In Chosen Places, Constructing New Jerusalems in Slavia Orthodoxa, Jelena Erdeljan examines the Old Testament topic of the divinely-chosen status of Jerusalem and the phenomenon of translatio Hierosolymi in visual culture, based on the examples of Constantinople, Turnovo, Belgrade, and Moscow.


Asymmetric spline surfaces appear useful for the design of high-quality general optical systems (systems without symmetries). A spline influence function defined as the actual surface resulting from a simple perturbation in the spline definition array shows that a subarea is independent of others four or more points away. Optimization methods presented in this paper are used to vary a reflective spline surface near the focal plane of a decentered Schmidt-Cassegrain to reduce rms spot radii by a factor of 3 across the field.


Abstract III AbstractIII Abstract The integration of modeling, simulation and optimization provides powerful tools for supporting advanced decision making in the competitive market. However, when applying the tools to polymerization processing, the challenging task is to accommodate the predictability of the mathematical model and the capability of model-based optimization due to its inherent complexities. In this thesis, novel strategies of modeling and optimization are developed and applied to a complex polymerization system, Semi-Interpenetrating Polymer Network (SIPN) process. By providing a comprehensive study on SIPNs, we show the great potential of advanced modeling and optimization in the polymer industry. New mathematical modeling strategies are first presented in this work. In the SIPN process, improving the productivity while preserving the quality of final products are usually contradictory with each other because of a slow seeded polymerization mechanism. The presence and interaction between two polymers imposes complexity in the model. To simulate the complex interpenetration and networking process, the model needs to consider several key features, such as a particle growth mechanism, intra-particle heterogeneity and polymerization kinetics. Hence, the first highlight of the work is a multi-stage modeling framework which decouples the modeling complexity: a generalized reaction-diffusion model to describe the particle growth and the intra-particle dynamics; and a new multipopulation-balance representation to integrate simultaneous crosslinking, grafting and degradation reactions into the kinetic model. The last component enables the prediction of gel content and molecular weight development simultaneously up to full conversion. Advanced computational tools are developed to tackle the problem of computation. Acquisition of reliable parameters is the key to predict the process performance over a broad range of operation. However, we face the problem of large variation of polymerization parameters in the literature and limitations in obtaining analytical measurements for polymer composites. A hybrid approach is presented to reduce model distortion by selecting the most prominent parameters from a large parameter set. Parameters are ranked through successive orthogonalization of the sensitivity matrix, and then the selection is iteratively refined through statistical inference from simultaneous parameter estimation. Validated models obtained are therefore usable for process optimization. New operation policies are explored


The increasing resistance of bacteria to conventional antibiotics has encouraged strong efforts to develop new antimicrobial agents. In addition, exposure to biological warfare agents may cause highly progressive, acute infections that may be lethal. Unfortunately, an attack by biological warfare agents may go unnoticed until large groups of people begin exhibiting symptoms and diagnosis is not always possible. Therefore, the early use of broad-spectrum antibiotics might be life saving. Host defense peptides (HDPs) are widely considered to be excellent lead structures for the development of novel broad-spectrum antibiotics because of their broad-spectrum of antimicrobial activity. In addition, they can modulate the innate immune response and boost infection-resolving immunity, while dampening potentially harmful pro-inflammatory (septic) responses. In order to develop artificial variants of HDPs with optimized activity for therapeutic application in depth understanding of the structure-activity relationship (SAR) is crucial. We identified the minimal LPS-neutralizing domain of the best studied HDP in man, LL-37, by using a library with overlapping sequences. Correlations between the capacity of LL-37 fragments to modulate TLR responses and their physico-chemical properties revealed that cationicity and hydrophobicity are essential for the modulation of LL-37 mediated TLR responses. A similar approach was used to evaluate the structure-activity relationship of the newly discovered HDP chicken cathelicidin-2 (CATH-2), revealing that core elements within mature CATH-2 can be identified that are linked to antibacterial and/or immunomodulatory activities. The antibacterial activity is located in a relatively short segment of the N-terminus of the peptide while the immunomodulatory activity is located in the central area of the peptide. In this respect, the N-terminal segment is of particular interest to use as a template for further development, because it combines high antibacterial activity with low cytotoxicity. The N-terminal part of CATH-2, C1-15, was used as a paradigm to develop very small, stable peptides with improved antibacterial and endotoxin-neutralizing activities. Point mutations which induced slight changes in hydrophobicity of the peptides increased antibacterial or immunomodulatory activity. We conclude that CATH-2 derived peptides are effective antibacterial and anti-inflammatory agents in vitro and can potentially be used as lead molecules for the development of novel drugs for the control of infectious diseases. D-isomers and head-to-tail cyclic variants of these peptides may potentially enhance their therapeutic efficacy.


For Principles of Accounting courses that use a 50/50 split The Demo Docs System of instruction replicates the classroom experience by providing more "I get it" moments outside of class. We've talked to tons of POA instructors and our editors have even taken the accounting course (numerous times!) to figure out the following issue in this course that is consistent: Students understand (or "get it") right after you do a problem in class, but as soon as they leave class, with each passing hour, their ability to do the problems again and complete their homework diminishes to the point of them either having to come to office hours to get help, or they just quit and get behind in the course. On top of this, you can end up getting behind in the course as well, in order to keep everyone on track. The Demo Docs system helps to recreate the "I get it" moments outside of class--keeping both you and the students on track.


Market power is the most important determinant of liability in competition law cases throughout the world. Yet fundamental questions on the relevance of market power are underanalyzed, if examined at all: When and why should we inquire into market power? How much should we require? Should market power be viewed as one thing, regardless of the practice under scrutiny and independent of the pertinent anticompetitive and procompetitive explanations for its use? Does each component of market power have the same probative force? Or even influence optimal liability determinations in the same direction? This Article's ground-up investigation of market power finds that the answers often differ from what is generally believed and sometimes are surprising — notably, higher levels of certain market power measures or particular market power components sometimes disfavor liability. This gulf between conventional wisdom and correct understanding suggests the need to redirect research agendas, agency guidance, and competition law doctrine.


At a time when the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate it is becoming increasing clear that patients with severe mental illness including schizophrenia represent a high-risk group for abnormal glucose homeostasis. There is, therefore, a need to raise awareness of the link between diabetes and schizophrenia and provide clear advice and guidance to health care professionals involved in the management of these patients. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Many third world oil producers are encountering serious problems in building up a diversified export base, while West European oil and gas producers (Netherlands, United Kingdom) are suffering a decline in their traded goods (manufacturing) sector induced by real wage pressures. It is becoming increasingly clear that high but temporary oil revenues may be somewhat ora mixed blessing, the quip of The Economist notwithstanding. The mechanism behind this unbalance is clear enough: part of the oil revenues is spent on non-traded goods which leads to a real appreciation (i.e., a rise in the relative price of non-traded goods in terms of traded goods). This in turn draws resources out of the non-oil traded sector into the non-traded goods producing sector (Corden and Neary (1982); van Wijnbergen (1980)). One may say that this is an efficient response to the increase in income from oil production, the United Kingdom (Mexico, Egypt, ...) simply should move into oil derived industries and non-traded goods and forget about their manufacturing sector until oil reserves are exhausted. However, many developing countries are hesitant to take this advice: after all the post-World War II success stories in economic development involve without exception countries that promoted their traded goods sector aggressively. Moreover, it is a well-established 'stylised fact' that technological progress is faster in the traded non-sheltered sectors of an economy than in the non-traded sector (Balassa (1964) is an early reference). Considering the hypothesis that technological progress, rather than taking place exogenously with the passage of time, is a function of accumulated experience, the concern of countries like Egypt, Mexico or Indonesia is much easier to understand. Since Solow (1957) and Denison (1962) it is known that capital accumulation explain only a small part of economic growth. If most of economic growth is caused by Learning by Doing induced technologica...


Alzheimer Disease (AD) is one of the common forms of dementia which is an irreversible neurodegenerative progressive disorder of the brain which affects the elderly population above the age of 65. Alzheimer is a brain disease that causes problems with memory, thinking and behaviour. It is severe enough to interfere with daily activities. Alzheimer symptoms are characterized by memory loss that affects day-to-day function, difficulty performing familiar tasks, problems with language, disorientation of time and place, poor or decreased judgment, problems with abstract thinking, misplacing things, changes in mood and behaviour, changes in personality and loss of initiative. There are different types of tests associated with AD such as neuropsychological tests, laboratory tests and various imaging modalities for the early diagnosis of AD. Although these tests are available, they are inadequate for the definite diagnosis of the disease. In this paper we focus on the databases related to AD such as ADNI (Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative), TREAD (Trajectory-Related Early Alzheimer's Database), CAMD (Coalition Against Major Diseases), and NAAC( National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center). The use of these internet sources, soft computing techniques and image analysis from the different imaging modalities in an efficient way for making a definite diagnosis and early confirmation of AD. Our aim is to predict the early diagnosis in a reliable manner such that to combine the values of different tests with the help of soft computing techniques to develop software tool for a definite diagnosis.


"If a man reads or hears a criticism of anything in which he has an interest, watch ... if he shows concern with any question except 'is it true?' he thereby reveals that his own attitude is unscientific. Likewise if ... he judges an idea not on its merits but with reference to the author of it; if he criticizes it as 'heresy'; if he argues that authority must be right because it is authority ... The path of truth is paved with critical doubt, and lighted by the spirit of objective enquiry... the majority of people have resented what seems in retrospect to have been purely matter of fact ... nothing has aided the persistence of falsehood, and the evils resulting from it, more than the unwillingness of good people to admit the truth ... the tendency continues to be shocked by natural comment, and to hold certain things too 'sacred' to think about. ... How rarely does one meet anyone whose first reaction to anything is to ask: 'is it true?' Yet, unless that is a man's natural reaction, it shows that truth is not uppermost in his mind, and unless it is, true progress is unlikely." - Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Why Don't We Learn from History?, PEN Books, 1944; revised edition, Allen and Unwin, 1972.


Much economic activity in the United States today emanates from technological advances that optimize through contextualization. Innovations as varied as Airbnb and Uber, fintech firms, and precision medicine are transforming major sectors in the economy by customizing goods and services as well as refining matches between available resources and interested buyers. The technological advances that make up the optimizing economy create new challenges for government oversight of the economy. Traditionally, government has overseen economic activity through general regulations that aim to treat all individuals equally; however, in the optimizing economy, business is moving in the direction of greater individualization, not generalization. An ever more optimizing economy therefore demands an increasingly smart, optimizing system of regulatory oversight. To ensure that government can properly balance policy goals in the new economy, steps need to be taken now to enhance the technological and analytical sophistication of the regulatory workforce, improve government's information technology infrastructure, build stronger and more complete collections of data, and draw on policy lessons from other periods of technological innovations. In the optimizing economy, government regulators will continue to play a crucial role in protecting the public from market failures, but, to fulfill that role, government will need to follow the private sector's lead and build up its own capacity for optimization.


Background Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is highly protective against sexual acquisition of HIV among men having sex with men (MSM). The cost-effectiveness of PrEP will play a major role in deciding whether the NHS should introduce PrEP. Aim To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of introducing PrEP among MSM in the UK. Methods An individual-based dynamic stochastic model calibrated to the HIV epidemic among MSM in the UK was used. It was assumed that, from 2016, 50% of people who tested negative for HIV and who had periods of condomless sex with a long-term or casual partners would use PrEP during such periods. While on PrEP men would be tested three-monthly and PrEP discontinued if diagnosed HIV-positive or if not engaging in condomless sex for that three-month period (and restarting PrEP if again engaging in condomless sex). Results Preliminary results indicate that the introduction of PrEP would lead to a gain in quality-adjusted life years. If current costs of antiretrovirals and PrEP are assumed for the next 30 years (as is generally regarded as good practice in the base cases analysis) PrEP introduction is not cost-effective. However, when considering likely reductions in costs of antiretrovirals and PrEP, due to the use of generic drugs, PrEP would likely be cost-effective. Conclusion Our preliminary evaluation suggests that the use of PrEP for MSM during periods of condomless sex is not cost effective at current antiretroviral prices, but it would become cost-effective if drug prices are reduced after patent expiry date.


BACKGROUND
A third of children admitted to paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) in the United Kingdom (UK) are transported by paediatric critical care transport services (PCCTs). Parents have described the transfer journey as particularly stressful. Critical care nurses have a key role in mitigating the impact of the journey on parents. Evaluating parents' experiences is important to inform service improvements.

AIM AND OBJECTIVES
Our aim was to describe the development of a new measure of parents' experiences of PCCTs, derived from data collected in the Differences in access to Emergency Paediatric Intensive Care and care during Transport (DEPICT) study.

DESIGN
A descriptive cross-sectional survey was used.

METHODS
As part of the DEPICT study, a 17-item transport experience questionnaire was developed and given to parents of children transported by PCCTs to 24 UK PICUs during a 12-month period. Analyses included exploratory factor analysis and a validation review by a PCCT stakeholder group.

RESULTS
Families of 1722 children (1798 journeys) completed questionnaires. Five items were excluded from further analysis as correlation coefficients were <0.3. Two factors explained 53% of the variance and all 12 items loaded on one of these factors. Factor 1 (8 items) explained 47% of the variance, had excellent internal reliability and the clustered items were conceptually coherent with a specific relevance to PCCTs; these were offered for consideration, with other items possibly discarded. Twenty-eight PCCT clinicians reviewed the questions. Using a 70% agreement threshold, one additional, previously discarded, item was identified for inclusion, resulting in a nine-item experience measure.

CONCLUSION
Our brief measure of parents' experience of critical care transport provides a standardized measure that can be used across all PCCTs, enabling national benchmarking of services and potentially increasing the collection and use of parent experience data to improve services.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
Being able to measure experience provides an opportunity to understand how to make services better to improve experience.


This paper applies different methodologies through measurement and simulation for the partial shading analysis of SPV arrays. A two-diode photovoltaic solar cell model evaluates SPV arrays under shading conditions. Experimental data from two identical 1.5 kWp PV generators was used as a study case. One is subjected to shading caused by the branches of a tree, resulting in its electricity production being affected for several days, and the other is shadow-free. The authors use a methodology based on short-circuit of the solar cells to determine the different irradiance levels. It was considered because it avoids using several irradiance sensors to map the shaded and unshaded regions in a shadow SPV array. The two-diode photovoltaic solar cell model used was developed in MATLAB/Simulink. The applied model and the map irradiance methodology can be used to represent IV curves in complex shading. For example, what could help identify if a given SPV array is working on a Global Maximum Power Point or a Local Maximum Power Point. Furthermore, the experimental results demonstrated that the model and methodology are useful in understanding what happens with SPV arrays in very complex shadow situations.


Many interesting search problems can be formulated as bi-objective search problems, that is, search problems where two kinds of costs have to be minimized, for example, travel distance and time for transportation problems. Bi-objective search algorithms have to maintain the set of undominated paths from the start state to each state to compute the set of paths from the start state to the goal state that are not dominated by some other path from the start state to the goal state (called the Pareto-optimal solution set). Each time they find a new path to a state s, they perform a dominance check to determine whether this path dominates any of the previously found paths to s or whether any of the previously found paths to s dominates this path. Existing algorithms do not perform these checks efficiently. On the other hand, our Bi-Objective A* (BOA*) algorithm requires only constant time per check. In our experimental evaluation, we show that BOA* can run an order of magnitude (or more) faster than state-of-the-art bi-objective search algorithms, such as NAMOA*, NAMOA*dr, Bi-Objective Dijkstra, and Bidirectional Bi-Objective Dijkstra.


In 2013, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure will be 75 years old. The rulemaking process by which they are promulgated has been a source of gloom for a generation. Like a wayward Hollywood star, the process is in "crisis" and its fans are experiencing "malaise." This paper addresses the reasons for that gloom and concludes that some level of "crisis" is inevitable. At the macro level, judicial rulemaking is a legislative function being performed by an unelected body which is constitutionally empowered only to perform the task of deciding cases and controversies. At the micro level, the Rules Advisory Committee is subject to being second-guessed by Congress, is plagued by uncertainty about the statutory limits of its power under the Rules Enabling Act, and receives inconsistent signals from the Supreme Court concerning the desirability of rulemaking versus case law development. These forces impel the Advisory Committee to avoid clashes with Congress and the Supreme Court by attending to minor matters. Instead of leading, as it is institutionally constituted to do, the Committee has become focused on wordsmithing. It has become less an Advisory Committee than a Strunk & White Committee. The result is an unjustified barrage of trifling changes that burden the bench and bar and squander opportunities to address topics meaningful to the administration of justice. Ultimately, then, the gloom attending the federal judicial rulemaking process is largely the Committee's fault. Like the wayward star, it should change its ways, a process that starts by understanding the burdens and costs imposed by every procedural change. This paper is a contribution to a festschrift in honor of Professor Martin H. Redish.


The work of Jean-Ulrick Désert, a Haitian-born artist currently based in Berlin, Germany, has often used the image of the body, most notably in his earlier performative works such as Negerhosen2000, where members of the public were allowed to submit portraits of the artist wearing skin-colored lederhosen. This would later inspire the use of nearly lost images of nineteenth-century black Germans rendered as cyanotypes in Prussian blue. Désert's work progressively distanced itself from the use of his own body; for example, he hired a (white) actor to impersonate him as an art teacher. The artist would later use the bodies of his audiences to perform new works such as The Passion, where the viewer is invited to wear and model various soccer-fan costumes of their choosing, denuded of team or national references, for a permanent photographic record. Desert researched the symbolic use of the body by asserting that certain bodies are emblematic of magic and mystery in the belief imposed on certain historical figures, such as Josephine Baker. The artist therefore uses Baker's image as a leitmotif for a series entitled The Goddess Projects, where she is rendered as a translucent stained-glass Madonna and later as the portrait motifs of seven hundred fifty stars arranged as the celestial constellation above the Caribbean capital of Haiti at the instant of January 2010's devastating earthquake. Even today, his art practice continues to articulate the body, be it present or absent, such as his works presented in Dakar's eleventh biennale (2014) and Martinique's first biennale (2013).


Using blotter, agar plate and deep-freezing method as recommended by ISTA, the seed borne mycoflora of 24 samples of tomato seeds collected from vegetable markets of different parts of Pakistan was examined. Agar plate method yielded greater number of fungi followed by blotter and deep-freezing method. Of the 20 genera and 37 species of fungi viz., Alternaria alternate, A. tenuissima, Aspergillus candidus, A. flavus, A. fumigatus, A. niger, A. quadrilineatus, A. flavus, A. niger, A. quadrilineatus, A. sulphureus, A. terreus, A. wentii. Aspergillus sp., Auriobasidium pullulans, Cephaliophora irregularis, Chaetomium globosum, C. indicum, Cladosporium sp., Curvu-laria lunata, C. tubereulata, Drechslera australiensis, D. hawaiiensis, D. state of Cochliobolus specifer, Fusarium moniliforme, F. oxysporum, F. semitectum, F. solani, Mucor sp., Macrophomina phaseolina, Nigrospora oryzae, Penicillium sp., Paecilomyces variotii, P. lilacinus, Phoma sp., Rhizopus sp., Scopulariopsis sp., Stachybotrys atra, Syncephalastrum sp., and Trichoderma harzianum, atleast 21 species of fungi marked with an asterisk are new reports from tomato seed. Fusarium moniliforme, F. solani, F. oxysporum, A. alternate, D. australiensis, A. flavus and A. niger were found predominant.Surface sterilization of seeds showed greater incidence of Chaetomium spp., fusarium oxysporum, F. solani, A. flavus and A. alternate with reduction in infection by A. niger A. terreus, A. wentii, D. australiensis, Penicillium sp., and Rhizopus sp. Where naturally infected seed were sown in steam sterilized soil, C. globisum, F. solani, S. atra, C. herbarum and C. Iunata showed pre-and post emergenece infection of seedling, indicating their seed-borne nature. In pathogenicity test seed inoculation and soil infestation with conidia of F. moniliforme, F. oxysporum and A. alternate reduced seed germination and produced wilting with greater incidence where an increase in inoculum level of the pathogen was used.No fruiting was observed where naturally infected seeds were artificially inoculated with F. oxysporum and sown in sterilized soil. Infection by F. oxysporum was also detected from root, stem leaf and flower parts. Soil infested with both Meloidogyne javanica root knot nematode and F. oxysporum showed an increase in gall formatlion only where the population of M. javanica was 2000 eggs/pot and F. oxysporum was 10 cfu/pot, but at high nematode or F. oxysporum population seedling mortality was produced. Paecilomyces lilacinus reduced the infection of M. javanica and F. oxysporum but efficacy of P. lilacinus declined with an increase in inoculum level of the pathogens.Seed treatment with Captan or Benlate @ 2 g a.i./kg seed showed significant control of F. oxysporum infection in 60 days old tomato plants in both naturally and artificially infected seeds. Seed dressing with microbial antagonists viz., Paecilomyces lilacinus, Trichoderma harzianum and Rhizobium meliloti also reduced the seed-borne infection of F. oxysporum with better results found in R. meliloti treatment where significant increase in plant height and fresh weight was observed


This paper examines the implications of international fragmentation of production for trade patterns of Singapore and the other ASEAN economies, with emphasis on their regional and global economic integration. The analysis reveals that the degree of dependence of these countries on this new global division of labor is much larger compared to the other countries of East Asia, Europe and North America. China has emerged as an important trading partner for ASEAN within regional production networks. Network-related trade in parts and components has certainly strengthened economic interdependence among ASEAN countries and between ASEAN, China and the other major economies in East Asia, but this has not lessened the dependence of growth dynamism of these countries on the global economy. The operation of the regional cross-border production networks depends inexorably on trade in final goods with North America and the European Union.


This writeup presents a critique of the field of "Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)". Literature in this domain falls into two main, distinct categories: (1) algorithms or protocols, and (2) applicationcentric system design. A striking observation is that references across these two categories are minimal, and superficial at best. We argue that this is not accidental, and is the result of three main flaws in the former category of work. Going forward, an applicationdriven, bottom-up approach is required for meaningful articulation and subsequent solution of any networking issues in WSNs.


The Value Line Investment Survey, with its well-known timeliness and safety rankings, has managed to generate a superior performance record over time. The authors' findings show that Value Line's timeliness ranks were significant predictors of success during our study period, even when several other key financial and market characteristics are considered. The timeliness ranks, however, appear to be biased toward the selection of securities with above-average market risk, even when controlling for safety level. The authors conclude that individual investors should not use Value Line's safety ranks to assess risk, but should instead focus on security betas. Following Value Line's recommended strategy would lead investors to large market-capitalization stocks with significant price and earnings growth momentum. Despite the "value" in its title, Value Line certainly does not recommend value stocks.


PARP inhibitors have recently been approved as monotherapies for the treatment of recurrent ovarian cancer and metastatic BRCA-associated breast cancer, and ongoing studies are exploring additional indications and combinations with other agents. PARP inhibitors trap PARP onto damaged chromatin when combined with temozolomide and methyl methanesulfonate, but the clinical relevance of these findings remains unknown. PARP trapping has thus far been undetectable in cancer cells treated with PARP inhibitors alone. Here, we evaluate the contribution of PARP trapping to the tolerability and efficacy of PARP inhibitors in the monotherapy setting. We developed a novel implementation of the proximity ligation assay to detect chromatin-trapped PARP1 at single-cell resolution with higher sensitivity and throughput than previously reported methods. We further demonstrate that the PARP inhibitor–induced trapping appears to drive single-agent cytotoxicity in healthy human bone marrow, indicating that the toxicity of trapped PARP complexes is not restricted to cancer cells with homologous recombination deficiency. Finally, we show that PARP inhibitors with dramatically different trapping potencies exhibit comparable tumor growth inhibition at MTDs in a xenograft model of BRCA1-mutant triple-negative breast cancer. These results are consistent with emerging clinical data and suggest that the inverse relationship between trapping potency and tolerability may limit the potential therapeutic advantage of potent trapping activity. Implications: PARP trapping contributes to single-agent cytotoxicity of PARP inhibitors in both cancer cells and healthy bone marrow, and the therapeutic advantage of potent trapping activity appears to be limited.


An approach is described that utilizes fuzzy sets to develop a fuzzy qualitative simulation algorithm that allows a semiquantitative extension to qualitative simulation, providing three significant advantages over existing techniques. Firstly, it allows a more detailed description of physical variables, through an arbitrary, but finite, discretisation of the quantity space. The adoption of fuzzy sets also allows common-sense knowledge to be represented in defining values through the use of graded membership, enabling the subjective element in system modelling to be incorporated and reasoned with in a formal way. Secondly, the fuzzy quantity space allows more detailed description of functional relationships in that both strength and sign information can be represented by fuzzy relations holding against two or multivariables. Thirdly, the quantity space allows ordering information on rates of change to be used to compute temporal durations of the state and the possible transitions. Thus, an ordering of the evolution of the states and the associated temporal durations are obtained. This knowledge is used to develop an effective temporal filter that significantly reduces the number of spurious behaviors. >


Changes in atmospheric CO_2 variability during the twenty-first century may provide insight about ecosystem responses to climate change and have implications for the design of carbon monitoring programs. This paper describes changes in the three-dimensional structure of atmospheric CO_2 for several representative concentration pathways (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5) using the Community Earth System Model–Biogeochemistry (CESM1-BGC). CO_2 simulated for the historical period was first compared to surface, aircraft, and column observations. In a second step, the evolution of spatial and temporal gradients during the twenty-first century was examined. The mean annual cycle in atmospheric CO_2 was underestimated for the historical period throughout the Northern Hemisphere, suggesting that the growing season net flux in the Community Land Model (the land component of CESM) was too weak. Consistent with weak summer drawdown in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes, simulated CO_2 showed correspondingly weak north–south and vertical gradients during the summer. In the simulations of the twenty-first century, CESM predicted increases in the mean annual cycle of atmospheric CO_2 and larger horizontal gradients. Not only did the mean north–south gradient increase due to fossil fuel emissions, but east–west contrasts in CO_2 also strengthened because of changing patterns in fossil fuel emissions and terrestrial carbon exchange. In the RCP8.5 simulation, where CO_2 increased to 1150 ppm by 2100, the CESM predicted increases in interannual variability in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes of up to 60% relative to present variability for time series filtered with a 2–10-yr bandpass. Such an increase in variability may impact detection of changing surface fluxes from atmospheric observations.


Purpose
The social media have enabled companies to reach out to global markets and provided them with the opportunity to customize their strategies and offerings in an unprecedented way. Given the scant empirical evaluation of social media use in the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) business-to-business (B-to-B) context, this paper aims to offer a comprehensive description of the antecedents and consequences of social media use in international B-to-B SMEs and the way in which this use affects their export performance.

Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a sample of 277 British B-to-B SMEs and uses positivist research with a quantitative approach, adopting a survey strategy through questionnaires and structural equation modeling.

Findings
The results reveal that the use of social media influences export performance through the quality of international business contacts – understanding customers' views and preferences, brand awareness and knowledge of the competition in various international markets. This study contributes to the emerging literature on B-to-B SMEs digital marketing by determining the mechanism through which B-to-B SMEs may benefit from using the social media in their efforts to export.

Originality/value
Despite the promising potential of the social media, especially for export-oriented companies, very limited attention has hitherto been paid to the relationship between the use of social media and export performance. This study attempts to fill the gap by investigating the extent to which actual use of social media impacts on the performance of exporting firms.


The idea of the roving librarian on a college campus is not new. This mobile information service allows students, faculty, staff, and community library users access to personalized information service in a variety of areas and promotes library service. A roving librarian project gives librarians the time to focus on serving patrons as individuals rather than on the building as the primary resource. It also allows librarians the opportunity to have formal and informal conversations with students which can enhance information services. Roving may well contribute to the retention of community college students and may also serve to strengthen the quality of students' educational experiences and aid in their academic success.


Within the mainstream environmental movement, regulated hunting is commonly defended as a tool for preserving and managing populations of wild animals for future generations. We argue that this justification, encapsulated in the seven principles of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, perpetuates settler colonialism—an institutional and theoretical apparatus that systemically eliminates Indigenous peoples, expropriates Indigenous lands, and disqualifies Indigenous worldviews— insofar as it manifests an anthropocentric ideology that objectifies hunted
animals as "natural resources" to be extracted. Because this ideology is antithetical to Indigenous views, its imposition through hunting regulation interrupts Indigenous lifeways, contributing to the destruction of Indigenous identity.


ABSTRACT Darwin famously opined that the most likely place of origin of the common ancestor of African apes and humans is Africa, given the distribution of its living descendents. But it is infrequently recalled that immediately afterwards, Darwin, in his typically thorough and cautious style, noted that a fossil ape from Europe, Dryopithecus, may instead represent the ancestors of African apes, which dispersed into Africa from Europe. Louis de Bonis and his collaborators were the first researchers in the modem era to echo Darwin's suggestion about apes from Europe. Resulting from their spectacular discoveries in Greece over several decades, de Bonis and colleagues have shown convincingly that African ape and human clade members (hominines) lived in Europe at least 9.5 million years ago. Here I review the fossil record of hominoids in Europe as it relates to the origins of the hominines. While I differ in some details with Louis, we are in complete agreement on the importance of Europe in determining the fate of the African ape and human clade. There is no doubt that Louis de Bonis is a pioneer in advancing our understanding of this fascinating time in our evolutionary history.


The young PSR B0540-69.3 in the LMC is the only pulsar (except the Crab pulsar) for which a near-UV spec- trum has been obtained. However, the absolute flux and spectral index of the HST/FOS spectrum are significantly higher than suggested by previous broad-band time-resolved groundbased UBVRI photometry. To investigate this difference, observations with ESO/VLT/FORS1 and analysis of HST/WFPC2 archival data were done. We show that the HST and VLT spectral data for the pulsar have >50% nebular contamination and that this is the reason for the above-mentioned difference. The broadband HST spectrum for the range 3300-8000 A is clearly nonthermal and has a negative spectral index, Fν ∝ ν −α with αν = 1.07 +0.20 −0.19 . This is different from the almost flat spectrum of the Crab pulsar, and also steeper than for the previously published broadband photometry of PSR B0540-69.3. We have also studied the spatial variations of the brightness and spectral index of the Pulsar Wind Nebula (PWN) around the pulsar, and find no significant spectral index variation over the PWN. The HST data show a clear asymmetry of the surface brightness distribution along the major axis of the torus-like structure of the PWN with respect to the pulsar position, also seen in Chandra/HRC X-ray images. This is different from the Crab PWN and likely linked to the asymmetry of the surrounding SN ejecta. The HST/WFPC2 archival data have an epoch separation of 4 years, and this allows us to estimate the proper motion of the pulsar. We find a motion of 4.9 ± 2. 3m as yr −1 (corresponding to a transverse velocity of 1190 ± 560 km s −1 ) along the southern jet of the PWN. If this is confirmed at a higher significance level by future observations, this makes PSR B0540-69.3 the third pulsar with a proper motion aligned with the jet axis of its PWN, which poses constraints on pulsar kick models. To establish the multiwavelength spectrum of the pulsar and its PWN, we have included recent Chandra X-ray data, and discuss the soft pulsar X-ray spectrum based on spectral fits including absorption by interstellar gas in the Milky Way, LMC as well as the supernova ejecta. We have compared the multiwavelength spectra of PSR B0540-69.3 and the Crab pulsar, and find that both PSR B0540-69.3 and the Crab pulsar have a weaker flux in the optical than suggested by a low-energy power-law extension of the X-ray spectrum. This optical depression is more severe for PSR B0540-69.3 than for the Crab pulsar. The same trend is seen for the PWNe of the two pulsars, and continues for low energies also out in the radio band. We discuss possible interpretations of this behavior.


Learning a novel motor skill is associated with well characterized structural and functional plasticity in the rodent motor cortex. Furthermore, neuroimaging studies of visuomotor learning in humans have suggested that structural plasticity can occur in white matter (WM), but the biological basis for such changes is unclear. We assessed the influence of motor skill learning on WM structure within sensorimotor cortex using both diffusion MRI fractional anisotropy (FA) and quantitative immunohistochemistry. Seventy-two adult (male) rats were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (skilled reaching, unskilled reaching, and caged control). After 11 d of training, postmortem diffusion MRI revealed significantly higher FA in the skilled reaching group compared with the control groups, specifically in the WM subjacent to the sensorimotor cortex contralateral to the trained limb. In addition, within the skilled reaching group, FA across widespread regions of WM in the contralateral hemisphere correlated significantly with learning rate. Immunohistological analysis conducted on a subset of 24 animals (eight per group) revealed significantly increased myelin staining in the WM underlying motor cortex in the hemisphere contralateral (but not ipsilateral) to the trained limb for the skilled learning group versus the control groups. Within the trained hemisphere (but not the untrained hemisphere), myelin staining density correlated significantly with learning rate. Our results suggest that learning a novel motor skill induces structural change in task-relevant WM pathways and that these changes may in part reflect learning-related increases in myelination.


This technical note proposes a simple analytical model for predicting the shear strength behavior of fiber-reinforced granular soils under high confining stresses, where it can be assumed that pullout of fibers does not take place. The model presents an analytical expression derived from the force-equilibrium consideration incorporating several significant parameters describing the characteristics of the granular soil and the fibers, such as fiber content, aspect ratio, modulus of elasticity of fibers, specific gravity of fiber material, soil-fiber friction, initial orientation with respect to shear plane, normal confining stress, specific gravity of soil particles, angle of shearing resistance of soil, and void ratio of soil. The expression shows that inclusion of fibers in the granular soil induces cohesion, may be called apparent cohesion, as well as increase in normal stress on the shear failure plane, which are proportional to the fiber content and aspect ratio, implying that increase in shear strength is also proportional to the fiber content and aspect ratio. The results based on this model are discussed for some specific range of parameters in their practical ranges. It is observed that the increase in shear strength of the granular soil due to the presence of fibers is significantly contributed by the apparent cohesion, and the contribution to the shear strength from the increase in normal stress is limited. The model shows that the increase in shear strength follows the trends of variation as reported in some previous works.


Enterprise social networks are organizationally bounded online platforms for users to interact with another and maintain interpersonal relationships. The allure of these technologies is often seen in intra-organizational communication, collaboration and innovation. How these technologies actually support organizational innovation efforts remains unclear. A specific challenge is whether digital content on these platforms converts to actual innovation development efforts. In this study we set out to examine innovation-centric content flows on enterprise social networking platforms, and advance a conceptual model that seeks to explain which innovation conveyed in the digital content will traverse from the digital platform into regular processes. We describe important constructs of our model and offer strategies for the operationalization of the constructs. We conclude with an outlook to our ongoing empirical study that will explore and validate the key propositions of our model, and we sketch some potential implications for industry and academia.


Last June the Supreme Court decided two momentous personal jurisdiction cases: one, Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations v. Brown, limited general jurisdiction to its rightful narrow role as a way to establish state court jurisdiction, while the other, J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro, barely staved off a second attempt to narrow "stream of commerce" as a vehicle for jurisdiction. Although both cases made those valuable contributions to doctrine, they both denied a court in the United States to United States citizens who sued foreign defendants for torts, effectively leaving the plaintiffs without remedies for the allegedly negligent acts of the defendants. Goodyear Dunlop Tires involved an accident outside the United States, while Nicastro arose from an injury in New Jersey. With globalization bringing increased international business and travel, there is sure to be a significant increase in injuries suffered by U.S. by citizens as a result of the negligent activities of foreign businesses and a resultant increase in the type of litigation involved in the two new cases. This article critiques both cases and then examines whether non-citizens are protected by constitutional personal jurisdiction rights. Outside the context of personal jurisdiction, the Supreme Court has held since the nineteenth century that the scope of constitutional protections varies depending on two factors: whether a party is a citizen of the United States or a foreign national and whether a non-citizen resides in the United States or abroad. Without any real consideration, the Supreme Court in Goodyear Dunlop Tires and Nicastro applied the same personal jurisdiction law to non-citizen, non-resident defendants as it applies to defendants who are U.S. citizens. This article argues that non-resident, non-citizens defendants are not protected by the constitutional personal jurisdiction law developed in domestic litigation. Freed from constitutional constraints, the Supreme Court has the ability to fashion a new law of personal jurisdiction for foreign defendants better suited for the tort claims of U.S. citizens, taking into account the interests of the U.S. plaintiffs. The article provides a foundation for developing a new law of personal jurisdiction for foreign defendants.


This paper aims to provide knowledge and help discover types of Baltic buildings, by recognizing and understanding their structural elements. The presented approach allows generating a recognizable spatial configuration of the structural ornamental elements that are traces of the past and re-presentation of the same line today. Tie rod anchors contemporaneously have a historical, aesthetic, formal and structural role. Their structural behavior is analyzed producing digital models. Results show the high quality of the element Gothic design, of essential historic importance, and their more structural efficiency than traditional Italian bar shaped tie rod ends. It is shown how, maintaining their formal, historical, representative value, the tie rod anchor structural functionality is increased due to the particular northern European local craft manufacture. The results presented in this paper are based on work developed with Giuseppe Faella, Full Professor of Structural Engineering at the Second University of...


Articulated character animation can be performed by manually creating and rigging a skeleton into an unfolded 3D mesh model. Such tasks are not trivial, as they require a substantial amount of training and practice. Although methods have been proposed to help automatic extraction of skeleton structure, they may not guarantee that the resulting skeleton can help to produce animations according to user manipulation. We present a sketching-based skeleton extraction method to create a user desired skeleton structure which is used in 3D model animation. This method takes user sketching as an input, and based on the mesh segmentation result of a 3D mesh model, generates a skeleton for articulated character animation.
In our system, we assume that a user will properly sketch bones by roughly following the mesh model structure. The user is expected to sketch independently on different regions of a mesh model for creating separate bones. For each sketched stroke, we project it into the mesh model so that it becomes the medial axis of its corresponding mesh model region from the current viewer perspective. We call this projected stroke a "sketched bone". After pre-processing user sketched bones, we cluster them into groups. This process is critical as user sketching can be done from any orientation of a mesh model. To specify the topology feature for different mesh parts, a user can sketch strokes from different orientations of a mesh model, as there may be duplicate strokes from different orientations for the same mesh part. We need a clustering process to merge similar sketched bones into one bone, which we call a "reference bone". The clustering process is based on three criteria: orientation, overlapping and locality.
Given the reference bones as the input, we adopt a mesh segmentation process to assist our skeleton extraction method. To be specific, we apply the reference bones and the seed triangles to segment the input mesh model into meaningful segments using a multiple-region growing mechanism. The seed triangles, which are collected from the reference bones, are used as the initial seeds in the mesh segmentation process. We have designed a new segmentation metric [1] to form a better segmentation criterion. Then we compute the Level Set Diagrams (LSDs) on each mesh part to extract bones and joints. To construct the final skeleton, we connect bones extracted from all mesh parts together into a single structure.
There are three major steps involved: optimizing and smoothing bones, generating joints and forming the skeleton structure. After constructing the skeleton model, we have proposed a new method, which utilizes the Linear Blend Skinning (LBS) technique and the Laplacian mesh deformation technique together to perform skeleton-driven animation. Traditional LBS techniques may have self-intersection problem in regions around segmentation boundaries. Laplacian mesh deformation can preserve the local surface details, which can eliminate the self-intersection problem. In this case, we make use of LBS result as the positional constraint to perform a Laplacian mesh deformation. By using the Laplacian mesh deformation method, we maintain the surface details in segmentation boundary regions.
This thesis outlines a novel approach to construct a 3D skeleton model interactively, which can also be used in 3D animation and 3D model matching area. The work is motivated by the observation that either most of the existing automatic skeleton extraction methods lack well-positioned joints specification or the manually generated methods require too much professional training to create a good skeleton structure. We dedicate a novel approach to create 3D model skeleton based on user sketching which specifies articulated skeleton with joints. The experimental results show that our method can produce better skeletons in terms of joint positions and topological structure.


Recommendation: The administration of prophylactic antibiotics before total ankle arthroplasty (TAA) potentially reduces the incidence of surgical site infection (SSI) and/or periprosthetic joint infection (PJI). Weight-based (of at least 2 g) cefazolin administered intravenously within 60 minutes before the procedure can be an adequate choice for antibiotic prophylaxis. If the patient has a beta-lactam anaphylaxis, we recommend an appropriate alternative antibiotic effective against Staphylococcus. It is unclear whether prophylaxis should be given as a single dose or as multiple doses. Level of Evidence: Strong. Delegate Vote: Agree: 100%, Disagree: 0%, Abstain: 0% (Unanimous, Strongest Consensus)


Reports have recently suggested that eosinophils have the potential to modulate allergen-dependent pulmonary immune responses. The studies presented expand these reports demonstrating in the mouse that eosinophils are required for the allergen-dependent Th2 pulmonary immune responses mediated by dendritic cells (DCs) and T lymphocytes. Specifically, the recruitment of peripheral eosinophils to the pulmonary lymphatic compartment(s) was required for the accumulation of myeloid DCs in draining lymph nodes and, in turn, Ag-specific T effector cell production. These effects on DCs and Ag-specific T cells did not require MHC class II expression on eosinophils, suggesting that these granulocytes have an accessory role as opposed to direct T cell stimulation. The data also showed that eosinophils uniquely suppress the DC-mediated production of Th17 and, to smaller degree, Th1 responses. The cumulative effect of these eosinophil-dependent immune mechanisms is to promote the Th2 polarization characteristic of the pulmonary microenvironment after allergen challenge. The Journal of Immunology , 2011, 187: 000–000.


Despite its importance to the Web, multimedia content is often neglected when building and designing knowledge-bases: though descriptive metadata and links are often provided for images, video, etc., the multimedia content itself is often treated as opaque and is rarely analysed. IMGpedia is an effort to bring together the images of Wikimedia Commons (including visual information), and relevant knowledge-bases such as Wikidata and DBpedia. The result is a knowledge-base that incorporates similarity relations between the images based on visual descriptors, as well as links to the resources of Wikidata and DBpedia that relate to the image. Using the IMGpedia SPARQL endpoint, it is then possible to perform visuo-semantic queries, combining the semantic facts extracted from the external resources and the similarity relations of the images. This paper presents a new web interface to browse and explore the dataset of IMGpedia in a more friendly manner, as well as new visuo-semantic queries that can be answered using 6 million recently added links from IMGpedia to Wikidata. We also discuss future directions we foresee for the IMGpedia project.


Purpose To evaluate the presence and causes of left brachiocephalic vein (LBCV) steno-occlusive lesions in patients with loss of normal waveform in Doppler ultrasound of the left internal jugular vein (LIJV). Materials and Methods We performed Doppler ultrasound of both internal jugular veins in 1912 patients who received an implantable venous access port from August 2013 to January 2016. Among them, 106 patients showed loss of normal Doppler waveforms of the LIJV (56 men and 50 women; mean age, 61.4 ± 11.6 years). We retrospectively analyzed the presence and causes of the LBCV steno-occlusive lesions on contrast-enhanced chest computed tomography (CT) images. Results LBCV steno-occlusive lesions were present in 82 patients (77.4%). The causes of these lesions were anatomic structures (n = 70, 85.4%), tumorous lesions (n = 11, 13.4%), and thrombus (n = 1, 1.2%). The anterior anatomic structures to the LBCV causing stenosis were bony structures (n = 50), right upper lobe (n = 11), and mediastinal fat (n = 9). The posterior anatomic structures to the LBCV resulting in stenosis were right brachiocephalic artery (n = 58), left common carotid artery (n = 7), and aortic arch (n = 5). The tumorous lesions resulting in stenosis were mediastinal lymph node (n = 5), thymic lesions (n = 3), lymphoma (n = 1), lung cancer (n = 1), and bone tumor (n = 1). Conclusions It is necessary to suspect steno-occlusive lesion of the LBCV from various causes and to use caution when performing central venous catheterization in cases with loss of a normal Doppler waveform.


Abstract
 The chaotic taxonomy of the subfamily Ornithoctoninae Pocock, 1895 is partially addressed, with a focus on redefining the arboreal genera Lampropelma Simon, 1892, Omothymus Thorell, 1891, and Phormingochilus Pocock, 1895. Previous works placing heavy emphasis on unstable taxonomic characters are addressed and stable taxonomic features presented for the clear delineation of males of arboreal ornithoctonine genera. The male of Phormingochilus everetti Pocock, 1895 is described for the first time. A new species, Omothymus rafni sp. nov. is described from historical material collected in Sumatra. Lampropelma violaceopes Abraham, 1924 is transferred to Omothymus based on comparative leg measurements and geographical location comb. nov. Lampropelma nigerrimum arboricola Schmidt & Barensteiner, 2015 is transferred to the genus Phormingochilus with full species status acknowledged, giving the new combination Phormingochilus arboricola comb. nov. Omothymus thorelli Simon, 1901 is considered a junior synonym of Omothymus schioedtei Thorell, 1891 syn. nov., based on similar morphology and geographical locations. Phormingochilus carpenteri Smith & Jacobi, 2015 is transferred to the genus Lampropelma based on comparative leg measurements and geographical location comb. nov. Phormingochilus kirki Smith & Jacobi, 2015 is considered a junior synonym of L. carpenteri syn. nov. Phormingochilus fuchsi Strand, 1906 is transferred to the genus Omothymus based on comparative leg measurement and geographic distribution comb. nov. Phormingochilus tigrinus Pocock, 1895 is removed from synonymy with P. everetti based on the lack of justification for the synonymy comb. rest. Omothymus dromeus Chamberlin, 1917 is removed from Omothymus and returned to the restored genus Melognathus comb. rest.


In September 2010, world leaders met for the High Level Plenary Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals ("MDGs Summit"). The Summit attracted high level participation from Member States, launched a number of important aid initiatives, and the Summit Outcome document reflected an unprecedented consensus by Member States on the importance of human rights for efforts to achieve the MDGs. The present paper critically appraises the MDGs and World Summit Outcome document from a human rights perspective, as the basis for recommendations on how human rights could be positioned to better effect in negotiations towards the post-MDGs development agenda. Following a short introduction, the first substantive part of the paper examines the history, impacts and ongoing significance of the MDGs in re-framing and re-focusing international and national poverty reduction efforts and policies. The paper then surveys the main conceptual and methodological problems relating to the existing global MDGs monitoring framework, relating these to a deeper analysis of the political economy of the international development debate, informed by the incipient efforts of international donor agencies to re-define sectoral monitoring frameworks, targets and indicators. This sets the stage for an analysis of the human rights implications of the World Summit Outcome document of September 2010, as an aid to assessing the international community's cognisance of the gaps in the existing MDGs edifice, and its willingness to address them in a successor global development agreement. The prospects for a successful post-2015 global partnership for poverty reduction will depend, in part, on forging more effective cross-disciplinary coalitions and communities of practice, building the theoretical and evidence bases for a constructive synthesis between human rights and MDGs-based development policy-making. Hence the third part of the paper offers a conceptual framing apt to accommodate divergent disciplinary perspectives on the relationship between human rights and development, with a particular focus on the comparative contributions to policy-making of human rights and welfare economics. The paper rejects the dominant narrative of the "value added" of human rights to development policy-making in favour of a more nuanced and embracing, even if non-prescriptive, conceptual framework that accommodates both deontological and consequentialist perspectives. The paper concludes by venturing a set of substantive and process-related parameters that should guide the reformulation of a post-2015 global poverty reduction compact, positioning human rights arguments and identified priorities clearly and strategically within an increasingly challenging constellation of threats to international human rights and underlying ethics of global social justice.


This thesis reports on a four-year field study conducted at the Saskatchewan regional office of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, a large department of the Government of Canada. Over the course of the study, a sweeping government-wide accounting reform took place entitled the Financial Information Strategy. An ethnographic study was conducted that documented the management accounting processes in place at the regional office prior to the Financial Information Strategy reform, the organization's adoption of the new accounting system associated with this initiative, and the state of the organization's management accounting system once the implementation was complete. This research, therefore, captures in detail a management accounting change process in a public sector organization. This study employs an interpretive perspective and draws on institution theory as a theoretical framework. The concept of loose coupling and insights from the literature on professions were also employed in the explanation-building process for the case. This research contributes to institution theory and the study of management accounting change by recognizing conflicting institutional forces at the organizational level. An existing Old Institutional Economics-based conceptual framework for management accounting change is advanced and improved upon through the development of a new conceptual framework that incorporates the influence of wider institutional forces, the concepts of open and closed organizational systems and loose coupling, and the recognition of varying rates of change and institutionalization of organizational activity sets. Our understanding of loose coupling is enhanced by the interpretation of institutional influences developed in this study as is the role of professionalization as a normative influence in public sector organizations.


Since sustainability and environmental issues rose lately, lightweighting has been the point of interest for automotive and aerospace sectors. Lightweighting reduces the fuel consumption of the vehicles and as a result of this reduces emissions. Aluminum, especially wrought aluminum alloys, have large potentials for dramatic weight reduction of structural parts while maintaining the safety and performance. Wrought aluminum alloys are used in automotive skin, bumpers and suspension parts etc. Lightweight suspension parts improve the ride quality and handling, additional to fuel consumption and emission reduction. Holistic life cycle approach takes into account the material flows and related information flows in order to achieve these material flows through the life cycle of the components as well as performance characteristics not only in technical and economic terms but also environmental and social terms. It is necessary to have seamless information flow through the life cycle of the components that could be enabled by the closed-loop product life cycle management (PLM). Closed-loop PLM may also help collection of life cycle information which is necessary to generate performance characteristics and distribution of performance characteristics among life cycle actors.


Objective: To describe the frequency of color vision deficiency among Pakistani adults presenting for pre-employment health screening in a tertiary care hospital. Methods: The cross-sectional study was carried out at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, and the data was collected for color vision deficiency, age, gender, and job applied for from pre-employment examination during 2013-2014. IBM SPSS 20 was used for statistical analysis. Results: Three thousand four hundred and thirty seven persons underwent pre-employment screening during 2013 and 2014; 1837 (53.44%) were males and 1600 (46.65%) females. The mean age was 29.01 (±6.53) years. A total of 0.9% (32/3437) persons had color vision deficiency with male being 1.4% and female 0.4%. Conclusion: Color vision deficiency was observed in 0.9% of candidates screened for pre-employment health check up in a tertiary care hospital. The color vision deficiency was predominantly present in male individuals.


This Article builds on efforts to promote urban agriculture and remove legal and practical obstacles to its development. Specifically, we explore concerns regarding land tenure. Urban agriculture development can be retarded by uncertainties in landownership and agriculturalists' land rights. We explore property tools that could be helpful to urban agriculturalists (both farmers and gardeners). One thing we learned quickly in our research is that the challenges (and therefore the most helpful tools) vary greatly by place. For this reason, we present examples of urban agriculture efforts across the United States to demonstrate the varying challenges that jurisdictions face and to detail which property law tools have effectively been put to use. Some of tools (like negotiating long-term leases or getting permits to farm city-owned land) are already in place. Others (like using self-help nuisance concepts) are more theoretical. What we find most intriguing and potentially widely applicable is the development of urban agricultural land trusts and uses of partial property rights like conservation easements and other servitudes. We end with a broader discussion of how land trusts and the property tools they have at their disposal serve to meet current urban agricultural needs.


1. The effect of 25° head-up tilt on blood pressure, urinary catecholamines, and creatinine clearance has been studied in untreated essential hypertensive patients and normotensive subjects. 2. The mean rise in diastolic pressure for all subjects with hypertension was 4.9 mmHg which did not differ significantly from the mean rise of 5.4 mmHg in the normal subjects. Ten of forty-one hypertensives had a diastolic pressure response greater than the response in any of eleven normal subjects, with a rise of greater than 10 mmHg. 3. The increase in urinary noradrenaline excretion with tilt was greater in these orthostatic hypertensive patients (1.74 μg/h) than in either the remaining hypertensive (0.34 μg/h) or the normotensive subjects (0.56 μg/h). Overall there was a significant correlation between changes in diastolic blood pressure and urinary noradrenaline. 4. Creatinine clearance was reduced by tilting. The mean reduction was similar for normally reacting hypertensive and normotensive subjects (6.0% and 7.2% respectively). The ten orthostatic hypertensive patients, however, had a greater reduction in creatinine clearance (23.4%), and in the hypertensive group as a whole changes in diastolic blood pressure and creatinine clearance were negatively correlated. 5. Those patients with excessive response to tilt tended to be young, not obese, and with recent onset of hypertension when documentation of this was adequate.


Introduction: Clinically, proprioception is evaluated by detecting the externally imposed passive movement or by the ability to reposition a joint to a predetermined position. This research was aimed to find the effect of coordination exercise on proprioception error of knee injured male professional footballers. Effectiveness of specific exercise on proprioception was assessed by photographic analysis to find the outcome. Methodology: The study was a randomized control trial. A total of 106 samples selected on the base of inclusion and exclusion criteria. The samples were randomly divided equally into experimental and control group for the study. The experimental group received coordination exercises, and the control group received traditional stretching and strengthening exercises. Results: The proprioception error for right and left knee joint found significantly reduced in experimental group after coordination exercise program. F ratio for the right and left side was 42.36 and 112.31, respectively, which are more than the table value 3.024, so they are significant at 0.05 levels. Conclusion: The study concluded that coordination exercise can improve proprioception of the knee joint among male professional footballers.


"Anger is a signal and one worth listening to," writes Dr. Harriet Lerner, in her renowned classic that has transformed the lives of millions of readers.While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence our anger, to deny it entirely, or to vent it in a way that leaves us feeling helpless and powerless. In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches women to identify the true sources of our anger and to use anger as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.


This book examines migration and colonialism in the ancient Near East in the late second millennium BCE, with a focus on the Levant. It explores how the area was shaped by these movements of people, especially in forming the new Iron Age societies.

The book utilises recent sociological studies on group identity, violence, migration, colonialism and settler colonialism in its reconstruction of related social and political changes. Prime examples of migrations that are addressed include those involving the Sea Peoples and Philistines, ancient Israelites and ancient Arameans. The final chapter sets the developments in the ancient Near East in the context of recent world history from a typological perspective and in terms of the legacy of the ancient world for Judaism and Christianity. Altogether, the book contributes towards an enhanced understanding of migration, colonialism and violence in human history.

In addition to academics, this book will be of particular interest to students of this period in the Ancient Near East, as well anyone working on migration and colonialism in the ancient world. The book is also suitable to the general public interested in world history.


In October 1931, Dick Tracy made his debut on the American newspaper pages. Through extensive research and interviews with Chester Gould (the creator of "Dick Tracy"), his assistants, Dick Locher (the current artist), Mark Allan Collins (who scripted the stories for 15 years), and many others associated with the strip, Dick Tracy as a cultural icon emerges. The artists are fully revealed and Dick Tracy paraphernalia and the 1990 movie Dick Tracy are discussed. Dick Tracys appearances in other media--books, comics, radio, movie serials, "B" movies, television dramas, and animated cartoons--are fully covered.


An exact and compact analytical formalism has been developed to calculate the Q factor for circular Bragg resonators. The electromagnetic fields, energy, and power flow have been expressed analytically relying on the transfer matrix coefficients. The Q factor has been derived for both TM and TE polarizations. The proposed formalism is then compared with two numerical methods.


OBJECTIVE
This study evaluated the feasibility and impact of gradually reducing relatively high doses of fluphenazine decanoate by one-half for chronically impaired, poor inner-city patients with schizophrenia.

METHOD
Forty-three patients currently receiving an average of 23 mg (0.3 mg/kg) of fluphenazine decanoate every 2 weeks were divided alternately into a group to remain at current doses (control group) and a group to undergo stepwise 50% dose reduction over 5 months under double-blind conditions. Clinical status and side effects were assessed quarterly for a year. Relapse was determined clinically and by changes in psychopathology ratings.

RESULTS
Eighty-six percent (N = 37) of the patients (control group, N = 17; reduced-dose group, N = 20) completed the study. The groups did not differ at baseline in demographic or clinical variables or neuroleptic dose. In the reduced-dose group, doses were lowered to an average of 11.5 mg every 2 weeks. The two groups did not differ throughout the year in number of relapses, and hospitalization rates fell similarly in both (overall, by about 67%). Clinical measures changed little. Extrapyramidal symptoms worsened in the control group but improved slightly in the reduced-dose group. Tardive dyskinesia worsened in both groups, but less in the reduced-dose group.

CONCLUSIONS
Maintenance neuroleptic doses much lower than the conventional ones can be achieved safely in schizophrenic patients by gradual reduction, without clinical worsening and perhaps with fewer extrapyramidal symptoms and less tardive dyskinesia. The two-thirds lower hospitalization rate, with substantial financial savings, apparently was due to nonspecific effects of research intervention.


Discussions of teaching - even some publications - abound with anecdotal evidence. Our intuition often supplants a systematic, scientific approach to finding out what works and what doesn't work. Yet, research is increasingly demonstrating that our gut feelings about teaching are often wrong. In this talk I will discuss some research my group has done on gender issues in science courses and on the effectiveness of classroom demonstrations.


From baby pictures in the cloud to a high school's digital surveillance system: how adults unwittingly compromise children's privacy online. Our children's first digital footprints are made before they can walk—even before they are born—as parents use fertility apps to aid conception, post ultrasound images, and share their baby's hospital mug shot. Then, in rapid succession come terabytes of baby pictures stored in the cloud, digital baby monitors with built-in artificial intelligence, and real-time updates from daycare. When school starts, there are cafeteria cards that catalog food purchases, bus passes that track when kids are on and off the bus, electronic health records in the nurse's office, and a school surveillance system that has eyes everywhere. Unwittingly, parents, teachers, and other trusted adults are compiling digital dossiers for children that could be available to everyone—friends, employers, law enforcement—forever. In this incisive book, Leah Plunkett examines the implications of "sharenthood"—adults' excessive digital sharing of children's data. She outlines the mistakes adults make with kids' private information, the risks that result, and the legal system that enables "sharenting." Plunkett describes various modes of sharenting—including "commercial sharenting," efforts by parents to use their families' private experiences to make money—and unpacks the faulty assumptions made by our legal system about children, parents, and privacy. She proposes a "thought compass" to guide adults in their decision making about children's digital data: play, forget, connect, and respect. Enshrining every false step and bad choice, Plunkett argues, can rob children of their chance to explore and learn lessons. The Internet needs to forget. We need to remember.... Download ebook, read file pdf Why We Should Think before We Talk about Our Kids Online


Weight loss. Revitalized energy. Better sleep habits. Increased immunity to disease. Clearer skin. You've heard about the benefits of cleanses--now you can experience them for yourself! With this book, you can forget fad, crash cleanses that are not right for your goals, or worse, put your health in jeopardy. Inside you will learn the ins and outs of healthy cleansing, including: How cleanses actually work Different types of cleanses (it's not all lemon juice and pepper!) Which cleanse is right for your lifestyle Tips to be safe and realistic about cleanses and your results Adjusting to eating after your cleanse Packed with 75 different cleanse recipes and featuring material that eases you into a post-cleanse diet, this book is your complete cleansing guide!


Dendroclimatology in the Eastern Mediterranean (EM) region has made important contributions to the understanding of climate variability on timescales of decades to centuries. These contributions, beginning in the mid-20th century, have value for resource management, archaeology, and climatology. A gradually expanding tree-ring network developed by the first author over the past 15 years has been the framework for some of the most important recent advances in EM dendroclimatology. The network, now consisting of 79 sites, has been widely applied in large-scale climatic reconstruction and in helping to identify drivers of climatic variation on regional to global spatial scales. This article reviews EM dendroclimatology and highlights contributions on the national and international scale.


Abstract We present new marine seismic‐reflection profiles and bathymetric maps to characterize Holocene depositional patterns, submarine landslides, and active faults beneath eastern and central Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska, which is the eastern rupture patch of the 1964 M w  9.2 earthquake. We show evidence that submarine landslides, many of which are likely earthquake triggered, repeatedly released along the southern margin of Orca Bay in eastern PWS. We document motion on reverse faults during the 1964 Great Alaska earthquake and estimate late Holocene slip rates for these growth faults, which splay from the subduction zone megathrust. Regional bathymetric lineations help define the faults that extend 40–70 km in length, some of which show slip rates as great as 3.75  mm/yr. We infer that faults mapped below eastern PWS connect to faults mapped beneath central PWS and possibly onto the Alaska mainland via an en echelon style of faulting. Moderate ( M w >4) upper‐plate earthquakes since 1964 give rise to the possibility that these faults may rupture independently to potentially generate M w  7–8 earthquakes, and that these earthquakes could damage local infrastructure from ground shaking. Submarine landslides, regardless of the source of initiation, could generate local tsunamis to produce large run‐ups along nearby shorelines. In a more general sense, the PWS area shows that faults that splay from the underlying plate boundary present proximal, perhaps independent seismic sources within the accretionary prism, creating a broad zone of potential surface rupture that can extend inland 150 km or more from subduction zone trenches.


This Article provides a novel investigation of how law both enables and constrains the ability of city residents to claim, name, and often rename their neighborhoods. A rich interdisciplinary dialogue in areas such as geography and sociology has emerged on the significance of place names, but this literature has largely ignored the legal dimensions of the phenomenon, with its implications for urban governance, belonging, and community conflict. This Article's empirical exploration of the role of law in change and conflict regarding neighborhood identity thus advances the discourse both for legal scholars focused on urban dynamics and across disciplines.

From gentrification fights sparked by efforts to rename the southern part of Harlem as "SoHa," to a successful community movement to change the name of the area once known as South Central to "South Los Angeles," neighborhood identity has long sparked controversy and is increasingly leading to proposals for legal change. These conflicts raise fundamental questions about urban governance and people's sense of ownership over their communities: How do neighborhoods actually get their formal names and why is neighborhood identity so hotly contested? And how does law mediate what we use to identify local communities?

Understanding the texture and significance of neighborhood naming conflicts, moreover, carries implications in two distinct areas of legal theory. First, in terms of property, neighborhood identity provides insights into collective cultural ownership in the absence of formal rights, reflecting the central tension in property theory between economic value and personhood. Likewise, conflicts over neighborhood naming shed new light on our understanding of local government law, foregrounding often-overlooked dynamics of formality and informality and the micro-scale interplay of public and private forces in urban governance. These related theoretical frames, finally, supply insights into the normative stakes in conflicts over neighborhood naming, where the advantages of formalization must be balanced against dynamics of exclusion and vulnerability, suggesting notes of caution for any attempt to reform the legal foundations of neighborhood identity.


Should the jury have acquitted George Zimmerman of murder? Should enraged husbands receive a pass for killing their cheating wives? Should the law treat a homosexual advance as adequate provocation for killing? Criminal law scholars generally answer these questions with a resounding "no." Theorists argue that criminal laws should not reflect bigoted perceptions of African Americans, women, and gays by permitting judges and jurors to treat those who kill racial and gender minorities with undue mercy. According to this view, murder defenses like provocation should be restricted to ensure that those who kill minority victims receive the harshest sanctions available. Equality is thus achieved by ratcheting up punishment. There is a similar bias in assessment of the death penalty, where those who kill racial minorities are treated more leniently than those who kill whites and are often spared execution. But the typical liberal response here is to call for abolition rather than more frequent executions. Equality is thus achieved by ratcheting down punishment. This article asserts that the divergence between the accepted scholarly positions on the provocation defense and capital punishment can be explained by provocation critics' choice to concentrate on spectacular individual instances of leniency toward those who kill gender minorities and death penalty theorists' tendency to view the entire institution of capital punishment as racist and retrograde. The article then provides the institutional sketch of noncapital murder law currently missing from provocation analysis by discussing sentencing practices, the demographic composition of murder defendants, and the provocation defense's potential role as a safety valve. It concludes that inserting institutional analysis into the critical assessment of provocation might undermine the prevailing scholarly dogma supporting pro-prosecution reform.


The purpose of this study were: 1) to determine the increase of production and
profitability of every process of production as a result of the application of
information technology in designing batik motifs labako than ever before, and 2) To
study the response of markets to post the application of informati on technology after
leaving the previous tradition. This type of research is descriptive quantitative and
qualitative research methods and sample surveys are craftsmen babtik labako wrote
in the Village Sumberpakem Sumberjambe District of Jember, digital -based design
motives and end customers in several places marketing products. To answer the first
objective analysis of the advantages and the use of different test average t -test, while
the second is used to answer the purpose of descriptive analysis tool with models
presenting the frequency table. The results of this study revealed that 1) the average
level of production and profit batik craft Labako Sumberjambe Jember increased
respectively by 27% and 36.04% compared to previous test results supported the ttest

where t count> t-table on real level of 1%; and 2) the average response of
craftsmen on the application of information technology are increasingly satisfied and
enjoys his job. In addition, There are some market response to the results of batik
batik labako cent said production quality is very good, it had been able to meet
market demands and motives are quite exotic, but others also said there needs to be
accelerated production, modification pattern is less varied and basic tobacco leaf
picture is less clear, which each amounted to 8.57%, 12.86%, 21.43%, 30.00%, 7.14%,
and 10.00% of respondents.


Italian opera gained an odd resonance in eighteenth-century British sensibility. By turns loved and hated, it acted on the British imagination as a catalyst both for some of the age's most brilliant satire, and for some of the century's most unusual musical extravagances. This dissertation argues that, despite (or in some ways because of) the eventual failure of Italian serious opera and its English hybrid forms to attain status within the musical canon, the progress of opera played a vital role in shaping and reflecting the formation of British national identity, and that, reciprocally, attempts to find a national identity played a large part in opera's fate in Britain. For the competing forces and factions of Italian and English opera in 1730s London, the bid for supremacy was inevitably linked with an appeal to authority (whether that of royalty, the nobility, the populace, or ideologies of the nation) that involved stressing their link with the national interest. The first chapter examines the relationship between the consistently politicised language used to discuss opera and the mode of civic action and public spiritedness still requisite amongst the Nobility, charting ways in which aristocratic support of this foreign genre might be reconciled to British concerns. The second chapter looks to a particularly problematic instance of opera's apparent politicisation in the 1730s Lord Hervey's analysis of the division between Handel and the 'Opera of the Nobility' to propose a possible 'solution' through the two Ariannas of 1734. In so doing, it shows opera's role within a culture of emulation, emphasising the flexibility and social contingency of operatic interpretation. Coterminous with Italian opera, but of a lower status, were ballad and burlesque opera, their critique of national cultural identity all the sharper for their role as cultural and formal boundary markers. Chapter three demonstrates though exploration of the curious and much-criticised English 'opera', Hurlothrumbo (1729), that British dislike of opera was bound up with the deep-seated fear of luxury. While 'Hurlothrumbo' was used as a derogatory epithet until the end of the century, this operatic work also provides a fascinating example of how opera producers might try to negotiate British unease. Chapter four examines the concerted attempt in the 1730s to associate English opera and musical theatre with topics of national interest through composers' and playwrights' appropriation of the stories of historical British ballads as the local equivalents of the venerable texts of Italian opera. The fact that many of the works discussed are 'problem pieces', considered generically, authorially or hermeneutically unstable, points not only to the reason for indigenous opera's failure to achieve canonical status, but also to a more fundamental problem with the role of opera (and, indeed, music in general) in the still-forming British identity. In the final chapter I turn from the problems of opera to the undoubted success of Handel, who himself made the transition from opera to oratorio; I evaluate the composer's apotheosis as a national hero through examining manifestations of his image in the 1730s and at the time of his death.


NASA's vision for space exploration stresses the cultivation of human-robotic systems. Similar systems are also envisaged for a variety of hazardous earthbound applications such as urban search and rescue. Recent research has pointed out that to reduce human workload, costs, fatigue driven error and risk, intelligent robotic systems will need to be a significant part of mission design. However, little attention has been paid to joint human-robot teams. Making human-robot collaboration natural and efficient is crucial. In particular, grounding, situational awareness, a common frame of reference and spatial referencing are vital in effective communication and collaboration. Augmented Reality (AR), the overlaying of computer graphics onto the real worldview, can provide the necessary means for a human-robotic system to fulfill these requirements for effective collaboration. This article reviews the field of human-robot interaction and augmented reality, investigates the potential avenues for creating natural human-robot collaboration through spatial dialogue utilizing AR and proposes a holistic architectural design for human-robot collaboration.


Last September, a pair of U.S. astronomers spotted the first "Goldilocks planet": a body outside the solar system orbiting its star at a distance that would leave it neither too hot nor too cold to harbor Earth-like life. Then a few days later, rival researchers announced that their more-detailed observations showed no sign of the putative planet. Gliese 581g was reclassified as "unconfirmed," and the Goldilocks milestone remains unclaimed. Disappointing, yes, but for exoplanetary research, the reversal was barely a bump in the road. At current rates of discovery, astronomers say, the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet is sure to come along soon, and many others will follow. Researchers are so confident that they are already gearing up to look for Goldilocks herself. They aim not merely to identify which planets might support life but to show that some of them do.


The problem of this study was to identify some concerns of Korean kindergarten teachers at different points in their careers, based on the conceptual framework of Katz's (1972, 1977, 1985) theory of preschool teacher development. This study also described the variations in these concerns on the basis of some teacher characteristics including teaching experience, certification, educational background, inservice training, and teaching assignment. The subjects for this study were 174 volunteers who were Korean kindergarten teachers in Seoul, Korea. The concerns of the teachers were expressed through the Kindergarten Teacher Concerns Questionnaire, consisting of two parts: (a) background information, and (b) the Kindergarten Teacher Concern Rating Scale (KTCRS), consisting of a list of 54 items developed by Tsai (1990), reflecting the four areas of concerns—Survival, Consolidation, Renewal, and Maturity—formulated by Katz. A Likert type 5-point scale indicating the degree of concerns was used in the questionnaire as the scoring system. The following conclusions were drawn from this study: 1. The concerns of the Korean kindergarten teachers were developmental in nature in terms of preoccupation with a specific area of concerns at different points in the teachers' careers. This result tended to follow a sequence of stages as posited by Katz (1972, 1977, 1985). 2. The sample characteristics of this study strengthened the belief that the qualifications for Korean kindergarten teachers need to be raised for the sake of development of early childhood education in Korea. 3. Certification and inservice training might enhance the teachers' job awareness and expectation level of job performance. The findings implied that preservice and inservice education need to be based on teacher concerns. The recommendations for future research included (a) replicating this study with a nationwide sample for a broader generalization, and (b) tracing the processes of change in Korean kindergarten teacher concerns through qualitative research such as longitudinal studies, case studies, or intensive interviews.


COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection, has recently been announced as a pandemic all over the world. Plenty of diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic knowledges have been enriched from clinical studies since December 2019. However, animal models, particularly non-human primate models, are urgently needed for critical questions that could not be answered in clinical patients, evaluations of anti-viral drugs and vaccines. In this study, two families of non-human primates, Old world monkeys (12 Macaca mulatta, 6 Macaca fascicularis) and New world monkeys (6 Callithrix jacchus), were experimentally inoculated with SARS-CoV-2. Clinical signs were recorded. Samples were collected for analysis of viral shedding, viremia and histopathological examination. Increased body temperature was observed in 100% (12/12) M. mulatta, 33.3% (2/6) M. fascicularis and none (0/6) of C. jacchus post inoculation of SARS-CoV-2. All of M. mulatta and M. fascicularis showed chest radiographic abnormality. Viral genomes were detected in nasal swabs, throat swabs, anal swabs and blood from all 3 species of monkeys. Viral shedding from upper respiratory samples reached the peak between day 6 and day 8 post inoculation. From necropsied M. mulatta and M. fascicularis, the tissues showing virus positive were mainly lung, weasand, bronchus and spleen. No viral genome was seen in any of tissues from 2 necropsied C. jacchus. Severe gross lesions and histopathological changes were observed in lung, heart and stomach of SARS-CoV-2 infected animals. In summary, we have established a NHP model for COVID-19, which could be used to evaluate drugs and vaccines, and investigate viral pathogenesis. M. mulatta is the most susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, followed by M. fascicularis and C. jacchus. One Sentence Summary M. mulatta is the most susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection as compared to M. fascicularis and C. jacchus.


Most taxa of aquatic invertebrates exhibit (1) strong variation in number and size of off- spring, and (2) an association between adult size and mode of development, and also between mode of development and size of the clutch. These patterns suggest that a similar set of constraints affects both critical life-history traits and physiology of most taxa. Evidence suggests that oxygen is limiting during early development in aggregated egg masses of marine invertebrates. We studied whether oxygen availability during early development could be a determinant of clutch size in the gastropod Acanthia monodon. We estimated intra- and extracapsular oxygen availability throughout embryo development using optic fibers and incubated capsules at different oxygen partial pressures (hypoxia, normoxia and hyperoxia) throughout development. We also compared the ratio between nurse eggs and embryos in capsules collected in situ as well as in experimental capsules. We found that intracapsular oxygen availability decreased as embryos developed (80% air saturation in early stages to 40% air saturation in late stages). The mean number of embryos increased as oxygen avail- ability increased from hypoxia to hyperoxia, while the total number of eggs remained constant. The mean number of embryos that developed under normoxia was similar to that recorded in field- collected capsules. We suggest that oxygen availability determines clutch size in this species, prob- ably as a result of oxygen competition among siblings. This may also occur in other taxa of marine invertebrates, since oxygen is limiting in egg masses in general.


ABSTRACT: The Cradle to Cradle (C2C) paradigm is emerging as an important regenerative design approach. C2C is aiming to create a positive footprint of the built environment, beyond carbon neutrality. However, there are very few studies that address the application of the C2C concept in building design. More importantly, there is hardly any documentation processes on methods or tools currently being used to design and evaluate C2C buildings. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to design, model and assess a C2C building prototype with a focus on energy and materials. The research methodology is based on literature review, case study design and performance (energy/materials) evaluation (DesignBuilder/SimaPro). The paper articulates the values, principles and goals of the C2C paradigm and translates them through the prototype design in the Swiss context. The results of the prototype design point to a 74% independence from non-renewable energy resources, compensating the operating and embodied energy during the building's life. On the other hand only 8% of the building materials were totally recyclable according to the C2C principles. The design process delivers insights on the application of the C2C concept in the built environment reporting on the limitation and means of improvement. Keywords: Cradle to Cradle, building design, energy, materials, biological and technical cycle, assessment