Objective To determine the incidence, nature and causes of concussions sustained during men's elite professional Rugby-7s and Rugby-15s. Design A prospective cohort study recording injuries classified as a time-loss concussion. Population Players competing in the following tournaments: Rugby 15s—English Premiership (2007/2008 to 2010/2011), Rugby World Cup (2007, 2011), Pacific Nations Cup (2012, 2013), Junior World Championship (2008, 2010–2013), Junior World Rugby Trophy (2008, 2010–2013); Rugby 7s—Sevens World Series (2008/2009, 2010/2011 to 2012/2013). Method The study was implemented according to the international consensus statement for epidemiological studies in rugby union; the main outcome measures included the number, incidence (number of concussions/1000 player-match-hours), mean and median severity (days absence) and cause of concussion. Results The incidence of concussion in Rugby-7s was significantly higher than that in Rugby-15s (risk ratio=1.84; p<0.001). The severity of concussions were significantly higher in Rugby-7s than Rugby-15s (mean—Rugby-7s: 19.2, Rugby-15s: 10.1; median—Rugby 7s: 20, Rugby-15s: 7; p<0.001). The main causes of concussion were tackling (44.1%) in Rugby-7s and collisions (43.6%) in Rugby-15s. Significantly more (risk ratio=1.49; p=0.004) concussed players were removed immediately from the game in Rugby-7s (69.7%) compared to Rugby-15s (46.7%). Conclusions Six actions were identified to improve the management of concussion in rugby: implement a pitch-side concussion assessment protocol; improve compliance with return-to-play protocols; work with referees to review the nature and consequences of collisions; improve players' tackle technique; investigate the forces involved in tackles and collisions; and evaluate reasons for the higher incidence of concussions in Rugby-7s.


Conventional synthetic voices can synthesise neutral read aloud speech well. But, to make synthetic speech more suitable for a wider range of applications, the voices need to express more than just the word identity. We need to develop voices that can partake in a conversation and express, e.g. agreement, disagreement, hesitation, in a natural and believable manner. In speech synthesis there are currently two dominating frameworks: unit selection and HMM-based speech synthesis. Both frameworks utilise recordings of human speech to build synthetic voices. Despite the fact that the content of the recordings determines the segmental and prosodic phenomena that can be synthesised, surprisingly little research has been made on utilising the corpus to extend the limited behaviour of conventional synthetic voices. In this thesis we will show how natural sounding conversational characteristics can be added to both unit selection and HMM-based synthetic voices, by adding speech from a spontaneous conversation to the voices. We recorded a spontaneous conversation, and by manually transcribing and selecting utterances we obtained approximately two thousand utterances from it. These conversational utterances were rich in conversational speech phenomena, but they lacked the general coverage that allows unit selection and HMM-based synthesis techniques to synthesise high quality speech. Therefore we investigated a number of blending approaches in the synthetic voices, where the conversational utterances were augmented with conventional read aloud speech. The synthetic voices that contained conversational speech were contrasted with conventional voices without conversational speech. The perceptual evaluations showed that the conversational voices were generally perceived by listeners as having a more conversational style than the conventional voices. This conversational style was largely due to the conversational voices' ability to synthesise utterances that contained conversational speech phenomena in a more natural manner than the conventional voices. Additionally, we conducted an experiment that showed that natural sounding conversational characteristics in synthetic speech can convey pragmatic information, in our case an impression of certainty or uncertainty, about a topic to a listener. The conclusion drawn is that the limited behaviour of conventional synthetic voices can be enriched by utilising conversational speech in both unit selection and HMM-based speech synthesis.


We face a glut of languages for programming distributed software today. However, only a few languages have proven their potential with wider practical use in different domains of computing. We picked two such languages, meant for different domains, to see if they could cross-pollinate and enrich one another. Specifically, we chose SystemJ, a language to program distributed embedded systems, and IEC61499, the next generation standard for distributed industrial automation control software. Unsurprisingly, we found similar structures and artifacts between the two. We also found significant differences mainly due to differing domain-specific requirements. This comparison leads to observations and guidelines for improving both languages, and we discuss directions towards an "ideal" distributed software programming language.


This thesis is based on an empirical study of company practice and considers cost management as an imperative to comprehend the dynamics and complexities of supply chains using a multi-theoretical framework. This framework combines theories of what enables firms in a supply chain to safeguard their exchanged cost management resources from a transaction cost economics perspective and sustainably develop these resources using the resource-based view of management.

This present study examines the effect of information system integration and knowledge absorption on cost management efforts between supply chain firms. Coupled with this, the study also deals with the effect of both formal and informal transaction governance mechanisms on cost management resources and how such resources, in turn, impact on management and improving performance in supply chains taking into accounts the potential supplier-buyer differentiating factors in the upstream and downstream segments of the supply chain. Informed by a thorough review of developments in the cost management and supply chain literature, a multi-theoretical model is developed and primary data are collected by means of a questionnaire survey from automotive firms in the UK. Usable replies received from 63 senior supply chain managers are analysed using latest developments in partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and relevant software (SmartPLS).

The findings of the current study can be summarised as follows. Information system integration plays a significant role in facilitating cost management resource exchange between supply chain firms. Associated with this is the vital role that absorptive capacity is found to have in developing such resources within trilateral relationships including suppliers, manufacturers and customers in a supply chain. Moreover, the study reveals that contractual governance and partner commitment are pivotal in collaborative cost management efforts in the upstream with suppliers. In contrast, trust and commitment are the most important mechanisms in managing costs jointly with customers. Interestingly, cost management is found to directly impact on the management of the whole supply chain irrespective of which governance mechanism underlies relationships with suppliers or customers, thus indicating how crucial inter-organisational cost management has become the modern manufacturing company.

The present study contributes to the supply chain field by showing which governance mechanisms can be utilised in sustainably protecting and managing cost management resources in supply chains. In addition, the study successfully demonstrates how competitive resources (e.g. information and knowledge) can facilitate and develop cost management resources in trilateral relationships involving suppliers in the upstream part of supply chains, manufacturers in the midstream part and customers in the downstream.


African studies is multidisciplinary in scope, and this site covers print and electronic sources on Africa that will be relevant to Syracuse University scholars.


This study investigated the process of change in intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators through in-depth interviews with their (ex-)partners. Programs designed to help perpetrators change their behavior, have yet to be endorsed by rigorous evaluation. In this context, this study explored survivors' perspectives for direction on how these programs might be further developed. Interviews were conducted with 18 IPV survivors, who had recently had the experience of having a (ex-)partner complete a perpetrator program. The study employed iterative data collection and analysis, in keeping with the grounded theory approach to qualitative research. Researchers used secondary coding to enhance study rigor. Lines of enquiry which were relevant to perpetrator program development were identified in an expert review of interim findings, after nine interviews. Survivors described change on a spectrum, from highly significant change, through uncertainty about change, to harmful change. Some survivors described their subscription to new standards of family safety, following the support and time-out they had been afforded during their partners' treatment. Study findings give us pause to consider what we can realistically hope to achieve through traditionally formatted psycho-educative group-work programs with perpetrators. Survivors described the need for long-term sustained change in perpetrators and genuine feelings of safety for themselves and their children. We discuss the role the current perpetrator programs might play in achieving these aims and point toward the inadequacy of commonly used behavior-counting tools in program evaluations. Based on the current study findings, we suggest that perpetrator programs can become perpetrator centric, and stray from their original conceptualisation as just one part of an integrated response to IPV. We lend support to calls for the use of survivor safety, and well-being measures, in program evaluations.


There is an urgent need for large‐scale botanical data to improve our understanding of community assembly, coexistence, biogeography, evolution, and many other fundamental biological processes. Understanding these processes is critical for predicting and handling human‐biodiversity interactions and global change dynamics such as food and energy security, ecosystem services, climate change, and species invasions. The Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) database comprises an unprecedented wealth of cleaned and standardised botanical data, containing roughly 81 million occurrence records from c. 375,000 species, c. 915,000 trait observations across 28 traits from c. 93,000 species, and co‐occurrence records from 110,000 ecological plots globally, as well as 100,000 range maps and 100 replicated phylogenies (each containing 81,274 species) for New World species. Here, we describe an r package that provides easy access to these data. The bien r package allows users to access the multiple types of data in the BIEN database. Functions in this package query the BIEN database by turning user inputs into optimised PostgreSQL functions. Function names follow a convention designed to make it easy to understand what each function does. We have also developed a protocol for providing customised citations and herbarium acknowledgements for data downloaded through the bien r package. The development of the BIEN database represents a significant achievement in biological data integration, cleaning and standardization. Likewise, the bien r package represents an important tool for open science that makes the BIEN database freely and easily accessible to everyone.


____________________________________________________________________ ii ABSTRACT Increasing turbidities due to land use changes and poor catchment management can cause negative impacts on estuaries worldwide. High turbidity has an impact on the biological functioning of estuaries which are amongst our most productive ecosystems. This study focuses on the St Lucia estuary on the east coast of South Africa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Ramsar wetland of international importance. Increased turbidity due to suspended inorganic sediments has been identified as an important threat to the sustainability of biodiversity in the St Lucia system. In order to determine the influence of increased cohesive sediment loads on the estuarine system it is necessary to understand how flocculation affects the fate and transport of cohesive sediment. Flocculation describes the processes of aggregate formation and breakup. Suspended sediment concentration, salinity and turbulent shear rates have been identified as key drivers of estuarine flocculation. This study investigates flocculation by measuring how the floc size distribution and settling velocities of flocs vary with the key drivers. A laboratory technique was developed where flocculation was simulated in an agitated beaker. Digital imaging techniques were used to measure changes in the size of flocs within the beaker and floc settling velocities in a still settling column. Results show reduced aggregation and floc size with increases in turbulent shear. Floc settling velocities were observed to increase with floc size while the effective density was observed to decrease. The study is concluded by investigating potential applications for the results obtained. Preface _____________________________________________________________________


Background: Feeding sick children by mouth at times may be difficult. Therefore, alternative methods such as nasogastric tube feeding may come handy. Similarly, oxygen therapy is life saving; however, there are concerns of parental refusal of these treatments. Therefore, this study seeks to determine the level of acceptance of these treatments and factors responsible for treatment refusal if any. Materials and Methods: This study was cross-sectional and 202 mothers whose children were on or had nasogastric tube feeding and oxygen therapy were recruited. Results: Most of the respondents′ accepted nasogastric tube feeding and oxygen administration on their children despite the fact that most were not counseled (66.8% and 61.4%, respectively). The most common reason for declining nasogastric tube feeding was the belief that it may occlude the airway while those who declined oxygen therapy was because they believed it may result in death. Most of those that accepted nasogastric tube feeding also accepted oxygen therapy (X 2 = 32.031, df = 1, P = 0.00). The educational status of the respondents had no significant relationship with acceptance of nasogastric tube feeding (X 2 = 3.245, df = 3, P = 0.36) and also oxygen therapy (X 2 = 0.487, df = 3, P = 0.92). Furthermore, their age and number of children had no influence on their decision on acceptance of nasogastric tube feeding or oxygen therapy. Similarly, ethnicity and occupational status had no statistically significant relationship on acceptance of oxygen or nasogastric tube feeding. Conclusion: The acceptance of nasogastric tube feeding and oxygen therapy is very encouraging and was not affected by maternal age, ethnicity, or educational qualification.


This article outlines the possibilities of autobiographical stories to criticize status quo iterations of International Relations (IR). The article draws on the personal experiences of the author's deportation order issued by the United Kingdom's Home Office and its associated Border Agency (UKBA) to challenge the accepted assumptions of a cosmopolitan worldview as it relates to orderly international institutional design. It highlights the possibilities of trauma when border management and personal mobility collide. It suggests that mobility trauma ensues when the expectations of human mobility, outlined in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, infringe the state's role as security provider. It begins in part one with a challenge to the traditional role and understanding of international borders that sustain order within the international. It examines the unacknowledged role that human vulnerability plays within IR and institutional design while frankly engaging with human vulnerability and trauma in the second section. This section details the experiences of the author when her mobility rights were curtailed and the ensuing identity crisis prompted by such events. The final section investigates the ideas of critical cosmopolitan scholarship demanding that such discourses acknowledge and work through the possibility of failed agency when the demands of state security supersede individual mobility rights. It turns to the possibility of traumatic iterations of IR in order to probe such possibilities. The article suggests, in its conclusion, the possibility of storytelling and psychoanalysis to endorse unorthodox agency, and the possibility of a dynamic international institutional design, that challenges the status quo iterations of IR.


The electronic structure of monolayer WSe2/BiIrO3(111) interfaces is investigated by first-principles calculations. The different polar directions of bilayer BiIrO3(111) can induce the p- or n-type doping of WSe2, indicating that the conductivity of monolayer WSe2 can be effectively modulated by switching the polarization of bilayer BiIrO3(111). Meanwhile, in B1 and B4 models, the spin splitting energies of WSe2 are 413.7 and 416.6 meV, which decrease by 52.9 and 50.0 meV compared to that of pristine monolayer WSe2 of 466.6 meV. Additionally, by applying a perpendicular electric field of 0.1 V nm-1, the spin splitting can be increased from 413.7 to 421.5 meV. However, spin splitting shows robustness against large electric fields. The results are useful in the design of novel two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide devices.

publisher-specific, author manuscript: http://rsc.li/journals-terms-of-use


This paper analyzes and compares the objective, the nature and the performance of R&D projects in the US and Japan, based on the first large scale systematic survey of inventors, focusing on the R&D projects yielding triadic patents. Major findings are the following. First, the projects for enhancing the existing business line of a firm account for a large share of R&D projects in both countries, confirming the view that the R&D investment is significantly conditioned by the existing complementary asset of a firm. In both countries, the inventions from R&D for existing business have the highest in-house utilization rate but use least the scientific and technical literature for their conceptions, while the reverse is the case for the inventions from R&D for new technology base (or for cultivating seeds). R&D projects for enhancing the technology base are much more common in the US. This difference can be partly accounted for by US inventors being more likely to have a PhD, but not by the differences in the structure of finance. US government financial support is relatively more targeted to projects for existing business and US venture capital provides support mainly projects for creating new business (6% of them), but not for more upstream projects. Only about 20-30% of the projects are for process innovation in both countries, providing direct evidence for the earlier findings that were based on US patent information. Product innovation generates process patents more often in Japan than in the US (25% vs. 10%), while product innovation projects are relatively more numerous in Japan. In both countries a significant share of inventions (more than 20%) were not the result of an R&D project, and a substantial proportion of such inventions are valued among the top 10% of patents, suggesting that R&D expenditure significantly underestimates inventive activities. A US invention is more often an unexpected by-product of an R&D project (11%) than in Japan (3.4%). The two countries have surprisingly similar distributions of R&D projects in man month and the average team size. In both countries, smaller firms tend to have relatively more high-value patents. In the US, inventors from very small firms (with less than 100 employees) and universities jointly account for more than one quarter of the top 10% inventions, even though they account for only 14% of all inventions. Man-months expended for an invention has a significant correlation with the performance of the R&D projects for existing business, less so for new business and not at all for those enhancing the technology base, suggesting substantial heterogeneity by project types in the determinants of the performance and in the uncertainty. A PhD has a significant correlation with R&D project performance especially for new business.


Commentary on: Luymes CH, Poortvliet RKE, van Geloven N, et al . Deprescribing preventive cardiovascular medication in patients with predicted low cardiovascular disease risk in general practice - the ECSTATIC study: a cluster randomised non-inferiority trial. BMC Med . 2018;16(1):5.

The prescription of cardiovascular drugs in primary prevention may be challenging due to the risk of adverse drug reactions overcoming the benefits in a population with low cardiovascular risk.1 The impact of drug deprescription in this context is still unknown.

This was a multicentric, open-label, cluster randomised controlled trial comparing the effect of the deprescription of cardiovascular drugs versus usual care.2 The trial included patients aged between 40 and 70 years with a low risk of cardiovascular events treated with antihypertensive drugs or lipid-lowering drugs for more than 1 year. The primary outcome was the difference in …


This chapter is dedicated to wetting and fracturing processes involving molecular phospholipid films and high-energy solid surfaces. In these systems, wetting of planar surfaces occurs in an aqueous environment by means of self-spreading of phospho‐ lipid membranes from artificially generated lipid sources, which range from manually deposited single sources (multilamellar liposomes) to liposome suspensions of different particle sizes, which are directly pipetted onto the substrate. The most prominent of the molecular lipid films is the phospholipid bilayer, which constitutes the fundamental structure of the biological cell membrane. Lipid membranes have peculiar characteristics, are highly dynamic, feature two-dimensional fluidity, and can accommodate functional molecules. Understanding the interactions of lipid films with solid interfaces is of high importance in areas like cell biology, biomedical engineering, and drug delivery.


The investigation of intentional intertextual references carried out in this article is based on the criteria introduced by the Anglicist Manfred Pfister. I arrive at the conclusion that Hab 3 refers to preceding biblicaltexts: In vv. 3.19 the prophetic prayer alludes to Deut 33 and 2 Sam 22 in order to assume the function of authoritative vicarious prayer, while avoiding martial ideology. If one approaches the book as a whole, Hab 3 stands in antithetical relationship to Hab 1, especially due to the fact that the theophany constitutes a counterattack against the Chaldean offensive described in Hab 1,5-11. This latter text seems to be given the form of a bitter ironical parody of Jer 5,15-17.


Consider the ten-dimensional spinor variety in the projectivization of a
half-spin representation of dimension sixteen. The intersection X of two
general translates of this variety is a smooth Calabi-Yau fivefold, as well as
the intersection Y of their projective duals. We prove that although X and Y
are not birationally equivalent, they are derived equivalent and L-equivalent
in the sense of Kuznetsov and Shinder.


The use of the time domain reflectometry (TDR) method, designated ASTM D6780 (ASTM D6780, 2005, "Standard Test Method for Water Content and Density of Soil in Place by Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR)," Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Vol. 04.09 ASTM International, West Conshohocken, PA), to measure water content and soil density is relatively new with both successful and unsatisfactory results being reported. This paper reexamines the TDR method from various aspects, including laboratory investigation of the relation between TDR-measured electrical properties and soil phase parameters, full scale laboratory evaluation of the standardized methods, real world performance evaluation at construction sites of earth dams, and theoretical reexamination. Laboratory calibration reveals the effect of soil type on soil electrical properties, and its implication on the TDR method is discussed. The full scale laboratory evaluation supports the validity of both the one-step and two-step TDR methods. But the field evaluation at construction sites of earth dams indicates otherwise, particularly in the measurement of soil density. The errors in the two-step method are attributed to the penetration disturbance of the field multipole resonance probe (MRP). An additional source of error in the One-Step method is found to be a theoretical flaw in the current empirical adjustment process for correcting the variation of pore-fluid conductivity from the calibration test to field measurements. Remediation for the two-step method and updating of the ASTM D6780 to overcome the shortcomings of the one-step testing are in progress.


Seven relatively salt tolerant mutants were selecled from segregating populations (1\'12) Wider saline sodic conditions.
Further testing of mutants under different salt stresses proved the superiority of one mutant namely RST-24. The
mutant also proved its salt tolerance potential under both the gravel culture and saline-sodic field conditions. The
mutant slightly surpassed parantal variety Basmati-370, for"length-breadth ratio (milled kernel), elogation ratio
and gel consistence .They yield and yield components and other quality traits of mutants and parent unnder salt stress
are also presented.


Background:  Biodiversity reporting is an area of sustainability accounting research that has received comparatively little attention from the academic community. This is despite the growing scientific concern about climate change, habitat destruction and extinction of species and mounting evidence on the implications of these environmental issues for our current way of life. This necessitates additional research on biodiversity reporting, especially in a South African context given that the country is home to some of the richest biodiversity regions on earth. Aim:  This research examines what information companies in the South African seafood industry are reporting on biodiversity. This includes the development and application of an easy-to-use disclosure scorecard to track the quality of biodiversity-related disclosures. Setting:  The study focuses on South African biodiversity reporting. The choice of region is informed by the country's significant marine resources and mature corporate reporting environment, where non-financial disclosures are expected to be well developed. Methods:  Content analysis was used to collect data from a sample of companies' integrated and sustainability reports. The data were analysed interpretively to determine what biodiversity disclosures companies provide and the quality of those disclosures. Conclusion:  The study shows that while the quantum of biodiversity reporting is relatively low, some companies are starting to provide more detailed accounts of their biodiversity impact, pointing to higher levels of reporting quality. There is still room for improvement, but these findings suggest that reporting on non-financial sustainability issues is maturing and that companies are beginning to appreciate the importance of preserving biodiversity for ensuring long-term sustainability.


Given the intensifying debates whether governments should use industrial policies to promote particular renewable energy technologies, the main objective of this study is to investigate the long-run effects of renewable energy support policies on economic growth and employment in 15 European Union (EU) member states for the 1990-2012 time period by using panel-data time-series econometric techniques. The first hypothesis is that the EU's renewable energy support policies lead to technological advancement, followed by economy growth, in the long-run. The second hypothesis states that these policies at least generate an increase in output and employment in the short-run. In summary, our results provide some evidence in support of the second hypothesis, but, in contrary to the similar studies, our findings do not support the first hypothesis that these policies promote growth in the long-run.


Blood metabolite concentrations and postpartum resumption of ovarian cyclicity in Sanga cowsAn experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of concentrations of certain blood nutrient-sensitive metabolites and the resumption of postpartum ovarian cyclicity in 16 Sanga cows (mean BCS 5). Blood samples were taken from cows from weeks 1 to 13 (90 days) postpartum, processed and the plasma progesterone concentration measured to determine the resumption of postpartum ovarian cyclicity. The cows were classified as having resumed ovarian cyclicity when a plasma progesterone concentration of ≥1.0 ng/mL was recorded for two consecutive weekly samples. Based on the resumption of ovarian activity, cows were classified as early cycling, late cycling or non-cycling. The plasma glucose, cholesterol, total protein, albumin and globulin concentrations recorded were similar in the early cycling, late cycling and non-cycling cows. The mean blood glucose, cholesterol, total protein, albumin and globulin concentrations were 3.60 mmol/L, 2.47 mmol/L, 83.1 g/L, 29.9 g/L and 52.9 g/L, respectively. Plasma urea concentrations in late (6.57 ± 0.17 mmol/L) and non-cycling (6.59 ± 0.17 mmol/L) cows were higher than in the early cycling (5.99 ± 0.17 mmol/L) cows in weeks 1 to 13 postpartum. In addition, the plasma creatinine concentration in the early cycling cows was higher than in late cycling cows (101.8 ± 1.82 versus 94.0 ± 1.99 mmol/L). Cows with higher plasma concentrations of urea and lower creatinine concentrations were at risk of delayed resumption of postpartum ovarian cyclicity. Results suggest poor nutritional status, especially energy deficiency, as a major underlying factor suppressing the postpartum resumption of ovarian cyclicity. Keywords : BCS, creatinine, cycling cows, plasma, postpartum, urea


ABSTRACT The principal goal of this article is to make clear the multiple pathways through which the built environment is having a potential effect on the occupants' physical and psychological health, well-being and performance. Reviewing the previous research literature on built environment and public health, high-quality environment design is an investment as occupants are healthier, staff retention rates are higher, productivity is higher and sustainability ideals are more likely to be met. Regarding the healthy effect of built environment, a conceptual model of healthy building and a framework to research the association between built environment and health is presented and discussed. In spite of a little progress in this area by now, some genuine challenges still lie ahead: (1) the necessity of dealing with the possible health consequence of built environment; (2) the need to extend the concept and perception of green buildings towards healthy buildings and develop a framework for assessing health, well-being and productivity of various scenarios in buildings; (3) the construction and design processes needed to have a primary aim directed towards making buildings healthy for working and living in. Holistic cognition about the problem, new research method and information on scientific validation, comparative testing or data collection and analysis is needed in the subsequent research.


Chlamydophilial infections leading to outbreaks of avian chlamydophilosis in domestic as well as companion birds have been reported worldwide, which reflects in economic loss to the owner and potential zoonotic transmission to humans. Study on the occurrence and prevalence of Chlamydophila psittaci in birds at live bird markets in Kaduna metropolis, Nigeria was carried out using Immuno Comb enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (IC ELISA) and modified Gimenez staining technique (mGS). Sera from 64 local chickens, 43 ducks, 64 pigeons, 64 broilers, 64 exotic layers, 48 turkeys and 64 guinea fowls were examined. Using the IC ELISA, 41.46% (85) and 34.95% (72) from the birds sampled from Central and Waff Road markets tested positive for C. psittaci, with an overall seroprevalence of 38.00%. There was no significant difference (P>0.05) in the prevalence of the infection from birds sampled in Central and Waff Road markets. Among various types of birds examined, the highest seroprevalence was recorded in pigeons 67.19% (43), duck 51.16% (22) and guinea fowl 46.88% (30) while the least seroprevalencewere recorded in exotic layers 18.75% (12) and broilers 15.63% (10). Nevertheless, there was significant difference (P<0.05) in prevalence of the infection among the various types of birds examined. The prevalence of the infection by mGS showed 4.10% (9) and 3.40% (7) from Central and Waff Road markets, with the highest prevalence in local chickens 6.25% (4) and 0.0% (0) in turkey. Statistical analysis by Kappa statistics indicates a slight agreement between the two tests. The results of this study confirmed our suspicion about the presence of C. psittaci in birds at live bird markets in Kaduna metropolis. Thus, routine screening of birds in abattoirs, quarantine stations, farms and enlightenment of the general public on avian chlamydophilosis control should be advocated. Date of Submission : September, 09, 2016 Date of Acceptance : October, 12, 2016 Date of Publication : December, 05, 2016 Type of article : Research article ©Copyright 2016 : Reuben, C.R Corresponding address: firstname.lastname@example.com; Phone no;


With Mexico seeming poised for a change election in 2012, why did it vote in a regime that ruled the country for much of the 20th century? Is the new PRI different from the old PRI? What are the implications of the PRI's return for Mexico's democracy? This article argues that several institutions on which the old regime was based remained intact after the transition, which made the return of the PRI almost inevitable. It suggests that the PRI's return is a mixed blessing for Mexican democracy. On the one hand, the peaceful turnover of power among all parties is a welcome sign that democracy is maturing. Political parties should have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes—a sign that electoral accountability may be working. On the other hand, however, the return of the PRI is likely to reinvigorate several features of the old regime that remained unscathed by the country's democratic transition, potentially representing a setback for Mexico's young democracy.


A recent movement in contracts scholarship - the so-called New Formalism - seeks to justify limitations on the introduction of extrinsic evidence to interpret contracts on the instrumental grounds of efficiency and empirical observation. There has not, as yet, been a concerted attempt to develop an instrumental argument for the more contextual types of interpretation observed in the Uniform Commercial Code and the Restatement (Second) of Contracts. This Article begins that task by arguing that the relative ability of transactors to draft complete contracts is likely to be an important determinant of their preferred interpretive regime. Where low contracting costs allow commercial parties to draft relatively complete contracts, it is understandable that these parties would have a strong preference for formal contract rules because such rules help to ensure the interpretation of these contracts in accordance with their express terms. Where, however, contracts are more difficult to write - and hence contain more gaps - transactors may prefer interpretive rules that allow courts to fill in contractual gaps based on extrinsic evidence such as industry custom, unexecuted drafts, and other indications of the parties' understanding of their obligations under the contract. At least in some instances, the use of this ex post evidence may be more cost effective relative to the ex ante investments that would be necessary to draft more complete contracts.To explore this problem, this Article adapts the framework used to predict vertical integration in the New Institutional Economics literature to identify the variables that are likely to affect the ability to draft complete contracts. This adapted model argues that the frequency and uncertainty of a transaction are the key variables that will determine the amount that parties are likely to invest in filling contractual gaps. The predictions generated by this model help to explain why some transactors, such as the grain, cotton, and diamond merchants studied by Lisa Bernstein, have strong preferences for formal interpretation. The model also suggests why industries that involve infrequent and uncertain transactions - such as construction, tailored software, and the market for mergers and acquisitions - do not share the preference for formal interpretation advocated and observed by the New Formalists.


The Internet has been used extensively for U.S. presidential election campaigns since the year 2000. In 2004, Internet campaigning grew to be more interactive than in previous years. The question of whether or not the Internet is making a difference in political outcomes has become noteworthy, and research efforts have examined political campaigns via websites, characteristics of the politically active population, and roles of the media. Among various campaign forces, activities organized by the online grassroots activist group MoveOn.org have become prominent. This article reports the voices of people who participated in political activities coordinated by MoveOn during the 2004 presidential election campaigns. The data were collected primarily through interviews. The findings contrast similarities and differences between participants in different levels of participation. Whereas most past studies focused on the macro level, this study is focused on the micro level. The article calls for further development of a theoretical framework for collective action facilitated via online and taking place offline.


The zinc finger protein 217 (ZNF217) is an important oncogene based on the high frequency of amplification and over-expression in many cancer types, but its molecular mode of gene regulation is poorly understood. We purified a complex of nuclear ZNF217-binding proteins by affinity chromatography and identified its components by mass spectrometry as Jarid1b/Plu-1, G9a, LSD1, CoREST, and CtBP1. Individual binding of these with ZNF217 was confirmed by co-immunoprecipiation (IP). Known activities of these proteins suggested a role of the ZNF217 complex in histone modification. Using in vitro assays the following activities were demonstrated: Histone H3 lysine 4 trimethyl (H3K4me3) demethylase activity, which co-fractionated with Jarid1b/Plu-1 in anion-exchange chromatography; H3K9 methylation, the known principal activity of G9a; and H3K27 methylation. The latter suggested EZH2 as another ZNF217 binding candidate, which could be confirmed by co-IP. Taken together, these findings suggest that ZNF217 assembles a distinct set of histone modifying proteins at target DNA sites that act synergistically in transcriptional repression.


Multi-sensor information fusion, when applied to fault diagnosis, the time-space scope, and the quantity of information are expanded compared to what could be acquired by a single sensor, so the diagnostic object can be described more comprehensively. The method of support vector machine (SVM) and D-S theory were presented in this paper to solve the problems about low detection accuracy, difficulty in extracting sensitive characteristics and unstable diagnosis system of single-sensor in rolling bearing fault diagnosis. Wavelet de-nosing technique was used for removing the signal noises. SVM was used to make pattern recognition of the bearing vibration signal, and then fusion process was made according to the D-S evidence theory, so as to realize recognition of bearing fault. The results indicated that the data fusion method improved the performance of the intelligent approach in rolling bearing fault detection significantly. Moreover, the results showed that this method can efficiently improve the accuracy of fault diagnosis.


Drawing on a range of sources, this article addresses the way in which various groups set about mapping the slums of Edwardian Norwich to bring understanding and order to the disordered world of the city's 750 courts and yards. It focuses on the social scientific investigations incorporated in the reports of the Medical Officer of Health; the evidence of social investigators; the findings of charitable bodies and the writings of local journalists, whether addressing the slum issue directly or reporting news stories set in slum areas. It shows how these individuals and groups identified, categorized and interpreted the slums and their dwellers and, by making the unknown known, encouraged a more vigorous intervention by the local state in the lives of the poor. It demonstrates the way in which these concerns and ideals came together in the moral panic which followed the Norwich Flood of August 1912, an event which revealed the dreadful state of the inner-city housing to a city-wide audience and culminated in the City's first public housing scheme. It shows how the impetus to demolish slums and build public housing on the outskirts of the city was conditioned by both the application of medical criteria and traditional moral constructions of the characters of slum dwellers.


Periodic heightened political tensions between India and Pakistan have derailed attempts to improve economic ties and trade relations between the two countries. India-Pakistan trade is unnaturally small, currently about $2 billion per year. Pakistan accounts for less than 1 percent of India's trade, and India accounts for less than 5 percent of Pakistan's trade. Constraints include high tariff and nontarrif barriers, inadequate infrastructure, bureaucratic inertia, excessive red tape, and direct political opposition. Khan recommends that President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had their first post-Mumbai attacks meeting on June 16, and are slated to meet again in Egypt in July, should pick up from where former President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Singh left off in their meeting in New Delhi in April 2005. The two governments could start with implementing short-term measures mainly to facilitate trade--such as easing restrictions on visas, opening additional border crossings and road routes, and increasing air links--many of which have already been agreed in principle at the April 2005 Musharraf-Singh meeting. The success of these "confidence building" short-term measures and the resulting growth in trade would encourage the creation of constituencies that would support more far-reaching liberalization of trade between the two countries. Over the medium to long term, Pakistan should grant most favored nation (MFN) status to India, which India already provides to Pakistan, and allow transit trade from India; India should significantly lower tariff rates for goods of particular interest to Pakistan (e.g., textiles) and remove nontariff barriers; and both countries should facilitate trade in energy, information technology, and services, remove obstacles to foreign direct investment flows, and harmonize customs procedures. Improving economic ties may help to resolve the larger political issues that have bedeviled India-Pakistan overall relations for over 60 years.


D. M. D. James writes: The palaeocurrent data for the Rhuddnant Grits presented by Clayton (1993) fills a major gap in knowledge of transport directions within the Welsh Silurian Basin and is much to be welcomed. The analysis of possible causes for the observed orientations of the palaeocurrents ventures boldly onto somewhat speculative quantitative ground, as Clayton fully acknowledges, and is thus doubly welcome. More data could usefully have been included on the nature and estimated height of the slope bounding the Rhuddnant Grits sub-basin and interpreted as induced by syndepositional activity on the basement faults of the Central Wales lineament. Major thickening of the grits across the lineament occurs in the turriculatus Biozone (British Geological Survey 1993, section 1); in contrast the grits of the crispus Biozone show negligible thickening across it and Clayton does not indicate from which biozone the palaeocurrent data was measured. It would also be helpful to indicate the criteria by which the thickness variation is considered to be syndepositional rather than infill of static topography. The generation of solitons on a transverse slope (i.e. at right angles to current motion) is presumably favoured by large differences between head and body heights and/or densities of the turbidity current and a rapid longitudinal transition between the head and body such that time is available after passage of the head to allow the laterally ponded material to accelerate to speeds capable of causing bed shear stress in the ripple field (i.e. an observable result) when interfering with


Organizational commitment has evidently emerged as the most predictable and researched construct of the employee's attachment or loyalty to the organization. An extremely committed person has the emotion that he is working for himself and not somebody else. Training makes a very significant contribution to the improvement of the organizations' human resources. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between employee attitude towards training and organizational commitment. To meet this purpose, extensive literature review was done. In this study, organizational commitment is defined as certain attitudes towards the organization. This includes employees' attachment to their organizations, the degree of their willingness to be a member of the organization and their acceptance of and commitment to organizational goals and their desire to attain them. Training variables were identified from literature reviews. A conceptual model was developed based on literature reviews done. Keywords: Employee Attitude towards Training, Organizational Commitment, Benefits from Training, Support for Training.


Abstract Background Data on functional imaging parameters such as blood volume (BV) in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) is limited. We assessed the association of baseline BV with survival outcome adjusted for baseline clinical factor in patients with mRCC. Methods BV was quantified using dynamic contrast-enhanced computed tomography in patients from two prospective studies; Angiogenesis Inhibitor Study (AIS) with pazopanib, sunitinib and temsirolimus and the Danish Renal Cancer Group Study-1 (Darenca-1) with interleukin-2, interferon alpha with or without bevacizumab. Data were analyzed using an Advanced Perfusion and Permeability Application softwareprogram, Phillips. BV was evaluated as a binary (above/below median) and as a continuous variable adjusted for treatment, gender, and individual IMDC factors. Association was evaluated using chi squared test for clinical factors, Cox regression for overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS), and logistic regression for objective response rate (ORR). Results Among 122 included patients, 105 patients had technically feasible scans and were included in the final analysis (AIS, N = 29 and Darenca-1, N = 76). Median BV was 32.87 mL * 100 g-1 (range 9.52 to 92.87). BV above median was associated with IMDC favorable risk group (p = 0.004), metastasis free interval > 1 year (p = 0.007) and male gender (p = 0.032). BV below median was associated with anemia (p = 0.040) and neutrophilia (p = 0.007). Patients with high vs. low baseline BV had longer PFS (12.5 vs. 5.6 months, p = 0.015) and longer OS (42.2 vs. 22.4 months, p = 0.001), respectively. In multivariate analysis, high baseline BV remained an independent favorable prognostic factor (OS: HR 0.49, 95% CI 0,30-0,78, p = 0.003, PFS: HR 0.64; 95% CI 0,42-0,97, p = 0.040). BV analyzed as a continuous variable was also associated with OS in multivariate analysis (HR 0.98, 95% CI 0,96-1,00, p = 0,017). No association was found between BV and ORR (OR 1.56; 95% CI 0,67-3,63, p = 0.3). Conclusions High baseline BV, obtained using functional imaging, is a new independent favorable prognostic factor associated with longer PFS and OS in patients with mRCC. Further research in functional imaging is encouraged. Clinical trial identification NCT01274273 (Darenca-1 Study). Legal entity responsible for the study Authors. Funding Phillips Healthcare provided the software used for DCE-CT analysis Roche and Novartis supported the clinical part of the study financially - but were however not invovled in the imaging analysis. Disclosure A. Drljevic-Nielsen: Research grant / Funding (institution), Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Ipsen; Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: Pfizer; Travel / Accommodation / Expenses: BMS. F. Donskov: Research grant / Funding (institution): Pfizer; Research grant / Funding (institution): Ipsen. All other authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


OF DISSERTATION ESSAYS ON FRESH VEGETABLE PRODUCTION AND MARKETING PRACTICES Commercial fresh vegetable production is one of the most rewarding and risky farming activities. The price and yield variations throughout the production year, the special characteristics of fresh vegetable produce (i.e. perishability), and the changing consumer demands are some of the factors contributing to the increased uncertainty faced by vegetable producers. This dissertation combined mathematical programming and econometric techniques to: 1) investigate the optimal production and marketing practices under different price distribution information scenarios, risk aversion levels and marketing outlets and 2) examine growers' preferences as well the effect of risk aversion levels and growers' risk perception on the choice of marketing contracts. Specifically, the following three modeling approaches were adopted in order to achieve the dissertation objectives: 1) quadratic programming under a mean-variance framework, 2) discrete choice experiments and 3) a combination of quadratic and integer programming embodied in a meanvariance framework. The findings indicate that optimal production practices and the resulting net returns are substantially influenced not only by the choice of marketing channel but also by growers' risk aversion levels as well as price knowledge. Furthermore, regarding the choice of marketing contracts, the results highlight the existence of heterogeneity in preferences and illustrate the importance of certification cost, in line with the previous literature. Lastly, the findings indicate that risk aversion and risk preferences do not play a significant role in the choice of contractual agreements by farmers.


Nine individuals of Apatidelia from Zhejiang Province, China were examined and their barcode sequences were generated and analyzed. A new species, A. morsei Xu & Sun sp. nov., is described and illustrated. The larva, male and female of A. acuminata Leng & Yang, 1998 and the male and female of A. morsei Xu & Sun sp. nov. are associated by mtCOI gene sequences. The male of A. acuminata Leng & Yang, 1998 is re-described and re-illustrated, and the female and the larva of the same species are also described and illustrated. Females and larvae of the genus are here reported for the first time.


Abstract Diffractionists usually place the birth of crystallography in 1912 with the first X-ray diffraction expeäriment of Friedrich, Knipping and Laue. This discovery propelled the mathematical branch of mineralogy to global importance and enabled crystal structure determination. Knowledge of the geometrical structure of matter at atomic resolution had revolutionary consequences for all branches of the natural sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, earth sciences and material science. It is scarcely possible for a single person in a single article to trace and appropriately value all of these developments. This article presents the limited, subjective view of its author and a limited selection of references. The bulk of the article covers the history of X-ray structure determination from the NaCl structure to aperiodic structures and macromolecular structures. The theoretical foundations were available by 1920. The subsequent success of crystallography was then due to the development of diffraction equipment, the theory of the solution of the phase problem, symmetry theory and computers. The many structures becoming known called for the development of crystal chemistry and of data banks. Diffuse scattering from disordered structures without and with partial long-range order allows determination of short-range order. Neutron and electron scattering and diffraction are also mentioned.


Five phthalates will be banned from toys and items such as teething rings and pacifiers, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) decided earlier this month. In a 3-2 vote, CPSC determined that the chemicals are harmful for male reproductive development and agreed to restrict the five plasticizers in toys and some child care products to no more than 0.1%. The substances are di-n-hexyl phthalate, di-n-pentyl phthalate, dicyclohexyl phthalate, diisobutyl phthalate, and diisononyl phthalate (DINP). Consumer groups applauded the restriction, which is expected to take effect in about six months. The American Chemistry Council (ACC), an association of chemical manufacturers, lashed out at CPSC's action on one of the substances. "This vote to ban DINP is arbitrary and capricious and proves CPSC isn't interested in acting based on valid scientific standards," the group said. Calling DINP one of the most thoroughly studied compounds in the world, ACC said reviews by


A new summary measure for time-to-event data, termed lost lifespan, is proposed in which the existing concept of reversed percentile residual life, or percentile inactivity time, is recast to show that it can be used for routine analysis to summarize life lost. The lost lifespan infers the distribution of time lost due to experiencing an event of interest before some specified time point. An estimating equation approach is adopted to avoid estimation of the probability density function of the underlying time-to-event distribution to estimate the variance of the quantile estimator. A K-sample test statistic is proposed to test the ratio of quantile lost lifespans. Simulation studies are performed to assess finite properties of the proposed statistic in terms of coverage probability and power. The concept of life lost is then extended to a regression setting to analyze covariate effects on the quantiles of the distribution of the lost lifespan under right censoring. An estimating equation, variance estimator, and minimum dispersion statistic for testing the significance of regression parameters are proposed and evaluated via simulation studies. The proposed approach reveals several advantages over existing methods for analyzing time-to-event data, which is illustrated with a breast cancer dataset from a Phase III clinical trial conducted by the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project.
Public Health Significance: The analysis of time-to-event data can provide important information about new treatments and therapies, particularly in clinical trial settings. The methods provided in this dissertation will allow public health researchers to analyze effectiveness of new treatments in terms of a new summary measure, life loss. In addition to providing statistical advantages over existing methods, analyzing time-to-event data in terms of the lost lifespan provides a more straightforward interpretation beneficial to clinicians, patients, and other stakeholders.


A lack of adequate German language skills is often discussed as a major reason for the disadvantage of children of immigrants in the German educational system. This article analyses the access to formal and informal early education of Turkish-origin children in Germany and the influence of these early education contexts on the children's German language acquisition. We use the frequency of stimulating parent–child activities as an indicator of informal education and the attendance in language instruction programmes at preschool as an indicator of formal education. The empirical results show that the frequency of parent–child activities in Turkish-origin families depends on parents' social background and German language skills. Language instruction programmes in preschools are most frequently used by children who most likely need such programmes: children with low levels of German language skills. For the development of German language skills, parent–child activities seem to be most important.


DEVELOPMENT OF KINASE CATALYZED BIOTINYLATION TO STUDY PHOSPHOPROTEOMICS by KONA ARACHCHILAGE CHAMARA SENEVIRATHNE AUGUST 2013 Advisor: Prof. Mary Kay Pflum Major: Chemistry (Organic) Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Kinase-catalyzed protein phosphorylation is involved in a wide variety of cellular events. Development of methods to identify phosphoproteins in normal and diseased states is critical to fully characterize cell biology. Our lab recently discovered kinase-catalyzed biotinylation, where ATP-biotin is utilized by kinases to label phosphopeptides or phosphoproteins with a biotin tag. To explore kinase-catalyzed biotinylation, kinetic measurements were obtained with various kinases and the data indicated that kinase-catalyzed biotinylation occurs with catalytic efficiency appropriate for phosphoproteomics application. Next, the susceptibility of the biotin tag to phosphatases was characterized and found that the phosphorylbiotin group was relatively insensitive to protein phosphatases. Importantly, robust kinase-catalyzed biotinylation occurs without the need for phosphatase inhibitor treatment. The results suggest that kinase-catalyzed biotinylation is well suited for phosphoproteomics studies, with particular utility towards monitoring low abundance phosphoproteins. Finally, we report application of kinase-catalyzed biotinylation to the enrichment of the phosphopeptides in cell lysates for mass spectrometrybased phosphoproteomics analysis. Significantly, the biotinylation strategy was used to enrich full-length phosphoprotein, which is challenging using metal ion purification. With the utility of


Abstract This article explores how armed forces in EU member states work with and view social media in national and international settings, and what the patterns of convergence/divergence are on these issues. To that end, a questionnaire targeted at EU armed forces was constructed. An index of qualitative variation was calculated to explore the relative convergence among respondents (n = 25) on issues of risks and opportunities with using social media nationally and internationally. Consistent with previous research on European armed forces, we found higher levels of divergence than convergence. Contrary to our expectations that similar challenges, joint international standards, and membership in international organizations would foster convergence with regard to social media use in areas of deployment, we found that convergence appeared foremost pertaining to the domestic level. Policy divergence was strongest in areas of deployment.


Abstract Context. Feral pigs (Sus scrofa) are highly fecund, and populations can increase rapidly under favourable conditions. Population size can also fluctuate widely, driven largely by changes in juvenile mortality in response to food availability, but these relationships have only been explored on a limited number of sites and over short periods. Aims. The present study aimed to investigate and quantify the numerical response of feral pig populations to changes in their food supply in north-eastern Australia. Methods. Pig population densities were determined from aerial surveys conducted over a 21-year period on 10 regional blocks (∼2000–6000 km2) throughout the Queensland rangelands. Densities were used to calculate annual exponential rates of increase (r), which were then corrected for anthropogenic mortality (baiting and commercial harvesting). Six proxy measures of annual food supply, including rainfall, pasture biomass and pasture growth (using the AussieGRASS model), were calculated for each survey block, and assessed as predictors of corrected r. The rates of increase predicted from the first half of the data series were then applied to initial population densities to estimate successive pig densities during the second period in each bioregion. Key results. The most parsimonious model of the numerical response had parameters common to three bioregions, with rainfall in the 12 months between surveys being the best predictor variable. Modelled densities for each bioregion were a good fit to actual, observed densities. Relationships between r and each measure of food supply at the individual block level were inconsistent. Conclusions. Using rainfall as a measure of food supply, the numerical response relationship provides a method for predicting the dynamics of feral pig populations at the bioregional scale. Predicting population dynamics at any one site using this relationship is less precise, suggesting that differences in landscape composition affect utilisation of resources supporting population growth. Implications. The results from the present study could be used to predict feral pig population changes at the bioregional level, supplementing or reducing the need for more frequent, expensive population surveys. This improved ability to predict fluctuations in regional feral pig populations can help guide future management actions.


The quantity of wildlife extracted from the Amazon has increased in the past decades as a consequence of an increase in human population density and income growth. To evaluate the spatial distribution of studies on subsistence and/or commercial hunting conducted in the Brazilian Amazon, we selected eight mid-sized and large-bodied aquatic vertebrate species with a history of human exploitation in the region. We used a combination of searches in the gray and scientific literature from the past 24 years to provide an updated distributional map of studies on the target species. We calculated the distances between the study sites and the locations of the research institutes/universities that the first and last authors of the same study were affiliated to. For the period of 1990 to 2014, we found 105 studies on the subsistence and/or commercial hunting of aquatic vertebrates in the Brazilian Amazon in 271 locations that involved 43 institutions (37 Brazilian and 6 international). The spatial distribution of the studies across the Brazilian Amazon varied, but over 80% took place in the northeast and central Amazon, encompassing three States of the Legal Brazilian Amazon (Amazonas, 51.42%; Pará, 19.05%; and Amapá, 16.19%). Over half of the research study sites (52.91%) were within 500 km of the research institute/university of the first or last authors. Some research institutes/universities did not have any inter-institutional collaborations, while others collaborated with eight or more institutes. Some research institutes/universities conducted many studies, had an extensive collaboration network, and contributed greatly to the network of studies on Amazonian aquatic vertebrates. Our research contributes to the knowledge of studies on the subsistence and/or commercial hunting of the most exploited aquatic vertebrates of the Brazilian Amazon, illustrates the impact that collaboration networks have on research, and highlights potential areas for improvement and the generation of new collaborations.


Extracting a target source signal from multiple noisy observations is an essential task in many applications of signal processing such as digital communications or speech and audio processing. The multi-channel Wiener filter is able to solve this task in a minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) optimal way by applying a spatial filter succeeded by a spectral postfilter. Its direct implementation, however, is difficult due to requiring the statistics of the unobservable source and noise signals. In this paper, we apply the signal-separation-based technique of multichannel decorrelation and reveal its relation to the Wiener post-filtering component. On this basis, we present a numerically robust and efficient adaptive algorithm to find an estimate of the MMSE-optimal postfilter based on the statistics of the observable signals alone. Experimental evaluation demonstrates the validity of the proposed approach and confirms the convergence of the adaptive algorithm to the MMSE-optimal postfilter solution.


The paper describes the creation and application of an investment portfolio. Main aim of the paper is to perform statistical analysis of selected financial instruments and to find a connection between the input data. Authors use application Adaptrade from the Adaptrade software company which is based on genetic algorithms basis and is able to process this difficult task in real time. The case analysis is performed for three world currencies—U. S. dollar, Canadian dollar and Swiss franc. Statistical analysis was performed specifically on the currency couple USD: CAD and USD:CHF. The input data consists of time series, which records the progress of prices of the financial instruments with a period of 15 minutes continuously from Monday 00:00 to Friday 23:00 for the period 2.1.2009 – 14.3.2011. JEL classification: C61, G11. Keywords: Optimization, soft computing, Adaptrade, genetic algorithms, investment portfolio.


Much has been written about Thurgood Marshall, but this is the first book to collect his own words. Here are briefs he filed as a lawyer, oral arguments for the landmark school desegregation cases, investigative reports on race riots and racism in the Army, speeches and articles outlining the history of civil rights and criticising the actions of more conservative jurists, Supreme Court opinions now widely cited in Constitutional law, a long and complete oral autobiography, and much more. Marshall's impact on American race relations was greater than that of anyone else this century, for it was he who ended legal segregation in the United States. His victories as a lawyer for the NAACP broke the colour line in housing, transportation, voting, and schools by overturning the long-established "separate-but-equal" doctrine. But Marshall was attentive to all social inequalities: no Supreme Court justice has ever been more consistent in support of freedom of expression, affirmative action, women's rights, abortion rights, and the right to consensual sex among adults; no justice has ever fought so hard against economic inequality, police brutality, and capital punishment.


The anaerobic treatment of waste water has been studied with an emphasis on the Up- flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor. A model to describe the processes occurring in a UASB reactor was developed and an experimental study of the anaerobic wastewater treatment systems in Nicaragua was also performed. Experimental work was carried out in order to link the study to the wastewater treatment situation in Nicaragua, a developing country. In order to assess the performance of the treatment plants, the methanogenic activity of sludge from seven anaerobic wastewater treatment plants was first addressed. Due to a lack of Standards for the measurement of methanogenic activity, a laboratory method was developed based on the methods found in the literature. An additional aim of this study was to find adequate inoculum for the wastewater treatment plant in a brewery using an anaerobic reactor. Physic-chemical characteristics of the sludge were also determined to provide a basis for decisions regarding the agricultural employment of the sludge from the treatment plants. A one-dimensional model describing the physical and biological processes occurring in an Up-flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket reactor has been developed. These processes are advection, dispersion and reaction in the granule, including mass transport at the interface and diffusion within the particle. The advection-dispersion equation is used to describe these phenomena in the reactor. Dispersion is mainly caused by the gas bubbles rising up through the reactor and the granules in the ascending flow. The extent of the dispersion is expressed by the dimensionless Peclet (Pe) number. It is assumed that the biological degradation takes place at the surface and within the granules. The processes occurring in the granules formed by the microorganisms are described in detail; they include diffusion in the stagnant film around the granule, diffusion within the particle, and a degradation reaction. From these processes, the reaction term is analytically determined. The granules were modelled as spherical porous biocatalysts of different sizes. The biochemical degradation reactions were assumed to follow Monod type kinetics of the first order. For the numerical solution of the model, a standard program was used (Within MATLAB). The model was applied to some experimental data taken from the literature. An important characteristic of the model is that it can simultaneously take into account reactions in granules of different sizes. At present, the parameters of the model are calculated using data from the literature; but experimental measurements of the main parameters are planned. The impact of the different parameters was studied by numerical simulation and its validity was tested using experimental data reported in the literature. The model could be a useful tool in the performance optimization of UASB reactors by predicting the influences of different operational parameters.


We investigate the secondary users (SUs) power allocation in ad-hoc cognitive radio networks, considering an underlay paradigm where SUs can access the licensed spectrum owned by the primary users (PUs), if the total power to SUs and the interference power threshold from PUs and the signal-to-interference-noise-ratio (SINR) requirements of SUs are guaranteed. While prevalent works about distributed resources allocation algorithms are mainly focused on power allocation under the consideration of many practical limitations, which may not be the case in practice. We assume that SUs also are needed to satisfy heterogenous constraints with different positions by taking the fairness of SUs into account. Moreover, we develop a weighted robust distributed power allocation scheme to guarantees the fairness of SUs. Techniques from robust optimization theory are used to study an objective formulation with infinite numbers of constraints. The optimal solution is obtained by using Lagrange dual method, and the Lagrange multiplier is solved by the sub-gradient update algorithm. The feasibility and availability of our proposed power allocation scheme is confirmed by numerical results.


The industrial and innovative development of Kazakhstan accounts for the growth of the national economy. Although the return on investment in innovative business is quite high in the global financial market in general, individual investors may either get very high profits or lose all their invested funds, which is unacceptable for enterprises.Therefore, it is especially important to define strategic approaches to reduce the potential loss ratio and increase the commercial success of innovation projects. For this purpose, it is necessary to properly and systematically form the financing sources of enterprises' innovative development, the effectiveness of which is confirmed by international and Kazakh experience.On the other hand, it is important to determine directions and conditions for the use of these funds in the course of the innovation process, since the timely suspension or termination of the project will significantly reduce possible losses.


Quality assurance (QA) tasks, such as testing, profiling, and performance evaluation, have historically been done in-house on developer-generated workloads and regression suites. The shortcomings of in-house QA efforts are well-known and severe, including (1) increased QA cost and (2) misleading results when the test cases, input workloads; and software platforms at the developer's site differ from those in the field. Consequently, tools and processes have been developed to improve software quality by increasing user participation in the QA process. A limitation of these approaches is that they focus on isolated mechanisms, not on the coordination and control policies and tools needed to make the global QA process efficient, effective, and scalable. To address these issues, we have initiated the Skoll project, which is developing and validating novel software QA processes and tools that leverage the extensive computing resources of worldwide user communities in a distributed, continuous manner to significantly and rapidly improve software quality. We call this distributed, continuous quality assurance (DCQA). We envision a QA process conducted around-the-world, around-the-clock on a powerful computing grid provided by thousands of user machines during off-peak hours. Skoll processes are distributed, opportunistic, and adaptive. They are distributed: Given a QA task we divide it into several subtasks, each of which can be performed on a single user machine. They are opportunistic: When a user machine becomes available we allocate one or more subtasks to it, collect the results when they are available, and fuse them together at central collection sites to complete the overall QA process. And finally they are adaptive: We use earlier subtask results to schedule and coordinate subtask allocation.
In this thesis, we build an infrastructure, algorithms and tools for developing and executing through, transparent, managed, and adaptive DCQA processes. We then develop several novel DCQA processes and empirically evaluate them, with a special focus on cost efficiency and applicability of these processes to real-life, highly-configurable software systems. Our results strongly suggest that these new processes are an effective and efficient way to conduct QA tasks such as evaluating performance characteristics and testing for functional correctness of evolving software systems.


Evidence suggests that extraverted (i.e., bold, agentic) behavior increases positive affect (PA), and could be targeted in wellbeing interventions. However, this evidence is either causally ambiguous or has questionable ecological validity, and the potential costs of sustained extraverted behavior have received minimal attention. To address these limitations, we conducted a randomized controlled trial examining the wellbeing benefits and costs of an extraverted behavior intervention conducted in everyday life. Participants (n = 147) were randomly assigned to an "act-extraverted" intervention or a "sham" (active control) intervention for 1 week in everyday life. Additional data for a contact control condition were obtained from a previous study (n = 76). Wellbeing outcomes included PA and negative affect (NA), feelings of authenticity, and tiredness-assessed both in the moment and retrospectively. There was a positive overall effect of the acting extraverted intervention on PA and authenticity. However, wellbeing outcomes also depended on dispositional extraversion: more introverted participants had weaker PA increases, experienced increased NA and tiredness, and decreased feelings of authenticity. Implications for wellbeing interventions and personality theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).


Abstract— We studied the texture, mineralogy, and bulk chemical composition of Dhofar 007, a basaltic achondrite. Dhofar 007 is a polymict breccia that is mostly composed of coarse‐grained granular (CG) clasts with a minor amount of xenolithic components, such as a fragment of Mg‐rich pyroxene. The coarse‐grained, relict gabbroic texture, mineral chemistry, and bulk chemical data of the coarse‐grained clast indicate that the CG clasts were originally a cumulate rock crystallized in a crust of the parent body. However, in contrast to monomict eucrites, the siderophile elements are highly enriched and could have been introduced by impact events. Dhofar 007 appears to have experienced a two‐stage postcrystallization thermal history: rapid cooling at high temperatures and slow cooling at lower temperatures. The presence of pigeonite with closely spaced, fine augite lamellae suggests that this rock was cooled rapidly from higher temperatures (>0.5 °C/yr at ˜1000 °C) than typical cumulate eucrites. However, the presence of the cloudy zone in taenite and the Ni profile across the kamacite‐taenite boundaries indicates that the cooling rate was very slow at lower temperatures (˜1–10 °C/Myr at <600–700 °C). The slow cooling rate is comparable to those in mesosiderites and pallasites. The two‐stage thermal history and the relative abundance of siderophile elements similar to those for metallic portions in mesosiderites suggest that Dhofar 007 is a large inclusion of mesosiderite. However, we cannot rule out a possibility that Dhofar 007 is an anomalous eucrite.


The potential of lipases (E.C.22.214.171.124.) as biocatalysts for the production of fatty acid derivatives for the food and nutraceutical industries, such as flavouring esters, fatty acid esters of antioxidants and structured lipids, is enormous, mainly due to their high regio- and stereo-selectivities, in addition to the other well-known advantages of enzymatic processes. The replacement of chemical catalysts by lipases presents great benefits in terms of the nutritional properties of the obtained products and environmental care. The reactions performed for the production of these compounds, as well as the best operation conditions, the biocatalysts used, reactor types and operation mode, are addressed in this review.


This work addresses the problem of reducing the time between query submission and results output in a retrieval system. The goal is achieved by considering only a database fraction as small as possible during the retrieval process. Our approach is based on a new clustering technique and comparisons with other clustering methods presented in the literature are performed. Our algorithm is shown to outperform the other techniques: retrieval performances close to those obtained with the whole corpus are achieved by selecting only 5% of the data.


Regional patterns of inflation persistence have received attention only at a very coarse level of territorial disaggregation, that of EMU member states. However economic disparities within EMU member states are an equally important policy issue. This paper considers a country with a large regional divide, i.e., Italy, at a fine level of territorial disaggregation (NUTS3). Our results show that economically backward regions display greater inflation persistence. Moreover, we show that higher persistence is linked to a lower degree of competitiveness in the retail sector.


Mathematical models based on ordinary differential equations, with impulses, are used to describe tumor growth after different treatment combinations, including chemicals as well as radiation. The models are calibrated, using a nonlinear mixed-effects framework, based on time series data of tumor volume from animal experiments. Important features incorporated into the models include natural cell death, and short-term as well as long-term response to radiation treatment, with or without co-treatment with a radiosensitizing compound. Tumor Static Exposure, defined as the treatment combinations that yield stability of the trivial solution to the system model, is introduced as a prediction tool that can also be used to compare and optimize combination therapies. The Tumor Static Exposure concept is illustrated practically, using calibrated models and data from animal experiments, as well as theoretically, using a linear cell cycle model to describe cancer growth subject to treatment with an arbitrary number of anticancer compounds.


BACKGROUND
Recommendations for antibiotic treatment of acute otitis media (AOM) have changed over the years, and today many experts recommend initial observation. However, antibiotic prescribing should be considered in children aged <2 years or if AOM is accompanied by discharging ear.

OBJECTIVES
To investigate the quality of treatment of AOM in general practice and to explore the influence of selected GP and patient characteristics on antibiotic prescribing.

METHODS
During the winter 2008, a prospective registration of patients diagnosed with AOM was conducted in general practice in Lithuania, Kaliningrad, Spain, Argentina, Sweden and Denmark. Some 1175 patients diagnosed with AOM were registered. Information about age and sex of the patient, duration of symptoms (days), temperature >38.5°C, ear discharge and the antibiotic treatment given was recorded.

RESULTS
Danish GPs had the lowest antibiotic prescription rate for AOM [72.7% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 67.0-77.8)] and GPs in Kaliningrad had the highest [97.1% (95% CI = 89.8-99.6)]. Narrow-spectrum penicillin was almost exclusively prescribed in the two Nordic countries, while broad-spectrum penicillins, often in combination with clavulanic acid, were prescribed in the other four countries. Macrolides comprised 5-10% of prescriptions. Antibiotic prescribing was associated with the following characteristics of the patients: symptoms for >3 days, ear discharge and fever.

CONCLUSION
The majority of patients with AOM were treated with antibiotics in all six countries, but considerable variations in both prescribing rate and choice of antibiotics were identified.


Auxin governs dynamic cellular processes involved at several stages of plant growth and development. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms employed by auxin in light of recent scientific advances, with a focus on synthetic auxins as herbicides and synthetic auxin resistance mechanisms. Two auxin receptors were reported. The plasma membrane receptor ABP1 (Auxin Binding Protein 1) alters the structure and arrangement of actin filaments and microtubules, leading to plant epinasty and reducing peroxisomes and mitochondria mobility in the cell environment. The second auxin receptor is the gene transcription pathway regulated by the SCFTir/AFB ubiquitination complex, which destroys transcription repressor proteins that interrupt Auxin Response Factor (ARF) activation. As a result mRNA related with Abscisic Acid (ABA) and ethylene are transcribed, producing high quantities of theses hormones. Their associated action leads to high production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), leading to tissue and plant death. Recently, another ubiquitination pathway which is described as a new auxin signaling route is the F-box protein S-Phase Kinase-Associated Protein 2A (SKP2A). It is active in cell division regulation and there is evidence that auxin herbicides can deregulate the SKP2A pathway, which leads to severe defects in plant development. In this discussion, we propose that SFCSKP2A auxin binding site alteration could be a new auxinic herbicide resistance mechanism, a concept which may contribute to the current progress in plant biology in its quest to clarify the many questions that still surround auxin herbicide mechanisms of action and the mechanisms of weed resistance.


Smartphones are becoming main personal information repositories. Unfortunately this information is stored in independent silos managed by applications. We have seen that already: in the Palm operating system, application "databases" were only accessible when the application schemas were known and worked by opening other application databases. Our goal is to provide support for applications to deliver their data in RDF. This would allow applications to exploit this information in a uniform way without knowing beforehand application schemas. This would also connect this information to the semantic web and the web of data through reference from and to device information. We present a way to do this in a uniform manner within the Android platform. Moreover, we propose to do it along the linked data principles (provide RDF, describe in ontologies, use URIs, link other sources). We first consider how the integration of RDF could be further pushed within the context of the Android platform. We demonstrate its feasibility through a linked data browser that allows for browsing the phone information.


Evolutionary change can occur by nonadaptive processes, such as random genetic drift, and as a consequence of selection on linked genetic variants. In addition, if selective regimes change over time, an allele currently at a high frequency because of past fitness advantage may be suboptimal for its present environment. Small effective population size along the human lineage increased the influence of drift, rendering mutations with slight effects on fitness effectively neutral. Demographic events like spatial expansions and population bottlenecks shape most of the genetic variation within and among modern populations. Natural selection itself may also contribute to nonadaptive or maladaptive change by increasing the frequency of linked deleterious variants. Also, certain maladaptive alleles may have increased in frequency because of compensating fitness advantages they provide.

Key Concepts:

Reduced effective population size along the human lineage led to an increase in the influence of genetic drift and a reduction in the efficacy of natural selection, especially for mutations with small selective effects. Evidence for this can be seen in comparisons of measures of natural selection in lineages having different effective population sizes.

Genome-wide variation within and between human populations can be almost entirely explained by random drift and demographic forces other natural selection.

Spatial expansions in human evolutionary history may cause gene surfing, in which low frequency alleles at the wave of advance can reach high frequencies and spread over large areas merely due to the effects of intense genetic drift. Nonadaptive gene surfing might be a better explanation than adaptive evolution for some high frequency, widespread genetic variants.

Population bottlenecks in human evolutionary history can lead to increases in drift and reductions in the efficacy of purifying selection. This leads to an increase in the fraction of slightly deleterious mutations present in human populations that have experienced recent bottlenecks.

Natural selection on alleles can result in nonadaptive shifts in the frequencies of alleles that are closely linked to them. Such linkage effects can lead to the increased frequencies of mildly deleterious alleles if they are linked to a beneficial variant, and can interfere with the effectiveness of adaptive evolution in promoting an advantageous allele if it is linked to a deleterious allele.

Caution should be exercised in interpreting patterns of genetic variation in human populations as being adaptive without thoroughly ruling out nonadaptive explanations.

Keywords:

population genetics;
evolution;
natural selection;
positive selection;
purifying selection;
human evolution;
gene surfing;
adaptation;
linkage;
effective population size;
genetic drift;
nonadaptive


This overview of bipolar disorder offers six scholarly reviews of the condition, accompanied by 122 brief commentaries from international experts. The result is a stimulating and comprehensive account of recent research, set in the context of a consensus about the findings. The commentaries include many enlightening and imaginative ideas. Akiskal's introductory review, on the diagnosis and classification of bipolar disorders, is perhaps his most articulate and convincing exposition of the concept of the 'bipolar spectrum' of conditions. These he subdivides into eight types, that can be recognised in up to 50% of the population. The commentaries show broad appreciation of the spectrum concept, but express the need for strict criteria to identify homogeneous groups for study. Only then can the supposed pharmacological 'dissections' be achieved, identifying patients who may benefit from particular therapeutic approaches. Bowden reviews drug treatments. The different perspective of North American and European experts is intriguing. For example, in the USA there is reluctance to use antidepressants for bipolar depression for fear of inducing mania, even though authorities such as Jules Angst argue that such switches are an inevitable sequel to effective resolution of depression in these people. One commentator actually recommends two failed trials with 'mood stabilisers' before giving an antidepressant. Yet, the definition of a mood stabiliser is not clear and no anticonvulsant drug has unequivocal evidence for prophylactic efficacy against mania. Several reasons suggest themselves for the divergence of expert opinion in the USA from opinion elsewhere and from clinical practice. In the USA there may be greater admiration for new approaches and moreintense fear of lawyers (and therefore of side-effects) than in Europe. Boland & Keller suggest that third-party reimbursement plays a part in diagnosis and treatment: 'it is difficult to find a patient with any sort of chronic psychiatric illness who is not on a mood stabiliser'. Kasper suggests that North American opinion leaders 'base their sound clinical knowledge on patient samples largely consisting of rapid-cyclers', an uncommon sub-type of bipolar disorder in Europe. A further possibility is that American academics are disinclined to refer to journals published outside the USA. Yet American investigators have been at the forefront of developments in clinical trials of new drugs. Other reviews deal with psychological therapies, the presentation in youth and old age, and the economic implications of the disorder. The recent expansion of knowledge means that there is a greater need for specialisation in the provision of health care to patients with bipolar disorder, who have been neglected in official plans such as the National Service Framework.


A M.M.I.C. realization of voltage controlled oscillator (V.C.O.) for X-BAND application and frequency stabilization is presented Fig.l. Conventional V.C.O. is based on the association of a Ga As MESFET and a varactor diode followed by a buffer amplifier.Among them ,an original one is proposed here:it is mainly based on the suppression of the varactor diode.Instead , the variations of a HEMT gate-to-source capacitance allow to realize frequency variation on the oscillator.This approach offers good frequency stability,low tuning sensitivity to temperature,low phase noise and obviously simpler design. On the other hand,the .present configuration of the microwave oscillator can be used to realize an injection-locked oscillator.For this purpose, we suggest an alternative approach for the design of stabilized microwave source without cavity-stabilization , such as dielectric resonator (DRSO) , or phase locked loop (PLL) system in order to obtain both simpler design and good performance such : high temperature stability and linear amplitude modulation with low cost and small size.


Selecting items from a collection is one of the most common tasks
users perform with graphical user interfaces. Practically every
application supports this task with a selection feature different
from that of any other application. Defects are common,
especially in manipulating selections of non-adjacent elements,
and flexible selection features are often missing when they would
clearly be useful. As a consequence, user effort is wasted. The
loss of productivity is experienced in small doses, but all
computer users are impacted. The undesirable state of support
for multi-element selection prevails because the same selection
features are redesigned and reimplemented repeatedly. This
article seeks to establish common abstractions for
multi-selection. It gives generic but precise meanings to
selection operations and makes multi-selection reusable; a
JavaScript implementation is described. Application vendors
benefit because of reduced development effort. Users benefit
because correct and consistent multi-selection becomes available
in more contexts.


Energy loss and energy theft are two serious problems in modern grid which produce huge waste and cost. The smart grid with its ability to collect information about the behaviors of suppliers and customers is expected to be better equipped than the existing grid to detect loss and theft. The following two questions are the main focus of our works: 1). "Can we locate the source of theft ?" 2)."How much energy is stolen?" We deal with two types of theft: tampering with a smart meter and tapping a line. For tampering, we propose a framework based on the measurement of energy, electric current and voltage to make theft detection feasible. In this framework, when measurements (of energy, electric current and voltage) are available everywhere, theft can be easily detected. The interesting case is, if measurements are not everywhere, theft detection is still feasible under some conditions. For different cases of measurement scenarios, we propose different solutions and provide the conditions under which our solutions work. In particular, assuming that the smart grid has a tree structure and has a single source of energy, we show via simulation the following results: 1) With the measurement of electric current at the entry of each user and at the source of energy, we can locate the source of theft if the electric power is stolen in a constant rate and the measurement noise is comparatively small; 2) With the measurement of the energy production and each user's energy consumption plus the measurement of electric current at the entry of each user, we can accurately estimate the resistance of each link as long as the amount of stolen energy is comparatively small; 3) With the measurement of the voltage and electric current at the source of energy and at the entry of each user, we can accurately estimate the resistance of each transmission link if there is no theft. For tapping, we apply clustering algorithms to analyze the anomalies in the usage data of all customers. We propose a hierarchical clustering algorithm which recursively bipartitions the data along the principle eigenvector and separate the usage data of normal users and abnormal users. Our theft detection framework employs the `1 minimization under non-negative constraint, i.e., min x≥0 ∥Y − Ax∥`1 . As a theoretical verification of our work, we prove that under some suitable conditions on the matrix A, the `1 minimization problem has a unique minimizer and the unique minimizer is equal to the real underlying result.


On December 1 1892, the Brouardel law was voted which gave legal status to dental surgeons. At that point, those who had followed appropriate studies delivered by the Faculty of Medicine were the only ones who could practise dental surgery [1]. Therefore, it was a profession in its infancy which enlisted during the war in 1939? On February 26 1916, a dental service was created in the infantry within the French army for the duration of the war. That of the Navy only started on March 1st 1916. After the Great War, only the Navy decided to dissolve its dental service for it did not have a satisfying organization to greet its patients. In 1934, a backup dental service was implemented once again. While they were made lieutenants in 1818, dentists could become captains after the law voted on December 19 1934 [2]. A few months later, dentists in the land army were attributed the same rank.


SIGNIFICANCE Systematic lighting assessments should be part of low vision evaluations. The LuxIQ has gained popularity as an assessment tool, but its reliability has not been examined independently and is necessary for evidence-based vision rehabilitation. PURPOSE Besides magnification, improved lighting levels are a common intervention in reading rehabilitation for individuals with low vision. Determining the appropriate lighting can be a complex and time-consuming task. The LuxIQ is a portable lighting assessment tool that can be used to systematically measure lighting preferences; however, there is little independent evidence to support its reliability in low vision rehabilitation. METHODS One hundred nine control subjects (age, 18 to 85 years) and 64 individuals with low vision (age, 27 to 99 years) adjusted both the luminance and color temperature parameters on the LuxIQ while viewing a sentence on the MNREAD at their preferred print size for continuous reading. After 30 minutes, they were asked to repeat the same measurements. RESULTS Using Bland-Altman plots, test-retest variability was calculated using the limits of agreement (LOAs). For illuminance, the LOA width was 2806 lux for control subjects and 2657 lux for visually impaired participants. For color temperature, the LOA width was 2807 K for control subjects and 2364 K for those with a visual impairment. Difference scores were centered near zero, indicating overall accuracy. CONCLUSIONS The measurement of lighting preference lacks the precision necessary for clinical utility, given that the LOA for luminance ranged more than 2600 lux, with normally sighted and low vision participants. Such variability translates into a range of approximately ±40 or 50 W in an incandescent light bulb, depending on the luminance level, making it clinically difficult to narrow down the options for evidence-based lighting recommendations. Next steps are to examine whether the reading behavior of low vision clients is positively affected by interventions that are based on LuxIQ recommendations.