A key step in order to realise photo-electrochemical (PEC) water splitting to produce hydrogen sustainably, is reactor design. Good engineering will minimise energy losses (both optical and ohmic) due to reactor construction, whilst ensuring the H2 and O2 produced are separated, and this can subsequently relax the requirements on the photo-absorber material and/or electro-catalysts. In this paper we show that separation of the products through hydrodynamic flow alone would negate the need for the conventionally used membrane, which has an associated ohmic drop and cost. This is demonstrated to be possible using a 'laminar flow between two parallel plates' reactor design and AR/Pe and AR are found to be the two key dimensionless numbers that predict product cross-over (where AR, Pe are aspect ratio and Peclet number respectively). Supersaturation was used as an indicator of bubble formation, which disrupts the laminar flow required for separation and it is shown that by increasing the reactor pressure, higher current densities can be tolerated before supersaturation occurs. Removal of the dissolved hydrogen and oxygen from electrolyte is discussed. A multi-physics model, which employs an optical transfer matrix method, is used to validate the previous conclusions. Experimental data for hematite and Pt deposited on FTO was used as the anode and cathode respectively. Parasitic optical losses and efficiency improvement with stacking are shown for the example reactor configuration. Additionally, the concept of stacking this reactor design in order to absorb light in multiple passes is introduced. This approach relaxes a classical constraint on photo-absorber materials: large absorption length compared to small diffusion length of charge carriers in the semiconductor.


Introduction: There is much evidence to show that separation anxiety can also occur in adults. The aim of current study was to examine the psychometric properties of adult separation anxiety questionnaire made by Manicavasagar , Silove ,Wagner and Drobny2003 (ASA -27). Materials & Methods: 400 students of Semnan University were selected by multistage cluster sampling method; they responded to the instruments of the study including adult separation anxiety questionnaire, Structured Clinical Interview for separation anxiety syndrome Adults and Separation Anxiety Symptom Inventory. Factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha coefficients and Pearson correlations methods were used for data analysis. Findings: Factor analysis and convergent validity methods were used to determine the construct validity of adult separation anxiety questionnaire (ASA-27). Results from factor analysis showed the adult separation anxiety questionnaire measure own factor. Result from Factor analysis showed that 5 questions (questions 1, 3, 13, 19 and 26) on adult separation anxiety factor loadings were less than 30/0; therefore they were excluded from the questionnaire. Also, results from convergent validity indicated a significant relationship between adult separation anxiety and symptoms of separation anxiety in childhood and adult separation anxiety symptoms in a structured clinical interview, there was a significant relationship. Reliability of the adult separation anxiety questionnaire (ASA-27) by Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0/89. The correlation between the two questionnaires (SCI- SAS) and (SASI) was 0/651(p less-than 0/001) and 0/588 (p less-than 0/001). Discussion & Conclusions: Persian version of adult separation anxiety questionnaire in students is of a good validity and reliability and it is an appropriate and practical instrument for the measurement of diagnosis of separation anxiety in adults.


Along this review, an introduction to the concrete world recycling will be done. Concrete is almost in
every building or road that is around us. As the world changes, new buildings and runways are
needed, therefore waste is generated and recycling becomes necessary. Not everybody knows
about concrete recycling for these reason people should know about it.
Concrete is the second most consumed material after water and is the basis for the urban
environment, that is why concrete waste makes up a considerable portion of the world's waste. This
waste consists of huge amounts of materials that are often deposited without any consideration,
causing many problems and encouraging the illegal dumping. In order to avoid that, recycling
becomes really important since better opportunities are crated.
Along this review, a wide vision of recycling concrete will be shown. The main chapters are as
follows and talk about the next subjects:
[1] A brief introduction would be done into RILEM technical committees on recycling and
sustainable development. The recycling of Construction and Demolition waste has emerged as a
socioeconomic priority within the European Union and a considerable amount of research and
development has taken place in the frame of RILEM. Parallel to the work of RILEM, the recycling of
concrete has taken place in USA. American Concrete Institute has also worked on recycling of
concrete.
A short reflection is also done about the necessity of changing our habits, particularly in the building
and construction industry. The utilization of construction waste by recycling can provide
opportunities for saving energy, time, resources and money.
Collection of recovery data about recycling concrete is of more recent interest with growing concern
regarding sustainable development. Every country has its own way of quantify the amount of waste
they generate and recycle, and that is not always available in all the regions since the definitions
used vary.
Concrete recycling has many advantages as well as disadvantages. From a purely economic point of
view the recycling of building waste is only attractive when the recycled product is competitive with
natural resources in relation to cost and quality. Recycling concrete reduces natural resource
exploitation and associated transportation costs, and reduces waste landfill. As the recycling process
can be done on site it is also a way to save energy. Taking into account that this is a new technology
many people will be needed so there would be good job opportunities.


Disease prediction has become important in a variety of applications such as health insurance, tailored health communication and public health. Disease prediction is usually performed using publically available datasets such as HCUP, NHANES or MDS that were initially designed for health reporting or health cost evaluation but not for disease prediction. In these datasets, medical diagnoses are traditionally arranged in "diagnose-related groups" (DRGs). In this paper we compare the disease prediction based on crisp DRG features with the results obtained employing a new set of features that consist of the fuzzy membership of patient diagnoses in the DRG groups. The fuzzy membership features were computed using an ICD-9 ontological similarity approach. The prediction results obtained on a subset of 9,000 patients from the 2005 HCUP data representing three diseases (diabetes, atherosclerosis and hypertension) using two classifiers (random forest and SVM trained on 21,000 samples) show significant (about 10%) improvement as measured by the area under the ROC curve (AROC).


Background: Hypertension and its complications is responsible for a significant proportion of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality worldwide. In Dora Nginza Hospital, clinical experience has shown that hypertension and its complications are common but despite this assumption, the overall prevalence of complications, social and demographic characteristics and various forms of presentations of hypertension in pregnancy is still largely unknown.

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of complications, risk factors, social and demographic characteristics of hypertensive complications of pregnancy in Dora Nginza Hospital.

Study deisgn: The study is a retrospective descriptive study performed on medical records. The study was carried out by looking at records of patients admitted with hypertension in pregnancy over a 2 year period (2007-2008). MS Excel was used to capture the data and STATISTICA version 9 was used for data analysis.

Setting: Dora Nginza hospital, Port Elizabeth Hospitals Complex.

Main outcome measures: The incidence, risk factors, maternal complications, perinatal outcome.

Results: A total of 22,711 deliveries were recorded in Dora Nginza hospital over the two year period (2007-2008). 1520 cases were complicated by hypertension giving an incidence of hypertension as 6.69% (66.9 per 1000 deliveries). The incidence of pre eclampsia is 35.40% and chronic hypertension 2.80%. Maternal complications occurred in 40.29% of the hypertensive women. Maternal deaths occurred in 0.79% (790 per 100000 deliveries) accounting for 38.71% of the total maternal deaths in the facility. Poor neonatal outcome was recorded in 5.90% of these women. The 2.30% stillbirths represent 3.30% of all fetal deaths in the facility for the study period. Prominent risk factors are age, race, low socioeconomic status, smoking and BMI.

Conclusion: Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy in Dora Nginza hospital is common and is an important cause of maternal and perinatal morbidity and mortality. Improved socioeconomic status, quality obstetric services which include early booking, proper antenatal care, early referral and proper documentation can minimise the effect of hypertension on pregnancy.


While most famously associated with numerous mid-century architects, Brutalism was a style of visual art that was also adopted by painters, sculptors, printmakers, and photographers. Taking into account Brutalist work by eminent artists such as Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, as well as lesser-known practitioners like Nigel Henderson and Magda Cordell , this volume focuses on a ten-year period between 1952 and 1962 when artists refused a programmatic set of aesthetics and began experimenting with images that had no set focal point, using non-traditional materials like bombsite debris in their work, and producing objects that were characterized by wit and energy along with anxiety, trauma, and melancholia. This original study offers insights into how Brutalism enabled British artists of the mid-20th century to respond ethically and aesthetically to the challenges posed by the rise of consumer culture and unbridled technological progress.


The study of the phenotypic characterisation and molecular polymorphism of local chicken populations was carried out in Benin on 326 chickens of the Forest ecological area and 316 of the Savannah ecological area, all were 7 months old at least. The collection of blood for the molecular typing was achieved on 121 indigenous chickens of which 60 from the Savannah ecological area and 61 from the Forest ecological area. The genotyping was carried out for 22 microsatellite loci. Weight and body measures of the Savannah chickens were significantly higher (P < 0.001) than those of the Forest chickens. In the Savannah ecological area, the most frequent plumage colours were the black (22.15%), the white (19.62%), the coppery black (7.59%) and the golden partridge (7.59%). In the Forest area, the fawn (15.34%), the black (10.43%), the white (6.8%), the silver white (6.8%) and the golden partridge (6.75%) were the dominant feather colours. Thus, phenotypic characterisation showed significant differences between Savannah and Forest local chickens. The FST calculated between the Savannah and Forest populations revealed a low genetic differentiation and the dendogram showed that Savannah and Forest chickens were quite intermingled. In conclusion, local populations from Savannah and Forest area may be considered as ecotypes, but not as two distinct breeds.


The adoption of large-scale computers by the British retail banks in the 1960s required a first-time dislocation of customer accounting from its confines in the branches—where it had been dealt with by paper-based and mechanized information systems—to a new collective space: the bank computer center. While historians have rightly stressed the continuities between centralized office work, punch-card tabulation, and computerization, the shift from decentralized to centralized information work by means of a computer has received little attention. In this article I examine the case of Ferranti and Martins Bank and employ elements of Anthony Giddens's structuration theory to highlight the difficulties of transposing old information practices directly onto new computerized information work.


The Enlist™ traits provide 2,4-D resistance in several crops. Though corn is naturally tolerant to 2,4-D, the engineered trait conferred by the aryloxyalkanoate dioxygenase-1 (AAD-1) enzyme provides enhanced 2,4-D tolerance and confers resistance to the graminicide herbicide family, the aryloxyphenoxypropionates. The objectives of this research were 2-fold: (1) measure and compare uptake, translocation, and metabolism of 2,4-D in Enlist™ (E, +AAD1) and non–AAD-1 transformed (NT, −AAD1) isogenic corn hybrids; and (2) and investigate the effect of glyphosate and/or the Enlist™ adjuvant system (ADJ) on these factors and corn injury. Uptake of radiolabeled 2,4-D acid applied alone in corn was not altered by the addition of ADJ when tank mixed at 24 h after application (HAA). By contrast, uptake of radiolabeled 2,4-D was significantly lower (69%) compared with 2,4-D plus ADJ (89%) at 24 HAA with a premixed formulation of 2,4-D choline plus glyphosate-dimethylamine (Enlist Duo™ herbicide [EDH]). Translocation of 2,4-D between the two corn hybrids was not different. E corn metabolized more 2,4-D (100% of absorbed) than NT corn (84%), and glyphosate did not alter 2,4-D metabolism. Furthermore, the metabolism of 2,4-D to nonphytotoxic dichlorophenol (DCP) and subsequent DCP-derived metabolites formed in E corn was examined. Injury to E corn is not typically observed in the field; however, injury symptoms were clearly evident in E corn (within 24 HAA) when formulated acetochlor was tank mixed with EDH, which correlated with an increase in 2,4-D uptake during this time period. In summary, the lack of injury in E corn following EDH applied alone may be attributed to a relatively low amount of 2,4-D uptake and the combination of natural and engineered 2,4-D metabolic pathways. Nomenclature: 2,4-D; acetochlor; Enlist Duo™ herbicide; glyphosate; corn, Zea mays L.


This policy paper was submitted to HM Treasury on 9th November 2015 in response to their consultation on Reforming the business energy efficiency tax landscape. The consultation document can be found here.

The paper states that "the instrument of choice to achieve the Government's policy objectives should be a price on the carbon content of energy, rather than on the amount of energy consumed, in order to address the greenhouse gas externality."


Combining close readings of literature and theory, Sex, Time, and Space in Contemporary Fiction opens up new ways to consider the sex-time-space nexus. In an exciting and compelling contribution to contemporary literary studies, this book takes the concept of 'exceptionality' as its point of departure as developed through an exploration of Giorgio Agamben's theory of the state of exception and the work of theorists including Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Through an analysis of a range of widely read contemporary fiction, including On Chesil Beach, Gertrude and Claudius, The Act of Love and Room, Ben Davies provides a rigorous exploration of narrative form and offers original theories of the prequel, narrative relations in terms of set theory, and the practice of reading itself.


By the year 2030, due to the rise in age-expectancy and accompanying increase in frequency in bone-weakening conditions, total hip replacement surgeries will increase by 174%. One of the most important facets of implant surgery is biocompatibility. Durable implants that are biocompatible with human tissue are needed to prevent rejection and failure. And with this logarithmic expected rise, the need for longer lasting implants will be needed more than ever before. Currently, metallic biomedical implants are the most common type. These, however, have a limited durability, often requiring surgery to be replaced after a decade. The combined action of wear and corrosion (termed tribocorrosion), brought about by friction during joint movements and the body's aggressive environment, causes implant failure. A material called biomedical grade 316 LVM stainless steel is commonly used in hip-joint implants. It naturally forms a thin oxide film on its surface that protects the material from the body's hostile environment. The problem with stainless steels is that despite this natural coat, tribocorrosion processes at the joints still form debris leading to problems for the patient and implant failure. Such failure can cause severe pain and expense when the hip implant needs to be replaced. Antonino Mazzonello (supervised by Dr Ing. Bertram Mallia and Dr Ing. Joseph Buhagiar), is investigating a new type of coating on hip implants. He is analysing the corrosion-wear performance of a dual-layer coating made up of a Chrome-Nitride (Cr-N) layer followed by a Cobalt-ChromeMolybdenum-Carbide (Co-Cr-Mo-C) layer deposited on top of lowtemperature carburised stainless steel (the coatings are made by Prof. Peter Dearnely [Boride Services Ltd.]. This treatment is owned and carried out by Bodycote Plc. The top layer reduces friction while the bottom layer toughens the coating, reducing its removal. When the dual-layered stainless steel is compared to the untreated steel, the treated material is more resistant to wear and corrosion. This new dual-coated material promises to be an ideal candidate for hip joint implants. Apart from being harder and more resistant, its low friction means that less effort would be required to move the joint. The encouraging results mean that in the near future this technology could be implemented in clinics. Mallia points out that 'such multi-layered coatings may offer a giant step in increased durability for a relatively small additional expense.'


This paper introduces Latent Growth Modeling (LGM) as a feasible method for analyzing longitudinal data to understand the process of change over time. Given the need to go beyond cross-sectional models, explore longitudinal Information Systems (IS) phenomena, and test IS theories over time, LGM is proposed as a complementary method to help IS researchers propose and evaluate time-centric hypotheses and make longitudinal inferences. The paper first describes the basic tenets of LGM and offers guidelines for using LGM in IS research, including framing hypotheses with time as a central component and implementing LGM models to test these hypotheses. The application of LGM in IS research is illustrated by modeling the longitudinal relationship between two IT variables (IT infrastructure and IT labor) and firm performance with 2001-2004 data from Fortune 1000 firms. Comparisons with other methods for analyzing longitudinal data reveal the advantages of LGM for studying time-dependent relationships and growth patterns.


Many reinforcement learning (RL) problems in practice are offline, learning purely from observational data. A key challenge is how to ensure the learned policy is safe, which requires quantifying the risk associated with different actions. In the online setting, distributional RL algorithms do so by learning the distribution over returns (i.e., cumulative rewards) instead of the expected return; beyond quantifying risk, they have also been shown to learn better representations for planning. We propose Conservative Offline Distributional Actor Critic (CODAC), an offline RL algorithm suitable for both risk-neutral and risk-averse domains. CODAC adapts distributional RL to the offline setting by penalizing the predicted quantiles of the return for out-of-distribution actions. We prove that CODAC learns a conservative return distribution -- in particular, for finite MDPs, CODAC converges to an uniform lower bound on the quantiles of the return distribution; our proof relies on a novel analysis of the distributional Bellman operator. In our experiments, on two challenging robot navigation tasks, CODAC successfully learns risk-averse policies using offline data collected purely from risk-neutral agents. Furthermore, CODAC is state-of-the-art on the D4RL MuJoCo benchmark in terms of both expected and risk-sensitive performance.


Gaussian Markov random fields (GMRFs) are probabilistic graphical models widely used in spatial statistics and related fields to model dependencies over spatial structures. We establish a formal connection between GMRFs and convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Common GMRFs are special cases of a generative model where the inverse mapping from data to latent variables is given by a 1-layer linear CNN. This connection allows us to generalize GMRFs to multi-layer CNN architectures, effectively increasing the order of the corresponding GMRF in a way which has favorable computational scaling. We describe how well-established tools, such as autodiff and variational inference, can be used for simple and efficient inference and learning of the deep GMRF. We demonstrate the flexibility of the proposed model and show that it outperforms the state-of-the-art on a dataset of satellite temperatures, in terms of prediction and predictive uncertainty.


Reservoir wettability is controlled by crude oil/brine/rock interactions that have not been well understood. Studies using either model compounds or crude oil fractions have had only limited success in reproducing the wetting alteration that can occur in nature. In this study, the approach is first to identify the key features of interfacial activity unique to crude oils, then to design and conduct wetting alteration experiments—using both flat solids and porous media—that demonstrate the mechanisms by which alteration can occur. Components of crude oils that are interfacially active are found in the highest molecular weight, most polar fractions of the oil, the resins and asphaltenes. How these components affect wetting depends on the compositions of not only the oil, but also the mineral surfaces and the aqueous phase that is always present in oil reservoirs. Wettability altering interactions can occur by several mechanisms. In the absence of water, adsorption of polar species can create intermediately-wet surfaces. If the oil is a poor solvent for its asphaltene fraction, adsorption of large asphaltene aggregates can make surfaces fairly oil-wet. Adsorption can also occur because of ionic interactions between oppositely charged acidic and basic sites at the oil/water and solid/water interfaces. There may also be interactions between similarly charged sites, if ion binding can occur. All of these mechanisms have been documented for a range of crude oils with varying asphaltene fraction, solvency, acid number, and base number.


This chapter focuses on alternative economies in a European post-socialist country, the Czech Republic, looking for transitions not towards, but beyond capitalism. After a brief historical excursion, the authors use the concept of eco-social enterprise and a five-dimensional, sliding-scale research framework to expand the EU social enterprise definition imported to post socialist-countries. The criteria include: 1. other-than-profit goals; 2. using profits to replenish nature and community; 3. democratic and localized governance and ownership; 4. rootedness in place and time; 5. non-market production, exchange and provisioning. Research has uncovered a heterogeneous group of entities including organic farms, community gardens, community cafes, a consumer cooperative, a municipally-owned shop, a community school, etc. Using brief illustrative case studies, the authors look at the varied traditions and diverse ideologies that shape and motivate current Czech eco-social enterprises.


What is this business called 'chaos'? What does it deal with? Why do people think it's important? And how did the term 'chaos' - long associated with disorder - come to signify a new paradigm in the orderly realm of mathematics? The concept of chaos is one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding research topics of recent decades. Chaos might underlie many kinds of well-known processes - the performance of the stock market, the weather, the cries of newborn babies, the dripping of a leaky faucet, and more.In "Chaos Theory Tamed", scientist Garnett P. Williams walks the reader through this exciting territory, building an understanding of chaos and its significance in our lives. "Chaos" is a mathematical subject. If you seek bodice-ripping romance, this book is not for you. But if you are a researcher working with data...a scientist, engineer, or economist who has specialized outside the field of mathematics...or an interested person with a bit of background in algebra and statistics...then "Chaos Theory Tamed" can help you understand the basic concepts of this relatively new arm of science.Williams explains the terms necessary for an understanding of chaos theory. He discusses 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' and what that means for long-term predictions. He explores the role of the chaotic or 'strange' attractor, order within chaos, fractal structure, and the emerging concepts of self-organization and complexity. Drawing from mathematics, physics, and statistics, the book provides a toolkit for readers, including vectors, phase space, Fourier analysis, time-series analysis, and autocorrelation.Williams describes routes that systems may take from regular behavior to chaos - period doubling, intermittency, and quasiperiodicity - and discusses nonlinear equations that can give rise to chaos. Dimension is a basic ingredient of chaos, and Williams brings clarity to the many ways in which this term is used by specialists in the field. And he explains how the magnitude of chaos may be gauged by Lyapunov exponents, Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, and mutual information - mysterious terms that 'aren't all that difficult once we pick them apart,' says Williams. "Chaos Theory Tamed" makes generous use of lists, graphs, field examples, summaries, and - perhaps most important - friendly language to help the reader learn and use the vocabulary of chaos. It will help scientists, students, and others outside mathematics to use the concepts of chaos in working with data, and it will give the interested lay reader a foothold on the fundamentals of this new realm of thought.


Structured game representations have recently attracted interest as models for multi-agent artificial intelligence scenarios, with rational behavior most commonly characterized by Nash equilibria. This paper presents efficient, exact algorithms for computing Nash equilibria in structured game representations, including both graphical games and multi-agent influence diagrams (MAIDs). The algorithms are derived from a continuation method for normal-form and extensive-form games due to Govindan and Wilson; they follow a trajectory through a space of perturbed games and their equilibria, exploiting game structure through fast computation of the Jacobian of the payoff function. They are theoretically guaranteed to find at least one equilibrium of the game, and may find more. Our approach provides the first efficient algorithm for computing exact equilibria in graphical games with arbitrary topology, and the first algorithm to exploit fine-grained structural properties of MAIDs. Experimental results are presented demonstrating the effectiveness of the algorithms and comparing them to predecessors. The running time of the graphical game algorithm is similar to, and often better than, the running time of previous approximate algorithms. The algorithm for MAIDs can effectively solve games that are much larger than those solvable by previous methods.


abstract :Scientists today can collect more data than they can perceive using traditional visualization methods. New technologies and sensors allow researchers to gather dynamic, complex multidimensional datasets—all of which must be carefully studied to reveal hidden patterns and narratives. The authors used an immersive platform to design a new visualization for real-time, intuitive spatial manipulations of time-based volumetric datasets via a wand-based gestural interface. The resulting work resolves microscopic tissue structures at a human scale in a room-based pixel space, facilitating research, discovery and in-person teaching and collaboration.


Background Advance Care Planning aims at improving alignment of care with patients' preferences. This may affect costs of medical care. Aim To determine the costs of an Advance Care Planning programme and its effects on the costs of medical care and on concordance of care with patients' preferences. Design/settings/participants In a cluster randomised trial, 16 residential care homes were randomly allocated to the intervention group, where frail, older participants were offered facilitated Advance Care Planning conversations or to the control group. We calculated variable costs of Advance Care Planning per participant including personnel and travel costs of facilitators. Furthermore, we assessed participants' healthcare use during 12 months applying a broad perspective (including medical care, inpatient days in residential care homes, home care) and calculated costs of care per participant. Finally, we investigated whether treatment goals were in accordance with preferences. Analyses were conducted for 97 participants per group. Trial registration number: NTR4454. Results Average variable Advance Care Planning costs were €76 per participant. The average costs of medical care were not significantly different between the intervention and control group (€2360 vs €2235, respectively, p=0.36). Costs of inpatient days in residential care homes (€41,551 vs €46,533) and of home care (€14,091 vs €17,361) were not significantly different either. Concordance of care with preferences could not be assessed since treatment goals were often not recorded. Conclusions The costs of an Advance Care Planning programme were limited. Advance Care Planning did not significantly affect the costs of medical care for frail older adults.


Traditionally, the calibration of safety critical nuclear instrumentation has been performed during each refueling outage. However, many nuclear plants have moved toward conditiondirected rather than time-directed calibration. This condition-directed calibration is accomplished through the use of on-line monitoring. On-line monitoring (OLM) commonly uses an autoassociative empirical modeling architecture to assess instrument channel performance. An autoassociative architecture predicts a group of correct sensor values when supplied a group of sensor values that is usually corrupted with process and instrument noise, and could also contain faults such as sensor drift or complete failure. This paper describes one such autoassociative model architecture, specifically autoassociative kernel regression (AAKR), and presents five metrics that may be used to evaluate performance. These metrics include the previously developed accuracy, auto sensitivity and cross sensitivity metrics along with a description of two new fault detectability performance metrics for application to instrument calibration verification (ICV) and anomaly detection. These parameters are calculated for an AAKR model of an operating nuclear power plant steam system and were used to describe the effects of model architecture on performance. It is shown that the ability of an empirical model to detect sensor faults in ICV systems is largely dependent on the model uncertainty and to a lesser degree its auto sensitivity. It is also shown that the ability of an empirical model to detect anomalies via the Sequential Probability Ratio Test (SPRT) is also related to uncertainty and the SPRT detectability is on the order of 50% smaller than the ICV detectability. These guidelines provide a framework for developing various models, in that models intended to be applied to ICV and anomaly detection tasks should focus on the minimization of uncertainty. Furthermore, the ICV and anomaly detection performance metrics are shown to be within the traditional +/-1% calibration tolerance and their performance under artificially faulted conditions are shown to be in direct agreement with their theoretical foundations.


Aims: Monthly breast self-examination (BSE) is one method for early detection of breast cancer. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of educational intervention based on the theory of planned behavior in promoting BSE of women in Gonabad, IRAN. Materials & Methods: In this clinical trial study, 140 married women aged 20–49 years from Gonabad were chosen randomly and divided into control and experimental groups. Educational needs were determined and the curriculum was developed and presented in 5 sessions. BSE behavior was studied using the constructs of planned behavior theory before, immediately and 3 months after training. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 20, using ANOVA, T-test student, Chisquare and multivariate analysis of variance and significant level was set at α=05.0 Findings: The mean age of the subjects was 37.27 ± 6.69 years. After intervention, the average score of BSE skill increased from 17.89 to 18.26 and the mean scores of theoretical constructs in the intervention group increased significantly (P<0.001). The effect of the educational intervention was evaluated three months later, but changes were not significant in the control group (P>0.05). Conclusion: This study showed that educational intervention based on the theory of planned behavior was effective in promoting BSE behaviors. Therefore, it is recommended that educational interventions to be designed specifically for and consistent with the constructs of the theory of planned behavior.


Surface plasmons (SPs) are electromagnetic excitations existing at the interface between a metal and a dielectric material. Control and manipulation of light based on SPs at the nanometer scale offers significant advantages in nanophotonic devices with very small elements, since the peculiar properties of SPs can be tailored by construction of nanostructures with various interfaces between metals and dielectric materials. Recent progress in nanostructures for SPs is reviewed. Resonance frequencies or wavelengths of SPs can be tuned by design of metal nanostructures, such as nanoparticles, nanorods, nanowires, nanosheets, and nanodisks. Moreover, SP resonance modes can also be tuned by control of the shapes and sizes of nanostructures, where the resonance modes include longitudinal and transversal resonances, dipolar and multipolar resonances, and Fano resonances. Based on SP coupling for metal nanostructures, metal–semiconductor nanostructures, metal–dielectric nanostructures, and metal–polymer nanostructures, propagating and guiding of SP can be achieved through the metal nanostructures and the hybrid structures. Additionally, metal nanostructures exhibit remarkable field enhancement effects (e.g., local near-field enhancement, and optical transmission enhancement) due to SP coupling. Furthermore, SP nanostructures perform unique focusing and imaging characteristics at the nanometer scale beyond the diffraction limit. Tailoring SPs by control of the nanostructures is expected to be used for design and development of high-performance optical components and circuits, which offer both potential and challenges for new generations of nanophotonic devices.


OBJECTIVES
To examine the relationship of the Childhood Cancer Symptom Cluster-Leukemia (CCSC-L) with health-related quality of life (HRQOL).

SAMPLE & SETTING
327 children receiving treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia from four pediatric oncology programs across the United States.

METHODS & VARIABLES
Participants completed fatigue, sleep disturbance, pain, nausea, and depression symptom questionnaires at four time points; these symptoms comprised the CCSC-L. HRQOL was measured at the start of postinduction therapy and then at the start of maintenance therapy. Relationships between the CCSC-L and HRQOL scores were examined with longitudinal parallel-process modeling.

RESULTS
The mean HRQOL significantly increased over time (p < 0.001). The CCSC-L had a significant negative association with HRQOL scores at the start of postinduction therapy (beta = -0.53, p < 0.005) and the start of maintenance therapy (beta = -0.33, p < 0.015). Participants with more severe symptoms in the CCSC-L over time had significantly lower HRQOL at the start of maintenance therapy (beta = -0.42, p < 0.005).

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Nurses are pivotal in providing management strategies to minimize symptom severity that may improve HRQOL.


We propose a novel measurement method for determining cell parameters, such as a cell thickness and twist angle in reflective liquid crystal (LC) cells, by using a unique polarization-converting device prepared with a circularly and homogeneously aligned LC (CH-LC) cell. The light intensity distributions from the reflective LC cell transmitted twice through the CH-LC cell are measured by a charge-coupled device array camera. Cell thickness can be derived by using coordinate values of local minimum spot in the spatial light intensity distribution measured at one wavelength, where the pretilt angle is assumed to be the designed value. Both cell thickness and twist angle can also be determined by two local minimum positions of the light intensity at two different wavelengths and the effects of a quarter-wave plate are discussed


This article discusses an academic discourse on the origin of Islamic Law by describing third school between two schools existing in this controversial field. By descriptive and comparative method, this article tries to describe how Yasin Dutton views on the beginning of Islamic Law's construction, and then how he digs his hypothesis against two dominant schools involved in the discussion of the date of Islamic Law birth. Dutton finds that if the Qur'an is the first written formulation of Islam in general, al-Muwatta of Malik is arguably the first written formulation of the Islam-in-practice' that becomes Islamic law. This way is missing in the first and second school attention. He considers the methods used by Malik in the Muwatta' to derive the judgements of the law from the Qur'an is thus concerned on one level with the finer details of Qur'anic interpretation. However, since any discussion of the Qur'an in this context must also include considerations of the other main source of Islamic law, namely the sunna, or normative practice of the Prophet, this latter concept, especially its relationship to the terms of hadith and amal (traditions' and living tradition'), also receives considerable attention. it is impossible, for Dutton, to find that these two main legitimate sources, textual and practical, will be different and in dispute. This third school wanted to fill the gap between these two schools using different object and argument although in someway meet in same conclusion.


A canonical model is described which reflects the real-time informational context of decision-making. Comparisons are drawn with 'conventional' models that incorrectly omit market-informed insights on future macroeconomic conditions and inappropriately incorporate information that was not available at the time. It is argued that conventional models are misspecified and misinterpret news but that these deficiencies will not be exposed either by diagnostic tests applied to the conventional models or by typical impulse response analyses. This is demonstrated through an analysis of quarterly US data 1968q4-2008q4. However, estimated real-time models considerably improve out-ofsample forecasting performance, provide more accurate 'nowcasts' of the current state of the macroeconomy and provide more timely indicators of the business cycle. The point is illustrated through an analysis of the US recessions of 1990q3-1991q2 and 2001q1-2001q4 and the most recent experiences of 2008.


In this work carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates and short glass fibre- reinforced polymers (sGFRP) were investigated by means of X-ray scatter dark field imaging (SDFI) using Talbot-Lau grating interferometer computed tomography. For the characterisation of the laminate structures of CFRP the anisotropic properties of the small angle scattering signal was used to image fibre bundles running in different directions. SDFI allows the visualisation of the weave pattern structure of a carbon fibre bundle in three dimensions, even if the individual fibres cannot be separated or the absorption contrast between the carbon fibres and the epoxy resin matrix is very low. For the investigated sGFRP samples qualitative information about local fibre anisotropies within a specimen were obtained by SDFI. Due to the complex behaviour of fibre alignment during the injection process a clear interpretation of the SDFI signals was difficult. As a reference method, all samples were scanned by means of high resolution cone beam Computed Tomography (µXCT). For the sGFRP the combination of µXCT and appropriate software tools provides local fibre orientations and allows three-dimensional visualisation by colour coding each extracted fibre.


Knowledge of the microcirculatory system has added significant value to the analysis of tissue oxygenation and perfusion. While developments in videomicroscopy technology have enabled medical researchers and physicians to observe the microvascular system, the available software tools are limited in their capabilities to determine quantitative features of microcirculation, either automatically or accurately. In particular, microvessel density has been a critical diagnostic measure in evaluating disease progression and a prognostic indicator in various clinical conditions. As a result, automated analysis of the microcirculatory system can be substantially beneficial in various real-time and off-line therapeutic medical applications, such as optimization of resuscitation.
This study focuses on the development of an algorithm to automatically segment microvessels, calculate the density of capillaries in microcirculatory videos, and determine the distribution of blood circulation. The proposed technique is divided into four major steps: video stabilization, video enhancement, segmentation and post-processing. The stabilization step estimates motion and corrects for the motion artifacts using an appropriate motion model. Video enhancement improves the visual quality of video frames through preprocessing, vessel enhancement and edge enhancement. The resulting frames are combined through an adjusted weighted median filter and the resulting frame is then thresholded using an entropic thresholding technique. Finally, a region growing technique is utilized to correct for the discontinuity of blood vessels. Using the final binary results, the most commonly used measure for the assessment of microcirculation, i.e. Functional Capillary Density (FCD), is calculated.
The designed technique is applied to video recordings of healthy and diseased human and animal samples obtained by MicroScan device based on Sidestream Dark Field (SDF) imaging modality. To validate the final results, the calculated FCD results are compared with the results obtained by blind detailed inspection of three medical experts, who have used AVA (Automated Vascular Analysis) semi-automated microcirculation analysis software. Since there is neither a fully automated accurate microcirculation analysis program, nor a publicly available annotated database of microcirculation videos, the results acquired by the experts are considered the gold standard. Bland-Altman plots show that there is "Good Agreement" between the results of the algorithm and that of gold standard.
In summary, the main objective of this study is to eliminate the need for human interaction to edit/ correct results, to improve the accuracy of stabilization and segmentation, and to reduce the overall computation time. The proposed methodology impacts the field of computer science through development of image processing techniques to discover the knowledge in grayscale video frames. The broad impact of this work is to assist physicians, medical researchers and caregivers in making diagnostic and therapeutic decisions for microcirculatory abnormalities and in studying of the human microcirculation.


This paper considers parameter estimation of linear systems under sensor-to-estimator communication constraint. Due to the limited battery power and the traffic congestion over a large sensor network, each sensor is required to reduce the rate of communication between the estimator and itself. We propose an observation-driven sensor scheduling policy such that the sensor transmits only the important measurements to the estimator. Unlike the existing deterministic scheduler, our stochastic scheduling is smartly designed to well compensate for the loss of the Gaussianity of the system. This results in a nice feature that the maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE) is still able to be recursively computed in a closed form, and the resulting estimation performance can be explicitly evaluated. Moreover, an optimization problem is formulated and solved to obtain the best parameters of the scheduling policy under which the estimation performance becomes comparable to the standard MLE with full measurements under a moderate transmission rate. Finally, simulations are included to validate the theoretical results.


Triangle meshes have been nearly ubiquitous in computer graphics, and a large body of data structures and geometry processing algorithms based on them has been developed in the literature. At the same time, quadrilateral meshes, especially semi-regular ones, have advantages for many applications, and significant progress was made in quadrilateral mesh generation and processing during the last several years. In this State of the Art Report, we discuss the advantages and problems of techniques operating on quadrilateral meshes, including surface analysis and mesh quality, simplification, adaptive refinement, alignment with features, parametrization, and remeshing.


Contributors Part I 1. Introduction: The Politics of Natural Resource Governance in Africa 2. Agrarian Social Change and Post-Colonial Natural Resource Management Interventions in Southern Africa's 'Communal Tenure' Regimes Part II: Political Economies of Natural Resource Governance 3. The Politics of Community-based Natural Resource Management in Botswana 4. Peasants' Forests and the King's Game? Explaining Institutional Divergence and Convergence in Tanzania's Forestry and Wildlife Sectors 5. The Evolution of Namibia's Communal Conservancies 6. Historic and Contemporary Struggles for a Local Wildlife Governance Regime in Kenya Part III: Local Struggles and Negotiations across Multiple Scales 7. Windows of Opportunity or Exclusion? Local Communities in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area, South Africa 8. 'People are not Happy': Crisis, Adaptation and Resilience in Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE Programme 9. The Rise and Fall of Community-Based Natural Resource Management in Zambia's Luangwa Valley: An Illustration of Micro- and Macro-Governance Issues 10. External Agency and Local Authority: Facilitating CBNRM in Mahel, Mozambique 11. Adaptive or Anachronistic? Maintaining Indigenous Natural Resource Governance Systems in Northern Botswana 12. Pastoral Activists: Negotiating Power Imbalances in the Tanzanian Serengeti Part IV: Looking Forward 13. A Changing Climate for Community Resource Governance: Threats and Opportunities from Climate Change and the Emerging Carbon Market 14. Democratizing Natural Resource Governance: Searching for Institutional Change Index


XML, XSL-T, workflow A host of standards are emerging for the processing of XML. Examples of these are XSL-T, XInclude, XQuery and XML Encrypt. Whilst individually useful, there is not yet a framework to assist developers in the composition of such operations into more complex processes. In this report, we introduce the XML Application Platform (XAP), which aims to address this need. The XAP is shown to have wide application to any domain where XML processing is encountered. We also describe a research prototype we have built called Dexter. Dexter provides execution of XML workflows to achieve complex XML transformations whilst providing many low-level support features such as caching and resource pooling. Several examples are shown to introduce readers to typical usages and to illustrate the workflow language that was developed for creating applications within Dexter.


A distinct lack of understanding about household-level forest-livelihood interactions represents a significant barrier to effectively incorporate forestry into China's poverty alleviation strategy. This thesis aims to improve understanding of household-level forest-livelihood interactions using a case study focused on smallholder production of bamboo in a mountainous and impoverished county in southern China. Three overarching research questions were addressed: 1) what is the role of forest-related income in household economies and rural development? 2) how does bamboo contribute to household income and rural livelihoods? and 3) what are the links between smallholder bamboo management practices, productivity, income, and livelihoods? These questions were addressed using primary socio-economic data collected from 240 households, bamboo management data, subsistence-use inventories, and biophysical surveys. Forest-related income played a very important role, with a 31.5% average contribution, predominantly cash from bamboo shoots and other NTFPs (with very little from timber or natural forest). Forest income was important at all income levels, although lower income households were more dependent than higher income households, who had significantly higher off-farm income and more land. Bamboo was utilized for a wide range of subsistence purposes (on farm, construction, food, fuel), and was the most valuable individual cash income source in half of the study villages, while the other half had very little bamboo income. Inadequate bamboo management practices limited productivity and the associated income, and bamboo's potential contribution to poverty alleviation. Findings demonstrate the need for more empirical household-level analyses of livelihoods to improve practice and policy for rural development and poverty alleviation in China. Forest-based development or poverty interventions should focus on improving the absolute income of forest dependent poor, and focus at the household-level so that benefits reach those who need them most. When off-farm income opportunities are limited, improvements to on-farm income earning activities - such as bamboo management - is one way to potentially improve livelihoods and reduce poverty.


Results from past research and research recently initiated are presented here in order to illustrate the need for a multi-fidelity (higher- and reduced-order) dynamic modeling, simulation, and optimization capability that results in aircraft subsystem integrations that minimize waste heat generation and reduce overall system energy requirements across a range of mission profiles. The examples presented provide a basis for the work envisioned as well as illustrations of the non-equilibrium thermodynamic effects of unsteady or transient operation on aircraft synthesis/design and operation. The three examples given involve i) the mission-integrated synthesis/design optimization of an advanced tactical aircraft system with a focus on its transient fuel loop subsystem, ii) the effects of mission segment discretizations on capturing the dynamics of a scram-jet hypersonic vehicle mission on vehicle performance, and iii) the effects of unsteady aerodynamics on flight vehicle operation.


Social media channels such as Twitter have emerged as platforms for crowds to respond to public and televised events such as speeches and debates. However, the very large volume of responses presents challenges for attempts to extract sense from them. In this work, we present an analytical method based on joint statistical modeling of topical influences from the events and associated Twitter feeds. The model enables the auto-segmentation of the events and the characterization of tweets into two categories: (1) episodic tweets that respond specifically to the content in the segmentsof the events, and (2) steady tweets that respond generally about the events. By applying our method to two large sets of tweets in response to President Obama's speech on the Middle East in May 2011 and a Republican Primary debate in September 2011, we present what these tweets were about. We also reveal the nature and magnitude of the influences of the event on the tweets over its timeline. In a user study, we further show that users find the topics and the episodic tweets discovered by our method to be of higher quality and more interesting as compared to the state-of-the-art, with improvements in the range of 18-41%.


Increasing demands by a growing population for food and oil have resulted in synchronous rises in the past 40 years of aquaculture and offshore oil drilling. Growth in these industries has highlighted the potential crippling impacts of coastal pollution, with marine farms likely to be susceptible to damage from harmful algal blooms and oil platforms to cause oil spills, as headlined by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico.  Drifting underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) represent a technology that can greatly enhance our understanding of such processes. Consisting of a swarm of untethered sensor nodes, an UWSN can be deployed over a large segment of the feature. The feature is carried through to different positions by underwater currents, the nodes, also drifting with the currents, are able to follow it and track it. To enable UWSNs, work is proceeding at multiple laboratories throughout the world on the design of localization, medium access control and routing protocols that can adapt to the problem that a drifting network topology has over short time intervals: frequent neighbour changes. However, the long-term impact that current drift has on 3D drifting UWSNs is poorly understood.  Current mobility models used to generate the motion of drifting nodes in simulation do not reflect how devices in real-life will disperse in water. At present, UWSN protocol schemes are evaluated in simulations where the current mobility of nodes is generated by unrealistic land-based random waypoint and other stochastic mobility models, or coarsely resolved numerical ocean models. Recently, a physically-inspired current mobility model known as MCM has been proposed. This is only defined along the water's surface, in 2D, however, and 3D extensions of this model have been simplistic and arbitrary.  The lack of realistic 3D current mobility models motivates this thesis to develop one so that the simulated evolution of UWSNs can more accurately reflect real-life. A consideration of the oceanographic data on which MCM is based is used to derive a 3D extension of the model that reflects observed features of the Gulf Stream current. The speed of the current declines with depth. This model is utilized to advect a drifting UWSN in an oil plume monitoring scenario and study the performance of two pressure routing protocols, Depth Based Routing (DBR) and HydroCast, over time. Previously, these schemes had only been validated in unrealistic stochastic and depth-invariant mobility models and their time-averaged performances were only reported.  Our findings show that 3D UWSNs cannot expect to stay connected and functioning if nodes only passively drift with the currents, with results demonstrating that a fully connected network can be so dispersed after three hours that no paths to sinks exist at all. Nodes must be equipped with some form of mobility to prevent their being separated and carried out of the monitoring region. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) capable of omnidirectional motion are expensive however, and instead UWSNs consisting of pro ling floats are considered in this thesis. Floats can move up and down by adjusting their buoyancy, which also allow them to move in 3D by exploiting water layers that are flowing in different directions to proceed along a desired heading. Recently, promising results in 2D path planning and formation control of floats have been presented. However, these works consider the floats to have infinite vertical velocity whereas in reality this is around 0:3 metres per second.  In this thesis, a practical node movement scheme is proposed for extending the coverage lifetime of a 3D UWSN consisting of floats. By accounting for the finite profiling velocity of floats, the scheme is able to position nodes at coverage holes with greater precision than existing 2D strategies. The scheme's performance is analysed by simulations. The results support the use of floats for achieving partial coverage, which can achieve similar levels of coverage as an AUV strategy while requiring less cost to deploy. In determining the lifetime of the network, we find that both energy and dispersion limit the lifetime of the network. Without propulsion, the nodes are carried out of and cease to cover the monitoring region. Using mobility to remain with the region, at the end of a 5 day mission duration floats have had to use up some or almost all of their battery capacity in profiling.


This essay considers ways in which China and an "East Asia" which includes Southeast Asia can both be compared to Europe in ways that help us appreciate the limitations of conceptualizing political processes largely through practices pioneered in European history. Contrasts between political institutions in China and Europe historically and today in turn suggest the flexible ways in which "region" can mediate between the global and the local levels of analysis. Through historical and comparative arguments this essay simultaneously reframes the debates on area studies and on regionalism and regional integration in ways that open up new lines of inquiry and a new agenda for research under the rubric of "East Asia." The essay argues that we need to attend to patterns of spatial similarities and connections, as well as differences, to better understand how regions were historically constructed and how these constructions shape the possibilities and limits of regionthinking and making.


Properties of sintered NdFeB magnets strongly depend on granulation and size distribution of constituent particles, which requires an efficient method for their separation into relatively narrow size fractions. We investigated two methods of magnetic particle separation from a mixture with different sizes using simulation by finite element method: magnetophoresis and gravity settling. In the case of magnetophoresis magnetic particles ranging in diameter from 1 to 10 m were deflected from the direction of continuous laminar flow by a perpendicular magnetic field. Larger particles were deflected from the direction of laminar flow more than smaller particles. The applied flow rate and strength and gradient of the applied magnetic field were the key parameters in controlling the deflection. The gravity settling model simulated spherical particles falling in heptane. Particles of various sizes were divided according to the time they needed to reach the bottom. The model used an axially symmetric fluid-flow simulation in a moving coordinate system connected with the particle, coupled with an ordinary differential equation for the force balance of the particle (gravity and drag force). The grain accelerated from standstill and rapidly reached its terminal velocity. This velocity was approximately proportional to the square of the particle radius, which led to clear separation of 5-10 m particles from those with a diameter of 1 m. Keywords—NdFeB particles, separation, gravity settling, magnetophoresis. Katarina Radulović is with Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Njegoševa 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia (e-mail: email@example.com. bg.ac.rs). Filip Radovanović is with Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Njegoševa 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia (e-mail: filip@ nanosys.ihtm.bg.ac.rs). Danijela Ranđelović is with Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Njegoševa 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia (e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com. bg.ac.rs). Vesna Jović is with Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Njegoševa 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia (e-mail: vjovic@ nanaosys.ihtm.bg.ac.rs). Jelena Lamovec is with Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Njegoševa 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia (e-mail: jejal@ nanosys.ihtm.bg.ac.rs). Dana Vasiljević Radović is with Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Njegoševa 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia (e-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com). Zoran Jakšić is with Centre of Microelectronic Technologies, Institute of Chemistry, Technology and Metallurgy, University of Belgrade, Njegoševa 12, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia (e-mail: jaksa@ nanosys.ihtm.bg.ac.rs).


Abstract Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin are often claimed to be capable of inducing life-changing experiences described as mystical or transcendental. especially if high doses are taken. The present study examined possible enduring effects of such experiences by comparing users of psychedelic drugs (n = 88), users of nonpsychedelic illegal drugs (e.g., marijuana, amphetamines) (n = 29) and non illicit drug-using social drinkers (n = 66) on questionnaire measures of values, beliefs and emotional empathy. Samples were obtained from Israel (n = 110) and Australia (n = 73) in a cross-cultural comparison to see if values associated with psychedelic drug use transcended culture of origin. Psychedelic users scored significantly higher on mystical beliefs (e.g., oneness with God and the universe) and life values of spirituality and concern for others than the other groups, and lower on the value of financial prosperity, irrespective of culture of origin. Users of nonpsychedelic illegal drugs scored significantly lower on a measure of coping ability than both psychedelic users and non illicit drug users. Both groups of illegal drug users scored significantly higher on empathy than non illicit drug users_ Results are discussed in the context of earlier findings from Pahnke (1966) and Doblin (1991) of the transformative effect of psychedelic experiences, although the possibility remains that present findings reflect predrug characteristics of those who chose to take psychedelic drugs rather than effects of the drugs themselves.


Despite calls for research-based policies, other types of evidence also influence education policy, including personal experience, professional expertise, and normative values. This article focuses on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) initiative, examining how research use varied over stages of the process and how it was integrated with other types of evidence. By drawing on elite interviews, we find that CCSS promoters and developers used evidence in much the way that policy analysis research would predict and that while research evidence was a major resource, it was combined with other types of evidence depending on political and policy goals at different stages of the CCSS process.


This report is one of a set of six which provide the background to the book 'Why not the best schools? What we have learned from outstanding schools around the world' published by ACER Press.


Multicellular development of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum results from the chemotactic aggregation of single cells to form a fruiting body consisting of a stalk supporting a spore mass. The interplay of two extracellular signalling molecules, cAMP (cyclic adenosine monophosphate) and the chlorinated hexaphenone DIF-1 (differentiation-inducing factor 1), directs cellular differentiation, and cAMP is also the chemo-attractant that orchestrates all of morphogenesis. Although this is a relatively unusual mode of pattern formation, most of the fundamental processes that typify development in higher organism are on display, and the genetic accessibility of the organism makes it a very powerful and relevant model system. It has proven particularly valuable for understanding the basic mechanism of chemotaxis and the role that chemotaxis can play in the morphogenesis of a multicellular structure.

Key concepts:

Dictyostelium cells aggregate by chemotaxis in response to propagating cAMP waves.

cAMP waves propagate through cAMP relay, the ability of the cells to detect a small cAMP signal, synthesis and secrete cAMP in response and thus pass the cAMP signal on to their neighbours.

Adaptation of the relay response ensures unidirectional wave propagation away from the centre.

Chemotactic cell movement involves detection of a cAMP gradient across the length of the cell, resulting in a polarization of actin–myosin cytoskeletal dynamics and movement up the gradient.

Multicellular morphogenesis, the arrangement of tissue in space and time, is controlled by the interplay of cAMP wave propagation and chemotaxis during all stages of development.

Dictyostelium development is separated from cell division but a cell's fate can be biased by its cell cycle position when development starts.

Prespore cells are formed in response to cAMP signalling.

Differentiation of prestalk cells is induced by a small organic molecule, DIF, which is secreted by the prespore cells. This induction forms part of a feedback loop that controls the prestalk–prespore ratio.

The tip-organizer cells are a subset of the prestalk cells that differentiation in response to a high local cAMP concentation.

Dictyostelium pattern formation occurs by the sorting out of differentiated cell types.

Keywords:

morphogenesis;
chemotaxis;
cell differentiation;
cell sorting


Abstract We analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics of capital and pollution in an economic growth model with purposive environmental protection activities. The production process of a unique homogeneous good generates pollution, thus the increases in output associated with economic growth tend to rise the stock of pollution. Pollution is a negative production externality which thus feeds back on the economy lowering the level of output; in order to compensate for such a negative effect associated with economic development, pollution is reduced by publicly funded abatement activities. We firstly consider a Solow-type framework in which economic and environmental policies are completely exogenous, and then we move to a Ramsey-type context in which they are endogenously determined. We analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics of the model economy through numerical simulations, and we consider two different specifications of the production function (a globally concave and a convex-concave technology) in order to stress the role that eventual poverty traps might play on both economic and environmental outcomes. We show that in the convex-concave technology framework, whenever rich regions are substantially rich diffusion can help poor regions to escape their poverty traps; if however they are not rich enough diffusion might condemn also rich regions to collapse. However, even if rich regions are particularly rich whenever the pollution externality is strong, the whole spatial economy might be doomed to collapse.


The aim of this paper is to show the influence of the subgrade reaction coefficient modelling on the simple 3D frame subjected to horizontal symmetrical static load. Since the work represents a continuation of the research on this topic, it was decided that the construction, in this case too, was built on the square foundations on granular soil. Different values of subgrade reaction coefficient obtained for the square foundation are the consequence of using different expressions defined by individual authors. Thus, one diagram shows each author's relation between the width of the foundations and the value of the subgrade reaction coefficient. The response of the characteristic structural framework additionally loaded with horizontal static force is then described further in the paper.


HCI is increasingly paying attention to sports, and more and more CHI attendees are aiming to maintain being physically active while attending CHI. In response, we offer a SIG on the topic of sports-HCI and conduct it in a sportive way: we will go out of the conference venue and jog around San Jose while discussing the role of HCI in relation to sports. The goal is to actively shape the future of the field of sports-HCI.


Benthic algae were surveyed in autumn (March) 2006 at nine sites in the Gordon River between the Gordon power station and the Franklin River junction, and three reference sites. The survey was conducted as required under the Basslink Monitoring Program, with all sites assessed by:
- Surveying across the river channel at existing fixed transect locations from bank to bank, where conditions permitted wading access;
- Estimating % algal cover at 3 locations at 2.5 m intervals within each of up to nine mesohabitats or 'zones', characterised by benthic substrate composition, across each transect;
- Preserving representative (non-quantitative 'scrape') samples of dominant algae from within each transect zone.
Patterns and trends in algal cover were broadly similar to those observed in previous years.
- Aquatic flora having a consistently low to moderate cover across all sites;
- Moss and filamentous algae having low overall mean % cover across all sites;
- Filamentous algae being low and locally variable in abundance;
 Mean moss cover being highly variable, but highest at site 74;
- Macrophytes occurring at site 72 at low densities.
Filamentous algal cover was low throughout, as expected in autumn, with slightly raised levels at sites 48 and 42, which suggested sustained moderate pre-Basslink trial flows permitting algal growth on the upper bars within the channel.
Data was also collected at three reference sites (Fr11, Fr21 and De7), for ongoing interpretation and benchmarking. Sampling at these sites was conducted by random placement of quadrats on the dominant channel substrate at 30 locations.
Data collected in this survey forms part of the database used to assess changes in instream conditions associated with changes in flow regimes resulting from Basslink.


Imagine you are the clinician who is responsible for a youth athletic programme. You know there are effective injury prevention programmes to reduce the risk for ACL injuries; the coach/manager asks you to decide which programme to implement for your team. However, ACL injuries are not as common as other injuries. To help decide whether it is worth making these programmes mandatory for all athletes under your care, you need to know the risk for ACL injury. A recent systematic review of 58 studies from various sports provides some data.1 As you read the systematic review, you note that the authors advise cautious interpretation of the results because of heterogeneity. What is heterogeneity and should you care?

Heterogeneity is a challenging issue in systematic reviews and a key factor in the decision to pool or not to pool the results of available studies. Here we guide readers and authors of systematic reviews on heterogeneity and its sources: clinical and methodological diversity (box 1).2 Box 1
### Definitions of key terms2

Heterogeneity: Genuine variability in the results of individual studies (above that expected by chance). The source of this variability is clinical or methodological diversity in the studies.

Clinical diversity: Between-study differences in participant characteristics, interventions or outcomes.

Methodological diversity: Between-study differences in design and risk of bias.

Bias: Methodological issues that systematically distort results.

Consider the individual studies in the ACL systematic review.1 Would we expect athletes of different ages, who play different sports at different levels to have the same risk for ACL injury? BJSM readers know, either from clinical practice or research, that different factors influence the risk for injury to a greater or lesser extent. Given your knowledge, do the included studies represent athlete groups with inherently different injury risks? Some studies include athletes …


This thesis explores how economic and institutional changes shape social preferences, in particular attitudes of wellbeing and unrest. The first chapter explores whether the welfare of women increased following the extension of women's rights between the 1960s and 1990s in Europe. Using individual-level data on life satisfaction, it shows through differences-in-differences that the extension of birth control rights is strongly linked to an increase in the welfare of women of childbearing age, while mutual consent divorce and maternity benefits proved less beneficial. Birth control rights also increased women's investment in education, probability of working and income. The second chapter investigates whether the same link between individual rights and welfare holds in the context of India. Unlike in Europe, there is no strong evidence that abortion rights increased the wellbeing of women. Some positive association between rights and wellbeing is only found once the income, education and location of individuals are accounted for. The third and fourth chapters examine which political and economic factors lead individuals to revolt against their government, creating conflict and property rights insecurity. Two innovative empirical approaches are introduced. Chapter 3 analyses the revolutionary preferences of over 100,000 people in 61 countries between 1981 and 1997. It uses instrumental variables to control for the possible endogeneity of economic and political variables. It finds that restricting the level of political and civil freedom has a strong impact on revolutionary support, which economic growth can only partly compensate for. Chapter 4 examines the interaction of preferences for revolt and actions combining the analysis of survey data with a laboratory experiment. The findings are consistent with the collective action problem. The feeling by citizens that the government "operates in the interest of the few" increases both revolutionary preferences and actions; political repression increases preferences for revolt but decreases actual opposition.


The Urban Forest Effects (UFORE) model developed by the USDA Forest Service quantifies the ecological benefits of urban forests. UFORE has been used to analyze many urban areas, including National Park land in Washington, D.C., but has not been applied to natural forests. We conducted a UFORE analysis of Prince William Forest Park for species composition and individual tree characteristics including tree height, DBH, canopy architecture, and general tree health, collecting data during the 2007 field season. The results show that the park contains over 6,287,000 trees and these trees store 394,000 tons of carbon with an annual net sequestration rate of 12,300 tons. This forest also abates 414 tons of air pollution annually. These results quantify and affirm to policymakers and the public the value and ecological importance of the forests managed by the National Park Service surrounding metropolitan Washington, D.C.


Background: Obesity is emerging as a global epidemic with growing threat to health in both developed and developing countries. It has become a major health concern for almost all the age groups of the society. Objectives of the study is assess the prevalence and co-morbidities of overweight and obesity among persons 15 years and above in urban and rural areas of Kanpur, UP. Methods: For this cross-sectional study, multistage random sampling technique was used to select one colony in urban and one village in rural area of Kanpur district. The desired sample size was 2200. Detailed socio-demographic information was collected on a pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire. After anthropometric examination, Body Mass Index (BMI) was used to assess the overweight and obesity status. Random blood sugar was measured using a portable glucometer. Data thus collected was analyzed using Chi-square test and percentage. Results: Statistically significant higher trend of obesity (BMI ≥ 30.0 kg/m 2 ) was observed in urban population with total 2.9% (1.2% in males and 4.8% in females) in comparison to rural population with total 0.6% (0.4 % in males and 0.8% in females). Conclusions: Overweight and obesity is a complex multi-factorial disease developing from interactive influences of numerous factors in urban and rural settings.


Objective Coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) using bilateral internal mammary arteries (BIMA) may improve survival over CABG using single internal mammary arteries (SIMA), but may be surgically more complex (and therefore costly) and associated with impaired sternal wound healing. We report, for the first time, a detailed comparison of healthcare resource use and costs over 12 months, as part of the Arterial Revascularisation (ART) Trial. Methods 3102 patients in 28 hospitals in seven countries were randomised to CABG surgery using BIMA (n=1548) or SIMA (n=1554). Detailed resource use data were collected covering surgery, the initial hospital episode, and for 12 months post randomisation. Using UK unit costs, total costs were calculated and compared between trial arms and for subgroups. Results Patients randomised to BIMA spent 20 min longer in theatre (95% CI 15 to 25, p<0.001) and also required more treatment for sternal wound problems. Mean (SD) total costs per patient at 12 months were £13 839 (£10 534) for BIMA and £12 717 (£9719) for SIMA (mean cost difference £1122, 95% CI £407 to £1838, p=0.002). No tests for interaction between subgroups and treatment allocation were significant. Conclusions At 12 months from randomisation, mean costs were approximately 9% higher in BIMA than SIMA patients, primarily due to longer time in theatre and in-hospital stay, and slightly higher costs related to sternal wound problems during follow-up. Follow-up to the primary trial endpoint of 10 years will reveal whether longer-term differences emerge in graft patency or in overall survival. Trial registration number Controlled-trials.com (ISRCTN46552265).


This paper introduces this themed issue of Critical Social Policy on the question of corporate power. Corporate power is recognized as an important agent in social policy making and delivery. However, to date there has been comparatively little attention to the crucial role that lobbying and corporate 'spin' play in helping to shape policy making contexts. This special issue of Critical Social Policy is concerned to bring such issues to the mainstream of social policy analysis. It is argued here that the rise of spin and public relations is a key feature of neoliberalism in the past two decades. These have worked to reshape policy making, resulting in pronounced changes in the content and process of policy making and it is argued that these have tended to marginalize or undermine democratic processes.


Kotlin is a statically typed programming language designed to interoperate with Java and fully supported by Google on the Android operating system. Based on Big Nerd Ranchs popular Kotlin Essentials course, this guide shows you how to work effectively with the Kotlin programming language through hands-on examples and clear explanations of key Kotlin concepts and foundational APIs. Written for Kotlin 1.2, this book will also introduce you to JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA development environment. Whether you are an experienced Android developer looking for modern features beyond what Java offers or a new developer ready to learn your first programming language, the authors will guide you from first principles to advanced usage of Kotlin. By the end of this book, you will be empowered to create reliable, concise applications in Kotlin.


Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are bio-inspired models of neural computation that have proven highly effective. Still, ANNs lack a natural notion of time, and neural units in ANNs exchange analog values in a frame-based manner, a computationally and energetically inefficient form of communication. This contrasts sharply with biological neurons that communicate sparingly and efficiently using binary spikes. While artificial Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) can be constructed by replacing the units of an ANN with spiking neurons, the current performance is far from that of deep ANNs on hard benchmarks and these SNNs use much higher firing rates compared to their biological counterparts, limiting their efficiency. Here we show how spiking neurons that employ an efficient form of neural coding can be used to construct SNNs that match high-performance ANNs and exceed state-of-the-art in SNNs on important benchmarks, while requiring much lower average firing rates. For this, we use spike-time coding based on the firing rate limiting adaptation phenomenon observed in biological spiking neurons. This phenomenon can be captured in adapting spiking neuron models, for which we derive the effective transfer function. Neural units in ANNs trained with this transfer function can be substituted directly with adaptive spiking neurons, and the resulting Adaptive SNNs (AdSNNs) can carry out inference in deep neural networks using up to an order of magnitude fewer spikes compared to previous SNNs. Adaptive spike-time coding additionally allows for the dynamic control of neural coding precision: we show how a simple model of arousal in AdSNNs further halves the average required firing rate and this notion naturally extends to other forms of attention. AdSNNs thus hold promise as a novel and efficient model for neural computation that naturally fits to temporally continuous and asynchronous applications


ONJ has been increasingly suspected to be a potential complication of bisphosphonate therapy in recent years. Thus, the ASBMR leadership appointed a multidisciplinary task force to address key questions related to case definition, epidemiology, risk factors, diagnostic imaging, clinical management, and future areas for research related to the disorder. This report summarizes the findings and recommendations of the task force.


Propane decomposition by IR laser radiation at 10.6 μm was studied with a pulsed multimode TEA CO2 laser and also with a cw CO2 laser. Propane molecules do not undergo appreciable photochemical decomposition via multiphoton absorption processes for laser fluences up to 40 J/cm2 (400 MW/cm2). At higher fluences plasmas are formed which cause extensive dissociation. If the radiation is incident on an aluminum surface in contact with propane, the molecules dissociate at an energy fluence as low as 2 J/cm2 (20 MW/cm2). This is considered to be due to plasma formation in the propane near the surface.


We report on a new single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) fabricated in a 130 nm CMOS imaging process. A novel circular structure combining shallow trench isolation (STI) and a passivation implant creates an effective guard ring against premature edge breakdown. Thanks to this guard ring, unprecedented levels of miniaturization may be reached at no cost of added noise, decreased sensitivity or timing resolution. The detector integrated along with quenching and read out electronics was fully characterized. Optical measurements show the effectiveness of the guard ring and the high degree of electric field planarity across the sensitive region of the detector. With a photon detection probability of up to 30% and a timing jitter of 125 ps at full-width-half-maximum this SPAD is well suited for applications such as 3-D imaging, fluorescence lifetime imaging and biophotonics.


Relocation is often taboo among policy makers and planners due to its political, social, and ethical connotations, and although increasingly mentioned as one of the potential climate change adaptation strategies, it mostly adheres to rhetoric with limited discussion of its actual implementation. Scientific study and observation indicate the imminence of climate change impacts, many of which may exceed the adaptive capacity of vulnerability hotspots. Therefore, it is imperative to reassess this response option in the light of its past negative reputation, the success of current initiatives, and decision makers' evolving perception of relocation as an adaptation option. The main objective of this dissertation research is to determine the need for, interest in, and prospects for community relocations as an adaptation option; explore ways to address limitations associated with this alternative, and identify opportunities that could emerge from the relocation process. This study reviews experiences from the past and current relocation efforts and gauges the current level of interest in and support for this adaptation option among policy makers and planners. It also provides conceptual models the relocation scenario, its digitalized simulation, the Climate Change Relocation Leaf, and the Relocation Suitability Index designed to help communities, policy makers and planners explore this alternative. The research commences with a comprehensive literature review of theoretical knowledge, past experiences, current case studies, and the existing state of institutional, political, and social perspectives related to climate change migration and relocation. It continues with a comparative content analysis of climate change adaptation plans to elucidate the relocation rhetoric utilized in the selected texts at what frequency and in what context. Next, the study represents the climate change relocation models and a scenario developed to engage decision-makers and stakeholders in assessing the need for and possibility of relocation. Lastly, the project concludes with the development of a conceptual and tabular framework for the Relocation Suitability Index and subsequent simulation designed to compare possible relocation host sites systematically based on their absorption capacity.


Background : The war in former Yugoslavia, which commenced in 1990, caused the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. There are numerous research investigations into the trauma and associated problems. However, there is no available publication concerning refugees' own perception of the provided support in host countries. Aims : To investigate how refugees evaluated support received (helpful or detrimental) and what kinds of support they wish to receive in the future. Method : The study participants were 854 refugees from former Yugoslavia settled in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. Alongside demographic data, they were assessed using International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI), Life Stressor Checklist–Revised (LSC–R), Manchester Short Assessment of Quality of Life (MANSA), Matrix for Recording Health Care, Social Interventions (MACSI), and an open questions interview. Results : Data revealed that 99.3% of refugees received some kind of support. The most frequent support (98.7%) was primary health care and the least frequent (34.7%) was support in employment and further training. The most helpful (27.5%) was primary health care, and the most detrimental (11.6%) was legal support. The most desired types of support were help in employment (31.8%) and further education/training (20.5%). The educational level of refugees affected their perceptions of support as detrimental or desired. Conclusions : There are different levels of received and desired support among host countries. There are also differences in the perception of received and desired support with regard to the refugees' educational levels. For the abstract or full text in other languages, please see Supplementary files under Reading Tools online


Many global problems in society relate to issues of
environment and development. This research explores
different connotations of environmental management and
development. Development models for Third World countries
are found to be most effective when they promote the
participation of people in the communities they serve.
The thesis demonstrates that development is a process
through which members of society develop themselves and
their institutions to enhance their ability to mobilize and
manage resources to produce sustainable and distributed
improvements in their life. The thesis shows that
environmental impact assessment (EIA) is an environmental
management instrument that allows people to participate in
the management of large development proposals. My research
demonstrates that the integration of public participation
for environmental impact assessment makes the ETA process
more meaningful and satisfactory for those who are most
frequently affected by infrastructures and commercial
enhancement.
The thesis reviews European legislation which
identifies major projects such as nuclear and fossil fuel
power stations, coal mines, oil and gas projects, airports, tunnels, barrages, roads and manufacturing plants for
compulsory EIA. The thesis identifies then public
participation as a necessary requirement for these
assessments. My work shows that the existence of NGOs and
other community groups may guarantee more realistic
representation than those circumstances where such groups
are discouraged, prohibited or ill formed because of
inadequate local leadership.
My investigation indicates that grass-roots
participatory movements, in which people are encouraged to
take the initiatives to manage the environment, develop
their expertise and capacity to survive in particular
circumstances are numerous.
In order to investigate EIA in a country well on the
way to industrialisation I examined the environmental
impact assessment of development projects incorporating
public participation in Portugal. I found that public
participation in EIA in Portugal is weak because of
historical political constraints.
Participation is integrated with environmental
management and development in grass-roots sustainable
development initiatives in Africa and Asia. I demonstrated
that local/regional resource management and development is
often promoted from the grass-roots by NGOs with diverse
histories. Some relate to people in different communities who have come together with different degrees of
participation according to their individual, family,
social, economic, political and environmental concerns.
They challenge their situations by making responsible
decisions, planning, implementing and monitoring their
objectives through processes of consultation, action and
reflection. I further demonstrated that community
objectives are achieved through involvement in each stage
of the development process.
If it is believed that human potentials are to be
discovered and developed, then meaningful participation can
realise this by people's active involvement at all level of
society in decision making. I demonstrated that NG0s,
historically, have been effective in this task by removing
obstacles and educating communities to participate.
suggested it is through the promotion of participation
that EIA can exert its effectiveness.


Statistical nuclear spectroscopy or spectral distribution methods have been developed by French and coworkers as an alternative, applicable in huge model spaces, to the conventional shell model approach for studying nuclear structure. The theory is based on the operation of a central limit theorem in large model spaces which yields a shape close to Gaussian for the smoothed eigenstate density distribution. The theory emphasizes the importance of traces of bilinear products of operators acting in a model space. Utilizing this and partitioning the model space according to group symmetries leads to an algorithm for expanding any interaction in terms of simpler operators. Detailed shell model comparison of excitation spectra, eigenstate 20 22 overlaps and B(E2) transition strengths in Ne and Ne with a realistic interaction and its SU(3) trace-equivalent approximations are presented. SU(3) symmetry breaking by single-particle shell effects is also studied. Spectral distribution methods are used to develop a statistical procedure for calculating alpha particle trans fer strengths that is valid in large model spaces. The theory gives the strength function as a bilinear expansion in orthogonal polynomials defined by moments of the inter action in the initial and final state model spaces. Rapid convergence is assured by the operation of the central limit theorem. The method involves partitioning the fixed J,T initial (target nucleus) and final (residual nucleus) state model spaces according to the supermultiplet symmetry. Moments of a statistical approximation to the Brown-Kuo interaction are used to estimate the eigenergies and configuration intensities for the initial and final state subspaces. Specific predictions for the reactions + a *■ 22Ne and 2®Ne + a + 2^Mg are made. The results are compared with experimental values and with predictions of other nuclear models. A unique feature of the study, unlike what has been found for E2, Ml, E4 strengths, is that the density weighted strength is not dominated by the density of states factor. CHAPTER


Developing online and blended learning programs at a university requires the selection of an appropriate framework which addresses the criteria of effective pedagogy. This paper aims to determine a framework for developing and evaluating online and blended learning environments within university educational contexts. The paper is based on the experience of developing blended and online teacher training programs in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia. First, the paper outlines the methodology of the project. Then, it explores various concepts and theoretical models of learning environments. The next part of the paper examines students' perspective of the elements of the learning environment as defined by the framework of choice. The paper concludes with a comparative overview of the theoretical framework and its application within the Bond University context.


A structure model describes the boundary geometries and the three‐dimensional solid phase distributions of the catchment. In contrast to an established ecosystem, feedback relations can be assumed for an initial geosystem between the development of spatial structures and the water and element fluxes. The objective was to develop a hydrological catchment model as a three‐dimensional spatial database of the solid phase that allows an integrative analysis, a periodical mass balance, and the generation of distributed model parameters for the developing system. Data were from the constructed catchment "Chicken Creek." The initial texture and bulk density distributions were generated by imitating sediment dumping, segregation, and compaction. Boundary geometries and changes in surface topography due to erosion and sedimentation processes were quantified on the basis of digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from aerial photographs. The catchment was visualized with the three‐dimensional software GoCad; the "emergence" of the water table and other structures (e.g., soil horizons, root zone) could be spatially assigned and quantified to identify regions with specific processes. A combination of three‐dimensional catchment with time‐dependent two‐dimensional surface models allowed generating the development of spatially distributed erosion–deposition patterns that formed new initial surfaces. The three‐dimensional distributed solid phase structure of the catchment allowed for a more direct comparison with observations using minimal invasive methods. The mass balance of the solids could be related with pedologic development and transfer to other geopedologic systems achieved by adapting sediment transport and deposition in the descriptions of the model. This model may help improve the integrative analysis of hydrological catchments.


Extracts obtained from roots, stems, leaves and flowers of Cymbopogon giganteus using hexane, dichloromethane (DCM), ethyl acetate and methanol were screened for their phytochemicals, total phenolics content, (TPC), total flavonoids content (TFC), total antioxidant content (TAC) and for their antifungal activity. Tannins, flavonoids, phenolic acids and alkaloids were mainly found in extracts, depending of the solvent used for extraction.
TAC were evaluated using Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP) and DPPH radical scavenging assays. Results from FRAP assay showed that methanolic flower extracts had highest TAC (112.94 ± 2.4 μg TE/mg of extracts), followed by leaves (68.56 ± 7.53 μg TE/mg of extract), roots (45.17 ± 4.28 μg TE/mg of extracts) and stems (39.21 ± 2.34 μg TE/mg of extract). The highest TPC were found in methanolic flowers extracts (171.17 ± 1.42 GAE/mg of extract) whereas DCM and ethyl acetate roots extracts exhibited the best TFC with respectively 348.34 ± 12.48 and 323.86 ± 31.55 μg of QE/mg of extract.
Only methanolic extracts of C. giganteus different parts were tested at 10 mg/mL on four local fungi. Results showed that methanolic roots extracts had an inhibitory effect of 16.16%, 19.15% and 10.79% respectively on the radial growth of Fusarium moniliforme, Phoma sorghina and Aspergillus flavius. Methanolic flowers extracts only inhibited Fusarium moniliforme radial growth at 19.4171% and Aspergillus flavius at 7.11%. None of plant parts extracts showed an inhibitory effect on Bypolaris orezae.