PURPOSE
Heavy chain-hyaluronic acid (HC-HA)/PTX3 purified from human amniotic membrane (AM) was previously observed to suppress inflammatory responses in vitro. We now examine whether HC-HA/PTX3 is able to exert a similar effect in vivo, using murine models for keratitis and corneal allograft rejection.

METHODS
The in vitro effect of HC-HA/PTX3 was tested using OTII ovalbumin (OVA) transgenic, purified CD4(+) T cells, or IFN-γ/lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated RAW264.7 cells. Cytokine production was measured by ELISA, while cell surface markers and cell proliferation were determined by flow cytometry. In vivo effects of HC-HA/PTX3 were analyzed by quantifying the recruitment of enhanced green fluorescence-labeled macrophages and by measuring the expression of arginase 1 (Arg-1), IL-10, and IL-12 in LPS-induced keratitis in the macrophage Fas-induced apoptosis (Mafia) mouse. The effect of corneal allograft survival in a complete major histocompatibility complex (MHC) mismatched mouse model was assessed by grading corneal opacification.

RESULTS
In vitro studies demonstrated that HC-HA/PTX3 significantly enhanced the expansion of FOXP3 T cells and suppressed cell proliferation and protein expression of IFN-γ, IL-2, CD25, and CD69 in activated CD4(+) T cells. Furthermore, immobilized HC-HA/PTX3 significantly upregulated IL-10 gene expression but downregulated that of IL-12 and IL-23 in activated RAW264.7 cells. Finally, in vivo subconjunctival injection of HC-HA/PTX3 significantly prolonged corneal allograft survival, suppressed macrophage infiltration, and promoted M2 polarization by upregulating Arg-1 and IL-10 but downregulating IL-12.

CONCLUSIONS
HC-HA/PTX3 can suppress inflammatory responses in vivo by modulating both innate and adaptive immunity of macrophages and CD4(+) T cells.


The EU has a significant impact on health and social care, and Brexit will create major issues in this sector. A Parliamentary inquiry has identified six areas: the health and social care workforce, reciprocal health coverage, regulation and research of medicines and medical devices, public health, funding and wider market and trade rules. The major impact on health, though, is likely to come from the economic cost of Brexit putting even more pressure on financing an already stretched health and care system.


Functional communication has always been a challenge for individuals with severe intellectual disabilities and speech and language impairments, yet it is one of the most important aspects of our daily life as humans. It is what we use to convey our most basic wants and needs, transfer information, and interact socially with one another. Communication systems increase student independence which in turn decreases the amount of behavioral problems, mainly tantrums and self-injurious behaviors, which are usually present when students do not have an effective mode of communication (Sigafoos, Arthur-Kelly, &Butterfield, 2006). In the past few decades, great strides have been made in improving the communication opportunities for individuals with communication barriers and their communication partners. There has been an increase in popularity of both high tech and low-tech augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices, which give these individuals an effective mode of communication. These can be anything from a picture card exchange to request an item, to a high tech digitized speech device with dynamic screen displays. This is a case study about the implementation of a multi-modal communication system and it's effect on an individual learner's expressive speech. The study is designed as action research done by a teacher in a special education classroom. Data is collected during communication activities, which are embedded into academic instruction and during the creation of contrived situations that facilitate the development of the learner's communicative skills. This paper presents Action Research as a viable and practical research methodology by chronicling one special educator's experience in implementing an action research study.


The target and bidding firms' return patterns during merger and acquisition attempt periods have been researched by many. This article explores how the target shareholder wealth protection which collar offers provide is related to the performance of merger arbitrage positions. More specifically, the authors seek to test how the collar offer deal components which are designed to protect the wealth of the target firm's shareholders relate to both merger arbitrage performance and the probability of success for the takeover effort. The results show that the level of wealth protection relates consistently and positively to the profitability of merger arbitrage and the probability of merger completion, thereby supporting the protection argument made by the authors. The results also show that the decision to use a fixed payment (fixed dollar amount) collar offer rather than a fixed exchange (variable dollar value exchange ratio) collar offer is positively related to the correlation between the target and acquiring firms' stock prices and the growth potential of the target firm. These findings may be of use to both merger arbitragers and those involved in the formulation of takeover offers.


This study presents a versatile index for the quantification of hysteretic loops between hydrological variables at the runoff event timescale. The conceptual development of the index is based on a normalization of the input data and the computation of definite integrals at fixed intervals of the independent variable. The sum, the minimum and the maximum of the differences between integrals computed for the rising and the falling curves provide information on the direction, the shape and the extent of the loop. The index was tested with synthetic data and field data from experimental catchments in Northern Italy. Hysteretic relations between streamflow (the independent variable) and soil moisture, depth to water table, isotopic composition and electrical conductivity of stream water (dependent variables) were correctly identified and quantified by the index. The objective quantification of hysteresis by the index allows for the automatic classification of hysteretic loops and thus the determination of differences in hydrological responses during different events. The index was also used to examine the seasonal dynamics in the relation between streamflow and soil moisture and captured the switch in the direction of the loop with changes in event size and antecedent wetness conditions. The sensitivity of the index to the temporal resolution of the measurements and measurement errors was also tested. The index can successfully quantify hysteresis, except for very noisy data or when the temporal resolution of the measurements is not well suited to study hysteresis between the variables. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


One central problem for the function and manufacture of materials where performance relies on nanoscale structure is to control the compatibility and interactions of the building blocks. In natural materials, such as nacre, there are examples of multifunctional macromolecules that have combined binding affinities for different materials within the same molecule, thereby bridging these materials and acting as a molecular glue. Here, we describe the use of a designed multifunctional protein that is used for self-assembly of nanofibrillar cellulose. Recent advances in the production of cellulose nanofibrils have given inspiration for new uses of cellulosic materials. Cellulose nanofibrils have mechanical and structural features that open new possibilities for performance in composites and other nanoscale materials. Functionalisation was realised through a bi-functional fusion protein having both an ability to bind to cellulose and a second functionality of surface activity. The cellulose-binding function was obtained using cellulose-binding domains from cellulolytic enzymes and the surface activity through the use of a surface active protein called hydrophobin. Using the bi-functional protein, cellulose nanofibrils could be assembled into tightly packed thin films at the air/water interface and at the oil/water interface. It was shown that the combination of protein and cellulose nanofibrils resulted in a synergistic improvement in the formation and stability of oil-in-water emulsions resulting in emulsions that were stable for several months. The bi-functionality of the protein also allowed the binding of hydrophobic solid drug nanoparticles to cellulose nanofibrils and thereby improving their long-term stability under physiological conditions.


A major concern regarding innovation in clean technologies in the EU is that the fragmentation of its innovation system may hinder knowledge flows and, consequently, spillovers across member countries. A low intensity of knowledge flows across EU states can negatively impact their technological base, suppressing opportunities for further innovations and hindering the movement towards the technological frontier. This paper evaluates the fragmentation of the EU innovation system in the field of renewable energy sources (RES) by examining the intensity and direction of knowledge spillovers over the years 1985-2010. We modify the original double exponential knowledge diffusion model to provide information on the degree of integration of EU countries' innovation efforts and to assess how citation patterns changed over time. We show that EU RES inventors have increasingly built "on the shoulders of the other EU giants", intensifying their citations to other member countries and decreasing those to domestic inventors. Furthermore, the EU strengthened its position as source of RES knowledge for the US. Finally, we show that this pattern is peculiar to RES, with other traditional (i.e. fossil-based) energy technologies behaving in a completely different way.


LUXE (Land Use in an eXurban Environment) is a land-use change model featuring different levels of land market implementation. It integrates land market interactions, the microeconomic determinants of willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA), and utility measures for land buyers. LUXE implements utility maximization, budget constraints, and competitive bidding. It is written in Java with Repast Simphony®, with auxiliary geographic information system (GIS) and landscape components.

Regarding the model details, please refer to the following publication:

Sun, Shipeng, Dawn C. Parker, Qingxu Huang, Tatiana Filatova, Derek T. Robinson, Rick L. Riolo, Meghan Hutchins, and Dan G. Brown (2014). Market Impacts on Land-use Change: An Agent-based Experiment. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104 (3): 460-484.

Huang, Qingxu, Dawn C. Parker, Shipeng Sun, Tatiana Filatova (2013). Effects of agent heterogeneity in the presence of a land-market: a systematic test in an agent-based laboratory. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 41: 188-203.

Robinson, Derek T., Shipeng Sun, Meghan Hutchins, Rick L. Riolo, Dan G. Brown, Dawn C. Parker, Tatiana Filatova, William S. Currie, and Sarah Kiger (2013). Effects of land markets and land management on ecosystem function: A framework for modelling exurban land-change. Environmental Modelling and Software 45: 129-40.

Parker, Dawn C., Dan G. Brown, Tatiana Filatova, Rick L. Riolo, Derek T. Robinson, and Shipeng Sun (2012). Do land markets matter? A modeling ontology and experimental design to test the effects of land markets for an agent-based model of ex-urban residential land-use change. In Agent-Based Models for Geographical Systems, eds. A. J.Heppenstall, A.T. Crooks, L.M. See, and M. Batty, 525-542: Springer Netherlands.


Groundwater is an important source of freshwater the world over, especially in arid and semiarid regions. In recent years, groundwater overextraction has led to a serious drawdown in groundwater level in many aquifers. Hence, the projecting groundwater level is essential for the planning and management of water resources in a basin scale. This study aimed to project the mean groundwater level in Najafabad Plain in central Iran. Najafabad Plain is one of the most important aquifers in the Zayandeh-Rud River basin currently facing a negative hydrologic balance, which has been aggravated by the excessive agricultural demand that has adversely affected its groundwater level. For the purpose of the study, a multilayer perceptron Artificial Neural Network (ANNs) was developed. Recently, alternative algorithms have been used for training ANNs to overcome the disadvantages of the Back Propagation (BP) algorithm that is easily stuck in local minima and slow training convergence. In this regard, the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm as the classical method and the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) as the evolutionary algorithm are adopted for training the feed forward ANNs and improving their performance. The obtained results from LM-NN were then compared with those from ANN-PSO model and observed information. Comparison of the results projected by the ANN-PSO and the observed mean groundwater levels using 58 piezometric wells with monthly time steps over a 20-year period showed that the ANN-PSO model is superior to LM in predicting groundwater level. As an illustration, for models run using nine hidden neurons for Nekouabad right zones the root mean square error (RMSE) of the testing dataset for ANN-PSO was the lowest (1.50) compared to those for LM-NN (1.76). Accordingly, the ANN-PSO models are able to be used as a reliable tool for evaluating different scenarios of the water resources management in the study aquifer. Finally, three management scenarios under two climate change scenarios, A2 and B1 (obtained from GCMs), were defined and the trained ANN-PSO was subsequently used to project the effects of each scenario on the groundwater level in the plain.


Shark catches in the protective nets set off the beaches of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa, are strongly influenced by the sardine run, the winter influx of shoals of Sardinops sagax from the south-west. The effect of the sardine run, which is highly variable from year to year, is greatest in June and July at beaches south of Durban. Total annual shark catch and effort are presented for the period 1952–2005, and total monthly shark catch on the KZN south coast for the period May–August, 1965–2005. Measures to reduce catches of sharks associated with the sardine run have been introduced and have been increasingly successful. Reliable species-specific catch data are available for the period 1978–2005 only. For this period, the spatio-temporal distribution of each of 14 species of shark and the frequency of occurrence of sardine in their diets is documented. Occurrence varies according to species, as does the apparent influence of the sardine run on shark distribution. During June and July on the KZN south coast, sardine were found in the diet of all but two species and frequency of occurrence was 40% or greater in eight species. The presence of copper or bronze whaler sharks Carcharhinus brachyurus in KZN waters appears to be strongly associated with the sardine run, as does that of certain life-history stages of dusky sharks C. obscurus. Spinner sharks C. brevipinna and smooth hammerhead sharks Sphyrna lewini are caught in greater numbers in summer than in winter, but appear to shift their spatial distribution seasonally to feed on sardine.


This study examines the extent to which household demographics, local economic and social conditions, and federal food security programs explain the likelihood of household food insecurity in Oregon. Between 1999 and 2001, Oregon had the highest average rate of hunger in the nation and ranked in the top five states with respect to food insecurity. Statistical analyses using a multivariate logit model reveal that food insecurity is influenced by much more than demographics and individual choices. County-level factors such as residential location (urban versus rural) and housing costs significantly affect the likelihood that families will be food insecure.


Data from Kovach's Base Map Interview and Drawn Map collected as part of
 the Perceptual Form of the City, a research project investigating the individual's
 perception of the urban landscape.


Degenerate four-wave mixing measurements were made on several Nd(3+)-doped laser materials by resonantly pumping the Nd(3+) ions. The dominant contribution to the signal under these conditions is associated with the difference in polarizabilities of the Nd(3+) ions in the metastable state versus the ground state. Absolute measurements of the signal strengths imply a laser-induced polarizability change of the order of 0.01-0.05 A(3). The results indicate that, for the case of a single-shot laser amplifier system, the beam distortion induced by this population induced change in the refractive index is comparable with the distortion arising from thermal effects.


Engaging critically with literature on mimesis, colonialism,
and the state in anthropology and history, this introduction argues for
an approach to mimesis and imitation as constitutive of the state and
its forms of rule and governmentality in the context of late European
colonialism. It explores how the colonial state attempted to administer,
control, and integrate its indigenous subjects through mimetic policies
of governance, while examining how indigenous polities adopted imitative
practices in order to establish reciprocal ties with, or to resist the
presence of, the colonial state. In introducing this special issue, three
main themes will be addressed: mimesis as a strategic policy of colonial
government, as an object of colonial regulation, and, finally, as a creative
indigenous appropriation of external forms of state power.


Aim: Accumulating evidence suggests that predictability of traditional cardiovascular risk factors declines with advancing age. We investigated whether carotid plaque scores (CPSs) were associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD) death in the oldest old, and whether asymmetrical dimethylarginine (ADMA), a marker of endothelial dysfunction, moderated the association between the CPS and CVD death. Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of Japanese subjects aged ≥ 85 years without CVD at baseline. We followed this cohort for 6 years to investigate the association of CPS with CVD death via multivariable Cox proportional hazard analysis. We divided participants into three groups according to CPS (no, 0 points; low, 1.2–4.9 points; high, ≥5.0 points). The predictive value of CPS for estimating CVD death risk over CVD risk factors, including ADMA, was examined using C-statistics. Results: We analyzed 347 participants (151 men, 196 women; mean age, 87.6 years), of which 135 (38.9%) had no carotid plaque at baseline, and 48 (13.8%) had high CPS. Of the total, 29 (8.4%) participants experienced CVD-related death during the study period. Multivariable analysis revealed a significant association of high CPS with CVD-related mortality relative to no CPS (hazard ratio, 3.90; 95% confidence interval: 1.47–10.39). ADMA was not associated with CVD death, but the significant association between CPS and CVD death was observed only in lower ADMA level. The addition of CPS to other risk factors improved the predictability of CVD death (p = 0.032). Conclusions: High CPS correlated significantly with a higher CVD death risk in the oldest old with low cardiovascular risk. Ultrasound carotid plaque evaluation might facilitate risk evaluations of CVD death in the very old.


Mehrzad Boroujerdi's Iranian Intellectuals and the West explores the works of three generations of Iranian writers and academics who contributed to the formation of a counter-Western "nativist" discourse. It opens with an exposition of the concepts that constitute the theoretical grid of the book and provide the title of its first chapter. "Otherness, Orientalism, Orientalism in Reverse, and Nativism." Informed by contemporary critical theories, Boroujerdi argues for the centrality of the "other" to the formation of modern self-identity. Re-encapsulating the main theses of Said's Orientalism, he recounts that "the Islamic world came to be perceived as the embodiment of all that was recently left behind in Europe: an all-encompassing religion, political despotism, cultural stagnation, scientific ignorance, superstition, and so on" (p. 7). He then explains "Orientalism in reverse," a concept formulated by the Syrian critic Sadik al-Azm. Preferring this clumsy concept to "Occidentalism" or "self-Orientalizing," Boroujerdi defines Orientalism in reverse as "a discourse used by 'oriental' intellectuals and political elites to lay claim to, recapture, and finally impropriate their 'true' and 'authentic' identity" (pp. 11–12). As a counter-narrative of Orientalism, this discourse "uncritically embraces orientalism's assumption of a fundamental ontological difference separating the natures, peoples, and cultures of the Orient and the Occident" (p. 12). Boroujerdi attributes the popularity of Orientalism in reverse to the "seductive lure of nativism," which is defined as "the doctrine that calls for the resurgence, reinstatement, or continuance of native or indigenous cultural customs, beliefs, and values" (p. 14). Surprisingly enough, Boroujerdi does not divulge that this seductive and pervasive " nativism" has no discursively significant equivalent in Iranian cultural politics.


This paper addresses the problem of choosing the right sources to solicit data from in sensing applications involving broadcast channels, such as those crowdsensing applications where sources share their observations on social media. The goal is to select sources such that expected fusion error is minimized. We assume that soliciting data from a source incurs a cost and that the cost budget is limited. Contrary to other formulations of this problem, we focus on the case where some sources influence others. Hence, asking a source to make a claim affects the behavior of other sources as well, according to an influence model. The paper makes two contributions. First, we develop an analytic model for estimating expected fusion error, given a particular influence graph and solution to the source selection problem. Second, we use that model to search for a solution that minimizes expected fusion error, formulating it as a zero-one integer non-linear programming (INLP) problem. To scale the approach, the paper further proposes a novel reliability-based pruning heuristic (RPH) and a similarity-based lossy estimation (SLE) algorithm that significantly reduce the complexity of the INLP algorithm at the cost of a modest approximation. The analytically computed expected fusion error is validated using both simulations and real-world data from Twitter, demonstrating a good match between analytic predictions and empirical measurements. It is also shown that our method outperforms baselines in terms of resulting fusion error.


A cross-sectional study of the nutritional significance of food aversions and cravings during pregnancy was conducted on 295 women in southern Ethiopia between February and May 1995. A questionnaire was used to collect data on dietary practices. Mid-upper-arm circumference (MUAC), triceps skinfold thickness (TSFT), and weight measurements were used to assess nutritional status. Slightly fewer than three-quarters (71%) of the women craved one or more foods, whereas about two-thirds (65%) avoided at least one food. Cereal foods, despite being staple foods in the area, were avoided by more women (41%) than any other foods. Livestock products, which were scarce at the time of the study, were craved by more women (55%) than any other foods. Comparisons using various anthropometric indicators revealed that women who avoided foods had significantly higher MUAC and TSFT than those who did not (p < .05), whereas there was no difference in nutritional status between women who craved foods and those who did not. However, those craving women who managed to get the desired foods had significantly higher weight gain (p < .05), but not significantly higher MUAC or TSFT, than those who did not. Aversion and craving were positively associated (χ2 = 10.66, p < .001; odds ratio, 2.36). Thus, women who avoided foods were 2.4 times more likely to crave foods than those who did not avoid foods. This implies that aversion and craving are complementary processes geared towards ensuring optimal nutrition during pregnancy. Aversion results in the avoidance of monotonous diets, whereas craving calls for varied and nutritious foods. More research, however, is needed before such a conclusion is warranted.


We have used single gonadotropes from the newly derived line, LbetaT2, to investigate the modulation of Ca2+ signaling and exocytosis by the steroid hormone environment. This cell line, derived by targeted oncogenesis in transgenic mice, has recently been shown to secrete LH in response to GnRH. We have characterized the effects of both GnRH and membrane depolarization on exocytosis and intracellular [Ca2+] ([Ca2+]i) in individual LbetaT2 cells. GnRH (1-100 nM) evoked concentration-dependent increases in [Ca2+]i and secretion, as monitored by measurement of plasma membrane capacitance (Cm) using the whole-cell perforated-patch technique, and the extent of these changes were dependent upon steroid hormone background. GnRH treatment of cells cultured in medium containing charcoal-treated FBS (ct-FBS) showed smaller changes in [Ca2+]i than cells cultured in untreated FBS. However, when estradiol (E2) and dexamethasone (Dex) were added to the ct-FBS medium (E2/Dex-ct-FBS), the elevations in [Ca2+]i stimulated by GnRH increased almost 2-fold. Additionally, the rates of secretion in the E2/Dex-ct-FBS-cultured cells were greater than in either ct-FBS- or FBS-cultured cells. The increase in secretory response observed with E2/Dex-ct-FBS appeared to be due to both an increase in the peak [Ca2+]i stimulated by GnRH and a shift toward increased sensitivity of the Ca2+ dependency of exocytosis. In contrast to GnRH-evoked responses, the increases in [Ca2+]i elicited by depolarization were greater in cells cultured in ct-FBS than in E2/Dex-ct-FBS; however, the secretory rates were no different in the two groups. Likewise, there was no apparent effect of steroid treatment on the Ca2+ dependency of depolarization-evoked exocytosis. In summary, these results 1) clearly demonstrate the utility of this cell line for single-cell studies of both agonist- and depolarization-evoked secretion; 2) reveal that steroid hormone background has profound effects on LbetaT2 cells, both on stimulus-induced calcium mobilization and on the apparent Ca2+ -sensitivity of exocytosis; and 3) show that expression of the steroid hormone effect on Ca2+ -sensitivity is dependent upon receptor occupation by GnRH.


We are awash in predictions about our data-driven future. Enthusiasts believe big data imposes new ways of knowing, while critics worry it will enable powerful regimes of institutional control. This debate has been of keen interest to communication scholars. To encourage conceptual clarity, this article draws on communication scholarship to suggest three lenses for data epistemologies. I review the common social scientific perspective of communication as data . A data as discourse lens interrogates the meanings that data carries. Communication around data describes moments where data are constructed. By employing multiple perspectives, we might understand how data operate as a complex structure of dominance.


While use of a racially and/or ethnically marked variety by an outsider is often interpreted as an act of linguistic crossing or linguistic appropriation, this paper adopts a second dialect acquisition perspective to account for instances of use of ethnically-marked dialect features by individual speakers in situations of interracial/ethnic contact: white women with significant social, kinship, and residential contact with African Americans in Columbus, Ohio. Linguistic data are obtained from sociolinguistic interviews and interactive speech data from white adult female speakers who participate in similar types of dense African American social networks, but differ from one another with regard to their use of morphosyntactic and phonological features associated with their second dialect, African American English (AAE), and the ages at which they began to have significant contact with native speakers of AAE, which range from early childhood to early adulthood. This paper's general finding—that age of acquisition (AoA) of AAE matters among adult whites who use AAE-linked features—is supported by numerous previous studies that address SDA across other various other social, regional, and national boundaries (cf. Siegel 2010). However, AoA is found to impact speakers' current use of morphological and phonological features differently and in a way that is somewhat anomalous with the SDA literature. Across the sample, a statistically significant correlation is shown between speakers' ages of acquisition and the qualitative range of AAE-linked morphosyntactic such that the lower the speaker's age of acquisition, the wider the range and the higher the rates of AAE features used, but the same correlation is not found for speaker AoA and use of AAE-linked phonological features. The key to understanding the patterns of use of AAE-linked phonology lies with outliers within the sample who provide additional insight into the life circumstances beyond AoA that impact SDA attainment. By considering both speaker norms and outliers, the benefits and limitations of second dialect acquisition analysis of adult use of racially/ethnically marked features across ethno-racial boundaries is explored. This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/ vol19/iss2/9 U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 19.2, 2013 Age of Second Dialect Acquisition and Linguistic Practice Across Ethno-racial Boundaries in the Urban Midwest


Inference from complex distributions is a common
problem in machine learning needed for
many Bayesian methods. We propose an efficient,
gradient-free method for learning general GMM
approximations of multimodal distributions based
on recent insights from stochastic search methods.
Our method establishes information-geometric
trust regions to ensure efficient exploration of the
sampling space and stability of the GMM updates,
allowing for efficient estimation of multi-variate
Gaussian variational distributions. For GMMs,
we apply a variational lower bound to decompose
the learning objective into sub-problems given
by learning the individual mixture components
and the coefficients. The number of mixture components
is adapted online in order to allow for
arbitrary exact approximations. We demonstrate
on several domains that we can learn significantly
better approximations than competing variational
inference methods and that the quality of samples
drawn from our approximations is on par
with samples created by state-of-the-art MCMC
samplers that require significantly more computational
resources.


We introduce a model for Hermitian holormorphic Deligne cohomology on a projective algebraic manifold which allows to incorporate singular hermitian structures along a normal crossing divisor. In the case of a projective curve, the cup-product in cohomology is shown to correspond to a generalization of the Deligne pairing to line bundles with "good" hermitian metrics in the sense of Mumford and others. A particular case is that of the tangent bundle of the curve twisted by the negative of the singularity divisor of a hyperbolic metric: its cup square (corrected by the total area) is shown to be a functional whose extrema are the metrics of constant negative curvature.


Epidote group minerals are common in metamorphosed mafic to intermediate igneous rocks, quartzofeldspathic sediments and calc-alumina silicate (marl) rocks of higher grade zeolite to medium grade amphibolite facies of low–medium pressure contact and regional metamorphic terranes (i.e., pressure and temperature conditions below the calcite-to-aragonite transition). Within any one rock, epidote composition in terms of Fe3+/(Fe3+ + Al) can be variable, but in general, is limited by whole-rock composition, such that epidote group minerals in metabasite lithologies are more Fe-rich than those in marls that tend to be more Al-rich and typically include zoisite. Because of their wide range of P - T stability, epidote group minerals of variable composition may form in a single rock during several stages of metamorphic re-equilibration. Slow rates of intra-crystalline Fe3+-Al exchange, especially at low temperatures, preserve complex zonation patterns in individual grains that can serve as a "tape-recorder" providing evidence for continuous or discontinuous prograde and retrograde reactions and the P - T -fluid-redox conditions of metamorphism. Thus, relic lower grade epidote (typically Fe-rich) often form cores over which new (typically less Fe-rich) higher grade epidote rims form. In such a case, the boundary between the two generations of epidote may be sharp or gradational depending on the temperature history of the rock and Fe3+-Al diffusivity. Often compositional differences are blurred across the boundary. In addition to zoning is the spread of individual epidote grain compositions within a rock (even on a thin-section scale). This is related to variation in the composition of coexisting phases or reactants (e.g., quartz; Ca-Al silicates such as plagioclase, margarite, lawsonite; mafic silicates such as chlorite, pumpellyite, amphiboles; other Ca-Fe3+ silicates such as prehnite, andraditic garnet; carbonates; Fe-oxides; relict volcanic glass), which serve as compositional micro-domains in which epidote may form. …


Performance of RF powered communication network is bottlenecked by short downlink energy transfer range and doubly-near-far problem faced in uplink information transfer to Hybrid Access Point (HAP). Theses problems can be resolved by cooperation of an RF energy harvesting node R present between HAP and RF energy harvesting information source S. However, there lies a dilemma at R on whether to transfer its harvested energy to S or to act as an information relay for transferring its data to HAP in a two-hop fashion. This paper resolves this dilemma of R by proposing a novel integrated information and energy relaying (i2 ER) protocol. It also provides insights on the relay positions suited for either energy relaying (ER), or information relaying (IR), or where neither ER nor IR will be useful. In this regard, while considering Rician fading channels, we derive the expression for mean harvested dc power at S via energy transfer from HAP and ER from R. We also derive the closed-form outage probability expression for decode-and-forward relaying with maximal-ratio-combining at HAP over Rician channels. Finally numerical results validating the analytical results and providing insights on the relaying role (ER and/or IR) of RF harvesting helping node are presented.


South Korea remains a puzzle for political economists. The country has experienced phenomenal economic growth since the 1960s, but its upward trajectory has been repeatedly diverted by serious systemic crises, followed by spectacular recoveries. The recoveries are often the result of vigorous structural reforms that nonetheless retain many of South Korea's traditional economic institutions. How, then, can South Korea suffer from persistent systemic instability and yet prove so resilient? What remains the same and what changes? The contributors to this volume consider the South Korean economy in its larger political context. Moving beyond the easy dichotomies --equilibrium vs. disequilibrium and stability vs. instability --they describe a complex and surprisingly robust economic and political system. Further, they argue that neither systemic challenges nor political pressures alone determine South Korea's stability and capacity for change. Instead, it is distinct patterns of interaction that shape this system's characteristics, development, and evolution.


This article proposes a novel approach to school food reform that promotes healthy dietary habits. Daily aggregate nutrition standardization (DANS) assigns each student an individualized standard to monitor the nutritional quality of all food provided to that student in school at any time of the day, including meals and snacks, whether from the cafeteria, vending machines, bake sales, or in class. DANS would enable schools to track all foods purchased by or served to a student each day and to compare the nutritional content of those foods to a nutrition standard appropriate for that student. Cafeteria registers and vending machines could easily be programmed to carry out DANS with only minor modifications to existing software currently used for menu planning, nutrient analysis, account management, and sales transactions. DANS could generate information that would allow parents, health professionals, or other interested parties to keep track of the nutritional profile of foods served to a child in school. DANS could also block purchases of foods that are inconsistent with a student's daily aggregate nutrition standard. Rather than instituting an outright ban on "bad" foods, DANS would help children develop healthy dietary habits in a more realistic environment that includes many of the temptations they face outside of school. DANS uses school food as an educational resource to equip students with the critical thinking skills and good judgment that they need to survive in the contemporary food system.


Understanding the mechanism of the load bearing and force transmission throughout fibrous biological structures can help decode complex physiological and pathological phenomena and provide insight into possible therapeutic solutions. Fibrous structures are characterized by one-dimensional fibers stabilized by cross-linking proteins and molecules. Preferentially aligned fibers form well-organized parallel bundles, whereas randomly distributed fibers create isotropic three-dimensional networks. Tendons, composed of staggered arrangements of collagen fibrils, and axonal cytoskeleton in neurons, composed of alternate rows of microtubules, are two instances of structures with aligned fibers. Collagen fibrous networks which make up the extracellular matrix (ECM) of connective tissues are an example of fibrous structures with random orientation of the fibers. As fibrous structures respond to external stresses, cross-linking elements transfer the loads between the fibers and transmit the bulk deformations from one end of the structure to the other end. This mechanical machinery allows these structures to sustain large deformations and transfer tissue scale forces to the subcellular level. In this thesis, we quantify the influence of this mechanism on several physiological and pathological processes related to tendons, axons, and ECMs. First, we employ the shear-lag model (SLM) to quantitatively identify the key parameters affecting the mechanical behavior of fibrous materials. Next, by extending the SLM and including poroelastic effects, we study the movement of the interstitial fluid throughout fibrous tissues. Notably, our model explains the exudation of fluid from tendon structures in response to tensile stretching, in agreement with previous observations. By incorporating the dynamics of the engagement of the cross-links in the load transfer pathway, we elucidate the underlying mechanism of viscoelastic behavior of fibrous tissues. In particular, the rate-dependent vulnerability of axons to dynamic loadings during brain injury is modeled and validated with previous in vitro studies. Finally, we study the nonlinear elasticity induced by the realignment and reorganization of the collagen fibers in the ECM and examine its impact on regulating cell-matrix interactions. Notably, our model shows that mechanical principles mediated by the ECM nonlinearity and the contractility of the cells play a crucial role in determining the phenotype of the tumor cells. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Materials Science & Engineering First Advisor Vivek B. Shenoy


The story of the Warsaw Rising from the author of The Isles and Europe: A History who is also the leading British authority on the history of Poland. Rising '44 is a brilliant narrative account of one of the most dramatic episodes in 20th century history, drawing on Davies' unique understanding of the issues and characters involved. In August 1944 Warsaw offered the Wehrmacht the last line of defence against the Red Army's march from Moscow to Berlin. When the Red Army reached the river Vistula, the people of Warsaw believed that liberation had come. The Resistance took to the streets in celebration, but the Soviets remained where they were, allowing the Wehrmacht time to regroup and Hitler to order that the city of Warsaw be razed to the ground. For 63 days the Resistance fought on in the cellars and the sewers. Defenceless citizens were slaughtered in their tens of thousands. One by one the City's monuments were reduced to rubble, watched by Soviet troops on the other bank of the river. The Allies expressed regret but decided that there was nothing to be done, Poland would not be allowed to be governed by Poles. The sacrifice was in vain and the Soviet tanks rolled in to the flat


I am not sure if I am the only one who feels this way, but sometimes I feel we are fighting a losing battle. It seems that the numbers and the challenges are overwhelming. But, something happened in the last few weeks that reminded me never to give up in fighting for the healthcare rights of all South Africans. Michelle Moorehouse, a member of our board, was incensed by an advertisement for Pre-Sex gel. This clearly unregistered product was being manufactured and sold by a doctor in Port Elizabeth. Michelle did not want anyone to buy this gel and to think that they were protected from HIV. She drafted a passionate letter that was sent off to a number of key stakeholders, including the Registrar of Medicine. The Medicines Control Council (MCC) visited the doctor's rooms, withdrew the product and stopped all sales. Who knows how many lives have been saved as a consequence? Well done to Michelle. We need to fight each battle that comes our way with the same dedication.


With the recognition of obesity as a global epidemic (World Health Organization [WHO], 2012), there has been increased interest in the study of weight bias and stigmatization (Ashmore, Friedman, Reichmann, & Musante, 2008; Puhl, Schwartz, & Brownell, 2005). Weight bias is a highly prevalent form of discrimination, perhaps as common as racial bias (Shkolnikova, 2008). Occurring in a wide variety of settings, weight bias may produce adverse effects in social relationships, education, employment, and health care (Durso & Latner, 2008), with the result that obese or overweight persons are socially marginalized and stigmatized.


Presented at the 4th Annual Undergraduate Research Spring Symposium, April 1, 2009 in Room 321 of the Georgia Tech Student Center.


This study compared children and adolescents who had deliberately selfharmed (DSH) with those who had not using data routinely collected during assessment at a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). The DSH group consisted of 64 boys and 194 girls aged between 7 to 18 years. The control group consisted of 175 boys and 181 girls aged between 11 and 18. As in previous studies, there was a substantially higher proportion of girls who self-harmed or who had depressive symptoms when compared to boys. The study investigated the effectiveness of HoNOSCA as an assessment tool for DSH and compared it with other measures of seriousness of self-harm (BDI, PATHOS, clinician-based risk rating or previous episodes of self-harm). Comparisons of HoNOSCA-rated 'self injury' with other assessment tools showed advantages of the latter in detecting individuals at risk. The study also investigated whether DSH was linked to changes in family living and explored trigger or risk factors. The HoNOSCA item 'Problems with family life and relationships' was linked to self-harm as expected. However, there were no substantial differences between the groups for measures of family living. Analyses of risk factors showed background issues concerning breakdown of relationships and self esteem were relevant to DSH.


We develop a new model for solvency contagion that can be used to quantify systemic risk in stress tests of financial networks. In contrast to many existing models, it allows for the spread of contagion already before the point of default and hence can account for contagion due to distress and mark‐to‐market losses. We derive general ordering results for outcome measures of stress tests that enable us to compare different contagion mechanisms. We use these results to study the sensitivity of the new contagion mechanism with respect to its model parameters and to compare it to existing models in the literature. When applying the new model to data from the European Banking Authority, we find that the risk from distress contagion is strongly dependent on the anticipated recovery rate. For low recovery rates, the high additional losses caused by bankruptcy dominate the overall stress test results. For high recovery rates, however, we observe a strong sensitivity of the stress test outcomes with respect to the model parameters determining the magnitude of distress contagion.


During fermentation for ethanol production, yeasts are subjected to different kinds of physico-chemical stresses such as: initially high sugar concentration and low temperature; and later, increased ethanol concentrations. Such conditions trigger a series of biological responses in an effort to maintain cell cycle progress and yeast cell viability. Regarding osmostress, many studies have been focused on transcriptional activation and gene expression in laboratory strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The overall aim of this present work was to further our understanding of wine yeast performance during fermentations under osmotic stress conditions. Specifically, the research work focused on the evaluation of NaCl-induced stress responses of an industrial wine yeast strain S. cerevisiae (VIN 13), particularly with regard to yeast cell growth and viability. The hypothesis was that osmostress conditions energized specific genes to enable yeast cells to survive under stressful conditions. Experiments were designed by pretreating cells with different sodium chloride concentrations (NaCl: 4%, 6% and 10% w/v) growing in defined media containing D-glucose and evaluating the impact of this on yeast growth and viability. Subsequent fermentation cycles took place with increasing concentrations of D-glucose (20%, 30%, 40% w/v) using salt-adapted cells as inocula. We present evidence that osmostress induced by mild salt pre-treatments resulted in beneficial influences on both cell viability and fermentation performance of an industrial wine yeast strain.


Insider–outsider relations in qualitative research have been heavily studied. Yet there is a dearth in the literature exploring how people who have experienced madness produce knowledge and overcome trying circumstances when they do qualitative mental health research with other survivors. This article fills this gap through a critical reflection on my experiences with psychosis and involuntary hospitalization and how they shaped dialogue with my participants. Situated within a narrative framework of inquiry, I reveal how self-disclosure and critical forms of relationality during interviews with 10 psychiatric survivors produced a survivor-centered knowledge that nuances biomedical understandings of mental illness and the mental health system. Practices of self-disclosure revealed how survivors and I had to navigate familial expectations as we recovered and tried to regain a sense of identity. Doing insider research also helped me overcome the periods of embarrassment and stigma in my psychosis, as I learned through critical dialogue how traumatic events can provide unique avenues for intense self-reflection and the development of greater empathy for mental health survivors. I also discuss some of the ethical concerns and limitations of having an insider status in qualitative mental health research, and how self-disclosure may present certain epistemological challenges in the research process.


Passwords have been dominating user authentication for more than half a century, and many researchers believe that they will continue as a key part of the user authentication world in the foreseeable future. The well-known usability-security problem of textual passwords, i.e., the difficulty for human users to choose strong and easy-to-remember passwords, has received a considerable attention over many years. Many alternative solutions have been proposed to replace textual passwords, however, none of them can keep all advantages of textual passwords without bringing new problems. As a consequence, hybrid user authentication systems such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) has been widely suggested for security-critical applications such as e-banking systems. Such hybrid user authentication systems normally lead to higher usability costs, so are not ideal solutions for all applications. The hybrid nature also means organizations and service providers have to deploy and maintain different user authentication components, thus making reconfiguration of such systems more complicated.

This thesis looks at several less-studies but still important areas of user authentication: how human users perceive objective ratings given by computer programs such as proactive password checkers (PPCs) and subjective ratings given by human experts, how human users can be better educated about password security, and how we can overcome the current drawbacks of hybrid user authentication systems to improve user experience and enhance reconfigurability of such systems. Our research led to some new insights on how human users perceive password strength ratings, a new password security education tool, and a novel ``all in one'' and backward compatible user authentication framework.

For the first work, we conducted a user study with over 1,000 crowdsourcing workers to gather information about how they perceived their trusts on objective and subjective ratings of a number of given passwords. The results shed light on the influence of personalization and contextualization on users' perceived trusts on password ratings, implying human users' decisions on textual passwords depend on highly on their personal characteristics, individual passwords and their own subjective judgments on given passwords. We observed several typical behavioral patterns in terms of human users' perceived trust on subjective and objective ratings. These findings can help support better designs of PPCs and other password security tools.

One finding of the above-mentioned user study is that many human users clearly trusted their own subjective judgments more than ratings given by others. This suggests better password educational tools are needed to help human users make better subjective judgments on password strength. We noticed PPCs have a natural side effect of educating users, but this effect has not been well studied and most designs are not optimal in terms of password security education. We therefore proposed Password Security Visualizer (PSV), an interactive visualization system specifically designed for password security education. PSV can provide many new features that do not exist in traditional PPCs, thus having a greater potential to achieve its goals of educating users. A 2-D prototype of PSV was implemented, and a number of user studies were conducted to investigate its performance as both a PPC and a password security education tool. The results showed that PSV was considered the most informative and recommended by most participants as a good educational tool.

The personalization effect observed in our user studies on passwords led us to consider how we can generalize existing user authentication framework to allow personalization beyond textual passwords. This led us to discover Pass∞ , a novel ``all in one'' and backward compatible framework which can support all four authentication factors (knowledge-based, token-based, biometric-based and context-aware authentication) and many different schemes in each factor. Pass∞ enables users to freely combine diverse authentication actions while keeping compatibility with textual passwords so that a user can continue to use his/her old textual password even after Pass∞ is introduced. The diversity of different authentication actions supported by Pass∞ can help users to personalize their individual choices of passwords to reach a better trade-off between security and usability: a human user can define his/her password as a sequence of simple authentication actions that can be easily remembered, and Pass∞ will convert the simple hybrid password into a much more complicated password that a password cracker will find very difficult to guess. Being able to support many different user authentication actions in a single framework also helps make Pass∞ highly reconfigurable, e.g., different password policies can be defined for different user groups to allow different types of combinations of user authentication actions. A prototype of Pass∞ prototype was implemented which will be tested in a number of user studies we plan to conduct in near future.


Since their introduction in the 1990s, charter schools have grown from a small-scale experiment to a ubiquitous feature of the public education landscape. The current study uses the legislative removal of a cap on the maximum number of charters, and the weakening of regulations on these new schools, in North Carolina as a natural experiment to assess the intensive impacts of charter school growth on teacher quality and student composition in traditional public schools (TPS) at different levels of local market penetration. Using an instrumental variable difference-in-differences approach to account for endogenous charter demand, we find that intensive local charter entry reduces the inflow of new teachers at nearby TPS, leading to a more experienced and credentialed teaching workforce on average. However, we find that the entry of charters serving predominantly White students leads to reductions in average teacher experience, effectiveness, and credentials at nearby TPS. Overall these findings suggest that the composition of the teacher workforce in TPS will continue to change as charter schools further expand, and that the spillover effects of future charter expansion will vary by the types of students served by charters.


Florencia E. Mallon examines the development of capitalism in Peru's central highlands, depicting its impact on peasant village economy and society. She shows that the region's peasantry divided into an agrarian bourgeoisie and a rural proletariat during the period under discussion, although the surviving peasant ideology, village kinship networks, and the communality inspired by economic insecurity have sometimes obscured this division.Originally published in 1983.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


A Nd:YAG pulsed laser with wavelength of 1.06 mm can cause a tremendous damage when interacts with material. In this study the effects of Nd:YAG laser interactions onto paper are reported. A combination lens technique was used with different focal length of lens. The target material that is a photographic paper was positioned at a focal spot of the laser beam. IR laser pulsed with peak power up to megawatt (MW) is brought to focus thus interacts with the photographic paper. This high-power impact of the laser pulsed shockwave caused a tremendeous damage on the photographic paper. Measurement of the impact was base on the surface size of the damage. From the observation result it shows that the maximum damage diameter for short lens system is 0.613 mm at peak power of 21.93 MW, whereas the maximum damage diameter for long lens system is 1.224 mm at 22.25 MW peak power.


Background: The pedagogy of clinical learning for nursing students in acute care settings has transitioned from an apprentice model to one necessitating more dynamic interactions between clinical staff nurses and learners. Clinical nurses must provide theoretical knowledge, share clinical expertise, and model professional behavior to nursing students in an increasingly complex medical system. Our clinical learning environments encompass significant technological advances, shortened length of patient stay, and institutional climates which are often dominated by financial constraints, all which have the potential to impact the teaching and learning environment, and consequently, patient outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes and experiences of registered nurses in acute care settings who clinically teach and mentor nursing students in order to understand pedagogical strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Methods: A qualitative study was undertaken to explore the attitudes and experiences of registered nurses who participate in the clinical teaching and mentoring of nursing students in an acute care setting. Semi- structured interviews were carried out using a focus group format. Three models of clinical education were represented within the sample. The first model consisted of a faculty member affiliated with an institution of higher learning overseeing the clinical experiences of six to eight students on one clinical unit for approximately 14 weeks. The second model was the preceptor-based model wherein an experienced nurse is paired with a student for approximately 240 hours during a ten-week period. The third model was the "Dedicated Education Unit" (DEU). The DEU leverages unit-based clinical staff nurses in a dual role as a clinical faculty member affiliated with a university-based nursing program and utilized a one-to-one or one-to-two teacher to learner ratio. Results: Thematic content analysis was carried out between and within the focus groups.  The findings suggest that: unit-specific philosophical pedagogies highly impact the overall experiences of teacher and learner; commonly shared, clearly articulated goals are imperative; and a firmly established and refined partnership between the student's academic institution and the health care facility may be critical to the successful outcome of the experience. Moreover, the participants articulated a perceived link between teaching students and enhanced communication on the unit, utilization of evidenced-based practice, and improved patient outcomes. Conclusion: The results presented here are based on focus group interviews with three groups of participants who are involved in the clinical education of nursing students. The six themes that emerged serve as a framework for understanding the comprehensive, time-intensive, patient-focused, and role-developmental approaches in which clinical nurses engage to support excellent clinical learning experiences for student nurses.


Based upon a robust optimization technique, Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS), we use simulation to find rules for identifying the correct Minkowski parameter r to use in Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). Claims from the paper of Shepard (1974) are confirmed, and others are nuanced. We confirm the value of r cannot be defined precisely, that the proper r value cannot be found in dimension 2 or when the data is too noised, but it is possible to find good estimates in the other cases.


Aims and Objectives: Information Technology (IT) service management has gained importance in the recent years. A service is a means of delivering value to the customers by facilitating outcomes, which customers want to achieve without ownership of the specific costs and risks. As IT services' efficient execution revolves around its implementation through software management, the need for understanding the relationship between IT service management and software management has become crucial. The aim of this thesis is to explore this relationship. Methodology: We designed this thesis study as an exploratory study. First, a systematic literature review was conducted to explore the role of software engineering in IT service management and the interconnection between them. Then, we performed a case study at Telenor Sweden AB by conducting interviews in order to further investigate the intersecting elements between ITIL v3 Framework, which is an international standard for IT service management and software engineering considering ISO/IEC 12207 standard on software processes. Results: The outcome of this thesis is a mapping between IT service management and software engineering considering ISO/IEC 12207 for software engineering processes and ITIL V3 Framework for IT service management. These mappings have been recommended to use by the case company to incorporate 'in-house' software models in line with ITIL V3 Framework implementation. Conclusion: Though ITIL V3 framework gives in depth guidelines for IT Service Management, it does not give sufficient details for managing applications that constitute IT Services. As ITIL V3 is a framework, it is flexible to accommodate the software engineering processes defined in ISO/IEC 12207 standard. Though we brought three-way relationship between ITIL V3, ISO/IEC 12207 and case company's software process models, it is found out that replacing existing models with ISO/IEC 12207 shall be difficult as it would be two new standards for the employees. The in house software process models are already inspired from standards. In this thesis, we provide a mapping between ITIL V3 and inhouse models of the case company to support the implementation of ITIL V3 for managing software applications to realize IT Services.


Innate and adaptive immunity work concertedly in vertebrates to restore homoeostasis following pathogen invasion or other insults. Like all homoeostatic circuits, immunity relies on an integrated system of sensors, transducers and effectors that can be analysed in cellular or molecular terms. At the cellular level, T and B lymphocytes act as an effector arm of immunity that is mobilised in response to signals transduced by innate immune cells that detect a given insult. These innate cells are spread around the body and include dendritic cells (DCs), the chief immune sensors of pathogen invasion and tumour growth. At the molecular level, DCs possess receptors that directly sense pathogen presence and tissue damage and that signal via transduction pathways to control antigen presentation or regulate a plethora of genes encoding effector proteins that regulate immunity. Notably, molecular circuits for pathogen detection are not confined to DCs or even to immune cells. All cells express sensors and transducers that monitor invasion by viruses and bacteria and elicit suitable effector barriers to pathogen propagation. Here, I discuss work from my laboratory that has contributed to our understanding of these issues over the years.


A growing number of individuals are choosing to study abroad although, like other manifestations of globalisation, the sources and destinations of these migratory flows are highly uneven. Within the context of ongoing debates about the motives for overseas study, the reproduction of class advantage, and countries' competitive advantage for internationally mobile students, this paper seeks to improve understanding of these variations. We situate international student mobilities within a theoretical framework which connects recent work in geography, emphasising the differentiation advantage derived from foreign study, with insights more commonly applied to labour migration which emphasise costs and benefits. Our findings, based on a statistical analysis of a large sample of country pairs, call into question the central importance commonly ascribed to countries' university quality in shaping the mobilities of international students. Far more influential is income in destination countries, together with relational ties created by colonial linkages, common language and pre-existing migrant stocks. Unique to the literature, we not only demonstrate important differences in the determinants of international student mobilities between developed and developing countries, but also between different sub-groupings of developing countries. Indeed, an important insight from our study is that it may be useful to move beyond binary classifications, and to deploy more refined country categorisations in seeking to understand contemporary corporeal mobilities.


Evaluation of a therapy involves comparing a group of patients receiving the intervention with a group of patients who do not receive it (the control group). With a few rare exceptions (such as diseases that currently have 100% mortality), a control group is always required to demonstrate that any improvement observed after treatment is not simply due to the natural course of the illness. There are a number of key elements in the design of these studies that will determine whether the findings are valid and generalisable.

Patients are selected to a trial by a process of recruitment that usually involves identification of potential participants, assessment of eligibility using inclusion and exclusion criteria, followed by a request for consent to participate. Selection can occur at any of these stages to influence the constitution of the study population. This is obviously a necessary process in assembling the study population, but selection can influence the interpretation of the findings.

Selection of patients for a trial will clearly affect generalisability. The results of the trial will only be generalisable to patients who resemble the selected study population. If most eligible patients are identified and recruited, then the results will be generalisable to the wider population. If recruitment is highly selective, then findings may not be easily generalisable. A high disease prevalence in the study population suggests a highly selected cohort.

Once patients have been selected into a trial, they are allocated to intervention or control treatment. Bias may result if patients, carers or researchers can influence the process of allocation. For example, patients may choose a treatment that they think will be beneficial. This will result in certain types of patient being allocated to certain treatments, leading to bias. The more that patients, carers and researchers can influence allocation to treatment group, the …


Variable acoustic properties can be obtained on an electroacoustic transducer's voicing face by very basic control strategies, among which are the shunting of the loudspeaker (shortcut, variable electric load, or negative resistance disposals). It is proven that enhanced controllability and better performances can be obtained by way of hybrid feedback control, consisting in a double feedback loop, one on acoustic pressure at the diaphragm and the other on its velocity, leading to a global acoustic impedance control. The present work will describe the theory of the hybrid feedback control, by way of block diagrams aiming at visualizing the control principle, starting from the shunted loudspeaker. Simulations of performances obtained on Matlab/Simulink will then be presented, and compared to experimental results obtained on analog prototypes mounted at the end of a dedicated impedance tube. A discussion on stability will then follow, leading to concluding remarks on the disposal behavior and possible means of enhancements.


Many academics and practitioners believe that Total Quality Management philosophy is the panacea of the 1990s for many industries in all segments of the economy, including education. Many others have argued that TQM is a fad, and like many of its predecessors, such as Management By Objectives (MBO), is going to fade away. Existing cases of successful implementation of TQM in business enterprises, which outnumber the failures, have made it easier for us to refute these claims. It is our belief that TQM is here to stay and, without it, organisations will not be able to survive in the turbulent and ever-changing environment of the 1990s. Although many of TQM applications found in literature were in the health care industry, TQM principles are applicable to other settings as well. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we will examine the barriers for TQM implementations in academia. Secondly, we will propose a framework for studying TQM in an academic setting.


Objective. To demonstrate the applicability of optimal control theory for designing minimum energy charge-balanced input waveforms for single periodically-firing in vitro neurons from brain slices of Long-Evans rats. Approach. The method of control uses the phase model of a neuron and does not require prior knowledge of the neuron's biological details. The phase model of a neuron is a one-dimensional model that is characterized by the neuron's phase response curve (PRC), a sensitivity measure of the neuron to a stimulus applied at different points in its firing cycle. The PRC for each neuron is experimentally obtained by measuring the shift in phase due to a short-duration pulse injected into the periodically-firing neuron at various phase values. Based on the measured PRC, continuous-time, charge-balanced, minimum energy control waveforms have been designed to regulate the next firing time of the neuron upon application at the onset of an action potential. Main result. The designed waveforms can achieve the inter-spike-interval regulation for in vitro neurons with energy levels that are lower than those of conventional monophasic pulsatile inputs of past studies by at least an order of magnitude. They also provide the advantage of being charge-balanced. The energy efficiency of these waveforms is also shown by performing several supporting simulations that compare the performance of the designed waveforms against that of phase shuffled surrogate inputs, variants of the minimum energy waveforms obtained from suboptimal PRCs, as well as pulsatile stimuli that are applied at the point of maximum PRC. It was found that the minimum energy waveforms perform better than all other stimuli both in terms of control and in the amount of energy used. Specifically, it was seen that these charge-balanced waveforms use at least an order of magnitude less energy than conventional monophasic pulsatile stimuli. Significance. The significance of this work is that it uses concepts from the theory of optimal control and introduces a novel approach in designing minimum energy charge-balanced input waveforms for neurons that are robust to noise and implementable in electrophysiological experiments. (Some figures may appear in colour only in the online journal)


This chapter revisits earlier work by the authors on international commercial arbitration. Drawing on new historical research, it suggests that the enduring success and legitimacy of the International Chamber of Commerce and international commercial arbitration relates to the type of alliances that European professors early in the twentieth century built with American lawyers -- who themselves had built strong connections with the U.S. state and with major commercial interests. The article first presents in broad terms the strategies of internationalization (including the import and export of norms and institutions) that elite corporate lawyers sought in order to build their position through the accumulation of international legal capital built in alliance with European law professors. These strategies of internationalization played a decisive role in building international justice as a hybrid system between common and civil law around a core of legal scholars/diplomats including learned Queens Counsel and continental law professors. Second, the chapter examines how the ICC Court of International Commercial Arbitration was established in the shadow of the Permanent Court of International Justice by borrowing its public visibility and the academic legitimacy of international law. The European professors who benefitted from the establishment of the Permanent Court and related institutions in The Hague were initially relatively peripheral to the ICC, because the ICC itself was relatively marginal in the interwar period. Yet a few of them extended their academic interest to issues of private law and international disputes. Third, when European law professors were given the opportunity to intervene in commercial disputes involving oil companies, after the tide of nationalistic fights over the appropriation of profits of the oil industry, they could use the value of the symbolic foundations of international justice, as well as their early academic investment, reinvigorated through a small diaspora of continental law professors with links to both the ICC and the American Arbitration Association, such as Martin Domke. Serving as arbitrators and scholars, they could apply and codify their doctrines and gain the recognition of international commercial arbitration as quasi-autonomous from economic and political interests.


Mobile Communication covers a wide range of topics. These include the replacement of co-present interaction with mediated contact and analysis of mobile-based cohesion and gender. The authors also explore the role of media choice and its effect on the quality as well as quantity of social cohesion. Other topics include mobile communication and communities of interest; and mobile communication, cohesion, and youth. This volume brings together scholars from around the world to consider how mobile communication both builds and destroys our sense of social cohesion. There is no question that uses of technology can lead to increased cohesion within personal communities. For example, this volume includes research on caravan couples in Australia, factory workers in China, young couples in Germany, citizens in Slovenia, and sports clubs in Ireland. It also includes research on drunken calls between university students in the US, calls of international students in Switzerland and communications between immigrant women in Melbourne, Australia. However, the contributors also argue that as social networks become inundated with mobile communication users, these users may become increasingly isolated and social division can ensue.


Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, and Rycik (1999), in their Position Statement for the International Reading Association on Adolescent Literacy, remind educators that "early achievement is not the end of the story...there are developmental stages of reading and writing" (p. 99) into adolescence and adulthood. This study asks the question of the impact of instructional and non-instructional factors on literacy development over time. To answer the question, a thorough and extensive review of the literature on longitudinal studies of literacy development was conducted. A synthesis of the research produced several related findings. First, instructional factors influencing literacy development over time include curriculum (content being taught): comprehension (word decoding/vocabulary), print-references (comprehension/reading/spelling), word recognition, fluency, phonological awareness, phonics, and phonemic awareness. The starting time for formal reading instruction and providing early intervention programs are other instructional factors. Findings also show that certain packaged literacy programs also positively impact literacy development over time. Other results indicate that non-instructional factors influencing literacy development over time include reader selfperception, behavior regulation, and a home life with a variety of literacy experiences. One other non-instructional factor found is school placement (high or low ability group). These findings are applicable for the professional development of elementary teachers, specifically, prekindergarten to grade three, and therefore will be distributed to them through a ten minute Teacher Tube professional development video.


Background Children with cerebral palsy (CP) frequently present with secondary impairments in spinal alignment and extremity range of motion, endurance for activity, and muscle strength. Creation of developmental trajectories for these impairments will help guide clinical decision‐making. Objective For children in each level of the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) this study aimed to: (1) create longitudinal developmental trajectories for range of motion (Spinal Alignment and Range of Motion Measures [SAROMM]), endurance (Early Activity Scale for Endurance [EASE]), and functional strength (Functional Strength Assessment [FSA]); and (2) develop age‐specific reference percentiles and amount of change typical over 1 year for these outcomes. Design This study used a longitudinal cohort design. Methods Participants comprised 708 children with CP across GMFCS levels, aged 18 months up to the 12th birthday, and their families. In 2 to 5 assessments every 6 months over 2 years, trained therapists performed the SAROMM and FSA, and parents completed the EASE questionnaire. For children in each GMFCS level, longitudinal trajectories using linear and nonlinear mixed‐effects models from all visits, and reference percentiles using quantile regression from the first, 12‐month, and 24‐month visits were created for each measure. Results Longitudinal trajectories and percentile graphs for SAROMM, FSA, and EASE were primarily linear, with different performance scores among GMFCS levels. There was much variability in both longitudinal trajectories and percentiles within GMFCS levels. Limitations Limitations included a convenience sample and varying numbers of participants assessed at each visit. Conclusions The longitudinal trajectories and percentile graphs have application for monitoring how children with CP are performing and changing over time compared with other children with CP. The resources presented allow therapists and families to collaboratively make decisions about intervention activities targeted to children's unique needs.


Selling virtual goods for real money is an increasingly popular revenue model for massivelymultiplayer online games (MMOs), social networking sites (SNSs) and other online hangouts. In this paper, we argue that the marketing of virtual goods currently falls short of what it could be. Game developers have long created compelling game designs, but having to market virtual goods to players is a relatively new situation to them. Professional marketers, on the other hand, tend to overlook the internal design of games and hangouts and focus on marketing the services as a whole. To begin bridging the gap, we propose that the design patterns and game mechanics commonly used in games and online hangouts should be viewed as a set of marketing techniques designed to sell virtual goods. Based on a review of a number of MMOs, we describe some of the most common patterns and game mechanics and show how their effects can be explained in terms of analogous techniques from marketing science. The results provide a new perspective to game design with interesting implications to developers. Moreover, they also suggest a radically new perspective to marketers of ordinary goods and services: viewing marketing as a form of game design.


ABSTRACT It is critical that the taphonomic processes by which taxa enter the fossil record be well documented and understood. This study focuses on the precision and accuracy of the fossil record of Ostracoda on San Salvador Island, Bahamas. This fauna has already been used to reconstruct climate change and sea-level fluctuations on San Salvador, but its taphonomy was not clearly understood. We test the accuracy of the record by examining correlations between rank abundance and taxonomic composition of sixteen living communities and death assemblages in seven lakes on the island. Additionally, we test the precision of this record by comparing the taxonomic composition and species abundances of sixteen death assemblages from each of the same seven lakes. In six out of seven of these lakes, the accuracy by which death assemblages record the taxonomic composition and rank-abundance distributions of living communities is high. In these same six lakes, the within-lake precision of the record is also high since death assemblages recovered from individual lakes are more similar to assemblages from the same lake than to any other lake. In the remaining water body tested, the accuracy and precision of the record exhibited wide variation at individual sampling sites that are related to its past use as a water resource for a nearby plantation, a steep depth gradient, and tidal fluctuations. This study demonstrates the high fidelity of the ostracode fossil record, but highlights the importance of site-specific taphonomic studies to understand physical and biological processes that may obscure this record.


Introduction Established in 2003, ERSTE Foundation has a history stretching back 190 years to the year 1819 when it was founded as the Erste Österreichische Spar Casse in Vienna. Rooted in our history as a social enterprise and financial service provider, ERSTE Foundation recognises that contemporary society faces huge challenges and that for a new and united Europe to work, integration is crucial—and that means uniting the economic, cultural and social capital of our region. Description We develop ideas and concepts to increase social participation and to ensure that no-one is left out, whatever their circumstances—which in turn creates stable, effective and fairer societies. European Integration is important to us. We want to work against prejudice and nationalism, to integrate thinking and living across borders, and make these experiences accessible, particularly to the young generation. Projects We intend to play an active role in giving people opportunities to increase their understanding of each other. Therefore, ERSTE Foundation has supported research projects that concern themselves with the effects of societal transformation processes: in particular we have been looking at the effects that demographic changes will have on the long-term care needs of elderly people in Central and Eastern Europe. From this, we intend to develop policy recommendations for decision makers in civil society, economy and politics.


The rapid proliferation of social networking sites (SNSs) has transformed the way people now socialize and communicate. SNSs have been recognized to contribute to body image (BI) dissatisfaction and disordered eating behavior (EB). Few qualitative studies have explored this issue in men. The aim of the current study was to investigate male SNS use and possible impacts on BI and EB. One-to-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight men in the United Kingdom. Interviews aimed to examine men's views on the potential impact of SNSs on BI and EB. Data were thematically analyzed. Findings suggested that SNSs may be a useful nutrition idea tool and motivational platform for men to improve their diet and exercise uptake. However, results also indicated that SNS use may contribute to BI dissatisfaction and increased risk of disorder. Future research may identify risk factors of SNS use, male BI concerns, and eating pathology across the lifespan.


Increased survival rates from childhood cancer call for efforts to reintegrate children with cancer back into their academic and social environments. The aims of this study were to: (1) review and analyse the existing literature on school re-entry interventions for children with cancer; and (2) discuss the importance of peer involvement in the treatment. Relevant databases were searched using equivalent search algorithms and six studies were selected that target children with cancer and/or their classmates. Two authors independently reviewed the literature for data extraction. The articles were reviewed using the PRISMA model for reporting reviews. Statistical calculations for the meta-analyses were done using Review Manager 5.2. The meta-analyses showed significant effects of school re-entry programmes in terms of enhancing academic achievement in children with cancer (P = 0.008) and lowering their levels of depression (P = 0.05). Increased knowledge among classmates was associated with less fear and a more positive attitude towards the child with cancer. Due to limited numbers of patients, lack of control groups, and the diversity of intervention strategies used in previous studies, there is a need for intervention programmes exploring the optimal path for the reintegration of children with cancer into the education system and into their peer groups.


Pointing out several undesirable consequences that Merge gives rise to in the mainstream minimalist approach to phrase structure, a strongly derivational model is developed that dispenses with the narrow syntactic Merge operation. Representations and recursion are argued to be properties of the interface components only, and to be absent from narrow syntax. Transfer, implementing feature checking in a local fashion and instructing interface computations, is defined as an iterative operation mapping Lexical Items to the interface components directly. In lack of Merge, narrow syntactic overgeneration is eliminated in toto, since no narrow syntactic representations are created and filtering of Transfer operations by the interface modules is immediate. It is argued that of the twin (overlapping) objectives of making syntax crash-proof and restricting syntactic overgeneration, only the latter is of relevance to the architecture of grammar.


The study reports the composition of the crop and growth pattern of important species in terms of
height, density, diameter and basal area during the rotation period in some productive stands of the Matang
Mangrove Reserve of Peninsular Malaysia.
In all, seven stands representing areas before thinning J, thinning II, thinning III and before final
felling were sampled. A II the sites were potential Rhizophora spp. stands belonging to Watson's inundation
classes II and III.
The crop was almost pure and uniform, dominated by Rhizophora apiculata. Brugiera parviflora, the
most important associate was found to constitute less than 10 per cent of the crop in most of the sampled
plots. On an average, there were 3236, 2107, 1321 and 830 stems per hectare before thinning I, II, III and
final felling respectively. Mean DBH for the respective stages were 8.28 em, 9.65 em, 13.90 em and 17.45
em. When compared with earlier estimates, it appears that there is a large scale mortality between 2 and 15
years of crop. There is a need to study the mortality rate and its causes during this period which might have
a bearing on the thinning schedules and rotation period.


Abstract Basaltic volcanism occurs at all the active volcanic systems of São Miguel. For the last 30 ka, the eruption of basaltic magma has been particularly significant in the areas between the three polygenetic volcanoes – Sete Cidades, Fogo and Furnas – and two basaltic fields have developed: the Picos Fissural Volcanic System (PFVS) and the Congro Fissural Volcanic System (CFVS). About 5 ka ago volcanic activity at CFVS ended abruptly and since then almost all basaltic activity has been concentrated at the PFVS, where about 30 eruptions have taken place. Despite the absence of eruptive activity, the Congro system represents one of the most active seismic areas in the archipelago. It shows episodes of volcanic deformation that are indicative of magma ascent, which halted beneath the volcanic system. Two historical eruptions are associated with the PFVS. The 1563 eruption at Pico do Sapateiro was of basaltic composition, whereas that of the 1652 eruption was, for almost two centuries, also considered to be basaltic. This event had, however, a Vulcanian style and involved the production of large amounts of fine ash and the growth of three trachyte domes with associated coulées. It was accurately described in contemporary historical accounts.


A new species of deep-water dogfish shark, Squalus shiraiisp. nov., is described herein as endemic to the tropical waters off Southern Japan. This species has been largely misidentified with S. mitsukurii. However, morphological, meristic and morphometric evidence support it to be a separate and undescribed species. Squalus shiraiisp. nov. differs from this species by having body brown in colour dorsally, caudal fin with ventral and dorsal tips markedly tapered and broadly white, dermal denticles uniscuspidate and lanceolate and larger number of precaudal (91–94) and total vertebrae (120–123) (vs. body dark grey to black; caudal fin with ventral and dorsal tips rounded and not white in colour; denticles tricuspidate and rhomboid; 86–90 precaudal and 116–117 total vertebrae). Squalus shiraiisp. nov. is also clearly separated from other Japanese congeners which are herein revisited to include six species, based on the examination of over 150 specimens caught from Japanese waters that were available in ichthyological collections: S. mitsukurii, S. japonicus, S. acutirostris, S. brevirostris and S. suckleyi. Squalus mitsukurii, S. japonicus and S. brevirostris are re-described in detail and the neotype of S. japonicus is herein designated. Squalus acutirostris is treated as a valid species with occurrences in Japan, China and Taiwan and, thus, a provisional diagnosis is given, as well as an updated diagnosis of S. suckleyi. A key to Squalus species from the North-western Pacific Ocean is given and main morphological differences between S. shiraiisp. nov. and the closest related species are discussed.


Self-supervised representation learning has seen remarkable progress in the last few years. More recently, contrastive instance learning has shown impressive results compared to its supervised learning counterparts. However, even with the ever increased interest in contrastive instance learning, it is still largely unclear why these methods work so well. In this paper, we aim to unravel some of the mysteries behind their success, which are the good practices. Through an extensive empirical analysis, we hope to not only provide insights but also lay out a set of best practices that led to the success of recent work in self-supervised representation learning.


This paper addresses the problem of registering the hexapedal robot, RHex, relative to a known set of beacons, by real-time visual servoing. A suitably constructed navigation function represents the task, in the sense that for a completely actuated machine in the horizontal plane, the gradient dynamics guarantee convergence to the visually cued goal without ever losing sight of the beacons that define it. Since the horizontal plane behavior of RHex can be represented as a unicycle, feeding back the navigation function gradient avoids loss of beacons, but does not yield an asymptotically stable goal. We address new problems arising from the configuration of the beacons and present preliminary experimental results that illustrate the discrepancies between the idealized and physical robot actuation capabilities.


Abstract Causes of self-induced limitation of glyphosate translocation were studied in sugar beet plants that were susceptible to or tolerant of (Roundup Ready) glyphosate. Glyphosate was taken up in both types of plants at the same rate and essentially stopped at the same time, around 4 h after [ 14 C]glyphosate was applied in 1% Roundup formulation. Tolerant plants continued to export glyphosate at a significant rate during the entire 30-h observation period while susceptible plants stopped after only 10 h and exported only half the amount. Herbicide was applied under three different experimental protocols to help identify causes for the inhibition of carbon and glyphosate translocation. Comparing the effect of 1% Roundup applied to source leaves of susceptible plants, during either the first half of the day or the end of the day, showed that glyphosate acting directly on source leaves under high light essentially stopped translocation. Glyphosate nearly completely inhibited photosynthesis and carbon export during the remaining 9 h of the light period but produced no observable effects on photosynthesis, C 3 -cycle carbon metabolism, or translocation in tolerant plants. Inhibition of carbon translocation and glyphosate translocation coincided, confirming that glyphosate export was inhibited by disruption of a process that drives carbon export. Applying glyphosate to all source leaves, except the two in which photosynthesis and export were being measured, revealed the effects of sink tissue inhibition on source leaf processes in the absence of direct effects on the source leaves. Import into the monitored sink leaf was reduced by 50% after about 3 h but the inhibition of import had a relatively small effect on carbon export and photosynthesis in the two source leaves not directly exposed to the herbicide. The results show that the glyphosate-induced disruption of C 3 cycle metabolism under high light was a key factor in the marked inhibition of photosynthesis and the rapid halting of carbon and glyphosate translocation in sugar beets.


Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world's top scientists, who are already inventing the future in their labs, Kaku - in a lucid and engaging fashion - presents the revolutionary developments in medicine, computers, quantum physics, and space travel that will forever change our way of life and alter the course of civilization itself. His astonishing revelations include: The Internet will be in your contact lens. It will recognize people's faces, display their biographies, and even translate their words into subtitles. You will control computers and appliances via tiny sen-sors that pick up your brain scans. You will be able to rearrange the shape of objects. Sensors in your clothing, bathroom, and appliances will monitor your vitals, and nanobots will scan your DNA and cells for signs of danger, allowing life expectancy to increase dramatically. Radically new spaceships, using laser propulsion, may replace the expensive chemical rockets of today. You may be able to take an elevator hundreds of miles into space by simply pushing the "up" button. "Like Physics of the Impossible" and "Visions" before it, "Physics of the Future" is an exhilarating, wondrous ride through the next one hundred years of breathtaking scientific revolution.


A fundamental, but mostly hidden, transformation is happening in the way public services are being delivered, and in the way local and national governments fulfill their policy goals. Government executives are redefining their core responsibilities away from managing workers and providing services directly to orchestrating networks of public, private, and nonprofit organizations to deliver the services that government once did itself. Authors Stephen Goldsmith and William D. Eggers call this new model "governing by network" and maintain that the new approach is a dramatically different type of endeavor that simply managing divisions of employees. Like any changes of such magnitude, it poses major challenges for those in charge. Faced by a web of relationships and partnerships that increasingly make up modern governance, public managers must grapple with skill-set issues (managing a contract to capture value); technology issues (incompatible information systems); communications issues (one partner in the network, for example, might possess more information than another); and cultural issues (how interplay among varied public, private, and nonprofit sector cultures can create unproductive dissonance). Governing by Network examines for the first time how managers on both sides of the aisle, public and private, are coping with the changes. Drawing from dozens of case studies, as well as established best practices, the authors tell us what works and what doesn't. Here is a clear roadmap for actually governing the networked state for elected officials, business executives, and the broader public.


This work focused on a Timepix chip [1] coupled with a bulk semi-insulating GaAs sensor. The sensor consisted of a matrix of 256 × 256 pixels with a pitch of 55 μm bump-bonded to a Timepix ASIC. The sensor was processed on a 350 μm-thick SI GaAs wafer. We carried out detector adjustment to optimize its performance. This included threshold equalization with setting up parameters of the Timepix chip, such as Ikrum, Pream, Vfbk, and so on. The energy calibration of the GaAs Timepix detector was realized using a 241Am radioisotope in two Timepix detector modes: time-over-threshold and threshold scan. An energy resolution of 4.4 keV in FWHM (Full Width at Half Maximum) was observed for 59.5 keV γ-photons using threshold scan mode. The X-ray imaging quality of the GaAs Timepix detector was tested using various samples irradiated by an X-ray source with a focal spot size smaller than 8 μm and accelerating voltage up to 80 kV. A 700 μm × 700 μm gold testing object (X-500-200-16Au with Siemens star) fabricated with high precision was used for the spatial resolution testing at different values of X-ray image magnification (up to 45). The measured spatial resolution of our X-ray imaging system was about 4 μm.