Background: It is not clear whether the addition of ezetimibe to statin will result in greater reduction in coronary plaque. We aimed to perform a meta-analysis of all RCTs and prospective studies that evaluated role of dual lipid lowering strategy in atherosclerosis regression. Methods: We searched PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane CENTRAL, Scopus and relevant references for RCTs (inception through December 20, 2015 without language restrictions) and performed meta-analysis using random effects model. Percentage change in plaque volume, change in lumen volume, percentage change in LDL, HDL and hsCRP were measured outcomes. Results: 3 RCTs and 1 prospective non randomized trial with a total population of 554 comprising mostly of Asian population were analyzed. Statin plus ezetimibe showed significantly greater lowering of plaque volume than statin alone (WMD -4.13 mm3 range of -7.42 mm3 to 0.85 mm3; p=0.01); there was a trend towards increased lumen volume in combination group without statistical significance [WMD 1.90 mm3 (-4.61 to 8.40); p=0.57).Combination strategy resulted in significantly higher percentage lowering of LDL at the end of follow up [WMD: -16.16(-22.47 to -9.85) p ≤ 0.00001]. No differences in percentage change in HDL and hsCRP were observed between two groups. Conclusion: Combination lipid lowering by statin plus ezetimibe causes significantly greater reduction in plaque volume and lowering of LDL cholesterol. Further larger studies are needed to validate the findings in all population groups.


Intensity modulated neutron radiotherapy (IMNRT) is currently being investigated as a mechanism to improve dose conformality in neutron radiotherapy, thereby minimizing normal tissue toxicity. This study investigates the applicability of two different dose calculation algorithms for IMNRT, a commercial system which utilizes a finite size pencil beam (FSPB) model, and an in-house planning system which uses a differential scatter air ratio (DSAR) method. Calculated dose distributions were compared with measured profiles for validation purposes. The beam-profiles matched to within ±3% in the central region of the field. The 80–20% penumbra width as measured using an ionization chamber varied as 0.6 cm and 1.0 cm for 3 × 3 and 10 × 10 cm2 profile at a depth of 2.5 cm. The FSPB model fitted the data to a penumbra width of 0.1 cm for both 3 × 3 and 10 × 10 cm2 profiles. These results indicate that the commercial system needs further investigation. However, the in-house planning system has been validated for small irregular fields for IMNRT to an accuracy of ±5%. Absolute dose measurements agreed with the calculated doses to within ±3%.


The current American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials standard on crushed concrete in base applications (M 319-02) allows up to 5 % brick by mass, and more with the approval of the engineer; however, in some regions the brick content may be greater than 10 %. More than 41 states allow the use of crushed concrete in highway applications, but only a handful allow the use of building derived concrete (BDC) or mixed stream crushed concrete. Barriers to increasing the appropriate use of BDC in highway applications include a lack of data comparing BDC properties and performance to natural aggregates, as well as data that pavement engineers can use for design. This research has focused on characterizing BDC that was screened to meet New Hampshire Department of Transportation specifications. The gradation, optimum water content, unit weight, and resilient modulus were measured for the BDC and for the control materials, which were a crushed stone and a sand. The resilient modulus was measured using both a laboratory triaxial cell, and a light falling weight deflectometer (LWD) in a test pit. The resilient modulus of the BDC exceeded that of the control materials as measured in the laboratory and using the LWD. In addition, the laboratory resilient modulus showed good correlation with the LWD stiffness. These results suggest that BDC would perform as well as natural aggregates in base course applications.


Tillage to disrupt (prune) tree roots is an intensive practice which could improve herbage productivity at the crop-tree interface by reducing competition for water. We compared tillage effects on 9- to 11-yr-old loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) growth and herbage yields of annual ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) and pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] on a fragipan soil in Arkansas. Alley crops were rotationally grown in a 9.7-m wide alley (main plot) between bordering trees on one of three tillage treatments: control (surface tillage), rip followed by surface tillage, and trench plus root barrier followed by surface tillage. Topsoil water in May through September, herbage mass, and nutritive value were measured for each crop for 2 or 3 yr in three subplots systematically arrayed (north, middle, and south) across the alley. Diameter at breast height (DBH, measured 1.3 m above soil surface) and height of border trees were measured annually. Trenching resulted in a more uniform distribution of topsoil water among subplots compared to the other tillage treatments. Annual ryegrass yield did not show a tillage response, but pearl millet yielded more herbage in the rip (6760 kg ha -1 in 2003) and trench (3300 kg ha -1 in 2005) than the control treatment (4990 and 1260 kg ha -1 for 2003 and 2005, respectively). Ripping and trenching significantly reduced loblolly pine DBH and height compared to the control. Similarly configured alley cropping practices probably have little potential for annual herbage production even with root pruning.


Ensemble is a Group Communication System built at Cornell and the Hebrew universities. It allows processes to create process groups within which scalable reliable fifo-ordered multicast and point-to-point communication are supported. The system also supports other communication properties, such as causal and total multicast ordering, flow control, and the like. This article describes the security protocols and infrastructure of Ensemble. Applications using Ensemble with the extensions described here benefit from strong security properties. Under the assumption that trusted processes will not be corrupted, all communication is secured from tampering by outsiders. Our work extends previous work performed in the Horus system (Ensemble's predecessor) by adding support for multiple partitions, efficient rekeying, and application-defined security policies. Unlike Horus, which used its own security infrastructure with nonstandard key distribution and timing services, Ensemble's security mechanism is based on off-the shelf authentication systems, such as PGP and Kerberos. We extend previous results on group rekeying, with a novel protocol that makes use of diamondlike data structures. Our Diamond protocol allows the removal of untrusted members within milliseconds. In this work we are considering configurations of hundreds of members, and further assume that member trust policies are symmetric and transitive. These assumptions dictate some of our design decisions.


The need to integrate technology into education has made necessary a thorough examination of teachers' technopedagogical competencies. While training preservice teachers, it is of particular importance that they acquire technopedagogical education competences during their preservice education. Practical and theoretical course content and Instructional Technology and Material Design (ITMD) courses are thought to be essential for preservice teachers' technopedagogical education competency acquisition. However, the role of ITMD courses in preservice teachers' technopedagogical education competency acquisition has remained obscure in the literature. As such, the study aims to describe the effect that ITMD courses have on technopedagogical education competency acquisition. The research was conducted with a total of 186 preservice teachers studying in the departments of classroom teaching and preschool teaching in a Faculty of Education in Turkey. The research data were gathered using the Technopedagogical Education Competency Scale (TPACK-deep), developed by Kabakci Yurdakul, Odabasi, Kilicer, Coklar, Birinci, and Kurt. This five-point Likert type scale consists of a total of four factors, i.e. design, proficiency, ethics, and exertion. The internal reliability coefficient of the 33-item scale was .95. The scale was applied by faculty members in-line with the course description designated by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) as a preand post-test at the beginning and end of the semester that the course was given. A paired samples t-test and CHAID (Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection) analysis were incorporatedly employed to analyze the data. The research showed that ITMD courses influenced preservice teachers' acquisition of technopedagogical education competencies. The following were observed to be critical predictor variables in technopedagogical education competency acquisition: having received computer training prior to taking the ITMD courses and the average time one spends using a computer per day.


Though convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have demonstrated remarkable ability in learning discriminative features, they often generalize poorly to unseen domains. Domain generalization aims to address this problem by learning from a set of source domains a model that is generalizable to any unseen domain. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed based on probabilistically mixing instance-level feature statistics of training samples across source domains. Our method, termed MixStyle, is motivated by the observation that visual domain is closely related to image style (e.g., photo vs.~sketch images). Such style information is captured by the bottom layers of a CNN where our proposed style-mixing takes place. Mixing styles of training instances results in novel domains being synthesized implicitly, which increase the domain diversity of the source domains, and hence the generalizability of the trained model. MixStyle fits into mini-batch training perfectly and is extremely easy to implement. The effectiveness of MixStyle is demonstrated on a wide range of tasks including category classification, instance retrieval and reinforcement learning.


Ventilation of the patient's lungs is an elementary skill of medical practice. Especially in the treatment of critically ill patients. Tracheal tube placement is a complex skill and unsuccessful in an unacceptably high percentage when performed by unskilled providers. If tracheal tube placemant fails, international guidelines recommend ventilation by facemask or, as an alternative, insertion of a supraglottic airway device. There is growing evidence and scientific consensus that supraglottic airway devices should be used as a first measure by personnel unexperienced with tracheal intubation as manikin trials have shown that placement of supraglottic airway devices is easy even for unexperienced users. However, there is an ongoing discussion to what extend manikin based studies can be transferred to real patients. Therefore this study compares the facemask and the LMA-Supreme(TM) laryngeal mask with regard to how well airway skills were transferred from manikin to patient by medical students during their anaesthesia rotation. The students were required to ventilate the lungs of a manikin using a facemask and then position a LMA-Supreme(TM) and ventilate the lungs. This process was then repeated on anaesthetised patients with identical respirator settings. Sixty-three students participated in the manikin study. The success rate for ventlating the lungs was 100% for both devices, but the mean (SD) time to achieve successful ventilation was 27.8 (24.4) s with the facemask compared with 38.6 (22.0) s with the LMA-Supreme(TM) (p = 0.008). Fifty-one of the students progressed to the second part of the study. In anaesthetised patients, the success rate for ventilating the lungs was lower for the facemask, 27/41 (66%) compared to the LMA-Supreme(TM) 37/41 (90%, p = 0.006). For 26 students who succeeded with both devices, the tidal volume was lower using the facemask, 431 (192) ml compared with the LMA-Supreme 751 (221) ml (p = 0.001), but the time to successful ventilation did not differ, 60.0 (26.2) s vs 57.3 (26.6) s (p = 0.71). Therefore, manikin training alone is of limited value for education of medical students, as well as the results of manikin-based studies regarding single airway skills or the performance of distinct airway devices are of limited value. Based on the findings of this study, supraglottic airway devices, such as the LMA-Supreme(TM), might be a more appropriate option for novices in airway management as compared to facemask ventilation and future guidelines should take this into account.


Abstract:This essay is a study of the notion of representation—its relation to difference, politics, diaspora, otherness, truth, and doxa—within Stuart Hall's work. The reevaluation of this concept in terms of dialectics and différance, or of blackness and innocence, is shown to be an abiding preoccupation of Hall's work. In particular, because blackness (or its notion) is never innocent, this essay explores the consequences of a certain undecidability that attends any encounter between representation and difference. And it is this X—its shaping of black meaning and life—that alerts us to an unsettling tension in Hall's work that no knowledge or encounter can fill and that leads to a purely negative reassessment of the racial imperatives of certain truths.


This dissertation is an examination of Maori women's relationship to feminism within the current postcolonial dilemma of New Zealand politics. It interrogates the voice of native women and the location of this articulation. I investigate the efficacy of 'speaking-out' under conditions of colonial renewal and advance stages of late-capitalism. I ask 'what role does mainstream feminist politics play in the reproduction of 'images' that express native women's subjectivity in the Pacific'? And subsequently, 'how have Maori women responded'? If the point is to have a voice, what does it mean for those of us who have been silenced to be 'given' a voice? The limits of feminism as the presumed destination of native women will be seen to reflect the double-bind proposed by Maori women unable to return 'home', to that space designated, 'indigenous theory'. The irony and contradictory inevitability of postcolonial politics produces a moment, event, that Native women have no option but to negotiate as part of the colonial encounter we all inhabit.


Since the Internet started developing, hosts and provided services have always been targeted with attacks trying to disrupt them. Trends show that, throughout the years, the number of hosts, as well as the degree of dependency
of the whole society on the services provided through the Internet, increased dramatically, whereas the skills and knowledge required to interfere with normal network operation, and eventually to abruptly interrupt it,
decreased accordingly. This considerations urge the requirement for effective tools, aimed at granting security to Internet users. The need for systems capable of detecting
attacks, and reacting in order to prevent them from occurring again, is nowadays undeniable.
In this thesis we propose methods based on multiple classifier systems for intrusion detection. We use such systems for automated data collection, also taking privacy issues into account. Some approaches to traffic classification are presented too, together with a proposal for the practical deployment of multiple classifiers in a real network environment.


In this article, we analyze ten artistic paintings of the Annunciation ranging from the XV century to the XX century in order to describe how the interaction between pictorially represented gestures and other pictorial elements allows them to convey more abstract meanings. Applying a historical approach to the gestures expressed by Mary, we show how — despite the different artistic approaches and sensitivities — her hand gestures always have a primary importance in conveying the meanings of PRUDENCE, CAU¬TION, FEAR, SURPRISE, CONCERN and GRATITUDE. We show how such gestures can be related to ordinary linguistic expressions that present analogous meanings. It is thus shown how gestural metaphor may interact with other modalities in pictorial representations.


We examine the stereo correspondence problem in the presence of slanted scene surfaces. In particular we highlight a previously overlooked geometric fact: a horizontally slanted surface (i.e. having depth variation in the direction of the separation of the two cameras) will appear horizontally stretched in one image as compared to the other image. Thus, while corresponding two images, N pixels on a scanline in one image may correspond to a different number of pixels M in the other image. This leads to three important modifications to existing stereo algorithms: (a) due to unequal sampling, intensity matching metrics such as the popular Birchfield-Tomasi procedure must be modified, (b) unequal numbers of pixels in the two images must be allowed to correspond to each other, and (c) the uniqueness constraint, which is often used for detecting occlusions, must be changed to a 3D uniqueness constraint. This paper discusses these new constraints and provides a simple scanline based matching algorithm for illustration. We experimentally demonstrate test cases where existing algorithms fail, and how the incorporation of these new constraints provides correct results. Experimental comparisons of the scanline based algorithm with standard data sets are also provided.


This study was undertaken to determine the impact of dural sinus venography and pressure measurements in the evaluation of patients with meningiomas involving the dural sinuses. Of three patients who had MR imaging, arteriography, and dural sinus venography, the latter method better delineated the site and extent of tumor invasion in all three patients. Pressure measurement in one patient reflected the severity of the hemodynamic compromise resulting from narrowing of the transverse sinus. In one patient, dural sinus venography confirmed patency of the superior sagittal sinus that was unsuspected on MR scans and arteriograms. A test occlusion of the area of stenosis in the third patient allowed the surgeon to sacrifice that segment of the sinus without deficit. Dural sinus venography is a useful adjunct to arteriography and MR imaging in the evaluation of invasive meningiomas.


There has been an increased interest in using impact techniques for sensing firmness of fruits and vegetables. When an impacter is used to impact a fruit, the impacting mass is an important parameter which affects both the impact signal and fruit damage. Results of theoretical analysis and tests conducted on two varieties of pears indicate that lowering the impacting mass results in amplifying the measured signal, reducing sensing errors, and minimizing damage to the fruit.


Stable isotope analysis is a useful tool for investigating diet, migrations and niche in ecological communities by tracing energy through food-webs. In this study, the stable isotopic composition of carbon and nitrogen in keratin was measured at growth increments of baleen plates from 3 sympatric species of rorquals (Balaenoptera acutrostrata, B. physalus and Megaptera novaeangliae), which died between 1985 and 2010 in Irish and contiguous waters. Bivariate ellipses were used to plot isotopic niches and standard ellipse area parameters were estimated via Bayesian inference using the SIBER routine in the SIAR package in R. Evidence of resource parti- tioning was thus found among fin, humpback and minke whales using isotopic niches. Highest δ 15 N values were found in minke whales followed by humpback, and fin whales. Comparison between Northeast Atlantic (Irish/UK and Biscayan) and Mediterranean fin whale isotopic niches support the current International Whaling Commission stock assessment of an isolated Medi - terranean population. Significantly larger niche area and higher overall δ 15 N and δ 13 C values found in fin whales from Irish/UK waters compared to those sampled in adjacent regions (Bay of Biscay and Mediterranean) suggest inshore foraging that may be unique to fin whales in Ireland and the UK. Isotopic profiles support spatial overlap but different foraging strategies between fin whales sampled in Ireland/UK and the Bay of Biscay. Stable isotope analysis of baleen could pro- vide an additional means for identifying ecological units, thus supporting more effective manage- ment for the conservation of baleen whales.


Abstract Statistical analyses were conducted on the capability of correlation detectors for similar events. Semiempirical synthetic runs took a 50-sec window on an Lg wave recorded at 750-km distance filtered from 1 to 3 Hz and embedded it 300,000 times in real continuous background seismic noise. The noise was selected for 36 days spread throughout the year to capture diurnal and seasonal variations. No screening for random, unknown signals in the noise was performed. A correlation detector has a 50% probability of detection with 1.5 false alarms per day for a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 0.32, which corresponds to a full magnitude unit reduction in detection threshold over a standard short-term average/long-term average (STA/LTA) technique. A scaled cross-correlation coefficient performs slightly better with one false alarm per day and has fewer false triggers on unknown, random signals. Summing the cross-correlation traces together for all three components enhances the detection signal similar to beamforming. A correlation detector summing the correlation traces for the three components together has a 96% probability of detection with zero false alarms in 36 days for an SNR of 0.32. The significant result of this study is that a correlation detector has more than an order of magnitude improvement in detection threshold for similar events with acceptably low false alarm rates to be used in practice.


Compelling evidence indicates that protein kinase CK2 plays an important role in many steps of cancer initiation and progression, therefore, the development of effective and cell-permeable inhibitors targeting this kinase has become an important objective for the treatment of a variety of cancer types including glioblastoma. We have recently identified 1,3-dichloro-6-[(E)-((4methoxyphenyl)imino)methyl]dibenzo(b,d)furan-2,7-diol (D11) as a potent and selective inhibitor of protein kinase CK2. In this study, we have further characterized this compound and demonstrated that it suppresses CK2 kinase activity by mixed type inhibition (KI 7.7 nM, KI 42 nM). Incubation of glioblastoma cells with D11 induces cell death and upon hypoxia the compound leads to HIF-1α destabilization. The analysis of differential mRNA expression related to human hypoxia signaling pathway revealed that D11-mediated inhibition of CK2 caused strong down-regulation of genes associated with the hypoxia response including ANGPTL4, CA9, IGFBP3, MMP9, SLC2A1 and VEGFA. Taken together, the results reported here support the notion that including D11 in future treatment regimens might turn out to be a promising strategy to target tumor hypoxia to overcome resistance to radioand chemotherapy.


This research investigates the social processes at play in the lives of ex-felon men who are stay-at-home fathers. The research question guiding this study asks, "Under what conditions do ex-felon men assume the role of at-home father?" Using data collected from in-depth interviews conducted with ten African-American (ex) Felon at-Home Dads residing in Guilford County, North Carolina, this study found that structural as well as agential factors appeared to impact participants' decisions to take on primary caregiver roles. Drawing from deviance and gender studies, I argue that anomic workforce conditions deny ex-felon men socially acceptable means of gaining financial stability as well as traditional sources of expressing gender. Ex-felon men experience stigma management strain as they attempt to enter/reenter a labor force that often denies ex-felons employment. This experience of strain has led ex-felon men to find new ways to express masculinity. Contextual factors that shape ex-felons' unique experiences along with contemporary images of fathers as nurturers provides some ex-felon men with opportunities to assume domestic roles. By assuming at-home father roles, participants seemingly escaped much of the hostile treatment they experienced as ex-felons. The implication of this research is that American family and domestic life will be reshaped, to some extent, by this Felon-at-home dad phenomenon.


Traditional forensic DNA interpretation methods are restricted as they are unable to deal completely with complex low level or mixed DNA profiles. This type of data has become more prevalent as DNA typing technologies become more sensitive. In addition they do not make full use of the information available in peak heights. Existing methods of interpretation are often described as binary which describes the fact that the probability of the evidence is assigned as 0 or 1 (hence binary) (see for example [59] at 7.3.3). These methods are being replaced by more advanced interpretation methods such as continuous models. In this paper we describe a series of models that can be used to calculate expected values for allele and stutter peak heights, and their ratio SR. This model could inform methods which implement a continuous method for the interpretation of DNA profiling data.


It has almost been a decade since the inception of a 'New South Africa', without apartheid, which separated South Africans and classified them hierarchically according to their 'race'. The 'eradication' of apartheid has meant that South Africans have had to re-look at issues around racial identity without a dominating apartheid ideology. The purpose of the research was to describe and to look at some of the features and dynamics concerning racial identity that are prevalent in a post-apartheid South Africa. This was done by exploring the nature and type of interactions University of Natal Durban (UNO) students (doing a Human Behaviour and the Environment module) had with persons not from their own racial group, prior to coming to UNO as well as at UNO. The possible challenges, threats and opportunities students felt were afforded them because of their racial group were also explored. Literature concerning issues of racial identification in South Africa and other parts of the world was also examined. A descriptive research design, using a triangulated research methodology incorporating both quantitative and qualitative methods was used in the study. A non-probability sampling method with reliance on 83 available law, community development, nursing and psychology students representing the four racial classifications in South Africa, namely black, white, coloured and Indian was used. Data were collected through observations as well as through a self administered structured questionnaire. The findings of the research suggest that issues related to racial identification in a post-apartheid South Africa, for black, white, coloured and Indian students is in turmoil and requires reconstruction. The findings further indicated that questions about affirmative action and the future of non-black South Africans in South Africa is believed to be uncertain and negative. The issue of poverty and the internalised oppression and inferiority of black students was also identified to be problematic.


Background: Elbow injuries cause significant disability for the throwing athlete. Scant data are available on the distribution and characteristics of these injuries in elite baseball players. No study exists that focuses solely on the epidemiological characteristics of elbow injuries in professional baseball players using a comprehensive injury surveillance system. Hypothesis: Professional baseball players have a high occurrence of elbow injuries influenced by factors including length of time playing, time period within the annual baseball season, and specific position played. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiological study. Methods: Data on elbow injuries occurring during the 2011-2014 seasons were collected from Major League Baseball's Health Injury and Tracking System, a comprehensive injury surveillance system. Each specific type of elbow injury was evaluated with respect to overall injury rate, years as a professional player, mechanism of injury, treatment, average time lost, and return to play. Results: During the study period, 3185 elbow injuries (n = 430 Major League; n = 2755 Minor League) occurred. The mean number of days missed and percentage requiring surgery were similar between Major and Minor League players. Overall, 20.0% (650/3185) of the injuries required surgical treatment. Pitchers were the most likely to incur an elbow injury (40.0% of injured athletes were pitchers), were the most likely to require surgery (34.2% of injured pitchers required surgery), and had the greatest mean number of days missed when treated nonsurgically (33.2 days). Medial injuries composed 42.1% (1342/3185) of all elbow injuries. Of all elbow surgeries performed during the study period, the highest percentage involved ligaments (372/650; 57.2%). Conclusion: Elbow injuries are a considerable source of disability in professional baseball players. Pitchers are most likely to incur these injuries, are most likely to require surgery, and have the highest mean number of days missed when treated nonsurgically. The most common injuries involve the medial elbow, with ligament injuries most often requiring surgery. This study represents the only investigation to date using a comprehensive injury surveillance system to examine elbow injuries in professional baseball players. It provides a basis for injury prevention and treatment recommendations, establishes the most thorough framework for determining elbow injury risk, and focuses continued research on elbow injury prevention in the elite baseball player.


Introduction: The steel industry is known as the most important consumer of energy and fuel. In doing so, ensuring safety of energy sources of a country needs to expect the risks analysis in order to select a comprehensive approach. This study aimed to identify the energy consumption and control measures available in the Hot Rolling Kavir Steel Complex and to conduct risk assessment by Energy Tracking and Barrier Analysis method (ETBA). Materials and methods: In this study, initially a team of experts identified mobilized energies and risks of the system and control measures using ETBA sheet that result of a standard MILSTD-882B. Then, the initial risk assessment was carried out using ETBA method. Finally, the control strategies were proposed and the secondary risk level was calculated. Results: Using ETBA, in total 19 energy types and 74 risk types were successfully identified so that in the first stage, 19 risks were unacceptable, 50 risks were unfavorable and 5 risks were acceptable for which the corrective strategies were required Then, the corrective revisions were proposed to reduce the risk level and calculate RAC2. Conclusion: Corrective controlling measures including safety, health and environmental training, continual monitoring and ongoing visit are effective using the safety equipment and personal protective equipment for reducing the unacceptable risks.


We study the role of information complexity in privacy leakage about an attribute of an adversary's interest, which is not known a priori to the system designer. Considering the supervised representation learning setup and using neural networks to parameterize the variational bounds of information quantities, we study the impact of the following factors on the amount of information leakage: information complexity regularizer weight, latent space dimension, the cardinalities of the known utility and unknown sensitive attribute sets, the correlation between utility and sensitive attributes, and a potential bias in a sensitive attribute of adversary's interest. We conduct extensive experiments on Colored-MNIST and CelebA datasets to evaluate the effect of information complexity on the amount of intrinsic leakage.


Swartland Shale Renosterveld is restricted to fertile fine-grained soils in the winter rainfall region of the Western Cape. Between 91% and 97% of this vegetation type is transformed, mostly due to agriculture. Remaining fragments have an irreplaceable conservation value due to a high richness of endemic geophytes. Information on renosterveld vegetation composition and response to disturbance is sparse. Research occurred at three sites near Wellington: Voelvlei Provincial Nature Reserve (CapeNature), Elandsberg Private Nature Reserve (Elandsberg Farms (Pty.) Ltd.), and Krantzkop munitions factory (Armscor/Somchem) forming a contiguous fragment in the AgterGroeneberg Conservancy. The primary research aim was to identify or ascertain patterns of plant succession in Swartland Shale Renosterveld and associated different-aged old fields (previously ploughed), with the interaction of grazing. The key research questions are: (1) What are the plant communities of unploughed renosterveld and different-aged old fields which originated in habitats of ploughed renosterveld? (2) What are the most characteristic features of the floristic and ecological relationship between the described plant communities in terms of ecological factors operating within the studied system? (3) Does total species and life-form group richness differ between natural vegetation and old fields? (4) Is life-form richness influenced by ploughing and grazing or the interaction between these disturbances? (5) Is life-form cover-abundance influenced by ploughing and grazing or the interaction between these disturbances? (6) Does alien plant species richness differ amongst seres, and with different levels of grazing intensity? A comparison of life-form richness and cover-abundance of old field vegetation was made with adjacent natural unploughed "controls". The effects of ploughing on community structure, with the inclusion of grazing was established. These life-form richness comparisons also occur across a gradient of increasing large mammalian herbivore grazing intensity. Sampling was conducted in winter and spring using nested 1000m releves. A hierarchical classification, description and floristic interpretation of renosterveld and old field vegetation were made using TWINSPAN, SYN-TAX 2000 and CANOCO. The samples were classified with TWINSPAN and two communities were described at the association level, namely: Ursinia anthemoides–Cynodon dactylon Grassland Community (with two variants) and the Pterygodio catholici–Elytropappetum rhinocerotis Shrubland Community (with two subassociations), respectively. The vegetation data were further hierachically classified using SYNTAX 2000 which revealed similar clustering of sample objects to that resulting from classification xi and ordination. Following ordination of sample objects with CANOCO, select groups of species were used to depict their response curves in relation to seral development. Briefly it was found that the effects of grazing vs. non-grazing was more pronounced on old fields than in unploughed vegetation. Overall total species and life-form richness was reduced by ploughing with old fields requiring a recovery period of 30 years to resemble unploughed vegetation.


This article addresses the proliferation of frivolous litigation in the context of public company deals. In 2012 93% of public company mergers and acquisitions valued at over $100 million and 96% of such transactions valued over $500 million incurred litigation. Through these "merger objection suits," plaintiffs' attorneys have successfully attached a transaction tax – in the form of attorneys' fees – as the cost of doing business for public company mergers and acquisitions. Armed with the knowledge that time is of the essence in these transactions, plaintiffs' attorneys understand the leverage they have to force a quick settlement with a defendant company's board. Adding to the attorneys' leverage and the pressure on defendants to settle is the threat of larger-than-normal litigation costs since most large public company deals that attract litigation incur more than one suit, often in several different jurisdictions. When given the choice of either paying plaintiffs' attorneys' fees – particularly when the settlement is typically otherwise non-monetary – or jeopardizing a multi-million dollar transaction, boards of defendant companies seem, understandably, eager to choose the former.This article explores the reasons for the increasing overabundance of merger objection litigation and the solutions that have been proposed or adopted to address it. Previous scholarship in this area has focused on the need to eliminate the multi-jurisdictional aspect of this litigation by funneling all such cases to the state of the target's incorporation or otherwise easing the consolidation of cases across jurisdictions. Eliminating the multi-jurisdictional aspect of merger litigation would, no doubt, be a step toward curbing abusive strike suits in this arena by alleviating some of the settlement pressure imposed on defendants by the high costs of litigating a case in multiple forums. However, the other incentives to settle, particularly those imposed by the pressure of the deal timeline, would remain. As such, this article suggests that, in addition to funneling merger objection suits to the state of incorporation of the target, there need to be state solutions, beginning with Delaware, to further deter strike suits in this area. This article describes a combination of legislative reform and enhanced oversight of merger objection settlements by the Delaware Chancery Court as a possible solution to the merger objection litigation problem.


This paper discusses several challenges in designing field experiments to better understand how organizational and institutional design shapes innovation outcomes and the production of knowledge. We proceed to describe the field experimental research program carried out by our Crowd Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University to clarify how we have attempted to address these research design challenges. This program has simultaneously solved important practical innovation problems for partner organizations, like NASA and Harvard Medical School (HMS), while contributing research advances, particularly in relation to innovation contests and tournaments. We conclude by proceeding to highlight the opportunity for the scholarly community to develop a "science of innovation" that utilized field experiments as means to generate knowledge.


Background: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of methylphenidate for treating mental sequelae after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Methods: Thirty-six patients with TBI were randomly divided into the intervention group and placebo group. The participants in the intervention group received methylphenidate, while subjects in the placebo group were administered a placebo. This study was conducted from January 2014 to December 2016. The outcome measurements included Mental Fatigue Scale, Choice Reaction Time, Compensatory Tracking Task, Mental Arithmetic Test, Digit Symbol Substitution Test, Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. In addition, safety was also recorded and assessed. Results: A total of 33 subjects completed the study. Methylphenidate showed greater efficacy than placebo, with decreased scores on the Mental Fatigue Scale, Choice Reaction Time, and Compensatory Tracking Task in the intervention group compared to the placebo group (P < .01, respectively). Furthermore, increased scores on the Mental Arithmetic Test, Digit Symbol Substitution Test, and MMSE in the intervention group, compared to those in the placebo group (P < .01 respectively), were observed. In addition, a significant difference in the scores on the BDI (P = .04) and Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (P = .005) was observed between the 2 groups. The safety at the end of the 30 week-treatment was similar between the 2 groups (P > .05). Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrated that methylphenidate could effectively improve mental fatigue and cognitive functions in patients with TBI.


Accurate rainfall forecasting is a crucial task for reservoir operation and flood prevention because it can provide an extension of lead-time for flow forecasting. This study proposes two rainfall time series prediction models, the Single Fuzzy Inference System and the Modular Fuzzy Inference System, which use the concept of cooperative neuro-fuzzy technique. This case study is located in the northeast region of Thailand and the proposed models are evaluated by four monthly rainfall time series data. The experimental results showed that the proposed models could be a good alternative method to provide both accurate results and human-understandable prediction mechanism. Furthermore, this study found that when the number of training data was small, the proposed model provided better prediction accuracy than artificial neural networks


This paper compares the reserve requirements of OECD countries. Reserve requirements are the minimum percentages or amounts of liabilities that depository institutions are required to keep in cash or as deposits with their central banks. To facilitate monetary policy implementation, twenty-four of the thirty OECD countries impose reserve requirements to influence their banking systems' demand for liquidity. These include twelve OECD countries that are also members of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and twelve non-EMU OECD countries. All EMU countries employ a single reserve requirement system, which is treated as one entity. ; The reserve requirement system for each of the twelve non-EMU countries is discussed separately. The similarities and differences among the thirteen reserve requirement systems are highlighted. The features of reserve requirements covered include: reservable liabilities, required reserve ratios, reserve computation periods, reserve maintenance periods, types of reserve requirements, calculations of required reserves, eligible assets for satisfying reserve requirements, remuneration on reserve balances, non-compliance penalties, carry-over of reserve balances, and required clearing balances.


The Internet of Things (IoT) offers the infrastructure of the information
society. It hosts smart objects that automatically collect and exchange data of
various kinds, directly gathered from sensors or generated by aggregations.
Suitable coordination primitives and analysis mechanisms are in order to design
and reason about IoT systems, and to intercept the implied technological
shifts. We address these issues from a foundational point of view. To study
them, we define IoT-LySa, a process calculus endowed with a static analysis
that tracks the provenance and the manipulation of IoT data, and how they flow
in the system. The results of the analysis can be used by a designer to check
the behaviour of smart objects, in particular to verify non-functional
properties, among which security.


Agricultural nutrient runoff and leaching into groundwater can impose societal costs that may be external to farmer decisions. Farmers can reduce the environmental impact of nutrient losses by adopting conservation and precision nutrient diagnostic and application practices. We examine the determinants of adoption decisions of such practices using mail survey data from a large, stratified sample of corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.) farmers in the US eastern Corn Belt. Via an ordered probit that captures both adoption and intent to adopt eight different practices, we evaluate a broad range of potential factors driving adoption of conservation and precision agriculture practices. We find that farmer objectives other than income, such as preferences for environmental amenities or social status, were important adoption drivers for conservation and precision technologies, respectively. Livestock farms had a distinct adoption profile, with greater likelihood to adopt cover cropping and less to adopt precision technologies. Farmers who participated in working lands programs were more likely to adopt both cover cropping and precision soil testing technologies. Policies and messaging to encourage voluntary adoption of practices to reduce agricultural nutrient loss should account for farmer objectives, farming systems, and existing policy incentives.


The case-fatality rate for acute bacterial meningitis in childhood is still disappointingly high. A review of 687 cases of acute bacterial meningitis including 72 deaths, identified in a defined population of children under ten years of age, was done to determine where patients were treated and where they died. Ten per cent of all hospital admissions were to infectious-disease hospitals, 16 per cent to teaching hospitals, and 74 per cent to general, non-teaching ("regional-board") hospitals. The case-fatality rates associated with these hospitals were three per cent, three per cent and 11 per cent respectively. The difference between regional-board and other hospitals was smaller, although still present, when children who died within a few hours of hospital admission were excluded from the analysis. Twenty-two per cent of all deaths (10 children who died outside hospital and six who were certified dead on admission) occurred before specialist care was reached. It may be possible to reduce the mortality from this disease by improving facilities for treatment in some hospitals. There is, however, an important residue of deaths--those which occur before hospital care is reached and, no doubt, some of those which occur soon after hospital admission--which would be unaffected by such improvements.


COLLETT-SCHMITT, KRISTEN ELIZABETH. Alarming Behavior: Crime Displacement and Observable Private Precaution. (Under the direction of Charles R. Knoeber.) Homeowners engage in private precaution when public protection is inadequate. When this precaution is observable to criminals, as in the case of a home burglar alarm system advertised with a sign or sticker, it has the beneficial effect of decreasing the probability of burglary of alarmed homeowners. However, because a burglar is rational in his criminal activity, he will avoid protected homes and target homeowners without alarms, increasing their probability of burglary. Observable private precaution therefore incorporates both the deterrence (Clotfelter 1978) and diversion (Shavell 1991) effects. Even though burglar alarms have been identified as effective deterrents, little research has been devoted to determining if they also divert crime. In this dissertation, I examine the diversion effect associated with burglar alarms. In chapter three, I estimate the net effect, or combined deterrence and diversion effects, of burglar alarms on burglary rates and find that burglary rates fall only slightly with increases in burglar alarm use. Assuming that burglar alarms deter, this finding suggests the presence of the diversion effect muting deterrence. In chapters four and five, I present two methods for measuring the diversion effect associated with burglar alarms using data from the homeowner's insurance industry. Since companies with more non-alarmed customers face larger costs due to diversion, chapter four measures the diversion effect as the relationship between the market shares of homeowner's insurance companies and the protective device discounts they offer. Chapter five's approach is based on the empirical method of Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes (1995) and uses supply and demand parameters in an oligopolistic framework to measure the diversion effect as the difference in the probabilities of burglary of non-alarmed homeowners when some homes install alarms and when no homes are alarmed. Both methods show that diversion can be measured. When empirically tested, they also yield estimates of the diversion effect. Although the social effects associated with burglar alarms are likely to be positive on balance, I expose the hidden costs that may be associated with observable precautionary measures. Alarming Behavior: Crime Displacement and Observable Private Precaution by Kristen Elizabeth Collett-Schmitt A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy


Drug delivery to the brain is highly restricted, since compounds must cross a series of structural and metabolic barriers to reach their final destination, often a cellular compartment such as neurons, microglia, or astrocytes. The primary barriers to the central nervous system are the blood-brain and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barriers. Through structural modifications, including the presence of tight junctions that greatly limit paracellular transport, the cells that make up these barriers restrict diffusion of many pharmaceutically active compounds. In addition, the cells that comprise the blood-brain and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barriers express multiple ATP-dependent, membrane-bound, efflux transporters, such as members of the multidrug resistance-associated protein (MRP) family, which contribute to lowered drug accumulation. A relatively new concept in brain drug distribution just beginning to be explored is the possibility that cellular components of the brain parenchyma could act as a "second" barrier to brain permeation of pharmacological agents via expression of many of the same transporters. Indeed, efflux transporters expressed in brain parenchyma may facilitate the overall export of xenobiotics from the central nervous system, essentially handing themoff to the barrier tissues. We propose that these primary and secondary barriers work in tandem to limit overall accumulation and distribution of xenobiotics in the central nervous system. The present review summarizes recent knowledge in this area and emphasizes the clinical significance of MRP transporter expression in a variety of neurological disorders.


This study examined generic and registerial similarities and differences between requestive email messages written by American native speakers and Jordanian nonnative speakers of English. In order to minimize the influence of status and power variables on the formulation of email messages, a sample of eighty email messages written by undergraduate students to the same prospective reader were selected for analysis. The collected texts were subjected to generic move structure analysis. Although the email messages share the same communicative purpose, the comparison between the two sets of texts revealed different linguistic and rhetorical preferences in terms of pressure tactics utilized, presentation of moves and the linguistic realization of these moves. The Jordanian writers tend put emphasis on the interpersonal elements and to use the self-submission, supplemented by unsupported claims; the Americans, instead, give priority to the propositional content and use objective supported claims to prove that their imposition is unintentional. The study attempts to provide some potential explanations for these infelicities related to the subliminal influence of native socio- ultural norms and the insufficient exposure to the pragmalinguistic contextualization conventions.


COMPLETE SCHOOL ALGEBRA. (Revised edition.) By Herbert E. Hawkes. Ph. D., William A. Luby and Frank C. Touton. Boston, New York. Chicago: Ginn & Co. Cloth. 507 pp. Price, $1.40. The revisions of. the :\fathematical texts edited by Percy F. Smith are au admirable demonstration of the wisdom of retaining the virtues -of conservatism and l';ivijlg the thrill of modernislll, Everything vital in the algebras of yesterday is magnified by the elimination of everything non-essential, It is like cutting worthless shrubbery that saps 'the soil of the forest and leaving the magnificent trees in their stateliness for intensified timber-making by unsapped: soil. After the elimination the revision enriches the soil by inoculation with newly discovered scientific pedagogical bacteria. To change the figure, here is a book of 500 pages which was in the front line of trenches when it entered the campaign of mathematical progress ten years ago. occupied new trenches in' 1!J10. 1911 and 1912, then "dug in" for seven years and now "goes oyer the top." routing the enemies of mathematical progress along the whole 1ine.


The strengths and self-broadening parameters for lines in the R branch of the ν3 fundamental of N2O have been measured for gas samples at 300 and 204 K. The results indicate that the collision cross sections at the two temperatures are nearly the same. Differences between values for total band strength of ν3 based on the present high-resolution measurements and values based on earlier low-resolution studies are discussed. The results obtained for self-broadening parameters are in excellent agreement with recent results of Toth and Margolis.


"Young, White, and Miserable" is a critically acclaimed study that compellingly shows how the feminist movement of the 1960s found momentum in the seemingly peaceable time of the 1950s. Wini Breines explores white middle class America and argues that mixed messages given to girls during this decade lent fuel to the fire that would later become known as feminism. Concluding with a look at the life and suicide of social scientist Anne Parsons, this book is a poignant and important look into conditions that led to the women's movement.


The mass transfer mechanism across a sheared air–water interface without bubble entrainment due to wave breaking was experimentally investigated in terms of the turbulence structure of the organized motions in the interfacial region in a wind-wave tank. The transfer velocity of the carbon dioxide (CO2) on the water side was measured through reaeration experiments of CO2, and the fluid velocities in the air and water flows were measured using both a hot-wire anemometer and a laser-Doppler velocimeter. The results show that the mass transfer across a sheared air–water interface is more intensively promoted in wind shear, compared to an unsheared interface. However, the effect of the wind shear on the mass transfer tends to saturate in the high-shear region in the present wind-wave tank, where the increasing rate of mass transfer velocity with the wind shear decreases rapidly. The effect of the wind shear on the mass transfer can be well explained on the basis of the turbulence structure near the air–water interface. That is, surface-renewal eddies are induced on the water side through the high wind shear on the air–water interface by the strong organized motion generated in the air flow above the interface, and the renewal eddies control the mass transfer across a sheared interface. The mass transfer velocity is correlated with the frequency of the appearance of the surface-renewal eddies, as it is in open-channel flows with unsheared interfaces, and it increases approximately in proportion to the root of the surface-renewal frequency. The surface-renewal frequency increases with increasing the wind shear, but for high shear the rate of increase slows. This results in the saturated effect of the wind shear on the mass transfer in the high-shear region in the present wind-wave tank. The mass transfer velocity can be well estimated by the surface-renewal eddy-cell model based on the concept of the time fraction when the surface renewal occurs.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the use of supplemental, as needed (prn) pharmacologic interventions for uncontrolled acute chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting (CINV) in children with cancer after implementation of new pediatric CINV prophylaxis guidelines. Description of Project: A retrospective chart review was completed on forty-three children admitted to the hospital for chemotherapy during a 3 month period in 2017 to document the use of medications given for acute breakthrough CINV. The pre-implementation group received anti-emetics based on the institutional standard of care. A second retrospective chart review was completed on thirty-three children admitted to the hospital for chemotherapy during a 3 month period in 2018 to evaluate use of medications for acute breakthrough CINV. The post-implementation group received anti-emetics based on the new published pediatric guidelines. Patient characteristics, treatment information, and provider compliance with guidelines were collected. Results/Conclusions: Implementation of the guideline by the institution was successful with 91% of patients in the post-intervention group receiving the new antiemetic regimen to prevent nausea and vomiting. The mean anti-emetic dose in all patients for breakthrough CINV pre-implementation was 4.837±10.4857. Postimplementation, the mean anti-emetic dose for all patients was 3.394±6.432. This was not statistically significant (p =0.462). For patients under 12, the mean anti-emetic dose preimplementation was 5.8±12.5333 and post-implementation was 3.882±8.1. This was also not statistically significant (p =0.55). Data collected from this project did demonstrate a decrease in the number of breakthrough anti-emetics used in children under 12 years of age likely related to the addition of the drug aprepitant. Although clinical guidelines provide excellence guidance to clinicians, they must always be evaluated for risk versus benefit; adapted to individual patient circumstances as appropriate; and used within the context of expert clinician judgement. 2 Implementation of National Pediatric Guidelines


Abstract This letter addresses the robustness problem when learning a large margin classifier in the presence of label noise. In our study, we achieve this purpose by proposing robustified large margin support vector machines. The robustness of the proposed robust support vector classifiers (RSVC), which is interpreted from a weighted viewpoint in this work, is due to the use of nonconvex classification losses. Besides the robustness, we also show that the proposed RSCV is simultaneously smooth, which again benefits from using smooth classification losses. The idea of proposing RSVC comes from M-estimation in statistics since the proposed robust and smooth classification losses can be taken as one-sided cost functions in robust statistics. Its Fisher consistency property and generalization ability are also investigated. Besides the robustness and smoothness, another nice property of RSVC lies in the fact that its solution can be obtained by solving weighted squared hinge loss–based support vector machine problems iteratively. We further show that in each iteration, it is a quadratic programming problem in its dual space and can be solved by using state-of-the-art methods. We thus propose an iteratively reweighted type algorithm and provide a constructive proof of its convergence to a stationary point. Effectiveness of the proposed classifiers is verified on both artificial and real data sets.


This study adopts a two-stage structural equation modelling approach to demonstrate the nomological validity and utility of The Theory of Planned Behaviour to both predict and to explain the visiting intentions of middle-class residents to social history museums within the next 12 months.

Working within an 'experience-based management approach' the present study provides both a descriptive contribution, in terms of identifying and providing significant improvements in the measurement of museum anticipated experiences and resource facilitators and constraints, as well as a predictive contribution, in terms of assessing the ability of The Theory of Planned Behaviour, and in particular, the relative contribution of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control modelled with complex summated- interactive antecedents, to explain museum visiting intentions. Particular attention is given to the neglected role of belief evaluation in previous museum and heritage studies in describing the structure and structural dynamics of anticipated museum experience opportunities. Furthermore, attention is given to the potential contribution of perceived behavioural control, and an understanding of an individual's resource constraints, to the experience-based management approach. A two-stage development of a summated interactive- complex model is shown to overcome methodological and conceptual deficiencies which have been noted in previous expectancy-value attitude studies. In addition, this study examines the impact of the anticipated interpretative environment (physical designed space) on the museum experiential opportunities, control and social influences perceived by individuals, and compares the interpretative orientation of The New Museology (idea-based museum) to traditional mixes of museum interpretative media (object-based museum) in this respect.

A qualitative-quantitative research design was employed. Thirty extended qualitative interviews formed the basis of the study by providing a 'real lived' understanding of common consumption experiences at heritage attractions, the resource problems associated with museum visits and the influences of social referents. Four hundred quantitative interviews with respondents from middle-class households formed the main focus of the study. Interviews were conducted using a systematic random sampling method applied in two spatially and demographically contrasting electoral wards of Edinburgh, Scotland. Across the spatial wards, respondents were randomly divided in two sub-groups (n=200). In each sub-group respondents were asked to evaluate a pictorial collage designed to capture the interpretative orientation of either the New Museology or traditional approach to museum interpretative mixes.

The study highlights the superiority of interpretative media mixes common to The New Museology in raising the instrumental and experiential-process value individuals anticipate from this style of museum attraction. In doing so, the study finds support for the continued application of The Manning-Haas Hierarchy of Demand, where the importance of 'setting' in managing the consumption experiences of consumers is explicitly recognised. However, due to the 'egalitarian' objective of The New Museology, and the expected 'levelling' or increasing homogeneity observed between visitors and non-visitors to idea-based (The New Museology) in terms of anticipated experiential benefits and costs perceived in this museum environment, the present study finds the predictive ability of attitudes in The Theory of Planned Behaviour is reduced. For the idea-based museum, these findings raise some questions regarding the ability of the Manning-Haas Hierarchy, which is based on expectancy-value theory, to operate as a predictive modd of motivation as it was intended. However, the present study does support the use of the Manning-Haas Hierarchy as a descriptive heuristic for product development alone. Subjective norms were not found to increase our understanding of museum visiting intentions, while the explanatory ability of perceived behavioural control was limited to idea-based museum attractions. Further, based on the significant contribution for past expereince to explain visiting intentions to the idea based museum, the present study calls for further research to identify potential 'deficiencies' in explanatory variables needed to more fully understand the motivations of individuals to visit idea-based museums associated with The New Museology. Finally, the present study demonstrates the importance of both sub-group analysis in the Theory of Planned Behaviour in order to identify the moderating impact of past experience and gender on the relative impact of attitude, subjective norms and perceived behaviour control on museum visiting intentions.


ABSTRACT Ending all forms of labor trafficking by 2030 has been prioritized within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Target 8.7), yet progress in combatting trafficking has been limited. Human trafficking is recognized as a global public health concern because of its widespread negative impacts on individual and population level health. This has led researchers, policymakers, and NGOs to frequently claim that trafficking has reached "epidemic proportions". If such is the case, then using tools from public health and epidemiology can help to generate novel insights in the way we conceptualize, research, and address the problem of trafficking. Using a methodological framework known as the Epidemiologic Problem Oriented Approach (EPOA), we analyze the various components of labor trafficking identification and response, drawing contextualized comparisons with infectious disease epidemiology to characterize labor trafficking as a "disease". This cross-disciplinary approach provides a well-defined conceptual organization of the components that play a role in understanding trafficking dynamics. Epidemiology is highly relevant in the study of trafficking and contributes to the growing research interest surrounding the intersection of public health and human trafficking.


A mathematical model driven by meteorological forcing and sea level differences has been established in order to describe the water exchange and vertical mixing in the Kattegat and Samso Belt. The model has been run with a time-step of 1 day for the period April - October from 1961 to 1981. The mixing has been represented by equations from the theory of turbulence with the normally used coefficients, i.e. no calibration has been necessary. Results from earlier investigations have been used to describe the flows in the Belts and the Sound. The vertical exchange between the upper, brackish and the lower, saline water is strongly dependent on the meteorology. A small meteorological activity results in small exchange flows which implies that the oxygen supply to the lower layer becomes smaller and unfavourable biological conditions may occur. A simple calculation has been carried out on the assumption that the chemical and biological oxygen demand is a first order process with a time scale for the oxygen decay, which is halfed for each 10° increase of temperature. Thus the model describes the effect of the meteorological activity on the oxygen concentration, all other parameters kept constant.


Exploring a vast array of topics related to computation, Computing: A Historical and Technical Perspective covers the historical and technical foundation of ancient and modern-day computing. The book starts with the earliest references to counting by humans, introduces various number systems, and discusses mathematics in early civilizations. It guides readers all the way through the latest advances in computer science, such as the design and analysis of computer algorithms. Through historical accounts, brief technical explanations, and examples, the book answers a host of questions, including: Why do humans count differently from the way current electronic computers do? Why are there 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, etc.? Who invented numbers, when were they invented, and why are there different kinds? How do secret writings and cryptography date back to ancient civilizations? Innumerable individuals from many cultures have contributed their talents and creativity to formulate what has become our mathematical and computing heritage. By bringing together the historical and technical aspects of computing, this book enables readers to gain a deep appreciation of the long evolutionary processes of the field developed over thousands of years. Suitable as a supplement in undergraduate courses, it provides a self-contained historical reference source for anyone interested in this important and evolving field.


Southampton Solent University has been running the unit ENG195 Applied and Academic English Advanced for international students since 2008 as part of the Institution-Wide Language Programme. Following the implementation of a new employability strategy in 2013, the unit was revalidated in July 2014, which led to a major redesign of the curriculum for delivery from the academic year 2014 - 2015. In addition to having updated academic content, it now has a specific focus on employability skills and their transferability to the real world. In particular, this paper evaluates the assessment practice on this unit in terms of the embedding of employability into the three assessed elements which consist of a Reading Test, a Speaking Test and an online Portfolio. Student feedback so far has been very positive, highlighting the usefulness of the unit, not just for academic study whilst at university, but for the world of work.


Mounting laboratory and animal model evidence supports the potentially carcinogenic effects of phthalates, chemicals used as plasticizers in a wide variety of consumer products (e.g., cosmetics, medications, vinyl flooring). Phthalate metabolites (PMs) are measurable in nearly 100% of the U.S. population, though levels vary widely, and also have been reported in human breast milk. However, prospective data on whether phthalates affect human breast cancer risk is lacking. Methods We conducted a nested case-control study within the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) prospective cohort (N = 419 invasive cases and 838 matched controls). Controls were matched 2:1 on age, enrollment date, follow-up time, and study group (WHI clinical trial or observational study). We measured a panel of thirteen PMs and creatinine in two or three urine samples per participant over 1 to 3 years. Multivariable conditional logistic regression analysis was used to estimate risk ratios and 95% confidence intervals (RR, 95% CI) for breast cancer risk associated with each PM, with incorporation of measurement error correction approaches to account for the moderate within-participant variability of PMs. Results Overall, we did not observe statistically significant associations between individual PMs and breast cancer risk in analyses adjusted for matching factors, creatinine, body mass index, smoking status, and race/ethnicity: e.g., mono-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (MEHP; p trend = 0.31; e.g., RR 0.91, 95% CI, 0.62–1.33), monoethyl phthalate (MEP; p trend = 0.16; e.g., RR 0.80, 95% CI, 0.55–1.16 for 4th quartile vs. 1st quartile), monohydroxy-isobutyl phthalate (MHiBP; p trend = 0.11; e.g., RR 0.78, 95% CI, 0.51–1.18 for 4th quartile vs. 1st quartile, and monobenzyl phthalate (MBzP; p trend = 0.11; e.g., RR 0.86, 95% CI, 0.57–1.28 for 4th quartile vs. 1st quartile). Conclusions These results indicate that urinary phthalate metabolite levels are not related to increased breast cancer risk. However, some phthalate metabolites may be associated with decreased risk, possibly through anti-estrogenic actions. Future analyses will explore grouping metabolites by parent phthalate and also will separately evaluate breast cancer risk by tumor estrogen receptor status and explore potential effect modification.


This thesis examines conservation easement policies across the New England states. Conservation easements are legal agreements through which landowners donate or sell some or all of their properties ' development rights to conservation entities, typically government entities or land trusts. I specifically ask: How do conservation easement policies compare across the New England states? How can conservation easement policies be reformed to enhance the use of easements as a conservation tool? Although easements allow conservation entities to conserve more land for less money, the ecological and social implications of the increased use of easements have been debated. I evaluate data availability, predominant holder types, secondary holders, size and distribution, funding mechanisms, stewardship, public access, and amendment and termination procedures for easements in each of the New England states . My findings suggest that data availability is extremely poor across the six states. I also find that state and private entities are the predominant easement holders. Data on secondary holders are limited, but more than 1 ,000 easement tracts in Vermont have at least one secondary holder. Secondary holders become involved either because they have financed the easement or to ensure the easement' s perpetuity. Average conservation easement tract size is largest in Maine and smallest in the southern New England states . Conservation easements are significantly clumped across the states. There is evidence of decreased funding for conservation in most of the states. Conservation entities tend to draw funding from many sources in order to finance the acquisition of large easements, and large land trusts and land trust coalitions support the activities of smaller land trusts. There seems to be increased focus on easement stewardship and on amendment and termination frameworks across the New England states. The status of public access remains uncertain. I conclude that moving forward, one of the greatest priorities for conservation easement policy should be improvement of easement data. It seems likely that land trusts and private entities will have to continue to play a leading role in improving conservation easement policy and stewardship. This thesis identifies future research directions, such as characterizing: the clumping of conservation easements; the cost-effectiveness of having an overarching government stewardship body for monitoring state-held easements; and, the efficacy of recently implemented easement amendment and termination procedures.


This study investigated the relationships between communication
patterns and peer interactions of a six-year-old child born to V ietnamese
immigrant parents in Taiwan. By case-study methodology, this study aimed to
answer the following questions: (1) what are the characteristics of the child\'s
communication patterns? And (2) what are the relationships of her communi -
cation patterns and her peer interactions? The data were collected by obser -
vations in the class and at home, and interviews with parents and teachers. To
measure the child\'s language development and temperament, the following
instruments were conducted: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, Test
of Children\'s Expression Ability, and Temperament Assessment Battery for
Children. Results suggested that, constrained by language experience at
home, the child\'s communication skills were underdeveloped. She had limited
vocabulary at her disposal and her speech was often incomprehensible. T he
communication patterns included avoidance, verbal threats, and reporting to
the teachers. Although her social status in the classroom was normal, the peer
interactions were negatively affected by her communication patterns. T he
implications of the findings were discussed and suggestions for future
research were included.


The following essay details a debate between UC Berkeley and a Regent who made charges of discrimination against AsianAmerican students that are similar to the current legal challenges facing Harvard University. The crux of such charges: on average, that one racial or ethnic group is more "qualified" than other groups, often underrepresented minorities, yet they have lower admissions rates. In 2004, Regent John Moores, convinced of discriminatory practices toward Asian-American students in the admissions process at Berkeley, did his own analysis of UC admissions data focused on SAT scores and that he publicized in the LA Times and other venues. Moores claimed his investigation provided clear evidence of discrimination. In the aftermath of California's Proposition 209 barring the use of race in admissions, Moores complained that Berkeley's adoption of a "holistic" review of applications reduced the importance of test scores by elevating subjective "measurements" that served as possibly illegal proxies for race and ethnicity. Conjuring memories of charges of discrimination in the 1980s by the Asian-American community regarding Berkeley's admissions processes, Moores asked, "How did the university get away with discriminating so blatantly against Asians?" For anti-affirmative action advocates, like Moores, standardized test scores were, and are, seen as the gold standard of academic ability since it is a "universal" measure unlike grades that are local assessments of abilities and subject to grade inflation. However, when compared to grades in high school, test scores have proven weak indicators of subsequent academic success at highly selective universities that must choose among a large pool of highly qualified students. Test scores also are not necessarily good measures for predicting the future engagement of students in the wide range of experiences and opportunities offered by major universities – including public service, undergraduate research, and co-curricular activities. Anti-affirmative action advocates largely see admissions as a reward based on test scores and are not terribly concerned with the predictive validity of other admissions criteria. This essay concludes with a brief discussion of the similarities of Moores' analysis and charge of discrimination in admissions with that at Harvard, and the probable legal path toward a new Supreme Court decision on affirmative action.


Abstract: Objectives: We sought to investigate potential mechanisms of increased serum thrombopoietin (TPO) concentrations in myelofibrosis with myeloid metaplasia (MMM) by simultaneously measuring serum TPO, platelet and megakaryocyte (MK) numbers, and MK c‐Mpl expression. Methods: We studied 17 consecutive patients who had MMM and were not receiving therapy at the time of evaluation. Serum TPO was measured by a two‐site immunochemiluminometric assay. Immunohistochemical staining of c‐Mpl was accomplished with an immunoperoxidase method on simultaneously obtained bone marrow specimens. Results: Our findings confirmed the presence of inappropriately increased serum TPO despite mostly normal or increased peripheral platelet counts and markedly increased bone marrow MK numbers. In addition, we found an inverse correlation between platelet count and serum TPO (P < 0.03) and splenic size (P < 0.04). However, serum TPO did not correlate with either bone marrow MK number or c‐Mpl expression. The lack of correlation of serum TPO and bone marrow megakaryocyte number may be accounted for by the unavoidable inaccuracies in quantifying megakaryocytopoiesis in a disorder of known altered hematopoietic progenitor cell distribution, both intramedullary and extramedullary. The significant inverse correlation between serum TPO and spleen size suggests that this site of extramedullary megakaryocytopoiesis may assume a role in the dysfunctional TPO regulatory axis. Conclusions: These observations suggest some preservation of the negative feedback regulation that appears to be dysfunctional at the MK c‐Mpl level. Consistent with previous observations in animal models, our observations suggest the possibility that altered TPO regulation resulting in sustained ligand excess may have pathogenetic relevance in MMM.


In a linear economy most resources used are disposed of at the end of their life. In order to move towards a more sustainable future, many product stakeholders are adopting circular economy processes hence taking a different approach to how materials are currently sourced, produced, used and disposed of. The central aim is to circulate the flows of materials and minimise the ecological impact of materials. Following the direction set by the circular economy, many products that are made of sustainable materials such as recycled post consumer waste and renewable materials have been developed. These sustainable materials often have unique sensorial qualities and the brands marketing these products seem to make a strategic use of the biography of the materials by providing information about the resource origin, both to position themselves as well as to accentuate their environmental concerns. Nevertheless, little is known about how users experience these materials. This paper reports a preliminary study to understand users' emotional experiences resulting from interaction with sustainable materials. Ten study participants were prompted with ten stimuli made of sustainable materials. They were asked to report their emotional responses towards the stimuli and describe the reasons for the emotions triggered by the stimuli. This study has found that the stimulievoked163emotions consistingof114positive emotionsand49negative emotions. The most reported positive emotion is 'surprise', whereas the most reported negative emotion is 'disgust'. The emotions were clustered into seven positive emotion typologies and four negative emotion typologies. The analysis of the emotion reports led to the identification of170emotional triggers in the form of appraisal themes. Four prominent appraisal themes were identified, namely systemic, expressive semantic, sensorial and technical appraisals. The interplay of these themes in participants' evaluation of sustainable materials caused a mix of positive and negative emotions to be evoked by most stimuli. Systemic appraisals pertained predominantly to the benefits and the impact of material use and were always positive, whereas other appraisal themes evoked both positive and negative emotions thus contributing to ambiguous feelings towards the stimuli. Only two recycled plastics stimuli that embody conventional sensorial properties were found to elicit little negative emotions. In contrast, stimuli with unconventional sensorial properties made of unfamiliar materials evoked a larger number of negative emotions. This research sheds new light on the emotional experiences of sustainable materials supporting the journey to facilitate their uptake.


While current Semantic Web languages and technologies are wellsuited for accessing and integrating static data, methods and technologies for the handling of dynamic aspects – required in many modern web environments – are largely missing. We propose to use Abstract State Machines (ASMs) as the formal basis for dealing with changes in Linked Data, which is the combination of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). We provide a synthesis of ASMs and Linked Data and show how the combination aligns with the relevant specifications such as the Request/Response communication in HTTP, the guidelines for updating resource state in the Linked Data Platform (LDP) specification, and the formal grounding of RDF in model theory. Based on the formalisation of Linked Data resources that change state over time, we present the syntax and operational semantics of a small rule-based language to specify user agents that use HTTP to interact with Linked Data as the interface to the environment. We show the feasibility of the approach in an evaluation involving the specification of automation in a Smart Building scenario, where the presented approach serves as a theoretical foundation.


Variation on symptoms and virulence wasobserved on different isolates of ChiVMV collected fromWest Java, Central Java, East Java, South Kalimantan, WestSumatera and Central Aceh. Research was conducted tostudy genetic variation of six ChiVMV isolates based onsequence analysis of coat protein (CP) gene and aminoacid. Sequence analysis of CP gene showed 87% to 99%homology among the six isolates with level of variationranging from 0.02% to 1.48%. Sequence analysis of aminoacid derived from CP gene showed 85% to 99% homology.Further analysis on amino acid motives of CP gene indicatedmutation of octapeptide motif, i.eLSGQVQPQSRQSEMETEVPQVR on ChiVMV CKB andRMETFGLDGRVGTQEEDTERHT on other ChiVMV isolates.Other differences was observed on amino acid number 61and 84 i.e. deletion of MET and mutation of GG to KV onChiVMV BL and KR. Phyllogenetic analysis based onnucleotide and amino acid sequence showed that sixisolates of ChiVMV can be differentiated into three groups.ChiVMV KR and BL were in the same group with ChiVMVPataruman (GeneBank No. access DQ854961), ChiVMV CKBwas in the same group with ChiVMV Cikabayan 2(GeneBank No. access DQ854960), and ChiVMV TD, ChiVMVNI and GB ChiVMV were in the same group with ChiVMVTaiwan (GeneBank No. access DQ854948). Analysis of CPgene confirmed the occurrence of genetic variation amongChiVMV isolates although symptom variation is weak.


In recent years, innovation has become a buzz word in the human rights sector. The concept is increasingly emphasised by funders and, consequently, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are beginning to pay attention to it, but usually with reluctance and cynicism. Wanting to better understand the origins of innovation and why rights based NGOs tend to instinctively resist it, Lucia Nader and Jose Guilherme F. de Campos interviewed over one hundred activists and human rights defenders.Here they distil the results of their research and offer the five main concerns with innovation that were articulated during the interviews, specifically that (1) it is simply a fashionable word from the private sector in the Global North; (2) there is no real need for innovation when fighting for human rights since the underlying principles of the movement do not change; (3) it is unfair to test innovative concepts on those that the human rights movement seeks to protect; (4) innovation only results in creating more rights violations; (5) innovation brings uncertainties, which funders tend not to like.Analysing each of these concerns in turn and presenting counter arguments, the authors conclude by suggesting five questions that organisations must ask themselves before embarking on a process of innovation.


Evidence suggests varied motives drives individuals to use dual-purposed systems such as social media. Current models of IT acceptance do not account for all these motives, and, while these models have been used in the context of dual-purposed systems, the focus was usually on the productivity side of use. Building on theories of motivational needs and person-environment fit, we conceptualize the construct of user-system fit - a construct that comprises four dimensions of fit – user-expression, needs-supplies, demands-abilities, and user-group fit – and which we hypothesize is positively associated with IT use. A model is developed and tested, and the results indicate that user-system fit explains 32.2% of usage.


In mammals, repetitive increases of the intracellular Ca2+ level, known as Ca2+ oscillations, are observed in oocytes immediately after sperm-oocyte fusion, which is a prerequisite event for oocyte activation. Previous studies indicate that phospholipase C zeta (PLCζ), a strong candidate sperm factor for triggering Ca2+ oscillations, is localized in the sperm head of several mammalian species. We have reported that the rate of pronucleus formation in oocytes injected with a sperm head is lower than that for oocytes injected with a whole spermatozoon (Nakai et al. 2009 IETS). This has given rise to a hypothesis that not only the sperm head but also the tail play a role in inducing oocyte activation in pigs. In this study, we attempted to detect the localization of PLCζ in the pig sperm tail and also its ability to activate porcine oocytes after injection. To clarify the localization of PLCζ in pig sperm, frozen-thawed ejaculated pig sperm were immunostained using an anti-PLCζ antibody that has been reported previously (Kurokawa et al. 2005). Western blotting was also carried out to examine whether PLCζ (72 kDa) was present in the sperm tail. Sperm tails were detached from the head by sonication and then collected after centrifugation in a Percoll density gradient. We also confirmed whether the sperm tail itself had the ability to trigger oocyte activation using the following 4 injection groups: (1)1 sperm head (Head), (2) 1 sperm tail (Tail), (3) 1 sperm head and 1 tail (Head + Tail), and (4) Sham. The nuclear status of the injected oocyte was evaluated at 10 h after injection. In the present study, we used 3 sperm samples that were prepared from different boars. In pig sperm, the acrosome, tail, and post-acrosomal regions were stained by the PLCζ antibody. The signals in both the post-acrosomal and tail regions disappeared after pretreatment with antigenic peptide, but that in the acrosome region was retained. Furthermore, we confirmed the presence of a band of approximately 72 kDa from the sperm tail and also confirmed its disappearance upon pretreatment with antigenic peptide. The rates of oocytes released from metaphase-II arrest in the Head, Tail, and Head+Tail groups were significantly higher than that in the Sham group (P < 0.05 by ANOVA andTukey test). However, most of the oocytes in the Tail group failed to form pronuclei and showed other meiotic stages (anaphase-II, telophase-II, or metaphase-III). In conclusion, we have shown that PLCζ is expressed in the post-acrosomal and tail region of pig sperm. It is suggested that, in the pig, the sperm tail participates in the triggering of oocyte activation. The authors thankRafaelA. Fissore (Department ofVeterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst) for providing the antigenic peptide for PLCζ. This study was supported in part by JSPS Fellowship (71310042 to M.N.) from the Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS).


The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s signified an end to organized impediments to the spread of globalization and this invariably led to the triumph of liberal democracy as the promoter of good governance. Globalization actually provides an impetus for socio-economic and political development. Successive Nigerian governments have found it challenging to institutionalize democratic principles and embark upon sound socio-economic policy initiatives in the country. This has led to questions being raised about the convergence between globalization, sustainable democracy and the implementation of deregulation policy in the Nigerian oil sector.
Therefore, the study engages in the crux of Nigeria's development dilemma under the weight of globalization. It explores the "pseudo-deregulation" in the oil industry, examines the capacity of Nigeria's state to embark on policy transformation. Furthermore, the study relates the roles of local and international actors involved in the deregulation to economic development and quality of democracy in the country. In achieving this, the dependency, dependent development and new public management theories are utilized as frameworks of analysis. Although the government maintains that the deregulation of the distribution and marketing sector of the oil industry is germane for fiscal balance and socio-economic development. However, based on the influence of global actors, the character of the Nigerian state and its primordial political elites, there is compelling evidence to attribute the deregulation policy to mismanagement and corruption that characterizes the oil industry. This explains the continued resistance to the policy by the majority of Nigerians.
I found, in this study, that fraudulent data was generated by the government to justify subsidy-cuts and the announcement of deregulation. The timing and implementation of the policy has left much to be desired. Hence there is a need for a phased deregulation process that provides 'safety nets' for the masses and satisfies other criteria for deregulation. State incapacity, structural problems and the underlining political economy of Nigeria remain a challenge to effective reform in the oil sector. I conclude the dissertation by reinforcing the argument that deregulation in the sector is a systematic mechanism by the government to expand the orbit of corruption in the downstream oil sector. Therefore, complete deregulation and subsidy removal, under the prevailing socio-economic realities, would be politically costly and this would endanger political stability in Nigeria.


Concern has been growing about the status of UK adder populations, with expert opinion reporting widespread declines. Assessing the true scale of these declines, however, has been hampered by a lack of quantitative data. Make the Adder Count began in 2005 as a national surveillance programme collecting standardised counts of adders lying-out after emerging from hibernation. 260 sites have contributed data, confirming a significant decline, on average, across sites with small populations, while the few with large populations (<10 % of sites) are weakly increasing. If these trends continue, within 15‒20 years, adders will be restricted to a few large population sites, significantly increasing the extinction risk for this priority species in the UK. Public pressure/disturbance was reported as the most frequent negative factor affecting sites, followed by habitat management and habitat fragmentation. Negative impacts from habitat management were reported almost as frequently as positive impacts, suggesting many management plans do not adequately consider the requirements of adders. The dataset also demonstrated earlier emergence among males, in warmer springs and at more northerly sites.


In adults, specific neural systems with right-hemispheric weighting are necessary to process pitch, melody, and harmony as well as structure and meaning emerging from musical sequences. It is not known to what extent the specialization of these systems results from long-term exposure to music or from neurobiological constraints. One way to address this question is to examine how these systems function at birth, when auditory experience is minimal. We used functional MRI to measure brain activity in 1- to 3-day-old newborns while they heard excerpts of Western tonal music and altered versions of the same excerpts. Altered versions either included changes of the tonal key or were permanently dissonant. Music evoked predominantly right-hemispheric activations in primary and higher order auditory cortex. During presentation of the altered excerpts, hemodynamic responses were significantly reduced in the rig1ht auditory cortex, and activations emerged in the left inferior frontal cortex and limbic structures. These results demonstrate that the infant brain shows a hemispheric specialization in processing music as early as the first postnatal hours. Results also indicate that the neural architecture underlying music processing in newborns is sensitive to changes in tonal key as well as to differences in consonance and dissonance.


Author(s): Collier, David; Munck, Gerardo L | Abstract: This symposium brings together ten essays that explore hypotheses about critical junctures, understood as major episodes of institutional innovation that generate an enduring legacy. Scholars routinely focus on episodes of innovation that occur in contrasting ways across cases, which in turn yields distinct trajectories of change and produces different legacies. These contrasts readily lend themselves to analysis based on the comparative method, generally combined with process tracing. For the analysis of single cases, the comparison is typically focused on explicit or implicit counterfactual alternatives that might have produced different trajectories of change. The critical juncture framework is seen as offering a set of hypotheses that may or may not fit a given historical situation, and whose actual fit must be demonstrated with great care.The symposium builds on Lipset and Rokkan's (1967) classic study of cleavage structures and party systems, as well as Collier and Collier's (1991) Shaping the Political Arena. The introduction by the coeditors provides an overall framework for studying critical junctures and the essays apply this framework, while at same time moving the discussion in new directions. The substantive domains explored include state-formation, party systems, neoliberal transformation, religion, law, economic growth, and colonial rebellion. Most essays focus on Latin America, while two discuss Europe and the United States; some analyze developments since the 1980s, whereas others reach back to the 19th century. Given that a critical juncture hypothesis inherently focuses on trajectories of change that extend over a substantial period of time, a key issue debated in the symposium is the amount of historical perspective required to establish that a critical juncture has in fact occurred. Contributors to the symposium, in addition to the coeditors, are Sidney Tarrow, Kenneth M. Roberts, Robert R. Kaufman, Taylor C. Boas, Timothy R. Scully, Jorge I. Dominguez, Sebastian L. Mazzuca, Andrew C. Gould, and Thad Dunning.


The objective of this study was to compare skeletal muscle mass (SMM) in older adults as estimated by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and three predictive equations. A total of 180 older adults (120 women and 60 men) aged 60 to 81 years were studied. Appendicular SMM was measured by DXA and estimated using predictive equations based on anthropometric measures, age, race, and gender. Agreement between methods was evaluated by the paired t-test, Pearson's correlation coefficient, and dispersion error. The prevalence of sarcopenia estimated with the different methods was compared using the kappa coefficient, sensitivity, and specificity. No difference was observed in mean SMM estimated by the predictive equation of Lee et al. and DXA (p>0.05), with a high correlation between methods in men (r=0.90; p<0.001) and women (r=0.86; p<0.001). The prevalence of sarcopenia did not differ between methods (DXA = 33.3% vs. equation = 36.1%), with high agreement between methods (kappa = 0.74; p<0.001) and high specificity (89%) and sensitivity (86%). The results indicate agreement between DXA and the predictive equation of Lee et al. for estimation of SMM and prevalence of sarcopenia in older adults.


Integrating policy on climate change adaptation into civil protection is explored through studies of extreme weather management at the national level in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, and through local case studies of the three coastal cities of Bergen, Malmö and Rotterdam. The research issues addressed have been the extent to which, and in what form, climate change adaptation policy has been integrated into civil protection, how the observed policy integration can be explained and how such integration can be improved. Different degrees of policy integration may stem from perceived vulnerabilities and varying needs for renewed legitimacy within the civil protection system following the end of the Cold War. A set of socio-historic characteristics of the "environment" and "civil protection" policy domains illuminate conditions for an improved outcome of the policy integration process.