The pregnancy-specific glycoproteins (PSGs) are the most abundant trophoblastic proteins in maternal blood during human pregnancy and they appear to be exclusive to species with hemochorial placentation. There are ten protein-coding human PSG genes (PSG1 - PSG9, PSG11) and also multiple PSG genes in non-human primates, rodents and bats. Several studies indicate that PSGs have immunoregulatory, pro-angiogenic, and anti-platelet functions. Some PSGs have been shown to bind different moieties on the surface of cells, including the tetraspanin CD9, heparan sulphate, and specific integrins. Recently, PSG1 was shown to associate with and activate the anti-inflammatory cytokines transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 and TGF- β2 making PSG1 one of the few known biological activators of these important cytokines. TGF-βs regulate many biological processes essential for pregnancy success including trophoblast invasion and proliferation, angiogenesis, extracellular matrix formation and tolerance to the fetal semi-allograft. As summarized in this review, progress has been made in recent years towards a better understanding of the functions of these proteins which were originally described in the early 1970s, but more research will likely contribute to demonstrate their importance for a successful pregnancy.


1. We studied 12 normotensive non-ketotic diabetic patients during poor metabolic control, with sustained hyperglycaemia, and again, after an interval of 3 weeks, when metabolic control was improved. On each occasion we measured blood pressure, total exchangeable sodium, plasma volume, transcapillary escape rate of albumin, and plasma concentrations of angiotensin II and aldosterone. 2. With improved diabetic control there was a small but significant fall in arterial pressure. Total exchangeable sodium was normal when control was poor but rose significantly to above normal with improved control. 3. Plasma volume also rose significantly with improved control, and the transcapillary escape rate of albumin fell and the intravascular mass of albumin rose. 4. Plasma angiotensin II and aldosterone concentrations were significantly above normal during poor metabolic control, but fell to normal with improved control. 5. These findings indicate a resetting of the relationship between blood pressure and exchangeable sodium when diabetic control improves. The association between exchangeable sodium and concentrations of angiotensin II and aldosterone also appears altered in diabetic patients. These changes associated with varying metabolic control must be considered when studying cardiovascular disease in diabetic patients.


PURPOSE: Traditionally in assessing the quality of research, methodological rigour alone has been examined. However the efficacy of the intervention itself is important as inadequacies in these areas may lead to substantial bias and may result in a lack of acceptance (and implementation) of the results by clinicians. This paper will look at what are the recommended treatment parameters that should be used in research on the efficacy of traction for LBP and discuss whether these criteria have been met in previous research trials. RELEVANCE: Consensus as to the management and treatment of LBP is still under debate and the efficacy of many physiotherapeutic interventions remains unclear. Lumbar traction continues to be used as a treatment but the research is inconclusive due to poor methodological quality. Treatment parameters need to be identified so that future studies will reflect clinical practice. SUBJECTS: Not applicable. METHODS AND MATERIALS: A computerised search using key words and a hand search of relevant manual therapy texts was undertaken. The application of optimal treatment weights, the length of the treatment session, the frequency of treatment, and the length of the overall programme of traction are areas that have had limited research. Therefore the determination of optimal treatment parameters were drawn from recommendations from expert opinion, supplemented by limited evidence on the mechanical and physiological effects of traction. ANALYSIS: Parameters were combined. RESULTS: Traction weights must be in excess of 26% of body weight or use a friction free couch, in addition to this a weight ranging from 10-85 kgs is required. Treatment times (at each session) ranged from 10-45 mins, expert opinion suggested that acute nerve root problems received daily treatment for at least two weeks and chronic problems received treatment 2-3 times weekly for a minimum of three weeks. On applying these criteria to RCTs looking at the efficacy of lumbar traction only four trials (total 13) met these criteria. CONCLUSION: This paper highlights the problems associated with establishing appropriate clinical parameters for research in lumbar traction, and also the effects of applying these criteria to the available research base. It is essential that these parameters are clarified if a high quality trial is to be designed; a solution to this is to survey clinicians about how and why they use lumbar traction.


Search is among the most disruptive innovations of our time. It influences what we buy and where we go. It shapes how we learn and what we believe. In this provocative and inspiring book, you'll explore design patterns that apply across the categories of web, ecommerce, enterprise, desktop, mobile, social, and real-time search and discovery. Filled with colorful illustrations and examples, Search Patterns brings modern information retrieval to life, covering such diverse topics as relevance, faceted navigation, multi-touch, personalization, visualization, multi-sensory search, and augmented reality. By drawing on their own experience-as well as best practices and evidence-based research-the authors not only offer a practical guide to help you build effective search applications, they also challenge you to imagine the future of discovery. You'll find Search Patterns intriguing and invaluable, whether you're a web practitioner, mobile designer, search entrepreneur, or just interested in the topic. Discover a pattern language for search that embraces user psychology and behavior, information architecture, interaction design, and emerging technology Boost enterprise efficiency and e-commerce sales Enable mobile users to achieve goals, complete tasks, and find what they need Drive design innovation for search interfaces and applications


This paper explores the uncanny anticipation of mobile telephony in the history of the visual image. Drawing on our remix project, The Secret Gestural Prehistory of Mobile Devices , it critically engages with contem - porary media culture's obsession with the occupation of the hands as an unwitting gesture in search of a purpose. This gesture is a bodily panto - mime imagining an indispensable, intimate apparel that has modified the body's relation to itself and remote others through mobile media. These images are suggestive of bodily rhythms that synchronize the hand, the ear, the eye and the mouth that have not always made sense. In this they foreshadow the potential media that will, in time, resolve this postural er - gonomics into a meaningful function: the immediate and continuous com - munion with unseen and absent others. The visual archive can become the unconscious of contemporary media when its images are re-coded through the writing of implicit and anachronistic narratives. The combina - tion of image and text, in the form of captions, denotates and detonates at one and the same time, creating a double vision that, once seen, can never be unseen.


Background and Objectives: Radio frequency identification (RFID) has paved the way for a plethora of monitoring applications in the field of oil and gas. Degradation in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)/ liquefied natural gas (LNG) quality and pipe infrastructure can be a nuisance for the oil and gas industry in Qatar. Hence, a human centric cyber-physical-system (CPS) utilizing hybrid wireless technologies including RFIDs and other sensor motes can detect and prevent such hazards. CPS technique can be used for the oil and gas sector in Qatar with customized framework architecture, event detection and decision algorithms. The objective of this research is to allow maintainers and administrators to perceive and decide on top of the monitoring system to increase the performance and efficiency of the whole monitoring application. Methods: The sensors collect the data and send it to the base station through collaborating wireless technologies. At the base station the data is processed and algorithms were run to detect an event such as presence of moisture, abnormal pressure, temperature and defects in a pipe's infrastructure health. Human interaction will help to further refine the data for possible false alarms. Mobile applications can be used by the users/administrators to send details of a perceived event directly to the base station. Results: Experiments were performed on the moisture detection in Wireless Research Laboratory in Texas A&M University at Qatar. On the similar note, other sensors can also be associated with the RFIDs and their data can be relayed to the server. A framework architecture was proposed for the human centric approach of the detection and monitoring system. Conclusion: We propose a system where these RFID active tags with the sensors such as pressure, temperature, flow, strain etc., in collaboration with other wireless technologies, are able to send information regarding the gas quality and pipe's infrastructure health. The collaboration of RFIDs and other technologies helps us to create a smart human centric monitoring system. This will enhance maintenance and event detection such as the presence of moisture or strain on pipe's structure. It will additionally assist in the automatic adjustment of the valve's and pump's properties according to the detected events.


Recent work in the field of automatic summarization and headline generation focuses on maximizing ROUGE scores for various news datasets. We present an alternative, extrinsic, evaluation metric for this task, Answering Performance for Evaluation of Summaries. APES utilizes recent progress in the field of reading-comprehension to quantify the ability of a summary to answer a set of manually created questions regarding central entities in the source article. We first analyze the strength of this metric by comparing it to known manual evaluation metrics. We then present an end-to-end neural abstractive model that maximizes APES, while increasing ROUGE scores to competitive results.


This paper utilizes a Swedish alcohol policy experiment conducted in the late 1960s to identify the impact of prenatal alcohol exposure on educational attainments and labor market outcomes. The experiment started in November 1967 and was prematurely discontinued in July 1968 due to a sharp increase in alcohol consumption in the experimental regions, particularly among youths. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences strategy we find that around age 30 the cohort in utero during the experiment have substantially reduced educational attainments, lower earnings and higher welfare dependency rates compared to the surrounding cohorts. The results indicate that investments in early-life health may have far reaching effects on economic outcomes later in life.


Author: Raphael Cioffi Title: An Original Method for Computing Complex Non-Premixed Flows in Chemical Equilibrium. Institution: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Degree: Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering Year: 2003 A novel method for computing chemical equilibrium reactions in three-dimensional reacting fluid flows is introduced in this paper. The originality of the method is that continuity equations are solved for the atomic densities rather than for the molecular species densities, as is the case for non-equilibrium flow calculations. The method is suited for applications to mixing flows in rocket engine combustors, where, due to the typical low convective speed, chemical reaction is best modeled as an equilibrium process. Equilibrium formulations usually describe the flow as a perfect, atomically uniform mix between the fuel and the oxidizer. This assumption tends to overpredict performance. Solving for the atomic densities permits the assumption of a flow in chemical equilibrium, and still allows for the spatial and temporal resolution of the molecular composition, pressure and temperature of the mixture. Properly accounting for the physical configuration of a rocket combustor, particularly the presence of separate fuel and oxidizer injectors, requires that the flow be treated as non-premixed. In this way, overall performance, and combustion instabilities, can be more accurately predicted. Transport phenomena due to molecular motion such as diffusion of the elemental masses, viscosity and conductivity are also considered, and their properties are modeled with the Chapman-Enskog theory. This study developed successively the equilibrium constants approach and the minimizations of Gibbs and Helmholtz free energies. Minimization of Helmhotz free energy was found to be the most appropriate method for Computational Fluid Dynamics (C.F.D.) implementation. In future works, we will implement this method to run test cases in parallel on the university cluster for the structured grid of a combustion chamber and exhaust nozzle of a rocket designed by the class of the thesis advisor.


OF DISSERTATION NONINVASIVE ASSESSMENT AND MODELING OF DIABETIC CARDIOVASCULAR AUTONOMIC NEUROPATHY Noninvasive assessment of diabetic cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy (AN): Cardiac and vascular dysfunctions resulting from AN are complications of diabetes, often undiagnosed. Our objectives were to: 1) determine sympathetic and parasympathetic components of compromised blood pressure regulation in patients with polyneuropathy, and 2) rank noninvasive indexes for their sensitivity in diagnosing AN. Continuous 12-lead electrocardiography (ECG), blood pressure (BP), respiration, regional blood flow and bio-impedance were recorded from 12 able-bodied subjects (AB), 7 diabetics without (D0), 7 with possible (D1) and 8 with definite polyneuropathy (D2), during 10 minutes supine control, 30 minutes 70-degree head-up tilt and 5 minutes supine recovery. During the first 3 minutes of tilt, systolic BP decreased in D2 while increased in AB. Parasympathetic control of heart rate, baroreflex sensitivity, and baroreflex effectiveness and sympathetic control of heart rate and vasomotion were reduced in D2, compared with AB. Baroreflex effectiveness index was identified as the most sensitive index to discriminate diabetic AN. Four-dimensional multiscale modeling of ECG indexes of diabetic autonomic neuropathy: QT interval prolongation which predicts long-term mortality in diabetics with AN, is well known. The mechanism of QT interval prolongation is still unknown, but correlation of regional sympathetic denervation of the heart (revealed by cardiac imaging) with QT interval in 12-lead ECG has been proposed. The goal of this study is to 1) reproduce QT interval prolongation seen in diabetics, and 2) develop a computer model to link QT interval prolongation to regional cardiac sympathetic denervation at the cellular level. From the 12-lead ECG acquired in the study above, heart rate-corrected QT interval (QTc) was computed and a reduced ionic whole heart mathematical model was constructed. Twelve-lead ECG was produced as a forward solution from an equivalent cardiac source. Different patterns of regional denervation in cardiac images of diabetic patients guided the simulation of pathological changes. Minimum QTc interval of lateral leads tended to be longer in D2 than in AB. Prolonging action potential duration in the basal septal region in the model produced ECG and QT interval similar to that of D2 subjects, suggesting sympathetic denervation in this region in patients with definite neuropathy.


Patients with diabetes mellitus have lower quality of life in almost all areas of life in comparison to general population. Complications of diabetes mellitus are predictors of the quality of life with the greatest influence in patients with diabetes.
The aim of the research is to establish the influence of acute and chronic complications on the quality of life in examinees with diabetes mellitus.
А clinical-epidemiological cross-sectional study was performed which includes 285 examinees with diabetes mellitus type 1 and 2, conducted in the diabetes department in General hospital in Leskovac. The anonymous, original questionnaire containing questions about socio-demographic data, the period of disease, therapy treatment, presence of acute and chronic complications and SF-36, EQ-5D and EQ-VAS parts. The data about presence of complications and laboratory blood and urine values have been obtained from medical documentation.
The greatest number of the examinees has been on oral hypoglycemic therapy (46.1%). The most present chronic complications have been angina pectoris (20%), diabetic polyneuropathy (74%) and retinopathy (63.5%). Hypoglycemia has been separated and independent predictive factor of lower score values for body pain (b=-0.140) and physical composite score (b=-0.118) in SF-36 questionnaire and total VAS score (b=-0.123). Angina pectoris, cardiac insufficiency and diabetic retinopathy have been the most important individual predictors of lower values of almost all subscales of SF-36, EQ-5D and EQ-VAS questionnaire.
The obtained results have shown that the presence of diabetes mellitus complications has a great influence on the quality of life of the patients. By defining the predictors of the quality of life of the patients with diabetes mellitus and modifying the variables, i.e. correction of hyperglycemia, hypertension, obesity, providing the psycho-social support, education, giving up smoking, the quality of life of the patients can be significantly increased.


Using industry-level manufacturing data, this paper demonstrates a negative effect of rents, measured by the mark-up ratio, on productivity growth. This result is robust to alternate specifications, including an instrumental variables approach. The negative effect is strongest in poor countries, suggesting that high profits stymie economic development rather than enable it. Consistent with the rent-seeking mechanism of the model, we find that high rents are associated with a slower reduction in tariffs. A country's average mark-up is a strong negative predictor of future economic growth, indicating that we may be measuring a phenomenon of the broader business environment.


Documentation of autumn and winter roosts of many species of hibernating bats are lacking from western North America. However, recent evidence suggests that rather than using caves and mines, many individuals and some species of bats may roost in inconspicuous rock crevices at these times of year. I investigated autumn use of rock crevices and other roosts by the little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus) in the Rocky Mountains of western Colorado through radiotelemetry (n = 38). Objectives were to determine the types and characteristics of roosts, describe patterns of movements to these roosts from summer colonies, and contrast findings with results of surveys of bats in caves and abandoned mines in Colorado during autumn and winter. Forty-four autumn transitional roosts and presumed hibernacula were located in buildings, trees, and rock crevices. Bats used short-distance movements changing in elevation to autumn transitional roosts and presumed hibernacula rather than major latitudinal migrations. Roost type and distance from capture site to roosts had the highest variable importance at the landscape scale. Microclimate comparisons showed that buildings provided warmer minimum average temperatures, which may benefit juvenile bats early in the transition season. Tree roost temperatures during autumn would allow bats to conserve energy by using daily torpor and passive rewarming to assist with afternoon arousals. Rock crevice roosts in talus were found to be suitable for hibernation by exhibiting the coolest average temperatures and maintaining the highest relative humidity levels. Autumn access and spring egress to high-elevation talus sites used by these bats were not obstructed by winter snow pack. These rock crevices also provided temperature and humidity levels that would support the persistence and growth of Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), the causal agent of white-nose syndrome. However, bats in this study appeared to roost alone, which could inhibit the bat-to-bat spread of Pd. Surveys of caves and mines within and surrounding the study area revealed few hibernating little brown myotis, suggesting that most individuals in Colorado may instead utilize rock crevices as roosts during winter.


Messages like "If You Drink Don't Drive", "Each water drop count" or "Smoking causes cancer" are often paired with visual content in order to persuade an audience to perform specific actions, such as clicking a link, retweeting a post or purchasing a product. Despite its usefulness, the current way of discovering actionable images is entirely manual and typically requires marketing experts to filter over thousands of candidate images. To help understand the audience, marketers and social scientists have been investigating for years the role of personality in personalized services by leveraging AI technologies and social network data. In this work, we analyze how personality affects user actions on images in a social network website, and which visual stimuli contained in image content influence actions from users with certain Big Five traits. In order to achieve this goal, we ground this research on psychological studies which investigate the interplay between personality and emotions. Given a public Twitter dataset containing 1.6 million user-image timeline retweet actions, we carried out two extensive statistical analysis, which show significant correlation between personality traits and affective visual concepts in image content. We then proposed a novel model that combines user personality traits and image visual concepts for the task of predicting user actions in advance. This work is the first attempt to integrate personality traits and multimedia features, and moves an important step towards building personalized systems for automatically discovering actionable multimedia content.


Background: Heart failure has a high mortality rate with 20% dying within the first year after diagnosis. The gold standard of treatment has been cardiac transplant however the shortage of donors continues to be a problem. Left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) have been bridging patients to transplantation, but they come with many complications. The HeartWare HVAD system is a promising new smaller LVAD that will hopefully improve the survival of heart failure patients awaiting transplant. The evidence of the clinical trials in this review was evaluated using the GRADE system. Method: An exhaustive search of available medical literature was conducted using Medline, CINHAL, and Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews Multifile. The terms used in the search included the words, "Heartware, HVAD, and transplant" with limits set for human subjects, the English language, and articles published since the year 2000. After one clinical trial was found the author of that trial was searched to find the second article then included in this review. Results: Two studies were reviewed in this systematic review. Both found that the HeartWare device was effective and safe in bridging end-stage heart failure patients to transplantation. The first study showed survival was 91% at 180 days and 86% at one year and the second study showed survival was 90% at 180 days, 84% at one year, and 79% at two years. Conclusion: The HeartWare HVAD system is effective and safe in bridging end-stage heart failure patients to transplantation.


I would unstate myself to be in a due resolution.-Gloucester in King Lear (1.2.102-03)before even a frame of the godfather part iii had been screened in late 1990, Francis Ford Coppola made a highly publicized connection between his new film and Shakespeare's King Lear. In Peter Cowie's book on Coppola, the director is quoted thus:Michael Corleone's instincts were always to be legitimate, so it would be odd now, when he's almost in the King Lear period of his life, if his prime aim and purpose were not indeedto become legitimate. The result is a very classical piece, in the tradition of a Shakespeare play. Before I began writing I read a lot of Shakespeare, looking for inspiration to Edmund in King Lear, Lear himself, Titus Andronicus, even Romeo and Juliet. (242)Filmmakers and film publicists like to throw this kind of allusion around, and it is worth noting that when Coppola recorded a commentary track over the film for the 2001 DVD release, although he spoke fleetingly and lovingly of Shakespeare and Hamlet in particular, he made no specific reference to King Lear at all. Nevertheless, the Lear allusion was picked up in reviews of the film in the early 1990s and has persisted in critical work on the influence of Shakespeare in Hollywood cinema ever since (Mizejewski 28-31;Rothwell 220-21, 226; Risko; Griggs, "Western Elegy"; Griggs, "Humanity"). The emphasis on themes of guilt, aging, renunciation, illness, family destruction, and redemption (or at least reconciliation) in The Godfather Part III indicates the usefulness of a comparison with King Lear. Furthermore, the timing of the film's production and release during the recession of the early 1990s-when the global economy was beset by mounting unemployment, home repossessions, high interest rates and mortgage default statistics, declining house prices, and stagnant housing sector construction-suggests ways in which the comparison might be even more fruitful and of more general use (Kamery; Eberts and Groshen). King Lear is, after all, a play that is very much concerned with economic crisis in both the contemporary and classical senses of those words.To elaborate on the context of Francis Coppola's high-profile "Lear dropping" and the global recession in which he made the allusion, it is important to point out that the late 1980s and early 1990s were notable years in King Lear's stage production history. For a tragedy by Shakespeare that is critically almost sacrosanct, it is not subject to nearly the same regularity of stage and screen production as Hamlet, Macbeth, or Romeo and Juliet. In the English summer of 1990 alone, however, there were three major stage productions of the play running at the same time-namely, those of Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company, the Royal National Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. These productions followed stage adaptations of Shakespeare's play by Tadashi Suzuki (The Tale of Lear) in the United States and Japan and by Barry Keefe (King of England) at Stratford Upon Avon in 1988, as well as the overdue UK premiere of Aribert Reimann's opera Lear for the English National Opera in 1989, a Hindi adaptation directed by Amal Allana performed in Delhi the same year, and finally, a New York production directed by Lee Breuer and a production of Howard Barker's Seven Lears at London's Royal Court Theatre, both in early 1990.1As Shakespeare's apparently recession-proof tragedy was dominating the stage and Coppola was contemplating his new Corleone film, Coppola was also participating in the omnibus production New York Stories (1989) with Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. What is interesting about this spiritual rather than literal (Bjorkman 202) union in the financial capital of the world in the early 1990s is what came after it for each of the filmmakers. Following New York Stories each of these New York fabulists released a film about crime-GoodFellas (1990), The Godfather Part III, and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)- and followed that with a fairy tale of magic, fantasy, and the extremities of desire: Alice (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) (Thompson and Christie 165; Keyser 199). …


Direct numerical simulations of turbulent channel flows at friction Reynolds numbers (Re) of 550, 1000 and 1500 are used to analyse the turbulent production, transfer and dissipation mechanisms in the compound space of scales and wall distances by means of the Kolmogorov equation generalized to inhomogeneous anisotropic flows. Two distinct peaks of scale-energy source are identified. The first, stronger one, belongs to the near-wall cycle. Its location in the space of scales and physical space is found to scale in viscous units, while its intensity grows slowly with $\mathit{Re}$ , indicating a near-wall modulation. The second source peak is found further away from the wall in the putative overlap layer, and it is separated from the near-wall source by a layer of significant scale-energy sink. The dynamics of the second outer source appears to be strongly dependent on the Reynolds number. The detailed scale-by-scale analysis of this source highlights well-defined features that are used to make the properties of the outer turbulent source independent of Reynolds number and wall distance by rescaling the problem. Overall, the present results suggest a strong connection of the observed outer scale-energy source with the presence of an outer region of turbulence production whose mechanisms are well separated from the near-wall region and whose statistical features agree with the hypothesis of an overlap layer dominated by attached eddies. Inner–outer interactions between the near-wall and outer source region in terms of scale-energy fluxes are also analysed. It is conjectured that the near-wall modulation of the statistics at increasing Reynolds number can be related to a confinement of the near-wall turbulence production due to the presence of increasingly large production scales in the outer scale-energy source region.


This article focuses on the holistic approach in oral and reading-writing difficulties based on a case study. The reading-writing difficulties are approached using the integrated-structuralism model, both from a theoretical point of view, in order to ensure the theoretical foundation of the material, and from a practical point of view, by discussing the case study of an 8-year-old girl with oral speech disorders during preschool period and with reading and writing difficulties after beginning school. The methodological examples are provided in order to understand better the integrated-structural approach model, which helps us present oral speech disorder in a tight relation with the reading and writing disorder, both being two faces of the same practical reality.


An analysis of the characteristics of ultra-low-permeability reservoir rocks and the processes for permeability loss form the basis for establishing high-resolution well log interpretation models. Moreover, this type of analysis is a prerequisite for the effective development of ultra-low-permeability reservoirs. The Chang 7-1 sandstone members of the Triassic Yanchang Group in the Longdong region of the SW Ordos Basin are typical ultra-low-permeability reservoirs and are studied in detail in this paper. A comprehensive methodology of evaluating the ultra-low-permeability reservoir is developed based on geological information and well logging data. First, pore structure characteristics are analysed in depth using core observations, cast thin sections, scanning electron microscopy and mercury injection porosimetry. The mechanism behind the formation of ultra-low permeability in a reservoir rock, and its controlling factors, are also clearly determined. Second, from the above results and the pore structure characteristics in the study area, the flow-zone indicator (FZI) is selected as the key reservoir modelling parameter to establish permeability models that can reflect different pore structure types and improve precision compared to non-classification pore structure models. In addition, conductivity experiments with water-saturated cores confirm that the additional conduction phenomenon of clay minerals has little impact in terms of reducing reservoir resistivity and, consequently, the Archie formula is found to be reliable for ultra-low-permeability rocks with porosities greater than 5% in the Chang 7-1 reservoir. Three types of well log interpretation models, such as permeability, oil saturation and porosity, are established for the ultra-low-permeability reservoirs using FZI as a classifier in the research area. These models reduce the relative errors to less than 10% and performed well for the ultra-low-permeability Chang 7-1 sandstones. This study contributes to the evaluation of ultra-low-permeability reservoir rocks and also generates fit-for-purpose log evaluation models to guide completion interval selection.


OBJECTIVES
Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) has consistently shown positive associations with blood pressure (BP). Whether elevations in PAI-1 levels precede or result from raised BP is still under debate and data on prospective studies are limited. Hence, we investigated the prospective associations of PAI-1 and the 4G/5G polymorphism with brachial and central BP and pulse pressure (PP) over a 10-year period.

METHODS
Black South Africans aged 30 years and older were included. Baseline data collection commenced in 2005 (n = 2010) with follow-up data collection in 2010 (n = 1288) and 2015 (n = 926). Plasma PAI-1 activity (PAI-1act), 4G/5G polymorphism genotyping, waist circumference and BP measurements were performed and analysed using sequential regression and mixed models.

RESULTS
In multivariable adjusted analyses, PAI-1act and the 4G/4G (vs. the 5G/5G) genotype increased the odds of developing hypertension in the total group [1.04 (1.01; 1.08) and 1.82 (1.07; 3.12) respectively]. Furthermore, PAI-1act was prospectively associated with brachial SBP (r = 0.0815) and PP (r = 0.0832) in the total group, and with central PP in women (r = 0.1125; all P < 0.05). Addition of waist circumference to the models either decreased or nullified the contribution of PAI-1act to BP and hypertension development.

CONCLUSION
PAI-1act and the 4G/4G (vs. the 5G/5G) genotype increased the odds of developing hypertension. Furthermore, PAI-1act associated prospectively with both brachial and central BP. These associations were mediated in part by central adiposity. The study supports the hypothesis that PAI-1 also contributes to hypertension development rather than solely being a consequence thereof.


To meet emerging bioenergy demands, significant areas of the large-scale agricultural landscape of the Midwestern United States could be converted to second generation bioenergy crops such as miscanthus and switchgrass. The high biomass productivity of bioenergy crops in a longer growing season linked tightly to water use highlight the potential for significant impact on the hydrologic cycle in the region. This issue is further exacerbated by the uncertainty in the response of the vegetation under elevated CO2 and temperature. We use a mechanistic multilayer canopy-root-soil model to (i) capture the eco-physiological acclimations of bioenergy crops under climate change, and (ii) predict how hydrologic fluxes are likely to be altered from their current magnitudes. Observed data and Monte Carlo simulations of weather for recent past and future scenarios are used to characterize the variability range of the predictions. Under present weather conditions, miscanthus and switchgrass utilized more water than maize for total seasonal evapotranspiration by approximately 58% and 36%, respectively. Projected higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2 (550 ppm) is likely to decrease water used for evapotranspiration of miscanthus, switchgrass, and maize by 12%, 10%, and 11%, respectively. However, when climate change with projected increases in air temperature and reduced summer rainfall are also considered, there is a net increase in evapotranspiration for all crops, leading to significant reduction in soil-moisture storage and specific surface runoff. These results highlight the critical role of the warming climate in potentially altering the water cycle in the region under extensive conversion of existing maize cropping to support bioenergy demand.


Nanomaterials have been synthesized using several different techniques. Some of these techniques are sophisticated, expensive and need certain training before use. However, there are other highly efficient methods for preparing nanomaterials that are easy to work with and require no specialized equipment, making them relatively inexpensive routes for synthesis. The least expensive routes are those that are classified as solution‐based techniques such as colloidal, sol‐gel and microwave‐assisted synthesis. The focus of this chapter is on a general description of each technique with recent advances in synthesis, doping processes and applications. Specifically, these processes are discussed in connec‐ tion with the synthesis of ZnO compounds and its related nanomaterials.


Important early textual witnesses show John 9,38-39a to be absent. Because of the use of uncharacteristic vocabulary, the use of rare verb forms such as "ephe" and "pisteuo" and the unique confession of faith and worship of Jesus as "Son of Man" during his earthly life, John 9,38 has been said to stand outside Johannine theology. I argue that, although John 9,38-39a confronts the Gospel's reader with uncharacteristic vocabulary, this does not necessarily imply that these words were added by a later hand under liturgical influence. Instead of standing outside Johannine theology, the confession of faith and the worship by the man healed from his blindness function as the first fulfilment of the proleptic prediction of the words in 4,23 "kai gar o pater toioutous zetei tous proskuvouvtas auton". Then, I confront the absence of 9,38-39a with yet another text-critical problem in the larger pericope 9,35—41 — the replacement of the title "uios tou anthropou" in 9,35 by "uios tou Theou" and argue that these two text-critical problems cannot be separated from one another. Finally, I explore how the designation "Son of Man" functions within the framework of "pisteuo" and "proskuneo". The worship of the Johannine Jesus can hardly be seen as a goal in itself. Instead, it is an acknowledgement that the Father is made known in the person of Jesus (cf. 9,3), and hence is typically Johannine.


Much research has examined the relationship between religion and civic engagement, finding that more religious people are more likely to donate their time, energy, and money to community organizations. The overwhelming majority of the quantitative research on the relationship between religion and civic engagement has been done in Europe and North America. However, we know that many people living in sub-Saharan Africa volunteer their time, and because of the many economic, social, and health problems that plague the continent, the need for local volunteers is particularly acute. This article uses data from the 2000 World Values Survey and multivariate regression models to examine which dimensions of religion are associated with unpaid involvement in caregiving and political organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. Special attention is given to the role of gender for understanding who volunteers for caregiving and political organizations. The findings show that socializing with religious friends is associated with an increased likelihood of volunteering for both types of organizations and that religious importance is associated with a greater likelihood of caregiver volunteering. Conversely, religious importance and service attendance are associated with a lower likelihood of volunteering for political organizations. As expected, women are more likely to volunteer for caregiving organizations and men are more likely to volunteer for political organizations.


A series of potent and selective carboxamide TRPA1 antagonists were identified by a high throughput screen. Structure–activity relationship studies around this series are described, resulting in a highly potent example of the series. Pharmacokinetic and skin flux data are presented for this compound. Efficacy was observed in a topical cinnamaldehyde flare study, providing a topical proof of pharmacology for this mechanism. These data suggest TRPA1 antagonism could be a viable mechanism to treat topical conditions such as atopic dermatitis.


The main objective of the research was to determine the main components where BS Secondary Education Graduates (BSEG) should focus on their undergraduate academic subjects in preparation for the LET. The researchers used the Logistic Regression (LR) procedure in STATA using the grades of the 138 BSEG from 2010-2014. The dependent variable represents the result whether or not the BSEG has passed the LET. Five predictors were used; three were continuous and were transformed to be normally distributed. This was done so as to yield meaningful interpretations after the method. The transformed variables were the average grades in (1) basic non-mathematics subjects, (2) basic math subjects, and (3) Professional Education subjects. The other two were indicators of (4) the gender of the BSEG as well as (5) their majors, where math is in focus. The results showed that of the five predictors, only the education subjects and gender were significant. The outcome was then used to build an LR Model. It also implies that the education subjects, being a component in LET, must be given greater essence by the Teacher Education Institution, other stakeholders, and ultimately, future LET takers in order to have a better chance of becoming professional teachers especially on the first take. This paper can serve as a guide in remodeling curricula as well since notably, while the General Education Subjects provide aspiring teachers more knowledge in other fields, it is not tantamount to gaining higher probability of passing the professionalization.


The statistical description of a one-dimensional superdiffusive Lévy flier restricted to a finite domain is well known to be technically involving. For example, in this type of process the probability distribution P(x, t) and survival probability S(t) cannot be obtained from the method of images. Other methods, such as the fractional derivative approach, also find technical difficulties due to the long jumps combined with the presence of absorbing boundaries. Here we revisit this problem through a different point of view. We map the corresponding master equation to a Schrödinger-like equation and then describe the Lévy flier evolution in a Fock space. The system states are assigned to the available positions in the discrete space. The Hamiltonian-like matrix is calculated for any Lévy index α ∈ (0, 2]. For the system sizes studied here the computation of its eigenvalues and eigenvectors are performed using a symbolic computing software. This method allows to build the time evolution operator, the distribution P(x, t) and the survival probability S(t). We compare our results for P(x, t) with direct Monte Carlo simulations and find a good agreement for all α ∈ (0, 2]. Similarly, our results for S(t) nicely agree with the numerical simulations for any time t, including the short-term behavior. In the long-term asymptotic limit we identify the crossover between the power-law and exponential behaviors, which emerge respectively when only one or both boundaries are reached by the Lévy flier. Comparisons with some exact expressions for Lévy flights in the continuous space limit also display good agreement. We conclude our analysis by discussing the possibility of extending the present framework to general bounded random walks and flights.


Why did black southern migrants during the Great
Migration not get off the train along the migratory corridor that connected the
points of departure and arrival, i.e. the Jim Crow South and the urban North?
How did midwestern small-towns and black America come to be understood as polar
opposites? Based on archival and ethnographic research, this project answers
these questions by disrupting grand narratives about the Great Migration and
the Midwest: 1) it disrupts the idea of predefined destinations of southern black
migrants by illustrating that not all wanted to settle in big cities; 2) it
disrupts the midwestern whiteness by displaying resilience and resistance of
minorities in the same landscape; and 3) it disrupts stereotypes of midwestern friendliness by
uncovering the self-perceived understanding of midwestern hospitality of
Hoosier communities that stands in stark contrast with the unwelcoming
environment as experienced by outsiders. Together, the chapters in this
dissertation record the racialized geographies of Indiana and provide a nuanced
understanding of identity and belonging in the Midwest. Analysis of the data
identifies cultures of exclusion prevalent in midwestern small towns.


The tokamak a configuration variable (TCV) is unique in its ability to create a variety of plasma shapes and to heat the electron population in high density regimes using microwave power at the third harmonic of the electron cyclotron frequency. In the frame of this thesis, the impact of plasma shaping and heating on the properties of the edge transport barrier (ETB) in the high confinement mode (H-mode) was studied. This mode of operation is foreseen as one of the reference scenarios for ITER, the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor, which is being built to demonstrate the feasibility of thermonuclear fusion using magnetic confinement. A feature of H-mode regime operation are edge localized modes (ELMs), instabilities driven by the steep pressure gradients that form in the plasma edge region due to a transport barrier. During an ELM event, energy and particles are expelled from the plasma in a short burst. This will cause serious problems with respect to the heat load on plasma facing components in a tokamak of the size of ITER. Understanding of the phenomena associated with ELMs is thus required and dedicated investigations of their theory and experimental observations are carried out in many laboratories worldwide. This thesis presents several experimental and numerical investigations of tokamak behavior for configurations where the plasma edge plays an important role. From the experimental viewpoint, studies of transport barriers are challenging, as plasma parameters change strongly within a narrow spatial region. As part of the work presented here, the TCV Thomson scattering system was upgraded to meet the requirements for diagnosing electron temperature and density with high spatial resolution in the region of internal and external transport barriers. Simultaneously, the data analysis was significantly improved to cope with statistical uncertainties and alleviate eventual systematic errors. For measurements of the time evolution of density and temperature profile during the ELM cycle, the low repetition rate of the lasers used for Thomson scattering is a limiting. Although the system on TCV comprises 3 laser units that may be triggered in sequence with time separations down to 1 ms, time evolution over longer periods can only be reconstructed from repetitive events. In this context, an adjustment of the laser trigger to improve the synchronization with the ELM event is an advantage. A method was developed and implemented to generate a synchronizing trigger sequence, by a real-time monitoring of the D-alpha emission, which provides a marker for the ELM event. Recently, a "snowflake" (SF) divertor configuration, proposed as a possible solution to reduce the plasma-wall interaction by changing the divertor's poloidal magnetic field topology, was generated, for the first time, in TCV. A numerical code (KINX), based on a magnetohydrodynamic model (ideal MHD), was used to investigate the stability limits of this configuration under H-mode conditions and compare them with a similar standard single-null equilibrium. In a series of experiments, improved energy confinement was found and explained by improved stability of the edge region in the SF configuration. The influence of the pedestal structure in ELMy H-mode plasmas on the energy confinement and on ELM energy losses was investigated. The different ELM regimes found in TCV were analyzed, in particular the transition between type-III to type-I ELMs. The operational boundary of each ELM regime was characterized and verified by ideal MHD stability simulations for the ETB region. Recent studies on the scaling of the pedestal width with normalized poloidal pressure were confirmed. Using the capabilities of TCV, the influence of plasma shaping on pedestal parameters and MHD stability limits was investigated. In the past, models were developed to describe the onset of type-I ELMs, which are associated with modes in the ETB region arising from a coupling of pressure- and current-driven instabilities (coupled kink-ballooning modes). Experimental studies were performed to trace the temporal evolution of pedestal parameters characterizing the ETB during an ELM cycle. The results of these experiments were analyzed using information from MHD stability calculations. It is concluded that these models are capable of predicting limits as necessary conditions for ELM activity, but are not sufficient to fully explain ELM triggering.


Chloroplasts are the energy-producing, photosynthesizing organelles of plants. These organelles have their own genome, which is regulated by light and which is not part of the nuclear genome of the plant. Baena-González et al. show that, under physiological concentrations of reduced glutathione (GSH) in the presence of low concentrations of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the activity of plastid transcription kinase (PTK) is inhibited in vitro. PTK phosphorylates the chloroplast RNA polymerase PEP-A, inhibiting its activity and suppressing chloroplast gene expression. In an invitro transcription assay, preincubation of PEP-A with PTK inhibits expression of both photosynthetic and nonphotosynthetic chloroplast genes. Exposure of mustard plants to high-intensity light (HL) led to a higher ration of GSH to oxidized glutathione in chloroplasts and enhanced transcription rates for all chloroplast genes tested compared with those in plants grown under light conditions optimal for growth (GL). Biochemical analysis of a partially purified RNA polymerase complex from plants exposed to GL or GL showed that the intrinsic kinase activity was lost in the HL samples. The authors suggest that under high-intensity light conditions, photosynthesis is stimulated, producing high concentrations of reducing equivalents and thus increasing the formation of GSH. GSH, in turn, may reduce PTK, inhibiting the enzyme activity and allowing the chloroplast RNA polymerase activity to increase, leading to increased chloroplast gene expression. E. Baena-González, S. Baginsky, P. Mulo, H. Summer, E.-M. Aro, G. Link, Chloroplast transcription at different light intensities. Glutathione-mediated phosphorylation of the major RNA polymerase involved in redox-regulated organellar gene expression. Plant Physiol. 127, 1044-1052 (2001). [Abstract] [Full Text]


The morphology and the appearance of quartz grains reveal the history of their movement and sedimentation. Consequently, many researchers have tried to decipher geological 'memory' using binocular microscopes and transmission and scanning electron-microscopes. Krinsley and his colleagues, most notably, have consequently been able to define some superficial characteristics of quartz grains from glacial, fluvo-glacial, littoral and aeolian regions. Thanks to the work of Cailleux (1942) and Cailleux & Trichard (1959) on morphoscopy, we now know that a binocular microscope allows us to recognize in most cases a marine or fluvo-glacial sand which has been subjected to wind or water transport. The present author believes that in this work, the principal value of the electron scanning microscope, thanks to the powerful magnifications that it allows, would be to determine the characterization of incipient modification on very slightly modified quartz grains and not those of advanced development visible with low magnification. It is not possible to study separately mechanical and chemical effects; however, the simultaneous study of these, of their causes and of their interactions, in different surroundings has enabled the author to draw up an atlas of the surface aspects presented by quartz grains at various stages of pedological evolution and to characterize fluviatile, inter-tidal, infra-tidal and wind-eroded features of differing intensity, even when these are only slightly marked on the grains. One of the first applications of this method here called exoscopy was undertaken on quartz samples from cores taken in the eastern area of the English Channel by the 'Terebel'. Exoscopy and endoscopy (G. Deicha and colleagues) permit the reconstruction of a large part of the geological history of detrital quartzes by going back, step by step, to the original formation.


This study investigated the spatial and temporal distributions of Chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) in Sabah coastal water using satellite data, and identified the associated oceanographic events which caused large scale water enrichment in the surface layer. Results showed that surface Chl-a experienced seasonality in Sabah waters. At the northwest coast, very obvious increase in the Chl-a was observed from January to March, attributed to wind-driven coastal upwelling during the northeast monsoon (NEM). The southeast coast depicted high Chl-a at Labuan offshore water, related to the reversing direction of Baram River plume towards Sabah during NEM. Labuan bay water had higher Chl-a during the southwest monsoon (SWM) due to the effect of discharged materials from the Padas River during the rainy season at Labuan. On the other side, a slight increase in surface Chl-a was illustrated along the entire northeast coast during NEM, with higher concentrations at the southern part compared to the northern region. The high Chl-a at the southern part (southern Sandakan) was owing to alongshore water transport from the northern region driven by NEM winds and effect of discharged materials from the Kinabatangan River during the rainy season at Sandakan. Water characteristic at the southeast coast was highly influenced by surface water transport from the Sulu and Sulawesi seas and prevailed surface currents. Both inshore and offshore waters off Semporna had peak Chl-a in December, related to Sulu Sea water transport towards Semporna and occurrence of cyclonic eddy at the offshore water during early NEM. Tawau water showed very high Chl-a throughout the year due to the effect of coastal discharge. The discharged material near Tawau was transported to a wider area offshore during SWM. That in turn caused another peak Chl-a at Semporna inshore water in August during SWM.


The most ambitious project of the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) is the construction of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E‐ELT) which will be by far the world's largest optical and near‐infrared telescope, and will provide images 15 times sharper than those from the Hubble Space Telescope. Such a project poses continuous challenges to systems engineering due to its complexity in terms of requirements, operational modes, long operational lifetime, interfaces, and number of components. Since 2008, the Telescope Control System (TCS) team has adopted a number of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practices in order to cope with the various challenges ahead. This is one of the largest publicly available MBSE information sources. This includes: the complex, interdisciplinary real world sample model 1 recommendations, findings, issues, Open‐Source MBSE Plugin for creating the model structure, extracting model variants, and supporting model based document generation based on DocBook, and multiple publications. The E‐ELT is one of the most influential projects for SysML standards and MBSE tools development. One of the project's and the supporting team's goals was feedback for the MBSE tool vendors and OMG SysML standards. This resulted in hundreds of formal requests (hundreds of tickets in the No Magic, Inc., support system, tens of scientific and industrial papers, MBSE guidance, and inputs to SysML standard update) and informal requests, both types of which clarified the standard and significantly moved forward the MBSE support in tools. In this paper we will overview MBSE application for this project as the core method to manage the complexity. We will identify major MBSE usage aspects. We will answer why and how MBSE was used for telescope modeling.


Government actions taken during and in the wake of the Financial Crisis of 2008 have generated lawsuits that, somewhat unexpectedly, have made takings law a key vehicle for assessing the government's response to the crisis. This Essay examines these developments and offers three observations. First, these suits have already served an important public purpose by uncovering information that might not otherwise have come to light about how and why the government chose to do what it did. Second, the prospect of relief for takings claims can bolster the legitimacy of emergency action. This insight leads to this Essay's final point, which concerns the political economy of public measures to contain financial and economic crises. Government choices regarding who gets help, how much, and with what strings attached inevitably yield winners and losers. Insulating these decisions from review can facilitate the use of crisis to subvert government for private ends. Particularly at a time when anxieties about "crony capitalism" and the outsize influence of elites are running high, these are the wrong incentives to create.


Abstract. Data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the EOS Aqua spacecraft each day show tens of thousands of Cold Clouds (CC) in the tropical oceans with 10 μm window channel brightness temperatures colder than 225 K. These clouds represent a mix of cold anvil clouds and Deep Convective Clouds (DCC). This mix can be separated by computing the difference between two channels, a window channel and a channel with strong CO 2 absorption: for some cold clouds this difference is negative, i.e. the spectra for some cold clouds are inverted. We refer to cold clouds with spectra which are more than 2 K inverted as DCCi2. Associated with DCCi2 is a very high rain rate and a local upward displacement of the tropopause, a cold "bulge", which can be seen directly in the brightness temperatures of AIRS and Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) temperature sounding channels in the lower stratosphere. The very high rain rate and the local distortion of the tropopause indicate that DCCi2 objects are associated with severe storms. Significant long-term trends in the statistical properties of DCCi2 could be interesting indicators of climate change. While the analysis of the nature and physical conditions related to DCCi2 requires hyperspectral infrared and microwave data, the identification of DCCi2 requires only one good window channel and one strong CO 2 sounding channel. This suggests that improved identification of severe storms with future advanced geostationary satellites could be accomplished with the addition of one or two narrow band channels.


Public opinion polling is usually done by random sampling from the entire population, treating individual opinions as independent. In the real world, individuals' opinions are often correlated, e.g., among friends in a social network. In this paper, we explore the idea of partitioned sampling, which partitions individuals with high opinion similarities into groups and then samples every group separately to obtain an accurate estimate of the population opinion. We rigorously formulate the above idea as an optimization problem. We then show that the simple partitions which contain only one sample in each group are always better, and reduce finding the optimal simple partition to a well-studied Min-r-Partition problem. We adapt an approximation algorithm and a heuristic algorithm to solve the optimization problem. Moreover, to obtain opinion similarity efficiently, we adapt a well-known opinion evolution model to characterize social interactions, and provide an exact computation of opinion similarities based on the model. We use both synthetic and real-world datasets to demonstrate that the partitioned sampling method results in significant improvement in sampling quality and it is robust when some opinion similarities are inaccurate or even missing.


Probabilistic modelling has proved useful to analyse performance, reliability and energy usage of distributed or networked systems. We consider parametric probabilistic models, in which probabilities are specified as expressions over a set of parameters, rather than concrete values. We address the parameter synthesis problem for parametric Markov decision processes and parametric Markov reward models, which asks for a valuation for the parameters such that the resulting (concrete) probabilistic model satisfies a given property. To solve parametric probabilistic models for quantitative reachability properties, we propose efficient, robust methods, either based on sampling, for which we provide two algorithms, Markov chain Monte Carlo and the cross entropy algorithm, or on swarm intelligence, for which we adapt the particle swarm algorithm, a nonlinear optimisation method from evolutionary computation. We implement the methods in PRISM and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on several case studies, including adaptive systems and online model repair.


Contract cheating is currently a concern for universities and the HE sector. It has been brought into the spotlight in recent years through the growth of online essay mills, where students can easily commission and purchase written assessment responses. This study contributes to the wider literature on academic integrity in HE by examining the phenomenon of contract cheating from a from a supply side perspective, thereby considering the essay mill offering and student interaction with it. The authors covertly engage with five essay mills, before successfully completing an assignment purchase with two of these providers. The pre-purchase stage of an assignment transaction is first examined, unpacking ten reassurance cues used by essay mill providers in the text of their websites. These reassurance cues help to ensure the attractiveness of the essay mill product to potential student consumers. The analysis then moves to explore the ethical discourses around academic integrity that essay mills provide, revealing inconsistencies in their stance towards the potential for academic misconduct from the use of essay mill services. Finally, the paper explores the quality of the essay mill product, through grading and Turnitin® reports for the two purchased essay mill assignments. Following recent calls for the outlawing of essay mills, this paper provides a timely addition to current understanding of this phenomenon, and the associated challenges of contract cheating in HE.


The paper gives an overview over issues concerning the role of financial stability in monetary policy. Historically, financial stability has figured highly among central banks' objectives, with policy measures ranging from interest rate stabilization to serving as a lender of the last resort. With the ascent of macroeconomics, these traditional tasks of central banks have been displaced by macroeconomic objectives, price stability, full employment, growth. The financial crisis has shifted the focus back to financial stability concerns. Along with these developments, the shift from a specie standard to a pure fiat money system has widened the scope for central bank policies, which are no longer constrained by legal obligations attached to central bank money. The paper first surveys the evolution of financial-stability and macroeconomic-stability concerns in central banking and monetary policy. Then it discusses two major challenges: (i) What should be done to assess the relevance of financial stability concerns in any given situation? How should one deal with the fact that systemic interdependence takes multiple forms and is changing all the time and that many contagion risks cannot be measured? (ii) What is the relation between financial-stability and macroeconomic-stability objectives? To what extent do they coincide, to what extent are they in conflict? How should tradeoffs be handled and what can be done to reduce the risk of the central bank's succumbing to financial dominance?


Background Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can cause lasting functional changes and lead to unemployment. The purpose of this study was to create and test a structural equation model (SEM) of the prediction of functional and employment outcome after TBI. Methods Participants were 949 individuals with predominantly moderate to severe TBI (74% males, median age 25.7 years) who attended a follow-up interview 1 year post-injury. Outcome (employment and mood, cognitive and behavioural changes) was measured using the Structured Outcome Questionnaire. An SEM, based on existing research, was developed, tested and modified. Results A comparative fit index of 0.99 and a root mean square error of approximation of 0.03 supported the fit of the final model. Age, education, pre-injury employment, injury severity and limb injuries were direct predictors of employment outcome. Gender, pre-injury psychiatric disorders and limb injuries were related to employment outcome by their association with mood, cognitive and behavioural changes. Conclusions The results demonstrate the complex interplay between various factors predicting outcome after TBI and provide evidence for the importance of tailoring rehabilitation to the individual's needs. Further research, including other conditions, can build on this model and include additional predictor and outcome measures.


Liver injury due to prescription and nonprescription medications is a growing medical, scientific, and public health problem. Worldwide, the estimated annual incidence rate of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is 13.9-24.0 per 100,000 inhabitants. DILI is one of the leading causes of acute liver failure in the US. In Korea, the annual extrapolated incidence of cases hospitalized at university hospital is 12/100,000 persons/year. Most cases of DILI are the result of idiosyncratic metabolic responses or unexpected reactions to medication. There is marked geographic variation in relevant agents; antibiotics, anticonvulsants, and psychotropic drugs are the most common offending agents in the West, whereas in Asia, 'herbs' and 'health foods or dietary supplements' are more common. Different medical circumstances also cause discrepancy in definition and classification of DILI between West and Asia. In the concern of causality assessment, the application of the Roussel Uclaf Causality Assessment Method (RUCAM) scale frequently undercounts the cases caused by 'herbs' due to a lack of previous information and incompatible time criteria. Therefore, a more objective and reproducible tool that could be used for the diagnosis of DILI caused by 'herbs' is needed in Asia. In addition, a reporting system similar to the Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN) in the US should be established as soon as possible in Asia.


In this article I offer an empirical analysis of impoliteness and mock-impoliteness in colloquial Russian conversation by examining the ways in which interlocutors produce and display an orientation to impolite and mock-impolite utterances. The corpus consists of recorded video from naturally occurring talk-in-interaction from the Russian reality television show Dom Dva 'House Two'. I argue that both, first-order, participant-constructed and second-order, analyst-constructed approaches to politeness and impoliteness studies can, and should, be used to inform one another. I use both approaches in order to analyze the specific ways mock-impolite and impolite turns are designed linguistically (through lexical items, turn structure and prosody) and paralinguistically (through laughter, pauses and body language). Further, I examine how these turns are discursively co-constructed by the interlocutors.


This paper describes our participation in the TREC-9 Spoken Document Retrieval (SDR) track. The THISL SDR system consists of a realtime version of a hybrid connection-ist/HMM large vocabulary speech recognition system and a probabilistic text retrieval system. This paper describes the configuration of the speech recognition and text retrieval systems, including segmentation and query expansion. We report our results for development tests using the TREC-8 queries, and for the TREC-9 evaluation.


This paper reports on the findings from a survey which was conducted examine the level of utilization of financial products by SMEs and its linkage with financial knowledge among SMEs in Zimbabwe. The study was conducted following a realization that a significant number of SMEs were financially excluded despite efforts by the financial services sector to tailor make products to their needs. A quantitative research method was used where data was collected among a randomly selected sample of 400 SMEs in the capital city Harare, using a self-administered questionnaire. Findings indicated a lack of awareness of most financial product and hence low usage of these products by SMEs. An association between financial product awareness and financial knowledge was noted but no relationship between financial product usage and financial knowledge. The study concluded that although SMEs are financially knowledgeable, there is no link with their participation in the main financial stream. The study therefore recommended the need to further increase awareness at the same time encouraging participation in the financial markets to reduce vulnerability associated with financial exclusion.


The present contribution argues in favour of the recognition of an article de in French which occurs either alone or with another article. The approach adopted calls for an historical recapitulation, i.e. "where does the article come from?", a theoretical investigation, i.e. "what is an article?", and the identification of an inventory, i.e. "what qualifies as an article?". Finally, a table is provided which summarizes the articles in terms of three pairs of oppositions, viz. part vs. whole, mass vs. count, continuous vs. discontinuous. The article de is definable as a partitive article, sometimes mass or count, continuous or discontinuous (where the form is de ), sometimes continuous mass (where the form is du , de la ), sometimes discontinuous mass or count (where the form is des ), sometimes continuous mass and count (where the form is d'un , d'une ).


Heptose-containing oligosaccharides (OSs) are found in the outer core of the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of a subset of non-typable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) strains. Candidate genes for the addition of either l-glycero-d-manno-heptose (ld-Hep) or d-glycero-d-manno-heptose (dd-Hep) and subsequent hexose sugars to these OSs have been identified from the recently completed genome sequences available for NTHi strains. losA1/losB1 and losA2/losB2 are two sets of related genes in which losA has homology to genes encoding glycosyltransferases and losB to genes encoding heptosyltransferases. Each set of genes is variably present across NTHi strains and is located in a region of the genome with an alternative gene organization between strains that contributes to LPS heterogeneity. Dependent upon the strain background, the LPS phenotype, structure and serum resistance of strains mutated in these genes were altered when compared with the relevant parent strain. Our studies confirm that losB1 and losB2 usually encode dd-heptosyl- and ld-heptosyl transferases, respectively, and that losA1 and losA2 encode glycosyltransferases that play a role in OS extensions of NTHi LPS.


Image recovery in optical interferometry is an ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem arising from incomplete power spectrum and bispectrum measurements. We reformulate this nonlin- ear problem as a linear problem for the supersymmetric rank-1 order-3 tensor formed by the tensor product of the vector representing the image under scrutiny with itself. On one hand, we propose a linear convex approach for tensor recovery with built-in supersymmetry, and regularising the inverse problem through a nuclear norm relaxation of a low-rank constraint. On the other hand, we also study a nonlinear nonconvex approach with built-in rank-1 con- straint but where supersymmetry is relaxed, formulating the problem for the tensor product of 3 vectors. In this second approach, only linear convex minimisation subproblems are how- ever solved, alternately and iteratively for the 3 vectors. We provide a comparative analysis of these two novel approaches through numerical simulations on small-size images.


One major problem facing Ghana is the unreliable supply of electricity. Unreliable electricity supply largely attributed to supply side constraints such as poor energy infrastructure, low tariffs which is below cost recovery and increasing demand has made it difficult to provide uninterrupted supply for the populace. Currently, there is a constant outcry by Ghanaians for the government and service providers to improve electricity service delivery due to the fact that households do suffer economic losses in the event of unannounced power outages to the point that many of them may be willing to pay higher tariffs if that will ensure improved service delivery. In this study we assess households' willingness to pay (WTP) for improved electricity supply as well as the factors that influence WTP through a contingent valuation survey. Results from our analysis indicated that, households in Ghana are prepared to pay on the average about ¢0.2734 for a kilowatt-hour which is about one and a half times more than what they are paying currently. An econometric analysis of the factors that influence households' WTP for improved electricity supply indicates that household income, sex, household size, secondary and tertiary level education are the significant factors.


INTRODUCTION: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. A study shows among 169 women under age 60 with a diagnosis of coronary heart disease in residents of Rochester, Minnesota. The first manifestation of coronary heart disease was angina in 95, myocardial infarction in 59, and sudden unexpected death in 15 women. (C M Beard et al, 1984). AIM AND OBJECTIVES:   To seek the association between reproductive history and cardiovascular disease risk in post-menopausal women. METHODS: Descriptive co relational study design was used to ascertain the association between reproductive history and cardiovascular disease risk in Vijay Marie Hospital, Hyderabad.  After obtaining consent a pilot study was conducted on 20 women above 35 years of age, married or unmarried, working or non-working women were selected by purposive sampling technique.  Three tools were developed and checked for its content validity.  Tool for socio demographic data, maternal history of women and assessment of cardiac risk factors.  Data obtained was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. RESULTS: Majority of women were 55-59 years, below 10th grade, 70% working, 75% married, 50% had family members more than three, 55% joint family, 30% diabetes.  There is statistically significant association between demographic data such as education (P=0.002), occupation (P=0.002), marital status (P=0.025), monthly family income (P=0.035) and heart problems at 0.05 level.   The association between age and selected cardiovascular risk factors such as high cholesterol (P=0.007), heart disease (P=0.00), arthritis (P=0.00), use of tobacco (P=0.002), physical activity (P=0.047), currently on OCPs (P=0.025), heart problems (P=0.002), on cardiac medications (P=0.002), are found to be statistically significant at 0.05 level.  There is also statistically significant association seen between reproductive history such as no. of abortions (P=0.001), regularity of menstruation (P=0.000), age at menopause (P=0.001) and heart problems at 0.05 level. CONCLUSION: Selected demographic characters such as education, occupation, marital status and monthly income; cardiac risk factors such as use of tobacco, light physical activity, on HRT, OCPs and on cardiac medications; reproductive history such as no. of abortions, regularity of menstruation and age at menopause were statistically found to be significant at 0.05 level.  Studies can be undertaken to see the effectiveness of alternative treatments in decreasing the postmenopausal symptoms.  Studies also can be undertaken to enhance the knowledge of women through structured health education program.


The advent of modem "big science" brings about a new kind of research formation: multi-institutional collaborations involving teams of researchers from several organizations. Despite their recent proliferation and visibility, no general classification of these "virtual organizations" exists. This study adopts a macrosociological, comparative perspective to develop a variety of classification schemes that capture the systematic variation of interorganizational collaborations in science along basic structural dimensions and to examine the relationships of these classifications with important sociological outcomes. Qualitative, historical analysis of collaborations in high-energy physics, space science, and geophysics showed that, when we set aside field-specific differences, seven general dimensions emerge as fundamental in describing the structural variety of collaborations in science: project formation, magnitude, organization and management, interdependence, participation, communication, and technological practice. Cluster analysis was then employed using interview data from 23 recent collaborations in five new areas of physics and allied sciences to build classification schemes along these structural dimensions. Next, analysis of variance models and qualitative comparative analysis were used to explore how the classifications relate to valued sociological outcomes such as success, trust, conflict, stress, and documentary routines. The empirical results strongly supported the central argument that a typology based on a broad conception of technological practice is superior to others in its ability to predict the patterned consequences of multi-institutional collaborations in science. In fact, it is the only clustering that is capable of explaining perceived success, trust, and stress. The major findings of the dissertation research suggest that it is necessary to move away from the narrow focus on the laboratory and the disciplinary organization of R&D in order to capture the structure and process of emergent forms of social organization in contemporary science.


Deception as forgery: The role of reference information in honesty and deceit" (2015). CUNY Academic Works. Using concepts derived from cybernetics, self-presentation theory, and research on human self-regulation, I develop a cybernetic perspective of deception and self-presentation. In this perspective, human communication, both honest and deceptive, is controlled by feedback mechanisms. I report two studies designed to test the basic prediction derived from the cybernetic framework that deceivers are able to better emulate truth-tellers when they have access to relevant reference information about the way truth-tellers behave. Each study manipulated liars' and truth-tellers' access to reference information in a different manner. In Study 1, some participants viewed video recordings of people being interviewed in a manner highly similar to the way the participants would be imminently interviewed. I hypothesized that the exemplar videos would equip liars with reference information that would enable to them to " counterfeit " a truth-teller's behavior. In Study 2, some participants engaged in activities analogous to the task about which they were to be interviewed. Of those who completed the analogous activities, some were interviewed about those activities, and some were not. I hypothesized that liars who completed the analogous activities and were interviewed about them would gain reference information from their own behavior and be better able to counterfeit truthful responses. The results of Study 1 partially supported the hypotheses. The results of Study 2 failed to support the hypotheses, possibly because processes more complex than expected were v at work. Implications of the results are discussed in relation to the cybernetic framework of self-presentation and deception. vi " There seems no reason to believe that we are ever acquainted with other people's minds, seeing that these are not directly perceived.... All thinking has to start from acquaintance; but it succeeds in thinking about many things with which we have no acquaintance. " Bertrand Russell (1905) vii Acknowledgments


When we review President Lyndon B. Johnson's densely packed, 11-page appointments diary for August 4, 1964, we learn of both the attack on U.S. boats in the Gulf of Tonkin and the discovery of the bodies of three slain civil rights workers in Mississippi. In a recorded telephone conversation from that same day, we can hear Johnson trying to persuade a congressional delegation to pass the Poverty Bill when the White House operator breaks in, announcing Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who tells the president about the attack near Vietnam. We can hear FBI officials tell Johnson about the discovery of the missing men, and Johnson asking that the announcement be held off until he had notified the families. At the end of the day, we can hear Lady Bird calling her husband "just to tell [him], I love you." ********** The human experience of presidential leadership-how events are never neatly laid out in particular order, how decisions have to be made in different contexts, and how domestic events, political choices, foreign affairs, and family relationships all interact--is made vivid when students explore "The Presidential Timeline of the 20th Century." "The Presidential Timeline of the 20th Century" (presidentialtimeline.org) is a newly unveiled website jointly created by the Learning Technology Center of The University of Texas at Austin and The National Archives' 12 presidential libraries. This web-based resource provides access to the continually growing store of digitized assets from the libraries' collections. The site reminds us that history is not simply the set of narratives we read in history books, but the experience of creating these stories from the essential evidence contained in primary sources such as Johnson's diary and telephone conversations. The goal of this project is to make primary and secondary source materials readily and freely available to students, educators, and adult learners throughout the world via a single unified and intuitive interface. The Timeline itself is deployed within a dynamic and visually engaging Flash-based interface that provides access to timelines of each modern president's life before, during, and after his time in office. These timelines, in turn, provide direct access to assets (primary and secondary resources), exhibits, and educational activities associated with specific events. At the time of its initial release in February 2007, the Timeline was populated with over 600 individual assets ranging from videos of significant presidential addresses and audio recordings of telephone calls, to photographs and handwritten internal White House memos. In addition to individual assets, the Timeline is populated by "curated exhibits." These consist of a series of five to ten screens that tell the story of a Timeline event, illustrated with selected individual assets. Scrolling through the Timeline causes any digitized assets associated with the selected event to appear at the bottom of the screen, along with explanatory notes about the event or the context of an asset. Other thematic timelines can be selected to appear under the main Timeline: the president's approval ratings; events in other presidents' lives; or events in the civil rights movement. Because the Timeline is an ongoing project, other thematic timelines and assets will be added, as well as assets from new presidential libraries as they enter the National Archives system. Eventually, earlier presidents will also appear on the Timeline. The experience of working with archival material differs profoundly from the experience of reading history in a book. The written narrative is usually thematically arranged, for example, with the civil rights movement in one section and the Vietnam War in another. But a student working with the Timeline would discover their overlap. Both the primary resources and educational activities provided by the Presidential Timeline are intended to enhance students' skills and enthusiasm for history and social studies. …


Higher education invests heavily in information technology and information systems, with variable outcomes. Organisations in other sectors, such as engineering, the defence industry, public administration and business, have developed and adopted good practice for the choice, development and operation of software-based systems that are only sometimes understood in higher education. In order to assess the extent to which good practice might assist higher education, the four tertiary institutions in the Western Cape of South Africa were approached and a representative range of academic, administrative, technical and managerial respondents agreed to contribute to the study. Interviews were organised in two parts: the first an open conversation about their involvement with systems, and the second a structured examination of systems-related events that they considered significant. By inspection of those events, bipolar scales were developed by which respondents were able to characterise events (for example as 'challenging' or 'easy', or as 'functional' or 'dysfunctional'). Respondents rated events on those scales. Repertory Grid analysis was applied so as to investigate which scales correlated with event success. 30 scales (out of 170) proved to be adequately correlated with success, and by principal component analysis they were combined to form ten 'success scale' groups, indicating ten areas where the deployment of good practice might be expected to lead to more effective use of improved information systems. A new Reference Model is developed that has a role to play in resolving the transitions between the domains of the Information Management Body of Knowledge (IMBOK).


This paper provides a search theoretical model that captures two phenomena that have characterized several episodes of monetary history: currency shortages and the circulation of privately issued notes. As usual in these models, the media of exchange are determined as part of the equilibrium. We characterize all the different equilibria and specify the conditions under which there is a currency shortage and/or privately issued notes are used as means of payment. There is multiplicity of equilibria for the entire parameter space, but there always exist an equilibrium in which notes circulate, either alone or together with coins. Hence, credit is a self-fulfilling phenomenon that depends on the beliefs of agents about the acceptability and future repayment of notes. The degree of circulation of coins depends on two crucial parameters, the intrinsic utility of holding coins and the extent with which it is possible to find exchange opportunities in the market.


The study of organic based materials is a flourishing area of interest as the physical/chemical properties of the compound can be tuned through functionalisation or simple chemical changes to the organic component. This thesis will focus on the magnetic behaviour of metal-organic magnetic materials where a variety of techniques will be used to study the magnetism such as bulk magnetometry and muon spin relaxation. As well as the magnetic properties, some comments will be made on the chemical properties such as molecular structure. The thesis begins with an overview of the theory of magnetism and details regarding experimental techniques.

Ni(TCNQ)$_2$ is a recently discovered non-solvated metal organic magnet that was reported to show ferromagnetic behaviour below 20 K where there was evidence of a glassy magnetic component. This thesis reports the synthesis of both a protio and deutero form of the material where upon deuteration of the TCNQ molecule, a shift in critical temperature ($T_{\rm C}$) was observed to a higher temperature by approximately 15%. Diffraction experiments were conducted to attempt to provide information on the atomic structure however this proved unsuccessful. Magnetometry experiments showed a ferromagnetic transition at approximately 20 K in the deuterated and 17 K in the protonated materials where at low temperatures the sample appeared to be a three-dimensional magnetically order material. Muon spin relaxation studies were conducted on the deuterated sample which showed two peaks within the dynamical relaxation in zero-field; one associated with the transition and a low temperature (5 K) spin freezing effect where it is believed there are interactions between magnetic clusters that enter a quasi-static regime. It may be possible that the glassy component and the ferromagnetic behaviour of the material are not due to the same exchange mechanism or magnetic interactions.

KTCNQ is a compound that undergoes a spin-Peierls transition, $T_{\rm SP}$, at approximately 400 K where below this temperature there is a dimerisation of the TCNQ radical spins that couple antiferromagnetically and the system goes from a conductive to insulating state. In an attempt to tune the TCNQ-TCNQ interactions different materials were synthesised where the protons on the TCNQ ring were substituted for fluorine and bromine atoms. On substitution of the protons with other elements a dramatic shift in Tsp was observed where for the fluorine based compounds $T_{\rm SP}$ = 150 K and the KTCNQ-Br$_2$ compound showed no evidence of a transition. Both KTCNQ-H$_4$ and KTCNQ-F$_4$ were studied further using muon spin relaxation where the transition is clearly modelled using a stretched exponential where an increase in electronic fluctuation rate is shown by a gradual move from an exponential to Gaussian relaxation. At low temperatures the relaxation again changes and within the KTCNQ-F$_4$ sample 2 F-$\mu^+$-F states are observed.

Another controversial organic based magnet is Ni$_2$TCNQ which was first synthesised in 2007. Here a study of a similar material is reported where the TCNQ has been swapped for TCNQF$_4$ and the magnetic properties are shown to be a result of nickel nanoparticles trapped within a metal-organic or purely organic based matrix. The room temperature ferromagnetism is not strictly due to only the bulk Ni particles as this would result in a blocking temperature below 20 K and so the matrix is shown to play an important role. The size of the Ni nanoparticles was shown to be tuneable when using different solvents within the reaction, generally use of chlori- nated solvents lead to rapid decomposition of the starting material, Ni(COD)$_2$ and lead to larger nanoparticles, however use of a nitrile based solvent led to Ni clusters that were approximately 1 nm in size and dispersed within the matrix. A novel scaling of the magnetisation curves as a function of field showed that once the ferromagnetic component had been subtracted the matrix or Ni based clusters show an antiferromagnetic ground state at low temperature.

The final chapter describes an investigation of the starting material, Ni(COD)$_2$ which was studied using a SQUID magnetometer where it was shown that there was a high level of magnetic impurities, which was attributed to small Ni clusters that showed a similar scaling relationship of the magnetisation as for the Ni2TCNQF$_4$ based material. This demonstrates the inappropriate nature of Ni(COD)$_2$ as a starting material for metal-organic based magnetic compounds.


We show that the combination of a weak magnetic propeller and accretion disc resonances can effectively halt accretion in short-period cataclysmic variables (CVs) for large fractions of their lifetimes. This may help to explain the discrepancy between the observed and predicted orbital period distributions of CVs at short periods. Orbital resonances cause the disc to become eccentric, allowing material to fall back on to the donor star or out of the system. A weak magnetic field on a rapidly spinning primary star propels disc material outwards, allowing it to access these resonances. Numerical and analytic calculations show that this state can be long lived (similar to 10(11) yr). This is because the magnetic propeller is required only to maintain access to the resonances, and not to push matter out of the Roche lobe, so that the spin-down time-scale is much longer than that for a classical propeller model.


The perspective of 'Praedicate Evangelium' regarding liturgical abuses
ABSTRACT: The paper examines the transformations made by the Ap. const. Praedicate Evangelium [= EP] regarding the contrast of liturgical abuses. Beginning with the problem of celebratory propriety that emerged in the context of postconciliar disbandment, it first examines the essential features of the case of abusiveness (the frequency of the conduct, the erroneous presumption of justification for the conduct, and the prominence of the authoritative condition) and, then, the main magisterial and papal directive interventions. Article 66 PB outlined a specific supervisory function on the part of the Congregation for Worship. PE, indulging the criterion of decentralizing co-responsibility, stimulates awareness of its own attributions and the specific responsibility of the bishops in ensuring the observance of liturgical norms. Article 96 EP therefore makes explicit the duties of the episcopal office and the supporting and assisting role of the Dicastery. The elimination of abusiveness is expressly linked with increased liturgical formation. The normative change does not change the essence of ecclesial discipline; however, it requires a qualitative leap in the pastoral solicitude of bishops (the most significant contribution is the deontological call). An in-depth theoretical and practical study of the problem of liturgical abusiveness, without trespassing on casuistry, can help complete the cultural and regulatory turnaround underway.
SOMMARIO: 1. Il sentito problema della correttezza celebrativa - 2. L'inquadramento della fattispecie abusiva - 3. Gli interventi magisteriali e direttivi pontifici - 4. La disciplina dell'art. 66 della 'Pastor bonus' - 5. Il nuovo approccio di 'Praedicate Evangelium' - 5.1. Il contesto della riforma curiale - 5.2. L'art. 96 di 'Praedicate Evangelium' - 5.3. La responsabilità episcopale - 6. L'opportuno collegamento con la formazione liturgica - 7. Un mutamento disciplinare o attitudinale?


Quantum Ergodicity aims at understanding the eigenstates of quantum mechanical systems admitting chaotic classical limiting dynamics. A paradigmatic system is the Laplace-Beltrami operator on a compact manifold of negative sectional curvature: its classical limit is the geodesic flow on the manifold, which is of Anosov type. Although no explicit expression is available for the eigenstates, one may use various tools from semiclassical analysis in order to gather some partial information on their structure. The central result (Quantum Ergodicity Theorem) states that almost all eigenstates are equidistributed over the energy shell, in the semiclassical limit, provided the classical system is ergodic. The lectures review the background techniques of semiclassical analysis and ergodic theory, give several versions of the QE theorem, and present several extensions of the result, which apply to specific systems, for instance chaotic systems enjoying arithmetic symmetries.