSM. Efforts should focus on improving counselling about U=U at all HIV testing settings.

 The knowledge of U=U seems to be associated with the place, recency and result of the last HIV test. Counselling should focus on the best evidence available at all HIV testing settings, to inform and empower the individuals.


University collaborations and industry partnerships are rapidly becoming a common practice the world over. Consequently, collaborations and partnerships are becoming a feature of lifelong learning in universities. Thus, this paper purposes on highlighting the importance of university-industry partnership between Kenyatta University and Equity Bank. The symbiotic relationships between universities and industry are very significant in fostering the economic development of a nation. Due to increased competition as a result of globalization and constant technological advancements, it is imperative for universities to collaborate with industry in order to enhance the diffusion of knowledge, increase research and development, patent innovations and build the nation's organizational capacity. For this reason, it is has become increasingly clear that there is need for close university-industry interactions as a means of national economic prosperity. Therefore, this paper examines the benefits of university-industry partnerships in promoting academic growth and community development with a specific focus on Kenyatta University. As its case study, the paper explores the partnership between Kenyatta University and Equity Bank. In our analyses, we examine the nature and role of collaboration between the two partnering institutions and illustrate how such partnerships promote academic and community economic development. In addition to the potential positive outcomes, this paper also discusses challenges and caveats of the partnership. Ultimately, the paper concludes that in the wake of growing economic challenges due to globalization, there is need for universities to forge working relationships with the industry in order to be relevant, progressive and to spur a nation's economic growth and development.


Current meters have been in use for flow gauging purposes for a very long time. They are subject of stringent requirements, especially when used as a check on hydraulic machine performance. The very principle of their operation, however, is a source of uncertainty, consisting as it does in the use of a current meter calibrated in calm water in a flume to measure discharge in turbulent flow in an enclosed space. Methods of use based on sound experience have managed to keep this margin of error within reasonab1y close limits. The increasingly wide range of use of these instruments and the wish to achieve greater accuracy have been followed by intensified research, which has centred around the two most important effects discovered in previous research, namely (i) an 'interference' effect between the current meters and their supports and (ii) the effect of flow turbulence. This research has now progressed so far that it should soon be possible to reduce these effects, for example by a careful reappraisal and choice among existing equipment. On the current meter data output side, improvements have been made to the impulse emission system and to velocity and discharge calculation methods. Technological progress has also been made with ball-bearing and propeller manufacture, with the result that it should now be possible to cut down considerably on calibration operations, which would be replaced by simple propeller geometry and bearing opposing torque checks. Finally, two gauging methods for convergent streamline flow are mentioned, which tend to improve measurement accuracy in this field and which have recently been compared.


This study investigates variation in preferences for mutual emotional dependence and togetherness in heterosexual romantic relationships among adults in the United States specifically considering the impact of race, gender, gender ideology, and cohort on preferences. A social structure and personality framework and concepts from exchange theory are used to interpret and predict relationship preference patterns found using binary hierarchical logistic regression analysis of data from the 1996 General Social Survey's (GSS) gender and emotions modules. Gender, gender ideology, cohort, and specific sociodemographic variables, such as education and marital status were found to impact preferences for mutual emotional dependence, however, no racially distinct patterns were found. The variables in the models explain less of the differences in preferences for togetherness than emotional dependence. However, education had a curvilinear relationship with preferences for togetherness, as people with the lowest and the highest educations were least likely to prefer togetherness.


This paper reviews ways of reducing surface transport noise by natural means. The noise abatement solutions of interest can be easily (visually) incorporated in the landscape or help with greening the (sub)urban environment. They include vegetated surfaces (applied to faces or tops of noise walls and on buildings' façades and roofs), caged piles of stones (gabions), vegetation belts (tree belts, shrub zones and hedges), earth berms and various ways of exploiting ground-surface-related effects. The ideas presented in this overview have been tested in the laboratory and/or numerically evaluated in order to assess or enhance the noise abatement they could provide. Some in-situ experiments are discussed as well. When well designed, such natural devices have the potential to abate surface transport noise, possibly by complementing and sometimes improving common (non-natural) noise reducing devices or measures. Their applicability strongly depends on the available space reserved for the noise abatement and the receiver position.


This publication picks up on several of the themes which emerge conceptually and artistically in the Central Asian Pavilion project, and elaborates them in a philosophical, historical and poetic register within the specific materiality and temporality of a book though the website as a repository and forum for these kinds of explorations should be mentioned as well—with its capacity to extend the time, space and context of the ideas beyond the Venice Biennale and to a readership beyond the project's immediate public. The Pavilion's organizing metaphor of "Winter" is appropriated from the poem by 19th century Kazakh poet, intellectual and activist Abay Qunanbaiuli. The metaphor of winter here evokes social stagnation, cultural censorship and political unfreedom. It refers to a context where the intensity of debate on social goals lags and there seems to be little or no horizon for change; a situation then, which varies more in degree than in kind from the one we experience in the relatively privileged environs of the North and West of the world of capital, where economy not only comes first, but political means are used to enforce economic goals, imposing and deepening crises of reproduction for billions of people. This is not to lose the specificity of the Central Asian situation, nor the differences between the nation states which fall into that rubric Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

However, Winter also embodies a potentially transformational character, as winter precedes spring and the snow gives place to a full blossoming; a frozen public dialogue may be replaced by a more participatory one. We believe that art is still able to serve as a catalyst for creating a genuine public debate, to end the state of hibernation and, in short, to open doors for the arrival of spring. A spring that has not yet come to Central Asia. Featuring essays on the geopolitics of energy, post-Soviet political narratives, art-historical analyses and the political economy of contemporary art in a time of social crisis, the book gives a snapshot of the aesthetic, political and poetic dimensions of the situation in the region.


Management of forage production for livestock grazing on semiarid grasslands depends on water availability. Evapotranspiration (ET) was measured using the Bowen ratio energy balance method on three grasslands at Mandan, ND: a nongrazed mixed-grass prairie (prairie), a grazed mixed-grass prairie (grazed prairie), and a grazed western wheatgrass [Pascopyrum smithii (Rybd) Love] site (western wheatgrass). Measurements were made from 24 April to 17 October (the growing period) in 1996, 1997, and 1998. Peak ET rates generally coincided with periods of peak biomass production and occurred between early July and early August. Peak biomass averaged 1097 kg ha -1 for the prairie, 1227 kg ha -1 for grazed prairie, and 1725 kg ha -1 for western wheatgrass, and peak leaf area index averaged 0.38 for the prairie, 0.44 for grazed prairie, and 0.59 for western wheatgrass. Growing period (175 d) ET averaged 489 mm for the prairie, 455 mm for the grazed prairie, and 497 mm for the western wheatgrass while growing period precipitation averaged 320 mm. Evapotranspiration of grazed prairie was 7% less than nongrazed prairie and 8% less than western wheatgrass. Evapotranspiration of the nongrazed prairie and the grazed western wheatgrass were similar. The ratio of the latent heat of ET to net radiation averaged 0.25 for grazed prairie and 0.28 for prairie, suggesting that grazing changed the canopy structure and energy budget components that affected ET. These results suggest that in a semiarid environment, proper grazing of prairie grasslands conserves soil water.


This paper analyzes the effects of introducing a graduated minimum wage in a model with optimal income taxation in which a government seeks to maximize social welfare. It shows that the optimal graduated minimum wage increases social welfare by increasing the low-productivity workers' consumption and bringing it closer to the first-best. The paper also describes how the graduated minimum wage in a social welfare optimum depends on important economy characteristics such as the government's revenue needs, the social-welfare weight of low-productivity workers, and the numbers and productivities of the different types of workers.


Australian research on immigrant languages has paid little attention to interactional approaches to language alternation as identity construction, and sites other than the family and the mainstream school. We argue for the need of studies that take into account a wider range of sites, in particular 'community' sites, and adopt fine-grained approaches through micro-level data, to provide more linguistic evidence and support for findings identified using other strategies. Drawing on micro-sociolinguistic research conducted in Australia in the ethnic media and the community languages schools, we show how in these 'in-between' sites ( Tsolidis & Kostogriz, 2008 ) language choice is often a matter of negotiation, and the issues of language use and identity tend to be foregrounded. We also address the questions of why these sites have been less researched and the value of findings from them in terms of language and identity research in multilingual contexts.