Osteoporosis is the most common metabolic bone disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of exercise therapy on balance, muscle strength, bone density and quality of life in women with primary osteopenia and osteoporosis and to compare two types of aerobic and strengthening exercises on mentioned indexes.

 Materials & Methods : In this clinical trial, 90 postmenopausal women with osteoporosis referring to physical medicine clinic during 15 months were randomized into three groups of 30 people. Drug therapy began in all three groups. Quadriceps, hip abductor and extensors of trunk muscles strength were determined. Bone density of lumbar and femoral areas was measured by DEXA method. SF36 questionnaire of quality of life was completed by patients. In the second and third groups, aerobic and strengthening exercises were conducted for 6 months.

 Results : Although average BMD in an intra-group comparison had significantly increased in all three groups, there was no significant difference in the mean of BMD increase in lumbar and femoral areas (0.29 ± 0.19, 0.26 ± 0.25, 0.26±0.23, P=0.834).Reduction of fall risk, improvement of postural stability and increased muscles strength were observed in two exercise groups compared to the group without exercise (P<0.001). There was a significant increase in improving quality of life of patients based on SF36 questionnaire.

 Conclusion : Performing a 6-month exercise program in post menopause women increases muscle strength, maintains balance and improves quality of life in this group of patients compared to postmenopausal women under drug therapy only. A subtle increase in bone density was observed among studied groups without any distinct difference however, its effects seem to be stronger by continuous exercise program.


Discussions of resource management and development in northern Thailand often emphasize the threat of eviction faced by uplanders living in forest reserve zones. This "specter of eviction" is to be found in official government policy, in academic accounts of highland development, and in the activist writings of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The review of the literature in this article suggests, however, that very few evictions have in fact taken place since the early 1980s and the threat of eviction in accounts written over the past two decades is exaggerated. The authors examine some of the political, practical, and policy reasons why the rate of eviction has been very low. They conclude by arguing that reliance on the specter of eviction by activist academics and NGOs seeking to defend the rights of upland farmers results in a political strategy that is disempowering and disengaged from current livelihood realities.


X-Stream is a system for processing both in-memory and out-of-core graphs on a single shared-memory machine. While retaining the scatter-gather programming model with state stored in the vertices, X-Stream is novel in (i) using an edge-centric rather than a vertex-centric implementation of this model, and (ii) streaming completely unordered edge lists rather than performing random access. This design is motivated by the fact that sequential bandwidth for all storage media (main memory, SSD, and magnetic disk) is substantially larger than random access bandwidth. We demonstrate that a large number of graph algorithms can be expressed using the edge-centric scatter-gather model. The resulting implementations scale well in terms of number of cores, in terms of number of I/O devices, and across different storage media. X-Stream competes favorably with existing systems for graph processing. Besides sequential access, we identify as one of the main contributors to better performance the fact that X-Stream does not need to sort edge lists during preprocessing.


With both transition dynamics and the EU integration process having shifted to the south-east of Europe, a region fairly marginalized in the literature, this book fills a gap by taking stock of where South-East Europe's economies and institutions stood in 2004. The authors evaluate the potential for investment and growth within the South-East European region, including the role of trade and FDI, and discuss the challenges associated with unemployment, poverty and 'brain drain'. The book also provides insights into the particular monetary and exchange rate policies applied, including cases of 'euroization', and finally makes an assessment, against this background, of the European perspective of the countries of South-East Europe.


A WORK IN PROGRESSFather Roger Schoenbechler, a monk of Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, MN, died in 1986 at the age of 85. Well known for his scholarly and liturgical work, he devoted many years in the latter part of his life, while he was chaplain to the Benedictine nuns at Crookston, MN, to a work on Benedictine women in history. He began by culling a number of Benedictine menologies and histories, as well as several general martyrologies, to find all the entries for women who could be broadly classified as Benedictine. This included not only women of the various orders which live under the Rule of St. Benedict, but also several related categories. He recognized also many women who had been major benefactors of monasteries, were relatives of significant Benedictine men or women, were raised or strongly influenced by Benedictinism, or whose places of life or death had become Benedictine monasteries at a later time. For the first centuries after the time of Benedict, it would be impossible to identify the monastic life of any monastery as strictly of the Benedictine order in the later sense, since the lifestyle was not codified and a mixture of many rules and customs were in use. Many women of these monasteries, however, had been included in Benedictine calendars and venerated by and as Benedictines for centuries.Using numerous traditional sources in four languages, Father Roger proceeded to collate the information into a short descriptive entry about each woman, with page references for each of his sources. These were organized chronologically and then geographically within each century as well. He had also developed indexes alphabetically and by feast date.At the time of his death this monumental work in progress had almost three hundred pages of typed manuscript and twice that many women named. Margot King had the good fortune of receiving from then-abbot Jerome Theissen of Saint John's permission to have the manuscript. The effort to prepare this work for publication is being carried out by Sister Judith Sutera and Deborah Vess.In order to make the finished work more useful, the editors are in the process of adding additional sources and making critical revisions to the descriptive material. It will be impossible to include all reference sources which might be consulted. Likewise, the descriptions of the women cannot be exhaustive nor free of mystery and unresolved conflict in the data, especially as regards those of the earliest periods of monastic history. What can be hoped is that this will be a starting point, a simple dictionary of Benedictine women. The goal is that those who would like to know more will study the women it names, their deeds and their spiritualities, their world and their significance.The portion presented here is still being refined and prepared for final publication. It represents one time and place among many, but one which provided numerous women of outstanding significance.ANGLO-SAXON BENEDICTINE WOMEN OF THE SEVENTH CENTURYBertha of Kent+late 6th centuryBertha was the Christian daughter of King Charibert I (561-567) of France, and was married to the pagan king Ethelbert of Kent (560-616), the first Anglo-Saxon king to become a Christian. When St. Augustine and his forty monks arrived at the Isle of Thanet in 596, King Ethelbert and Queen Bertha received them solemnly, and gave them permission to preach the Christian faith throughout their kingdom. She was the first benefactress of the Benedictines in England, presenting them with the old British church of St. Martin near Canterbury, which had been her court chapel.(1)Eanswida of Folkestone+640August 31St. Eanswida (Eanswitha) was the daughter of King Eadbard (Edbald), and the granddaughter of King Ethelbert of Kent and his wife Bertha. She opposed her father's wishes that she marry a pagan prince and finally obtained his permission to found a monastery near Folkestone in Kent, England, where she became abbess. …


Aim: The aim of our study was to investigate the changes in renal functions as well as body mass index and lipid profiles of morbid obese patients that underwent Sleeve Gastrectomy (SG) by comparing them with patients that received Balloon Gastroplasty (BG) treatment.
Materials and method: This is a retrospective study. For preoperative and postoperative periods (between 4 and 5 months), the parameters related to patients' fasting blood sugar and insulin, lipid profile, Body Mass Index (BMI), liver function tests and Creatinine (Cr) were recorded, and Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR) values were calculated according to MDRD (Modification of Diet in Renal Disease Study) and CKD-EPI (Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration) formulations.
Results: Groups were similar according to age, baseline creatinine, CKD-EPI and MDRD levels and BMI values. With regard to renal function, there was a significant decrease in Cr values and significant increases in CKD-EPI and MDRD levels in this group of patients (p values; 0.010, 0.022, 0.029, respectively). There was no significant difference between preoperative and postoperative Cr, CKD-EPI and MDRD values of patients that underwent balloon gastroplasty (p values; 0.421, 0.581, 0.316 respectively).
Discussion: Obesity is a risk factor for chronic kidney disease. Abnormal kidney functions are seen more commonly in morbid obese patients. SG enables weight loss, and thus contributes to the improvement of renal functions.


In 1974, the concept of using pull-off test as a means of predicting the compressive strength of concrete was patented in the UK by Professor Long at Queen's University Belfast. Initially, the pull-off test was developed primarily aiming at unplanned in-situ strength determination. It was found later also particularly suited for assessment of bond strength of repairs. This test has now been accepted in British Standards, BS 1881-207:1992 for assessing the in-situ concrete strength in structures and BS EN 1542:1999 for assessing the bond strength between overlays and substrate concrete in patch repairs. In addition, BS 1881-201:1986 recommends it for quality control and long-term monitoring of hardened concretes. It has also been accepted in North America (ASTM C1583-04), Holland and some other countries for similar applications. This paper reviews its development history, principle, factors affecting the test results as well as its current applications in civil engineering fields.


In this paper, the authors elaborate the results obtained after analyzing and assessing the software process activities in five small to medium sized Indian software companies. This work demonstrates a cost effective framework for software process appraisal, specifically targeted at Indian software Small-to-Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Improvisation deals with the unforeseen. It involves continual experimentation with new possibilities to create innovative and improved solutions outside current plans and routines. The framework explicitly focuses on organizations that have little or no experience in software process improvement (SPI) programmes. The companies involved in this assessment have no CMMI experience prior to the work. For Indian software SME's, it has always been difficult to find the resources, both time and money, which are necessary to engage themselves properly in SPI. To alleviate this, we have developed a low-overhead and relatively noninvasive solution tool to support SMEs in establishing process improvement initiatives. The paper initially describes how the framework was developed and then illustrates how the method is currently being extended to include a questionnaire based approach that may be used by the appraised organization to perform follow-on self-assessments. The results obtained from this study can be used by organizations to achieve the CMMI standards. Finally, the results are discussed for consistency by incorporating a scientific based approach to avoid ambiguities which arise while arriving at a result.


Dairy policy often becomes a contentious topic during U.S. farm bill negotiations. The dairy subtitle of the 2012 farm bill has been debated and discussed since 2009. This research uses best-worst scenario methods to analyze dairy farmer preferences for policy options, including eliminating existing dairy policies, implementing new dairy policies related to income support and growth management, and ending ethanol subsidies. Results indicate that large and small dairy herd operators have differing preferences. Large herd operators prefer to end ethanol subsidies rather than specific dairy policy changes, while small herd operators most preferred support for income over feed-cost margins.


In many cases of deposits like tailings from open pit mines, the environment is damaged by the long extension of the slopes. Steeper slopes have a better influence on the landscape. On the other hand, the basic problem is caused by ground water, which a posteriori, after completing the construction of these structures, seeps through the foundation of the slopes. It is very important that no reclaim helps to solve this problem. If the deposits are founded in the wrong way, i.e. in the foundations where no disturbances of capillary water are applied, new methods have to be employed in order to stabilize the slopes. Before this, studies concerning the influence of ground water on the slope stability of the deposits have to be carried out. Natural slopes cannot practically be assessed, as the expanses involved in such tests are enormous. This is why scale models are prepared, together with numerical analysis based on coupled modeling. The influence of water is simulated by free internal parameters, which describe the extent of the hydration. On the other hand, geotechnical parameters change according to rules determined in the laboratory. Such a complex discussion can then be a starting point for several improvements of the slopes. The coupled modeling (scale and numerical) is applied to prepare a parametric study of tailing dams in Northern Bohemia, where large problems occurred because of the moving of current slopes against existing villages in this region. Scale models have been created in compliance with real situations and the results from them implemented in mathematical models. A parametric study was carried out using the numerical models.


Current understanding of the ionospheric behaviour has been obtained through different observations, modelling and theoretical studies. Knowledge of the ionospheric electron density distribution and its fluctuations, high quality data sets, as well as reliable data ingestion and assimilation techniques are essential for models predicting ionospheric characteristics for radio wave propagation and for other applications such as satellite tracking navigation, etc., to mitigate the ionospheric effects on radio wave propagation. Effect of the ionosphere on Global Navigation Satellites System (GNSS) accuracy is one of the main factors limiting the reliability of GNSS applications. In accord with the objectives of the European COST 296 project, (Mitigation of Ionospheric Effects on Radio Systems, MIERS) under an international collaboration some new results have been achieved in collecting and processing high quality ionospheric data, in adaptation of the ionospheric models to enable data ingestion and assimilation, and in validation and improvement of real-time or near-real time ionospheric ionisation electron density reconstruction techniques.


After a storm, thousands of dead bivalves washed upon a beach are sometimes observed. Bivalves are important not only as the marine products but also as the index of the quality of coastal environment. Hence, the field observations of the distribution of bivalves in a coastal zone; and the laboratory experiments on the characteristics of the behavior of bivalves have been performed. An interesting result is found by Yamashita and Matsuoka (1994) in a laboratory experiment on the burrowing process of bivalves under eroding condition due to the oscillatory flow: even when the descending velocity of a sand surface is sufficiently smaller than the burrowing velocity of bivalves, some bivalves cannot stay in the sand layer and are picked-up by oscillatory flow. In this study, the physical background of their results are considered from a viewpoint of sediment transport mechanics. Two important aspects are investigated: the one is the stochastic aspect of the burrowing process of bivalves; and the other is the reverse grading phenomena observed in motion of mixed-size grains.


This paper discusses the domestic and global obligations Australia is facing with respect to its climate change mitigation obligations. Because of the 'enhanced greenhouse effect' caused by human activity, climate change has become a global issue that requires collective support and action to ensure its mitigation, with the prevailing question being: What is the most equitable, effective and efficient means of abrogation? Traditionally, environmental measures have been enforced through command and control regulations, with their aim being to prohibit behaviour that was seen to be damaging to the environment. However, the last 20 years or so have seen a rise in the use of 'market-related instruments' such as the implementation of 'green' taxes and 'emission trading schemes' (ETSs) to influence human behaviour indirectly. From past experience, economic incentive-based policies are generally more efficient measures than regulatory approaches at combating issues like climate change. The paper compares two such economic or market-based approaches: carbon taxes and ETSs, noting the differences, advantages and shortcomings of each. International comparisons are noted, in particular, the success of Denmark and Sweden in their adoption of carbon taxes as part of their domestic Environmental Tax Reform (ETR) initiatives to address undesirable carbon emissions in their countries. The paper then examines the major regulatory controls that address the environmental protection activities which are already operating in Australia, before discussing the problematic and unsuccessful implementation in 2009/10 of the Australian Government's own version of an ETS, the 'Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme' (CPRS). Current developments including the recommendations of the Australian Government's new Multi-Party Climate Change Committee (MPCCC) and an examination of the recently released Garnaut Climate Change Review Updates, Nos. 6, 7 and 8, is also undertaken together with an overview of the more recent recommendations made in 'The Garnaut Review 2011: Australia in the Global Response to Climate Change'. It is concluded that despite the Australian Government's preferred option to implement another ETS variant (which would initially operate as a fixed-price permit scheme, to be converted later to a full ETS after a period of three to five years), a carbon tax would be better equipped to provide a solution that is revenue neutral, simple to administer, encourages technical innovation and, most importantly, is more likely to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2) than other regulatory measures, or other economic or market-based schemes.


This thesis aims to explore different meanings attached to being a "revolutionary mother" by women who identified as "revolutionaries" in the 1970s and 1980s. Based on a close analysis of in-depth, semi-structured oral history interviews with women who were both revolutionaries and mothers, as well as women who became mothers after the 1980 military coup, this research focuses on how motherhood narratives reconfigure the revolutionary narrative. Being a revolutionary and a mother has meant dealing with a gendered division of labor both at home and within revolutionary political organizations. This research aims to complicate the meanings of personal and political, public and private through the narratives of revolutionary mothers. The literature on motherhood and political activism has focused on either mothers' peace politics, or women's "entrance" into the public sphere through motherhood. The memories and struggles of women who identified as "revolutionaries" in the 1970s and 1980s have been either totally invisible or marginalized in public debates, as well as in the academic literature. Narratives of motherhood have constituted a significant layer of silence within this larger invisibility. Women who were mothers participated in revolutionary movements, or they became mothers during their years of political activism. This research seeks to fill a gap in the literature by analyzing the experiences, memories and contemporary reflections of women who were mothers and politically engaged revolutionaries in the 1970s and 1980s. This study argues that "revolutionary mothers" (re)constructed contested meanings of being a revolutionary and a mother, and shows how discussion of motherhood expands our understanding of revolutionary history in Turkey.


A detailed radiocarbon chronology obtained by accelerator mass spectrometry together with organic carbon and carbonate measurements on two Black Sea cores has been used to compare and contrast the burial fluxes of organic carbon in the Holocene sapropel and the modern sediment. At both deep-water and eastern-slope sites, the sapropel is separated from the modern facies by a variable thickness of compositionally homogeneous sediment with low levels of organic carbon and anomalously old radiocarbon ages. This homogeneous unit probably represents deposition by slumping or mudflow. The age limits of the sapropel are 1600-6600 B.P. at the deep-water site and 4000-6000 B.P. (radiocarbon years before 1950 A.D.) at the shallow-water site. The carbon accumulation rate in the deep-water sapropel is higher than that in the modern deep-water facies by a factor of 2 and is approximately the same as that in the modern sediment in shallow water. The revised chronology of sapropel formation and the differences in the carbon accumulation rates probably indicate that the sapropel was formed by increased production during the transition from the premodern lake to the modern marine phases of the Black Sea. This conclusion is consistent with the clear marine carbon-isotope signal in the organic mattermore » in the sapropel in both cores (results to be reported elsewhere), in contrast to the mixed source of carbon in the other facies.« less


Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes the infectious disease COVID-19, which was first reported in Wuhan, China in December, 2019. Despite the tremendous efforts to control the disease, COVID-19 has now spread to over 100 countries and caused a global pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 is thought to have originated in bats; however, the intermediate animal sources of the virus are completely unknown. Here, we investigated the susceptibility of ferrets and animals in close contact with humans to SARS-CoV-2. We found that SARS-CoV-2 replicates poorly in dogs, pigs, chickens, and ducks, but efficiently in ferrets and cats. We found that the virus transmits in cats via respiratory droplets. Our study provides important insights into the animal reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 and animal management for COVID-19 control.


DNA methylation is an indicator of the initiation of prostate carcinogenesis and as such has utility as a marker of risk in pathologically negative prostate tissue samples. We conducted a matched case-control study nested in a historical cohort of over 6,000 men with pathologically benign prostate specimens identified between January 1991 and November 2002 with no previous history of prostate cancer. Eligible cases were diagnosed with prostate cancer at least one year after cohort entry. Controls were selected through incidence density sampling and matched to cases on date and age at cohort entry, race, and type of specimen. In 310 matched prostate cancer case-control pairs (65% white; 35% African American), we assayed the DNA of the benign prostate specimen for presence of methylation in a five-gene panel (APC, RARB, CCND2, RASSF1, MGMT) and then estimated the risk of developing prostate cancer associated with methylation at each gene for the whole sample and stratified by race. Overall, methylation of RARB had the strongest association with prostate cancer risk (HR = 1.94; 95% CI = 1.30 – 2.91). In race-stratified analyses, the majority of the increased risk associated with RARB was found in the African-American sample (HR = 3.40; 95% CI = 1.68–6.88). In addition, APC was also associated with increased risk for prostate cancer in the African-American sample (HR = 2.17; 95% CI = 1.09–4.29). In a model that included both genes, only RARB remained statistically significantly associated with prostate cancer (HR = 3.14; 95% CI = 1.54–6.44). In whites, methylation was not associated with prostate cancer for any of the five genes assayed. In summary, positive methylation status at RARB and APC in pathologically benign prostate is associated with significant increased risk for subsequent prostate cancer, but primarily in African-American men. Whether this race-specific risk is due to racial differences in environmental stimuli and/or biology is unclear, but further study of DNA methylation in the earliest stages of prostate carcinogenesis may help explain the disproportionate burden of this disease among African-American men.


Background: Whitening toothpastes exert a whitening effect on teeth through higher surface cleaning effectiveness resulting from the abrasive properties of the paste or specific chemical components. This systematic review and meta-analysis was conceptualized to examine the relationship between whitening toothpastes and surface roughness as well as microhardness of human teeth and to clarify the evidence base available around this relationship by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies in this topic area, looking at in vitro randomized control trials. Methods: Criteria for including studies in the review were done based on population, intervention, comparison, outcomes and study and studies were identified from electronic databases. Covidence® was used for data screening and data extraction. The CONSORT tool was used for checking relevant content and methodology used in each of the papers reviewed. Systematic review was done followed by meta-analysis, using Review Manager. Results: A total of 125 articles were obtained on key word search. After duplicate removal and title screening, 17 articles were eligible for full text review. Finally, 7 studies were included for systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted on 4 studies. The forest plot for surface roughness showed that that the meta-analytic effect was statistically significant with surface roughness value being higher in the intervention group. The forest plot for microhardness showed that the meta-analytic effect was statistically significant with the microhardness value being lesser in the intervention group. Conclusions: Although whitening toothpastes typically can lighten tooth color by about one or two shades, there is some evidence to show that these toothpastes also affect the mineral content of teeth by increasing surface roughness and reducing microhardness. More evidence and further research are needed to identify the type of whitening agent which will whiten the tooth effectively while maintaining the integrity of the tooth structure.


OBJECTIVES
Sterile α motif and histidine-aspartate domain-containing protein 1 (SAMHD1) has been shown to restrict retroviruses and DNA viruses by decreasing the pool of intracellular deoxynucleotides. In turn, SAMHD1 is controlled by cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK) that regulate the cell cycle and cell proliferation. Here, we explore the effect of CDK6 inhibitors on the replication of herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) in primary monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM).

METHODS
MDM were treated with palbociclib, a selective CDK4/6 inhibitor, and then infected with a GFP-expressing HSV-1. Intracellular deoxynucleotide triphosphate (dNTP) content was determined using a polymerase-based method.

RESULTS
CDK6 inhibitor palbociclib blocked SAMHD1 phosphorylation, intracellular dNTP levels and HSV-1 replication in MDM at subtoxic concentrations. Treatment of MDM with palbociclib reduced CDK2 activation, measured as the phosphorylation of the T-loop at Thr160. The antiviral activity of palbociclib was lost when SAMHD1 was degraded by viral protein X. Similarly, palbociclib did not block HSV-1 replication in SAMHD1-negative Vero cells at subtoxic concentrations, providing further evidence for a role of SAMHD1 in mediating the antiviral effect.

CONCLUSIONS
SAMHD1-mediated HSV-1 restriction is controlled by CDK and points to a preferential role for CDK6 and CDK2 as mediators of SAMHD1 activation. Similarly, the restricting activity of SAMHD1 against DNA viruses suggests that control of dNTP availability is the major determinant of its antiviral activity. This is the first study describing the anti-HSV-1 activity of palbociclib.


The adaptive importance of case constructions for the crawling behaviour of three coexisting Trichoptera with scraping larvae, Agapetus fuscipes (Glossosomatidae), Apatania fimbriata and Drusus annulatus (Limnephilidae), from a first-order stream was studied with respect to larval biomass, case composition, substratum roughness and crawling velocity. Larval biomass differed among the species, with A. fuscipes carrying a relatively heavy case compared to A. fimbriata and D. annulatus. The organic portion of the mineral case, mainly silk, was lower in A. fuscipes than in the two limnephilid species. The number of particles per case was lower, and the size range of the sand grains selected was higher in A. fuscipes than in the limnephilid larvae. Large sand grains were not selected by the limnephilid larvae, but contributed to the relatively high mass of the A. fuscipes cases. The energetic costs of case construction (silk: biomass) were not significantly different between species. Species-specific crawling velocity on substrata without biofilms correlated positively with larval size, and negatively with the relationship between case and larval mass. Crawling velocity and crawling distance were significantly less on rough than on smooth tiles, especially with A. fuscipes and A. fimbriata. These two species searched more intensively for food on rough than on smooth tiles. The species-specific differences in case construction and crawling behaviour seem to he important for resource partitioning and habitat use in these scrapers, enabling them to coexist.


This study examined the conflict that married women experienced between work and family roles, and
analysed the coping behaviour. Data from 82 professional women from six research institutes revealed that
married women experienced work-family conflict with varying intensities in trying to meet the expectations
of work and family roles. In managing the work-family conflict, the women tended to cope through reactive
role behaviour, and personal role redefinition by changing their own attitudes and perceptions of role
expectations. These two strategies were more frequently adopted than structural role redefinition, which
entails changing the expectation of members in the role set such as family members, colleagues and leaders
at the work place, and society. Implications of these findings for working women and suggestions for further
research are discussed.


We provide fresh evidence regarding the relation between compensation consultants and CEO pay. First, firms that employ consultants have higher-paid CEOs—this result is robust to firm fixed effects and matching on economic and governance variables. Second, while this relation is partly due to consultant conflicts of interest, it is largely explained by the impact consultants have on the composition and complexity of CEO pay plans; notably, this impact fully mediates the consultant-CEO pay relation. Third, firms with higher-paid CEOs and more complex pay plans are more likely to hire a consultant. Last, Say-on-Pay voting patterns suggest shareholders view positively the advice consultants provide, but only when consultants provide no other services. We also find suggestive evidence of boards "layering" new equity incentive plans over existing ones, thereby increasing the impact of composition and complexity on CEO pay beyond the premium the CEO would demand for bearing additional compensation risk.
 JEL Classifications: J33; M12; M52; M48.
 Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.


Abstract Despite improvements in women's work opportunities and educational achievements, women's survival disadvantage is a demographic reality of urban India. A temporal and cross-sectional analysis of the data from the 1991 and 2001 census of India, while reaffirming the positive association between women's employment and the birth and survival of more girls, fails to reconfirm the oft-emphasized positive connection between women's education and increased survival of girls. Relatively high levels of women's education, by being indicative of household socioeconomic status, may be associated with increased ability to discriminate against girls through prenatal sex selection, especially in the presence of cultural biases resulting in low women's rates of participation in paid work, persistence of dowry payments, and lack of women's property rights. As the educational achievements of urban Indian women improve, gender discrimination in the birth and survival of girls may intensify as a cumulative effect of socioeconomic factors continuing to favor sons.


The three-volume set LNCS 9746, 9747, and 9748 constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Design, User Experience, and Usability, DUXU 2016, held as part of the 18th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2016, in Toronto, Canada, in July 2016, jointly with 13 other thematically similar conferences. The total of 1287 papers presented at the HCII 2016 conferences were carefully reviewed and selected from 4354 submissions. These papers address the latest research and development efforts and highlight the human aspects of design and use of computing systems. The papers accepted for presentation thoroughly cover the entire field of Human-Computer Interaction, addressing major advances in knowledge and effective use of computers in a variety of application areas. The total of 157 contributions included in the DUXU proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this three-volume set. The 49 papers included in this volume are organized in topical sections on design thinking; user experience design methods and tools; usability and user experience evaluation methods and tools


This paper provides new empirical evidence on a monetary policy committee with heterogeneous members whose decisions affect the efficacy of monetary policy. It thereby provides a link between the literature on monetary policy committees and central bank monetary policy implementation through monetary rules. Using a novel data-set of the idiosyncratic characteristics of FOMC members, over the period from August 1979 to February 2014, the empirical findings show that characteristics such as education, age, and, to a lesser extent, work experience are not important in understanding the FOMC decision-making process. Instead, the results point to the importance of time spent within the Federal Reserve System, tenure on the FOMC itself, and the influence of the Chair in shaping the decision-making process. The results are expected to have implications for the capacity of economic agents, as well as various markets in the economy, to more readily interpret public (monetary policy) information that reaches them. This makes the monetary policy decision process less noisy and, thus, enhances those agents' and markets' capability to attach the correct weight to this information.


Dearth of actionable evidence of the magnitude, determinants, and mediators of health inequalities in deprived communities has hampered efforts to eliminate invidious health inequalities. The objectives of this study, which set out to bridge the knowledge gap, were to assess the magnitude of health inequalities, identify the determinants of health
inequalities, and determine which material, psychosocial, and behavioral factors mediate health inequalities in Korogocho, an informal settlement in Nairobi, capital city of Kenya. Eligible, consenting adults were selected from each of Korogocho informal settlement's nine villages, for this cross-sectional, field-based study, through multi-stage mixed cluster sampling. The independent variables comprised demographic, socioeconomic,and environmental determinants while the mediating variables were material, psychosocial, and behavioral factors. Differences in the prevalence of the dependent variables: self-rated health status and self-reported chronic health conditions, were the indicators of health inequalities. Health inequalities were measured in three dimensions: health disadvantage, health gap, and social health gradient using prevalence difference, odds ratio, and concentration curves respectively. Complementary qualitative data were collected from six focus group discussions and key informant interviews. The study population comprised 719 adults aged 25 to 59 years, mean age 34.20 ± 8.68 years with 188 (26.1%) males. Ngomongo village respondents had the highest prevalence of poor self-rated health status (44.3%) while Grogan B village respondents had the highest prevalence (29.7%) of self-reported chronic health conditions. Compared to Korogocho informal settlement, Ngomongo village (Odds ratio [OR], 2.22; 95% CI, 1.44 to 3.44; P =0.0003) and Kisumu Ndogo village (OR, 1.76; 95% CI, 1.06 to 2.93; P = 0.029)respondents suffered significant health disadvantage. Varying magnitudes of health gaps and gradients were detected in the villages except in Highridge village where the magnitude of health inequalities was not statistically significant. Social health gradients were most marked within Gitathuru and Kisumu Ndogo villages but not across Korogocho informal settlement. From binary logistic regression, older age (45 to 59 years), female gender, lack of access to health care, and village of residence were the significant determinants of health inequalities. Significant mediators of health inequalities were alcohol intake, lack of voluntary physical exercise, having multiple, concurrent sexual partners, and unprotected sex. Mediators contributed between 10.5% and 14% in females and between 30.3% and 40.4% in males, to health inequalities. The qualitative interviewees attributed ill-health mainly, to environmental pollution, poor sanitation, and poverty. To conclude, despite mass deprivations and concentrated poverty, disaggregated data showed significant magnitudes of health inequalities within and across some villages
of Korogocho informal settlement. Most of the identified determinants and mediators of health inequalities were socially constructed and therefore remediable. This study provides needed policy-relevant evidence, which is based on local priorities and should
help stakeholders to target policies and design interventions such as social protection, gender mainstreaming, environmental regeneration, and health promotion to eliminate health inequalities and hence leverage aggregate population health. Future large scale, longitudinal studies that incorporate life-courses perspectives are recommended to further
validate the findings of this study in other deprived communities in Africa and globally.


We review the historical highlights of the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Studies of nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, disease modifying antirheumatic drugs, and biological agents over 5 decades were evaluated and summarized. There is emphasis on drug therapy as it has developed and evolved from empirical relief of symptoms with salicylates to targeted intervention in the immunoinflammatory process with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors. A therapeutic paradigm has been proposed to rationalize the use of the available therapies. If one accepts the thesis that both the acute and chronic consequences of RA are due to persistent misdirected and inadequately controlled inflammation that causes tissue destruction and loss of function, then prolonged complete control of the abnormal inflammatory process is the fundamental first step in the management of all patients with RA. Unfortunately, even with the newest therapeutic options to treat RA, most patients achieve only partial suppression of inflammation and many lose therapeutic benefit after an initial good response. The management of persistent or recurrent rheumatoid inflammation and disability continues to be a challenge. It remains to be determined whether the future addition of more potent specific interventions in the immunoinflammatory process will be able to solve this problem without disarming host defenses against infections and tumors.


Australian labour law, at least from the mid-twentieth century, was dominated by the employment paradigm: the assumption that labour law's scope was the regulation of employment relationships –full-time and part-time, and continuing, fixed term or casual – with a single (usually corporate) entity employer. But no sooner had the employment paradigm established and consolidated its shape, it began to fall apart. Since the 1980s there has been a significant growth of patterns of work that fall outside this paradigm, driven by organisational restructuring and management techniques such as labour hire, sub-contracting and franchising.

Beyond Employment analyses the way in which Australian labour law is being reframed in this shift away from the pre-eminence of the employment paradigm. Its principal concern is with the legal construction and regulation of various forms of contracting, including labour hire arrangements, complex contractual chains and modern forms like franchising, and of casual employment. It outlines the current array of work relationships in Australia, and describes and analyses the way in which those outside continuous and fixed term employment are regulated. The book seeks to answer the central question: How does law (legal rules and principles) construct these work relationships, and how does it regulate these relationships?

The book identifies the way in which current law draws the lines between the various work relationships through the use of contract and property ownership, and describes, analyses and synthesises the legal rules that govern these different forms of work relationships. The legal rules that govern work relationships are explored through the traditional lens of labour law's protective function, principally in four themes: control of property, and the distribution of risks and rewards; maintenance of income security; access to collective voice mechanisms, focusing on collective bargaining; and health, safety and welfare. The book critically evaluates the gaps in the coverage and content of these rules and principles, and the implications of these gaps for workers. It also reflects upon the power relationships that underpin the work arrangements that are the focus of the book and that are enhanced through the laws of contract and property. Finally, it frames an agenda to address the gaps and identified weaknesses insofar as they affect the economic wellbeing, democratic voice, and health and safety of workers.


This paper examines the intellectual legacy of Reuven Feuerstein (19212014) through an analysis of how his implied theories and practices serve to align pedagogy with mediational teaching. It offers a closer examination of ten psychological and pedagogical aspects of mediation for the practice of education in the classroom, after outlining twelve characteristics of a mediating pedagogy. The principles of the cognitive map are explained to increase a teacher's understanding of how to transmit content more effectively and more adaptively. This mediating style gives teachers a sense of professional authenticity. The simple role of transmitter of material is changed into that of the expert, guide, director, neighbourly educator, etc. As a consequence of this transformation, many teachers have begun to feel more enthusiastic for their job. It concludes with a summary of Feuerstein's influence derived from these formulations.


... in the minutiae lie often the unfoldings of the Story, as well as of the heart ... (1) As Samuel Richardson was publishing The History of Sir Charles Grandison, his third and final novel, in 1753 and 1754, Parliament was engaged in the reform of English marriage law. Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act (1753) represented the culmination of more than a century of debate among civil and ecclesiastical authorities over how best to eliminate illicit clandestine marriages, among other perceived abuses, and to resolve the inconsistencies that bedeviled England's archaic marriage laws. The Marriage Act standardized English matrimonial practice and, in the process, asserted Parliament's competence to regulate a social practice that had long been governed by ecclesiastical law and folk tradition. As a deliberate attempt to demystify and rationalize matrimony, the Marriage Act expressed a widespread cultural desire to impose order on norms and behaviors that appeared to self-consciously "enlightened" observers to be both chaotic and incoherent. In Sir Charles Grandison, Richardson, whose hero is a paradigmatic embodiment of "enlightened" virtuosity, reveals his support for marriage reform by contrasting depictions of abuses typical under the old marriage laws to scenes that demonstrate the rational pleasures associated with well-regulated marriage. At the same time, however, Richardson acknowledges the limitations inherent in any attempt to rationalize human behavior or regulate human desire. Sir Charles Grandison, which divides its hero's affections between two different but equally deserving women, dramatizes an emotional dilemma that not even the most enlightened marriage code can fully resolve. While Sir Charles's wedding to Harriet Byron fulfills the demands of the marriage plot and the marriage code, it fails to account for the depth of his attachment both to Harriet and to her rival, Clementina della Poretta. Richardson resolves Sir Charles's matrimonial dilemma by marrying his hero to Harriet in a public ceremony that fulfills the requirements of the Marriage Act, and in doing so he affirms the value of the new law's systematic approach to the rationalization of marriage practices. In the final scenes of the novel, however, Richardson symbolically recuperates "bigamy," one of the more notorious abuses to which the old marriage laws were subject, as a means of responding to the concerns of readers who have taken Clementina's claims to heart. By presenting his readers with an imaginatively "bigamous" conclusion to the novel, even as he celebrates the accomplishment of marriage reform, Richardson reminds his readers of the inadequacy of any law--or any narrative--to do justice to the complex and contradictory needs, desires, and affective bonds that characterize the human experience of love. Richardson had explored the diffculties posed by intense and often wayward human desires in both of his previous novels and, in Pamela, he directly acknowledges the possibility of "bigamous" or "polygamous" relationships. In the first part of the novel (1740), Mrs. Jewkes menaces Pamela with the prospect of a bigamous marriage to Mr. B.'s Swiss retainer Colbrand and suggests that Colbrand would happily sell his bride to Mr. B. in order "to go home again, with the Money, to his former Wife and Children, for she says, it is the Custom of those People to have a Wife in every Nation." (2) In the novel's continuation (1741), Richardson evokes the specter of bigamy again in his account of Mr. B.'s flirtation, following his marriage to Pamela, with the Countess Dowager of--, a beautiful widow with whom he playfully argues "in favour of that foolish topic polygamy," prompting the Countess to inform her uncle, in an act of deliberate provocation, that "she had rather be a certain gentleman's second wife, than the first to the greatest man in England." (3) In both situations, bigamy (or "polygamy") is marked as culpable and risible. …


Abstract. In recent years, the electromagnetic radiation (EMR) method has been used to detect faults and to determine main horizontal stress directions from variations in intensities and directional properties of electromagnetic emissions, which are assumed to be generated during micro-cracking. Based on a large data set taken from an area of about 250 000 km2 in Northern Germany, Denmark, and southern Sweden with repeated measurements at one location during a time span of about 1.5 yr, the method was systematically tested. Reproducible observations of temporary changes in the signal patterns, as well as a strongly concentric spatial pattern of the main directions of the magnetic component of the EMR point to very low frequency (VLF) transmitters as the main source and hence raise serious concerns about the applicability of the method to determine recent crustal stresses. We conclude that the EMR method, at its current stage of development, does not allow determination of the main horizontal stress directions.


The chapter examines why tax is so readily accepted as a critical part of constitutional history yet so rarely discussed in connection with the contemporary UK constitution. A convincing explanation is offered by Joseph Schumpeter, namely that there is an important difference between the establishment of a state and its normal operation thereafter. At the point of establishment, everything depends on success or failure in securing adequate and reliable revenues. Once the state is up and running, tax is generally subordinate to government, although the manner in which it is exacted may have important and enduring social consequences. There is therefore a point in time at which attention shifts from how tax constitutes the state to how it is constituted by the state.

This portrayal of tax is largely accepted in the present book, with two important qualifications. First, there is a tendency for constitutional crises to be channelled through tax, perhaps precisely because threatening revenue streams is a very effective way for antagonists to threaten the integrity of the state itself. Tax may therefore re-emerge as a topic of constitutional importance during periods of acute conflict. Secondly, there is a less spectacular but more pervasive tendency to privilege the security of public revenues, even in areas of law that are not conventionally treated as part of revenue law such as charity law and restitution. This second tendency, it is suggested, is most visible in cases where the protection of public revenues contradicts normative preferences that we would otherwise expect to see reflected in the area of law in question.

The difficulty with using these phenomena to highlight the constitutional relevance of tax is that the first is associated with old controversies such as the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Case of Ship Money, the Glorious Revolution and the People's Budget of 1909; whereas the latter receives piecemeal acknowledgement in various literatures but has not been examined systematically. In any case, the breakneck pace of change in the contemporary UK constitution, alarming from many perspectives, presents an unparalleled opportunity to observe the interaction of tax and constitutional questions in a modern developed state. This chapter, after presenting a critical review of the relevant literature, selects a few of these interactions for further examination: the devolution of tax powers to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and English localities; tax reform processes within the UK government and Parliament; the relationship between taxpayer rights and tax authority powers; and the changing domestic constitutional relevance of law associated with the OECD and the EU.

The aim of the book is not to provide a comprehensive survey of the fiscal constitution, but to highlight the potential for tax to disrupt the constitution, and for attempts to protect revenues to disrupt other areas of the law. These points, it is suggested, deserve more prominence in both tax and constitutional scholarship than they have hitherto achieved. To those readers newer to the study of tax, the unusual combination of tax topics prompted by a constitutional analysis may also offer a new window into the subject and a useful complement to more conventional introductions.


The Problem of Slavery as History: A Global Approach. By Joseph C. Miller. The David Brion Davis Series. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2012. Pp. xii, 218. $30.00 paper.During my first year in graduate school over twenty years ago, I asked Prof. Marie Perinbaum if she would lead a tutorial about slavery in Africa. She said she would consider it after I wrote a critique of Miller's Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1983). Miller hooked me. Since then, I have consumed, as all scholars and aspiring scholars of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade have to, the incredible corpus of work that Miller has produced over a forty-year career. Year after year I follow Perinbaum' s lead, plunking Way of Death down on the table of graduate seminars and telling students to be ready for next week's discussion.I'll now be adding The Problem of Slavery to my graduate syllabi. What is appealing about the study is that while considering an incredible span of time (tens of thousands of years) and multiple continents, Miller embeds slaving in specific temporal and spatial contexts in a way that no one else has the erudition to do. In his words, he challenges readers to think "in an epistemologically historical way" by "tracking observable outcomes of human strategies of slaving ... in their historical contexts" (p. 9). His central argument is revealed in the title. Slavery has persisted as history and not merely in history. No period of the human past can be understood without a consideration of the strategic importance of slaving. There is much in this revelatory thesis to be packed into a relatively short book. With dense prose, select examples, and great historical imagination, Miller succeeds, forging a study that is important, challenging, and insightful.He begins with the premise that the "prevailing concept of institutionalized slavery in fact primarily represents abolitionist depictions of the U.S. antebellum South, with the enslaved as one-dimensional victims of similarly one-dimensional brutal masters" (p. 2). This may be true of some scholarship, but with regard to Africanist historiography it is not. Certainly the past generation of studies has situated slave and slave-like systems in particular local contexts. Moreover, as popularly imagined, slavery in the U.S. antebellum South has not been one-dimensional. Slavery has been characterized as both brutal (in the film Amistad), and benignly paternalistic (in Gone with the Wind) and has been ignored, depicted, and re-depicted in all manner of ways at sites of historical preservation (e.g., Jefferson ' s Monticello) .Miller proceeds to problematize the oft-used phrasing "slavery as an institution," which, he emphasizes, gives the impression that slavery was a fixed, unchanging system across time and space. This is a useful point for non-specialists, but specialists will be surprised to read that "nearly all academic literature ... implicitly or explicitly, anywhere in the world, has continued to treat slavery as an implicitly static institution: that is, sociologically" (p. 24). By my read, for about three decades Africanist scholarship in particular has examined transformations in slavery. To be sure, when viewed in global perspective, slavery was not an institution. Across time and space slaveries have existed in many institutionalized and not-so- institutionalized forms. …


The goal of transfer learning is to use the knowledge acquired in a set of source tasks to improve performance in a related but previously unseen target task. In this paper, we present a multilayered architecture named CAse-Based Reinforcement Learner (CARL). It uses a novel combination of Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) to achieve transfer while playing against the Game AI across a variety of scenarios in MadRTSTM, a commercial Real Time Strategy game. Our experiments demonstrate that CARL not only performs well on individual tasks but also exhibits significant performance gains when allowed to transfer knowledge from previous tasks.


The article analyses the issue of the concept of justice in the modern world. Current globalisation processes are often identified with westernisation and are particularly conflicting and ambiguous. Therefore, the article reviews the concepts of justice – liberalistic (J. Rawls), hermeneutic of the universal discourse (J. Habermas, R. Alexy), postmodernistic (J.–F. Lyotard, R. Rorty, J. Derrida), communitarian (A. MacItyre, Ch. Taylor, M. Walzer) – that are currently prevailing in the western tradition, and tries to establish their interrelationship as well as their influence to other traditions. Also, an attempt is made to find out whether a concept of justice is possible that would claim universality, universal recognition and importance. One of most eminent modern liberal scientist J. Rawls suggests that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. In the J. Rawl's hypothetical situation all the people are rational and blind of circumstances ("veil of ignorance"). They negotiating to try to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative outcomes (minimax principle) and they'd decide about two principles of justice: political equality and economic equality. For all that J. Rawls recognized that these two principles of justice could be formulated only in the liberal democratic countries, so his theory of justice isn't universal. J. Habermas modified in his discourse of ethic the moral theory of I. Kant and formulated the conception of procedural justice. According to J. Habermas moral and law are built or speculated from discourse, i.e. from discussion of liberate and equal people, and in all society. J. Habermas suggests that this discourse goes on always, everyday and never stops. He find justice in building and agreement of rules of this public democratic discourse. So justice we can understand as rightness (R. Alexy). But the mane problem of the universal recognition of this theory is not rational argumentation in the building of law in some countries and traditions. Postmodernism pronounce the end of great narratives (religion, philosophy, law). J.–F. Lyotard called the situation of modern as "politic of terror". He says that now we need to recognize that there are many language games and it will not do to try legitimate one language game over the other. Also we need to learn to define the rules of language within our local situation. By local situation he means, for example, having coffee at the table or a specific online discussion. So we must find some way to strive for justice without first having to agree what kind of law is just. J. Derrida's own statements on the relationship between justice and deconstruction have proven somewhat unhelpful. In his most extended discussion of the subject, Derrida insisted simultaneously that (1) justice is impossible; (2) justice is not deconstructible; (3) law is deconstructible; (4) the undeconstructibility of justice and the deconstructibility of law ensure the possibility of deconstruction; and (5) deconstruction is justice. For all that we can say that the end of great narratives came not in the all countries and cultures, where one language game (religion, local virtues) are still important. Communitarianism argues that liberalism ignore community and this is one of the most important reasons of leveling of globalisation processes. Every individual must be prepared to give up some rights for the sake of his (her) community. Communities need cooperative virtues, shared goals, shared obligations, so the concept of justice depends from the local communities values, traditions and are different in every community. In general we could recognize the concept of justice in contemporary process of globalisation not as one universal idea but as various values in different countries, traditions and cultures.


The right to cast a ballot from a feminine hand occupied the attention and efforts of hundreds of women for more than a century in the U.S. In these two volumes Campbell (University of Minnesota) provides a basic understanding of two processes: the development of the rhetoric used by the women who argued for equal rights, and the constraints and sanctions applied to those women who affronted the norms of society's expectation that true women were seldom seen and never spoke in public. The first volume lays the foundation for the analysis of rhetorical style and content by its fine introduction and by a succession of chapters organized chronologically, with biographical sketches and excerpts from speeches. It includes a chapter specifically addressed to issues of sex, race, and class faced by African American women. Volume 2 is not a continuation of the first, but contains the texts on which the first volume is based. The biographical and historical sections are gracefully written and well organized, but the greatest value of the set lies in the actual words of the feminist leaders and Campbell's skillfull analyses. Every women's studies program must have this available. Upper-division undergraduates and above. "Choice"


"Interest is an emotion associated with curiosity, exploration, and knowledge-seeking (Fredrickson, 1998; Izard, 1977; Silvia, 2005a, 2005b, 2006; Tomkins, 1962). The first researchers to propose an appraisal structure of interest were Smith and Ellsworth (1985). An alternative appraisal structure of interest was proposed by Silvia (2005a, 2005b). Experiment 1 tested these competing models. Participants viewed copies of calming and disturbing classical and contemporary paintings, rated each picture for appraisals, and reported their experienced interest, pleasantness/enjoyment, and disturbingness. Experiment 2 aimed to replicate the appraisal structures for the emotion of interest and measured viewing time. Results showed (1) interest and pleasantness were unrelated; (2) novelty-complexity positively predicted interest; (3) disturbing pictures were highly interesting; (4) and viewing time positively predicted interest."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.


An enzyme assay for measuring dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP)-lyase activity was applied to natural sea water samples taken during the 1993 spring bloom off the Dutch coast. When relating the measured DMSP-lyase activity to the most abundant algal species found during the cruise, a significant correlation with Phaeocystis sp. numbers (r(2) = 0.9660, n = 23) was observed, but not with any of the other species present, or with total diatom numbers, total diatom biovolume or total protein. The calculated dimethyl sulfide (DMS) production by Phaeocystis sp. in a typical spring bloom off the Dutch coast appeared to be 1.5 to 4.5 times higher than the DMS loss due to flux to the atmosphere and photochemical oxidation. The results indicate that the alga Phaeocystis sp. has a very active DMSP-lyase, specific for this species, that was potentially responsible for the conversion of DMSP to DMS in the area investigated, leaving 35 to 75% of DMS for bacterial consumption.


Previous radio observations of the galaxy cluster A3560 in the Shapley Concentration showed complex radio emission associated with the brightest cluster member.To understand its origin we observed it with the GMRT, the VLA and ATCA at 240 and 610 MHz, 1.28,1.4, 2.3,4.8 and 8.4 GHz, and performed a detailed morphological and spectral study of the radio emission associated with the BCG. We also observed the cluster with XMM-Newton and Chandra to derive the properties of the ICM. The radio emission of the N-E nucleus of the dumb-bell BCG shows an active radio galaxy, plus aged diffuse emission, which is not refurbished at present. Our Chandra data show that the radio active nucleus of the BCG has extended X-ray emission, which we classify as a low-luminosity corona. A residual image of the XMM-Newton brightness shows the presence of a spiral-like feature, which we interpret as the signature of gas sloshing. The presence of a subgroup is clear in the surface brightness residual map, and in the XMM-Newton temperature analysis. The optical 2D analysis shows substructure in A3560. A galaxy clump was found at the location of the X-ray subgroup, and another group is present south of the cluster core, close to the spiral-like feature. The aged part of the radio emission closely follows the spiral pattern of the X-ray residual brightness distribution, while the two active radio lobes are bent in a completely different direction. We conclude that the complex radio emission associated with the cluster BCG is the result of a minor merger event in A3560. The aged diffuse emission is strongly affected by the sloshing motion in the ICM. On the other hand, the bent jets and lobes of the current radio AGN activity may reflect a complex gas velocity field in the innermost cluster regions and/or sloshing-induced oscillations in the motion of the cD galaxy.


Amid other uses, the term "lo-fi" (a corruption of "low fidelity") appears both in soundscape studies and in indie rock. Even though it is associated to negative qualities in the former and positive ones in the latter, these apparently antagonistic postures reclaim conditions of sonic production and contemplation that might have been lost in the past—if not in a pre-industrial era, at least in a moment prior to the culture industry. Nevertheless, both emerge from the same idea of "fidelity" that hatched from the stereophony phenomenon. Such a case seems to defy the pertinence of Bolter and Grusin's double logic of remediation, so as to deal with sonic processes. That happens due to conceptions of lo-fi which demonstrate that by making media perceptible does not always result in the absence of presence, nor does it block a sense of immersion.


The "social licence to operate" has been invoked in science policy discussions including the 2007 Universal Ethical Code for scientists issued by the UK Government Office for Science. Drawing from sociological research on social licence and STS interventions in science policy, the authors explore the relevance of expectations of a social licence for scientific research and scientific contributions to public decision-making, and what might be involved in seeking to create one. The process of seeking a social licence is not the same as trying to create public or community acceptance for a project whose boundaries and aims have already been fully defined prior to engagement. Such attempts to "capture" the public might be successful from time to time but their legitimacy is open to question especially where their engagement with alternative research futures is "thin". Contrasting a national dialogue on stem cells with the early history of research into bioenergy, we argue that social licence activities need to be open to a "thicker" engagement with the social. Co-constructing a licence suggests a reciprocal relationship between the social and the scientific with obligations for public and private institutions that shape and are shaped by science, rather than just science alone.


Background. The selection of pharmacotherapy for the treatment of alcohol withdrawal remains a clinical challenge. Research continues into the underlying pathophysiology of dependence and withdrawal. A spectrum of clinical presentations of alcohol dependence is emerging, yet recommendations and guidelines have remained unchanged for some time.  Objectives. To engage with the problem of translating research into practice, as reflected by the selection of pharmacotherapy for alcohol withdrawal by medical practitioners in the Free State Province, South Africa. Methods. A questionnaire-based survey and interviews were conducted among 121 professionals in both the private and public sectors across the province. A subgroup was formed comprising the 58 doctors who indicated that they prescribe for alcohol withdrawal. Participants worked in private general practice, specialist psychiatry practice, in a state hospital or in a treatment centre. Results. Prescribing practices varied based on practitioners' geographical distribution and professional capacity. Deviation from standard recommendations included the routine use of clothiapine and antidepressants in withdrawal regimens. Prescribing clothiapine appears to be a local custom. While prescription of antidepressants may indicate unrealistic expectations of therapeutic benefit, there are clear indications that this is maintained to mask the diagnosis of an alcohol-related condition. Prescribing for alcohol withdrawal is therefore not necessarily determined by pathophysiology or efficacy of medication. Conclusion. Withdrawal regimens need to be reassessed by researchers, policy makers and funders, balancing new developments with the real-life experiences and challenges of prescribers and their patients.


GH exerts a diverse array of physiological actions that include prominent roles in growth and metabolism, with a major contribution via stimulating IGF-1 synthesis. GH achieves its effects by influencing gene expression profiles, and Igf1 is a key transcriptional target of GH signaling in liver and other tissues. This review examines the mechanisms of GH-mediated gene regulation that begin with signal transduction pathways activated downstream of the GH receptor and continue with chromatin events at target genes and additionally encompasses the topics of negative regulation and cross talk with other cellular inputs. The transcription factor, signal transducer and activator of transcription 5b, is regarded as the major signaling pathway by which GH achieves its physiological effects, including in stimulating Igf1 gene transcription in liver. Recent studies exploring the mechanisms of how activated signal transducer and activator of transcription 5b accomplishes this are highlighted, which begin to characterize epigenetic features at regulatory domains of the Igf1 locus. Further research in this field offers promise to better understand the GH-IGF-1 axis in normal physiology and disease and to identify strategies to manipulate the axis to improve human health.


On March 31, 1968, over 500 Black nationalists convened in Detroit to begin the process of securing independence from the United States. Many concluded that Black Americans' best remaining hope for liberation was the creation of a sovereign nation-state, the Republic of New Afrika (RNA). New Afrikan citizens traced boundaries that encompassed a large portion of the South--including South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana--as part of their demand for reparation. As champions of these goals, they framed their struggle as one that would allow the descendants of enslaved people to choose freely whether they should be citizens of the United States. New Afrikans also argued for financial restitution for the enslavement and subsequent inhumane treatment of Black Americans. The struggle to "Free the Land" remains active to this day. This book is the first to tell the full history of the RNA and the New Afrikan Independence Movement. Edward Onaci shows how New Afrikans remade their lifestyles and daily activities to create a self-consciously revolutionary culture, and it argues that the RNA's tactics and ideology were essential to the evolution of Black political struggles. Onaci expands the story of Black Power politics, shedding new light on the long-term legacies of mid-century Black Nationalism.


Genetically
modified
organisms
have
been
accompanied
by
hopes
and
concerns
regarding
the
potential
of
this
technology
to
reshape
agricultural
practices,
our
environment
and
the
food
we
eat.
The
controversy
surrounding
GMOs
raised
questions
regarding
the
present
and
future
relationship
between
science
and
society.
This
thesis
contributes
to
this
debate
by
exploring
GM
scientists'
thoughts
about
public
opinion
and
its
influence
on
their
work.
I
contend
that
how
scientists
listen
to
public
opinion
is
mediated
by
national
context,
which
I
explore
through
a
comparison
of
the
United
Kingdom
and
Italy.
Within
the
public
understanding
of
science,
and
social
studies
of
science
more
generally,
the
listening
capacity
of
scientists
has
largely
been
ignored.
Asking
if,
how
and
under
what
conditions
GM
scientists
listen
to
public
opinion
on
GMOs,
I
address
this
gap
in
the
literature.
A
mixed
method
approach
is
used
to
answer
these
questions.
This
combines
descriptive
statistics
with
a
range
of
qualitative
methods,
including
narrative
analysis,
case
study
and
situational
analysis.
This
methodological
approach
is
meant
to
bridge
qualitative
and
quantitative
methodologies,
historically
polarised
within
PUS
scholarship.
This
thesis
is
structured
by
my
own
changing
understanding
of
the
listening
process.
Initially,
I
assumed
a
stimulus-‐response
model
of
scientists'
listening,
in
which
the
public
talks
and
scientists
respond.
Following
my
data
collection
and
analysis,
I
developed
a
new
model
for
listening
that
includes
three
moments:
hearing
public
opinion,
interpreting
it,
and
responding
to
it.
Using
this
model,
I
identify
two
typical
patterns
in
GM
scientists'
listening
process.
Both
of
these
patterns
are
associated
with
the
'deficit
model',
which
scientists
used
differently
according
to
their
national
contexts.
Drawing
on
Jasanoff's
(2005)
concept
of
civic
epistemology,
I
contend
that
these
patterns
are
indicative
of
scientists'
civic
epistemologies,
which
are
informed
by
a
number
of
different
factors.


Surface heat and freshwater fluxes from the Comprehensive 0cean-Atmosphere Data Set are revised and used diagnostically to compute air-sea transformation rates on density, temperature, and salinity classes over the domain of the data. Maximum rates occur over the warmest water and over mode waters, which are the dominant result of air-sea interaction. Transformation in different is accordingly distinguished by temperature and salinity, just as water masses in different oceans are so distinguished. Over the entire domain, to about 30°S, approximately 80×106 m3 s−1 of warm cool water are transformed by air-sea fluxes, on annual average. Calculations for several seas in the North Atlantic, where deep water is thought to originate, we also presented.


Aims Malta leads most childhood obesity statistics. This study aimed to assess paediatric staff's attitudes towards managing overweight and obese children, explore barriers they experienced when looking after these children and determine perceived levels of skill and interest in training in childhood obesity management. Methods A questionnaire was distributed to all registered Maltese paediatricians (n=42) and paediatric specialist trainees (n=13), in both public and private sectors in Malta. The questionnaire explored attitudes, barriers, perceived level of skill and interest in training in childhood obesity management. Participants were asked to return the questionnaire anonymously in a sealed envelope. Results were analysed with Microsoft Excel 2007 and an online statistical tool. Ethics approval was obtained. Results 52 participants responded to the questionnaire (94.5%). Most had considerable experience in paediatrics (1-10 years, 28.8%; 11-20 years, 36.5%; 21 or more years, 34.6%). The overwhelming majority (>94%) believe paediatricians play an important role in childhood obesity and recognise obesity is a serious health problem in Malta, affecting children's quality of life and psychological wellbeing. The commonest barriers in obesity management were: lack of patient motivation (96.2%), lack of support services (84.6%) and lack of parental involvement (82.7%). Doctors with 20 years or less of experience felt more competent and comfortable managing childhood obesity than their more experienced counterparts. Overall, less than half of respondents felt either competent (49%) or comfortable (47.1%) managing overweight children. Perceived competencies were poorest for behavioural management, family therapy, and parenting guidance. A third to half of respondents reported a high interest in obesity management skills training. 67.5% of respondents stated that they use past experience as their source of information to manage overweight children, topping professional guidelines (37.3%), speciality training (31.4%), and medical school teaching (12%). Conclusion This study is the only attempt to assess Maltese paediatricians' experiences when caring for overweight children. The study identified a need to improve training programmes for Maltes paediatricians and trainees, while setting up a multidisciplinary service for overweight children would facilitate the management of childhood obesity.


This Note employs Critical Race, feminist, Marxist, and queer theory to analyze the underlying reasons for the exclusion of domestic workers from legal and regulatory systems. The Note begins with a discussion of the role of legal and regulatory systems in upholding and replicating White supremacy within the employer and domestic worker relationship. The Note then goes on to argue that the White, feminist movement's emphasis on access to wage labor further subjugated Black and immigrant domestic workers. Finally, I end with an in-depth legal analysis of New York's Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the nation's first state law to specifically extend legal protections to domestic workers. The Note discusses many provisions of the bill and draws on the experiences of organizers involved in the passage of the bill to provide critical analysis of the limitations of legal reform. With this Note, I hope to provide organizers, activists, and legal practitioners with additional critical tools crafting solutions, legal reforms, and narratives in the struggle to end the oppression of domestic workers.


Whilst the promise of RNA interference (RNAi) continues to expand in the therapeutic environment, the utility of the endogenous RNAi mechanism, microRNAs (miRNA), in diagnostics has been proven with the successful commercialization of a biopsy assay for the identification of cancer of unknown primary origin (CUP). The implications and consequences in personalized medicine arising from this highly sensitive and specific approach are substantial, however, the true potential is only beginning to be understood, as reports of disease-specific miRNA signatures in circulating lymphocytes, blood plasma/ serum, lung sputum, saliva and urine have been described, even in diseases where no diagnostic tools exist. This review summarizes the various approaches in miRNA biomarker discovery in addition to key findings in the field with the highest potential for clinical development.


This study provides the result of a doctorate research into the impact of existential psychotherapeutic interventions with people experiencing chronic eating disorders. The results indicate that positive outcomes are correlated to therapeutic interventions which concentrate on the clients own perception of control and choice over their own eating habits.

The research aim was to explore both the effects and the effectiveness of existential therapy in altering the individuals subjective interpretation of their Self when they are deeply immersed in the experience of disordered eating. Interventions went beyond the cognitive-behavioural approaches into the implementation of existential psychotherapy which helped individuals to explore the existential concerns of life, choice, hope, social inclusion and love within the context of their own sense of Being. This focus led to an improvement in all study subjects and a reduction in the use of mental health resources.

All individuals entered the study following assessment criteria which included chronicity, lengthy use of mental health services and past therapeutic interventions. Three diagnostic criteria were included, Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and Morbid Obesity. Data presented in the study supported the original premise that all three eating disorders share underlying similarities and justify the inclusion of the diagnostic criteria of morbid obesity within the study. Therapy was either in closed groups or individual and consisted of a fixed number of one-hour sessions.

Therapeutic techniques included cognitive-behavioural therapy and person-centred counselling focusing on self-esteem and self-assertion, as well as an existential focus on dualistic perception of the mind/body, the conscious sense of the present and the affective bond with food itself. A series of therapeutic phases were structured to demonstrate the progress from interventions in self-esteem and self-assertion to existential concerns and principles.

Taking therapy beyond cognitive-behavioural techniques involved the application of Yaloms' (1980) and Strasser and Strassers' (1997) Existential Therapy and an exploration of Duker and Slades' (1988) concepts of the fragmentation of the sense of Self in individuals experiencing eating disorders. The research demonstrated important differences between the professional perception of appropriate eating and alteration in weight as successful clinical outcomes, and the clients' dependency on disordered eating as a source of release from interacting with others. Mental health interventions were perceived by clients as attempts to stop such a release without providing a substitute. A clear sense of loss was presented by all study subjects when eating was controlled by others. In most cases disordered eating was habitual and the emotional effects of raised or lowered glucose levels gave a sense of numbness and nothingness which was actively pursued. This was also attained when disordered eating was combined with other self-harm behaviours. Mental health practitioners inadvertently prevented the attainment of a sense of numbness by their focus on eating and body weight. The encouragement of food regimes causes increased anxiety for all clients leading to poor compliance levels.

The research results have the potential to impact on mental health education and clinical services as the data indicates that individuals with disordered eating gain more benefit when the therapeutic focus is less on restoring appropriate eating habits and more on the individuals sense of Self; the importance of food intake as a source of escape from others and escape from the internal awareness of Self.


Ill health may be related to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Haemophilia, a rare congenital bleeding disorder, predominantly affects males and females may be identified as carriers. Genetic testing is available for individuals and family members who are interested to know their predisposition to the condition Thirty-nine members of a cohesive haemophilia community in Victoria, Australia, were interviewed about their attitudes towards genetic testing. The transcripts were analysed using thematic and narrative analysis techniques. The themes reflected the meanings people attached both to the disease itself and to the use of genetic testing to detect it. Narrative analysis was then employed to investigate these patterns of meaning further. We identified three typical narratives models within this haemophilia community: those of a male with haemophilia, of a female carrier and of a female non-obligate carrier (female without a familial predisposition to haemophilia). Close examination revealed a distinct pattern where aspects of the narratives tended to cluster' according to thematic categories. While people in the haemophilia community are broadly in favour of genetic testing and genetic counselling, males with haemophilia have concerns that arise in relation to biological data banks, female carriers are cautious about antenatal testing and support greater communication of risk within families, and female non-obligate carriers are specially concerned about the safety of obstetric practices. The pattern of responses we have identified indicates that, despite the proliferation of issues and themes across the narratives, the number of possible personal narratives in which they are embedded is in fact quite limited. In this sense narrative analysis offers a supplementary dimension to thematic analysis in the elucidation of qualitative data.


Small organisms (meiofauna) inhabiting sediments in the deepest (>10,000 m) ocean trenches are almost unknown. Through a quantitative study of live foraminifera from an extreme trench environment (10,900 m water depth), we demonstrate that these protists are an abundant meiofaunal component. Foraminifera are organisms of central importance in geology and biology. There is currently great interest in primitive noncalcareous taxa with simple, single-chambered shells. The Challenger Deep assemblages are dominated by these phylogenetically important forms. Molecular evidence suggests that similar taxa are modern representatives of the basal foraminiferal evolutionary radiation that probably occurred in the Precambrian (Neoproterozoic).


Lead (Pb) is an important environmental pollutant extremely toxic to plants and other living organisms including humans. To assess Pb phytotoxicity, a pot culture experiment was carried out using two groundnut cultivars (Arachis hypogaea L. cultivar K6 and cultivar K9) on plant growth, ROS levels, lipid peroxidation, and antioxidant metabolism using biochemical, histochemical methods. Plants were grown in pots for 14 days, in the botanic garden, and subjected to Pb-stress (0, 100, 200, 400 and 800 ppm) by adding Pb (NO3)2 solution and further allowed to grow for 10 days. The results showed that cultivar K6 registered lower Pb accumulation than cultivar K9, however, localization of Pb was greater in roots than leaves in both groundnut cultivars. The Pb-stress results in an increase in free radicals (O2•- and H2O2) generation in both groundnut cultivars, but more significantly in cultivar K9 than K6. Pb-stress also caused significant changes in the rate of peroxidation as shown in the levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) content in roots and leaves of both groundnut cultivars. Free proline, ascorbic acid (AsA) and non-protein thiol (NP-SH) contents were increased in cultivar K6 due to Pb-stress, but less in cultivar K9. Pb treated plants showed increased levels of antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), guaiacol peroxidase (GPX), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) glutathione reductase (GR) and glutathione S-transferase (GST). Isozyme band intensities of SOD, GPX and APX were more consistent with the respective changes in antioxidative enzyme activities. These results indicate that cultivar K6 possesses greater tolerance potential for Pb toxicity than cultivar K9.


On the basis of its tetrapod fauna, the "Stormberg Group" of southern Africa can be divided into at least two zones. The lowest one is composed of the Molteno and Lower Elliot Formations. It has yielded remains of poorly known stereospondyls, unpublished rauisuchians, enigmatic carnivorous dinosaurs, numerous prosauropods, and rare sauro-pods and cynodonts. The presence of an ornithischian and a chelonian is alleged, but that of a dicynodont is quite doubtful. The age of the Lower Elliot Formation has been the subject of much speculation. A parallel is drawn with European Upper Norian-"Rhaetian" sites in which plateosaurid prosauropods constitute the vast majority of macrovertebrate remains. In conclusion, the Lower Elliot Formation is correlated with the Apachean "Land Vertebrate Faunachron", which suggests that it is not older than late Norian.


AIM
To study the anatomy, histology and fiber relations of the superior medullary velum.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Ten previously frozen and formalin-fixed sheep brains were used. The fiber dissection was done using the operating microscope at the Rhoton Anatomy Laboratory of Marmara Faculty of Medicine. A tractographic study was conducted on five volunteer patients to see the fiber anatomy of the superior medullary velum.

RESULTS
The average thickness and length was found to be 0.296 mm (range 0.09-1 mm) and 4.25 mm (range 3.25-4.5 mm) respectively. Histologically, the superior medullary velum consisted of cuboidal layer of ependymal cells on the anterior surface related to fourth ventricle. The subependymal layer contained hypocellular fibrillary zone with few glial cells, and the outer layer consisted of thin layer of fibroblasts. Under the hypocellular fibrillary zone, abundant axons and organized structures were observed. Tractographically, only a few fibers were identified on diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI).

CONCLUSION
We could not identify a distinct tract anatomically and neuron cells histologically. Neuron-like cells and organized structures were observed on immunohistochemical analysis. Also a few tracts were observed on DTI study as an ascending pathway from spinal tracts to the superior medullary velum. Further studies including human cadaveric, histologic and fiber tractographic investigations are needed to say that it is harmless to divide this anatomical structure.


We investigate the metastable phase behaviour of the ST2 water model under deeply supercooled conditions. The phase behaviour is examined using umbrella sampling (US) and well-tempered metadynamics (WT-MetaD) simulations to compute the reversible free energy surface parameterized by density and bond-orientation order. We find that free energy surfaces computed with both techniques clearly show two liquid phases in coexistence, in agreement with our earlier US and grand canonical Monte Carlo calculations [Y. Liu, J. C. Palmer, A. Z. Panagiotopoulos and P. G. Debenedetti, J Chem Phys, 2012, 137, 214505; Y. Liu, A. Z. Panagiotopoulos and P. G. Debenedetti, J Chem Phys, 2009, 131, 104508]. While we demonstrate that US and WT-MetaD produce consistent results, the latter technique is estimated to be more computationally efficient by an order of magnitude. As a result, we show that WT-MetaD can be used to study the finite-size scaling behaviour of the free energy barrier separating the two liquids for systems containing 192, 300 and 400 ST2 molecules. Although our results are consistent with the expected N(2/3) scaling law, we conclude that larger systems must be examined to provide conclusive evidence of a first-order phase transition and associated second critical point.


We introduce diagnostic expectations into a standard setting of price formation in which investors learn about the fundamental value of an asset and trade it. We study the interaction of diagnostic expectations with two well-known mechanisms: learning from prices and speculation (buying for resale). With diagnostic (but not with rational) expectations, these mechanisms lead to price paths exhibiting three phases: initial underreaction, followed by overshooting (the bubble), and finally a crash. With learning from prices, the model generates price extrapolation as a byproduct of fast moving beliefs about fundamentals, which lasts only as the bubble builds up. When investors speculate, even mild diagnostic distortions generate substantial bubbles.


ATR FT-IR spectroscopy is a widely used technique for surface analysis. A less common FT-IR method is CIRCLE ATR, which was originally designed to study aqueous systems that are difficult to analyze due to strong water absorbance in transmission measurements. Recent studies of styrene/acrylic acid copolymer dissolved in aqueous solvent show that with the use of this technique it is possible to detect very low concentrations of solute (0.001 w/w). For our purposes this technique was modified for application to surface studies of flexible films and fibers.


In this paper, a novel supervised classification approach is proposed for high-resolution dual-polarization (dual-pol) amplitude satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. A novel probability density function (pdf) model of the dual-pol SAR data is developed that combines finite mixture modeling for marginal probability density functions estimation and copulas for multivariate distribution modeling. The finite mixture modeling is performed via a recently proposed SAR-specific dictionary-based stochastic expectation maximization approach to SAR amplitude pdf estimation. For modeling the joint distribution of dual-pol data the statistical concept of copulas is employed, and a novel dictionary-based copula-selection method method is proposed. In order to take into account the contextual information, the developed joint pdf model is combined with a Markov random field approach for Bayesian image classification. The accuracy of the developed dual-pol supervised classification approach is validated and compared with benchmark approaches on two high-resolution dual-pol TerraSAR-X scenes, acquired during an epidemiological study. A corresponding single-channel version of the classification algorithm is also developed and validated on a single polarization COSMO-SkyMed scene.


We analyze households' economic freedom to determine their standard of living, characterized by their capacity to spend on housing, utilities, food, and transport: economic poverty is a lack of freedom due to budgetary constraints. We propose three new measures. The first is the classical notion of "freedom to choose", distinguishing however between the categories of high, medium and low frequency of purchase. Facing a food price increase, households in the lowest decile cannot escape it: they are not free. For the lowest decile the share of high-frequency consumption goods is 60%. We show that the households in the 1° decile of consumption recorded an inflation rate which, between 1999 and 2009, was 7 percentage points higher than the inflation rate for the 10° decile. The second is a measure of the freedom to choose an adequate food plan: the share of households unable to ensure adequate food consumption, according to our measure, was 6.3% in 2007, increasing to 8.4% in 2009. We show that food consumption, inside and outside the home, is constrained by housing costs. The level of food consumption for households below the food poverty line is startlingly low for families with children, and constraints on food consumption in the north are slightly higher than in the south of Italy. The third measure is defined with reference to a "negative saving" of necessities, i.e. a level of income lower than that required to ensure an adequate consumption of non-durable goods and services. The share of households which experienced financial difficulties in 2008, at the onset of the crisis, was 13.7%. The households with negative savings are typically those having one earner, working class, young and living in rented housing; this group tended to increase between 1998 and 2008. While the level of food and clothing consumption is almost equal in the north and the south of Italy, the degree of economic vulnerability is higher in the south when considering income and savings.


This book is about the South African amnesty process. Many of the most well-known cases are investigated: the Cradock Four, the Pebco Three, the St James's Church, Heidelberg Tavern, Bisho, Boipatong, Trust Feeds and KwaMakutha massacres; the killing of Amy Biehl, Chris Hani, Steve Biko, Stanza Bopape, Fabian and Florence Ribeiro; the Motherwell, Magoo's Bar, Ellis Park Rugby Stadium, Church Street and Wimpy bombings, the Craig Duli coup, the applications of Craig Williamson, Trevor Tutu, Eugene de Kock and Jeffrey Benzien, the collective applications of the ANC 37 and APLA leaders, the Jerry Richardson case involving Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and amnesty cases stemming from the Magnus Malan trial. The content of many of the amnesty decisions are investigated to see how the Amnesty Committee applied the amnesty law and whether the decisions were fair and consistent. The book examines the amnesty application numbers the number of 'legitimate' applications, the spread across political affiliation, the number of female applicants, and who is a victim and who is a perpetrator. It looks at the extent to which the indemnity process that occurred between 1990 and 1995 undermined the 'carrot' of amnesty, whether the criminal justice system offered a sufficient 'stick' to coax potential applicants into the process, and how timing of events and attitudes of political parties influenced applications. Also considered is the timing of hearings, the role of the Investigations Unit, and the way in which the Amnesty Committee dealt with offences committed outside of South Africa, witchcraft applications and gender crimes. The subject of the final chapter is what happens next. Will those who were refused amnesty or who did not apply be prosecuted? A few significant themes or debates permeate the text; the extent to which the TRC was victim-centred or perpetratorfriendly; the extent to which the TRC and the amnesty process in particular, contributed to the discovery of 'sufficient' truth, a prerequisite for reconciliation; and the extent to which the TRC and its amnesty process actively attempted to facilitate national unity and reconciliation.