Dynamic analysis is an important technique used in malware analysis and is complementary to static analysis. Thus far, virtualization has been widely adopted for building fine-grained dynamic analysis tools and this trend is expected to continue. Unlike User/Kernel space malware analysis platforms that essentially co-exist with malware, virtualization based platforms benefit from isolation and fine-grained instrumentation support. Isolation makes it more difficult for malware samples to disrupt analysis and fine-grained instrumentation provides analysts with low level details, such as those at the machine instruction level. This in turn supports the development of advanced analysis tools such as dynamic taint analysis and symbolic execution for automatic path exploration.
The major disadvantage of virtualization based malware analysis is the loss of semantic information, also known as the semantic gap problem. To put it differently, since analysis takes place at the virtual machine monitor where only the raw system state (e.g., CPU and memory) is visible, higher level constructs such as processes and files must be reconstructed using the low level information. The collection of techniques used to bridge semantic gaps is known as Virtual Machine Introspection.
Virtualization based analysis platforms can be further separated into emulation and hardware virtualization. Emulators have the advantages of flexibility of analysis tool development and efficiency for fine-grained analysis; however, emulators suffer from the transparency problem. That is, malware can employ methods to determine whether it is executing in an emulated environment versus real hardware and cease operations to disrupt analysis if the machine is emulated. In brief, emulation based dynamic analysis has advantages over User/Kernel space and hardware virtualization based techniques, but it suffers from semantic gap and transparency problems.
These problems have been exacerbated by recent discoveries of anti-emulation malware that detects emulators and Android malware with two semantic gaps, Java and native. Also, it is foreseeable that malware authors will have a similar response to taint analysis. In other words, once taint analysis becomes widely used to understand how malware operates, the authors will create new malware that attacks the imprecisions in taint analysis implementations and induce false-positives and false-negatives in an effort to frustrate analysts.
This dissertation addresses these problems by presenting concepts, methods and techniques that can be used to transparently and precisely analyze both desktop and mobile malware using virtualization. This is achieved in three parts. First, precise heterogeneous record and replay is presented as a means to help emulators benefit from the transparency characteristics of hardware virtualization. This technique is implemented in a tool called V2E that uses KVM for recording and TEMU for replaying and analysis. It was successfully used to analyze real-world anti-emulation malware that evaded analysis using TEMU alone. Second, the design of an emulation based Android malware analysis platform that uses virtual machine introspection to bridge both the Java and native level semantic gaps as well as seamlessly bind the two views together into a single view is presented. The core introspection and instrumentation techniques were implemented in a new analysis platform called DroidScope that is based on the Android emulator. It was successfully used to analyze two real-world Android malware samples that have cooperating Java and native level components. Taint analysis was also used to study their information ex-filtration behaviors. Third, formal methods for studying the sources of false-positives and false-negatives in dynamic taint analysis designs and for verifying the correctnessof manually defined taint propagation rules are presented. These definitions and methods were successfully used to analyze and compare previously published taint analysis platforms in terms of false-positives and false-negatives.


Impulsivity may lead to several unfortunate consequences and maladaptive behaviors for clinical and non-clinical people. It has a key role in many forms of psychopatology. Although many studies discuss the negative impact of it, few of them emphasize the relationship between cognitive impulsiveness and decision making in non-clinical subjects. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of cognitive impulsiveness on decision making and explore the strategies used by non-clinical participants to solve problems. For this purpose, we apply two measures of impulsivity: the self-report Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) and the performance based Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). This is the first study that compares self-report impulsiveness based on BIS-11 with performance-based reflectivity measured by CRT. Moreover, we evaluate participants' reasoning processes employed to answer CRT questions based on the calculation expressions and data organization they made while answering the CRT, notice that we apply the instruments with pen and paper. These reasoning processes are related to the role of Executive Functions for decision making and its relationship with impulsiveness. The sample consists of 191 non-clinical adults, either professionals or undergraduate students from the fields of business, management or accounting. Results show that cognitive impulsiveness may negatively affect decision making, and that who calculate CRT questions on the paper sheet make better decisions. Moreover, there is no difference in strategies used by impulsive and non-impulsive people during a decision making. Finally, people who inhibit their immediate answers also perform better during a decision making.


In this paper we build upon recent scholarship on the globalization of youth culture and sport to examine the growing popularity of action sports in the Middle East. We focus on the development of the urban physical practice of parkour (also known as free running)—the act of running, jumping, leaping through an urban environment as fluidly, efficiently and creatively as possible—among Middle Eastern youth. Drawing upon interviews and media analysis of various print, digital and social media, we reveal how youth (particularly young men) in Gaza developed their own unique parkour group, despite various social, cultural, economic, physical and psychological obstacles. We explain the proactive approaches adopted by these young men to find appropriate training spaces, to develop the skills of local children and youth, and to support their peer groups. In particular, we describe how these young men are creatively engaging social media (e.g., YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) to gain inspiration from the transnational parkour community, and also for opening new dialogue and establishing informal cultural exchanges with parkour enthusiasts around the world. We conclude by offering some broader comments for the Sport for Development and Peace Building (SDP) movement, encouraging youth-focused SDP initiatives to move beyond the 'deficit model' and toward more collaborative projects that provide space for local voices and acknowledge youth agency.


The principal water target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is to ensure environmental sustainability by halving the proportion of people without access to safe water by 2015. Although great strides have been made in meeting this challenge since the year 2000, the safety of many of these water supplies remains unknown. Acknowledging the weaknesses of current water quality and hydrogeological means of assuring microbial safety, this paper has the objective of developing improved methods for the assessment and management of microbiological water safety based on a 'risk' paradigm. This paper provides evidence for the risk assessment of both conventional aquifer pathways and localised (short circuiting) pathways to 25 wells of three well technology types in Mozambique between 2002 and 2005. * Findings from the research outline improve methods of risk assessment and management by demonstrating that (1) the predominant source of contamination was from animal faeces rather than from latrines/septic tanks, (2) short circuiting is a significant risk to shallow groundwater in developing countries, (3) the use of alternative indicator organisms (e.g. enterococci) may improve risk understanding and (4) the World Health Organisation Water Safety Plans are recommended as an appropriate method of risk management.


Most work in heuristic search focused on path finding problems in which the cost of a path in the state space is the sum of its edges' weights. This paper addresses a different class of path finding problems in which the cost of a path is the product of its weights. We present reductions from different classes of multiplicative path finding problems to suitable classes of additive path finding problems. As a case study, we consider the problem of finding least and most probable paths in a Markov Chain, where path cost corresponds to the probability of traversing it. The importance of this problem is demonstrated in an anomaly detection application for cyberspace security. Three novel anomaly detection metrics for Markov Chains are presented, where computing these metrics require finding least and most probable paths. The underlying Markov Chain is dynamically changing, and so fast methods for computing least and most probable paths are needed. We propose such methods based on the proposed reductions and using heuristic search algorithms.


Supply chain management is among the most critical factors necessary for creating a competitive advantage for a company. In the current competitive market environment, firms strive to respond as well as offer its customers services faster. The information technology market is huge and is fast growing. Particularly, cloud computing is currently shaping the way various activities such as accounting, finance, and supply chain management are organized in the organization. Accounting information systems (AIS), being part of the management information systems, represents one of the most significant systems in the economic unit and it varies across different organizations depending on their application and the importance attached to them. Several organizations integrate and automate their business operations through the use of AIS. AIS is a computer-based system that increases the control as well as enhances the coordination of the operations of the organization. Some of the primary functions performed by AIS are data maintenance, data collection, data security, knowledge management, and information generation. Good AIS seeks to take advantage of surrounding circumstances to improve the quantity and quality of the information so as to enhance the users' delivery mechanism hence providing different users with diverse types of important information to meet their demands. This paper examines how the integration of AIS assists in improving the company's supply chain management in the Bahraini retail market. This research study found out that AIS increases the efficiency of information sharing between various parties such as the suppliers and other stakeholders thereby streamlining supply chain management in retail firms in Bahrain.


The rapid growth in the vernacular broadcast media sector in Kenya has been lauded as key in the social and economic transformation of the rural communities. However, how they can be used in conflict management still remains datable. The aim of this study was to evaluate the contemporary vernacular media intervention in the Abakuria community which has been prone to internecine intra-ethnic conflicts for a long time. The study analysed sources of information from broadcast media and their role in conflict resolution; evaluated the existing media reportage of intra-ethnic conflict; identified shortfalls in the usage of existing broadcast media platforms for resolving ethnic conflict and assessed the suitability of vernacular broadcast media in resolution of intra-ethnic conflict among the Abakuria community. The study used libertarian and social responsibility theories to advance understanding of the media in enhancing conflict management. It used a mixture of survey and qualitative methods of research design. Data was obtained from 162 victims of previous conflict and 162 local community members as well as 12 media practitioners and 12 key informants from the four divisions of Mabera, Ntimaru, Kegonga and Kehancha. Analysis of previous media reports was also done.


This article draws on a qualitative research study which set out to explore women's experiences and views of pornography within the broader context of conflicting feminist positions on pornography. The research methodology posed an implicit criticism of the kind of 'findings' familiar from mainstream psychological research: semi-structured interviews were conducted with women from diverse backgrounds in the UK, and feminist theory and discourse analysis were used to inform interpretation of their accounts. Although the question of feminism was not explicitly raised by the interviewer, it emerged as a recurrent theme in interviews, with interviewees suggesting that the feminist anti-porn stance in particular has influenced their perspective on pornography. Their accounts show that women's experiences are variegated, individual and complex, and that discourses of pornography and feminism may be negotiated in unpredictable ways.


Section 56 of the Electronic Communications Act 36 of 2005 (the ECA) prohibits radio and television broadcasting services from transmitting party election broadcasts (PEBs) and political advertisements except during an election period. The recent decision of the House of Lords in R (on the application of Animal Defenders International) v Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport [2008] 3 All ER 193 (HL) may have implications for the interpretation and application (and, possibly, the constitutionality) of this provision.


This article explores familial jurisdiction over citizenship, using the study of Anishinaabe citizenship practices in the Fort William First Nation, through the lens of adoption stories. The author highlights how families are able to use adoption to regulate citizenship, bringing new citizens into the nation, while also selecting those who do not belong. The familial system of affirmation is different than a Certificate of Indian Registration and requires collective action, rather than individual self-determination. Belonging at Fort William is further argued to not depend solely on blood quantum, Indian status, or band membership but, rather, depends on active community determination and accountability to the community on an on-going basis. Seen this way, adoption narratives reveal a citizenship order that challenges Canada's claimed jurisdiction to discern who belongs with First Nations.


With social computing systems and algorithms having been shown to give rise to unintended consequences, one of the suspected success criteria is their ability to integrate and utilize people's inherent cognitive biases. Biases can be present in users, systems and their contents. With HCI being at the forefront of designing and developing user-facing computing systems, we bear special responsibility for increasing awareness of potential issues and working on solutions to mitigate problems arising from both intentional and unintentional effects of cognitive biases. This workshop brings together designers, developers, and thinkers across disciplines to redefine computing systems by focusing on inherent biases in people and systems and work towards a research agenda to mitigate their effects. By focusing on cognitive biases from content or system as well as from a human perspective, this workshop will sketch out blueprints for systems that contribute to advancing technology and media literacy, building critical thinking skills, and depolarization by design.


Extreme-scale transmissions exhibit schedules dependent upon the equipment used to generate data, availability of the collaborators who will investigate and analyze the data, and the availability of storage and supercomputing resources, which must be dedicated to distribution, backup, computation, and visualization of data. Given such a wide array of dependencies, these applications, which are often scientific in nature, offer the luxury of in-advance reservation of network resources prior to the demand uptimes. Advance reservation (AR) allows for efficient scheduling around or in cooperation with competing reservations from other applications. Thiswork focuses on static inputs to two classifications of AR demands: with and without slidingwindow flexibility.We further introduce the ability for a demand to be assigned tomore than one dedicated wavelength at different points throughout its lifetime depending on availability. This λ-switching functionality is incorporated at time-slot granularity, which limits the overhead associated with reconfiguring wavelength resources at runtime and enhances opportunities for scheduling efficiency. A novel λ-switching integer linear program is presented to evaluate this enhancement under varying degrees of temporal flexibility. Detailed and novel proofs are provided, which demonstrate that AR scheduling with and without λ-switching is in the complexity class NP-complete. Conservative heuristics are presented to harness the benefits of λ-switching while lowering the trade-off from transceiver reconfiguration overhead. Lower bounds also are developed as a baseline comparison for these heuristics, and we evaluate these solutions through extensive simulation. We also introduce the notion of considering timeslotted, wavelength-routed networks from the perspective of a finer resource granularity represented by the intersection of the temporal and spectral resource domains.


Background Body region of onset and functional disability are key components of disease heterogeneity in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Objectives To evaluate patterns of grey matter pathology in the motor cortex and correlate focal structural changes with functional disability. Methods We conducted a single-centre neuroimaging study of a cohort of 33 cognitively normal patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and 44 healthy controls. A voxel-wise generalised linear model was used to investigate the distribution of disease burden within the motor cortex in relation to clinical disability. Results Patients with bulbar onset have bilateral focal atrophy in the bulbar segment of the motor homunculus compared with patients with limb onset who have focal cortical changes in the limb segment of their motor strip. Furthermore, the extent to which different body regions are affected in ALS corresponds to the extent of focal grey matter loss in the primary motor cortex. Cortical ALS pathology also extends beyond the motor cortex affecting frontal, occipital and temporal regions. Conclusions Focal grey matter atrophy within the motor homunculus corresponds with functional disability in ALS. The findings support the existing concepts of cortical focality and motor phenotype heterogeneity in ALS.


Abstract The growth of landscape-scale land management necessitates the development of methods for large-scale vegetation assessment. Field data collection and analysis methods used to assess ecological condition for the 47 165-h North Spring Valley watershed are presented. Vegetation cover data were collected in a stratified random design within 6 Great Basin vegetation types, and the probability of detecting change in native herbaceous cover was calculated using power analyses. Methods for using these quantitative assessment data are presented to calculate a departure index based on reference condition information from LANDFIRE (an interagency effort to map and model fire regimes and other biophysical characteristics at a mid-scale for the entire United States) Biophysical Setting models for the mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. subsp. vaseyana [Rydb.] Beetle) vegetation type. For mountain big sagebrush in the North Spring Valley landscape, we found that the earliest successional classes were underrepresented and that mountain big sagebrush moderately invaded by conifers was more abundant than predicted by the LANDFIRE reference based on the historic range of variability. Classes that were most similar to the reference were mountain big sagebrush with the highest conifer cover and late development mountain big sagebrush with perennial grasses. Overall, results suggested that restoration or approximation of the historic fire regime is needed. This method provides a cost-effective procedure to assess important indicators, including native herbaceous cover, extent of woody encroachment, and ground cover. However, the method lacks the spatial information that would allow managers to comprehensively assess spatial patterns of vegetation condition across the mosaics that occur within each major vegetation type. The development of a method that integrates field measurements of key indicators with remotely sensed data is the next critical need for landscape-scale assessment.


Poor solubility remains one of the more challenging and critical tasks in drug discovery and development, and it is also the main cause of low bioavailability and poor therapeutic efficacy of the drug. Many solubility enhancement techniques are available in literature like cyclodextrin inclusion complexes, salt formation, solid dispersion, drug delivery carrier approach and prodrug approach are useful, but the most widely used technique for enhancing the solubility of poorly soluble drugs is by encapsulating the drug is lipid-based excipients, which enhances solubilization of the drug in excipient matrix, lead to enhanced bioavailability and improved therapeutic efficacy. Many lipid-based drug delivery systems are available like self-emulsifying drug delivery system (SEDDS), liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, nanostructured lipid carrier, which are widely used for lipophilic drugs. In this review, we highlighted some novel mechanisms for drug absorption through lipid-based systems and its commercial applications in the pharmaceutical and


A method is reported that makes use of holography to study the kinetics of the radical photopolymerization of acrylamide in a polyvinyl alcohol when the Kogelnik theory is applied. A mechanism of unimolecular termination by the radicals that initiate the polymerization reaction is postulated to calculate the quantum yield, the molar-extinction coefficient, the index of refraction, and the thickness of the film. The conversion percentage of monomers is obtained along with the ratio of rate constants of the mechanism of polymerization from the nonlinear fit of the transmittance curves, their angular response, and the temporal evolution of diffraction efficiency. Compared with previous holographic techniques, this method has the advantage of predicting these chemical parameters using all the data points of the temporal diffraction efficiency variation rather than being restricted to the linear zone of these curves. In this way the whole reaction process, not just the initial process, is taken into account.


Spin-selective charge recombination of photogenerated radical ion pairs within a series of donor-bridge-acceptor (D-B-A) molecules, where D = phenothiazine (PTZ), B = oligo(2,7-fluorenyl), and A = perylene-3,4:9,10-bis(dicarboximide) (PDI), PTZ-FL(n)-PDI, where n = 1-4 (compounds 1-4), is studied using time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance (TREPR) spectroscopy in which the microwave source is either continuous-wave or pulsed. Radical ion pair TREPR spectra are observed for 3 and 4 at 90-294 K, while the neutral triplet state of PDI ((3)*PDI) is observed at 90-294 K for 2-4 and at 90 K for 1. (3)*PDI is produced by three mechanisms, as elucidated by its zero-field splitting parameters and spin polarization pattern. The mechanisms are spin-orbit-induced intersystem crossing (SO-ISC) in PDI aggregates, direct spin-orbit charge-transfer intersystem crossing (SOCT) from the singlet radical pair within 1, and radical pair intersystem crossing (RP-ISC) as a result of S-T(0) mixing of the radical ion pair states in 2-4. The temperature dependence of the spin-spin exchange interaction (2J) shows a dramatic decrease at low temperatures, indicating that the electronic coupling between the radical ions decreases due to an increase in the average fluorene-fluorene dihedral angle at low temperatures. The charge recombination rates for 3 and 4 decrease at low temperature, but that for 2 is almost temperature-independent. These results strongly suggest that the dominant mechanism of charge recombination for n >or= 3 is incoherent thermal hopping, which results in wire-like charge transfer.


The purpose of the article is to present the results of a critical literature review (CLR) on Design of experiments (DoE) in the service industry.,A critical review of existing literature review across various databases including Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar and Emerald Insight were searched for the identification of relevant papers. The authors searched relevant journal articles for a time period of 25 years (1994–2019).,A total of 29 industry case studies of DoE applications were identified spanning healthcare, retail, logistics, education, marketing, after sales and catering business. The industrial experimentation strategies adopted by the case study organisations were screening, factorial designs, Taguchi, response surface method and split-plot. It was apparent that there are only a handful number of papers showing the applications of DoE across the service sector and this motivates for pursuing further research into this topic by the authors.,The findings of the study can be very useful for middle and senior managers to understand the benefits of implementing this powerful technique for increased understanding of service processes, as well as for optimising service performance. Moreover, the paper presents some of the fundamental challenges, as well as skills needed for the successful application of DoE.,To the best of our knowledge, this is the first CLR on DoE and its applications in the service sector. The findings of the study can be beneficial to both academic and industrial communities to understand some of the challenges and fundamental gaps which need to be tackled in the future.


We examine how gender, racial, and ethnic variation in unemployment and Unemployment Insurance (UI) receipt changed over time in the U.S. economy and how these changes are influenced by shifts in the occupational and industrial composition of employment. Using Current Population Survey (CPS) data, we confirm that, in the past 50 years, the unemployment rates for women, nonwhites, and Hispanics have been converging to those of the rest of the population. By 1992, women had the same unemployment rates as men; whereas nonwhite and Hispanic rates remained above those for the full population. Yet, once we adjust for industry and occupation differences in employment, women have higher unemployment rates than men, while Hispanics have similar unemployment rates to non-Hispanics. Nonwhites still have appreciably higher unemployment rates than whites. For women, the patterns of UI receipt correspond with unemployment differentials. Nonwhites and Hispanics are less likely to receive UI benefits than their unemployment experience would imply. The analysis also considers how differences in volatility of unemployment are explained by industrial and occupational distributions.


Microscale devices are promising tools to overcome specific challenges within oral drug delivery. Despite the availability of advanced high-quality imaging techniques, visualization and tracking of microscale devices in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract is still a challenge. This work explores the possibilities of applying planar X-ray imaging and computed tomography (CT) scanning for visualization and tracking of microscale devices in the GI tract of rats. Microcontainers (MCs) are an example of microscale devices that have shown great potential as an oral drug delivery system. Barium sulfate (BaSO4) loaded into the cavity of the MCs increases their overall X-ray contrast, which allows them to be easily tracked. The BaSO4-loaded MCs are quantitatively tracked throughout the entire GI tract of rats by planar X-ray imaging and visualized in 3D by CT scanning. The majority of the BaSO4-loaded MCs are observed to retain in the stomach for 0.5-2 h, enter the cecum after 3-4 h, and leave the cecum and colon 8-10 h post-administration. The imaging approaches can be adopted and used with other types of microscale devices when investigating GI behavior in, for example, preclinical trials and potential clinical studies.


A technique for high-accuracy tracking of formants or vocal tract resonances is presented in this paper using a novel nonlinear predictor and using a target-directed temporal constraint. The nonlinear predictor is constructed from a parameter-free, discrete mapping function from the formant (frequencies and bandwidths) space to the LPC-cepstral space, with trainable residuals. We examine in this study the key role of vocal tract resonance targets in the tracking accuracy. Experimental results show that due to the use of the targets, the tracked formants in the consonantal regions (including closures and short pauses) of the speech utterance exhibit the same dynamic properties as for the vocalic regions, and reflect the underlying vocal tract resonances. The results also demonstrate the effectiveness of training the prediction-residual parameters and of incorporating the target-based constraint in obtaining high-accuracy formant estimates, especially for non-sonorant portions of speech.


The digital transformation of our society changes the way we live, work, learn, communicate, and collaborate. This disruptive change interacts with all information processes and systems that are important business enablers for the digital transformation since years. The Internet of Things, Social Collaboration Systems for Adaptive Case Management, Mobility Systems and Services for Big Data in Cloud Services environments are emerging to support intelligent usercentered and social community systems. They will shape future trends of business innovation and the next wave of information and communication technology. Biological metaphors of living and adaptable ecosystems provide the logical foundation for self-optimizing and resilient run-time environments for intelligent business services and related distributed information systems with service-oriented enterprise architectures. The present research investigates mechanisms for flexible adaptation and evolution of Digital Enterprise Architectures in the context of integrated synergistic disciplines like distributed service-oriented Architectures and Information Systems, EAM Enterprise Architecture and Management, Metamodeling, Semantic Technologies, Web Services, Cloud Computing and Big Data technology. Our aim is to support flexibility and agile transformations for both business domains and related enterprise systems through adaptation and evolution of digital enterprise architectures. The present research paper investigates digital transformations of business and IT and integrates fundamental mappings between adaptable digital enterprise architectures and service-oriented information systems.


The objective of the study described in this paper is to define safety metrics that are based on the utilisation of resources. The background of this research is a specific need of the aviation industry where small and medium-sized enterprises lack large amounts of safety-related data to measure and demonstrate their safety performance proactively. The research department of the Aviation Academy has initiated a 4-year study, which will test the possibility to develop new safety indicators that will be able to represent safety levels proactively without the benefit of large data sets. The research team has reviewed the academic and professional literature about safety performance indicators and has performed surveys into 13 companies in order to explore what, how, and why safety performance indicators are used and whether there is a statistically linear relation between SMS process metrics and safety outcomes. The preliminary results showed that companies do not use data from all SMS processes in the development of safety performance indicators, they do not ground the selection of indicators on specific criteria, they implement SMS process in different ways, but they are eager to use alternative metrics, including ones potentially to be derived on the basis of contemporary safety models and views. As part of the development of alternative safety metrics, safety performance indicators were defined that are based on the difference between required resources and available resources. Resources are people, time, equipment and budget. This work is inspired by the general notion that a large gap between 'work as imagined' and 'work as done' has a negative influence on the level of safety. Work as imagined in this context is represented by available resources and work as done by required resources. The metrics were defined by a combination of literature research and semi-structured interviews with operational practitioners in the aviation industry. The suitability of the metrics will subsequently be tested in pilot studies within the aviation industry.


This paper presents two algorithms for estimating depth from integral images, which capture a scene by using multiple lenses, offering anaglyph depictions. The first algorithm involves the 3-D integral imaging grid formed by casting rays inversely through the lenses used to capture the integral image. In this formulation, depth estimation is equivalent to finding correspondences on the ray-crossing points. The second algorithm follows the depth-through disparity approach. In this case, a stereo-like minimization problem is formulated which is handled by the graph cuts method. The novelty of the proposed paper lies in constraining the optimization procedures with the "anchor points". This results in enhanced estimation accuracy, while eliminating the optimization complexity. Anchor points is a set of reliable reference points, detected by applying a robust local image descriptor to viewpoint images, called self-similarity descriptor. The performance of both algorithms is evaluated on a synthetic integral image database in comparison with another state-of-the-art algorithm.


Though the importance of psychological factors in maintenance of health, as well as etiology and prognosis of diseases have been recognized in ancient medicine by discerning and thoughtful clinicians in all ages, for the large majority of the practitioners such a perception has not been there. A cross-sectional, organ-based, and symptom-centered clinical approach was largely prevalent in day-to-day medicine. Medical training also followed more or less the same path. The positive psychological and behavioral qualities needed in the physician are left to the individual student to develop on his own during studies or to the physician afterwards. Some do, many do not. The importance of communication, doctor-patient relationship, empathy and psychological sensitivity in the making of a physician started getting identified in advanced medical universities in western countries by the middle of the last century. Since then behavioral science and medical humanities have been incorporated as important modules in the graduate medical training curriculum not only in advanced western medical universities, but also in good universities elsewhere. The situation in India, till now has been quite unsatisfactory. The undergraduate medical students had only 2 weeks of clinical posting and few hours of lectures, allotted for psychiatry: Even these were not actually carried out in many institutions properly. Responding to repeated representations from mental health experts in the country and abroad, medical universities and educationists, the Medical Council of India in 2012 has made 2 weeks of Residential Internship in Psychiatry (CRRI) mandatory, and also recommended incorporation of medical humanities in the MBBS curriculum. The paper presents a brief outline of how a Clinical Behavioral Sciences Training Program l incorporating medical humanities can be developed and carried out as a mainstream component for the undergraduate medical training in the country. The author points out that, if medical administrators and medical teachers take it up in right earnest, it would be the most significant contribution to humanize medical education in the country-which is precisely the need of the hour in the field.


Objectives Exposure to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) has been associated with adverse respiratory and systemic outcomes. Physical activity (PA) in polluted air may increase pollutant uptake and thereby health effects. The authors aimed to determine the short-term health effects of TRAP in healthy participants and any possible modifying effect of PA. Methods Crossover real-world exposure study comparing in 28 healthy participants pulmonary and inflammatory responses to four different exposure scenarios: 2 h exposure in a high and low TRAP environment, each at rest and in combination with intermittent moderate PA, consisting of four 15 min rest and cycling intervals. Data were analysed using mixed effect models for repeated measures. Results Intermittent PA compared to rest, irrespective of the TRAP exposure status, increased statistically significant (p≤0.05) pulmonary function (forced expiratory volume in 1 s (34 mL), forced vital capacity (29 mL), forced expiratory flow (FEF25–75%) (91 mL)), lung inflammation (fraction of exhaled nitric oxide, FeNO, (0.89 ppb)), and systemic inflammation markers interleukin-6 (52.3%), leucocytes (9.7%) and neutrophils count (18.8%). Interquartile increases in coarse particulate matter were statistically significantly associated with increased FeNO (0.80 ppb) and neutrophil count (5.7%), while PM2.5 and PM10 (particulate matter smaller than 2.5 and 10 µm in diameter, respectively) increased leucocytes (5.1% and 4.0%, respectively). We found no consistent evidence for an interaction between TRAP and PA for any of the outcomes of interest. Conclusions In a healthy population, intermittent moderate PA has beneficial effects on pulmonary function even when performed in a highly polluted environment. This study also suggests that particulate air pollution is inducing pulmonary and systemic inflammatory responses.


DOI: 10.30919/es8d128906 Graphene has been hailed as a revolutionary membrane material because of its many alluring features and the ease in their tunability. In specific to gas separation industry, the exceptional molecular transport, the possibility of fabricating membranes having thickness at a nanoscale range and the robust lattice structure that can withstand to the rigorous perforation methods render graphene to stand ahead of its contemporary materials. Moreover, its broad chemical tolerance and high mechanical strength facilitate the mass-production of membranes possessing macroscopic dimensions and their subsequent long-term operation under harsh environments. In this concise review, we complied and discussed the progress of gas-separation performance of graphene-based membranes with a prime focus on recent advancements in scalability, functionalization/modification along with the new manufacturing processes including the budding approaches through synthetic chemistry. The strategies implemented, the factors that influenced the membranes'performance and the corresponding transport mechanisms were highlighted in detail. In the end, we outlined the daunting challenges facing by these graphene-based membranes in realization of their prospects as well as the proposed measures for alleviating them.


The detection of fatigue cracks at fasteners in the sub layers of multi-layered aircraft structures can be problematic using conventional nondestructive testing
methods. In this thesis the sensitivity of low frequency guided ultrasonic waves to detect these defects is studied. Guided ultrasonic waves typically have energy
distributed through the thickness of such structures and allow for defect detection
in all sub-layers, but have wavelengths larger than commonly used in bulk wave
ultrasonic testing.
The model aerospace multi-layered structure investigated consists of two aluminium
plate strips adhesively bonded using a paste adhesive with a fastener hole.
Guided waves were excited by placing piezoelectric (PZT) transducers on the surface
of the structure. Experimentally the wave propagation and scattering was measured
using a laser interferometer. The wave propagation was studied numerically using
Semi-Analytical Finite-Element (SAFE) calculations and 3D Finite Element (FE)
simulations.
Thickness and width mode shapes of the guided waves were identified from the
SAFE simulations. By placing PZT discs across the width of the structure the excited
exural wave modes could be controlled to an extent. The thickness mode
shapes of these waves are similar to those in a large multi-layered plate structure. 3D
FE simulations predict a similar amplitude change due to a defect in these structures.
Fatigue crack growth monitoring on tensile specimens was realized, measuring the
amplitude at a single point. The measured changes in the amplitude of the ultrasonic
signal due to a defect agree well with 3D FE simulations.
These investigations found that using low frequency guided ultrasonic waves
defects through the thickness of a hidden sub layer can be detected from measurements
on the undamaged, accessible layer.


Biosensors are commonly produced using a siliconon-insulator (SOI) CMOS process and advanced lithography to define nanowires. In this paper, a simpler and cheaper junctionless three-mask process is investigated, which uses thin-film technology to avoid the use of SOI wafers, in situ doping to avoid the need for ion implantation and direct contact to a low-doped polysilicon film to eliminate the requirement for heavily doped source/drain contacts. Furthermore, TiN is used to contact the biosensor source/drain because it is a hard resilient material that allows the biosensor chip to be directly connected to a printed circuit board without wire bonding. pH sensing experiments, combined with device modeling, are used to investigate the effects of contact and series resistance on the biosensor performance, as this is a key issue when contacting directly to low-doped silicon. It is shown that in situ phosphorus doping concentrations in the range 4 × 1017-3 × 1019 cm-3 can be achieved using 0.1% PH3 flows between 4 and 20 sccm. Furthermore, TiN makes an ohmic contact to the polysilicon even at the bottom end of this doping range. Operation as a biosensor is demonstrated by the detection of C-reactive protein, an inflammatory biomarker for respiratory disease.


To predict a set of diverse and informative proposals with enriched representations, this paper introduces a differentiable Determinantal Point Process (DPP) layer that is able to augment the object detection architectures. Most modern object detection architectures, such as Faster R-CNN, learn to localize objects by minimizing deviations from the ground truth, but ignore correlation between multiple proposals and object categories. Non-Maximum Suppression (NMS) as a widely used proposal pruning scheme ignores label-and instance-level relations between object candidates resulting in multi-labeled detections. In the multi-class case, NMS selects boxes with the largest prediction scores ignoring the semantic relation between categories of potential election. In contrast, our trainable DPP layer, allowing for Learning Detection with Diverse Proposals (LDDP), considers both label-level contextual information and spatial layout relationships between proposals without increasing the number of parameters of the network, and thus improves location and category specifications of final detected bounding boxes substantially during both training and inference schemes. Furthermore, we show that LDDP keeps it superiority over Faster R-CNN even if the number of proposals generated by LDPP is only ~30% as many as those for Faster R-CNN.


Asthma is caused by exposure to certain substances in the environment that lead to inappropriately severe allergic reaction in the lung. These environmental antigens trigger the activation of immunoglobulin E, which activates mast cells. One of the inflammation-inducing substances released by the mast cells is prostaglandin D2, which Matsuoka et al. demonstrate to cause some of the more severe symptoms of asthma. In prostaglandin D2-deficient mice, fewer T lymphocytes that secrete Th2 cytokines and fewer eosinophils accumulate in the lung, and these mice did not develop the hyperreactive airway response characteristic of asthma attacks. Thus, prostaglandin D2 could prove to be a new therapeutic target against asthma. Matsuoka, T., Hirata, M., Tanaka, H., Takahashi, Y., Murata, T., Kabashima, K., Sugimoto, Y., Kobayashi, T., Ushikubi, F., Aze, Y., Eguchi, N., Urade, Y., Yoshida, N., Kimura, K., Mizoguchi, A., Honda, Y., Nagai, H., and Narumiya, S. (2000) Prostaglandin D2 as a mediator of allergic asthma. Science 287: 2013-2017. [Abstract] [Full Text]


This paper describes the architecture and the implementation of BlueStar, which uses a federation-based approach to design and build Internet-scale data centers. Instead of aggregating all of the compute, storage, and network resources in a single data center, our approach uses the concept of a federation in which differentsize data centers participate to provide the capacity needed to support Internet-scale applications. The main advantage of our approach is that due to the inherent geographic distribution of the data centers, applications can be easily provided with support for high availability, disaster recovery, and localized access (reduced latency). The approach also enables the service providers to realize benefits by deciding to locate the hosting of applications to take advantage of savings due to cost differentials between peak and offpeak hours, power rates, and cooling costs across data centers. Further, the approach enables individual data centers to maintain independence and operational control over their resources. We discuss the implementation of BlueStar using two sample composite applications: BlueMaps, a server-side mashup application (i.e., an application that provides data or functionality from more than one location), and Lotus® Connections, a collaboration application.


Full color holographic optical element fabrication using a photopolymer is proposed for a waveguide-type head mounted display. The fabricated full color holographic optical elements can be attached to the waveguide to replace the conventional couple-in and couple-out optics in the head mounted display. To implement the system, this study analyzed the optical characteristics of the photopolymer using three lasers (red, green and blue). Considering the color uniformity, a new laminated structure for a full color holographic optical element was also designed. The proposed system was confirmed experimentally.


Global perturbative QCD analyses, based on large data sets from electron-proton and hadron collider experiments, provide tight constraints on the parton distribution function (PDF) in the proton. The extension of these analyses to nuclear parton distributions (nPDF) has attracted much interest in recent years. nPDFs are needed as benchmarks for the characterization of hot QCD matter in nucleus-nucleus collisions, and attract further interest since they may show novel signatures of non- linear density-dependent QCD evolution. However, it is not known from first principles whether the factorization of long-range phenomena into process-independent parton distribution, which underlies global PDF extractions for the proton, extends to nuclear effects. As a consequence, assessing the reliability of nPDFs for benchmark calculations goes beyond testing the numerical accuracy of their extraction and requires phenomenological tests of the factorization assumption. Here we argue that a proton-nucleus collision program at the LHC would provide a set of measurements allowing for unprecedented tests of the factorization assumption underlying global nPDF fits.


In this first article in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Asian Energy Studies (JAES), the scene is set for further discussions and debates on the energy challenges in Asia. Energy is fundamental to economic development. Thus far, Asia has been largely meeting its skyrocketing energy demand through conventional technologies based on fossil fuels. However, challenges relating to energy security, local pollution, and global climate change mean that such a path is no longer feasible and Asian countries must meet their growing energy demands in a more sustainable manner. Addressing these challenges is not only critical to the realization of the Asian century, but also to global sustainable development. Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary energy studies have much to offer in addressing these pressing issues. The mission of JAES is to provide a free and international forum for scholars and professionals working in this exciting and important field of study.


This paper will focus on the co-adaptation of a group of humans and an intelligent system which acts as a disc jockey. The intelligent system selects and delivers background music in a workplace environment. The humans provide limited feedback about their preferences, and the intelligent system attempts to minimize the number of unacceptable choices of music. During the study, the actual tracks presented to the humans, which humans were present, and the response of the humans are recorded over an 8 month period. The intelligent system (Personal DJ) monitors the responses of the audience, and derives preference rules that describe the mix of music that is acceptable to each audience. It then draws from this music mix, based on the current audience, time of day, and other environmental conditions. The humans have the option of vetoing any song at any time. These veto actions are recorded, and the Personal DJ adapts to these veto actions to refine its model of the audience's preferences. At the same time, the humans are being presented with a mix of music that is drawn from a wide range of musical selections (rock, heavy metal, reggae, classical, jazz, new age), and during the study period it became apparent that the humans were adapting their preferences to the delivered music. Tracks which were uniformly vetoed under specific conditions during the early part of the study became acceptable to the same audience under the same conditions during the latter part of the study. This causes the Personal DJ to alter its model of the audience and adapt to the new preferences. However, as the new mix of music was presented to the audience, they, in turn, adapted to the new mix and changed their pattern of vetoes; this co-adaptation is capable of causing a pattern similar to Pilot Induced Oscillation. The paper presents an analysis of this phenomenon, and draws some guidelines for the design of adaptive systems which will have long-term interaction


Should traditional knowledge be patentable? As the number of patents filed by large corporations for native crops has increased, activists have become concerned about the economic effects of these patents on indigenous people. This iBrief discusses the attempts by one group of activists to test the validity of such patents in the United States and explores the issue of biopiracy in the Third World.


The previous studies of Pleistocene deposit in the Lithuanian Maritime Region (LMR) show the difficulty of its stratigraphical subdivision and correlation of sediment beds. Due to scarcity of biostratigrafical and absolute dating results, the variety of litostratigraphical criterions such as till petrography, geochemistry or even well rounded hornblende grain amount and other physical or visual characteristics used for litostratigraphy and correlation of tills did not give effective results. The article provides correlation of Pleistocene deposits based on mineralogical composition of the sandy fraction of tills from one geological profile located along the Lithuanian Baltic Sea coast using the multivariate statistics. The mineralogical data from six boreholes were statistically analysed and lithostratigraphical interpretation was made. Data analysis displayed that the till complexes have different amount of minerals from statistically derived mineral associations. It allowed distinguishing of six till complexes characterized by distinct mineralogical composition. These differences are clearly visible in the results of the statistical comparative analysis of the mineral composition of adjacent tills complexes. The stratigraphical identification of distinguished till complexes is based on its occurrence, inter-till deposit absolute dating and interglacial sediment palaeobotanical results.


Existing research has found an inverse relationship between urban density and the degree of income inequality within metropolitan areas, suggesting that, as cities spread out, they become increasingly segregated by income. This paper examines this hypothesis using data covering more than 160000 block groups within 359 US metropolitan areas over the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. The findings indicate that income inequality defined by the variance of the log household income distribution does indeed rise significantly as urban density declines. This increase, however, is associated with rising inequality within block groups as cities spread out. The extent of income variation exhibited between different block groups, by contrast, shows virtually no association with population density. There is, accordingly, little evidence that sprawl is systematically associated with greater residential segregation of households by income. JEL Classification: D31, R11, R23


The United States has a huge long-term fiscal gap, perhaps with a present value as great as $74 trillion. The US may thus be unable to continue meeting its current spending commitments without eventually enacting huge tax increases. The tax cut enacted in 2001 may have increased the fiscal gap by about $13 trillion, but the main cause of the gap is increasing life expectancy, which raises the cost of Social Security and Medicare. While the fiscal gap can in theory be eliminated at the stroke of a pen by simply changing stated policy, in practice this could lead to serious disruption of people's expectations. In addition, the fiscal gap may impair future generations' opportunity to take full advantage of technological advances (such as in treating cancer) that have the potential to make their lives significantly better than ours.


The third edition of the only comprehensive casebook on electronic discovery and evidence, authored by the field's leading authorities, incorporates the 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; updates case law in the field; and expands discussions of cooperation, proportionality, social media, and professional responsibility obligations. Two new chapters have been added, one on the latest search techniques, including Technology-Assisted Review, that all lawyers must understand; and another on emerging issues with the surveillance, search, and seizure of electronically stored information by law enforcement in criminal cases. This casebook is a must for any course in e-discovery, and an important resource for civil procedure, criminal law, evidence, and ethics courses.


We report a new Nd:YAG-pumped picosecond optical parametric oscillator that generates bandwidth-limited pulses. Using two LiNbO3 crystals, it produces tunable, near-1.4-μm (signal-wave) pulses of 18-psec duration and Δν = 1.2 cm−1 FWHM (Δντ = 0.7). The output energy of the optical parametric oscillator in a signal wave is no less than 2 mJ with 10% energy stability. The key to this device is the injection of cw single-frequency GaAs diode-laser radiation. Using the injection of diode-laser radiation, we have measured the spectral intensity of a quantum noise at λ = 0.85 μm. The intensity was found to be 6 ± 2 W/cm2 cm−1 sr (theoretical value, 4.7 W/cm2 cm−1 sr).


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Endoscopic third ventriculostomy is becoming routine among neurosurgical pediatric procedures. However, reports on anesthesia for children undergoing such procedures are rare. The aim of this series of cases was to demonstrate the precautions that should be taken and efficacy of the method used.

CASE REPORT
Thirty-eight children younger than 2 years, who underwent neuroendoscopic third ventriculostomy for the treatment of obstructive hydrocephalus from 1999 to 2004 at the Biocor Instituto were evaluated retrospectively. The diagnosis, comorbidities, age, weight, anesthetic technique, monitoring, and intra- and postoperative complications were evaluated. Patients, ages 1 week to 20 months, presented obstructive hydrocephalus secondary to compression of the aqueduct of different etiologies. In thirty-five children anesthesia was induced by inhalational anesthetics and in 3 by intravenous anesthetics. Thirty-four patients were monitored with electrocardiogram, pulse oxymeter, capnograph, and esophageal thermometer, while in 4 children it included also continuous invasive blood pressure monitoring. Fifteen patients had balanced maintenance anesthesia with fentanyl and isoflurane, and 23 children received inhalational isoflurane. Thirty-five children were extubated after the procedure in the surgical room and three in the ICU. Six patients were transferred to the ICU after extubation. The following complications were observed: intraoperative cardiac arrhythmias without hemodynamic repercussions (6 cases); two patients presented intraoperative bleeding, but in only one the placement of an external derivation was necessary. The postoperative complications included: vomiting (6), fever (4), seizures (2), laryngeal spasm (1), and stridor (1).

CONCLUSIONS
Third ventriculostomy has a low incidence of complications, even in patients younger than 24 months, as long as proper anesthetic and surgical procedures are used.


The function of a protein depends on the structure of the protein. A commonly used analytical technique for studying protein structure is radical-probe mass spectrometry (RPMS). RP-MS oxidizes a protein of interest then quantitates the oxidation on the protein. Such quantitations can probe the solvent-accessible surface area (SASA) of the protein. This SASA can be used for studying the structure of the protein. Thus, the spatial resolution of such quantitations of oxidation is the spatial resolution at which protein folding can be studied. This thesis proposes a computational method for increasing, by many times, the spatial resolution of such quantitations of oxidation. Traditional RP-MS can already quantitate the oxidation on a peptide of a protein. MS/MS, which is also known as tandem mass spectrometry, is a technique in analytical chemistry. MS/MS can fragment a peptide into the suffixes of this peptide. Thus, the fraction of such individual suffixes of length i that are oxidized is the relative frequency that one of the last i residues of this peptide is oxidized. Thus, two such suffixes of lengths i and j, where i > j, correspond to two such frequencies. Thus, the difference between these two frequencies is the frequency that the oxidation on this peptide is inclusively between the i-last and (j + 1)-last residues of this peptide. The oxidation between these two residues is used by our computational method to quantitate oxidation at subpeptide level. Such quantitated oxidation extents match the previously published oxidation rates and are computed from an MS/MS dataset. The MS/MS dataset is produced by a specially designed RP-MS experiment. This RP-MS experiment used MS/MS that targeted six tryptic peptides of apomyoglobin (PDB 1WLA). However, such quantitations of oxidation are not precise, mostly because random errors exist in such fraction of the suffixes that are oxidized. Such a fraction is a type of peak-area fraction. A peak-area fraction represents, in a sample, the quantity of a type of molecule relative to another type of molecule. To estimate random errors in a peak-area fraction, we made three reasonable assumptions partially justified in the literature. From these assumptions, we mathematically deduced our empirical formula. Our empirical formula estimates random errors in a peak-area fraction that is observed in only one run of mass spectrometry. Such estimated random errors match the empirically observed random errors in a test dataset. The test dataset is generated by three almost repeated runs of MS/MS. To generate the test dataset and the MS/MS dataset, the same instrument analyzed, with similar configurations, two similar samples. Thus, our empirical formula is used for estimating random errors in such a quantitation of oxidation in the MS/MS dataset. MS is a technique in analytical chemistry. MS is similar to MS/MS. However, the throughput of MS/MS is lower than the throughput of MS by orders of magnitude.


As the universe of available information becomes larger and innovation becomes more complex, the task of examining patent applications becomes increasingly difficult. This Article argues that the United States Patent Office has insufficiently responded to changes in the information universe and to innovation norms. This leaves the Patent Office less able to adequately assess patent applications, and more likely to grant bad patents.
After first demonstrating how innovation has been responsive to contemporary innovation norms for hundreds of years, this Article uses information and data science methods to empirically demonstrate how innovation has drastically changed in recent decades. After empirically demonstrating the changed innovation system and the inadequate response to these changes by the USPTO, this Article concludes with policy prescriptions aimed to help the Patent Office implement examination procedures adequate to assess 21st century innovation. These prescriptions include more granular crediting for the time spent by examiners assessing applications, an increased focus on teamwork at the Patent Office, improvements to the inter partes review process, and alterations to the analogous art doctrine.


Research on pattern formation Penitentiary inmates in Yogyakarta Wirogunan aims to identify and examine patterns of development Wirogunan prison inmates in Yogyakarta since inmates have different backgrounds, and the suitability of the pattern of development of inmates with Law No. 12 Year 1995 on Corrections. Research is normative legal research, by doing library research to obtain secondary data as data headliner. This is because legal research is normative then used to measure qualitative analysis focused on the substance of the reasoning process used in drawing conclusions deductive reasoning method, derives the major premise submission form filing laws then the minor premise that legal fact, from these later withdrawn conclusion. The results of this study are: (1) Although inmates are grouped by type of crime, but the pattern of fostering implemented with the same pattern. Educational background is not made the basis of coaching the inmates. The shape of the coaching is done by Corrections Yogyakarta Wirogunan IIA Class are: (a) personality development: intellectual, physical and spiritual, (b) independence: self employment training, nature must not merely filling time, (c) skills: making shoes, furniture, silk screening, haircuts, make a mat. Guidance to inmates must be in accordance with the educational background that is owned by the inmates. This meant that the knowledge that has been acquired during their education convict before he became a prisoner is not lost. In addition, it will be able to equip the inmates soon after they came out of the prison, as well as (2) Pattern formation in Prison Class IIA Wirogunan Yogyakarta is not in accordance with the provisions of Law No. 12 Year 1995 on Correctional because there is still discrimination that is in Prison inmates it against the rules, if the inmate is initially had standing as prisoners of corruption, was only given a warning letter, but when another inmate offense can be punished more heavily. As an example of such offense caught carrying HP.


Mountain caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) in southeastern British Columbia subsist for most of the winter on arboreal hair lichen, mostly Bryoria spp. Foraging occurs mainly in old subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) forests near treeline. Here, the lower limit of Bryoria in the canopy is dictated by snowpack depth because hair lichens die when buried in snow. Bryoria is often beyond the reach of caribou in early winter, prompting caribou to move downslope to where lichen occurs lower in the canopy and other foraging modes are possible. Snowpacks are normally deep enough by late winter that caribou can reach Bryoria where it is most abundant, at high elevations. Extending this to inter-annual comparisons, Bryoria should be less accessible during late winter of low-snow years following normal winters, or of normal to low-snow years after deep-snow winters. We hypothesized that when maximum snowpack in late winter is low relative to the deepest of the previous 5 years, mountain caribou will use lower elevations to facilitate foraging ("lichen-snow-caribou" or LSC hypothesis). We tested this with late-winter data from 13 subpopulations. In the dry climatic region generally and for minor snowfall differences in wet and very wet regions, caribou did not shift downslope or in fact were at higher elevations during relatively low-snow years, possibly reflecting the ease of locomotion. The LSC hypothesis was supported within wet and very wet regions when snowpacks were about 1 m or more lower than in recent years. Elevation declined by 300 m (median) to 600 m (25th percentile) for snowpack differences of at least 1.5 m. Greater use of lodgepole pine and western hemlock stands sometimes also occurred. Management strategies emphasizing subalpine fir stands near treeline should be re-examined to ensure protection of a broader range of winter habitats used by caribou under variable snowpack conditions.


This essay reports on a study concerning awareness of English varieties among Swedish secondary school pupils. The aim is to find out whether Swedish secondary school pupils are aware of the differences between English varieties as regards pronunciation, spelling and vocabulary. In addition, the study aims at finding out whether pupils believe in preferences in their environment for any particular variety and what might be influencing their own preferences of English varieties. The study is questionnaire-based and the respondents are all pupils in two 8th grade classes in Stockholm. The pupils seem to believe that they are aware of the differences between varieties, although only a little more than half of the respondents claim that this includes differences in vocabulary. High recognition is claimed for Indian, Scottish and Australian English. As to preferences, British and American English dominate. Possible influences may be English textbooks claimed by the pupils to prefer mainly British English. Even English teachers are believed to have preferences mainly for British English but also American English. To the extent that friends are believed to have a preference, it is for American English. Less strong influences seem to come from the Internet, parents and school. The pupils seem to be exposed to English varieties to some extent, but apparently receive little explicit teaching which could increase awareness of English varieties.


The days of heroic travel are gone; unless, of course, in the newspaper sense, in which heroism like everything else in the world becomes as common if not as nourishing as our daily bread. Conrad, preface xviii I began to feel I was surrounded by almost palpable spectres from Lord Jim, Victory, and "Falk" whenever I was in Singapore or Bangkok--1 would catch the flick of Marlow's nautical jacket or a whiff of his cheroot, or get a glimpse of Captain Whalley's bushy whiskers on Singapore's sunlit esplanade, and hear the rattle of the horse-tramway down Bangkok's New Road passing Schomberg's hotel. Young 2 In The Gates of Ivory (1991), Margaret Drabble's enterprise, and that of her protagonists, is stamped by Joseph Conrad's legacy, one that remains problematic, contested, and controversial. [1] This dark excursion into Southeast Asia, the third volume of her trilogy that began with A Radiant Way (1987) and continued with A Natural Curiosity (1989), represents the culmination of Drabble's negotiation with global issues, of her journeys both outward to the perimeter and inward to "the heart of darkness." Though her characters may be sent briefly to Africa in The Needle's Eye (1972) and The Realms of Gold (1975), Drabble's earlier fictions largely depict the separate worlds of British northern provincial life and London's metropolitan culture, but the primary address is increasingly NW3 or NW5, the domain of middle-class professional folk, of journalists and television producers whose diaries record numerous lunch meetings at favored trattoria in Soho or Notting Hill Gate. Beginning with The Ice Age (1977), the i ndividual struggles of her female characters are overshadowed by a sense of "collective crisis" (Sutherland); the canvas is enlarged and Drabble establishes herself as the "chronicler of a contemporary Britain" (Stovel 186), monitoring social, economic, and political realities in the Age of Thatcher. Further, James Gindin asserts that Drabble "has always seen herself as part of an English literary tradition" (255), and depends on a consistent use of guides and models from that tradition: Bunyan, Austen, George Eliot, Thackery, Dickens, and Arnold Bennett. As the trilogy sends her metropolitan characters in search of the outer limits of a known and knowable community, Drabble begins to diagnose a condition of the world rather than a condition of England, and neither Bunyan's allegorical geography nor the brimming social panoramas of the nineteenth-century and Edwardian realists seem able to cope with this growing complexity. The new guide was not English-born; he knew Poland, Russia, France, Africa, and the Eastern Archipelago before he counted England his home. It is to Joseph Conrad that Margaret Drabble turns to contemplate, if not to explain, the cruel and bewildering path of contemporary civilization, and to interrogate the shifting definitions of postmodernity. The relationship between novel and guide is therefore one key to Drabble's vision of her time; the frequent failure of her characters to "read" Conrad is as much a part of that key. The issue of reading and interpretation is also signaled in the novel's title and epigraph, taken from The Odyssey, Book XIX, where Penelope warns the stranger to distinguish between the false dreams that come to us through the gates of ivory and those that appear through the gate of "polished horn" and speak truthfully of what will come to pass. The lure of dreams that ultimately deceive is a crucial source of action, particularly for Stephen Cox, the trilogy's most avid traveler and the only truly dedicated reader of Joseph Conrad. At the end of the first novel in the series, we learn that he has "gone to Kampuchea" (Radiant Way 392), gone to research a play about Pol Pot. The absent Cox is not forgotten through the pages of A Natural Curiosity. Alix Bowen "wonders about Stephen Cox and Cambodia. In Cambodia, people disappeared. …


N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) play a critical role in transducing neuronal activity patterns into changes in synaptic strength. However, how they mediate this transduction in response to physiological stimuli has remained elusive. In particular, it has been debated whether different NMDAR subtypes play opposing signaling roles in synaptic plasticity. Using perforated patch-clamp recordings from pairs of synaptically connected glutamatergic neurons in dissociated hippocampal culture, we found that spike-timing-dependent potentiation induced by pairing pre- and postsynaptic spikes required the activation of a fast component of NMDAR current that is likely to be mediated by NR2A-containing NMDARs (NR2A-NRs). In contrast, spike-timing-dependent depression required a slow component of NMDAR current carried by NR2B-containing NMDARs (NR2B-NRs). CV analysis showed that the locus of this depression was primarily presynaptic in pairs of cells making strong synaptic connections, whereas weaker synapses showed no clear preference for pre- or postsynaptic expression. This depression was not significantly reduced by antagonism of the CB1 receptor, in contrast to spike-timing-dependent depression in the neocortex that requires presynaptic CB1 signaling. With blockade of NR2B-NRs, spike triplets that contained both potentiating and depressing spike-timing components induced net potentiation. However, when the putative NR2A-NR population is inhibited, these spike triplets resulted in either depression or no net change, depending on the temporal order of the spike-timing components. These results imply a dynamic competition between signaling modules that can be biased by differentially antagonizing NMDAR subtypes during the induction of spike-timing-dependent plasticity. Using a simple model, we show that such a modular competition recapitulates our observations.


The effective dismantling of discarded products regardless being used or not is critically important to their reuse, recovery, and recycling. However, the existing product disassembly planning methods pay little or no attention to resource constraints, e.g., limited numbers of disassembly operators and tools. Thus, a resulting plan when being executed may be ineffective in practice. This paper presents a dual-objective optimization model for selective disassembly sequences by considering multiresource constraints such that disassembly profit is maximized and time is minimized. A scatter search is adopted to solve the proposed dual-objective optimization model. It embodies the generation of diverse initial solutions, global assessment of objective functions, a crossover combination operator, a local search strategy for improved solutions, and a reference set update method. To analyze the effect of different weights on its performance, simulations are conducted on different products. Its effectiveness is verified by comparing its optimization results and those of genetic local search. Note to Practitioners—This work deals with a sequence modeling and planning problem of product disassembly. It establishes a novel dual-objective optimization model for product disassembly subject to multiresource constraints. Previously, such a problem is handled through a methodology based on the optimization of a single objective, i.e., disassembly time or cost. The resultant solution is insufficient without fully considering disassembly resources, e.g., labors and tools. Also, in an actual disassembly process, a decision-maker may want to maximize disassembly profit, as well as minimize disassembly time. This work considers both objectives and proposes scatter search to solve disassembly problems. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach can solve them effectively. The obtained solutions give decision makers some desired choices to select a right disassembly process when an actual product is disassembled.


Extended carbon nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), exhibit remarkable properties but are difficult to synthesize uniformly. Herein, we present a new class of carbon nanomaterials constructed via the bottom-up self-assembly of cylindrical, atomically-precise small molecules. Guided by supramolecular design principles and circle packing theory, we have designed and synthesized a fluorinated nanohoop that, in the solid-state, self-assembles into nanotube-like arrays with channel diameters of precisely 1.63 nm. A mild solution-casting technique is then used to construct vertical "forests" of these arrays on a highly-ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surface through epitaxial growth. Furthermore, we show that a basic property of nanohoops, fluorescence, is readily transferred to the bulk phase, implying that the properties of these materials can be directly altered via precise functionalization of their nanohoop building blocks. The strategy presented is expected to have broader applications in the development of new graphitic nanomaterials with π-rich cavities reminiscent of CNTs.


Both prokaryotes and eukaryotes respond to oxidative stress by increasing the expression of genes that detoxify reactive oxygen species. Lee and Helmann show that Bacillus subtilis PerR, which is a transcriptional repressor of the PerR regulon, undergoes peroxide-stimulated iron-catalyzed histidine oxidation, which causes the protein to dissociate from DNA, allowing the PerR-regulated genes to be expressed. PerR is a dimer that under native conditions contains one Zn2+ and one Fe2+ per subunit. Lee and Helmann modeled the PerR structure on FurPA, a homolog from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and predicted that four cysteines formed a binding site for Zn2+ and three histidines and two aspartic acid residues formed a binding site for Fe2+ (or Mn2+). Mutational analysis confirmed that these nine residues were essential for peroxide-mediated derepression of a reporter gene. PerR bound to Fe2+ became oxidized and dissociated from DNA (based on electrophoretic mobility shift assay and fluorescence anisotropy measurements) in response to peroxide, whereas PerR bound to Mn2+ in place of Fe2+ did not. In the presence of Fe2+ and aerobic conditions, the protein was oxidized and the oxidation did not influence the accessibility of the cysteine residues to iodoacetamide, which indicated that they were not oxidized. Mass spectrometry analysis and mutational analysis in vivo demonstrated that His37 and His91, which are also involved in Fe2+ coordination, were the sites of oxidation. The data suggest that peroxide triggers the metal-catalyzed formation of 2-oxo-histidine in PerR, which allows expression of peroxide-defense genes. Histidine oxidation is a new mechanism of peroxide sensing, with most other redox-sensitive proteins, thus far studied, modified on cysteine residues. J.-W. Lee, J. D. Helmann, The PerR transcription factor senses H2O2 by metal-catalysed histidine oxidation. Nature 440, 363-367 (2006). [PubMed]


The deep biosphere of subseafloor basalts is thought to consist of mainly prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea). Here we report fossilized filamentous microorganisms from subseafloor basalts interpreted as fossilized fungal hyphae, probably Dikarya, rather than fossilized prokaryotes. The basalts were collected during the Ocean Drilling Program Leg 197 at the Emperor Seamounts, North Pacific Ocean, and the fossilized fungi are observed in carbonate-filled veins and vesicles in samples that represent a depth of ∼150 m below the seafloor. Three-dimensional visualizations using synchrotron-radiation X-ray tomographic microscopy show characteristic fungal morphology of the mycelium-like network, such as frequent branching, anastomosis, and septa. Possible presence of chitin in the hypha walls was detected by staining with Wheat Germ Agglutinin conjugated with Fluorescein Isothiocyanate and examination using fluorescence microscopy. The presence of fungi in subseafloor basalts challenges the present understanding of the deep subseafloor biosphere as being exclusively prokaryotic.


Economists have long decried the efforts of large, advanced economies to manipulate their currencies to boost net exports at their trading partners' expense. But the International Monetary Fund appears to have ignored the beggar-thy-neighbor exchange rate policies of countries with developed, highly open economies. This Policy Brief examines Switzerland, Singapore, and Hong Kong, which have actively kept the value of their currencies low since the 2008–09 global recession. In each case, greater fiscal and especially domestic monetary ease would have achieved similar macroeconomic outcomes with less currency intervention and declining current account surpluses. If such countries had adopted these strategies to increase domestic demand, the global economy would have rebounded faster.


BACKGROUND: Antithrombin (AT) activity is reduced during cardiac operations with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), which is associated with adverse outcomes. Preoperative AT supplementation, to achieve >58% and <100% AT activity, may potentially reduce postoperative morbidity and mortality in cardiac operations with CPB. This prospective, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of preoperative treatment with AT supplementation in patients at risk for low AT activity after undergoing cardiac surgery with CPB. METHODS: A total of 425 adult patients were randomized (1:1) to receive either a single dose of AT (n = 213) to achieve an absolute increase of 20% above pretreatment AT activity or placebo (n = 212) before surgery. The study duration was approximately 7 weeks. The primary efficacy end point was the percentage of patients with any component of a major morbidity composite (postoperative mortality, stroke, acute kidney injury [AKI], surgical reexploration, arterial or venous thromboembolic events, prolonged mechanical ventilation, and infection) in the 2 groups. Secondary end points included AT activity, blood loss, transfusion requirements, duration of intensive care unit (ICU), and hospital stays. Safety was also assessed. RESULTS: Overall, 399 patients (men, n = 300, 75.2%) with a mean (standard deviation [SD]) age of 66.1 (11.7) years, with the majority undergoing complex surgical procedures (n = 266, 67.9%), were analyzed. No differences in the percentage of patients experiencing morbidity composite outcomes between groups were observed (AT-treated 68/198 [34.3%] versus placebo 58/194 [29.9%]; P = .332; relative risk, 1.15). After AT infusion, AT activity was significantly higher in the AT group (108% [42–143]) versus placebo group (76% [40–110]), and lasted up to postoperative day 2. At ICU, the frequency of patients with AT activity ≥58% in the AT group (81.5%) was significantly higher (P < .001) versus placebo group (43.2%). Secondary end point analysis did not show any advantage of AT over placebo group. There were significantly more patients with AKI (P < .001) in the AT group (23/198; 11.6%) than in the placebo group (5/194, 2.6%). Safety results showed no differences in treatment-emergent adverse events nor bleeding events between groups. CONCLUSIONS: AT supplementation did not attenuate adverse postoperative outcomes in our cohort of patients undergoing cardiac surgery with CPB.


Temperature predicting is the utilization to forecast the condition of the temperature for an upcoming date for a given area. Temperature predictions are done by gathering quantitative data in regard to the current state of the atmosphere. In this study, a proposed hybrid method to predication the daily maximum and minimum air temperature of Baghdad city which combines standard backpropagation with simulated annealing (SA). Simulated Annealing Algorithm are used for weights optimization for recurrent multi-layer neural network system. Experimental tests had been implemented using the data of maximum and minimum air temperature for month of July of Baghdad city that got from local records of Iraqi Meteorological Organization and Seismology (IMOS) in period between 2010 to 2016. The results show that the proposed hybrid method got a high accuracy prediction results that reach nearly from real temperature records of desired year.


The cytokine erythropoietin binds to the classic erythropoietin receptor to mediate hematopoiesis and has independent tissue-protective bioactivities. Leist et al. (see the Perspective by Ehrenreich) generated a distinct isoform of erythropoietin that separates its two activities. A carbamoylated derivative did not bind to the classical erythropoietin receptor and lost the hematopoietic capacity of natural erythropoietin. However, the derivative was neuroprotective in animal models of stroke, spinal cord injury, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, and diabetic neuropathy. M. Leist, P. Ghezzi, G. Grasso, R. Bianchi, P. Villa, M. Fratelli, C. Savino, M. Bianchi, J. Nielsen, J. Gerwien, P. Kallunki, A. K. Larsen, L. Helboe, S. Christensen, L. O. Pedersen, M. Nielsen, L. Torup, T. Sager, A. Sfacteria, S. Erbayraktar, Z. Erbayraktar, N. Gokmen, O. Yilmaz, C. Cerami-Hand, Q. Xie, T. Coleman, A. Cerami, M. Brines, Derivatives of erythropoietin that are tissue protective but not erythropoietic. Science 305, 239-242 (2004). [Abstract] [Full Text] H. Ehrenreich, A boost for translational neuroscience. Science 305, 184-185 (2004). [Summary] [Full Text]


Now in paperback, the best-selling author of "A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 "asks the most fundamental question of all: What makes life worth living? In our endless pursuit of successful careers, security, and economic gain, have we lost sight of the fundamental purpose of it all? In his final work based on decades of ever-deepening Christian experience, Phillip Keller shares his spiritual heritage--showing us the path to confident and resilient faith. He explores twenty-one ways to embrace deeper meaning and joy in our daily lives, beginning with knowing God firsthand. From this central relationship flows a new perspective on the reason and resources for everyday challenges, stresses, and blessings.


As part of a programme of research to understand truck driver health and well-being issues, two studies have focussed on truck driver sleep and sleepiness. In the first study within the log-transport sector, actigraph (12 drivers) and sleep diary data (45 drivers) revealed that many drivers were exhibiting fatigue risk factors including: less than six hours sleep in the past 24 hours, Less than 14 hours sleep in the last 48 hours, being awake for more than 16 hours and driving between the hours of 1-6 am. A similar study in the fuel transport sector was carried out to measure drivers" sleep patterns, perceptions of sleep, alertness and shift type effects, using a sleep diary and questionnaire (84 drivers). Many drivers demonstrated similar fatigue risk factors to the log truck drivers, although they tended to achieve slightly more sleep and report less sleepiness than log truck drivers. Practical recommendations for fatigue prevention and healthy lifestyles among drivers were also given. Overall, many drivers achieved less sleep than is optimal, and in rare instances, drivers reported very low levels of sleep (e.g. 0-3 hours sleep) per 24 hours. Drivers reported that the start of their shift rotation (first day back to work after a break) was a particularly challenging time. A number of suggestions to mitigate sleep issues, work-time sleepiness and fatigue were developed in conjunction with the companies who participated in this study. This included regular (3-4 monthly) screening for sleep and fatigue problems, taking a supportive approach and a driver "engagement" exercise (checklist, truck check or meeting) at the start of the shift rotation. Between the two studies, it is clear that truck driver sleep and sleepiness is problematic. However, there are a number of potentially effective industry led initiatives that could be trialled and implemented. Further investigation of the wider benefits and costs of implementing some of these initiatives could be carried out to determine their merits.


We design and develop a new shared Augmented Reality (AR) workspace for Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), which establishes a bi-directional communication between human agents and robots. In a prototype system, the shared AR workspace enables a shared perception, so that a physical robot not only perceives the virtual elements in its own view but also infers the utility of the human agent—the cost needed to perceive and interact in AR—by sensing the human agent's gaze and pose. Such a new HRI design also affords a shared manipulation, wherein the physical robot can control and alter virtual objects in AR as an active agent; crucially, a robot can proactively interact with human agents, instead of purely passively executing received commands. In experiments, we design a resource collection game that qualitatively demonstrates how a robot perceives, processes, and manipulates in AR and quantitatively evaluates the efficacy of HRI using the shared AR workspace. We further discuss how the system can potentially benefit future HRI studies that are otherwise challenging.


The performance of the global routing system is vital to thousands of entities operating the Autonomous Systems (ASes) which make up the Internet. The Border Gateway
Protocol (BGP) is currently responsible for the exchange of reachability information and the selection of paths according to their specified routing policies. BGP thus enables traffic to flow from any point to another connected to the Internet. The manner traffic flows is often influenced by entities in the Internet according to their preferences. The latter are implemented in the form of routing policies by tweaking BGP configurations. Routing policies are usually complex and aim to achieve a myriad goals, including technical, economic and political purposes. Additionally, individual network managers need to
permanently adapt to the interdomain routing changes and, by engineering the Internet traffic, optimize the use of their network.

Despite the flexibility offered, the implementation of routing policies is a complicated process in itself, involving fine-tuning operations. Thus, it is an error-prone task and operators might end up with faulty configurations that impact the efficacy of their strate-
gies or, more importantly, their revenues. Withal, even when correctly defining legitimate routing policies, unforeseen interactions between ASes have been observed to cause important disruptions that affect the global routing system. The main reason behind this resides in the fact that the actual inter-domain routing is the result of the interplay of many routing policies from ASes across the Internet, possibly bringing about a different
outcome than the one expected.

In this thesis, we perform an extensive analysis of the intricacies emerging from the complex netting of routing policies at the interdomain level, in the context of the current operational status of the Internet. Abundant implications on the way traffic flows in the Internet arise from the convolution of routing policies at a global scale, at times resulting in ASes using suboptimal ill-favored paths or in the undetected propagation of configuration errors in the routing system. We argue here that monitoring prefix visibility at the interdomain level can be used to detect cases of faulty configurations or backfired routing policies, which disrupt the functionality of the routing system. We show that the lack of global prefix visibility can offer early warning signs for anomalous events which,
despite their impact, often remain hidden from state of the art tools. Additionally, we show that such unintended Internet behavior not only degrades the efficacy of the routing policies implemented by operators, causing their traffic to follow ill-favored paths, but can also point out problems in the global connectivity of prefixes.

We further observe that majority of prefixes suffering from limited visibility at the interdomain level is a set of more-specific prefixes, often used by network operators to
fulfill binding traffic engineering needs. One important task achieved through the use of routing policies for traffic engineering is the control and optimization of the routing function in order to allow the ASes to engineer the incoming traffic. The advertisement of more-specific prefixes, also known as prefix deaggregation, provides network operators with a fine-grained method to control the interdomain ingress traffic, given that the longest-prefix match rule over-rides any other routing policy applied to the covering less specific prefixes.

Nevertheless, however efficient, this traffic engineering tool comes with a cost, which is usually externalized to the entire Internet community. Prefix deaggregation is a known reason for the artificial inflation of the BGP routing table, which can further affect the
scalability of the global routing system. Looking past the main motivation for deploying deaggregation in the first place, we identify and analyze here the economic impact of
this type of strategy. We propose a general Internet model to analyze the effect that advertising more-specific prefixes has on the incoming transit traffic burstiness. We show that deaggregation combined with selective advertisements (further defined as strategic deaggregation) has a traffic stabilization side-effect, which translates into a decrease of the transit traffic bill. Next, we develop a methodology for Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
to monitor general occurrences of deaggregation within their customer base. Furthermore, the ISPs can detect selective advertisements of deaggregated prefixes, and thus identify customers which may impact the business of their providers. We apply the proposed methodology on a complete set of data including routing, traffic, topological and billing information provided by an operational ISP and we discuss the obtained results.


Purpose:  Disassembly is an important process that distinguishes remanufacturing from conventional manufacturing. It is a unique process that becomes focus of investigation from many scholars. Yet, most scholars investigate disassembly from technical and operational standpoint that lack of strategic perspective. This paper attempts to fill this gap by looking at disassembly from a strategic perspective by considering organisational characteristics, process choices and product attributes. To be more specific, this paper has three objectives. First, to gain understanding what has been done, and what need to be done in the field of disassembly in remanufacturing. Second, to conduct a systematic literature review for identifying the factors affecting disassembly for remanufacturing. Third, to propose a new model of disassembly for remanufacturing and also to provide avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach: This study used a systematic literature review method. A series of steps were undertaken during the review. The study was started with determining the purpose of the study, selecting appropriate keywords, and reducing the selected papers using a number of criteria. A deeper analysis was carried out on the final paper that meets the criteria for this review. Findings: There are two main findings of this study. First, a list of factors affecting disassembly in remanufacturing is identified. The factors can be categorised into three groups: organisational factors, process choices and product attributes. Second, using factors that have been identified, a new model of disassembly process for remanufacturing is developed. Current studies only consider disassembly as a physical activity to break down products into components. In the new model, disassembly is viewed as a process that converts into into output, which consist of a series of steps. Research limitations/implications:  The opportunities for future research include: the need to develop an index of factors affecting disassembly, and how to most appropriate relationship between original equipment manufacturers and contract remanufacturers to share knowledge gained from remanufacturing operations to improve product remanufacturability. Practical implications: Remanufacturers should not focus on product attributes only in order to manage their disassembly process efficiently. Rather, more strategic factors such organisational factors and process choices should also be considered as well. Originality/value:  This is the first study that identifies a comprehensive factors affecting disassembly in remanufacturing. In addition, it is for the first time that disassembly is not only viewed as a physical activity, but it is a process that consists of a series of step.


This thesis examines the impact of Data-driven learning (DDL) or classroom concordancing on a group of adolescent students in Greece seeking to investigate the degree of motivation to learn grammar when involved in DDL and the effectiveness of DDL in the teaching and learning of grammar. The study introduced concordance-based grammar materials to the experimental group, whereas a conventional grammar book was used with the control group, examining common grammar items and patterns. The analysis of classroom data gathered during DDL sessions offered insights into the improved noticing skills of the participants but also into the difficulties when involved in DDL with regard to unknown vocabulary and the Key Word in Context (KWIC) concordance format, which underlined the need for considerable teacher guidance. The qualitative evidence drawn from questionnaires and interviews suggested that the majority of the participants acknowledged the contribution and potential of corpora, but the degree of motivation to study grammar further varied. Most learners also expressed their preference for concordance-based learning, rather than their previous mostly passive learning experience, and further access to corpora, but without total abandonment of the conventional grammar book. The qualitative evidence was supplemented with analysis of test performances of the two groups, according to which more participants of the experimental group scored higher than those of the control group in each test. All these findings pointed to important gains and represent a preliminary step in the development of corpus-based grammar teaching to EFL adolescent learners.