Optimizing all three thermoelectric properties (Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity, and thermal conductivity) simultaneously is a nontrivial task, especially for the Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity. Here, we demonstrate that chemically tuned rutile TiO2 sintered from N- and Nb-codoped nanoparticles possesses not only an enhanced power factor but also a decreased thermal conductivity. In samples produced under strongly reducing conditions, the electrical resistivity is decreased markedly to 3.96 x 10(-5) Omega m while maintaining a high Seebeck coefficient. In this manner, the power factor can be greatly improved to 9.87 x 10(-4) W m(-1) K-2 at 785 degrees C with a significantly enhanced figure of merit ZT of 0.35 at 700 degrees C. Theoretical modeling based on density functional theory suggests that enhanced asymmetrical carrier transport (i.e., with the minority carrier relatively localized on one side of the Fermi level but the majority carrier delocalized on the other) can be induced by locally distorting the crystal structure, since this imposes local perturbations on the intrinsic periodic potential field, which may be responsible for the improved power factor. The greatly improved thermoelectric behavior of chemically tuned rutile TiO2 provides a promising route to producing practical thermoelectric materials without the use of toxic heavy elements. Our findings also provide a promising new strategy for enhancing the thermoelectric properties of other thermoelectric materials.


German playwright Carl Sternheim's comedy "The School of Uznach" (1926) is a caustic satire of the modern dance movement; particularly the claims of its central figures, notably Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman, to have achieved through their dance practice a fundamental change in social values and a new model of the human being. Set in a fictional dance academy which espouses progressive ideals of self-expression, sexual permissiveness and harmony between mental states and bodily movement, Sternheim's play lampoons the hidden conformity, vulgarity and meaningless platitudes he sees as pervading much of his contemporary dance culture. This article considers Sternheim's work as a literary example of the contemporary reception of the aims and methods of Ausdruckstanz; echoed for instance in the work of left-wing sociologist Siegfried Kracauer. While Laban's and Wigman's influences on subsequent dance developments are undeniable, Sternheim's play sounds a cautionary note about the over-theorisation of body culture and paradoxically repressive outcomes of radical methods in (dance) pedagogy.


OBJECTIVES: To investigate the effect of Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) accreditation and hospital care practices on breastfeeding rates at 1 and 4 months. METHODS: All women who birthed in Queensland, Australia, from February 1 to May 31, 2010, received a survey 4 months postpartum. Maternal, infant, and hospital characteristics; pregnancy and birth complications; and infant feeding outcomes were measured. RESULTS: Sample size was 6752 women. Breastfeeding initiation rates were high (96%) and similar in BFHI-accredited and nonaccredited hospitals. After adjustment for significant maternal, infant, clinical, and hospital variables, women who birthed in BFHI-accredited hospitals had significantly lower odds of breastfeeding at 1 month (adjusted odds ratio 0.72, 95% confidence interval 0.58–0.90) than those who birthed in non–BFHI-accredited hospitals. BFHI accreditation did not affect the odds of breastfeeding at 4 months or exclusive breastfeeding at 1 or 4 months. Four in-hospital practices (early skin-to-skin contact, attempted breastfeeding within the first hour, rooming-in, and no in-hospital supplementation) were experienced by 70% to 80% of mothers, with 50.3% experiencing all 4. Women who experienced all 4 hospital practices had higher odds of breastfeeding at 1 month (adjusted odds ratio 2.20, 95% confidence interval 1.78–2.71) and 4 months (adjusted odds ratio 2.93, 95% confidence interval 2.40–3.60) than women who experienced fewer than 4. CONCLUSIONS: When breastfeeding-initiation rates are high and evidence-based practices that support breastfeeding are common within the hospital environment, BFHI accreditation per se has little effect on both exclusive or any breastfeeding rates.


Studies have produced conflicting results about whether digital media (the Internet, texting, social media, and gaming) displace or complement use of older legacy media (print media such as books, magazines, and newspapers; TV; and movies). Here, we examine generational/time period trends in media use in nationally representative samples of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders in the United States, 1976–2016 (N 1,021,209; 51% female). Digital media use has increased considerably, with the average 12th grader in 2016 spending more than twice as much time online as in 2006, and with time online, texting, and on social media totaling to about 6 hr a day by 2016. Whereas only half of 12th graders visited social media sites almost every day in 2008, 82% did by 2016. At the same time, iGen adolescents in the 2010s spent significantly less time on print media, TV, or movies compared with adolescents in previous decades. The percentage of 12th graders who read a book or a magazine every day declined from 60% in the late 1970s to 16% by 2016, and 8th graders spent almost an hour less time watching TV in 2016 compared with the early 1990s. Trends were fairly uniform across gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The rapid adoption of digital media since the 2000s has displaced the consumption of legacy media.


The arterial oxygen tensions (Pa,02) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients travelling by air, should, according to two different guidelines, not be lower than 7.3 kPa (55 mmHg) and 6.7 kPa (50 mmHg), respectively, at a cabin pressure altitude of 2,438 m (8,000 ft). These minimum in-flight Pa,O2 values are claimed to correspond to a minimum Pa,O2 of 9.3 kPa (70 mmHg) at sea-level. The authors have tested whether this limit is a safe criterion for predicting severe in-flight hypoxaemia. The authors measured arterial blood gases at sea-level, at 2,438 m and at 3,048 m (10,000 ft) in an altitude chamber at rest and during light exercise in 15 COPD patients with forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) <50% of predicted, and with sea-level Pa,O2 >9.3 kPa. Resting Pa,O2 decreased below 7.3 kPa and 6.7 kPa in 53% and 33% of the patients, respectively, at 2,438 m, and in 86% and 66% of the patients at 3,048 m. During light exercise, Pa,O2 dropped below 6.7 kPa in 86% of the patients at 2,438 m, and in 100% of the patients at 3,048 m. There was no correlation between Pa,O2 at 2,438 m and pre-flight values of Pa,O2, FEV1 or transfer factor of the lung for carbon monoxide. In contrast to current medical guidelines, it has been found that resting arterial oxygen tension >9.3 kPa at sea-level does not exclude development of severe hypoxaemia in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients travelling by air. Light exercise, equivalent to slow walking along the aisle, may provoke a pronounced aggravation of the hypoxaemia.


This article will consider the extent to which mad and disabled people's histories have, or have not, been included in studies of Canada's past, including in surveys, biographies and specialized fields. The purpose is to understand when, where and how people deemed mad or disabled have been excluded or included in broader discussions of Canadian history and how the recent growth of mad people's history and disability history in Canada can influence historiographical developments. There will also be a discussion of how both fields are directly related since people deemed mad were and are to this day categorized under the broad scope of disability, just as are people with physical, sensory and intellectual disabilities. Consideration will also be given to how this field of inter-disciplinary research has benefited from work by researchers who do not necessarily identify as historians in either field but whose work has contributed to these areas, such as through the scholarship of medical historians. The ultimate aim of this paper is to advocate for mad and disabled people's histories to become incorporated more widely beyond these specialized fields when interpreting Canada's past.


The paper presents the design plan for a mobile solution aimed at stress reduction. The solution will be developed by a team of medics, psychotherapists, HCI experts and knowledge engineers and will provide continuous data sensing and feedback about personal stress levels. At the same time contextual and activity information will be captured. Stress management is particularly important for high-risk populations such as former alcoholics to reduce the risk of relapse; they will therefore test and validate the solution. By combining and correlating psycho-physiological data with data on activities (e.g. walking or social interactions) and environment/location (e.g. ambient light) it is expected that sources of stress can be recognised which in turn will allow individuals to either avoid stress-inducing factors or develop appropriate coping strategies. To make sense of the data captured, it is proposed to use intelligent algorithms to recognise patterns in the data streams and semantic technologies to interpret the text messages of users. People with other stress-related health problems such as burn-out, smoking, depression or sleeping problems will also benefit from our research.


Expression of an antisense transcript that overlaps with the first exon of p53 increases the abundance of p53. The tumor suppressor p53 is important for the cellular response to DNA damage and is encoded by one of the most frequently mutated genes in cancer cells. The regulation of p53 abundance is complex, with transcriptional and posttranscriptional mechanisms playing important roles. Mahmoudi et al. identified an antisense transcript that overlaps with the first exon of p53 and that, when knocked down, decreases the abundance of both p53 transcript and protein. They called the antisense transcript Wrap53, for WD40-encoding RNA antisense to p53, and showed that the p73 gene also had an overlapping Wrap73 antisense gene. Various techniques were used to verify that the increase in p53 did not require the Wrap53 protein. For example, silencing RNAs (siRNAs) targeted specifically to the exon 1α (a transcript from the alternative start site that is the only Wrap53 transcript that overlaps with the p53 coding sequence) decreased p53 abundance without affecting Wrap53 protein abundance, and overexpression of only the exon 1α, which does not encode protein, increased p53 abundance. Wrap53 and the corresponding region of the p53 gene appeared to form a duplex, and inhibition of this duplex by the introduction of 2′-O-methyl oligoribonucleotides reduced p53 abundance. The importance of Wrap53 regulation of p53 in the response to DNA damage was evident by the reduced stimulation in p53 in cells exposed to DNA-damaging agents that were also depleted for Wrap53, and overexpression of a truncated Wrap53 that included the exon 1α increased DNA damage–induced cell death. S. Mahmoudi, S. Henriksson, M. Corcoran, C. Méndez-Vidal, K. G. Wiman, M. Farnebo, Wrap53, a natural p53 antisense transcript required for p53 induction upon DNA damage. Mol. Cell 33, 462–471 (2009). [PubMed]


The lunar poles feature a microenvironment that is almost entirely unknown to planetary science. Because of the very small tilt of the Moon's axis with respect to the Sun, craters and other depressions near the poles are permanently shaded from direct sunlight. As a consequence, these surfaces should have maintained extremely low temperatures, well under 100 K, for billions of years. There is some evidence that these surfaces act as cold traps, capturing and sequestering volatiles from the Moon and elsewhere. Most popular attention has focused on the possible presence of water ice that might be used by astronauts in the future, but the poles may offer a unique scientific resource. Possible sources for volatiles at the lunar poles range from the Sun to interstellar clouds, and if present, such volatile deposits may provide unique information about many aspects of planetary science.


Between January and April 2002, Mason Inlet, situated between Figure Eight Island and Wrightsville Beach, N.C. was artificially relocated 2,800 ft updrift of its most recent position at the southern terminus of a migrating barrier spit. Relocation was chosen from several coastal management options due to increased backbarrier infilling and southerly migration of the inlet that imminently threatened a resort complex and infrastructure on northern Wrightsville Beach. The relocated Mason Inlet provides an ideal site to study the evolution and impacts of a recently relocated system from its inception while simultaneously assessing the relative success of the project. Techniques such as ADCP, RTK GPS, and GIS-based analyses served as tools in the collection of data pertaining to a variety of inlet parameters.
Cumulative erosion measured along neighboring shoreline reaches was induced by inlet relocation and subsequent formation of the ebb-tidal delta coupled with channel migration. Key indicators suggest that the system remains flood dominant. Noticeable infilling of the backbarrier persists along with ebb durations exceeding flood durations and flood flow volumes exceeding ebb volumes. JARRETT's (1976) theoretical equation relating tidal prism (TP) and cross-sectional area (AC) appears to be a useful tool for estimation of the relocated Mason Inlet's TP. However, ebb-tidal delta volume after 1.6 years remains well below the equilibrium volume predicted by WALTON and ADAMS' (1976) model. Future modification (e.g. dredging feeder channels) to the system will be needed in order to mitigate the infilling nature of the inlet that historically has led to increased migration to the southwest. Failure to contain the inlet within the proposed "inlet corridor" will result in an unsuccessful relocation effort.


Many-Objective Robust Decision Making (MORDM) is a prominent model-based approach for dealing with deep uncertainty. MORDM has four phases: a systems analytical problem formulation, a search phase to generate candidate solutions, a trade-off analysis where different strategies are compared across many objectives, and a scenario discovery phase to identify the vulnerabilities. In its original inception, the search phase identifies optimal strategies for a single reference scenario for deep uncertainties, which may result in missing locally near-optimal, but globally more robust strategies. Recent work has addressed this issue by generating candidate strategies for multiple policy-relevant scenarios. In this paper, we incorporate a systematic scenario selection procedure in the search phase to consider both policy relevance and scenario diversity. The results demonstrate an increased tradeoff variety besides higher robustness, compared to the solutions found for a reference scenario. Future research can routinize multi-scenario search in MORDM with the aid of software packages.


This research applies an interdisciplinary approach to the bidirectional relationship between illicit drug trafficking activities (specifically, cocaine and opioid trafficking in Colombia and Mexico) and the architectures, spaces, and territories in which they are located. Certain spaces that determine or are determined by the actions of drug trafficking organizations are described, analyzed, and classified based on various methodologies and the use of academic, official, and press information. In addition, case studies are reconstructed using architectural and geographic representation mechanisms to exemplify and illustrate the main arguments. The paper examines the three stages of activity that constitute the illegal drug economy: production (involving the placement of crop fields and laboratories), distribution (which entails exploitation of mobility infrastructure), and cross-cutting activities in relation to drug trafficking support spaces. The research provides an articulated interpretation of the various drug trafficking activities from a spatial perspective, the characterization of spaces that are important to criminal organizations and to the performance of their activities, and insights into the spatial thinking strategies and tactics associated with drug trafficking.


Delirium is a condition that is under-researched in comparison with equally common conditions (Adamis, Martin, Treloar & Macdonald, 2005). This is especially evident in the paucity of research into the lived experience of delirium. One group of patients who frequently become delirious is older people who have undergone surgery for a fractured hip.

This study examines the experiences of delirium in elderly hip fracture patients, to explore how people make sense of their experiences both while still in hospital and three-months later once they have been discharged. Nine older people who had experienced an episode of delirium following surgery for a fractured hip were interviewed in hospital. Four of these were interviewed three months later once they had returned home. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 1995) was used to analyse the data collected from the semi-structured interviews.

Participants struggled to make sense of their experiences, and used defensive strategies to manage their anxieties. Participants appeared to have concerns about the implications of their experiences for their mental health, and the potential consequences for dependence on others. Some participants felt inadequately supported by nursing staff during their delirious experiences. At three-month follow-up participants still struggled to make sense of their experiences and the concerns they expressed did not appear to have substantially changed from the time they were in hospital.

Despite its small size, this study offers some important considerations for clinical practice. Possible avenues for future research are also discussed.


Background: Providing safe drinking water and monitoring the quality are necessary in the human societies.
Objective: The aim of study was to evaluate the microbial quality of groundwater of Qazvin city.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed to evaluate the microbial quality of 45 drinking water resources Qazvin city in terms of total coliform and fecal. Sampling was done in the winter to spring during 2013-14. Sample analysis was performed using standard multiple tube fermentation (3 tubes) method for total coliform and fecal counting.
Findings: Total coliform and fecal concentration were zero in all taken samples and all samples were free of microbial contamination of total and fecal coliform.
Conclusion: Microbial quality of drinking water supplies of Qazvin city was favorable in terms of total and fecal coliforms and in accordance with the standards of the country in relation to microbial contamination, But in order to maintain the desirability, continuous monitoring of the water and wastewater company is very important on the quality of the supply sources of drinking water.


Abstract Our article in the Journal of Sports Sciences (Russell, Benton, & Kingsley, 2010) was designed to evaluate the reliability and construct validity of soccer skills tests that assess passing, shooting, and dribbling. This aim is stated explicitly in the title, abstract, introduction and discussion sections of the article (Russell et al., 2010). Test-retest reproducibility was presented as absolute- and relative-reliability (Hopkins, 2000), and construct validity was determined as the ability of the tests to discriminate between abilities in a group of performers (National Coaching Foundation, 1995). Construct validity was confirmed and the absolute reliability statistics were comparable or tighter than previous soccer skill tests of passing, shooting and dribbling (Russell & Kingsley, 2011). These skill tests have been combined with an exercise protocol to simulate physiological demands and movement patterns of soccer match-play (Russell, Rees, Benton, & Kingsley, 2011). Through a series of subsequent studies, these skill tests have already been used to evaluate the effects of: (1) soccer-specific movement patterns on acid-base balance (Russell & Kingsley, in press), (2) soccer-specific fatigue on precision, speed and success of passing, shooting and dribbling (Russell, Benton, & Kingsley, 2011), and (3) carbohydrate supplementation on passing, shooting and dribbling (Russell, Benton, & Kingsley, 2012). In this response, we provide a brief description of some of the inaccuracies presented in the 'Letter to the Editor' along with further commentary on some of the theoretical issues that relate to soccer skills tests.


Foster parents' ability to support a minority youth's cultural needs is critically important to the appropriate development of the youth's cultural identity and avoidance of negative reactions to real or perceived rejection or dismissal of their cultural values or traditions. This study assessed the ability of a set of practice-based measures to identify indicators of positive transcultural parenting. It involved a cross-sectional, nonprobability sample of 78 licensed foster parents who completed standardized foster parent assessments. Discriminant function analysis was used to correctly classify 91% of respondents into two distinct groups of low- and high-scoring foster parents on a cluster of demographic and fostering predictors of openness to effectively parenting culturally different children. Foster parents' race, education level, dedication to fostering, available time to foster, understanding of certain foster parent roles, and knowledge of transcultural parenting activities were the strongest predictors of cultural receptivity, a precursor for competence in transcultural parenting. These findings demonstrate the potential usefulness of a set of psychometrically sound measures for prescreening and enhancing transcultural parenting skill sets among prospective foster parents who would likely support the psychological, social, and cultural development of youths of a different race, ethnicity, or culture from themselves.


The essential information relating to the work that the authorities regulating competition carries out in an economic sector, particularly when talking about the protection of economic actors against anti-competitive behaviours and making sure that they, as well as the consumers can benefit from a fully open internal market facilitate the collaboration of national competition authorities that become vectors of market development policies. In the context of a market-oriented policy, it is very important to strengthen the position of manufacturers in the product supply chain. We must highlight how legislation in the analysed field and in competition law is compatible with a view to achieving fairer and more efficient results for both producers and consumers. The superior satisfaction of consumers' interests aims to develop a market for products or services that offer facilities to both manufacturers and consumers. The approach in terms of competitive cooperation specific to the theory of games, emphasizes the benefits of companies that are actively involved in influencing the market, in creating an environment where the end result contributes to increasing profitability of the economic operators and in achieving certain benefits for consumers. The paper briefly presents several theoretical aspects specific to the concept of competitive cooperation accompanied by relevant examples.


The stability of a secondary Tollmien–Schlichting wave, whose wavenumber and frequency are nearly one half those of a fundamental Tollmien–Schlichting instability wave, is analyzed using the method of multiple scales. Under these conditions, the fundamental wave acts as a parametric exciter for the secondary wave. The results show that the amplitude of the fundamental wave must exceed a critical value to trigger this parametric instability. This value is proportional to a detuning parameter which is the real part of k − 2K, where k and K are the wavenumbers of the fundamental and its subharmonic, respectively. For Blasius flow, the critical amplitude is approximately 29% of the mean flow, and hence many other secondary instabilities take place before this parametric instability becomes significant. For other flows where the detuning parameter is small, such as free‐shear layer flows, the critical amplitude can be small, thus the parametric instability might play a greater role.


Landscapes are sculpted by a variety of processes that weather and erode bedrock, converting it into soils and sediments that are moved downslope. Quantifying erosion rates provides important insights into a wide range of questions in disciplines from tectonics and landscape evolution to the impacts of land use. Cosmogenic nuclides contained in quartz sediment provide a robust tool for determining spatially averaged erosion rates across scales ranging from single hillslopes to continental river basins and are providing fundamental clues to how landscapes evolve. Cosmogenic nuclides in buried sediments contain unique information about paleo–erosion rates up to millions of years in the past. This article explores some of the basic ideas behind various methods used to infer catchment-wide erosion rates and highlights recent examples related to problems in tectonics, climate, and land use.


Now is a time of dramatic change in mental health care as the world is witnessing a proliferation of research into the genetics of mental disorders. Despite several genetic test developments there is a paucity of qualitative research exploring the issues concerning its potential future introduction. This inspired my primary research question: What are the main implications regarding the developments being made in genetic testing for mental disorders in terms of their proposed introduction in a clinical setting? This was investigated through 33 semi-structured interviews with a range of psychiatric professionals from a single NHS trust location in the South West of England. As research has demonstrated that different medical professionals consider issues in mental health care in different ways (Colombo, et al. 2003 ; Fulford and Colombo, 2004) participants' personal constructs of mental disorder were examined to see if their accounts of the tests differed on the basis of their unique conceptualisations of mental distress. An additional component feature in this research relates to what these developments may ultimately represent or provide psychiatry and mental health care as a result of being able to consider mental disorders in terms of underlying biology. Historically there has been a persistent attempt to determine the underlying genetic components of mental distress, however, this always seems to fail or the next big development is always 'just around the corner' this observation is considered when the major developments in psychiatric genetics are examined in light of the sociological field of the 'promissory nature of science' (Borup, et al. 2006) I suggest that the developments in genetic testing for mental distress represent an iconic continuation of this process. Interview transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis and five themes were developed that cover aspects such as how the tests' introduction will alter perceptions in mental health care, issues concerning the tests' practical impact, their possible shortcomings, and how they may alter clinical practice. My findings indicate that, in the majority of themes, personal approaches to mental disorder do appear to influence participants' accounts of the tests. The overall trend is that if an interviewee personally endorsed a biological approach to understanding mental disorder they would be willing to see the tests used in clinical practice. There were two areas of thematic agreement between all psychiatric professionals regardless of their conceptualisations of mental disorder. These concerned the impacts genetic testing could have on different aspects of the legitimacy of mental disorders and the significance of using the tests to aid in treatment rather than diagnosis. Implications of my thematic findings for patient groups, mental health services, and policy makers are discussed.


The multicritical behavior of the Blume–Capel model with infinite-range interactions is investigated by introducing quenched disorder in the crystal field Δi, which is represented by a superposition of two Gaussian distributions with the same width σ, centered at Δi = Δ and Δi = 0, with probabilities p and (1 − p), respectively. A rich variety of phase diagrams is presented, and their distinct topologies are shown for different values of σ and p. The tricritical behavior is analyzed through the existence of fourth-order critical points, as well as how the complexity of the phase diagrams is reduced by the strength of the disorder.


Gofas S. & Rolàn E. 2009. — A systematic review of "Asthenotoma spiralis (Smith, 1872)" in West Africa, with description of Two new species (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Conoidea). Zoosystema 31 (1): 5-16. ABSTRACT The West African marine species generally known as Asthenotoma spiralis (Smith, 1872) is revised, and transferred to the genus Tomopleura Casey, 1904. This specific name is shown to be preoccupied and a replacement name Tomopleura spiralissima n. nom. is provided. Two further species Tomopleura fuscocincta n. sp. and T. tricincta n. sp., hitherto confused with T. spiralis, are described with a type locality in Angola. All three species have larval shells indicating a planktotrophic development and therefore good ability for dispersal, and all three are broadly sympatric across the entire West African region from Senegal to Angola. They are nevertheless differentiated in microhabitat and normally do not occur together in the same samples.


Book summary: Social Media in Social Research: Blogs on Blurring the Boundaries, is a collection of blogs drawing together the experiences and expertise of over 50 contributors and members of the New Social Media, New Social Science? online community.
The book covers a researcher's journey from scoping phases to dissemination, demonstrating how new forms of data produced by social media can be integrated into a researcher's toolkit. Titles include Dislike This: Facebook's experimental ethics, 10 things survey researchers should know about Twitter and Blogging research projects, a good idea in principle…
Blog authors range from experts in social media research to newcomers to the field. Expert blog authors include Joe Murphy, RTI International Survey Methodologist; Deborah Lupton, Australian sociologist and professor; and Carl Miller, co-founder and Research Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos.
With over 600 registered members, and over 2,500 twitter followers from around the world, the New Social Media, New Social Science? network brings together academics, researchers and research stakeholders to explore questions posed by the increasing use of social media platforms and data in social science research.


MsmS is a heme-based redox sensor kinase in Methanosarcina acetivorans consisting of alternating PAS and GAF domains connected to a C-terminal kinase domain. In addition to MsmS, M. acetivorans possesses a second kinase, MA0863 with high sequence similarity. Interestingly, MA0863 possesses an amber codon in its second GAF domain, encoding for the amino acid pyrrolysine. Thus far, no function of this residue has been resolved. In order to examine the heme iron coordination in both proteins, an improved method for the production of heme proteins was established using the Escherichia coli strain Nissle 1917. This method enables the complete reconstitution of a recombinant hemoprotein during protein production, thereby resulting in a native heme coordination. Analysis of the full-length MsmS and MA0863 confirmed a covalently bound heme cofactor, which is connected to one conserved cysteine residue in each protein. In order to identify the coordinating amino acid residues of the heme iron, UV/vis spectra of different variants were measured. These studies revealed His702 in MsmS and the corresponding His666 in MA0863 as the proximal heme ligands. MsmS has previously been described as a heme-based redox sensor. In order to examine whether the same is true for MA0863, redox dependent kinase assays were performed. MA0863 indeed displays redox dependent autophosphorylation activity, which is independent of heme ligands and only observed under oxidizing conditions. Interestingly, autophosphorylation was shown to be independent of the heme cofactor but rather relies on thiol oxidation. Therefore, MA0863 was renamed in RdmS (redox dependent methyltransferase-associated sensor). In order to identify the phosphorylation site of RdmS, thin layer chromatography was performed identifying a tyrosine as the putative phosphorylation site. This observation is in agreement with the lack of a so-called H-box in typical histidine kinases. Due to their genomic localization, MsmS and RdmS were postulated to form two-component systems (TCS) with vicinal encoded regulator proteins MsrG and MsrF. Therefore, protein-protein interaction studies using the bacterial adenylate two hybrid system were performed suggesting an interaction of RdmS and MsmS with the three regulators MsrG/F/C. Due to these multiple interactions these signal transduction pathways should rather be considered multicomponent system instead of two component systems.


Gamification can be defined as the use of game components in non-ludic contexts, and has become a crucial element in the field of behavioral learning. The present work aims to make a systematic review of the main components and its application of gamification in the social environment. To obtain the results, two of the most important scientific databases were consulted: Scopus and Web of Science. 136 articles published between 2011 and mid-2016 under the title Gamification were extracted and reviewed. The results of this study demonstrate how gamification has been gaining importance in the social field and that the use of game components increase motivation and commitment. It shows how gamification uses individual and/or group rewards to achieve proposed objectives; being successfully implemented in education, health, services, and social learning. Finally, it suggests that the success of the gamification system is directly related to the context, the framework selected, and the interaction of the participants.


Military memoirs often seek to reproduce an authoritative understanding of warfare that delineate important strategies of the frontline. The soldier-narrator invokes a shared sympathy between the different, though connected, worlds of the soldiers and the civilians. This essay proposes that the complex processes of racial and gender identification experienced by the colonized resulted in the production of their own discourses about identity, and examines how colonial categorizations of difference inflected the racial and gendered construction of heroes and enemies in wars. Sifting through the military memoirs of four Pakistani Generals, this essay analyses how Pakistani genocidal masculinity was constructed and manifested during the independence struggle of Bangladesh. It inquires what myths and stereotypes contributed to the militarized performances of masculinity? Through an analysis of how the bodies of both Hindu minorities and women were symbolically used in the war to construct national identity, this essay proposes that militarization as a hegemonic masculine discourse was predicated on, and justified through, a range of ideological logics of order and chaos, of revolts and counter-insurgency measures that advanced and legitimized military action in 1971. This essay also argues that by offering their personal understanding of history, politics, and honour, these memoirs claim (and justify) the right to use violence.


Whether political conditionality should be attached to foreign aid and whether a recipient country's level of democracy should be the benchmark for conditionality and sanctioning instruments remain highly controversial issues. This is reflected by the debates around the Agenda for Change, the allocation formula of the European Development Fund (EDF) and the European Commission's new Budget Support Policy. Critics of political conditionality argue that democracy and human rights are too normative criteria and foster the politicisation of aid allocation instead of increasing aid effectiveness. They also claim that the level of democracy is unsuitable as a criterion, because it has no influence on economic development. However, this critique can be contested: – From a perspective of domestic donor politics, democratic donor governments will not abstain from using political conditionality because their own constituencies expect human rights standards and democracy to be relevant for aid allocation. – From a recipient perspective, aid is more effective in promoting inclusive development in democracies than in autocracies. Moreover, governmental foreign aid to autocracies tends to stabilise authoritarian structures and to delay democratisation. Thus, arguing that there is little reason for using political conditionality (and sanctions) is as valid as saying that the Earth is flat. At the same time, inferring from this insight that political conditionality is bound to be effective is like claiming that the planet is a cube. After all, even sound arguments in support of political conditionality have to address the demanding challenges to make conditionality work. – The function of political conditionality must be clear. Is it used as a selection criterion, intended to ensure that foreign aid does not stabilise authoritarian structures and effectively promotes economic development? Or is political conditionality to be used in a more demanding way as an incentive to promote democracy and good governance? – If political conditionality is to be applied more proactively to promote democratic governance, donor harmonisation is key, because only a coherent incentive system sets credible signals and has a chance to contribute to institutional reform. – Effective political conditionality requires smart application. Comprehensive political reforms cannot be "bought" with foreign aid. Yet, realistic, tailor-made and credibly communicated incentives increase the probability of strengthening reform-minded forces and fostering gradual reform steps. While political conditionality has been implemented effectively in some cases, successfully applying it often overstretches the political capacities of donor coordination. For Europe, this means that effective conditionality requires a more integrated approach to foreign and development policy. – Consequently, conditionality and sanctioning instruments from policy fields such as aid, trade and investment have to be combined in an intelligent manner. Otherwise, we will continue to observe ad hoc, overly ambitious and ill-coordinated political conditionality that fails to serve its purpose.


Introduction: Internal dental anatomy represents a great challenge in Endodontics. Diagnosing and delineating an accurate treatment plan is often a challenge. Objective: The objective of this case report was to describe a clinical case of endodontic intervention in mandibular premolar with complex anatomy, associated with cracked root after two and a half years. Case report: Female patient was referred for evaluation with painful symptoms. Clinical examination revealed tooth #44 provided support for a removable partial denture and was periodontally healthy. Active intraoral fistula was also present. Pulpal sensitivity tests were performed with negative response. Radiographic examination revealed complex dental anatomy, with two fused roots and periapical lesion. Diagnosis of pulp necrosis was established, and endodontic therapy instituted. Results: Clinical and radiographic control one year and four months later demonstrated repair of periapical region, as well as recovery of masticatory and aesthetic functions. However, two and a half years after endodontic intervention, the patient returned with painful symptoms. Examination revealed a periodontal pocket located 12mm mesiobucally, whereas radiographic examination evinced lateral apical periodontitis. Cone-beam computed tomographic scans were requested, but did not add to the diagnosis. Clinical signs established the diagnosis of cracked root with indication of extraction and referral for oral rehabilitation. Conclusion: The importance of diagnosis and follow-up as well as supremacy of clinical examination are highlighted for the implementation of the correct treatment plan.


In this compelling new study, Debra Walker King considers fragments of experience recorded in oral histories and newspapers as well as those produced in twentieth-century novels, films, and television that reveal how the black body in pain functions as a rhetorical device and as political strategy. King's primary hypothesis is that, in the United States, black experience of the body in pain is as much a construction of social, ethical, and economic politics as it is a physiological phenomenon.As an essential element defining black experience in America, pain plays many roles. It is used to promote racial stereotypes, increase the sale of movies and other pop culture products, and encourage advocacy for various social causes. Pain is employed as a tool of resistance against racism, but it also functions as a sign of racism's insidious ability to exert power over and maintain control of those it claims - regardless of race. With these dichotomouse uses of pain in mind, King considers and questions the effects of the manipulation of an unspoken but long-standing belief that pain, suffering, and the hope for freedom and communal subsistence will merge to uplift those who are oppressed, especially during periods of social and political upheaval. This belief has become a ritualized philosophy fueling the multiple constructions of black bodies in pain, a belief that has even come to function as an identity and community stabilizer.In her attempt to interpret the constant manipulation and abuse of this philosophy, King explores the redemptive and visionary power of pain as perceived historically in black culture, the aesthetic value of black pain as presented in a variety of cultural artifacts, and the socioeconomic politics of suffering surrounding the experiences and representations of blacks in the United States. The book introduces the term Blackpain, defining it as a tool of national mythmaking and as a source of cultural and symbolic capital that normalizes individual suffering until the individual - the real person - disappears. Ultimately, the book investigates America's love-hate relationship with black bodies in pain.


Background. The application of lean management is standard in many companies all over the world. It is used to continuously optimise existing production processes and to reduce the complexity of administrative processes. Unfortunately, in higher education, the awareness of lean management as a highly effective methodology is quite low. Research aims. The research aim is to show how the lean strategy can be applied in university environments. Finally, this paper address the question why it is so difficult to implement lean in a university environment and how an institution of higher education can move forward towards becoming a lean university. Methodology. Based on a literature review, five key lean principles are presented and examples of their implementation are discussed using short case studies from our own institution. We also compare our findings with those in the literature. Key findings. Lean offers the chance to improve the management of higher education institutions. This requires a commitment on the part of the university top management aiming at convincing all stakeholders that a culture of lean helps the institution to be able to adapt to the rapidly changing environment of higher education.


The paper is devoted to the studies of viscous flows caused by a vibrating boundary. The fluid domain is a half‐space, its boundary is a nondeformable plane that exhibits purely tangential vibrations. Such a simple geometrical setting allows us to study general boundary velocity fields and to obtain general results. From a practical viewpoint, such boundary conditions may be seen as the tangential vibrations of the material points of a stretchable plane membrane. In contrast to the classical boundary layer theory, we aim to build a global solution. To achieve this goal we employ the Vishik–Lyusternik approach, combined with two‐timing and averaging methods. Our main result is: we obtain a uniformly valid in the whole fluid domain approximation to the global solutions. This solution corresponds to general boundary conditions and to three different settings of the main small parameter. Our solution always include the inner part and outer part that both contain oscillating and non‐oscillating components. It is shown that the nonoscillating outer part of the solution is governed either by the full Navier–Stokes equations or the Stokes equations (both with the unit viscosity) and can be interpreted as a steady or unsteady streaming. In contrast to the existing theories of a steady streaming, our solutions do not contain any secular (infinitely growing with the inner normal coordinate) terms. The examples of the spatially periodic vibrations of the boundary and the angular torsional vibrations of an infinite rigid disc are considered. These examples are still brief and illustrative, while the core of the paper is devoted to the adaptation of the Vishik–Lyusternik method to the development of the general theory of vibrational boundary layers.


Abstract Glacial deposits are found in the Ayn Formation and Shareef Formation of the Mirbat Group close to Mirbat in Dhofar, southern Oman. The Mirbat Group is most likely a correlative of the Abu Mahara Group of the Huqf Supergroup of northern Oman. The Ayn Formation, the main subject of this chapter, comprises <400 m of mainly coarse-grained glaciogenic deposits, ponded in 2- to >8-km-wide N- to NW-oriented palaeovalleys eroded into crystalline basement, with few or no deposits preserved on intervening palaeohighs. The Shareef Formation occurs as thin, lenticular, erosional remnants beneath the unconformably overlying Cretaceous. The Ayn Formation is overlain by a thin (<3 m), discontinuous cap carbonate that passes from carbonate-cemented talus on the basin margin to stromatolitic carbonate on palaeohighs and resedimented gravity flows on palaeovalley flanks. The Ayn Formation is younger than its youngest detrital zircons and the youngest late plutons in crystalline basement, constraining it to <c. 720 Ma, but its exact age is unknown. The detrital zircon population comprises exclusively Neoproterozoic sources, suggesting derivation from the juvenile Neoproterozoic crust of the Arabian area. The composition of fine-grained matrix in glaciogenic diamictite units and of non-glacial mudstones, plotted using the chemical index of alteration (CIA), suggests strong variations in the intensity of palaeoweathering on contemporary land surfaces between the mechanical weathering-dominated Ayn Formation, and the chemical weathering-dominated overlying Arkahawl Formation, which supports the notion of major glaciation followed by rapid climatic transit as basin margins were flooded and buried with sediment during post-glacial transgression. The carbon isotopic ratio (δ13C) of the post-glacial carbonate is strongly variable from −3.5‰ to +5.8‰, whereas carbonate fissures in the underlying basement range between +4.1‰ and +5.7‰. Two independent palaeomagnetic studies have yielded low palaeomagnetic latitudes for the Mirbat Group.


Joint design of routing and Resource allocation algorithms in cognitive radio based wireless mesh networks. The mesh nodes utilize cognitive overlay mode to share the spectrum with primary users. Prior to each transmission, mesh nodes sense the wireless medium to identify available spectrum resources. Depending on the primary user activities and traffic characteristics, the available spectrum resources will vary between mesh transmission attempts, posing a challenge that the routing and resource allocation algorithms have to deal with to guarantee timely delivery of the network traffic. To capture the channel availability dynamics, the system is analyzed from a queuing theory perspective, and the joint routing and resource allocation problem is formulated as a non-linear integer programming problem. The objective is to minimize the aggregate end-to-end delay of all the network flows. A distributed solution scheme is developed based on the Lagrangian dual problem. Numerical results demonstrate the convergence of the distributed solution procedure to the optimal solution, as well as the performance gains compared to other design methods. It is shown that the joint design scheme can accommodate double the traffic load, or achieve half the delay compared to the disjoint methods. It is shown that the joint design scheme can accommodate double the traffic load, or achieve half the delay compared to the disjoint methods.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the prevalence of urinary incontinence in the Galician population aged more than 64 years.

METHODS
We performed a descriptive study, based on a personal interview with each individual from a sample of the target population. The sample was obtained through random sampling stratified into urban, semi-urban and rural of the Autonomous Community of Galicia. Subsequently, a random sample was extracted from the database of the individual health cards of selected localities. A total of 350 interviews in 12 sampling locations were performed.

RESULTS
The prevalence of urinary incontinence in Galicia in 2002 was 35.14% (95% CI: 31-38%, 15-28 for men and 38-51% for women).

CONCLUSIONS
One out of three Galicians aged more than 64 years presents urinary incontinence. The prevalence is almost double in women.


Although in many interface theories, the domains of phrasal phonological processes are defined in terms of prosodic constituents, D'Alessandro and Scheer (2015) argue that their proposed modification of phase theory, Modular PIC, renders prosodic constituents superfluous. Phrasal phonological domains can instead be defined directly in the syntax. In this response, we argue that Modular PIC does not provide a convincing new approach to the syntax-phonology interface, as it is both too powerful and too restrictive. We show that the analysis offered of raddoppiamento fonosintattico in Eastern Abruzzese does not justify the loss of restrictiveness Modular PIC brings to phase theory. We also show that Modular PIC is too restrictive to account for phenomena, from Bantu languages and others, that have received satisfactory analyses within interface theories that appeal to prosodic constituents. We conclude that Modular PIC does not successfully replace prosodic constituent approaches to the interface.


Stepwise excitation laser-enhanced ionization spectroscopy utilizes two independently tunable dye lasers to populate high-lying excited states of atoms in flames. Two atomic resonances are required, with the upper level of the first-step transition coinciding with the lower level of the second-step transition. Efficient population of a high-lying atomic level is achieved, from which a high rate of collisional ionization can take place. The double-resonance aspect of such excitation adds an extra dimension of spectroscopic selectivity to the measurement. A computer-controlled dual-wavelength LEI spectrometer, including a Fizeau wave-meter for wavelength verification, is used to record three-dimensional spectra–ionization signal as a function of both first- and second-step wavelengths. Examples illustrate the accuracy advantage accorded by the three-dimensional survey.


Background Around 15% of the 100 000 injuries that occur on ski slopes in Switzerland affect the head. Protective helmets can reduce the incidence of head injuries. Bfu and national partners carried out the campaign '1000 injuries per day. Protect yourself with a helmet' to motivate skiers and snowboarders to use a snow-sport helmet. Objective To evaluate the success of the campaign objectives. Setting Skiers and snowboarders at 20 ski resorts in Switzerland. Participants Before, during and after the campaign, 19 740 skiers and snowboarders were observed; 8820 were interviewed. Intervention Quantitative surveys: observations and interviews. Qualitative surveys: document analysis, qualitative interviews, analysis of the media, group discussion. Main outcome measurements A concept, process, impact and outcome evaluation was done by an external specialised evaluation agency. Results The measures are appropriate to the target of increasing the rate of helmet use. The main elements (posters, television advertisement, helmet testing days) of the campaign were implemented as planned. Hazard awareness and consciousness of vulnerability improved between the 2007 and 2010 winter seasons. The target value of the criterion 'lacking comfort' couldn't be obtained. The helmet wearing rate has greatly increased. The results show a small correlation between campaign recognition and helmet use. Conclusion The rate of helmet use, hazard awareness and consciousness of vulnerability increased considerably. However, the impact of the campaign on the increases is unclear. First, the rate of helmet use had already risen after the first year of campaigning. Second, studies have shown that campaigns may raise awareness but not achieve behavioural change. Third, there is only a small correlation between campaign recognition and helmet use. The campaign has supported and strengthened the effect of various factors that have promoted helmet use. However, the reasons for the increase in helmet use are unknown.


In the late eighteenth century the Catholic Church in Spanish America found itself torn between two ideological viewpoints: whether to maintain traditional forms of worship and discipline, or to accept the innovations favored by an Enlightened Crown that wished to reform observance and clerical discipline. Using a royal document known as Tomo Regio, dated July 21, 1769, Charles III addressed the metropolitans of the New World and ordered them to celebrate provincial councils to promote the changes that he, his reformist ministers, and ecclesiastical authorities in Spain deemed necessary to rejuvenate the Church. In response, five conciliar assemblies took place in Mexico (City) (1771), Manila (1771), Lima (1772), Charcas (1774-1778), and Santa Fe de Bogota (1774), all of them metropolitan capitals of Hispanic America and the Philippines.1 1. Historiographic Interpretations The historiography of church reforms in America and the Philippines in the eighteenth century has followed two trends. The first regards the reformist center in the Iberian peninsula: the crown would be the protagonist of the conciliar movement. Manuel Gimenez Fernandez, for whom the eighteenth-century American provincial councils were instruments for subjecting the Church in the New World to the regalist policy of Madrid, initiated this first trend with his characteristic incisiveness.2 Jesuit historiography has followed this interpretation.3 Albert de la Hera, in a more recent interpretation, sees these Caroline provincials councils as "pilot experiments" to implant, in the Hispanic monarchy, an autonomous national church in the center of the Roman Catholic Church.4 David A. Brading situates these reforms in the peninsula, but sees them from another perspective: the reforms were carried out by peninsular sectors of the clergy in America,5 confronted with the Creole clergy; this way, the reforms constituted an alienating process. A second historiographical trend situates the reformist center in America. Grounded in a cultural analysis, Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and Bernabe Navarro (1948), Vicente Rodriguez Casado and Mario Gongora (1969), underlined the existence of an American Catholic Enlightenment.6 With regards to Church-State relations, Bernard Bobb, Asuncion Lavrin, and Nancy Farriss, in America, also emphasized the protagonism of the Americans.7 Luis Sierra and Jesus Garcia Anoveros also rejected the vision of the American Church as a passive victim of the State in the Indies.8 In this second group we include Pablo Macera and Rene Millar Corbacho, who on studying the Council of Lima,9 and Alejandro Soria-Vasco the Council of Charcas,10 highlighted the open debate that took place in both assemblies. Teresa Y. Maya Sotomayor (1997), on analyzing the eighteenth-century Mexican Council,11 also views the prelates of New Spain as protagonists of the reform project.12 In summary, the eighteenth-century American ecclesiastical reforms have been interpreted, from the peninsular point of view, as instruments of the Bourbon state policy and as an alienating force, carried out by the peninsular clergy, against the aspirations of the Creoles. From the American perspective, the reforms have been seen as a process of ecclesiastical change which produced a division between a popular baroque religiosity and an austere and rationalizing piety of the elite and the upper clergy. 2. The Caroline Project for the American Church All the authors agree that these provincial councils formed part of the enlightened reform program for Spanish America. This project considered the American territories as suppliers of resources for the Spanish monarchy to recover its position as a first-class world power. From an economic and political viewpoint, the American "kingdoms"-a political status they were granted since the sixteenth century-were treated as colonies. To put this project into practice required the collaboration of the Church in Spanish America and its identification with the interests of the State. …


This chapter provides an overview of the antibiotic resistance situation in bacteria of both animal and food origin and analyzes whether these bacteria represent a greater threat to human health when they harbor antibiotic resistance genes. Monitoring systems that record the amount of antimicrobial agents used for humans and animals and carry out surveillance of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria from food-producing animals have been in place for some years in and are published annually in Denmark, Sweden , Norway, and the Netherlands. The bacteria used in food preparation are mainly gram-positive and include Lactococcus, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Leuconostoc, Carnobacterium, Enterococcus, Micrococcus, Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, and Propionibacterium. Among them are Lactococcus and Lactobacillus, which are also the two most widely used genera of lactic acid bacteria in the dairy industry, and Enterococcus, which can be an opportunistic pathogen and has the ability to easily acquire and redistribute antibiotic resistance genes to other bacteria. The relationship between the human and animal isolates has yet to be elucidated, but the presence of sul3 genes in retail meat products strongly suggests that the food chain acts as link between food-producing animals and humans. As antibiotic resistant Campylobacter is widespread in food-producing animals, it has the potential to reach consumers via the food chain. To stop the cascade of multidrug resistance and its consequences for human health, adequate measures should be taken in all fields where antibiotics are used, including agriculture and veterinary and human medicine.


Sir Winston Churchill once reminded us that "the further backward we can look, the better we can see ahead." This statement is as true in the environmental arena as it is in the more traditional field of history. Environmental politics, policies, and outcomes lie within the realm of conscious and collective human choice.(1) Thus, the intelligence with which such choices are made can be improved by a better understanding of the major actors and environmental issues that have brought us to where we are today. The history of environmental politics and policy in the United States can be conveniently divided into four periods: the conservation movement from 1890 to 1920, the preservation movement from 1920 to 1960, the environmental movement from 1960 to 1990, and the contemporary period from 1990 to the present.(2) Roots There were, of course, attempts to protect the environment before 1890. For example, during the first part of the 19th century, the federal government took a number of actions to preserve good mast timber for ships, and President John Quincy Adams' administration even went so far as to establish a management program on forest reservations in 1827.(3) With the exception of the Adams administration, however, no other political administration from Washington to Buchanan showed any foresight in planning for the nation's future needs.(4) In fact, there was not really much effort at all for environmental protection until some time after the Civil War. The years between 1865 and 1890 are perhaps best characterized as a period of resource exploitation as natural resources were subordinated to the political objectives of industrial development, removal of Native Americans from their lands, homestead settlement, and the promotion of free enterprise.(5) During the reconstruction era after the Civil War, the nation concentrated on rebuilding the South and developing the West. Managers, entrepreneurs, and engineers were more concerned with using resources than with conserving them. By the late 1800s, however, a few political leaders and their advisers began to recognize the need to protect the nation's vast natural resource wealth. 1890-1920 According to historian Samuel P. Hays, "The modern American conservation movement grew out of the firsthand experience of federal administrators and political leaders with problems of Western economic growth, especially Western water development."(6) During the years from 1890 to 1920, rational planning to promote efficient development and use of all natural resources was the essence of the conservation movement.(7) In the late 1800s, a number of notable federal employees - including W.J. McGee, Gifford Pinchot, John Wesley Powell, Frederick Newell, and George Maxwell - decided that something needed to be done about conserving natural resources. Together, they formulated four doctrines that later became the creed of the conservation movement: * Conservation is not the locking up of resources; it is their development and wise use. * Conservation is the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time. * Federal public lands belong to all the people. * Comprehensive, multiple-purpose river-basin planning should be used in developing the nation's rivers.(8) With these doctrines as their guide, federal forestry officials joined hydrographers and campaigned for more rational and efficient use of timber resources. During the 1890s, the organized forestry movement in the United States shifted its emphasis from saving trees to promoting sustained-yield forest management.(9) By 1891, the federal government began setting aside forest reserves within the federal domain, and it authorized selective cutting and marketing of timber in 1897.(10) Gifford Pinchot, the chief forester of the Forest Service under President Theodore Roosevelt, was an important link between the intellectual and scientific founders of the conservation movement and the president. …


In Peru, concessions for harvesting Brazil nuts (fruits of the Amazon tree Bertholletia excelsa) were launched in the Madre de Dios Department in 2000. This study analyses the extent to which the Brazil nut concession system (which covers about 1 million ha of closed canopy forest) has met its objective of providing a governance model for sustainable and equitable use. Primary and secondary information sources were used to analyse governance outcomes based on 10 indicators, and the performance of Brazil nut concessions in two contrasting land-use types in Madre de Dios were compared (within and outside protected areas). It was found that corresponding institutional arrangements have led, more than a decade later, to different socioeconomic, ecological and legal outcomes. Particularly outside protected areas, where the vast majority of the concessions are located, a paradoxical situation was found of ineffective over-regulation on paper but minimal intervention from state agencies; ineffective state monitoring and sanctions; poor law enforcement with excessive punitive measures; power imbalances in the value chain and illegal timber harvesting; the lack of a multiple forest-use framework; and overlapping, conflictual customary and regulatory governance. This paper argues that at present, the long-term sustainability of the Brazil nut concession system seems compromised. If the Brazil nut concession system is to enter into a new decade, this may only be possible by formally recognizing the multiplicity of land uses, implementing and validating sound silvicultural approaches, minimizing land use and management trade-offs in alignment with local aspirations, and establishing effective negotiation platforms with different productive sectors and government agencies.


Motivated by the enlarged design space and additional flexibility offered by the latest advances in manufacturing techniques, especially Additive Manufacturing (AM), this thesis investigates a novel turbine end-wall aerothermal management method with the engineered surface structures, through closely coupled experi-mental and numerical studies. A 90-degree turning duct and a linear turbine cascade test section were employed for the experimental research in a low-speed wind tunnel. Duct and turbine end-wall heat transfer and cooling effectiveness were measured by transient Infrared Thermography. PIV measurement was conducted to obtain the exit flow field. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were performed using ANSYS FLUENT to compliment the experimental findings. The flow solver uses the finite volume method to solve the three-dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. The k-ω shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model was validated and chosen for all the numerical studies. The secondary flow control principle of the engineered surface structure in the simplified duct is revealed through a detailed investigation of the flow produced by multiple small surface structures. The CFD and PIV measurement results consistently show that addition of the engineered surface structure on end-wall can effectively reduce the magnitude of streamwise vorticity associated with the secondary flow and alleviate its lift-off motion. For turbine cascade applications, it can be observed that the strength of the passage vortex is effectively reduced, and the passage vortex loss core moves closer to the end-wall with the addition of the engineered surface structure. The purge air cooling enhancement by the engineered surface structure is then studied. The purge air cooling flow becomes more attached to the end-wall and covers a larger wall surface area with the added end-wall rib structures. Both experimental and numerical results reveal a consistent trend on improving film cooling effectiveness and net heat flux reduction (NHFR). This novel concept was success-fully demonstrated in a more realistic turbine cascade case. Enhanced cooling effectiveness and net heat flux reduction were obtained from both experimental data and CFD analysis. The additional surface features were proved to be effective in reducing the passage vortex and providing more coolant coverage without introducing additional aerodynamic loss. The overall Net Heat Load Reduction for the 90-degree turning duct and the turbine cascade is increased by 11% and 2% respectively.


Despite record economic growth for more than a decade, poverty has remained stubbornly high in Afghanistan, especially in the regions that suffered less from conflict. This paper aims to explain this paradox by combining a model of conflict intensity at the province level over period 2007-14 with a model of consumption at the household level in 2011. Provincial data show that higher levels of conflict were positively correlated with both a larger presence of troops (international and Afghan) and larger aid flows. Household data show that the negative impact of conflict on consumption was more than offset by the positive impact of aid and troops. According to the estimates, Afghan troops contributed more to poverty reduction than international troops, possibly because they spent more locally. The paper uses the estimated models to conduct an out-of-sample validation exercise, focusing on the transition initiated in 2014. The results should be interpreted with caution, as the quantitative models cannot account for strategic shifts in the insurgency and watershed political developments. But they suggest that the reduction in the number of international troops and declining foreign aid flows led to an increase in conflict intensity and a decline in consumption per capita, matching current trends.


Arsenic contamination of the fields and groundwater is a global problem. Alfold is the most affected area in Hungary. Irrigation witharsenic contaminated water, and crop production on the contaminated soil can cause a food safety problem, because arsenic is easy taken up by the cell of the plant roots. To prevent this, very important to monitoring the arsenic content of soils and plants. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is a fast, easy method to determined the concentration of minerals in the case of plant and soil samples The analytical methods can give reliable, results if the analytical process, including the sample preparation method, is the best. The objective of this study was to compare 3 type of sample preparation method which was dry ashing, wet digestion in open system, and microwave digestion. As a result of our experiement shows the microwave digestion is the appropriate method to determined the arsenic content of soil samples. In the case of plant samples we can use wet digestion in open system or microwave digestion as a samle preparation method.


Participation is a fundamental principle of the Italian Constitution (art. 3). Nonetheless its enforcement was rather weak in the first decades of Italian Republic. Only from the nineties on – especially after many Italian authorities and citizens had direct knowledge of the Participatory budgeting of Porto Alegre – the simple participation evolved into various forms of Participatory Democracy. Many Italian municipalities of various dimensions developed it, creating a number of original experiments on a new model of administration. The fact is all the more remarkable as Italy in the last decade has been dominated by populism of the Berlusconi variety. This study analyses the leading principles of participatory democracy as it is now practiced in Italy and clarifies their principal purposes, hoping for their development as a means to "democratize democracy".


This essay considers the theme of the contract as a metonym for failed government in Charles Dickens's and Wilkie Collins's collaborative Christmas story The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857), written to commemorate the Indian "Mutiny." Building on critical studies by Myron Magnet, Grace Moore, and Lillian Nayder, and reviewing relevant contract theories of government in political philosophy, my analysis traces the proliferating tropes of the contract in this unusual narrative and suggests that as well as presenting a topical satire on circumlocutory colonial bureaucracy, these figures also encode Dickens's suspicions about the sustainability of liberal forms of colonial rule. While noting further contexts for the contract-theme in The Perils of Certain English Prisoners , my paper goes on to suggest that, in replacing social-contractual and "constitutional" identities with bonds of chivalric loyalty, the text inadvertently anticipates important changes in the idiom of colonial rule in India in the post-"Mutiny" period.


We propose a mixed deep neural network strategy, incorporating parallel combination of Convolutional (CNN) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), cascaded with deep autoencoders and fully connected layers towards automatic identification of imagined speech from EEG. Instead of utilizing raw EEG channel data, we compute the joint variability of the channels in the form of a covariance matrix that provide spatio-temporal representations of EEG. The networks are trained hierarchically and the extracted features are passed onto the next network hierarchy until the final classification. Using a publicly available EEG based speech imagery database we demonstrate around 23.45% improvement of accuracy over the baseline method. Our approach demonstrates the promise of a mixed DNN approach for complex spatialtemporal classification problems.


The introduction of a regulatory framework in the area of collective management of rights in Nigeria must have been intended to strengthen the creative industry. Unfortunately, it has thrown this industry and in particular the music and film industries into a battle of a regulated against a non-regulated collective administration sector for upward of twenty (20) years.
My choice of research on this topic could be attributed to the interest I developed while administering the collective administration desk at the Nigerian Copyright Commission. Serving on that desk afforded the opportunity to see the frustration of right owners who were being deprived the fruit of their labor, as the societies meant to collect and distribute royalties on their behalf were enmeshed in litigations and in the process, rarely paid any royalties to authors.
Within this context, this research seeks to explore whether there is any merit in the continued existence of the current regulatory framework for collective management in Nigeria, and what the best operational framework for collective administration in Nigeria would be.
A methodological approach entailing literature review of books, articles, journals, legislation, cases, reports of committees and interviews with experts was adopted, with critical analysis carried out on particularly the Nigerian Copyright Act, the Nigerian Copyright (collective management organisation) regulation, the South African Copyright Act, the South African Performers' Protection Act, the South African Collecting Societies Regulation, as well as judicial decisions challenging certain provisions in the Nigerian legislation.
It is hoped that this research will spur a desire for the need for supervisory and regulatory agencies of government to seek the national interest above all others in taking and making decisions that affect the collective administration of copyright and related rights.


The IC Module Compiler is a new design aid that applies structured hierarchical design methodology, similar to aspects of the methodology pioneered by the Caltech Silicon Structures Project [GRA79], to the task of defining VLSI chip logic. It converts designs described as interconnections of MSI level modules into detailed logic or functional descriptions for simulators and other chip design aids. Detailed models of the modules, including adders, counters, multiplexers and memory elements, are stored in a library. Along with a simple syntax for circuit connectivity data, the Module Compiler language features C language style constructs to support module parameterization and maximize flexibility. This paper describes the features and structure of the Module Compiler and illustrates its application through examples.


Background . The unexpected admission of a loved one to an intensive care unit (ICU) may have a negative effect on the everyday lives of family members, as they have had little time to adjust. Hence, it is imperative for healthcare professionals to promote optimal outcomes for both the patient and family members during admission for critical illness. Objective . To explore and describe the needs of families during critical illness and to develop methods to provide family care during a critical illness of a loved one. Methods . The Strauss and Corbin grounded theory approach was used. In-depth interviews with 16 intensive care nurses, 6 doctors and 9 family members in private and public settings were completed. Results . Five codes emerged using the characteristic coding in grounded theory. These were identified as information sharing; reassurance; striving for consolation; garnering of resources; and cultural and religious co-operation. Conclusion . This study elicited the needs of family members of ICU patients. Methods tailored around these needs were presented to support family members during a critical illness.


We analyze observed Cl− transport during a large‐scale in situ unsaturated infiltration experiment in terms of the observation scale of the transport process and the physical stratification of the Tertiary sedimentary flow domain. By comparing piston flow and local velocity profiles, we show that velocity variations cannot be explained by water content changes alone. We also demonstrate that by comparing a layered convection–dispersion (CD) model with the observations, the dispersivity profile cannot be explained with the model, which produced unrealistic local dispersivity values. These discrepancies were partially explained by nonrepresentative sampling using porous cup solution samplers (PCS). We hypothesize that fingering flow or convergence phenomena below sand–clay interfaces leads to nonrepresentative artificially high dispersivity values. Velocity and dispersivity values immediately above the clay layers, however, seem more reliable due to convergence and more lateral mixing induced by a larger water content. Following the criteria derived from the Chuoke equation, we show that the subsoil can be subjected to fingering flow. We found that this process likely persisted for some 17 yr. Therefore, we conclude that the fine‐textured clayey layers regulated the flow rate through time, approaching a quasi‐steady‐state flow condition. Overall, solute transport processes in the unsaturated layered subsoil appeared to be very strongly influenced by stratification of the flow domain. An apparent highly variable flow field was induced by the clay layers interbedded in a sandy deposit, while the local PCS sampling devices were likely too small to properly assess the mixing regime at this large scale.


Orange is a major crop and an important source of health-promoting bioactive compounds. Increasing the levels of specific antioxidants in orange fruit through metabolic engineering could strengthen the fruit's health benefits. In this work, we have afforded enhancing the β-carotene content of orange fruit through blocking by RNA interference the expression of an endogenous β-carotene hydroxylase gene (Csβ-CHX) that is involved in the conversion of β-carotene into xanthophylls. Additionally, we have simultaneously overexpressed a key regulator gene of flowering transition, the FLOWERING LOCUS T from sweet orange (CsFT), in the transgenic juvenile plants, which allowed us to obtain fruit in an extremely short period of time. Silencing the Csβ-CHX gene resulted in oranges with a deep yellow ('golden') phenotype and significant increases (up to 36-fold) in β-carotene content in the pulp. The capacity of β-carotene-enriched oranges for protection against oxidative stress in vivo was assessed using Caenorhabditis elegans as experimental animal model. Golden oranges induced a 20% higher antioxidant effect than the isogenic control. This is the first example of the successful metabolic engineering of the β-carotene content (or the content of any other phytonutrient) in oranges and demonstrates the potential of genetic engineering for the nutritional enhancement of fruit tree crops.


Economic development in the era of globalization requires each company to continue to grow and develop. To know the development of an enterprise can be seen from the value of the company. The value can be determined by the company's capital structure. As is well known that the structure of the financial cost of capital is derived from the composition of long-term debt and capital itself. Any changes in capital structure will result in a change in the cost of capital and corporate value. Therefore, companies must try to determine the optimal capital structure to minimize the cost of capital so that the company's value will increase. This study aims to determine how policies affect the company's long-determination of the source of funding or capital structure of the company for three years (2006-2008) and determine if capital structure has been established for three years has been optimized so as to increase the value of the company Research methods used in this study is disriptif research method with type of case study on PT. Semen Gresik (Persero) and its subsidiaries. Analysis performed includes the analysis of profitability ratios, leverage ratios, capital structure analysis, analysis of capital costs, the company value analysis to determine the optimal capital structure. The results of this study indicate that the optimal capital structure in PT. Semen Gresik (Persero) Tbk and Subsidiaries occurred in 2007. This is evidenced by the minimum cost of capital in the amount of 17.13%, while the next two years cost of capital increased sharply in the amount of 18.85% in 2006 and 20.32% in 2008. This capital cost increases due to company policy who prefer using their own capital in fulfillment of the funds so that the composition of long-term debt and capital itself is not balanced. In the year 2008 company's capital structure was not optimal, although the value of a company that achieved increased from previous years in the amount of 12,174,631,490, this is because the company's profits have increased. Therefore, in determining the company's capital structure should be more careful and consider the national economic conditions.


Frost fouling of heat exchanger surfaces is a common problem in many industrial, commercial and domestic applications. In this study the frost formation process on a flat plate with forced convection was experimentally investigated. A flat plate heat exchanger test loop was designed, built and tested. Air from the room passed over the cold test plate. Test conditions were limited to a test surface temperature range from -15 to -5 °C, air humidity ratio range from 0.004 to 0.01 kg/kg, supply air temperature range from 15 to 23 °C, and inlet airflow Reynolds number range from 3000 to 7000 (ie. air velocity from
1.15 to 2.67 m/s).

An innovative new method, using a laser-beam and light-meter for the measurement of frost thickness, was designed and calibrated with an accuracy of 0.025 mm. Also, a newly designed method of measuring the local frost mass concentration (mass per unit area) was developed and tested. A calibrated heat-flux meter was used to measure the local heat flux along the test plate.

Typical frost thickness, mass concentration and heat flux data are presented as a function of distance from the leading edge, humidity ratio of the inlet air, test surface temperature, inlet velocity (or Reynolds number), and time. Frost property data from more than 50 test runs are correlated against the five independent test variables using dimensionless variables. The coefficients of tolerance range from 0.91 to 0.96 for the independent variables over the range of test conditions. These data and correlations are discussed and compared with other available data in the literature.


Frequent surveys from October 2009 to March 2010 in temperate forest of Pathiyal Dhar of district Chamoli resulted in identification of 54 bird species belonging to 25 families and 5 orders. The maximum individuals was noted in the month of December (1222), followed by January (1120), March (999), February (998), November (945) and October with minimum number of (619). The average relative abundance showed great variations. The maximum relative abundance was recorded of House sparrow (0.0094), Black headed Jay (0.0063), Large billed crow (0.0051), Common Myna (0.0046), Red billed blue magpie (0.0036), Himalayan Bulbul (0.0029), Blue whistling thrush (0.0024), Great tit (0.0023), Blue rock pigeon (0.0022), House swift (0.0022), Red rumped swallow and Ashy throated warbler (0.0021), Jungle prinia (0.0019), Streaked laughningthrush (0.0017) and Tawny owl with (0.001) minimum relative abundance.


While the regional climate is the primary selection pressure for whether a plant strategy can survive, however, competitive interactions strongly affect the relative abundances of plant strategies within communities. Here, we investigate the relative importance of competition and perturbations on the development of vegetation community structure. To do so, we develop DIVE (Dynamics and Interactions of VEgetation), a simple general model that links plant strategies to their competitive dynamics, using growth and reproduction characteristics that emerge from climatic constraints. The model calculates population dynamics based on establishment, mortality, invasion and exclusion in the presence of different strengths of perturbations, seed and resource competition. The highest levels of diversity were found in simulations without competition as long as mortality is not too high. However, reasonable successional dynamics were only achieved when resource competition is considered. Under high levels of competition, intermediate levels of perturbations were required to obtain coexistence. Since succession and coexistence are observed in plant communities, we conclude that the DIVE model with competition and intermediate levels of perturbation represents an adequate way to model population dynamics. Because of the simplicity and generality of DIVE, it could be used to understand vegetation structure and functioning at the global scale and the response of vegetation to global change. Correspondence to: K. Bohn (email@example.com)


RX J1914.4+2456 is a candidate double-degenerate binary (AM CVn) with a putative 569 s orbital period. If this identification is correct, then it has one of the shortest binary orbital periods known, and gravitational radiation should drive the orbital evolution and mass transfer if the binary is semidetached. Here we report the results of a coherent timing study of the archival ROSAT and ASCA data for RX J1914.4+2456. We performed a phase-coherent timing analysis using all observations spanning a ≈4.6 yr period. We demonstrate that all the data can be phase-connected, and we present evidence that the 1.756 mHz orbital frequency is increasing at a rate of (8 ± 3) × 10-18 Hz s-1, consistent with the expected loss of angular momentum from the binary system via gravitational radiation. In addition to providing evidence for the emission of gravitational waves, measurement of the orbital ν̇ constrains models for the X-ray emission and the nature of the secondary. If stable mass accretion drives the X-ray flux, then a positive ν̇ is inconsistent with a degenerate donor. A helium-burning dwarf is compatible if indeed such systems can have periods as short as that of RX J1914.4+2456, an open theoretical question. Our measurement of a positive ν̇ is consistent with the unipolar induction model of Wu et al., which does not require accretion to drive the X-ray flux. We discuss how future timing measurements of RX J1914.4+2456 (and systems like it) with, for example, Chandra and XMM-Newton, can provide a unique probe of the interaction between mass loss and gravitational radiation. We also discuss the importance of such measurements in the context of gravitational wave detection from space, such as is expected in the future with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission.


The Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) form a group of multi-gene isoenzymes involved in the cellular detoxification of both xenobiotic and endobiotic compounds. GSTs have been divided into a number of subclasses, alpha, mu, pi, and theta. The classification was made on the basis of sequence similarity and immunological cross-reactivity. GSTs show a high level of specificity toward GSH but the electrophilic second substrate can vary significantly both between and within the classes in spite of their sequence similarity. X-ray crystallography and site-directed mutagenesis studies have together elucidated the structure and mechanism of GSTs. Catalysis occurs by conjugation with glutathione (GSH) and the less toxic and more hydrophilic products can then be partially metabolised and excreted. This invaluable service is however disadvantageous during chemotherapy where GSTs have been associated with multi-drug resistance of tumour cells. Levels of expression of different isoforms of GSTs are tissue specific. The variations in expression between normal and tumour cells are of interest and in most cases the levels of GSTs are increased, especially p-GST. Understanding the complex role that GSTs play in drug resistance begins with determining the pattern of isoform expression and the substrate specificities of each isoform. The use of isozyme-specific, GSH analogues as inhibitors to modulate GST activity during chemotherapy is a promising strategy in the battle against cancer. This review attempts to provide a detailed overview of the literature concerning the different classes of GSTs, their function and mechanism and the use of GSTs as therapeutic targets for disease as current at the time of submission.


Gamma titanium aluminide alloys often solidify peritectically and show a coarse, dendritic microstructure, which can lead to unacceptable mechanical properties in the as-cast condition. In view of the development of improved cast alloys, the dependence of the solidifying microstructure on the aluminum content and other alloying elements was investigated. The formation of the observed solidification microstructures is discussed in comparison with microstructure formation maps calculated by the NCU (nucleation and constitutional undercooling) model developed by Hunziker et al. [1].


Residential consumers remain reluctant to choose new electricity suppliers. Even the most successful jurisdictions, four U.S. states and other countries, have had to adopt extensive consumer education procedures that serve largely to confirm that choosing electricity suppliers is daunting. Electricity is not unique in this respect; numerous studies find that consumers are generally reluctant to switch brands, even when they are well-informed about product characteristics. If consumers prefer not to choose, opening regulated markets can reduce welfare, even for some consumers who do switch, as the incumbent can exploit this preference by raising price above the formerly regulated level. Policies to open markets might be successful even if limited to industrial and commercial customers, with residential prices based on those in nominally competitive wholesale markets.


Individuals who decline to join cooperative groups — outsiders — raise concerns in many areas of law and policy. From trade policy to climate agreements to class action procedures, the fundamental concern is the same: a single member of the group who drops out could weaken the remaining union. This Article analyzes the outsider problem as it affects patents.
The outsider question has important bearing on patent and antitrust policy. By centralizing and simplifying complex patent licensing deals, patent pools conserve tremendous transaction costs. This allows for the widespread production and competitive sale of many useful technologies, particularly in the consumer electronics industry. Because these transaction cost savings appear to outweigh the most common competition-related concerns patent pools raise, antitrust authorities generally view these private pools favorably.
Others are less sanguine. Most patent pools are incomplete: for the technologies they cover, not all relevant patents are included. The reason for this is understandable: patent holders sometimes believe they can negotiate for higher royalties by declining to join an existing pool. Antitrust regulators are aware of this behavior, but do not worry much about it. A growing number of economists and legal scholars believe, however, that this outsider behavior may impose higher costs on pool licensees, detracting from the central benefit that patent pools offer — transaction cost savings. These commentators urge antitrust regulators to regard patent pools with greater caution and skepticism.
These calls for caution, however, are based mostly on theories about how patent pools should work, rather than empirical study. Remarkably, little research has been done to shed light on the actual impact of patent pool outsiders. Through an original ethnographic study, this Article seeks to remedy this gap. A set of the most notable and public episodes of outsider behavior were collected from industry press reports, case reports, and historical archives. Crucial new information was then gathered through interviews with lawyers and executives directly involved with the episodes studied.
The study reveals a characteristic of patent pools that has gone unappreciated until now: they subtly but powerfully influence bargains that take place "poolside" — i.e., deals between patent holders and licensees that take place "in the shadow" of the pool. This spill-over effect can beneficially limit the power that theorists have assumed outsiders to have. This is an unappreciated benefit of cooperation. The theorists, as it turns out, have not used the wrong approach, but rather, have been missing some important parameters.
To further aid regulators, this Article builds upon its qualitative findings by introducing a new quantitative technique for estimating the cost that a licensee either incurs or saves due to an outsider. Applying this technique to original financial and industry data gathered from research subjects, this Article shows that, counterintuitively, patent licensees are sometimes better-off where cooperation among licensors is partial, rather than complete. The inflection point lies where the royalty rate hike that a unified pool would need to charge to draw in an outsider is equal to the transaction costs that licensees would conserve by dealing with a single pool.
This study's revelations have provocative implications that reach beyond patent law. Contrary to conventional wisdom, slightly fragmented property markets may sometimes be preferable to "grand coalitions." There may exist in any given market for complementary patent rights (or other complementary property rights), an optimal level of diffusion of ownership that resides between total diffusion and total concentration. Some cooperation may not only be better than none, but also better than more.
Drawing upon this study, antitrust regulators who must evaluate patent pools can assemble a clearer and more complete understanding of their overall costs and benefits — a topic that Robert Merges and I recently wrote on in a related article. This Article is also helpful beyond patent law. The ethnographic methodology followed here reveals dynamics between outsiders and groups that theory alone has not captured. Scholars concerned with outsiders in other areas of law and policy can refine and build upon theory by applying a similar ethnographic approach.


This paper presents a theoretical study on propagation and scattering characteristics of a short optical pulse in a dense distribution of scatterers. Examples include pulse diffusion in whole blood and in a dense distribution of particulate matter in the atmosphere and the ocean. The parabolic equation technique is applicable to the forward-scatter region where the angular spread is confined within narrow forward angles. When the angular spread becomes comparable to the order of unit steradian, there is as much backscattering as forward scattering and diffusion phenomena take place. We start with the integral and differential equations for the two-frequency mutual coherence function under the first-order smoothing approximation, and a general diffusion equation and boundary conditions are obtained. As examples, we present solutions for diffusion of a pulse from a point source and a plane wave incident on a slab of scatterers.


Abstract The best-estimate coupled three-dimensional (3-D) core and thermal-hydraulic code system TRAC-BF1/COS3D has been developed. COS3D, based on a modified one-group neutronic model, is a 3-D core simulator used for licensing analyses and core management of commercial boiling water reactor (BWR) plants in Japan. TRAC-BF1 is a plant simulator based on a two-fluid model. TRAC-BF1/COS3D is a coupled system of both codes, which are connected using a parallel computing tool. This code system was applied to the OECD/NRC BWR Turbine Trip Benchmark. Since the two-group cross-section tables are provided by the benchmark team, COS3D was modified to apply to this specification. Three best-estimate scenarios and four hypothetical scenarios were calculated using this code system. In the best-estimate scenario, the predicted core power with TRAC-BF1/COS3D is slightly underestimated compared with the measured data. The reason seems to be a slight difference in the core boundary conditions, that is, pressure changes and the core inlet flow distribution, because the peak in this analysis is sensitive to them. However, the results of this benchmark analysis show that TRAC-BF1/COS3D gives good precision for the prediction of the actual BWR transient behavior on the whole. Furthermore, the results with the modified one-group model and the two-group model were compared to verify the application of the modified one-group model to this benchmark. This comparison shows that the results of the modified one-group model are appropriate and sufficiently precise.