This volume introduces a new concept, 'criterial features', for the learning, teaching and testing of English as a second language. The work is based on research conducted within the English Profile Programme at Cambridge University, using the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The authors address the extent to which learners know the grammar, lexicon and usage conventions of English at each level of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). These levels are currently illustrated in functional terms with 'Can Do' statements. Greater specificity and precision can be achieved by using the tagged and parsed corpus, which enables researchers to identify criterial features of the CEFR levels, i.e. properties that are characteristic and indicative of L2 proficiency at each level. In practical terms, once criterial features have been identified, the grammatical and lexical properties of English can be presented to learners more efficiently and in ways that are appropriate to their levels.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
In a prior study, primary resistant acute lymphoblastic leukemia (RES-ALL) was observed in 11 of 176 (6%) adult patients treated with a four drug regimen (IVAP), its incidence being higher in T-cell or Philadelphia (Ph) chromosome/BCR-ABL rearrangement positive ALL cases with a blast cell count >25x10(9)/L (RES-ALL rate 19%, p=0.04). Aiming to minimize this percentage of resistant disease, fractionated cyclophosphamide (f-CY) was then added to the IVAP regimen.

DESIGN AND METHODS
Study 08-96 was a prospective, collaborative phase II trial carried out at eight general hospital centers specialized in the care of hematologic malignancies. Historical IVAP-treated patients served as a retrospective control group. All consecutive, untreated patients (>15 years) with a diagnosis of ALL or advanced-stage lymphoblastic lymphoma (LBL) were eligible. RES-ALL was defined as the persistence of >5% ALL cells in the bone marrow 28-40 days after the start of the IVAP regimen (idarubicin 10 mg/m(2)/d on days 1 and 2; vincristine 2 mg on days 1, 8 and 15; L-asparaginase 6,000 U/m(2) on alternate days 3 6 from day 8; prednisone 60 mg/m(2)/d on days 1-21). In the new study, two f-CY schedules were sequentially adopted: CY 150 or 75 mg/m(2)/bd, given for 4 consecutive days before IVAP (f-CY 1200 or 600, expressing total CY dose in mg/m(2)).

RESULTS
Eighty-eight patients were evaluable (age range 15-74 years, blast count 0-240x10(9)/L, 14 T-lineage, 74 B-lineage, 13 Ph/BCR-ABL+). The first 39 patients received the f-CY 1200 schedule, 22 patients received f-CY 600, and the last 27 patients were not given any f-CY. These changes were dictated by the results of interim analyses of the f-CY groups (RES-ALL rate not reduced, myelotoxicity increased). Altogether, compared with the historical IVAP and no f-CY groups, the incidence of RES-ALL was not decreased by the addition of f-CY 1200/600 in B-lineage ALL, regardless of Ph/BCR-ABL expression and blast count. However, none of 14 T-ALL cases in the new study had RES-ALL (8 in f-CY groups, 5 of whom with >25x10(9)/L blast cells), compared to 5/39 (13%, overall) or 4/21 (19%, with >25x10(9)/L blast cells) among the control cases. Owing to small sample size, this difference was not statistically significant.

INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
This preliminary experience suggests that T-ALL may be more sensitive than B-lineage ALL to an early therapy including f-CY. The hypothesis could be tested in a larger clinical trial.


The spectroscopic response of CdTe detectors has been investigated with an unusual irradiation geometry, i.e., with the beam impinging at various angles through the cathode surface. In fact, the classical planar parallel field (PPF) irradiation geometry, i.e., with photons impinging perpendicularly to the cathode, limits the spectroscopic performance at high energies (E>60 keV), if thick detectors are used, owing to the large spread in the paths of the charge carriers. These paths for the holes can be greatly reduced by using larger impinging angles, thus improving the energy resolution without losses in detection efficiency. Several sets of measurements have been carried out with a narrow photon beam, coming from collimated /sup 57/Co, /sup 109/Cd and /sup 241/Am sources; measurement angles ranged from 0/spl deg/ (orthogonal to the cathode) to 87/spl deg/ (beam grazing the cathode). The spectroscopic responses of the detectors for 14, 22, 60 and 122 keV photon energies have been analyzed. Detectors equipped with both full anodes and microstrip anodes were used. In this last case the rectangular collimated spot of the beam was used with the long side both parallel and orthogonal to the strip direction. The experimental results show that an actual improvement in the spectroscopic performance is obtained, mostly for the high-energy X-rays, by this tilting procedure. Further, this technique allows the evaluation of the detector dead layer thickness. The obtained performance and possible medical and space applications are discussed.


This paper considers identi…cation and estimation of a nonparametric regression model with an unobserved discrete covariate. The sample consists of a dependent variable and a set of covariates, one of which is discrete and arbitrarily correlates with the unobserved covariate. The observed discrete covariate has the same support as the unobserved covariate, and can be interpreted as a proxy or mismeasure of the unobserved one, but with a nonclassical measurement error that has an unknown distribution. We obtain nonparametric identi…cation of the model given monotonicity of the regression function and a rank condition that is directly testable given the data. Our identi…cation strategy does not require additional sample information, such as instrumental variables or a secondary sample. We then estimate the model via the method of sieve maximum likelihood, and provide root-n asymptotic normality and semiparametric e¢ ciency of smooth functionals of interest. Two small simulations are presented to illustrate the identi…cation and the estimation results.


The importance of small and medium enterprises has been recognized by most developing countries. This is due to their contribution to the national economy and employment opportunities including Malaysia. However, in their rapid establishment, they are still facing the problem of weakening and failure at almost 42% in Malaysia. In this modern day of environment, either large companies or SMEs also have challenges and weaknesses. In order to sustain and survive in contributing to the economy of the country, risk management or enterprise risk management (ERM) has been seen as a tool that could help SMEs to grow and to survive in a global market. ERM is not new in Malaysia as it has been adopted by many large corporations and financial institutions but for SMEs, ERM is a new thing that needs to be explored and understood. The study of ERM adoption has been increasing in recent years but for SMEs, it is still sparse. In view of this, the purpose of this study is to discover the determinants of intention to adopt ERM by manufacturing SMEs. The conceptual framework of this study was built form the fundamental understanding on ERM determinants intention to adopt, theories form the combination of DTOE, TOE and IDT model which comprises of selected demographic profile, decision-maker, organizational and external environment. This study model posited on firm size, firm age, firm sector, top management support, presence of Chief Risk Officer (CRO), firm complexity, ownership structure, regulatory pressure and competitive pressure. From the questionnaire survey, 160 responses had been analyzed using the Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) 22.0. The findings revealed that intention to adopt ERM by SMEs was influenced by the regulatory pressure and competitive pressure. Next, the intention also driven by the presence of CRO, firm complexity and ownership structure. Surprisingly, top management support had no significant effect on the intention to adopt ERM in SMEs and this could be due to lack of knowledge on ERM benefits and the newness of ERM in SMEs industry. A competent study of SMEs is able to provide an understanding and additional knowledge on the ERM in SME for the practitioners and academician. The discussion and implication provided in this study would strengthen the body of knowledge on the ERM intention to adopt and adoption which affects the SMEs business performance, besides acting as a reference for empirical research.


We review methods and assess the policy influence of a series of publiclyfunded Cost of Illness studies, mostly published since 1990. Our analysis shows that headline cost estimates, including the influential paper by Collins and Lapsley (2008), depend on an incorrect procedure for incorporating real world imperfections in consumer information and rationality, producing a substantial over-estimate of costs. Other errors further inflate these estimates, resulting in headline costs that are unrelated to either total economic welfare or GDP and therefore of no policy relevance. Counting only external, policy-relevant costs not only deflates overall figures substantially but also results in rank order changes among cost categories. Despite this, Cost of Illness studies appear effective in mobilizing public opinion towards increased regulation and taxation that is not justified by an expected increase in economic welfare: this is the cost of cost studies.


All-optical relaying techniques are proposed to improve the error performance and overall distance coverage of free-space optical (FSO) communication systems. An all-optical amplify-and-forward (OAF) relaying technique is presented where the received optical field is amplified at each relay. A novel channel model is developed including field distributions and weak turbulence. Simulation results indicate that OAF significantly enhances the BER performance, but is severely degraded by background light. In order to remove the impact of background noise, an optical regenerate-and-forward (ORF) relaying technique is also presented. At a bit rate of 10 Gbps, using two equally-spaced OAF relays under a turbulence-free atmospheric condition increases the total communicating distance by 0.9 km over direct transmission at a BER of 10-5, while using two ORF relays provides an additional gain in range of 1.9 km. In general, replacing OAF relays by ORF relays extends the total communicating distance at a cost of implementation complexity.


Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines are attracting increased attention in education. The iSTEM 2017 conference was a professional development program designed to acquaint pre-service teachers with interdisciplinary, research-based STEM instructional strategies that can transform traditional classroom instruction into dynamic learning environments. The STEM Education Scholars (STEMES) is a Learning Community of Practice, housed in the College of Education, at a midsized mid-western public research university. The program of study focused on designing a professional development program for future Pre-K12 teachers. The iSTEM 2017 conference presented by the STEMES Community of Practice sought to inform pre-service teachers of STEM pedagogy, and focused on innovative classroom resources, hands-on learning and increasing content confidence when incorporating STEM into classroom instruction. iSTEM 2017 was held in February, 2017, and offered twenty refereed presentations and workshop sessions, a keynote address, and a closing session to over 200 pre-service teachers. Conference participants chose sessions, participated in game-like experiences and shared their learning with each other as well as with conference organizers. Results from participant self-reported surveys were analyzed to measure the impact of the conference on improving participants' confidence in teaching STEM topics, and their attitudes about the instructional methods. These results were added to the conference proceedings, which also contain documentation of each iSTEM 2017 session. Findings suggest that the iSTEM 2017 conference had an overall positive impact on participants' familiarity with ANALYSIS OF A STEM EDUCATION PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE


Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis or caseous lymphadenitis is a common condition in sheep and goats. Two cases are described involving otitis media-interna and, in one case, cerebellar abscessation. The first case began with otitis externa and progressed to cerebellar abscessation, presumably as a result of C. pseudotuberculosis infection based on the macroscopic appearance of the abscess. The second case of otitis media-interna involved C. pseudotuberculosis with parasitic encephalitis or secondary meningo-encephalitis. Caseous lymphadenitis is a worldwide problem in livestock and also has zoonotic implications. Antimicrobial therapy of abscesses is often unrewarding due to the thick encapsulation of the abscesses and the extremely contagious nature of the organism. Alternative measures of treating this condition must be sought. In flocks or herds where caseous lymphadenitis has been diagnosed, it should be considered as a differential diagnosis for neurological conditions. The potential for spread must be kept in mind when it is suspected to be the cause of otitis in livestock.


BACKGROUND
Neuropathic pain is difficult to treat. We identified those studies in the literature in which the effectiveness of alpha lipoic acid as a treatment for neuropathic pain was evaluated.

METHODS
Systematic literature review. The databases MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched using the keywords 'lipoic acid', 'thioctic acid', 'diabet*', and the medical subject headings (MeSH ) 'thioctic acid' and 'diabetes mellitus'. Randomised placebo-controlled trials (RCTs) and meta-analyses were selected and assessed for their methodological quality.

RESULTS
Five RCTs and one meta-analysis were found. The Total Symptom Score (TSS) was used as the primary outcome measure. A significant improvement in the TSS was reported in four of the RCTs. An oral or intravenous alpha lipoic dose of at least 600 mg per day resulted in a 50% reduction in the TSS. However, compared with the control group, the TSS reduction in most groups was less than 30%, which is the threshold presumed to be clinically relevant. Four RCTs were of good quality (level of evidence 1b), one RCT had methodological limitations (level 2b), and the methodological quality of the meta-analysis was insufficient for the purposes of this review.

CONCLUSION
Based on the currently available evidence, when given intravenously at a dosage of 600 mg once daily over a period of three weeks, alpha lipoic acid leads to a significant and clinically relevant reduction in neuropathic pain (grade of recommendation A). It is unclear if the significant improvements seen after three to five weeks of oral administration at a dosage of >or= 600 mg daily are clinically relevant.


Howard Schwartz, the author of this extraordinary collection of Jewish tales and parables, is one of the most creative, inventive, and inspiring Jewish writers of our generation. When one reads his work, the question arises: what is taken from a primary text and what is invented by the imagination of the author? The answer is a complex one, for as Cynthia Ozick has observed about the writing of Howard Schwartz, 'Each tale is original, yet grow(s) out of the old traditions and tellings.' Ozick adds that Schwartz is 'under the spell of Jewish dream and legend,' pointing to the fact that he is a creative vessel: he has poured the tradition into his soul and then, combining the tradition with his own experience and imagination creates new tales of great depth and profundity. Describing his first encounters with the midrashic literature of the Jewish sages as 'a major turning point' in his life and writing career, Schwartz immersed himself in traditional Jewish literature, including the Bible, the Talmud, and the midrashic collections, as well as kabbalistic and hasidic texts. Schwartz also identifies the writings of Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, as well as Sufi and Zen parables, as sources of inspiration. As he writes, 'The ancient models served as a living tradition for me,' and he points to the fact that his tales 'emerged out of the impulse to fuse my own imagination with that of traditional Jewish lore.' Adam's Soul: The Collected Tales of Howard Schwartz brings together three collections of the author's writings. The book begins with a remarkable gathering of individual tales described by Schwartz as using the 'midrashic method,' as well as being in the tradition of medieval Jewish folktales, hasidic tales, and the writings of I. L. Peretz, S. Y. Agnon, and I. B. Singer. The second part of the book consists of Schwartz's highly acclaimed collection of stories titled Captive Soul of the Messiah. Based on the life and teachings of the hasidic master Rabbi Nach


"Brandon, how did you feel?" "When?" "During it?" Philip Morgan to Brandon Shaw LIKE ROBERT BRESSON'S L'Argent (1983) and Vittorio DeSica's Bicycle Thief (1949), Rope is possibly one of the most disconcerting films ever made. As Thomas A. Bauso suggests in Hitchcock's Re-Released Films, "[Hitchcock's] central achievement in viewer disorientation is his simultaneous provoking of his audience to regard the crime with horror and his implicating of that audience in the performance of the crime. More than anything else, this complex process accounts for the unpleasant sensations that Rope seems to produce in many of its viewers" (232; italics mine). The film contains elements of irrationality and causes a degree of viewer alienation that was quite rare for the American screen in 1948. In later films greater permissiveness in Hollywood allowed Hitchcock to vividly portray the destruction of an innocent (Psycho, The Birds, Topaz, Frenzy), something that, with the exception of Rope, was almost impossible to introduce in his films from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Moreover, the murder of David Kentley (Dick Hogan) in Rope, in spite of his nonexistence as a character, unlike Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in Psycho, is particularly heinous because of its utter meaninglessness and cruelty. David's death is made that much more unsettling for the viewer not from knowing him as a character but from being exposed to those in his life who loved him. The screenplay was adapted from the 1929 British play by Patrick Hamilton, produced in the United States as Rope's End, which bears many similarities to the real-life Leopold and Loeb murder case of 1924. What makes Rope compelling is the double-sided manner in which the story unfolds. On the one hand, the viewer experiences the inside jokes and black humor along with Brandon and Philip because it knows about the murder from the beginning of the film. On the other hand, the viewer is subjected to little shocks and traps that Hitchcock introduces, such as when we laugh at Rupert's discussion about "Strangulation Day" or "Cut a Throat Week" only to notice Mr. Kentley looking out the window because he is worried about his absent son. This duality is part of the film's fundamental structure: as the real time of the events unfolds ostensibly without any cuts or filmic compression of time, the camera movements weave in and out and back and forth, creating a seamless continuity that often deepens these traps for the viewer. When we hear Mr. Kentley say off-screen that he is a very fortunate man today, because of the books Brandon has offered him, the camera has moved to a close-up of Philip looking distraught, having been told by Mrs. Atwater that his hands will bring him great fame. In a discussion of these and other examples below, we will see that this kind of double-edged tension between visual and dramatic information puts more and more of an ambiguous moral strain upon the viewer. Two affluent, homosexual lovers, Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Philip Morgan (Farley Granger), murder a former prep school companion, David Kentley. Hitchcock was keenly aware of how far a verbal or dramatic nuance could go to suggest a homosexual alliance between characters. In Rope the homosexual sub-text is thematically linked to elitism and perversity. Brandon's espousal of a Nietzschean doctrine of intellectual superiority is more than superficially linked to the Nazi doctrine of ethnic superiority. Brandon and Philip believe they possess a Nietzsehean superiority that places their actions above the judgment of conventional law. During a conversation with Mr. Kentley (Cedrick Hardwicke) that is initiated by Rupert's (James Stewart) tongue-in-cheek discussion of murder as an art ("Not one of the seven lively, perhaps, but an art nevertheless," says Rupert), Brandon asserts his position that those who are entitled to commit murder "are those men who are of such intellectual and cultural superiority that they are above the traditional moral concepts. …


Written by a recognized expert, and based on his experience in teaching the subject to students with a variety of educational backgrounds, The Science of Grapevines: Anatomy and Physiology is the only book to comprehensively explore the physiology of the grapevine as it occurs around the world.While other books have focused on the vines of specific regions, the globalization of the wine industry and the resulting increase of lands around the world being used for grapevine cultivation has left a gap in information. This book addresses not only the specific issues and concerns of grapevines from regions around the world, but includes important emerging topics such as global climate change, water relations, temperature effect and more.The truly unique approach of this book is the scientifically-grounded exploration, often applying discoveries in other plant species, of the main physiological processes underlying grapevine form and function, their interactions, developmental and environmental control, and their implications for practical vineyard management


Realistic virtual worlds are increasingly used for training, decision making, entertainment, and many other purposes, which require the convincing modeling and animation of virtual characters as well as the faithful behavior of devices in their environment. Intelligent Simulated Realities (ISReal) is a platform for virtual environments that are enriched with a high-level semantic description and populated by intelligent agents using Semantic Web technologies to perceive, understand, and interact with their environment. In this paper, we present the basic architecture of the ISReal platform and show the user interaction in an agent assisted


The plains harvest mouse (Reithrodontomys montanus) inhabits grasslands in the Great Plains, but little is known about its ecology and natural history in native tallgrass prairie. We sampled native tallgrass prairie in spring and autumn by standard traplines on the Konza Prairie Biological Station during autumn 1981-spring 2013 and for shorter time periods in woodlands and brome fields. In addition to our long-term research, we studied small mammals on a large Prairie Grid (∼13 ha) that was trapped intensively (about every 2 weeks except in winter) during 1984–1987. Plains harvest mice (n = 39) were captured in native prairie but not in brome fields or wooded habitats. In all prairie sites, they were found to be rare (1.1 individuals/10,000 trap nights [TN]); in 14 Core Sites sampled for 32 years, abundance was higher in autumn (1.95/10,000 TN) than in spring (0.70/10,000 TN). It was not apparent that these low abundances were related to precipitation or another weather feature. On the Prairie Grid, plains harvest mice were associated with uplands and secondarily with slopes, whereas they avoided lowlands. Furthermore, they showed a positive response to conditions that are created during the first growing season following spring prescribed fires. Overall, 44% of individuals were males and this value did not differ from a 1:1 sex ratio. Non-reproductive females (8.7 g) were slightly larger than males (8.3 g); only females occupied the largest body size class (11.0–11.5 g). The smallest pregnant female weighed 9.0 g, whereas the smallest female that was lactating as evidenced by conspicuous mammae weighed 7.0 g. Pregnancies were recorded in spring, summer and autumn but not in winter; about one-third of females captured were pregnant. A juvenile (5.5 g) was captured in summer. We conclude that to understand this rare species (ca. 0.1% of the small mammal community on Konza Prairie) even studies with small sample sizes are important to elucidate the natural history and ecology of the plains harvest mouse.


The legal aspects at the junction of interstate energy cooperation have become increasingly important in a world that is hungry for energy security. This book focuses on selected legal issues relating to international energy governance. International law as it stands today is not well equipped to handle international energy governance issues fully. This legal deficiency affects energy security negatively. If the currently fragmented and multi-layered international energy governance regime were streamlined for greater legal cohesiveness and international political and economic cooperation, it would promote energy security. Some chapters of the book take a broader view on interstate energy cooperation, such as energy transit, energy market liberalization and energy investment. Others focus on specific areas of such cooperation, such as trade and energy; trade, environment and energy; and energy exploration and maritime delimitation disputes. The book also presents an analysis of European Union energy governance and renewable energy.


Until recently, most managers of publicly held corporations had little reason to worry about corporate criminal liability. Times have changed. Criminal activity puts public corporations at greater peril than previously. State and federal prosecutors are more willing to proceed against publicly held firms and their managers. Convicted corporations now face onerous criminal fines and civil penalties as well as intrusive government oversight and other nonmonetary sanctions. Managers also now are more responsible for the fate of their companies should a crime occur. In contrast to the traditional approach to corporate criminal liability - under which there was little managers could do to avoid a conviction or reduce the sanction once a crime was detected - under the modern approach, managers can take actions that fully or partially insulate a company from criminal liability for its employees' wrongs. Managers can protect their firms by responding proactively with programs designed to deter crime. Managers of publicly held firms must understand the changing landscape of federal criminal law if they are to successfully respond to the challenges presented by potential wrongdoing by managers and other employees. This chapter discusses how managers can best respond to the evolving practice of corporate criminal liability. It highlights measures that managers can take to deter crime; it also discusses what managers can do to reduce potential sanctions for any crimes that are committed. Finally, the chapter discusses problems with the current system and pitfalls that arise for managers attempting to promote good corporate compliance.


Fetal heart rate monitoring affects the lives of millions of women and infants every year in the United States alone. Used by all members of the obstetric team nurses, students, midwives, and physicians – it is the primary method to assess fetal oxygenation in both the antepartum and intrapartum setting. Improving outcomes and promoting patient safety depends upon correct use and interpretation of fetal heart rate monitoring, and is crucial to daily obstetric practice.


From its creation in the early fourteenth century to its dissolution in the sixteenth, the nunnery at Dartford was among the richest in England. Although obliged to support not only its own community but also a priory of Dominican friars at King's Langley, Dartford prospered. Records attest to the business skill of the Dartford nuns, as they managed the house's numerous holdings of land and property, together with the rents and services owed them. That the Dartford nuns were capable businesswomen is not surprising, since the house was also a center of female education. For Nancy Bradley Warren, the story of Dartford exemplifies the vibrancy of nuns' material and spiritual lives in later medieval England. Revising the long-held view that fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English nunneries were impoverished both financially and religiously, Warren clarifies that the women in female monastic communities like Dartford were not woefully incompetent at managing their affairs. Instead, she reveals the complex role of female monasticism in diverse systems of production and exchange. Like the nuns at Dartford, women religious in late medieval England were enmeshed in material, symbolic, political, and spiritual economies that were at times in harmony and at other times in conflict with each other. Building on emerging cross-disciplinary trends in feminist scholarship on medieval religion, Warren extends ongoing debates about textual and economic constructions of women's identities to the rarely considered evidence of monastic theory and practice. To this end, Spiritual Economies emphasizes that the cloister was not impermeable. As worldly forces such as economic trends and political conflicts affected life in the nunneries, so too did religious practices have political impact. In breaking down the convent wall, Warren also succeeds in breaching the boundaries separating the material and the symbolic, the religious and the secular, the literary and the historical. She turns to a wide range of sources-from legislative texts, court records, and financial accounts to devotional treatises and political propaganda-to explore the centrality of female monasticism to the flowering of female spirituality and to the later Middle Ages at large.


The definition of a unit of structural evolution which can be applied to Precambrian as well as to younger areas is discussed, and the spatial unit "orogen" is selected as the most suitable term for such a unit. It means any zone in which orogenic movements occur. This term is broader than "geosyncline," for such movements are not limited to geosynclines. The orogens of the different parts of the earth vary greatly in dimension, form, and situation with respect to older zones. The stages of a "drama" (a term preferred to "orogenic cycle") are outlined and applied to an interpretation of the history of the African continent.


The growth of the World Wide Web has spawned a wide variety of new information sources, which has also left users with the daunting task of determining which sources are valid. Many users rely on the Web as an information source because of the low cost of information retrieval. It is also claimed that the Web has evolved into a powerful business tool. Examples include highly popular business services such as Amazon.com and Kalahari.net. It is estimated that around 80% of users utilize search engines to locate information on the Internet. This, by implication, places emphasis on the underlying importance of Web pages being listed on search engines indices. Empirical evidence that the placement of key words in certain areas of the body text will have an influence on the Web sites' visibility to search engines could not be found in the literature. The result of two experiments indicated that key words should be concentrated towards the top, and diluted towards the bottom of a Web page to increase visibility. However, care should be taken in terms of key word density, to prevent search engine algorithms from raising the spam alarm.


Abstract This study presents the results of the reprocessing and geological reinterpretation of a trio of regional seismic reflection lines acquired by the Ministere des Ressources naturelles du Quebec in 1978. The three profiles (M-2001, M-2002 and M-2003), which represent 280 km of data, cross the Chambly-Fortierville syncline and provide images of the St. Lawrence Platform and the Appalachian foreland thrust belt of southern Quebec. Profile M-2001, the longest profile, extends across the full width of the southern Quebec Appalachians. Post-stack seismic data processing has improved the quality of the original seismic sections by enhancing coherent reflection events and attenuating reflection noise. Time migration further improved the seismic data. The seismic interpretations provide new information on subsurface geology, including the recognition of complex structural patterns in platform and foreland units, the presence of a triangle zone at the structural front, and the geometry of thrust slices of platform units and Appalachian thrust nappes. The M-2001 line also provides images of the internal Humber Zone, including back-thrust faults on the flanks of Notre Dame Mountains Anticlinorium and mega thrust wedges, possibly involving Grenvillian basement, within the core of the anticlinorium. In southern Quebec, six conventional petroleum plays, plus shale gas potential, are recognized in the St. Lawrence Platform and Appalachian Foreland. From these, the Saint-Flavien field (161 million m3 of past natural gas production) and other potential targets are imaged by the three seismic profiles studied. The reprocessing and reinterpretation of these seismic reflection profiles provide new insights into the structure, geological evolution and petroleum potential of the St. Lawrence Platform and the Appalachian foreland thrust belt of southern Quebec.


In the past, governments had more freedom in setting their taxes as the barriers to free movement of capital and people were high. The gradual process of globalization is lowering these barriers and results in rising capital flows and greater manpower mobility. Tax competition exists when governments are encouraged to lower fiscal burdens to either encourage the inflow of productive resources or discourage the exodus of those resources. With tax competition in the era of globalization politicians have to keep tax rates "reasonable" to dissuade workers and investors from moving to a lower tax environment. Most countries started to reform their tax policies to improve their competitiveness. However, the tax burden is just one part of a complex formula describing national competitiveness. The other criteria like total manpower cost, labor market flexibility, education levels, political stability, legal system stability and efficiency are also important.


The Supreme Court's modern interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause in the realm of interstate commerce is textually problematic, unfaithful to the Constitution's original meaning, and contains positive incentives for Congress to over-regulate. The Necessary and Proper Clause was intended to embody the common law doctrine of principals and incidents, and the Court should employ that doctrine as its interpretive benchmark. The common law doctrine contains less, although some, bias toward over-regulation, and it is flexible enough to adapt to changing social conditions. Adherence to the common law doctrine would markedly improve Commerce Power jurisprudence and reduce incentives for harmful congressional behavior.


This paper present a dead variable analysis algorithm for reducing the state
space of UPPAAL models. By resetting irrelevant variables to their initial value
reductions of UPPAAL models are achieved.
The developed algorithm consists of two parts. In the rst part we dene an
algorithm to determine the relevance of variables. We also cope with the various
features of UPPAAL like, for instance, function calls and value passing variables
and we present an algorithm to determine the relevance of variables that are
used in a property. In the second part we transform the original timed automata
by introducing resets for irrelevant variables. We improve on extending
transformation algorithms by not resetting irrelevant variables at every location.
Based on the developed algorithm we implemented a tool that performs the
transformation and by executing this tool for three case studies we show that
it indeed achieves reductions.
We conclude with noting that, next to the reductions, the main benet of our
work is that UPPAAL users do not have to perform the resets manually any
more, making their work easier and less error prone, as these resets can now be
performed automatically.


This paper examines social structures underlying economic activity in Second Life (SL), a massively multiplayer virtual world that allows users to create and trade virtual objects and commodities. We find that users conduct many of their transactions both within their social networks and within groups. Using frequency of chat as a proxy of tie strength, we observe that free items are more likely to be exchanged as the strength of the tie increases. Social ties particularly play a significant role in paid transactions for sellers with a moderately sized customer base. We further find that sellers enjoying repeat business are likely to be selling to niche markets, because their customers tend to be contained in a smaller number of groups. But while social structure and interaction can help explain a seller's revenues and repeat business, they provide little information in the forecasting a seller's future performance. Our quantitative analysis is complemented by a novel method of visualizing the transaction activity of a seller, including revenue, customer base growth, and repeat business.


Motivated by the problem of query answering over multiple structured commonsense theories, we exploit graph-based techniques to improve the efficiency of theorem proving for structured theories. Theories are organized into subtheories that are minimally connected by the literals they share. We presentmessage-passing algorithms that reason over these theories using consequence finding, specializing our algorithms for the case of first-order resolution, and for batch and concurrent theorem proving. We provide an algorithm that restricts the interaction between subtheories by exploiting the polarity of literals. We attempt to minimize the reasoning within each individual partition by exploiting existing algorithms for focused incremental and general consequence finding. Finally, we propose an algorithm that compiles each subtheory into one in a reduced sublanguage. We have proven the soundness and completeness of all of these algorithms.


We investigate the lasing spectra, threshold gain values, and emission directionalities for a two-dimensional microcavity laser with a "kite" contour. The cavity modes are considered accurately using the linear electromagnetic formalism of the lasing eigenvalue problem with exact boundary and radiation conditions. We develop a numerical algorithm based on the Muller boundary integral equations discretized using the Nystrom technique, which has theoretically justified and fast convergence. The influence of the deviation from the circular shape on the modal characteristics is studied numerically for the modes polarized in the cavity plane, demonstrating opportunities of directionality improvement together with preservation of a low threshold. These advantageous features are shown for the perturbed whispering-gallery modes of high-enough azimuth orders. Other modes can display improved directivities while suffering from drastically higher threshold levels. Experiments based on planar organic microcavity lasers confirm the coexistence of Fabry–Perot-like and whispering-gallery-like modes in kite-shaped cavities and show good agreement with the predicted far-field angular diagrams.


This study is based upon plumes seen close to the solar limb within coronal holes in the emission from ions formed in the temperature region of 1 MK, in particular, the band of Fe ix 171 Å from EIT on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. It is shown, using geometric arguments, that two distinct classes of structure contribute to apparently similar plume observations. Quasi-cylindrical structures are anchored in discrete regions of the solar surface (beam plumes), and faint extended structures require integration along the line of sight (LOS) in order to reproduce the observed brightness. This second category, sometimes called "curtains," are ubiquitous within the polar holes and are usually more abundant than the beam plumes, which depend more on the enhanced magnetic structures detected at their footpoints. It is here proposed that both phenomena are based on plasma structures in which emerging magnetic loops interact with ambient monopolar fields, involving reconnection. The important difference is in terms of physical scale. It is proposed that curtains are composed of a large number of microplumes, distributed along the LOS. The supergranule network provides the required spatial structure. It is shown by modeling that the observations can be reproduced if microplumes are concentrated within some 5 Mm of the cell boundaries. For this reason, we propose to call this second population "network plumes." The processes involved could represent a major contribution to the heating mechanism of the solar corona.


We examine whether cross-firm return predictability is associated with accounting quality (AQ), and find that stock returns of good AQ firms significantly positively predict one-month-ahead stock returns to industry- and size- matched poor AQ firms. In testing a delayed-information-processing mechanism behind the cross-firm return predictability, we find that: (i) Analyst earnings forecast revisions (FR) mimic the return patterns, as FR of good AQ firms significantly positively predict one-month-ahead FR of matched poor AQ firms; (ii) Cross-firm return predictability is concentrated in months with substantial news arrival, but not in no-news months; (iii) Cross-firm return predictability is stronger when the good AQ predictor firms have a richer information environment than poor AQ firms as proxied by analyst following and institutional ownership. Collectively the results uncover a new relation between accounting quality and stock return dynamics.


We review the emergence of a novel regulatory innovation called a 'regulatory sandbox,' designed to incubate innovation in the financial sector in a relaxed, but safeguarded regulatory environment. It also provides a symbiotic environment for innovators to test new technologies and for regulators to understand their implications for the financial sector and consumer protection.

While the concept has been embraced by a growing number of developed and developing world regulators, we describe where and how these sandboxes are being used in developing countries. We assess that for these countries, establishing thematic regulatory sandboxes which focus on specific national financial and developmental priorities - such as remittances - rather than spanning multiple national agendas may be preferred as a more efficient use of scarce resources.


This report presents a profile and benchmark of the water system in the Greater Bogor region of Indonesia as part of the Australia-Indonesia Centre's Urban Water Cluster (UWC).The tool used for benchmarking is the Water Sensitive Cities Index (WSC Index), developed by the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities. It enables diagnosis of key strengths and improvement needs for 34 indicators across 7 goals to inform prioritisation of actions and provide a framework for ongoing monitoring and evaluation of a city's water sensitive performance.


This paper argues that the spatial decay function of agglomeration economies is much more complex than is often assumed in the agglomeration literature. We provide insight into this issue by analyzing a nationwide and spatially rich wage panel. The key finding is that wages and urbanization are not significantly related on short distances ( This article is revised on February 28th 2018. The revised version (Discussion Paper 376) can be found here . This positive effect attenuates across geographic space and becomes insignificant after 40-80km. This non-monotone relation between wages and distance to economic mass is in line with recently observed trend towards employment decentralization, because it suggests that agglomeration economies on short distances, i.e. in city centers, are offset by congestion externalities. Additionally, this paper finds no evidence that foreign economic mass affects wages in the Netherlands, which suggests that national borders are still a substantial barrier for economic interaction.


The use of visual methods in social science research has become popular, and creative techniques are widely recognised as having the potential to evoke more nuanced understanding of the ways in which other people experience their worlds. This 'methods in action' case focuses on the visual data production techniques of photo-elicitation, mapping and collage making, and examines four key areas. First, the case engages with debates around the participatory potential of visual data production and complicates the idea that visual methods are necessarily participatory. Second, practicalities are considered in relation to working with visual data in the field. Third, the case explores the idea of familiarity by introducing data examples where visual methods


The international carbon market, specifically the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) created by the Kyoto Protocol, is an important contributor to the breathtaking growth of renewable energy in China. Ever since its debut, it has been at the center of the policy debate whether the CDM achieves real emission reductions or just generates "hot air." The goal of this paper is to investigate its effect on wind power investment and to simulate the counterfactual scenario without the carbon market. I develop a fully dynamic model that incorporates the strategic interactions of wind farms that are induced by agglomeration externalities. The empirical results suggest that only 22 percent of wind power projects would not have happened with the proceeds from carbon credits, which throws the additionality of the CDM into question. The results also imply that the development of wind power may not be dramatically slowed down by the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol.


Power lies with convention and truth with the punished individualist. Control of perception is the essence of power. This scenario denies the joy, the real joy, expressed in immediate aesthetic responses. Research results suggest battle lines seem to have been drawn between those who tolerate creative thinking and those who do not. These authors were influenced by the mentorship of creativity experts E. Paul Torrance for Henrickson and John C. Gowan for Miller. They conclude, while the achievements of creative efforts are often very rewarding, indeed, the process of arriving there can be disturbing and painful. Research by Henrickson in Iowa indicated the non-creative personality is content with having achieved a conventional image and as for anything else couldn't care less. Yet, those iconoclasts who have unique creative gifts can make a significant difference to society, science and art. Their relationship to their life's work is often deeply spiritual or driven by a sense of destiny and mission which is revealed in their works. Creativity is an emergent property of extraordinary human development. This article explores the works of creativity experts, promoting deep understanding of the complex territory of human expression, including perception, metaphor, narrative, praxis and theory. Creativity reveals the deep connection between mind and matter that modern physicists are just beginning to explore. The crisis of a global turning point demands something extraordinary from the best and brightest of us. A new model of research must not only include but encourage divergent or "Out of the Schrodinger's Box" thinking. It is often the artist not the academic that the public listens to, along with their own observations of changing thoughts and attitudes. This creates new environments and restructures the cultural ambiance. Part I of this article contains: The Minority Report; Double-Edged Gifts; Awesome Beauty; Self Regulatory Process; and Perceptive & Silenced Minorities.


Organized rural development in Sweden can be described at two levels; a local level with a large number of local actors organized in a so-called village-action movement, and a national level where political parties and the government present different suggestions on how to develop rural areas. However, characteristic for Sweden is also a close relationship between these two levels and a bottom-up perspective encouraging local initiatives, which is exemplified by All Sweden Shall Live (ASSL); a general rural development organization characterized by both policy-making ambitions and support of local development projects. A central but also ambiguous concept in the organization ASSL's campaigns and ideology is 'the local,' and with discourse theory, as a point of departure, this case-study examines how different meanings of 'the local' are used to advocate investments in local perspectives and local measures. Special attention is directed towards how meanings of 'the local' form a 'fantasy,' an emotional and ideological worldview, and how this worldview is of importance in the organization's self-legitimization and for its potential as an agent of political mobilization. While ASSL is a Swedish organization, the subject is of general relevance because ideological investments in both 'the local' and 'the regional' are common, for example, in processes of relocalization—local responses to globalization—and in arguments about the importance of localities and regions in a global economy. Furthermore, the paper illustrates how such investments can have unexpected effects such as the transfer of responsibility for rural development from the government to local actors.


Pancreatic adenocarcinoma displays a variety of molecular changes that evolve exponentially with time and lead cancer cells not only to survive, but also to invade the surrounding tissues and metastasise to distant sites. These changes include: genetic alterations in oncogenes and cancer suppressor genes; changes in the cell cycle and pathways leading to apoptosis; and also changes in epithelial to mesenchymal transition. The most common alterations involve the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene, the HER2 gene, and the K-ras gene. In particular, the loss of function of tumor-suppressor genes has been documented in this tumor, especially in CDKN2a, p53, DPC4 and BRCA2 genes. However, other molecular events involved in pancreatic adenocarcinoma pathogenesis contribute to its development and maintenance, specifically epigenetic events. In fact, key tumor suppressors that are well established to play a role in pancreatic adenocarcinoma may be altered through hypermethylation, and oncogenes can be upregulated secondary to permissive histone modifications. Indeed, factors involved in tumor invasiveness can be aberrantly expressed through dysregulated microRNAs. This review summarizes current knowledge of pancreatic carcinogenesis from its initiation within a normal cell until the time that it has disseminated to distant organs. In this scenario, highlighting these molecular alterations could provide new clinical tools for early diagnosis and new effective therapies for this malignancy.


Marine environment is a diverse and untapped source of a wide variety of biologically active compounds. Among several organisms, marine actinomycete has been known to be a potential source for novel enzymes. Diabetes mellitus is a long term metabolic disorder characterized by hyperglycaemia. In the present study, marine actinobacteria isolated from the marine sediments of the coastal areas of Kothapattanam, Ongole, Andhra Pradesh, were used to screen for alpha-amylase inhibitor and antioxidant compounds, which are known to manage type 2 diabetes. A total of 20 actinobacteria were isolated from the marine sediments. Among the 20 isolates, an actinobacterial isolate designated VITMA1 showed 58.16% inhibition against alpha amylase enzyme. Further, VITMA1 also exhibited antioxidant activity. It showed 61.82% of DPPH radical scavenging activity, reducing power at 1.933 and a metal chelating activity of 20.33% respectively. The combined effect of antioxidant activity and alpha-amylase enzyme inhibition makes the secondary metabolite obtained from marine actinobacterial isolate, a potent anti-diabetic drug. Based on phenotypic characteristics, VITMA1 was identified upto the genus level as Streptomyces sp.


Due to the increased popularity of herbomineral preparations in the healthcare sector, a new proprietary herbomineral formulation was formulated consisting of ashwagandha root extract and three minerals viz. zinc chloride, magnesium gluconate, and sodium selenate. The objective of the study was to evaluate the in vitro effect of Biofield Energy Healing (The Trivedi Effect®) on the test formulation using murine splenocyte cells. The herbomineral formulation was divided into two parts; one defined as the control, while the other part was treated with the Biofield Energy Healing Treatment performed from a remote distance by twenty renowned Biofield Energy Healers (The Trivedi Effect®) and defined as the Biofield Treated formulation. The splenocyte cells were exposed to test formulations at concentration from 0.00001053 to 10.53 µg/mL and were analyzed after 48 hours for cell viability using MTT assay. The expression of the cytokines (TNF-α, IFN-γ, IL-1β, and MIP-1α) was determined using ELISA assay. The cell viability data showed that all the tested concentration ranges were found to be safe with percentage cell viability at more than 80%. Further, TNF-α expression was significantly inhibited in the Biofield Treated test formulation group with respect to the vehicle control, while at 0.001053 and 0.1053 µg/mL, the expression was suppressed by 1.70% and 8.16%, respectively in the Biofield Treated test formulation compared to the untreated formulation. However, a significant immunosuppression was reported in IFN-γ expression at 0.00001053, 0.0001053, 0.01053, 0.1053, and 1.053 µg/mL by 12.63%, 2.31%, 8.31%, 9.15%, and 7.86%, respectively in the Biofield Treated test formulation compared with the untreated test formulation. The MIP-1α expression was inhibited by 8.31%, 21.53%, and 8.70% at 0.0001053, 0.01053, and 0.1053 µg/mL, respectively in the Biofield Treated formulation compared with the untreated test formulation. However, IL-1β expression was significantly suppressed by 19.72% at concentration 0.00001053 µg/mL in the Biofield Treated test formulation compared with the untreated test formulation. Thus, the down-regulation of tested cytokines and chemokines in the Biofield Energy Healing test formulation might be applicable for controlling acute and chronic inflammation in many clinical diseases. Overall, the results demonstrated that The Trivedi Effect®- Biofield Energy Healing (TEBEH) has the capacity to potentiate the immunomodulatory activity of the test formulation, which can be useful against autoimmune disorders. Biofield Treated Test formulation may also be useful in anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, stress management and in preventing immune-mediated tissue damage in organ transplants by improving overall health and quality of life.


From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Spanish and Portuguese monarchs launched global campaigns for territory and trade. This process spurred two efforts that reshaped the world: missions to spread Christianity to the four corners of the globe, and the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. These efforts joined in unexpected ways to give rise to black saints. Erin Kathleen Rowe presents the untold story of how black saints - and the slaves who venerated them - transformed the early modern church. By exploring race, the Atlantic slave trade, and global Christianity, she provides new ways of thinking about blackness, holiness, and cultural authority. Rowe transforms our understanding of global devotional patterns and their effects on early modern societies by looking at previously unstudied sculptures and paintings of black saints, examining the impact of black lay communities, and analysing controversies unfolding in the church about race, moral potential, enslavement, and salvation.


Packed with full-color photographs and examples straight from recent headlines, WRITING AND REPORTING NEWS: A COACHING METHOD, 8e uses tips and techniques from revered writing coaches and award-winning journalists to help you develop the writing and reporting skills you need to succeed in the changing world of journalism. An entire chapter is devoted to media ethics, while ethical dilemmas in each chapter give you practice working through ethical issues you might face on the job. Offering the most up-to-date coverage available, the Eighth Edition fully integrates multimedia content into the chapters-reflecting the way the news world actually operates. An all-new book glossary gives you quick access to newer Journalism lingo. In addition, the book now offers MindTap Communication, a fully online, highly personalized learning experience that enhances learner engagement and improves outcomes. Integrating new trends in the convergence of print, broadcast, and online media, WRITING AND REPORTING NEWS equips you with the fundamental skills you need for media careers now-and in the future.


Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another-architecture and philosophy-can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space-the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.


Protists (microbial eukaryotes) are diverse, major components of marine ecosystems, and are fundamental to ecosystem services. In the last 10 years, molecular studies have highlighted substantial novel diversity in marine systems including sequences with no taxonomic context. At the same time, many known protists remain without a DNA identity. Since the majority of pelagic protists are too small to identify by light microscopy, most are neither comprehensively or regularly taken into account, particularly in Long-term Ecological Research Sites. This potentially undermines the quality of research and the accuracy of predictions about biological species shifts in a changing environment. The ICES Working Group for Phytoplankton and Microbial Ecology conducted a questionnaire survey in 2013–2014 on methods and identification of protists using molecular methods plus a literature review of protist molecular diversity studies. The results revealed an increased use of high-throughput sequencing methods and a recognition that sequence data enhance the overall datasets on protist species composition. However, we found only a few long-term molecular studies and noticed a lack of integration between microscopic and molecular methods. Here, we discuss and put forward recommendations to improve and make molecular methods more accessible to Long-term Ecological Research Site investigators.


Understanding the complex relations between trade integration and poverty reduction is now a priority for Latin American policymakers. The chapters of this book, penned by eminent authors with a long-standing record in the field, represent the current state of knowledge about trade and poverty and offer contrasting points of view about whether freer trade can reduce poverty in Latin America. One of the main lessons extracted from the book is that preexisting policies and socioeconomic conditions play a key role in determining how trade integration affects poverty. Because transmission channels are complex and highly contextualized, policymakers are urged to adopt complementary policies tailored to their countries' circumstances in order to ensure an equitable distribution of the gains from trade.


Abstract. The present study examined the utility of testing noncognitive aptitudes as a predictor of graduation from US Air Force air traffic controller (ATC) training. A total of 1,003 training candidates participated in the study. Results of logistic regression indicate that noncognitive areas of functioning at the start of training significantly predicted graduation beyond the effects of a measure of cognitive aptitude. Higher levels of emotional self-awareness, self-actualization, reality testing, stress tolerance, happiness, and approach to problem solving best differentiated graduates from nongraduates. The results of the study suggest such areas of functioning are important for training success.


Most of the scorpion sting cases are acute life-threatening and time-limiting medical emergencies. The present study was undertaken to analyze the varied clinical presentations in patients admitted with a history of scorpion bite, with a special emphasis to find out whether any difference existed in the presentation of paediatric patients in comparison to the adult patients and to understand whether any particular signs and symptoms were associated with increased mortality and morbidity in different age groups. Also, the final outcomes in all the age groups were noted.This study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital (SRN Hospital, Allahabad) from April 2006 to September 2007. In all the age groups, 74 cases presenting with a history of scorpion sting were either observed or admitted to the intensive coronary care unit (ICCU). They were classified into different groups (A-D) depending upon the clinical presentation. GROUP A included patients who presented only with local signs or those who were asymptomatic; GROUP B included patients having signs of acute pulmonary oedema (APO); GROUP C included patients with signs of APO and myocarditis and GROUP D included patients with APO, myocarditis and encephalopathy or encephalopathy alone. The final outcome was tabulated and the results were analyzed to associate the mortality with any particular clinical parameter. The treatment protocol was designed according to the groups divided. The older age group (5-15 years) comprised of the asymptomatic group (Group-A) in which survival was excellent (100%). Group B comprised of the maximum number of patients ie.52 (70.27%). In this group, the patients in the age group of 5-15 years were the largest cohort. Survival in this group was quite satisfactory, with a recovery rate of 96.16%. Group C patients had an additional element of myocarditis which affected the younger individuals i.e. age groups less than 5 and 5-15 years comprising of 3 patients each. In this group, mortality was seen in 2 (33.33%) patients. Group D had the worst outcome with 100% mortality rates and affected the extremes in the age groups from very young (less than 5 years) to the elderly (above 15 years) patients. An incidental finding of priapism was noted in 27.02% of the patients. The point to be noted was that it was present in 100% of the cases in the age group of less than 5 years in male children and in 40 % of the cases in the age group of 5-15 years in males. There was no incidence of priapism in males above 15 years. Key Messages 1. In the present study, most of the patients suffering from the scorpion bite were males and from the rural background. 2. Of the initial signs and symptoms, intense pain and paresthaesia were present in 70.27% of the cases; however, breathlessness was the most common (78.37%) initial presentation in the study conducted. 3. The patients were classified into different groups (A-D) depending upon the clinical presentation. GROUP A included patients presenting with only local signs or those who were asymptomatic; GROUP B included patients having signs


Electronic commerce (e-commerce) is changing the way people make business transactions, especially in the business-to-consumer (B2C) area, and it is becoming a significant global economic force. Since Internet technologies and infrastructures to support e-commerce are now in place, attention is turning to psychological factors that affect e-commerce acceptance by online users and their perceptions of online transactions. One such factor is trust, seen to be key to the proliferation of e-commerce. Trust has existed as long as the history of humans and human social interactions, and it has been studied long before the emergence of the Internet or e-commerce. With respect to consumer behavior, studies have mainly focused on trust and trust relationships in the off-line world and have emerged from numerous disciplinary fields since the 1950s (Corritore, Kracher, & Wiedenbeck, 2001). These disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, psychology, management, marketing, ergonomics, human-computer interaction (HCI), and industrial psychology (Corritore, Kracher, & Wiedenbeck, 2003), have together contributed an extensive body of literature on trust in general, and therefore, they are important grounding points for the examination of trust in the online world. However, "trust is an extraordinarily rich concept, covering a variety of relationships, conjoining a variety of objects," as Nissenbaum (2001, p. 104) has pointed out. Due to the complex and abstract nature of trust, each discipline has its own understanding of the concept and different ways to conceptualize it according to the features of a particular context. Even with the diverse trust research, researchers from every discipline do acknowledge the value of trust and generally observe and accept four characteristics of trust. First, there must exist two specific parties in any trusting relationship: a trusting party (trustor) and a party to be trusted (trustee). The two parties, comprised of persons, organizations, and/or products, constantly evaluate each other's behaviors. Second, trust involves vulnerability. Trust is only needed, and actually flourishes, in an environment that is uncertain and risky. Third, trust decreases complexity in a complex world and leads people to take actions, mostly risk-taking behaviors. "Without trust people would be confronted with the incomprehensible complexity of considering every possible eventuality before deciding what to do" (Grabner-Krauter & Kaluscha, 2003, p. 787). And fourth, trust is a subjective matter. It is directly related to and affected by individual differences and situational factors. The previously mentioned characteristics of trust make it especially needed in e-commerce because people perceive economic transactions in a virtual environment as posing a higher degree of uncertainty than in traditional settings. Most e-commerce transactions are not only separated in time and space, but are also conducted via limited communication channels and impersonal interfaces, making trust a crucial facilitator for people to overcome fear, risks, and complexity. Therefore, online consumers need trust as a mental shortcut to reduce the complexity of conducting business transactions with online vendors (Luhmann, 1989). Such trust occurring in cyberspace is commonly termed "online trust," and we limit the scope to the online trust that is pertinent to B2C e-commerce, namely, the trust that occurs for an individual Internet user toward a specific e-commerce Web site or the online vendor that the Web site represents. Derived from the general definition for trust (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998), online trust can be defined as follows: an Internet user's psychological state of risk acceptance based upon the positive expectations of the intentions or behaviors of an online vendor. There are almost certainly many potential sources of influence that promote or hinder online trust. However, the current article focuses on the HCI or interface design perspective in inducing online trust, that is, to use what consumers can see on an e-commerce interface to affect their feelings of trust toward the online merchant that the e-commerce interface represents.


The Great Irish Famine is the most pivotal event in modern Irish history, with implications that cannot be underestimated. Over a million people perished between 1845-1852, and well over a million others fled to other locales within Europe and America. By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The 2000 US census had 41 million people claim Irish ancestry, or one in five white Americans. This book considers how such a near total decimation of a country by natural causes could take place in industrialized, 19th century Europe and situates the Great Famine alongside other world famines for a more globally informed approach. It seeks to try and bear witness to the thousands and thousands of people who died and are buried in mass Famine pits or in fields and ditches, with little or nothing to remind us of their going. The centrality of the Famine workhouse as a place of destitution is also examined in depth. Likewise the atlas represents and documents the conditions and experiences of the many thousands who emigrated from Ireland in those desperate years, with case studies of famine emigrants in cities such as Liverpool, Glasgow, New York and Toronto. The Atlas places the devastating Irish Famine in greater historic context than has been attempted before, by including over 150 original maps of population decline, analysis and examples of poetry, contemporary art, written and oral accounts, numerous illustrations, and photography, all of which help to paint a fuller picture of the event and to trace its impact and legacy. In this comprehensive and stunningly illustrated volume, over fifty chapters on history, politics, geography, art, population, and folklore provide readers with a broad range of perspectives and insights into this event. -- Publisher description.


The Intel® Wireless-AC 9260 adapter supports Bluetooth+ 5 and 2x2 802.11ac Wi-Fi including wave 2 features such as 160MHz channels, delivering up to 1.73Gbps1 and downlink MU-MIMO. These new features deliver a significant increase in user speeds in dense deployments, supporting fast downloads and long battery life compared to legacy 802.11ac devices. Combined with Intel® CoreTM processors and exceptional Intel wireless innovations, the Intel® Wireless-AC 9260 can provide Gigabit download speed1 and dramatically improve your connected experience at home, work, or on the go.


Providing high-quality HIV/AIDS care requires high-quality, accessible data on individual patients and visits. These data can also drive strategic decision-making by health systems, national programs, and funding agencies. One major obstacle to HIV/AIDS care in developing countries is lack of electronic medical record systems (EMRs) to collect, manage, and report clinical data. In 2001, we implemented a simple primary care EMR at a rural health centre in western Kenya. This EMR evolved into a comprehensive, scalable system serving 19 urban and rural health centres. To date, the AMPATH Medical Record System contains 10 million observations from 400,000 visit records on 45,000 patients. Critical components include paper encounter forms for adults and children, technicians entering/managing data, and modules for patient registration, scheduling, encounters, clinical observations, setting user privileges, and a concept dictionary. Key outputs include patient summaries, care reminders, and reports for program management, operating ancillary services (e.g., tracing patients who fail to return for appointments), strategic planning (e.g., hiring health care providers and staff), reports to national AIDS programs and funding agencies, and research.


Temperature alone explains a great amount of variation in sediment organic carbon (OC) mineralization. Studies on decomposition of soil OC suggest that (1) temperature sensitivity differs between the fast and slowly decomposition OC and (2) over time, decreasing soil respiration is coupled with increase in temperature sensitivity. In lakes, autochthonous and allochthonous OC sources are generally regarded as fast and slowly decomposing OC, respectively. Lake sediments with different contributions of allochthonous and autochthonous components, however, showed similar temperature sensitivity in short‐term incubation experiments. Whether the mineralization of OC in lake sediments dominated by allochthonous or autochthonous OC has different temperature sensitivity in the longer term has not been addressed. We incubated sediments from two boreal lakes that had contrasting OC origin (allochthonous versus autochthonous), and OC characteristics (C/N ratios of 21 and 10) at 1, 3, 5, 8, 13, and 21°C for five months. Compared to soil and litter mineralization, sediment OC mineralization rates were low in spite of low apparent activation energy (Ea). The fraction of the total OC pool that was lost during five months varied between 0.4 and 14.8%. We estimate that the sediment OC pool not becoming long‐term preserved was degraded with average apparent turnover times between 3 and 32 years. While OC mineralization was strongly dependent on temperature as well as on OC composition and origin, temperature sensitivity was similar across lakes and over time. We suggest that the temperature sensitivity of OC mineralization in lake sediments is similar across systems within the relevant seasonal scales of OC supply and degradation.


Dream recall ability can vary between and within individuals, dependent on a number of influencing factors, including personality dimensions, number of nocturnal awakenings, and attitudes towards dreaming. Only a few studies, however, consider the possible connection of dream recall ability to general waking memory ability, or the influence of being motivated to actively remember dreams. The present survey-based study had two major aims: 1) To search for correlates and relationships between memory for dreams and memory for waking experience; 2) To address the effect of motivation on dream recall ability, split for both dream recall frequency (DRF) and dream recall detail (DRD). These questions were assessed in 57 participants who completed an online survey, consisting of questions from the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire (MADRE) and a memory exercise for an original short story. DRF and DRD were positively related, but showed different patterns of relation with the other measures. Of most interest, participants who reported high DRD also remembered the most details from the story, suggestive of an overlap between waking and dream recall ability. However, this relationship was non-linear, as the lowest memory score came from the intermediate DRD group, not the low DRD group, hence a non-significant correlation between DRD and score. DRF was unrelated to memory score, with no significant differences between high and low DRF groups, and no significant correlation between measures. This is likely due to the nature of the task being more compatible with memory for details. Correlations showed a consistent relationship between motivation and attitude measures, particularly the motivation to understand dreams. The most important points to be taken away from this study are: 1) there is apparent partial overlap between dream recall and waking memory for details; 2) being actively motivated to remember or understand dreams is an important variable to consider in future experiments; 3) and dream recall should be studied as its constituent parts of frequency and detail.


A new and more comprehensive estimation method for stock-production models is proposed, to provide more reliable stock assessment when data availability is limited. Using difference equations to implement a non-equilibrium production model, the new approach (named POEEM, for Process and Observation Errors Estimation Method) incorporates uncertainties due to both process and observation errors, employing a non-linear model fitting approach. The method has been evaluated using both simulated and real data sets, and has been applied to data from some Brazilian fish stocks. The weighting ratio between process and observation errors has proved to be a crucial factor in determining the model results, and a fully satisfactory method for selecting this ratio is still required. Sensitivity analyses conducted with the simulated data have been used to study the behaviour of the method for a range of exploitation and noise levels. Data series with low and medium levels of noise yielded consistent results irrespective of the level of exploitation, whereas very noisy data series did not provide reliable results. For comparison, data from a previously analysed stock was also tested with POEEM and resulted in peculiar results for the stock status and management advice. Data from four demersal species caught off southeastern Brazilian coast were also analysed employing POEEM, and more conventional methods. For all of them further analyses on mapping some parameters sensitivity must be conducted in order to increased the reliability of the results. Two species have the POEEM estimated assessment trend corroborated by independent biological studies. King weakfish is apparently on the verge of a collapse, with very low levels of production and biomass. Jamaican weakfish is around its maximum sustainable yield and the exploitation level on this stock should not be intensified. For the other two species, high levels of uncertainty were responsible for contradictory outcomes. For whitemouth croaker, the balance between process and observation error could not be consistently achieved, because of high amount of observation noises. For grey triggerfish, the assessment revealed a collapsed stock, but previous biological studies do not corroborate this scenario. Discarding onboard and fleet behaviour appear to be confusing the analysis of this data series. In general, the new method seems to be capable of giving useful results, consistent with biological studies, when a limited amount of data is available. However, further work is needed to find a satisfactory method for fixing the weighting ratio. In order to improve the Brazilian stock assessments, both fishery and biological data must be continuously collected to maintain and update the results, and effort data needs to be collected for other fleets, and incorporated in the analysis.


An increasing need for smaller, higher-power-density devices is driving the development of more advanced topologies for use in power architectures. The challenge, however, is to reduce the size of the passive components in circuit boards (e.g., the inductors), which are typically the most bulky. There are two ways to approach this problem. The first is to redesign the flux in the inductor in order to minimize its size; the second is to optimize the magnetic properties of the constituent magnetic materials, which include permeability, density, resistivity, core loss density, saturation magnetization value, fluidity, sintering temperature, and others. Compared to altering the nature of solid magnetic materials to reduce space constraints, modifying the magnetic composite is preferred. The most popular candidates for use in magnetic composites are magnetic powders and polymer composites. In particular, when metal alloys are chosen as magnetic powders they have high initial permeability, high saturation magnetization values, but low electrical resistivity. Since polymers can serve as insulation materials, mixing metal alloys with polymers will increase electrical resistivity. The most common metal alloy used is nickel-iron (permalloy) and Metglas. Since existing modeling methods are limited in (a) that multiphasic composites cannot be utilized and (b) the volume fraction of magnetic particles must be low, this investigation was designed to utilize FE (finite element) simulation to analyze how magnetic properties change with the distribution of permalloy powder or Metglas flakes in composites. The primary magnetic properties of interest in this study are permeability and core loss density. Furthermore two kinds of magnetic composites were utilized in this investigation: a benzocyclobutene (BCB) matrix–permalloy and a benzocyclobutene (BCB) matrix-permalloy-based amorphous alloy (Metglas 2705M) material. In our FE simulations, a BCB matrix–permalloy composite was utilized in a body-centered cubic model with half-diameter smaller particles serving as padding. The composite was placed in a uniform magnetic field surrounded by a material whose relative permeability was equal to zero in simulation. In comparison to experimental results, our model was able to predict permeability of composites with volume fraction higher than 52%. It must be noted, however, that although our model was able to predict permeability with only 10% off, it was less effective with respect to core loss density findings. The FE model also showed that permeability will increase with an increasing volume fraction of magnetic particles in the composite. To modify the properties of the composite material, the model of the BCB matrix-permalloy-Metglas composite followed model simulations up to the point at which flakes were inserted in BCB matrix-permalloy composite. The thickness of flakes was found to be an important factor in influencing resulting magnetic properties. Specifically, when the thickness of flakes decreased to quarter size at the same volume fraction, the permeability increased by 15%, while core loss density decreased to a quarter of the original value. The analysis described herein of the important relationship between magnetic properties and the composites is expected to aid in the development and design of new magnetic composite materials. Microstructure-based FE Modeling and Measurements of Magnetic Properties of Polymer Matrix-Metal Composites


High-resolution pollen analysis of core MD01-2430 from the Sea of Marmara (40°47.81' N, 27°43.51' E) allows us to reconstruct the vegetation response to climatic changes during the past 23 cal ka in the Northeastern Mediterranean. Variation in mesic/temperate forest cover indicates major climatic shifts connected to Heinrich Stadial 1, Bolling-Allerod, Younger Dryas and to the onset of the Holocene. Pollen–anthropogenic indicator approach was used to recognize human-induced landscape changes in the Sea of Marmara. The pollen-inferred onset of the Holocene occurs at ca. 11.5 cal ka, indicating that the Northeastern Mediterranean region represents a transitional zone where higher moisture availability supported an earlier forest expansion than the borderlands of the Aegean Sea and Black Sea. Two major forest retreats occurred during the Holocene at ca. 5.5 and 2.1 cal ka. The Holocene forest setbacks are in phase with previously published alkenone-inferred sea-surface temperature decreases in the Sea of Marmara reconstructed from the same core. Our new pollen record testifies the sensitivity of Mediterranean forests to changes in moisture availability, which is driven by changes in high-latitude atmospheric processes (North Atlantic Oscillations and/or Siberian High).


In this article, the author focuses on the work called Laocoon , which was one of the most popular subjects for 18th century art writers. The first description of the work was provided by Pliny the Elder who, in the 36th volume of his Naturalis historia , calls it the best work of the art in the world – be it painting or sculpture. Pliny identifies three artists from Rhodes – Hagesandros, Polydoros and Athenedorus – as the authors of the Laocoon Group . After the sculpture was found in the vicinity of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Laocoon has repeatedly aroused the interest of art historians. Johann Joachim Winckelmann raised the sculptural group into focus during the Age of Enlightenment. And his positions, and sometimes opposition to them, form the basis of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's, Johann Gottfried Herder's and Johann Wolfgang Goethe's writings on the Laocoon . I am sure that their thoughts deserve also attention today, when we speak about the fundamental change in philosophy, philology, and partially also in art history. In seeking an answer to Lessing's question, "Why does Laocoon not cry in marble but in poetry?" Can art speak? And if it can, how? The first stage of the article explores the contradictory nature of word and picture, in which regard both Lessing and Herder preferred the former. The second question that arises in the article is: What are the framework and boundaries of art writing as a method of art history for ascertaining and describing the internal nature of a work of art? And further, do words enable one to arrive at the deeper layers of a work and the reason for the act of creation? And if so, to what extent? The third and most important issue examined in the article is the two possible approaches to a work of art, and visual images more generally – the analytical and phenomenological. By relying on history, and the broadly accepted methods of the narrative, sociological, biographical, and other sciences contingent on it, the epistemological nature of art has remained outside the conceivable limits of scientific language. And as such, it has reduced the possibility of understanding pictures and finding them a place in today's scale of assessments; of speaking not only about the external and measurable parameters, but also about works of art as unique phenomena, in which an invisible and metaphysical content exists in addition to that which is inherent to the visible and the describable. Just as much as our rudiments of rationality and logical analysis help us to understand works of art, their impact relies on a subjective readiness to receive artistic experiences, which according to Goethe, transform the Laocoon into something affectively animated in the torchlight. Art is usually revealed by in-depth sources via the contemplative reflection that follows sensory experiences. Since Longinus's time, this has been described as sublimity, and it garnered supporters in the form of the Neo-Platonic authors of the Renaissance, whose role in 18th century aesthetics is just as significant as the art history tradition based on classical archaeological research. In the writings of Winckelmann, and those who followed him, the two poles of this approach to art are tightly merged. The author's goal is to draw attention to ways of understanding and writing about art, besides the descriptive methods and those related to history; to those that focus on the processes related to the gnoseological side and to subconscious creation, and provide a place for words and their power to create ever newer and more expressive metaphors. One possibility for translating visual images into verbal form is to adopt the breadth of poetry and its language, which truthfully, being just as ambiguous and inexplicable as art, enables us to make the indescribable describable; via a work of art as the initial idea, and the work that informs us of this idea as a series of formed images that can be assessed as pictures that describe the spiritual image (or eidolon in Greek).


A Thesis submitted to the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology
College of Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of MSc degree in Biotechnology, 2015


Background: To examine the association between metformin use and mortality in patients with diabetes and cervical cancer. Methods: Using Ontario health databases, a retrospective, population-based cohort study was conducted in women with diabetes ≥ age 66 years diagnosed with cervical cancer between 1997 and 2010. The association between metformin exposure and cervical cancer–specific mortality was examined using Fine–Gray regression models, with noncancer death as a competing risk and cumulative metformin use as a time-varying exposure. The association with overall mortality was examined using Cox regression models. Results: Among the 181 women with diabetes and cervical cancer, there were 129 deaths, including 61 cervical cancer–specific deaths. The median follow-up was 5.8 years (interquartile range 4.2–9.6 years) for surviving patients. Cumulative dose of metformin after cervical cancer diagnosis was independently associated with a decreased risk of cervical cancer–specific mortality and overall mortality in a dose-dependent fashion [HR 0.79; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.63–0.98; and HR 0.95; 95% CI, 0.90–0.996 per each additional 365 g of metformin use, respectively]. There was no significant association between cumulative use of other antidiabetic drugs and cervical cancer–specific mortality. Conclusion: This study suggests an association between cumulative metformin use after cervical cancer diagnosis and lower cervical cancer–specific and overall mortality among older women with diabetes. Impact: Cumulative dose of metformin use after cervical cancer diagnosis among older women with diabetes may be associated with a significant decrease in mortality. This finding has important implications if validated prospectively, as metformin is inexpensive and can be easily combined with standard treatment for cervical cancer. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 25(3); 507–12. ©2015 AACR.


Training data for text classification is often limited in practice, especially for applications with many output classes or involving many related classification problems. This means classifiers must generalize from limited evidence, but the manner and extent of generalization is task dependent. Current practice primarily relies on pre-trained word embeddings to map words unseen in training to similar seen ones. Unfortunately, this squishes many components of meaning into highly restricted capacity. Our alternative begins with sparse pre-trained representations derived from unlabeled parsed corpora; based on the available training data, we select features that offers the relevant generalizations. This produces task-specific semantic vectors; here, we show that a feed-forward network over these vectors is especially effective in low-data scenarios, compared to existing state-of-the-art methods. By further pairing this network with a convolutional neural network, we keep this edge in low data scenarios and remain competitive when using full training sets.


In this thesis, the numerical solution of time-dependent partial differential equations (PDE) is studied. In particular high-order finite difference methods on Summation-by-parts (SBP) form are analysed and applied to model problems as well as the PDEs governing aerodynamics. The SBP property together with an implementation of boundary conditions called SAT (Simultaneous Approximation Term), yields stability by energy estimates. The first derivative SBP operators were originally derived for Cartesian grids. Since aerodynamic computations are the ultimate goal, the scheme must also be stable on curvilinear grids. We prove that stability on curvilinear grids is only achieved for a subclass of the SBP operators. Furthermore, aerodynamics often requires addition of artificial dissipation and we derive an SBP version. With the SBP-SAT technique it is possible to split the computational domain into a multi-block structure which simplifies grid generation and more complex geometries can be resolved. To resolve extremely complex geometries an unstructured discretisation method must be used. Hence, we have studied a finite volume approximation of the Laplacian. It can be shown to be on SBP form and a new boundary treatment is derived. Based on the Laplacian scheme, we also derive an SBP artificial dissipation for finite volume schemes. We derive a new set of boundary conditions that leads to an energy estimate for the linearised three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. The new boundary conditions will be used to construct a stable SBP-SAT discretisation. To obtain an energy estimate for the discrete equation, it is necessary to discretise all the second derivatives by using the first derivative approximation twice. According to previous theory that would imply a degradation of formal accuracy but we present a proof that this is not the case.


The kinetics of Ge hut cluster formation and the evolution of film stress have been studied during Ge deposition at 400 and 500 deg. C by high-resolution low-energy electron diffraction and surface-stress-induced optical deflection. The hut clusters grow coherent to the Si substrate but show an increased layer distance of 4% due to strain-induced tetragonal distortion. The distortion of the Ge unit cell adds up to more than 8%. The sudden onset of hut formation is observed at 3.5 monolayers of Ge. Individual hut clusters instantly grow to a width of 20 nm. The strain relief of the order of 15%-20% is maximized by complete dissociation of the Ge wetting layer. Together with this Ge only two additional monolayers of Ge are necessary to cover the entire surface with fully evolved hut clusters.


Interactions between boats, and coastal and freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris), were studied in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, during 2001. The goal was to determine the conditions under which dolphins reacted to boats and to recommend conservation actions. Both coastal and freshwater Irrawaddy dolphins surfaced less in the presence of boats, but the avoidance reaction lasted longer for the river dolphins. River dolphins surfaced significantly less often in the presence of motorized canoes ( 1,000 hp). Coastal dolphins only reacted to speedboats, and only when they approached at a 50-m distance. River dolphins reacted within a maximum distance of 250 m before and 300 m after a speedboat passed. Besides surfacing changes, river dolphins actively avoided container tugboats. The strength of reactions did not depend on the dolphins' behavior, group size, or age. Hypersensitivity by river dolphins to intensive boat traffic could explain the different responses between coastal and river dolphins. To prevent dol phin displacement from their core areas, an action plan currently is being developed by a nongovernmental organization in cooperation with Indonesian governmental institutions and residents. Speedboat owners will be urged to reduce boat speed in areas indicated on sign boards.