This paper describes a novel 3D model-based tracking algorithm allowing real-time recovery of 3D position, orientation and facial expressions of a moving head. The method uses a 3D anthropometric muscle-based active appearance model (3D AMB AAM), a feature-based matching algorithm, and an extended Kalman filter (EKF) pose and expression estimator. Our model is an extension of the classical 2D AAM, and uses a generic 3D wireframe model of the face, based on two sets of controls: the anatomically motivated muscle actuators to model facial expressions and statistically-based anthropometrical controls to model different facial types.


Politics and business often involve making risky or dangerous decisions whose outcomes can be predicted only with difficulty, if at all. As attitudes toward risks and dangers vary between individuals, it is reasonable that people with different attitudes are active in areas requiring decisions with differing degrees of risk. For example, it has frequently been observed that entrepreneurs are more risk-loving than employees. In late 2011, we surveyed members of the German Bundestag (federal parliament) as to their attitude toward risk (and danger or uncertainty), revealing that they are far more risk-loving than average people; they are even significantly more risk-loving than the self-employed.1 It is possible to take a critical view of the fact that politicians are prepared to assume higher risks than the general population normally would. In this respect, politicians do not represent the population. Yet, we interpret this finding in a positive manner, as a socially rational "division of labor" between citizens, voters, and politicians in the context of a representative democracy whose institutions limit risk-seeking and power.


INTRODUCTION The Great American Depression, spanning the 1930s, inscribed into the culture a psychic crisis. Faith in industrial ingenuity, heralded as "progressive," came unhinged. By 1933, four years after the stock market crash, one quarter of the work force was unemployed.(1) Into this dilemma came a multitude of photographic projects, the most famous of which were sponsored by the federal government in the form of agencies that provided relief to farmers, the unemployed and others. The most completely realized project was the documentation of conditions faced by displaced farmers, recorded by the Historic Section of the Resettlement Administration (RA), later the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The socially-oriented photographic book made its appearance, as did the photographic magazine, best exemplified by Life in 1936. Many of the best known American photographers came to prominence during the Depression, including Berenice Abbott, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and Margaret Bourke-White. Of all the photographers from that era, one represented the quintessential photographic style of the Depression while remaining an elusive figure in photographic history: Walker Evans (1903-1975). From the vantage point of 1995, Evans's documentation of the Depression era is axiomatic. His photographs are ubiquitous, both in print and in collections including the United States Library of Congress, which houses his FSA photographs. Surprisingly, until now a full-length biography of Evans has never been undertaken, although his life and photographs have occupied distinguished photographic and cultural historians including John Szarkowski, William Stott, Alan Trachtenberg, and most recently, Jean-Francois Chevrier.(2) The most elusive of the Depression-era photographers, Evans's personality and method of working set him apart from his contemporaries, his talent and taste emanating from a literary rather than a visual tradition. The year 1995 marked the publication of two new studies examining Evans's life and work. The first, Walker Evans: A Biography, by independent photo historian and curator Belinda Rathbone, is written as a general interest biography. The book, the first full-length biography on Evans, exhumes the private aspects of the artist's life in an attempt to understand his work. Citing the difficulty that prior would-be biographers encountered in Evans's previously unsettled estate - recently settled and currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City - Rathbone's book makes use of a host of personal documents. As the daughter of Perry Rathbone, the former director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the author was fortunate to have known Evans. Building upon her early impressions of the artist - whom the author characterizes as eccentric and unconventional - she spent five years tracking down and gathering personal reminiscences from more than 100 of Evans's closest friends and associates. These testimonies form the basis of her understanding of Evans's character. The second book, a 400-page catalog, Walker Evans: The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection, written and compiled by Judith Keller, the museum's associate curator of photography, provides an exhaustive analysis of the museum's Evans collection. The collection is broad in scope, and Keller's approach considers the photographs within the socio-cultural and aesthetic discourses spanning Evans's 50-year career. Much of the work came from photography collector Arnold Crane who purchased over 1000 archival prints from Evans in the 1960s and 1970s (an event documented by Rathbone). Keller organized the collection chronologically into 10 chapters, tracing Evans's key photographic assignments, each section rich with cultural significance and aesthetic analysis. Keller's research reveals continuity in the work: throughout his career, Evans pursued particular subject matter, "signage, and other found objects, portraits and architecture,"(3) (although this was not what he photographed exclusively). …


Abstract This paper deals with tomographic techniques for two-dimensional spatially resolved concentration measurements indoors. This represents a significant advance over the traditional point measuring method for mapping tracer gas and pollutants. Methods for recording of data are stressed as well as different types of tomographic reconstruction algorithms such as the Smooth Basis Function Minimization (SBFM) and the modified Low Third Derivative (LTDm) methods. Among the reconstruction algorithms available today, SBFM and LTDm are among the most promising. These algorithms show potential for reconstruction of gas concentration in rooms, since they are regularized to converge towards smooth concentration distributions. Using the LTD method and ‗snapshot' configuration enables the examination and real-time monitoring of transient flows.


This study was conducted to investigate perceptions of violence in sport in general and perceptions of violence in intramural sports for university participants in intramural sports. Social learning theory and social exchange theory were incorporated to account for factors contributing to the presence of violence in sports. A four page group administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 200 university intramural sports participants. Based upon an analysis of the data support was found for social learning theory and social exchange theory. Strong support was expressed for the perception that "weak" officials who do not take complete control of player violation contribute to violence in sports for both intramural sports and sports in general. There as also strong support for the perception that violence in sport is likely to result in personal injury. ********** Since sport is, in part, a mirror of society, and since violence is increasing in society (Smith, 1986), there should be more violence in sport. Research has suggested that the causes of sport violence perceived by students are provocation, encouragement by coaches (Reilly, 1995; O"Brien and Wolff, 1996), peer pressure, wanting to win, because it is an implicit part of the game (Scher, 1993; Weinstein, et al., 1995; Pilz, 1996), revenge and retaliation, and as the result of role models (Pooley and Golding, 1987). Stress on winning at any cost has brought about increased acceptance of violence as a means to achieve that end. Violence has a high probability of taking place when its use constitutes the difference between winning and losing, as well as when there is weak officiating, sanctions are not severe, coaches are not willing or able to control their players, or even encourage them to break laws (Clark, 1981). In addition, among males, some are influenced by the macho image in society (Messner, 1992; Messner and Sabo, 1992; Coakley, 1998). An elbow thrown requires an equally physical reaction; many fail to accept that not to retaliate is the most courageous response. Competitors also increasingly provide what fans like--a situation that is exacerbated by media influences. To summarize, player violence takes place within as well as outside the rules. Pressure to win appears to be the major factor for sports violence (Pooley, 1987). Theory Social Learning Theory According to social learning theory (Bandura and Waiters, 1963; Bandura, 1973), the foundation of socialization is grounded in the dual processes of reinforcement and modeling. This theoretical perspective accounts for the social learning of behaviors in three ways. First, social learning results from direct instruction featuring rewards for approved behavior and punishment for disapproved behavior. Second, social learning takes place by repetitive construction of relations between certain circumstances and the behavior that is expected in those circumstances. Third, social learning involves the use of role modeling. Reinforcement may be either positive, through explicit or implicit approval and/or material reward, or negative, by means of disapproval, criticism or punishment. In sport, reinforcements for violent acts come from several sources. One source is the immediate reference group of the athlete, such as coaches, teammates, and family. Another source is the structure of sport and the implementation of rules by governing bodies and officials. Still another source is the attitude of fans, media, and society. Coaches, based on their position of control over athletes, provide a strong influence on their team members with respect to the types of violent behavior considered acceptable in sport. One study found that 52% of hockey players between 18-21 perceive their coaches as high approvers of violent behavior (Smith, 1979). Another study by Smith (1977) found that the more coaches support violence, the more their players will engage in violent behavior. …


This work considers the adjustment of proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers. Because of their very simple structures, this kind of controllers are very appreciated, and used abundantly by the industrial community. The restricted number of the controller parameters often implies moderate performances, compared to those that can be obtained by high order control structures. In compensation, it is highly desired to use simple and fast procedures for the tuning of PID controllers. In practice, the methods using minimal a priori information about the plant are largely preferred. This thesis falls in this context. The adjustment is considered in the frequency domain, because as well as stability and robustness, the time domain performances of the closed-loop system can be represented. The traditional robustness indicators, which consist of the phase and gain margins, the crossover frequency, as well as more advanced parameters, which are the infinity-norm of the sensitivity and complementary sensitivity functions, can be taken into account by the presented approaches. In the first chapters, the synthesis is realized in a model-free framework. First of all, the simplicity of the modified Ziegler-Nichols method is exploited. By measuring only one point of the system frequency response, the approach mentioned above proposes to adjust the PID controller parameters in order to obtain a desired value for the phase margin. In this work, it is also desired to calibrate the slope of the loop frequency response at the crossover frequency in order to satisfy constraints on the infinity-norm of the sensitivity functions. This calibration can be done by using approximations arising from Bode's integrals, without requiring any other information about the plant. This approach often improves the results compared to the original modified Ziegler-Nichols method, without loosing its extreme ease of implementation. Next, an iterative model-free tuning approach, is studied. Robustness margins are measured directly on the plant using limit cycles generated by non-linear closed loop experiments. A frequency criterion is then defined as the weighted sum of the squared errors between the desired and the measured values of the considered margins. The criterion minimization is carried out iteratively using a gradient algorithm, without requiring any other information about the plant than that measured previously. Finally, a model-based approach is presented. The existing methods are usually based on simple first or second order plant model. Many uncertainties rise often from such approaches, due in particular to unmodeled dynamics. In this work, the model uncertainties are directly taken into account in order to guarantee robust performance and stability for the closed-loop system. Finally, a direct application of this methodology is formulated for the decentralized control of multivariable systems. In each chapter a real-time application is presented to illustrate the methods and to show their effectiveness and simplicity.


AbstractThe multivocality of hatred is revealed through the analysis of a journal entry portraying a complicated emotional relationship between a young woman, a 6-year-old girl, and the girl's mother. Two competing readings of hatred are presented, revealing the different narrative positions from which the subject speaks. One is a psychoanalytic discourse, tracing the intrapsy-chic, object-related hurts that were reactivated from the past and projected in present experiences. The other is a constructionist reading, which focuses on conflicts over values and ideas, suggesting a communicative theory of ha-tred. It is concluded that these different voices are not hierarchical, but rather alternately dominate the text, depending on the position of the speaker and the context. The meaning of hatred is thus revealed as neither unified nor univocal. Rather, the narrative perspective mediates between childhood hurts and normative and ethical reason. It constructs two stories, both of which illustrate similar (but not identical) plots of suffering, mis-recognition, and dependency. (Social Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Construc-tionism, Emotions)


One long-term goal of machine learning research is to produce methods that are applicable to reasoning and natural language, in particular building an intelligent dialogue agent. To measure progress towards that goal, we argue for the usefulness of a set of proxy tasks that evaluate reading comprehension via question answering. Our tasks measure understanding in several ways: whether a system is able to answer questions via chaining facts, simple induction, deduction and many more. The tasks are designed to be prerequisites for any system that aims to be capable of conversing with a human. We believe many existing learning systems can currently not solve them, and hence our aim is to classify these tasks into skill sets, so that researchers can identify (and then rectify) the failings of their systems. We also extend and improve the recently introduced Memory Networks model, and show it is able to solve some, but not all, of the tasks.


This exploratory paper examines the synergy between small businesses and the municipality in rural areas in northern Sweden, by exploring whether the degree of social capital and trust influences local small business development. Previous research shows that municipal policy tools, initiatives, and state-society synergy are crucial for local small business development in rural areas. This study challenge popular assumptions about how state-society synergy is imperative for local small business development by saying that a lack of vertical trust has in fact encouraged the entrepreneurial force and increased small business development in the rural areas studied. A qualitative case-study method was used including interviews, observations and studying of documents. Results show, by using the indicator 'extent of trust in the municipality' as measurement, that when there is strong horizontal social capital, it may in fact inhibit the possibility of creating strong vertical social capital, and the extent of trust towards the municipality is insignificant in promoting small business development in a rural area if the horizontal social capital is strong.


We present a kit comprising cardboard mechanical components and a custom printed circuit board, designed to support novices in building computational percussive instruments with everyday materials. We set three design criteria: accessibility, adaptability, and expressivity. We conducted two workshops with experts and novices to assess the usability of our kit and observe the variety of constructions that users make. The kit enabled both experts and novices to build working instruments and to explore creative experimentation with different materials and objects.


The present study is based on a controlled experiment in Switzerland with 240 subjects randomly assigned either to community service or to electronic monitoring. Measures of outcome include reconvictions, self-reported delinquency and several measures of social integration such as marriage, income and debts. The findings, based on subjects who successfully completed their sanction, suggest, with marginal significance (p < 0.10), that those assigned to electronic monitoring reoffended less than those assigned to community service, that they were more often married and lived under more favourable financial circumstances. Electronic monitoring may be an alternative to noncustodial sanctions. With increasing demands for non-custodial sanctions, it is crucial having more alternatives available.


With a view to defining what a minority is, the author lays down an inventory of variables likely to aid in answering the above question. Hence we find the minority's « will to survive » and the « number of its members ». In his research, the author leads us to consider various legal, para-legal and doctrinal opinions from which we may extract several constants that permeate the whole. Thus it is that down through the decisions of the Permanent Court of International Justice, the European Court for Human Rights, Canadian courts, etc., there are various elements defining what a minority is.


This study explores how the 'care' of able-bodied employees and managers (observers) affects their relationships with colleagues with cerebral palsy. Disability researchers have established that 'help' and 'care' may cause feelings of dependency with the recipient. However, few workplace studies have investigated the potential negative consequences of 'caring for' colleagues with disabilities. Through open-ended interviews conducted in 2013 in 13 Danish work organizations with 13 employees with cerebral palsy and 62 observers, the study examines how the relational aspect of 'care' may result in relationships between colleagues of 'parent–child' or 'helper–helpless'. The study thus clarifies the inherent contradictions embedded in the dynamics of organizational behaviour in relation to employees with disabilities, namely that workplaces may hire a person with physical limitations (perhaps to deflect accusations of social discrimination) and still end up stigmatizing these workers because of the stereotypical assumptions related to employees with disabilities.


Following a conceptual analysis of the term "quasi-market", this article will look at four national efforts to reform health-care management in what can be regarded, in respect of the degree of solidarity and universality applied, as three different health-care models. The changes in Chile are a continuation of the country's previous reform, which went further than any other in the region in undermining the solidarity and universality of the health-care model. The conclusion is that it would be beneficial to consolidate purely managerial aspects so that progress can be made with the use of administered prices, relevant information on the quality and cost of care can be produced, and efficiency and effectiveness criteria can be applied to clinical services. In Argentina and Colombia, while there are large differences between the two, the changes that have been made are part of a reform process aimed at encouraging competition while upholding the principles of solidarity and universality. Because change has mainly centred on the financing model, management has had a subordinate place since the outset. In the case of Colombia, the article highlights the excessive complexities of hospital financing, which have combined with regulatory shortcomings to inhibit management change. In the case of Argentina, where hospitals are excessively large, it describes the wide range of hospital management reforms that have resulted from past decentralization, the degree to which management is independent of fiscal discipline and the different ideas that exist of the part played by hospitals in referral systems. In the case of Costa Rica, where health care is primarily public and based on principles of solidarity and universality, the article looks at the creation of internal health markets that resulted from the introduction of a new performance-related organizational and financing model in the Costa Rican Social Security Fund; it notes that the management contracts used have interesting features as regards organization and information and the shaping of a health-care system, but that they are excessively complex and involve high transaction costs, and it analyses the difficulties involved in introducing real provider decentralization and creating performance incentives.


The economic evaluation of health care interventions including new health technologies such as branded pharmaceuticals requires an assessment of whether the improvement in health outcomes they offer exceeds the improvement in health that would have been possible if the additional resources required had, instead, been made available for other health care activities. Therefore, some assessment of these health opportunity costs is required if the best use is to be made of the resources available for health care. This report provides a brief review of the literature on the assessment of health opportunity costs, outlines how existing estimates of the effect of changes in health expenditure on mortality, as well as survival and morbidity, can be used to provide some initial assessment of the possible health opportunity costs associated with additional health care costs for the different states of India. The resulting estimated range for India is 14,116 to 22,275 2015 INR (223 to 351 2015 USD). Estimated ranges for the states range from 4,747 to 7,338 2015 INR (75 to 116 2015 USD) for Bihar to 27,370 to 42,701 2015 INR (432 to 673 2015 USD) for Himachal Pradesh and higher for Delhi. This wide range of possible estimates based on existing work are discussed and some suggestions are made of how further research could provide estimates that more closely reflect evidence of the health effects of health care expenditure in the Indian states.


When own mother's milk is not available, donor human milk (DHM) is the first choice in preterm infant feeding. Although worldwide strong efforts have been made to implement human milk (HM) donation, there is currently little available research on donors characteristics and their influence on volume and composition of DHM. The present study aimed to evaluate the relationship between social-demographic variables of donating mothers (age, residence, job, number of children), as well as gestational age and birth weight of their babies, and volume and composition of donated HM. The analysis of data revealed a statistically significant impact of maternal age and profession, as well as babies' birth weight and donation duration, on the volume of milk donation, but no effect of donor's place of residence. Gestational age also had an effect on the volume of milk donation, but the effect was not statistically significant (p-value on the verge of significance). Regarding milk composition, gestational age < 29 weeks, low birth weight and overall donation period were statistically correlated to higher protein content. Statistical analysis of other DHM components did not result significant except for carbohydrates, being their content inversely associated with birth weight, with p-value at the margin of significance.


Effective exploration of spatially referenced educational achievement data can help educational researchers and policy analysis accelerate interpretation of datasets to gain valuable insights. This paper illustrates the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze educational achievement gaps in Arkansas. The Geographic Academic Policy Series (GAPS), developed in the National Office for Research on Measurement and Evaluation Systems, provides a visual "snapshot" of achievement relative to important policy issues. The GAPS series displays maps in conjunction with state-wide summaries of educational statistics, but does not require complicated understanding of statistics or methodology by the user. Currently, the GAPS series examines the relationships between school district academic performance and other district level variables including percent of students participating in Free and Reduced Lunch Programs (a proxy measure for poverty), school district size, and per pupil spending. In addition, district performance on the ACT exam, which is completed by students intending to attend college, is presented and examined in relation to district size. The GAPS series also includes state maps identifying the academic performance status of all districts and schools in Arkansas relative to NCLB. Policy makers have been particularly interested in the GAPS series, noting that it provides them with an effective method for examining academic achievement statewide. Intordution Since the implementation of the "No Child Left Behind" Act in 2001, educational assessment has become increasingly important to educators, administrators, and policy makers. Analysis of educational achievement gaps is, however, a complex and rapidly developing field. In the last few years, through the National Office for Research on Measurement and Evaluation Systems (NORMES), we have been asked to provide information on. numerous education related policy issues. Our immediate reaction was to organize and develop formal academic studies. However, we have also learned that in most cases what was requested was not a comprehensive research study, but an overview of data addressing the question being asked. For education policy analysis, while school and district academic performance data are useful for obtaining specific achievement results, it does not facilitate broader examination of performance trends within a state, region or district. In this time of school accountability, it is vital that the policy analysts have access to data that can inform their decision making. Educators and policy makers require information that will enable them to determine which programs and policies art effective, and which might need to be revised. "A picture is worth a thousand words." Graphical representation has always been a vital tool for education policy analysts, because it shows patterns in the data rather than detail, accelerating the interpretation of datasets to gain valuable insights (Tukey, J. W. 1977; Wegman 2000). Many people involved in education policy are often not comfortable with 'numbers' or 'statistics' but color-coded graphical representations of the information. As Cobb (2003) noted "Considering that it has been estimated that 80% of all local government decisions are made with geography in mind (Garson &Biggs, 1992), it seems reasonable for education researchers and policy analysts to study the world in a geographic context." Given the importance and the need for analyzing and understanding of geographic influences in support of decision making, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and associated tools provide a strong foundation for dealing with these problems. A GIS is a computer-based tool for mapping and analyzing data and events. GIS technology integrates database operations with the visualization and geographic analysis benefits offered by maps. Digital maps created using GIS can directly access the power of human vision and reveal patterns that are often more difficult to discern in numerical summaries of data. …


In order to provide further information about canine perinatology, and because of the scarce knowledge about fetal fluids composition in dogs, the present study was aimed to assess the cortisol concentrations in fetal fluids collected from small-sized purebred newborn puppies born by elective cesarean section, at term of pregnancy (Meloni et al, 2014). Furthermore we assessed possible correlations of amniotic and allantoic cortisol concentrations and newborn outcome at 24 hours of age and with the newborn gender. Fetal fluids cortisol concentrations were also evaluated for correlation with maternal parity, litter-size, neonatal gender, birth weight and Apgar score (Veronesi et al, 2009). The study, performed on 50 born alive, normal weighed puppies, without gross physical malformation, showed that cortisol concentration was higher in allantoic than in amniotic fluid (p<0.01), even if a strong positive correlation between the two fluids cortisol concentration was found (p<0.0001; R=0.83). Interestingly, higher amniotic (p<0.05) cortisol concentrations were associated to puppies not surviving at 24 hours after birth. Therefore it could be suggested that this parameter may be useful for the recognition, at birth, of puppies needing special surveillance in the first day of age. In relation to the other evaluated parameters, no correlations with amniotic or allantoic cortisol concentrations were found. In conclusion, the present results showed that in small-sized purebred puppies, born at term by elective caesarean section, the evaluation of amniotic cortisol concentration seems useful for the detection of puppies that need special surveillance during the first 24 hours of age, and should be coupled to the newborn evaluation by Apgar score.


Three adult rhesus monkeys were subjected to 2 and 24 hours of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) contact lens wear. The induced corneal changes were examined with the electron microscope. Mild epithelial oedema as well as early degenerative cell changes was present already after 2 hours' wear. Rigid lens wear for 24 hours produced more severe oedema and cell alterations together with premature cell loss and ultimately, in areas of lens bearing, corneal denuding. Only the monkeys wearing contact lenses for 24 hours had significant stromal swelling, which was primarily evident in the posterior region, while the anterior limiting lamina remained unaffected. The stromal swelling was patchy and mainly around keratocytes and between lamellae, while fluid within the lamellae was evident only occasionally in posterior stroma. Changes among keratocytes were evident, especially posteriorly, where reaction was frequently severe. Endothelial reaction was restricted to a limited fluid uptake in the 24-hour-wear experiment. In addition there was in these monkeys an apparent loosening of the endothelial adhesion to the posterior limiting lamina. It is concluded that the oedematous epithelium undergoes cell shrinkage and flattening, which is compensated for by an uptake of fluid. The uptake of fluid maintains the overall normal thickness of the epithelium. The conclusion is supported by other studies, where the normal thickness of oedematous epithelium has been shown by pachometry. The results in the present study further suggest that stromal oedema in the contact lens wearer is a result of a relative loss of endothelial function, leading to a swelling that moves in a posterior to anterior direction.


The extraction of retinal vessels plays an important role in the diagnosis and study of retinal diseases, such as Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), Diabetic Retinopathy, Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP). Vessel diameters, tortuosity, branch lengths, angles, and bifurcations are essential to diagnosing these diseases. However, this is a challenging task due to high noise levels, the low contrast of thin vessels to the background, non-uniform illumination, and the central light reflex. Our goal here is to develop a framework to accurately segment the retinal vessels as a preprocessing step for the feature extraction of the vessels towards the future disease diagnosis. In this paper, we present a principal curve based retinal vessel segmentation approach to achieve this goal. We first use the isotropic Gaussian kernel Frangi filter to enhance the retinal vessels and measure the diameters of them. A multiscale principal curve projection and tracing algorithm is then proposed to identify the centerlines of the vessels in the output image of the Franfi filter using the underlying kernel smoothing interpolation of the intensities. The estimated vessel radius from the Frangi filter are used as the bandwidth of the kernel interpolation in the principal curve projection and tracing step. The vessel features toward diagnosing and analyzing the diseases can be extracted from our segmentation results. The presented approach is implemented on a publicly available DRIVE database [16].


Stated choice experiments about ecosystem changes involve complex information. This study examines whether the format in which ecosystem information is presented to respondents affects stated choice outcomes. Our analysis develops a utility-maximizing model to describe respondent behavior. The model shows how alternative questionnaire formats alter respondents' use of filtering heuristics and result in differences in preference estimates. Empirical results from a large-scale stated choice experiment confirm that different format presentations of the same information lead to different preference parameter estimates and error variances. A tabular format results in choice parameter estimates with statistically smaller variances than parameters estimated from data obtained with a text-based format. A text-based format also appears to induce greater use of decision heuristics than does a tabular format.


A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF COMMON CROSSLINKINGING AGENTS FOR ELECTROSPUN COLLAGEN SACFFOLDS by Pallavi Masih Cartilage injury is one of the leading causes of knee pain in the world. Over two million Americans suffer from cartilage injury every year, resulting in swelling, pain or joint impairment, causing it difficult to maintain an active life style. Synthetic grafts are used extensively to restore tissue functions. The major drawback limiting successful incorporation of synthetic grafts in body is their lower ability to integrate to natural tissue, poor biocompatibility which often results in triggering immunogenic responses, causing graft rejection. Collagen is thus studied and used excessively as a successful implantable material. The reason being that it is natural in origin, biocompatible, bioresorbable, easily available and very cost effective. The current study involves electrospinning of type I collagen fibers extracted from bovine tendons and to modify their properties by various crosslinking methods using glutaraldehyde, genipin, or N-(3Dimethyl aminopropy1)-N'-ethyl carbodiimide with and without Nhydroxysulfosuccinimide. The fibers were characterized using both chemical and physical tests to compare the effectiveness of different crosslinker and crosslinking concentrations. The tests involved mechanical testing using instron, determination of thermal stability using DSC, surface and morphological analysis using SEM, measure of free amino acid to determine crosslinking density. The genipin crosslinked samples were comparable in morphology and more thermally stable than EDC crosslinked samples. A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF COMMON CROSSLINKINGING AGENTS FOR ELECTROSPUN COLLAGEN SACFFOLDS


We measure the microvortical flows around gold nanorods propelled by ultrasound in water using polystyrene nanoparticles as optical tracers. We infer the rotational frequencies of such nanomotors assuming a hydrodynamic model of this interaction. In this way, we find that nanomotors rotate around their longitudinal axes at frequencies of up to ≈ 2.5 kHz, or ≈ 150 000 rpm, in the planar pressure node of a half-wavelength layered acoustic resonator driven at ≈ 3 MHz with an acoustic energy density of <10 J·m(-3). The corresponding tangential speeds of up to ≈ 2.5 mm·s(-1) at a nanomotor radius of ≈ 160 nm are 2 orders of magnitude faster than the translational speeds of up to ≈ 20 μm·s(-1). We also find that rotation and translation are independent modes of motion within experimental uncertainty. Our study is an important step toward understanding the behavior and fulfilling the potential of this dynamic nanotechnology for hydrodynamically interacting with biological media, as well as other applications involving nanoscale transport, mixing, drilling, assembly, and rheology. Our results also establish the fastest reported rotation of a nanomotor in aqueous solution.


Energy saving can be achieved in mobility enabled wireless sensor networks that visit sensor nodes and collect data from them through short range communication. The problem that has been faced in WSNs is the increased latency in data collection due to the speed at which the data have been collected. So in order to collect the data efficiently a rendezvous point (RP) is used. Here data are collected by the base station while visiting the rendezvous points. The rendezvous points collect the data which are being buffered from various source nodes are being aggregated at a particular point known as RP. This work proposes an efficient rendezvous design algorithm with provable performance bounds with mobility and fixed tracking.


Recent psychological research suggests that the individual human mind may be effectively modeled as involving a group of interacting social actors: both various subselves representing coherent aspects of personality; and virtual actors embodying "internalizations of others." Recent neuroscience research suggests the further hypothesis that these internal actors may in many cases be neurologically associated with collections of mirror neurons. Taking up this theme, we study the mathematical and conceptual structure of sets of inter-observing actors, noting that this structure is mathematically isomorphic to the structure of physical entities called "mirrorhouses." Mirrorhouses are naturally modeled in terms of abstract algebras such as quaternions and octonions (which also play a central role in physics), which leads to the conclusion that the presence within a single human mind of multiple inter-observing actors naturally gives rise to a mirrorhouse-type cognitive structure and hence to a quaternionic and octonionic algebraic structure as a significant aspect of human intelligence. Similar conclusions would apply to nonhuman intelligences such as AI's, we suggest, so long as these intelligences included empathic social modeling (and/or other cognitive dynamics leading to the creation of simultaneously active subselves or other internal autonomous actors) as a significant component.


English Bible translation has always been ideological, exposing the religious traditions of the translators. But A. S. Worrell's New Testament , published in 1904, is a rarity. Worrell was a Landmark Southern Baptist who converted to Pentecostalism late in life, and his Bible version reflects this unique combination of Landmark and Pentecostal sympathies. This article identifies the marks of both theologies and the ways in which Worrell integrated them into his singular Bible translation.


Andrographis paniculata Nees is an annual herbaceous plant which belongs to the family Acanthaceae. It is commonly known as Kalmegh, is found in the plains of India, China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Asia and is native to India and Sri Lanka. Kalmegh is known to be the "king of bitters" though it is of small size and it also has a similar appearance and taste as that of the Neem plant. It is one of the widely used effective medicinal plants
in the world. All parts of this plant are used to extract the potential
phytochemical, but the composition of phytoconstituents mostly differs
from one part to another in a season, place and time of harvest. It is a
traditional medicinal plant widely used in the treatment of anti-inflammatory,
anti-bacterial, anti-oxidant, hepatoprotective, hematocidal, anti-HIV, anti-cancer, anti-diabetic, arthritis, rheumatism, cough, cold, multiple sclerosis, depression, diarrhoea, dysentery, candida, fevers, herpes, leprosy, malaria,
jaundice, tuberculosis and several infectious diseases ranging from malaria
to dysentery. The plant is widely used in Ayurvedic and homeopathic system
of medicine. The medicinal value of this plant is due to the active ingredients
via andrographolide and neoandrographolide, which are derivative of diterpinoids. It prevents oxidative damage and inhibits binding of toxic metabolite
to DNA.


Based on survey responses from a national random sample of nearly 4,000 high school and college students, we uncover a dramatic gender gap in political ambition. This finding serves as striking evidence that the gap is present well before women and men enter the professions from which most candidates emerge. We then use political socialization—which we gauge through a myriad of socializing agents and early life experiences—as a lens through which to explain the individual-level differences we uncover. Our analysis reveals that parental encouragement, politicized educational and peer experiences, participation in competitive activities, and a sense of self-confidence propel young people's interest in running for office. But on each of these dimensions, women, particularly once they are in college, are at a disadvantage. By identifying when and why gender differences in interest in running for office materialize, we begin to uncover the origins of the gender gap in political ambition. Taken together, our results suggest that concerns about substantive and symbolic representation will likely persist.


The City in Central Europe: Culture and Society from 1800 to the Present, Malcolm Gee, Tim Kirk and Jill Steward (eds), Aldershot and Vermont, Ashgate Publishing, 1999, 288 pp., £49.50 This book is a collection of essays which show different aspects of historical, architectural, and social development of cities in central Europe, in particular German cities and ones within the Habsburg Empire. Most essays focus on the shaping of modern urban culture, and those factors which had the main impact on how these cities appear today. Of course, these factors are many faceted and therefore the contributions to this book illustrate this development from various sides. A major part of The City in Central Europe deals with cities and the arts. Urban elites have always been interested in initialising and sponsoring institutions of high culture for reasons of prestige and support. Robin Lenman exemplifies this by describing German cities in the nineteenth century. Many German cities at that time became art centres, the art market was thriving, and especially addressed the middle-class bourgeoisie. For them 'consumption' of art was an important aspect in their lifestyle. In another essay on arts and the city Malcolm Gee describes the world of arts in Berlin in the interwar period. He tells us how different groups sought to adapt modern art even in such difficult times as 1918. As a result of these efforts, the Prussian National Gallery, in particular its new section, attained an important role for the support of modern German art. Ludva Klusiakovia takes a complementary view by dealing with less-developed urban centres in central Europe, especially the region close to Eastern Europe. The questions that arise are, what makes a town a European centre, and what are the factors for establishing art centres? A city whose name is closely linked in our minds with arts and culture is Vienna, being in the very centre of Europe. In the nineteenth century it was one of the biggest cities in Europe and capital of one of the largest empires ever. But for some obscure reason it seemed not to become a metropolis, like Paris or London. The main reason was that, in the eighteenth century, Vienna was chiefly a city of government, the capitalists of the double monarchy with its nobles and government officials. Although the Habsburg dynasty and other nobles were highly interested in art, art was not available to the citizens and tourists. Jill Steward shows in her essay that Vienna was not prepared for tourists, and only slowly developed a tourist market with facilities for visitors. But not only tourism was needed to change the 'sleepy' city of Vienna-Steven Beller points out that the middle class was virtually non-existent. This changed rapidly when Jewish immigrants moved to Vienna at the end of the eighteenth century. They were involved with all sorts of financial business and supported all kinds of art, and soon became opinion leaders in Vienna's society. …


Alternative gene splicing provides a versatile mechanism by which cells generate proteins with different or even antagonistic properties. Previously we determined the hypoxia-inducible protein Bnip3 is integral component of the mitochondrial death pathway that can signal apoptosis and autophagy but the precise mechanisms that differentially regulates these divergent processes remains cryptic. Herein, we provide novel evidence that inclusion or skipping of exon3 of Bnip3 mRNA by alternative splicing generates proteins with distinct and opposing actions on autophagy and cell survival. Metabolic stress imposed by hypoxia or nutrient deprivation resulted in the synthesis of two Bnip3 mRNA isoforms in post-natal ventricular myocytes in vitro and in vivo. Notably, one Bnip3 mRNA comprised of exons 1 through exon 6 encoded a protein of 26 kDa, while a second mRNA generated by the fusion of exon 2 and exon 4 encoded a truncated Bnip3 protein of 8.2 kDa. Sequence analysis revealed the truncated isoform encodes a conserved C-terminus domain that exclusively targets Bnip3 to the endoplasmic reticulum and not mitochondrion. While the 26 kDa Bnip3 induced mitochondrial perturbations and autophagy, the spliced variant suppressed Bnip3- induced mitochondrial defects and autophagy. Interestingly switching from glucose to fatty metabolism preferentially accumulated the spliced isoform and the association of Bcl-2/Beclin-1 complexes suppressing autophagy. Furthermore, genetic knock-down or mutations within the C- terminus of the spliced variant defective for ER targeting sensitised cardiac myocytes to mitochondrial ROS production and death. To our knowledge our data provide the first direct evidence for a novel survival mechanism whereby the metabolic status of the cell programs autophagy or apoptosis by preferentially targeting Bnip3 isoforms to mitochondria or ER during metabolic stress. Hence, Bnip3Delta ex3 may confer a selective growth advantage that may explain more fundamentally, how certain cells, avert Bnip3 and death during cellular stress.


For more than twenty years, serious C programmers have relied on one book for practical, in-depth knowledge of the programming interfaces that drive the UNIX and Linux kernels: W. Richard Stevens Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment . Now, once again, Richs colleague Steve Rago has thoroughly updated this classic work. The new third edition supports todays leading platforms, reflects new technical advances and best practices, and aligns with Version 4 of the Single UNIX Specification. Steve carefully retains the spirit and approach that have made this book so valuable. Building on Richs pioneering work, he begins with files, directories, and processes, carefully laying the groundwork for more advanced techniques, such as signal handling and terminal I/O. He also thoroughly covers threads and multithreaded programming, and socket-based IPC. This edition covers more than seventy new interfaces, including POSIX asynchronous I/O, spin locks, barriers, and POSIX semaphores. Most obsolete interfaces have been removed, except for a few that are ubiquitous. Nearly all examples have been tested on four modern platforms: Solaris 10, Mac OS X version 10.6.8 (Darwin 10.8.0), FreeBSD 8.0, and Ubuntu version 12.04 (based on Linux 3.2). As in previous editions, youll learn through examples, including more than ten thousand lines of downloadable, ISO C source code. More than four hundred system calls and functions are demonstrated with concise, complete programs that clearly illustrate their usage, arguments, and return values. To tie together what youve learned, the book presents several chapter-length case studies, each reflecting contemporary environments. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment has helped generations of programmers write code with exceptional power, performance, and reliability. Now updated for todays systems, this third edition will be even more valuable.


Nina S. Johnson, College '09, Philosophy Citizenship and Nationality in a Globalizing World Liberalism, as a philosophical doctrine, is based on the idea that individuals matter. Individuals set fundamental ends that they believe to be valuable and then revise and pursue those ends in the real world. Where a person is born can have a profound effect on the ends that a person sets and the means with which they examine and realize them. Given that people do not choose the nation in which they are born, nationality seems arbitrary from the moral point of view. This paper examines nationality and what it means to be a member of a national community, in an effort to show that the experience of being raised in such a community 'marks' individuals in a way that is normatively significant. Ultimately, I argue that the fact that individuals are bounded to particular nations changes the way in which we should look at them from the perspective of justice. Comments 2008-2009 Penn Humanities Forum on Change Undergraduate Mellon Research Fellows http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/08-09/fellows_uhf.shtml This presentation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2009/9 Citizenship and Nationality in a Globalizing World


Section 1: Scientific Inquiry Chapter 1: Introduction to Scientific Thinking 1.1 Science as a Method of Knowing 1.2 The Scientific Method 1.3 Other Methods of Knowing 1.4 The Goals of Science 1.5 Approaches in Acquiring Knowledge 1.6 Distinguishing Science From Pseudoscience Chapter 2: Generating Testable Ideas 2.1 Generating Interesting and Novel Ideas 2.2 Converting Ideas to Hypotheses and Theories 2.3 Developing Your Idea: Deduction and Induction 2.4 Performing a Literature Review 2.5 Ethics in Focus: Giving Proper Credit 2.6 The "3 Cs" of an Effective Literature Review 2.7 Testing Your Idea: Confirmation and Disconfirmation 2.8 Ethics in Focus: Publication Bias Chapter 3: Research Ethics 3.1 Ethics in Behavioral Research 3.2 The Need for Ethics Committees in Research: A Historical Synopsis 3.3 Ethics in Focus: Examples From Psychology 3.4 Human Participant Research: IRBs and the APA Code of Conduct 3.5 Ethics in Focus: Anonymity and Confidentiality 3.6 Animal Subject Research: IACUCs and the APA Code of Conduct 3.7 Additional Ethical Considerations: Scientific Integrity Section II: Defining and Measuring Variables, Selecting Samples, and Choosing an Appropriate Research Design Chapter 4: Identifying Scientific Variables 4.1 Criteria for Defining and Measuring Variables 4.2 Constructs and Operational Definitions 4.3 Types of Variables 4.4 Scales of Measurement 4.5 Reliability of a Measurement 4.6 Validity of a Measurement 4.7. Selecting a Measurement Procedure 4.8 Ethics in Focus: Replication as a Gauge for Fraud? 4.9 SPSS in Focus: Entering and Coding Data Chapter 5: Sampling From Populations 5.1 Why Do Researchers Select Samples? 5.2 Subjects, Participants, and Sampling Methods 5.3 Methods of Sampling: Nonprobability Sampling 5.4 Methods of Sampling: Probability Sampling 5.5 Sampling Error and Standard Error of the Mean 5.6 SPSS in Focus: Estimating the Standard Error of the Mean 5.7 Potential Biases in Sampling 5.8 Ethics in Focus: Participant Pools 5.9 SPSS in Focus: Identifying New Populations Using the One-Sample t Test Chapter 6: Choosing a Research Design 6.1 Designing a Study to Answer a Question 6.2 Categories of Research Design 6.3 Internal and External Validity 6.4 Demonstrating Cause in an Experiment 6.5 Ethics in Focus: Beneficence and Random Assignment 6.6 Threats to the Internal Validity of a Research Study 6.7 Threats to the External Validity of a Research Study 6.8 External Validity, Experimentation, and Realism 6.9 A Final Thought on Validity and Choosing a Research Design Section III: Nonexperimental Research Designs Chapter 7: Naturalistic, Qualitative, and Existing Data Research Designs Naturalistic Observation 7.1 An Overview of Naturalistic Observation 7.2 The Research Setting: Natural and Contrived Settings 7.3 Techniques for Conducting Naturalistic Observation 7.4 Ethics in Focus: Influencing Participant Behavior Qualitative Designs 7.5 An Overview of Qualitative Designs 7.6 Qualitative Research Designs 7.7 Ethics in Focus: Anonymity in Qualitative Research Existing Data Designs 7.8 An Overview of Existing Data Designs 7.9 Existing Data Designs 7.10 Ethics in Focus: Existing Data and Experimenter Bias Chapter 8: Survey and Correlational Research Designs Survey Designs 8.1 An Overview of Survey Designs 8.2 Types of Survey Items 8.3 Rules for Writing Survey Items 8.4 Administering Surveys 8.5 Surveys, Sampling, and Nonresponse Bias 8.6 Ethics in Focus: Handling and Administering Surveys Correlational Designs 8.7 The Structure of Correlational Designs 8.8 Describing the Relationship Between Variables 8.9 Limitations in Interpretation 8.10 Correlation, Regression, and Prediction 8.11 SPSS in Focus: Correlation and Linear Regression Section IV: Quasi- Experimental and Experimental Research Designs Chapter 9: Quasi-Experimental and Single-Case Experimental Designs Quasi-Experimental Designs 9.1 An Overview of Quasi-Experimental Designs 9.2 Quasi-Experimental Design: One-Group Designs 9.3 Quasi-Experimental Design: Nonequivalent Control Group Designs 9.4 Quasi-Experimental Design: Time Series Designs 9.5 Quasi-Experimental Design: Developmental Designs 9.6 Ethics in Focus: Development and Aging Single-Case Experimental Designs 9.7 An Overview of Single-Case Designs 9.8 Single-Case Baseline-Phase Designs 9.9 Validity, Stability, Magnitude, and Generality 9.10 Ethics in Focus: The Ethics of Innovation Chapter 10: Between-Subjects Experimental Designs 10.1 Conducting Experiments: Between-Subjects Design 10.2 Experimental Versus Control Group 10.3 Manipulation and the Independent Variable 10.4 Variability and the Independent Variable 10.5 Ethics in Focus: The Accountability of Manipulation 10.6 Comparing Two Independent Samples 10.7 SPSS in Focus: Two-Independent-Sample t Test 10.8 Comparing Two or More Independent Samples 10.9 SPSS in Focus: One-Way Between-Subjects ANOVA 10.10 Measuring the Dependent Variable 10.11 Advantages and Disadvantages of the Between-Subjects Design Chapter 11: Within-Subjects Experimental Designs 11.1 Conducting Experiments: Within-Subjects Design 11.2 Controlling Time-Related Factors 11.3 Ethics in Focus: Minimizing Participant Fatigue 11.4 Individual Differences and Variability 11.5 Comparing Two Related Samples 11.6 SPSS in Focus: Related-Samples t Test 11.7 Comparing Two or More Related Samples 11.8 SPSS in Focus: One-Way Within-Subjects ANOVA 11.9 An Alternative to Pre-Post Designs: Solomon Four-Group Design 11.10 Comparing Between-Subjects and Within-Subjects Designs Chapter 12: Factorial Experimental Designs 12.1 Testing Multiple Factors in the Same Experiment 12.2 Selecting Samples for a Factorial Design in Experimentation 12.3 Types of Factorial Designs 12.4 Ethics in Focus: Participant Fatigue and Factorial Designs 12.5 Main Effects and Interactions 12.6 Identifying Main Effects and Interactions in a Graph 12.7 Including Quasi-Independent Factors in an Experiment 12.8 Reasons for Including Two or More Factors in an Experiment 12.9 Higher-Order Factorial Designs 12.10 SPSS in Focus: General Instructions for Conducting a Factorial ANOVA Section V: Analyzing, Intrepreting, and Communicating Research Data Chapter 13: Analysis and Interpretation: Exposition of Data 13.1 Descriptive Statistics: Why Summarize Data? 13.2 Frequency Distributions: Tables and Graphs 13.3 Measures of Central Tendency 13.4 Measures of Variability 13.5 SPSS in Focus: Central Tendency and Variability 13.6 Graphing Means and Correlations 13.7 Using Correlation to Describe Reliability 13.8 SPSS in Focus: Cronbach's Alpha and Cohen's Kappa 13.9 Ethics in Focus: Deception Due to the Distortion of Data Chapter 14: Analysis and Interpretation: Making Decisions About Data 14.1 Inferential Statistics: What Are We Making Inferences About? 14.2 Types of Error and Power 14.3 Parametric Tests: Applying the Decision Tree 14.4. Nonparametric Tests: Applying the Decision Tree 14.5 SPSS in Focus: The Chi-Square Tests 14.6 Effect Size: How Big Is an Effect in the Population? 14.7 Estimation: What Are the Possible Values of a Parameter? 14.8 Confidence Intervals, Significance, and Effect Size 14.9 Issues for Interpretation: Precision and Certainty 14.10 Ethics in Focus: Full Disclosure of Data Chapter 15: Communicating Research: Preparing Manuscripts, Posters, and Talks 15.1 Elements of Communication 15.2 Writing a Manuscript: Writing Style and Language 15.3 Elements of an APA-Style Manuscript 15.4 Literature Reviews 15.5 Reporting Observations in Qualitative Research 15.6 Ethics in Focus: Credit and Authorship 15.7 Presenting a Poster 15.8 Giving a Professional Talk


Emotion analytics is the study of human behavior by analyzing the responses when humans experience different emotions. In this thesis, we research into emotion analytics solutions using computer vision to detect emotions from facial expressions automatically using live video.  Considering anxiety is an emotion that can lead to more serious conditions like anxiety disorders and depression, we propose 2 hypotheses to detect anxiety from facial expressions. One hypothesis is that the complex emotion "anxiety" is a subset of the basic emotion "fear". The other hypothesis is that anxiety can be distinguished from fear by differences in head and eye motion.  We test the first hypothesis by implementing a basic emotions detector based on facial action coding system (FACS) to detect fear from videos of anxious faces. When we discover that this is not as accurate as we would like, an alternative solution based on Gabor filters is implemented. A comparison is done between the solutions and the Gabor-based solution is found to be inferior.  The second hypothesis is tested by using scatter graphs and statistical analysis of the head and eye motions of videos for fear and anxiety expressions. It is found that head pitch has significant differences between fear and anxiety.  As a conclusion to the thesis, we implement a systems software using the basic emotions detector based on FACS and evaluate the software by comparing commercials using emotions detected from facial expressions of viewers.


Gliomas account for the majority of human brain tumors and the incidence of gliomas is expected to rise in upcoming years and therefore extensive efforts have been devoted to the discovery of potent antiglioma agents. Due to the importance of benzoxazoles for anticancer drug discovery, herein new benzoxazole-based hydrazone derivatives (3a-g) were designed and synthesized. The cytotoxic effects of the compounds on C6 rat glioma and NIH/3T3 mouse embryonic fibroblast cell lines were investigated using MTT assay. The apoptotic effects of the most selective anticancer agent were analyzed based on Annexin V-PI binding capacities in flow cytometry. The compounds were also investigated for their acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitory effects using a modification of Ellman's spectrophotometric method. In order to evaluate the compliance of the compounds to Lipinski's rule of five, their physicochemical parameters were determined using Molinspiration software. N'-([1,1'-Biphenyl]-4-ylmethylene)-2-[(5fluorobenzoxazol-2-yl)thio]acetohydrazide (3g) was found to be more effective on C6 cell line (IC50= 4.30±0.28 μg/mL) than mitoxantrone (IC50= 4.56±1.24 μg/mL). The high SI value of compound 3g indicated that its antiglioma activity was selective. This compound caused late apoptosis in a dose dependent manner. Compound 3g was also found to be the most effective AChE inhibitor in this series. According to in silico studies, compound 3g only violated one parameter of Lipinski's rule of five. On the basis of Lipinski's rule, the compound was expected to have reasonable oral bioavailability. According to in vitro and in silico studies, compound 3g stands out as a promising antiglioma agent for further studies.


It was studied the presence of HTLV-I antibodies in 3,774 sera, 1,409 of them were from blood donors, 1,444 were from patients who had suffered from some sexually transmitted disease recently, and 921 from transfused patients. The DAVIH HTLV I (ELISA) and DAVIH BLOT HTLV I (Western Blot) systems produced at the DAVIH Laboratories (Havana, Cuba) were used for screening and confirmation, respectively. Of the 68 reactive sera utilized in the ELISA test, it was confirmed the presence of HTLV I/II antibodies in 2, whereas 12 were considered as undetermined by the Western Blot.


The use of unmanned aerial systems (UASs) has rapidly grown in many civil applications since the early 2010s. Nowadays, a large variety of reliable low-cost UAS sensors and controllers are available. However, contrary to ultralight aircrafts (ULAs), UASs have a too small operational range to efficiently cover large areas. Flight regulations prevailing in many countries further reduced this operational range; in particular, the "within visual line of sight" rule. This study presents a new system for image acquisition and high-quality photogrammetry of large scale areas (>10 km²). It was developed by upscaling the UAS paradigm, i.e., low-cost sensors and controllers, little (or no) on-board active stabilization, and adequate structure from motion photogrammetry, to an ULA platform. Because the system is low-cost (good quality-price ratio of UAS technologies), multi-sensors (large variety of available UAS sensors) and versatile (high ULA operational flexibility and more lenient regulation than for other platforms), the possible applications are numerous in miscellaneous research domains. The system was described in detail and illustrated from the flight and images acquisition to the photogrammetric routine. The system was successfully used to acquire high resolution and high quality RGB and multispectral images, and produced precisely georeferenced digital elevation model (DEM) and orthophotomosaics for a forested area of 1200 ha. The system can potentially carry any type of sensors. The system compatibility with any sensor can be tested, in terms of image quality and flight plan, with the proposed method. This study also highlighted a major technical limitation of the low-cost thermal infrared cameras: the too high integration time with respect to the flight speed of most UASs and ULAs. By providing the complete information required for reproducing the system, the authors seek to encourage its implementation in different geographical locations and scientific contexts, as well as, its combination with other sensors, in particular, laser imaging detection and ranging (LiDAR) and hyperspectral.


Multiemployer pension plans, like other employer plans, have been challenged by two financial crises since 2000. The majority of multiemployer plans are returning to financial health, but a substantial minority face serious funding problems that are exacerbated by unique structural challenges in the multiemployer sector. These challenges include a high ratio of inactive to total participants, high rates of negative cash flow, and inadequate withdrawal penalties so that exiting companies do not cover the costs they leave behind. The Multiemployer Pension Reform Act (MPRA) of 2014 has not proved to be a cure-all for the multiemployer crisis. As of November 2017, the U.S. Treasury Department has approved four of the 15 benefit-cut requests submitted by these plans. Of the remainder, one application remains under review, five applications have been denied, and five have been withdrawn. So, while the ultimate effectiveness of MPRA still remains to be seen, it is clear that other solutions must also be explored to alleviate the multiemployer burden. At this stage, the majority of proposed solutions to the multiemployer challenge fall into two categories: alleviating the burden of orphaned members – workers left behind when employers exit – and providing subsidized loans – either through direct government lending or government guarantees on private sector loans. Whatever the ultimate solution, a case can be made for a package that involves contributions from employers (tailored not to sink already fragile plans), from plan participants, and from taxpayers. Any solution to the multiemployer problem must be comprehensive, helping not only those in serious trouble today but also staving off future problems. Early action might stabilize other plans heading for trouble. One clear warning sign for plans is a negative cash flow rate in excess of negative 10 percent.


Egypt's heavy reliance on energyand capital-intensive industries currently hinders its drive towards achieving sustainable development goals. This paper studies environmental total factor productivity (ETFP) for ten energy-intensive industries using the Malmquist index and data envelopment analysis (DEA) for the period 2002-2014. Through incorporating CO2 emissions by energy intensive industries, DEA helps identify both environmentally-efficient and inefficient industries. Findings indicate that: i) ETFP has remained almost unchanged for the 10 industries, with 'technical progress' improvement almost fully outweighed by an efficiency deterioration, ii) excluding the environmental component indeed yields overestimated total factor productivity (TFP). In its estimation of ETFP, the paper adds to exiting empirical literature since no similar estimation has been done for Egypt. Results may be relevant to other countries with similar industrial structures. Policy implications include the reliance on renewable sources of energy, bearing directly on the achievement of the seventh, ninth and twelfth SDG goals.


Despite the experience of several decades the numerical simulation of computational fluid dynamics is still an enormously challenging and active research field. Most simulation tasks of scientific and industrial relevance require the modeling of multiple physical effects, complex numerical algorithms, and have to be executed on supercomputers due to their high computational demands. Facing these complexities, the reimplementation of the entire functionality for each simulation task, forced by inflexible, non-maintainable, and non-extendable implementations is not feasible and bound to fail. The requirements to solve the involved research objectives can only be met in an interdisciplinary effort and by a clean and structured software development process leading to usable, maintainable, and efficient software designs on all levels of the resulting software framework. The major scientific contribution of this thesis is the thorough design and implementation of the software framework WaLBerla that is suitable for the simulation of multi-physics simulation tasks centered around the lattice Boltzmann method. The design goal of WaLBerla is to be usable, maintainable, and extendable as well as to enable efficient and scalable implementations on massively parallel supercomputers. In addition, a performance analysis of lattice Boltzmann simulations has been conducted on heterogeneous supercomputers using a MPI, a hybrid, and a heterogeneous parallelization approach and over 1000 GPUs. With the help of a performance model for the communication overhead the parallel performance has been accurately estimated, understood, and optimized. It is shown that WaLBerla introduces no significant performance overhead and that efficient hardware-aware implementations are possible in WaLBerla. Furthermore, the applicability and flexibility of WaLBerla is demonstrated in simulations of particle flows and nano fluids on CPU-GPU clusters. By the successful application of WaLBerla in various simulation tasks, and the analysis of the performance and the software quality with help of quality criteria, it is shown that the design goals of WaLBerla have been fulfilled.


Familism has been consistently considered the most protective value for recently immigrated Latino families in the U.S. (Rodriguez, Mira, Paez, & Myers, 2007). However, the literature remains mixed regarding the degree to which familism is endorsed by acculturating Latino adolescents and little is known about what predicts familism endorsement among these populations. More specifically, past work has not established how context, owing to varying life experiences, influences the endorsement of familism. Therefore, the present study employed a bioecological model of human development to examine how experiences within the individual, school, and family contexts affect the endorsement of familism values in a sample of 179 Latino adolescents. The results show that the variables assessed within the individual and family bioecological contexts held the overall greatest predictive value on the endorsement of familism, but the school context did not prove to be a significant predictor. Across the entire model, ethnic identity (i.e., private regard and centrality) and parent-child warmth and support displayed consistently significant positive associations with the endorsement of familism. Implications for practice as well as school policies are discussed in light of these results.


The empirical literature provides a wide range of estimates for trade elasticities at the aggregate level. Furthermore, recent contributions in international macroeconomics suggest that low (implied) values of the trade elasticity of substitution may play an important role in understanding the disconnect between international prices and real variables. However, a standard model of the international business cycle displays multiple locally isolated equilibria if the trade elasticity of substitution is sufficiently low. The main contribution of this paper is to compute and characterize some dynamic properties of these equilibria. While multiple steady states clearly signal equilibrium multiplicity in the dynamic setup, this is not a necessary condition. Solutions based on log-linearization around a deterministic steady state are of limited to no help in computing the true dynamics. However, the log-linear solution can hint at the presence of multiple dynamic equilibria.


The growth of the Internet during the past years led to an increased demand for capacities in long distance communication. This was partly met by techniques
for all optical multiplexing. One of the ways to multiplex optical signals is using a circular optical microresonator. A circular cavity can act as an optical filter by placing it between two straight waveguides. Light is launched into one of these. If the input wavelength matches the cavity a resonance will occur and the power will be transferred to the other waveguide. Otherwise, no resonance occurs and the light will stay in the first waveguide. This thesis treats ring and disc microresonators within a 2D model. The resonant electomagnetic fields supported by such a free circular cavity are determined in the form of whispering gallery modes. From the Maxwell equations an ansatz for the electric field is derived and from that the resonances are calculated. For this a Matlab program was written which solves for the complex resonance frequency, but needs a good estimate as starting point. The simulation results agree well with the results from [9] and [16].


Plant roots secrete a complex polysaccharide mucilage that may provide a significant source of carbon for microbes that colonize the rhizosphere. High molecular weight mucilage was separated by high-pressure liquid chromatography gel filtration from low molecular weight components of pea root exudate. Purified pea root mucilage generally was similar in sugar and glycosidic linkage composition to mucilage from cowpea, wheat, rice, and maize, but appeared to contain an unusually high amount of material that was similar to arabinogalactan protein. Purified pea mucilage was used as the sole carbon source for growth of several pea rhizosphere bacteria, including Rhizobium leguminosarum 8401 and 4292, Burkholderia cepacia AMMD, and Pseudomonas fluorescens PRA25. These species grew on mucilage to cell densities of three- to 25-fold higher than controls with no added carbon source, with cell densities of 1 to 15% of those obtained on an equal weight of glucose. Micromolar concentrations of nod gene-inducing flavonoids specifically stimulated mucilage-dependent growth of R. leguminosarum 8401 to levels almost equaling the glucose controls. R. leguminosarum 8401 was able to hydrolyze p-nitrophenyl glycosides of various sugars and partially utilize a number of purified plant polysaccharides as sole carbon sources, indicating that R. leguminosarum 8401 can make an unexpected variety of carbohydrases, in accordance with its ability to extensively utilize pea root mucilage.


In order to examine 24-hour colony attendance patterns by mated Forster's Terns Sterna forsteri in South San Francisco Bay, California, during incubation and chick-rearing stages, we radio-marked 10 individuals consisting of five pairs and recorded colony attendance using an automated data-logging receiver system. We calculated and analyzed five variables: the total attendance time by pairs and individuals, the duration of individual attendance bouts, and the duration both members of a pair either overlapped in colony attendance or were both absent from the colony. The percentage of time spent on the colony by at least one individual of a pair was highest during incubation and declined during chick rearing. Overall, male terns spent a greater proportion of time diurnally attending the colony than females. Females spent a greater proportion of time on colony at night, and without these nocturnal records, we would have reported overall female colony attendance rates as being much lower. Despite sex-specific differences in attendance rates, the length of attendance bouts did not differ between the sexes. Simultaneous colony attendance by both members of a pair was high at night, but during the day, pairs infrequently overlapped in their colony attendance and both members were frequently absent. Our datalogging system functioned well, and our data illustrates the importance of collecting 24-hour records when considering attendance rates.


The first 16‐channel transceive surface‐coil array that conforms to the human head and operates at 298 MHz (7 T) is described. Individual coil elements were decoupled using circumferential shields around each element that extended orthogonally from the former. This decoupling method allowed elements to be constructed with arbitrary shape, size, and location to create a three‐dimensional array. Radiofrequency shimming achieved a transmit‐field uniformity of 20% over the whole brain and 14% over a single axial slice. During radiofrequency transmission, coil elements couple tightly to the head and reduce the amount of power necessary to achieve a mean 90° flip angle (660‐μs and 480‐μs pulse lengths were required for a 1‐kW hard pulse when shimming over the whole brain and a single axial slice, respectively). During reception, the close proximity of coil elements to the head increases the signal‐to‐noise ratio in the periphery of the brain, most notably at the superior aspect of the head. The sensitivity profile of each element is localized beneath the respective shield. When combined with the achieved isolation between elements, this results in the capacity for low geometry factors during both transmit and receive: 1.04/1.06 (mean) and 1.25/1.54 (maximum) for 3‐by‐3 acceleration in the axial/sagittal plane. High cortical signal‐to‐noise ratio and parallel imaging performance make the conformal coil ideal for the study of high temporal and/or spatial cortical architecture and function. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


This paper highlights the unique challenges faced by researchers conducting a multi-sited study of the clothing industry in Malaysia. The study involves workers and manufacturers in multiple sites in industrial suburbs across Malaysia. The workers in the study, mostly female migrant workers, are considered to be a vulnerable group because they are subjected to harsh discipline under company contract conditions and state immigration laws, as well as difficulties faced within an industrial urban environment. Feminist principles were adopted in the multi-sited ethnography with the aim of facilitating connections among different subjects and a more equal and caring relationship between ethnographer and the subjects being researched. Stacey (1988) asserts that generic ethnographic research should follow feminist methodological principles such as egalitarianism, reciprocity, and reflectivity, although simultaneously she argues that the closer the relationship between ethnographer and subjects, the greater the likelihood of exploitation. In the case of the author's research, applying feminist principles was for the most part successful although it was difficult to develop close personal relationships with the migrant workers studied because of the multiplicity of sites, the difficulties in locating a migrant worker community, coupled with the short time workers spent away from the factory. In terms of the manufacturers interviewed in this study, the author developed relationships of trust with some, but maintaining trust and transparency with others within a corporatist network of manufacturers became more challenging as the fieldwork progressed. Moreover, the paper raises some of the tensions specific to feminist principles and some relevant to "multi-sited" ethnographic research.


In the last decades, municipal mergers have been one major element of local government reforms in Switzerland and beyond. In this article, we describe and analyze the political effects of this development. We use a quasi-experimental setting to test the impact of municipal mergers on electoral participation. We find that in merged municipalities, the decrease in turnout is significantly stronger than in non-merged municipalities. Further, the effect is more pronounced in relatively small localities. There is a temporal dimension to this effect—that is, turnout drops mainly in the first election after the first merger, but not so much after the second or third merger. Hence, the study provides a skeptical yet differentiated perspective on the democratic consequences of municipal mergers and points to further research avenues to develop a more comprehensive understanding of local government consolidation.


Plants need to determine which end is "up" long before they emerge as seedlings from the ground. For Arabidopsis, the first indications of an apical-basal axis are seen in the initial embryonic cell division that separates a smaller apical cell from a larger basal cell. These cells generally go on to form shoots or roots. Long et al. have now cloned the Topless gene, mutations in which can alter the fate of the apical pole. The Topless protein bears features that resemble transcriptional corepressors. Mutations in a histone deacetylase affect Topless function, and thus chromatin remodeling likely plays a key role. These findings suggest that auxin-mediated axis formation precedes transcription-mediated axis stabilization. J. A. Long, C. Ohno, Z. R. Smith, E. M. Meyerowitz, TOPLESS regulates apical embryonic fate in Arabidopsis. Science 312, 1520-1523 (2006). [Abstract] [Full Text]


Urban logistics has been a subject of interest to researchers and practitioners for more than 20 years in France and Europe, and more than 40 in the United States. Nevertheless, the subject remains difficult to address by a lack of unification in the definitions and proposed methods but also by what makes its great richness: the diversity of actors and the pluridisciplinarity of the methods and techniques available.
This book, which synthesizes more than 10 years of personal research on the subject, but also experience within different teams and projects, intends to bring a unified vision (and more and more followed at the international level) on logistics planning Urban development. It begins with an overview of research in urban logistics and then describes and defines the main components: flows, actors, infrastructures, management components, technologies, regulations and financing actions. A unified vision of these elements as well as the definition of sustainable urban logistics is proposed.
Then, the book presents the basics of planning and managing sustainable urban logistics. First, the basics of the before-after analysis are introduced, not only for the experiments but also for the simulation of scenarios. To carry out this type of analysis, two main groups of methods are needed: methods for estimating flows and methods for calculating evaluation indicators. The book presents the main global standards and dominant models for the estimation of the urban freight transport demand, i.e. of freight transport needs in urban areas. Then it presents the methods for estimating and simulating transport and distribution schemes (i.e. transport supply) as well as a proposal for integrated supply-demand modeling. All these methods are presented for immediate application to practitioners, accompanied by summary tables and parameters necessary for their implementation.
As far as evaluation is concerned, the book presents a framework for the choice of sustainable indicators and scorecards. Second, the main methods for economic, environmental, social and accessibility assessment are presented. They are accompanied by tables and figures necessary for their implementation. Finally, the main applications of the proposed methods are introduced. The book is meant to be a practical guide to applying the main methods from scientific research to a practical context, and presents examples of quantified and explained application. It is thus the first book that summarizes and presents the main unified methods to help the different decision-makers to implement them in their actions of planning and management of the urban logistics and the transport of goods in town.


High efficiency of DC/DC converters is important in many portable applications to extend the available energy cycle of energy sources. Other applications benefit from energy savings. This work offers modeling and simulation techniques to analyze and design for an overall efficiency optimization of standard synchronous and asynchronous buck/boost converter topologies including variable switching frequency loads. Loss equations are developed, modeled, and simulated along with common power electronic components utilizing Matlab/Simulink SimPower toolbox. Optimization curves are developed for various cases and analyzed to aid in design.


: The ideal boundary of a negatively curved manifold naturally carries two types of measures. On the one hand, we have conditionals for equilibrium (Gibbs) states associated to Hoelder potentials; these include the Patterson-Sullivan measure and the Liouville measure. On the other hand, we have stationary measures coming from random walks on the fundamental group. We compare and contrast these two classes.First, we show that both of these of these measures can be associated to geodesic flow invariant measures on the unit tangent bundle, with respect to which closed geodesics satisfy different equidistribution properties. Second, we show that the absolute continuity between a harmonic measure and a Gibbs measure is equivalent to a relation between entropy, (generalized) drift and critical exponent, generalizing previous formulas of Guivarc'h, Ledrappier, and Blachere-Haissinsky-Mathieu. This shows that if the manifold (or more generally, a CAT(-1) quotient) is geometrically finite but not convex cocompact, stationary measures are always singular with respect to Gibbs measures. A major technical tool is a generalization of a deviation inequality due to Ancona saying the so called Green distance associated to the random walk is nearly additive along geodesics in the universal cover. Part of this is based on joint work with Gerasimov-Potyagailo-Yang and part on joint work with Tiozzo.


Image segmentation, i.e., assigning each pixel a discrete label, is an essential task in computer vision with lots of applications. Major techniques for segmentation include for example Markov Random Field (MRF), Kernel Clustering (KC), and nowadays popular Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN). In this work, we focus on optimization for image segmentation. Techniques like MRF, KC, and CNN optimize MRF energies, KC criteria, or CNN losses respectively, and their corresponding optimization is very different. We are interested in the synergy and the complementary benefits of MRF, KC, and CNN for interactive segmentation and semantic segmentation. Our first contribution is pseudo-bound optimization for binary MRF energies that are high-order or non-submodular. Secondly, we propose Kernel Cut, a novel formulation for segmentation, which combines MRF regularization with Kernel Clustering. We show why to combine KC with MRF and how to optimize the joint objective. In the third part, we discuss how deep CNN segmentation can benefit from non-deep (i.e., shallow) methods like MRF and KC. In particular, we propose regularized losses for weakly-supervised CNN segmentation, in which we can integrate MRF energy or KC criteria as part of the losses. Minimization of regularized losses is a principled approach to semi-supervised learning, in general. Our regularized loss method is very simple and allows different kinds of regularization losses for CNN segmentation. We also study the optimization of regularized losses beyond gradient descent. Our regularized losses approach achieves state-of-the-art accuracy in semantic segmentation with near full-supervision quality.


This study was carried out to evaluate the in vitro antibacterial activity of nanofluid based on Trachyspremum copticum essential oils and Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles against different bacterial species. The essential oil was obtained by hydro-distillation and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The agar disk diffusion and micro-dilution methods were used to study the antibacterial activity. GC-MS analysis of the essential oil revealed 16 compounds, representing 99.61% of the total oil in which Thymol (29.17%) and ρ-cymene (27.17%) were the main components. The diameters of inhibition zones varied in the ranges of 28-33, 18-37, 17-32 and 16-29 mm, respectively for positive control and treatments containing 1000, 500 and 300 ppm ZnO NPs. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of ZnO against B. cereus, S. aureus, S. entrica and E. coli was determined respectively 250, 250, 500 and 500 ppm. Minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) of ZnO against the mentioned bacteria was respectively 250, 500, 1000 and 500 ppm. B. cereus and E. coli were respectively the most and least sensitive species against the nanofluid. ZnO NPs improved the antibacterial activity of T. copticum essential oil and show the potent application of the particles in different industries like food packaging, food and pharmaceutical systems.


In this study, the method of entropy generation minimization (i.e., design aimed at facilitating both heat, mass and fluid flows) is used to improve the evaporator geometry (aspect ratio and fin density) considering the irreversibilities produced by the heat and mass transfer, and viscous flow processes. A fully algebraic semi-empirical model was put forward to simulate the thermal-hydraulic behavior of tube-fin evaporator coils running under frosting conditions. The model predictions were validated against experimental data from Silva (2012), showing a good agreement between calculated and measured counterparts, with errors within a ±5% band for the cooling capacity and the air flow rate. The optimization exercise pointed out that high aspect ratio heat exchanger designs lead to minimum entropy generation in cases of fixed heat duty and air flow rate constrained by the characteristic curve of the fan.


We investigate the existence of spatial interaction in spending decisions among Italian municipalities. We estimate a spatial autoregressive dynamic panel data model, using information on 5,564 Italian municipalities over the period 2001-2011, exploiting their border contiguity as a measure of spatial neighborhood. We find a positive effect of neighboring expenditures on total, capital and current expenditures of a given municipality. We do not find any evidence of yardstick competition when we take account of political effects, while we find a negative relationship between spatial interaction and the size of the municipality for current expenditure. Thus, we conclude that spillover effects drive the strategic interaction.


The passage of the North America Free Trade Agreement has focused attention on methods for the United States to increase its exports to its southern neighbors without also losing U.S. jobs to new competitors. The market for environmental goods and services in Latin America presents a prime opportunity for U.S. investment and trade. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) expects the South American market, estimated at more than $2 billion today, to expand by up to thirty percent per year over the next decade as nations privatize their energy sectors and impose strict environmental laws and enforcement mechanisms.(1) OPIC, a U.S. government agency, promotes foreign and domestic economic growth by providing insurance and financial services to U.S. firms that invest in developing nations and emerging market economies. OPIC will provide at least $1.7 billion this year in financing and political risk insurance to support U.S. investment in Latin America, up from $1.4 billion last year.(2) OPIC's involvement in the Latin American environmental goods and services market is part of a larger effort by the Clinton administration to promote U.S. exports. In response to President Clinton's April 21 Earth Day speech, the U.S. Department of Commerce formed the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Exports. The working group found Mexico to be the most promising foreign market for environmental goods and services.(3) Technologies that are in demand in Mexico include water pollution control, water treatment, air monitoring, and environmental engineering and consultation. Canada, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe are also prime markets for U.S. environmental exports. The United States has "an overwhelming advantage" over other nations in environmental technology since U.S. companies have much more experience, especially with the remediation of contaminated sites.(4) In 1990 the United States had a $4 billion trade surplus in the environmental sector.(5) The annual international market for environmental goods and services is currently $270 billion and is expected to reach $600 billion by 2000.(6) Over the past several years, OPIC has assisted about fifty projects involving the export of environmental technology, generating U.S. exports of $618 million and 2300 U.S. jobs.(7) In August 1993, OPIC President Ruth Harkin presented the agency's three-pronged program on the environment.(8) First, OPIC will aggresivesively identify new investment opportunities for U.S. environmental firms in developing nations, the former Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe. Second, OPIC is improving its screening and monitoring of the projects it finances to ensure that they do not adversely affect the environment. Third, OPIC is seeking to develop its Environmental Investment Fund, which will be used to invest in environmentally beneficial projects worldwide. OPIC's policies have begun to reflect the fact that Latin America accounts for forty percent of the agency's activities. Compared with much of the agency's portfolio, such as the former Soviet Union and the Gaza Strip, "this region begins to look stable," Harkin said.(9) Since OPIC expects less demand for insurance coverage but more for loan guarantees, the agency will shift emphasis from insurance toward loans. An increase in the amount of loan guarantees available per project(10) will enable OPIC to support large projects such as the Argentina-Chile gas pipeline. OPIC is paying particular attention to the Southern Cone countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, where the environmental market exceeds $1.7 billion. In November 1993, Harkin led an OPIC environmental investment mission to Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, and Santiago. The mission included eleven U.S. companies, offering environmental services in waste water management, water purification, river dredging, solid and hazardous waste, renewable and wind energy, oil spill cleanup, and soil decontamination. …


A 5 year-old boy with a cerebellar gangliocytoma with a peripheral right facial paresis and ataxia is presented. His MRI showed a heterogenous, diffuse lesion, isointense on T1 and hyperintense on T2-weigthed sequences, involving the right cerebellar hemisphere with direct extension into the right facial nerve. The present case is the first description of a gangliocytoma with direct facial nerve invasion, as demonstrated for the facial nerve paresis and supported by MRI and surgical inspection.


ABSTRACT Background and objectives: The main objective of this study was to evaluate the levels of ischemia-modified albumin (IMA) and malondialdehyde (MDA) in patients with subclinical (SHypo) and overt hypothyroidism (OHypo), and to assess the effects of levothyroxine (LT4) therapy on the oxidative stress (OS) parameters. We also investigated the relationships among serum thyroid hormones, lipid parameters, and IMA and MDA in these patients. Design and methods: Thirty untreated patients with OHypo, 25 untreated patients with Shypo, and 30 age- and sex-matched healthy controls were prospectively included in the study. Biochemical and hormonal parameters including IMA and MDA were evaluated in all patients just before and one month after the maintenance of euthyroidism. Results: Compared with the control subjects, the levels of MDA and triglycerides (TG) significantly increased in patients with SHypo (p < 0.001 and p < 0.05, respectively), whereas high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels significantly decreased (p = 0.01). Patients with OHypo showed significantly high MDA, total cholesterol (TC), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and TG levels (p = 0.001, p < 0.01, p = 0.01, and p < 0.01, respectively), and significantly low HDL-C levels compared with the controls (p < 0.05). MDA levels and lipid profile were not significantly different in the patients with OHypo when compared with the patients with SHypo. Serum IMA levels did not significantly change in patients with OHypo and SHypo compared with the controls. In the pre-treatment period, MDA levels were inversely correlated with HDL-C levels in patients with OHypo (r: −0.471, p = 0.009). Plasma MDA and LDL-C levels significantly decreased and HDL-C levels significantly increased in the groups of OHypo and SHypo after LT4 treatment. Serum IMA levels did not significantly change with the therapy in all patient groups. Conclusions: Increased MDA levels in both patient groups represent increased lipid peroxidation which might play an important role in the pathogenesis of the atherosclerosis seen in these patients. Increased OS in patients with SHypo and OHypo could be improved by LT4 treatment. Also, MDA can be used as a reliable marker of OS and oxidative damage, while IMA is considered to be inappropriate.


This paper analyzes the efficient taxation of oil and capital income in an oil-dependent infinite-lived economy facing perfect capital mobility. Two cases are examined: one with product market imperfections and free tax choice, one with perfect competition and tax restrictions. The optimal tax rates on oil and capital strictly depend on the international tax system implemented; however, they are also affected by the degree of market power and the extent to which monopoly profits are taxed, the type of tax restrictions and the use of oil (as an input or a consumer good). Under the residence-based system, capital income should always be exempted from taxation, while the optimal tax on productive oil may differ from zero. Under the source-based system, second-best taxes on capital and oil are non-zero.


Hydrocephalus is an increased cerebrospinal fluid volume inside the cerebral ventricles, causing secondary compression of brain parenchyma. The diagnosis is based on cranial imaging techniques (computed tomography, transfrontanellar ultrasonography) and electroencephalography. The main therapeutic objectives are: reducing cerebrospinal fluid production and decreasing the intracranial pressure, convulsions' improvement and the removal of the cause (infectious, immune-mediated etc.). The most efficient treatment for hydrocephalus is the surgical intervention (ventriculo-peritoneal shunt).