The bivariate probit model is frequently used for estimating the effect of an endogenous binary regressor on a binary outcome variable. This paper discusses simple modifications that maintain the probit assumption for the marginal distributions while introducing non-normal dependence among the two variables using copulas. Simulation results and evidence from two applications, one on the effect of insurance status on ambulatory expenditure and one on the effect of completing high school on subsequent unemployment, show that these modified bivariate probit models work well in practice, and that they provide a viable and simple alternative to the standard bivariate probit approach.


The data compression methods of J. Ziv and A. Lempel (1976) are modified and augmented in three ways in order to improve the compression ratio and hold the size of the encoding tables to a fixed size. The improvements are in the area of dispensing with any uncompressed output, ability to use fixed size encoding tables by using a replacement strategy, and more rapid adaptation by widening the class of strings which may be added to the dictionary. It is shown how these improvements also provide an adaptive probabilistic model for the input data. The issue of data structures for efficient implementation is also addressed.<<ETX>>


The two main causes of mortgage payment difficulties are rising house prices and a temporary loss of household income. Currently available bank products handle these problems only when the mortgage is already delinquent (usually for a long time). The so-called workout process that starts at this point usually results in either loan restructuring or termination. A number of ideas and initiatives are present in the literature which brings this expensive workout process earlier and in an automatic fashion, thereby making it more predictable and less expensive for both sides. By using an embedded optionality in the mortgage product it is possible to reduce scheduled payments or the balance itself with the decline of the value of the property offered as collateral. The paper aims to create a theoretical model and its simulations on mortgage products with an above mentioned embedded optionality and to propose a fair pricing method.


 Abstract —The paper declares effects of exercise intervention of the research project "Basic research of balance changes in seniors", granted by the Czech Science Foundation. The objective of the presented study is to define predictors, which influence bio-psycho-social consequences and effects of balance ability in senior 65 years old and above. We focused on the Fall-Efficacy Scale changes evaluation in seniors. Comprehensive hypothesis of the project declares, that motion uncertainty (dyskinesia) can negatively affect the well-being of a senior in bio-psycho-social context. In total, random selection and testing of 100 seniors (30 males, 70 females) from Prague and Central Bohemian region was provided. The sample was divided by stratified random selection into experimental and control groups, who underwent input and output testing. For diagnostics the methods of Medical Anamnesis, Functional anthropological examinations, Tinetti Balance Assessment Tool, SF-36 Health Survey, Anamnestic comparative self-assessment scale were used. Intervention method called "Life in Balance" based on yoga techniques was applied in four-week cycle. Results of multivariate regression were verified by repeated measures ANOVA: subject factor, phase of intervention (between-subject factor), body fluid (within-subject factor) and phase of intervention × body fluid interaction). ANOVA was performed with a repetition involving the factors of subjects, experimental/control group, phase of intervention (independent variable), and x phase interaction followed by Bonferroni multiple comparison assays with a test strength of at least 0.8 on the probability level p < 0.05. In the paper results of the first-year investigation of the three years running project are analysed. Results of balance tests confirmed no significant difference between females and males in pre-test. Significant improvements in balance and walking ability were observed in experimental group in females comparing to males (F = 128.4, p < 0.001). In the females control group, there was no significant change in post- test, while in the female experimental group positive changes in posture and spine flexibility in post-tests were found. It seems that females even in senior age react better to incentives of intervention in balance and spine flexibility. On the base of results analyses, we can declare the significant improvement in social balance markers after intervention in the experimental group (F = 10.5, p < 0.001). In average, seniors are used to take four drugs daily. Number of drugs can contribute to allergy symptoms and balance problems. It can be concluded that static balance and walking ability of seniors according Tinetti Balance scale correlate significantly with psychic and social monitored


Petroleum refineries are important facilities for refining petroleum products that provide the primary source of energy for domestic and industrial consumption globally. Petroleum refinery operations provide significant contribution to global economic growth. Petroleum refineries are complex, multifaceted systems that perform multiple phase operations characterized by a high level of risk. Evidence based major accidents that have occurred within the last three decades in the petroleum refineries, around the world, indicates losses estimated in billions of US dollars. Many of these accidents are catastrophes, which have led to the disruption of petroleum refinery operations. These accidents have resulted in production loss, asset damage, environmental damage, fatalities and injuries. However, the foremost issue analysed in literatures in relation to major accidents in petroleum refineries, is the lack of robust risk assessment and resourceful risk management approaches to identify and assess major accident risks, in order to prevent or mitigate them from escalating to an accident. Thus, it is exceptionally critical to readdress the issue of petroleum refinery risk management with the development of a more dependable, adaptable and holistic risk modelling framework for major accident risks investigation. In this thesis, a proactive framework for advanced risk management to analyse and mitigate the disruption risks of petroleum refinery operations is presented. In this research, various risk elements and their attributes that can interact to cause the disruption of PRPU operations were identified and analysed, in order to determine their criticality levels. This thesis shows that the convergent effect of the interactions between the risk elements and their attributes can lead to the disruption of petroleum refinery operations. In the scheme of the study, Fuzzy Linguistic Preference Relation (FLPR), Fuzzy Evidential Reasoning (FER) and Fuzzy Bayesian Network (FBN) methodologies were proposed and implemented to evaluate the criticality of the risk elements and their attributes and to analyse the risk level of PRPU operations. Also, AHP-fuzzy VIKOR methodology was utilised for decision modelling to determine the optimal strategy for the risk management of the most significant risk elements' attributes that can interact to cause the disruption of PRPU operations. The methodologies proposed and implemented in this research can be utilised in the petroleum refining industry, to analyse complex risk scenarios where there is incomplete information concerning risk events or where the probability of risk events is uncertain. The result of the analysis conducted in this research to determine the risk level of petroleum refinery operations can be utilised by risk assessors and decision makers as a threshold value for decision making in order to mitigate the disruption risk of PRPU operations. The decision strategies formulated in this thesis based on robust literature review and expert contributions, contributes to knowledge in terms of the risk management of petroleum refinery operations. The result of the evaluation and ranking of the risk elements and their attributes can provide salient risk information to duty holders and decision makers to improve their perceptions, in order to prioritise resources for risk management of the most critical attributes of the risk elements. Overall, the methodologies applied in this thesis, can be tailored to be utilised as a quantitative risk assessment tool, by risk managers and decision analysts in the petroleum refining industry for enhancement risk assessment processes where available information can sometimes be vague or incomplete for risk analysis.


This paper identifies the relative importance of demands for government revenue and industry protection in shaping tariff legislation during the antebellum period. To do this, a two-limit probit model is estimated for five different products to determine the effectiveness of pressure groups in influencing government decisions to change tariff rates. I find that protection demands were the key factor influencing the structure of tariff legislationwith no influence from revenue demands. In addition, southern industries were more effective than northern industries at gaining protection but faced a higher probability of reductions in protection when their prices were rising.


The growth mode and electronic structure of C-60 molecules adsorbed on InP(100) were studied by x-ray photoemission spectroscopy and ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy as a function of coverage and annealing temperature. The C 1s, P 2p, In 4d core levels and the valence band photoemission spectra point to the presence of a localized covalent bond between the C-60 molecules and the substrate. No filling of the lowest unoccupied molecular orbit derived bands was observed. The absence of any change in the surface components of the In 4d core level upon C-60 adsorption indicates that the chemisorption bond exists between the fullerene molecules and P atoms rather than between C-60 molecules and In atoms, This assertion is supported by the simultaneous desorption of both C-60 and P upon annealing to 640 K and above.


The growing hazard of induced seismicity driven by the boom in unconventional resources exploitation is strongly linked to fault activation. We perform laboratory measurements on simulated fault gouges comprising powdered reservoir rocks from major oil and gas production sites in China, to probe the control of mineral composition on fault friction and stability responses during reservoir stimulation. Double direct shear experiments were conducted on gouges with phyllosilicate content ranging from 0 to 30 wt.% and grain sizes <150 μm, at constant normal stresses of 10–40 MPa and conditions of room temperature and water saturation. The velocity step and slide‐hold‐slide sequences were employed to evaluate frictional stability and static healing, respectively. Results indicate that the mineralogy of the gouges exhibit a strong control on the frictional strength, stability, and healing. Phyllosilicate‐rich samples show lower frictional strength μ and higher values of (a − b), promoting stable sliding. For the gouges studied, the frictional strength decreases monotonically with increasing phyllosilicate content, and a transition from velocity weakening to velocity strengthening behavior is evident at 15 wt.% phyllosilicates. Intermediate healing rates are common in gouges with higher content of phyllosilicates, with high healing rates predominantly in phyllosilicate‐poor gouges. As an indispensable component in reservoir rocks, the carbonates are shown to affect both the frictional stability and healing response. These findings can have important implications for understanding the effects of mineralogy on fault behavior and induced seismic potential in geoengineering activities, particularly in reservoirs in China.


This essay was written for a forthcoming book on international antitrust litigation in Europe. It provides a comparative perspective on the U.S. approach to the jurisdictional and choice-of-law issues raised in international antitrust litigation. The chapter examines personal jurisdiction over foreign defendants involved in anticompetitive conduct, as well as the question of applicable law in cross-border antitrust litigation -- including the possibility of applying foreign antitrust law. It also focuses on the intersection between antitrust claims and contract claims, and on the special conflict-of-laws issues that arise in the context of class actions.


Merging-compression is a solenoid-free plasma formation method used in spherical tokamaks (STs). Two plasma rings are formed and merged via magnetic reconnection into one plasma ring that then is radially compressed to form the ST configuration. Plasma currents of several hundred kA and plasma temperatures in the keV-range have been produced using this method, however until recently there was no full understanding of the merging-compression formation physics. In this paper we explain in detail, for the first time, all stages of the merging-compression plasma formation. This method will be used to create ST plasmas in the compact (R ~ 0.4–0.6 m) high field, high current (3 T/2 MA) ST40 tokamak. Moderate extrapolation from the available experimental data suggests the possibility of achieving plasma current ~2 MA, and 10 keV range temperatures at densities ~1–5  ×  1020 m−3, bringing ST40 plasmas into a burning plasma (alpha particle heating) relevant conditions directly from the plasma formation. Issues connected with this approach for ST40 and future ST reactors are discussed


Objective: The study aims to investigate the effects of diabetes mellitus (DM) on ovarian injury and reserve in a rat model. Study Design: In this prospective experimental study, 16 female Sprague-Dawley albino rats (12 weeks, 220-240 g) were randomly divided into 2 groups. Group 1 included 8 normal healthy rats as controls. No drug was administered to the controls. Group 2 included the other 8 rats in which diabetes was induced by intraperitoneal injections of streptozotocin (STZ). After overt DM occurred (blood glucose >250 mg/dl), all the animals were euthanized and blood samples were collected by cardiac puncture for biochemical analysis. Bilateral oophorectomy was performed for histopathological examination. Immunoexpressions of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB) and caspase-3 as well as anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) levels were assessed. Values were analyzed by t test. Results: Immunoexpressions of NF-kB and caspase-3 were significantly higher in non-treated diabetic rats than in the control group (p = 0.011 and p = 0.010, respectively). In healthy control group, AMH levels (3.22 ± 0.58 ng/ml) were significantly higher than in the non-treated diabetic group (1.41 ± 0.25 ng/dl; p = 0.024). Conclusion: Hyperglycemia causes severe ovarian injury via NF-kB pathway and caspase-3 apoptotic pathway, leading to the decrease in ovarian reserve in STZ-induced diabetic rats.


Luther Fox, a loner, haunted by his past, makes his living as an illegal fisherman -- a shamateur. Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, he grew melons and played guitar in the family band. Robbed of all that, he has turned his back on music. There's too much emotion in it, too much memory and pain. One morning Fox is observed poaching by Georgie Jutland. Chance, or a kind of willed recklessness, has brought Georgie into the life and home of Jim Buckridge, the most prosperous fisherman in the area and a man who loathes poachers, Fox above all. But she's never fully settled into Jim's grand house on the water or into the inbred community with its history of violent secrets. After Georgie encounters Fox, her tentative hold on conventional life is severed. Neither of them would call it love, but they can't stay away from each other no matter how dangerous it is -- and out on White Point it is very dangerous. Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, "Dirt Music" is a love story about people stifled by grief and regret; a novel about the odds of breaking with the past and about the lure of music. Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity." Even in the wild, Luther cannot escape it. There is, he discovers, no silence in nature. Ambitious, perfectly calibrated, "Dirt Music" resonates with suspense and supercharged emotion -- and it confirms Tim Winton's status as the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation.


Retaining the late Jesse Dukeminier's signature blend of wit, erudition, insight, and playfulness, Wills, Trusts, and Estates, now in its Eighth Edition, continues to offer interesting cases, well written notes, and a logical organization. The Eight Edition's new Companion Website, available with adoptions, includes an electronic version of the Teacher's Manual, PowerPoint slides on selected topics, and author updates. A stellar example of a great casebook, Wills, Trusts, and Estates features: eminently clear presentation of topics comprehensive substantive coverage inspired case selection engaging notes, questions, and problems that connect and highlight legal themes and principles humorous and illustrative cartoons, art, photographs, and other images a detailed Teacher's Manual that answers every question and problem posed in the casebook and includes comments on material cited in the text, analyses, comments, syllabus notes, and teaching suggestions With many new and revised notes, questions, and problems, the carefully updated Eighth Edition explores: New developments in law reform by the ALI and NCCUSL, such as: the 2008 Amendments to the Uniform Probate Code, including validation of notarized wills, reformation of wills for mistake, and a reworking of the spousal share the Uniform Power of Attorney Act further progress in the Restatement (Third) of Trusts and Restatement (Third) of Property Ongoing developments in the law, in such areas as: inheritance rights for same-sex partners the posthumous right of publicity the power of an agent to alter an incompetent principal's estate plan liberalized rules of trust modification and termination, and of trustee removal standing for donors in suits against the trustees of charitable trusts perpetual trusts and self-settled asset protection trusts Increasingly important topics such as: the movement to cure will execution defects and reform mistakes in wills fiduciary administration and trust investment law will contests, particularly the law of capacity and insane delusion Co-authors Robert Sitkoff and James Lindgren took great care to preserve the voice and spirit of Jesse Dukeminier, while fulfilling the trust and expectation among users for timely and relevant coverage, cases, and note material. *Teacher's Manuals are a professional courtesy offered to professors only. For more information or to request a copy, please contact Aspen Publishers at 800-950-5259 or email@example.com.


Reinforced concrete is one of the most durable, versatile, and widely used construction materials. It can be used to make small posts, vast bridges, and tall buildings as well as lining tunnels and constructing pipeline. Generally, this composite material is capable of withstanding a wide range of environments, from oil rigs in the North Sea to deserts. However, occasionally it does not give the low maintenance life expected of it. Sometimes this is due to more adverse condition than initially expected. Consequently, there are many structures in the built environment suffering from corrosion induced damage.
During the last few years, infrastructure deterioration caused by corrosion has escalated, warranting serious consideration. Among the different distressing consequences of reinforcing-bar corrosion, the most common is concrete cover cracking. When a reinforcing steel bar corrodes in concrete, a surface layer of steel is consumed and a layer of corrosion products rust forms on the perimeter of the bar. The rust that forms occupies a larger volume than the consumed steel layer, the increased volume creates internal high pressure against the surrounding concrete, and cracking and spalling result. Thus, steel corrosion may cause damage in steel, concrete, and the bond between them.
Investigations have been conducted during the last three decades regarding chloride penetration and prediction of corrosion initiation. However, few investigations have dealt with corrosion propagation and/or residual life predictions, which are also needed for durability forecasting. Therefore, the aim of this investigation is to discuss, based on experimental information from previous investigations, the possibility of linking the degree of degradation (from a load-capacity reduction point of view) to the surface distress (for example, crack width opening) of a corroding reinforced concrete element in a marine environment.
This dissertation presents a laboratory study, applied to three different type of concrete, in order to analyze and monitor the material behavior under accelerated ageing. The purpose of an accelerated test is to cause, degradation, corrosion or failure in a shorter time period than under normal conditions without change in failure mechanism. The studyoutline is based on different reference, but basically it was carried out performing accelerated corrosion test and using knowledge related to mechanical, chemical and electrochemical engineering. The analysis provided information concerning durability and service life of material.
This information were applied to investigate on the possibility of on-field analysis and the correlation among traditional techniques of monitoring, service life modeling and increasing of acoustic emission technology for health monitoring.


Tree growth rings are signs of the seasonality of tree growth and indicate how tree productivity relates to environmental factors. We studied the periodicity of tree growth ring formation in seasonally inundated peatlands of Central Kalimantan (southern Borneo), Indonesia. We collected samples from 47 individuals encompassing 27 tree species. About 40% of these species form distinct growth zones, 30% form indistinct ones, and the others were classified as in between. Radiocarbon age datings of single distinct growth zones (or "rings") of two species showing very distinct rings, Horsfieldia crassifolia and Diospyros evena, confirm annual growth periodicity for the former; the latter forms rings in intervals of more than one year. The differences can be explained with species-specific sensitivity to the variable intensity of dry periods. The anatomical feature behind annual rings in Horsfieldia is the formation of marginal parenchyma bands. Tree ring curves of other investigated species with the same anatomical feature from the site show a good congruence with the curves from H. crassifolia. They can therefore be used as indicator species for growth rate estimations in environments with weak seasonality. The investigated peatland species show low annual growth increments compared to other tropical forests.


We present new optical photometry of two low-mass X-ray binary stars, UW CrB (MS 1603+260) and V1408 Aql (4U 1957+115). UW CrB is an eclipsing binary and we refine its eclipse ephemeris and measure an upper limit to the rate of change of its orbital period, (unitless). The light curve of UW CrB shows optical counterparts of type I X-ray bursts. We tabulate the times, orbital phases, and fluences of 33 bursts and show that the optical flux in the bursts comes primarily from the accretion disk, not from the secondary star. The new observations are consistent with a model in which the accretion disk in UW CrB is asymmetric and precesses in the prograde direction with a period of ∼5.5 days. The light curve of V1408 Aql has a low-amplitude modulation at its 9.33 hr orbital period. The modulation remained a nearly pure sine curve in the new data as it was in 1984 and 2008, but its mean amplitude was lower, 18% against 23% in the earlier data. A model in which the orbital modulation is caused by the varying aspect of the heated face of the secondary star continues to give an excellent fit to the light curve. We derive a much improved orbital ephemeris for the system.


Due to the ban on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in New York State (NYS), it serves as an ideal location to study the natural processes that control the migration of dissolved methane and high salinity fluids found at depth. The hydrogeologic setting of NYS is analogous to that of Northern Pennsylvania where unconventional exploration has not been restricted. Halogens geochemically behave conservatively and can be found in unique proportions. Therefore, they serve as useful tracers for the natural movement of groundwater. The focus of our study is to: 1) establish a more cohesive baseline for groundwater quality data for NYS prior to the onset of unconventional natural gas development than currently available; 2) evaluate the spatial variability and hydrologic controls over dissolved methane, chloride, bromine, and iodine; and 3) further evaluate the extent to which bromine-iodine mass ratios (Br/I) may be useful as a geochemical tracer in groundwater in the Appalachian Basin. Sampling occurred throughout the late summer and fall of 2016 and 2017. Water was collected from domestic and public supply groundwater wells (n=108) located in five distinct NYS hydrologic regions defined by major drainage basins: western NYS, central NYS, Broome and Tioga Counties of southern NYS, the Mohawk River Basin, and the Upper Hudson River Basin. The majority of samples (54%) had methane concentrations between 1-10 mg/L, 40% of samples fell below the detection limit, and 6% of samples had methane greater than 10 mg/L, the actionable level implemented by the US Department of the Interior Office of Surface Mining. Mann-Whitney statistical tests on this dataset suggest that landscape position did not serve as a strong control for elevated methane as suggested in previous studies. In contrast, the strongest predictors for methane in potable groundwater appear to be: general bedrock type (i.e. sedimentary or crystalline), height of the well bore above the Marcellus Shale, sodium (Na)-rich water type, and degree of confinement. Halogen concentrations, particularly bromine and iodine, can characterize saline formation waters naturally mixing with potable waters. The quality of groundwater wells often consists of both shallow groundwater flow and some measure of Upper and Middle Devonian (Marcellus Formation) waters from the bedrock below. Our results show that iodine in conjunction with bromine can be utilized to identify the degree of formation water influence in potable groundwater. ASSESSING DISSOLVED METHANE AND HALOGEN PATTERNS IN GROUNDWATER OF NEW YORK STATE by Shannon Renee Garvin A.A.S., Onondaga Community College, 2012 B.S., State University of New York College at Cortland, 2015 Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Earth Sciences Syracuse University August 2018 Copyright © Shannon Renee Garvin 2018 All Rights Reserve


The presence of the foreign banking ownership in Indonesia has resulting in pro and contra. In one side it's worried that the ownership of foreign banking may create foreign domination, but in the other hand states that the ownership of foreign banking has brings the positive impact in the efficiency and stabilization of banking. Meanwhile, national bank which is manage by government are often to be said having bad performance. This research is purposed to see the differences of the finance & share performances between bank that was dominated by foreign capital and bank that was dominated by government. Seven banks are taken as sample in the study and categorized into categorizes mentioned above. They are also included emitten bank registered in BEI. The 2007 financial statements of the banks are used in this study to observe and compute the variables determining the performance of the banks. The variables are LDR, CAR, ROE, BOPO, PBR and PER. The calculation and analysis are entirely based on Kruskal Wallis test technique. The result of the study provided that there are no significant differences on those variables in both group of banking. It means that no differences of the finance and share performances between the two groups of bank. Kata kunci: LDR, CAR, ROE, BOPO, PBV, PER, Bank dominasi asing, Bank dominasi negara.


The diversity and complexity of bioinformatics resources presents significant challenges to their localisation, deployment and use, creating a need for reliable systems that address these issues. Meanwhile, users demand increasingly usable and integrated ways to access and analyse data, especially within convenient, integrated "workbench" environments. Resource descriptions are the core element of registry and workbench systems, which are used to both help the user find and comprehend available software tools, data resources, and Web Services, and to localise, execute and combine them. The descriptions are, however, hard and expensive to create and maintain, because they are volatile and require an exhaustive knowledge of the described resource, its applicability to biological research, and the data model and syntax used to describe it. We present here the Workbench Integration Enabler , a software component that will ease the integration of bioinformatics resources in a workbench environment, using their description provided by the existing ELIXIR Tools and Data Services Registry.


A novel design technique that is used to optimize contact pressure distribution was introduced and investigated. The primary objective of this design tool, called the Predicted Displacement Method, was to provide a calculated contact surface shape alteration of a contact body that induces a uniform contact pressure across its entire nominal contact surface when pressed against its destination contact boundary at a speci ed magnitude. This technique was developed so it could be applied to any contact surface to spread out a once poorly distributed and localized contact pressure distribution. The methodology was detailed in this work and a proof of concept was conducted to test the idea's feasibility. The proof of concept supported the methodology's ability to shape a cantilevered beam so that it pressed against a semi-in nite space uniformly. This methodology was then applied to two relevant contact assemblies and resulted in uniform contact across each contact interface. The results also illustrated the ability to control contact magnitude and demonstrated improved contact distribution at magnitudes beyond the design value. The methodology presented in this work provides engineers with a analytical and numerical tool to improve contact pressure distribution between any contact surfaces. Possible future use of this methodology includes incorporation into engineering software packages for contact surface design. Contact Pressure Distribution Optimization


We describe an audio-visual automatic continuous speech recognition system, which significantly improves speech recognition performance over a wide range of acoustic noise levels, as well as under clean audio conditions. The system utilizes facial animation parameters (FAPs) supported by the MPEG-4 standard for the visual representation of speech. We also describe a robust and automatic algorithm we have developed to extract FAPs from visual data, which does not require hand labeling or extensive training procedures. The principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on the FAPs in order to decrease the dimensionality of the visual feature vectors, and the derived projection weights were used as visual features in the audio-visual automatic speech recognition (ASR) experiments. Both single-stream and multistream hidden Markov models (HMMs) were used to model the ASR system, integrate audio and visual information, and perform a relatively large vocabulary (approximately 1000 words) speech recognition experiments. The experiments performed use clean audio data and audio data corrupted by stationary white Gaussian noise at various SNRs. The proposed system reduces the word error rate (WER) by 20% to 23% relatively to audio-only speech recognition WERs, at various SNRs (0–30 dB) with additive white Gaussian noise, and by 19% relatively to audio-only speech recognition WER under clean audio conditions.


Binaural hearing in humans ensures our effective communication as it improves the sound localization, the speech understanding in noise, the spatial awareness, the listening easiness, and the development of spoken language. The majority of the literature on patients with single-sided deafness and cochlear implantation involves adult patients; the cochlear implant is a viable and cost-effective treatment option for this population. So in this chapter, we will emphasize the importance of early treatment of unilateral hearing loss in the pediatric age and the emerging indication of the cochlear implant as a treatment.


Combining first-order logic and probability has long been a goal of AI. Markov logic (Richardson & Domingos, 2006) accomplishes this by attaching weights to first-order formulas and viewing them as templates for features of Markov networks. Unfortunately, it does not have the full power of first-order logic, because it is only defined for finite domains. This paper extends Markov logic to infinite domains, by casting it in the framework of Gibbs measures (Georgii, 1988). We show that a Markov logic network (MLN) admits a Gibbs measure as long as each ground atom has a finite number of neighbors. Many interesting cases fall in this category. We also show that an MLN admits a unique measure if the weights of its non-unit clauses are small enough. We then examine the structure of the set of consistent measures in the non-unique case. Many important phenomena, including systems with phase transitions, are represented by MLNs with non-unique measures. We relate the problem of satisfiability in first-order logic to the properties of MLN measures, and discuss how Markov logic relates to previous infinite models.


Genetically obese (fa/fa) Zucker rats maintain a normal lean body size but deposit excessive amounts of body fat. Preferential use of substrates for lipid synthesis results in inefficient use of dietary nitrogen for protein deposition. Three studies were carried out to determine whether an increased protein requirement caused hyperphagia and whether young Zucker rats preferentially regulated protein or energy intake. Rats were offered isoenergetic diets with nitrogen contents ranging from 4.5 to 53.2 mg/g, or isonitrogenous diets with energy contents of 2.2, 3.3 or 4.2 kcal/g. In both situations obese rats had significantly higher food intakes than lean rats. Within phenotype the rats maintained an almost constant energy intake so that nitrogen intake was proportional to dietary nitrogen concentration. In a third experiment lean and obese rats were given different proportions of their control protein intake by stomach tube. Energy intake was determined by voluntary consumption of a protein-free diet. Within phenotype energy intake was the same for all levels of protein intake. It appears that obese Zucker rats regulate energy intake at an elevated level and that protein intake is determined by dietary nitrogen content. Hyperphagia does not appear to result from a desire to obtain protein.


The Moroccan coast has a rich environmental and ecological heritage and varied as its intrinsic value as its demographic and socio-economic interest. It has a rich and varied environmental heritage (flora and fauna, landscape and natural sites such as dunes and wetlands), which provides resources to the basis of various economic activities (forestry, fishing, grazing and forestry activities .. .). This explains the human and urban concentration, becoming more diffuse, supported and dense on these spaces. This urbanization and densification of the coast irretrievably leads to increased pressure on coastal and problems to confront: solid and liquid waste management, flow (road traffic, drinking water system, energy service ... ), spatial planning (intensive industrialization, coastal development, tourism projects of great effect ...), preserving the landscape and natural resources. The use of bivalve mollusk (Mytilusgalloprovincialis) as a bio-indicator of marine ecosystem pollution provides an advantage of monitoring the coastal contamination and the evolution of the quality of coastal marine species of Rabat-Sale. The objective of this study is a comparison of the dynamic structure of the population of Mytilusgalloprovincialis on the coast of Sale-Rabat (with stations S1, S2 and S3 for Sale and R1, R2 and R3 for Rabat) in us based on the study size frequency histograms to assess the quality of the aquatic ecosystem. Following the results of this study the spatial distribution of the demographic structure of Mytilusgalloprovincialis fluctuates widely from one area to another minimum density of 624 individuals/m2est observed in Rabat and a maximum of 4224 individuals / m2 of Sale. It seems that it depends mainly on the physical and chemical factors, edaphic and hydrological coastline are: the nature of the substance, the tidal phenomenon, the availability of food and behavior of species. Different regression lines show that there is good correlation between the total length to the width of the shell, with significant correlation coefficients (R) of between 50% and 97% Salt and it is greater than 96% for Rabat.


Operational monitoring of global terrestrial gross primary production (GPP) and net primary production (NPP) is now underway using imagery from the satellite‐borne Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. Evaluation of MODIS GPP and NPP products will require site‐level studies across a range of biomes, with close attention to numerous scaling issues that must be addressed to link ground measurements to the satellite‐based carbon flux estimates. Here, we report results of a study aimed at evaluating MODIS NPP/GPP products at six sites varying widely in climate, land use, and vegetation physiognomy. Comparisons were made for twenty‐five 1 km2 cells at each site, with 8‐day averages for GPP and an annual value for NPP. The validation data layers were made with a combination of ground measurements, relatively high resolution satellite data (Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus at ∼30 m resolution), and process‐based modeling. There was strong seasonality in the MODIS GPP at all sites, and mean NPP ranged from 80 g C m−2 yr−1 at an arctic tundra site to 550 g C m−2 yr−1 at a temperate deciduous forest site. There was not a consistent over‐ or underprediction of NPP across sites relative to the validation estimates. The closest agreements in NPP and GPP were at the temperate deciduous forest, arctic tundra, and boreal forest sites. There was moderate underestimation in the MODIS products at the agricultural field site, and strong overestimation at the desert grassland and at the dry coniferous forest sites. Analyses of specific inputs to the MODIS NPP/GPP algorithm – notably the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation absorbed by the vegetation canopy, the maximum light use efficiency (LUE), and the climate data – revealed the causes of the over‐ and underestimates. Suggestions for algorithm improvement include selectively altering values for maximum LUE (based on observations at eddy covariance flux towers) and parameters regulating autotrophic respiration.


This paper adopts a vector autoregressive (VAR) approach to analyse the labour market adjustment mechanisms for 12 New Zealand regions over the period 1985 to 2001. It examines the effects of a region-specific shock to employment on itself, the unemployment rate, the participation rate, and the wage rate. The role of migration as a channel of regional labour market adjustment is also inferred. We find that adjustment occurs predominantly through inter-regional migration although the unemployment and participation rates also play a role. Wages, on the other hand, account for very little adjustment. The importance of inter-regional migration in New Zealand matches the results found in Sweden, but stands in contrast to the picture in many European countries. Migration appears to be a more dominant adjustment channel compared to the US and Australian cases. However, this has to be placed into context – New Zealand regions are much smaller in terms of population size.


A multimodal system accepting touchpad gesture input and speech input has been developed to support browsing online newspapers for the visually impaired. The issue addressed in this work is how to combine the two input modalities for nonvisual text-information browsing. An exploratory study with fourteen sighted subjects suggests that: (1) A dependence between users' choice of input modality and the type of input operations undertaken exists – speech is preferred for abstract input and gesture for location-based navigations. (2) Continuous repetitive operations are more likely to be performed using the touchpad. (3) Among several factors including changes in operation types, input failures, and interruptions in task performance, the first factor is the major cause of users' input mode mixes. (4) Prevalent user strategies for error corrections do not involve input modality switches but repetitions of failed operations and tryouts of different operations in the same input modality. (5) Training orders have limited effect on users' preference on input modalities in later usage. (6) Skipping is common in a familiar information organization. In speech, the main skipping strategy is speaking the desired item directly. On the touchpad the main strategies include approximating the location of a desired item and sequential skips. A confirmative experiment will be conducted with visually impaired users and will lead to suggestions for designing non-visual multimodal input for the addressed application domain.


Regional climate models (RCMs) are used for forecasting future climate including precipitation characteristics. Performances of five different RCMs for predicting the precipitation characteristics for Gothenburg, Sweden were evaluated against the daily observed precipitation over the period 1961 to 2009. Statistical analysis was done on annual, monthly, multi-daily, and daily data. The statistical techniques used include principal component analysis (PCA), comparison of annual maximum, frequency of exceedances determined from Poisson distribution, comparison of frequency distributions, and Mann–Kendall technique for investigating trend over time. Inter-annual variability and autocorrelation between years were also investigated. The results obtained point towards the usefulness of these high-resolution RCMs. It was observed that all the models give the annual maximum precipitation within 3 mm of the observed data. As for the observed series, no trends were found for monthly or seasonal data. The number of exceedances above threshold accepted Poisson distribution hypothesis with the mean exceedances from RCM-PROMES being very close to the mean exceedances from the observed data. PCA also indicated that PROMES came closest to explaining the observed data. The presented statistical methods can be used for bias correction of raw RCM data in future studies.


Formal techniques for the specification of real time systems must be capable of describing system behavior as a set of relationships expressing the temporal constraints among events and actions, including properties of invariance, precedence, periodicity, liveness, and safety conditions. The paper describes a Temporal-Interval Logic with Compositional Operators (TILCO) designed expressly for the specification of real time systems. TILCO is a generalization of classical temporal logics based on the operators, eventually and henceforth; it allows both qualitative and quantitative specification of time relationships. TILCO is based on time intervals and can concisely express temporal constraints with time bounds, such as those needed to specify real time systems. This approach can be used to verify the completeness and consistency of specifications, as well as to validate system behavior against its requirements and general properties. TILCO has been formalized by using the theorem prover Isabelle/HOL. TILCO specifications satisfying certain properties are executable by using a modified version of the Tableaux algorithm. The paper defines TILCO and its axiomatization, highlights the tools available for proving properties of specifications and for their execution, and provides an example of system specification and validation.


Background The Emergency Room (ER) represents a strategic location for pharmacovigilance due to easy access, permanent availability and a multidisciplinary clinical approach. Purpose To investigate over a period of twenty-four months how much a constant pharmacist presence in the ER could encourage ER personnel to report ADEs promptly, encouraging greater attention to be paid to their clinical relevance. Materials and methods Monitoring done by the pharmacist in the ER of Gaetano Rummo Hospital (BN), allowed the collection of medical, diagnostic and clinic data regarding suspicious ADEs and patients involved. The information is collected and transcribed in the form provided by AIFA (the Italian Medicines Agency), evaluated and entered into the National Pharmacovigilance Network. The pharmacist also provided monthly reports which described the number of ADEs reported, a description of the ADEs and suspicious medicines. Results In the two years of monitoring, the following data has been collected: in total 253 reports (3 paediatric cases, 123 adults and 127 over 65) with a slightly majority of male patients (128). Of these, 42.7% were regarded as 'Serious' (4 lives endangered, 103 required hospitalisation or prolonged hospitalisation and one resulted in death). Of the iatrogenic pathologies highlighted 71.6% involved skin and subcutaneous tissue rash (96), gastrointestinal reactions (82), systemic disorders and conditions related to the administration site (53), respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders (50) and, finally, diseases of the nervous system (44). The suspicious drugs were mainly ASA and warfarin (24). Conclusions From the results obtained, extensive monitoring of medicines represents an important cost-saving opportunity related to the appearance of ADEs and a crucial source of reports on pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic problems of medicinal products on the market. This leads to an improvement in the quality of health care. No conflict of interest.


Colson Whitehead's non-fictional reflections on urban scenography in The Colossus of New York: A City in Thirteen Parts (2003. N Y: Anchor Books, 2004) is an attempt to understand space as personal and as a site of narrative performance, where the "naked city" (6) responds to the inroads made by "eight million" New Yorkers on its consciousness. The technique of personification, which is extensively used by the author, can be striated using Mark Turner's notion of 'conceptual blending' (The Literary Mind. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), which allows the reader to cognitively map the terrain where people read, write and live their own versions of the city. The book, constitutive of thirteen essays, illustrates how locales such as Central Park, Broadway, Times Square and moments such as Morning possess the ability to regulate the mental state of the city dweller. The text exemplifies Mark Turner's assertion that "personification is perhaps the most thoroughly analyzed consequence of blended space" (76), resulting from our ability to recruit emergent mental spaces that are a part of the larger conceptual domains of perception, experience and representation. This is illustrated through the reveries of an anonymous female pedestrian in the essay on 'Brooklyn Bridge,' from The Colossus of New York, where "her whole history hordes behind her with its unfashionable area code and immigrant spice[s]" (99), as she traverses the span of the bridge. Arrested movement suggested by the drifting island on which the bridge stands echoes the pedestrian's attempt to deal with expectation and responsibility: "Various anchors hold the island in place so it won't drift away. You'd try to flee too, if everyone heaped their dreams upon you" (99). This state of suspension mirrors the transient nature of the pedestrian's performance as she adds her part to the everyday urban flows channeled by the bridge. The blended space stages the motif of 'talking cities' where "the city knows you" (8), it sees, and it "remembers, too" (9). The motif is extended when the blend contextualizes the dialogic interplay of urban artifact with pedestrian as the "bridge takes a while to get to the heart of its argument and for a while she is seduced by honey talk" (99), anticipating a vision of the cityscape where she emerges into its consciousness. The "exemplary rhetoric" provided by the bridge augments the space of narration where "this rather spectacular leap of faith" (100), from artifact to locale, is realized in the duration of the spatio-temporal 'span'. Here the metaphor, "leap of faith," finds resonance in the capacity of the pedestrian to inhabit "outlaw territory, between places" (102), as she bridges the zone of exile in her movement across the elevated span. Movement and interrupted motion, in the form of a pause, performed by people walking on the bridge are key features in facilitating different spatial perspectives, affording the reader insights into their mental states. A pause taken while walking is enough to cause awe and fear of the skyline as it serves to remind the pedestrian of her insignificance: "Let's pause for a sec to be cowed by this magnificent skyline . …


Abstract. Particulate matter (PM), of which a significant fraction is comprised of secondary organic aerosols (SOA), has received considerable attention due to its health implications. In this study, the water-soluble oxidative potential (OPWS) of SOA generated from the photooxidation of biogenic and anthropogenic hydrocarbon precursors (isoprene, α-pinene, β-caryophyllene, pentadecane, m-xylene, and naphthalene) under different reaction conditions ( RO2+ HO2 vs. RO2+ NO dominant, dry vs. humid) was characterized using dithiothreitol (DTT) consumption. The measured intrinsic OPWS-DTT values ranged from 9 to 205 pmol min−1 µg−1 and were highly dependent on the specific hydrocarbon precursor, with naphthalene and isoprene SOA generating the highest and lowest OPWS-DTT values, respectively. Humidity and RO2 fate affected OPWS-DTT in a hydrocarbon-specific manner, with naphthalene SOA exhibiting the most pronounced effects, likely due to the formation of nitroaromatics. Together, these results suggest that precursor identity may be more influential than reaction condition in determining SOA oxidative potential, demonstrating the importance of sources, such as incomplete combustion, to aerosol toxicity. In the context of other PM sources, all SOA systems, with the exception of naphthalene SOA, were less DTT active than ambient sources related to incomplete combustion, including diesel and gasoline combustion as well as biomass burning. Finally, naphthalene SOA was as DTT active as biomass burning aerosol, which was found to be the most DTT-active OA source in a previous ambient study. These results highlight a need to consider SOA contributions (particularly from anthropogenic hydrocarbons) to health effects in the context of hydrocarbon emissions, SOA yields, and other PM sources.


Flash SSDs are omnipresent as database storage. HDD replacement is seamless since Flash SSDs implement the same legacy hardware and software interfaces to enable backward compatibility. Yet, the price paid is high as backward compatibility masks the native behaviour, incurs significant complexity and decreases I/O performance, making it non-robust and unpredictable. Flash SSDs are black-boxes. Although DBMS have ample mechanisms to control hardware directly and utilize the performance potential of Flash memory, the legacy interfaces and black-box architecture of Flash devices prevent them from doing so. In this paper we demonstrate NoFTL, an approach that enables native Flash access and integrates parts of the Flashmanagement functionality into the DBMS yielding significant performance increase and simplification of the I/O stack. NoFTL is implemented on real hardware based on the OpenSSD research platform. The contributions of this paper include: (i) a description of the NoFTL native Flash storage architecture; (ii) its integration in Shore-MT and (iii) performance evaluation of NoFTL on a real Flash SSD and on an on-line data-driven Flash emulator under TPCB,C,E and H workloads. The performance evaluation results indicate an improvement of at least 2.4x on real hardware over conventional Flash storage; as well as better utilisation of native Flash parallelism.


APPG Conception to the Age of Two

Invited Submission 10th October 2016

Early Childhood Education and Care: The Missing Partner

Dr Eunice Lumsden
The University of Northampton

Response to Implementing Recommendation Two (Building Great Britons)

Require local authorities, CCGs and Health & Wellbeing Boards to prioritise all factors leading to the development of socially and emotionally capable children at age 2, by: adopting and implementing a '1001-days' strategy, and showing how they intend to implement it in collaboration with their partner agencies, within 5 years. The '1001-days' strategies should be based on primary preventive principles, with particular emphasis on fostering mental/emotional wellbeing and secure attachment, and preventing child maltreatment.

Thank you very much for inviting me to talk to you all today. The four key points I would like to make during the presentation are:

1. We need to change the way we work at every level if the 1001Critical Days recommendations are to be realized.

2. There needs to be a holistic approach to young children's health, wellbeing, early learning and welfare that supports an integrated approach.

3. The Health and Wellbeing Boards need to include specific early childhood experts on their boards.

4. There needs to be an infrastructure approach to funding for early childhood that stops the continual policy changes at a national and local level and drives an integrated policy approach to the first 1001 days and beyond.

Starting on a high note

Northamptonshire Health and Wellbeing Board have just published their strategic plan for 2016-2020.

Prevention, early intervention and early diagnosis will begin from conception, with holistic support throughout the 1001 Critical Days (p.12).

Some Important Points for Clarification

Since the middle 1990's there has been a substantial shift in the academic field of Early Childhood Studies. It is now recognised as the interdisciplinary academic study of the period 0 (conception) to eight and has its own academic benchmark

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is focused on practice in the early years sector

This presentation draws upon my experience:

1. As a Social Worker mainly in child maltreatment, foster, adoption and court work.
2. In academia engaged in the development of the academic field of early childhood studies
3. Workforce reform in the ECEC sector.

All three are intrinsically intertwined.

What are the Barriers to systemic change?

Separatist development of professions

Education and Health and Social Care separated at national and local level

Yet early childhood, especially 'very early childhood' is the one period in the life course where so many professions come together to support young children and their families.

Despite millions of pounds of Government money invest in early years since 1997 ECEC often seen as 'childcare' to support working parents, still seen as 'women's work' (98% Female). Even though there is statement after statement at a policy level about the importance of the early years- this sector have not become equal partners. This needs to change.

There are excellent examples of practice eg Everton in Liverpool, Penn Green Corby, Camrose Northampton, Croyland, Wellingborough (The latter two have been severely hit by changes to Children Centre delivery).

Untapped Strength in England

The ECEC workforce has undergone major workforce reform. The quality of provision across England has improved. 80% of setting now 'Good or Outstanding' (OFsted 2015) but still not narrowing the educational gap for children.

The Foundation Degree in Early Years has transformed lives – children's, parents and the practitioners themselves. The Early Childhood Studies degree is now established at universities across the UK, providing an excellent foundation for future careers in services for children and families and we now have a new professional EARLY YEARS TEACHER (0-5) (Formerly Early Years Professional). There professional standards, skills, knowledge and unique positioning with babies, young children and families have so much to bring to improving lifelong outcomes.

There is a growing workforce who are supporting the transformation of babies and young children's lives, yet they are barely recognised let alone celebrated. They have a vital role not only in early learning but in the health and wellbeing of future generations, yet when you look at the Health and Wellbeing Boards, our early years colleagues are invisible.

Professional Perspective

The campaign by the APPG about the vital importance of the first 1001 has done immeasurable good. I see the impact it has had with professionals breathing a sigh of relief that the importance of the first 1001 days has been recognised.

There are numerous policy agendas at present that are responding rather than preventing.

The time is right now for truly 'join-up the dots' so that we can join up the dots for children. We have an ECEC workforce who are ready and willing.

What Next

I urge the APPG to continue to push for a Minister with overall responsibility for Early Childhood. However with new Ministers in place and new roles assigned the APPG has a vital role in bringing together the key Ministers from the Department of Education and Health to support their understanding of the academic field of Early Childhood and the importance of joining up health, wellbeing, welfare and early learning agendas…why..

There are numerous strategies—The Health and Wellbeing Boards are one example. BUT…There does not appear to be an overriding ownership of how they work together or not for our youngest children:

Early Years premium approx. 53p per hour to improve disadvantaged young children's long term educational outcomes, a therapist supporting an adoption family to £100-200 per hour.

Thank you for listening.

Dr Eunice Lumsden
10th October 2016


Stress echocardiography is a routinely used clinical procedure to diagnose cardiac dysfunction by comparing wall motion information in prestress and poststress ultrasound images. Incomplete data, complicated imaging protocols and misaligned prestress and poststress views, however, are known limitations of conventional stress echocardiography. We discuss how the first two limitations are overcome via the use of real-time three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound imaging, an emerging modality, and have called the new procedure "3-D stress echocardiography:" We also show that the problem of misaligned views can be solved by registration of prestress and poststress 3-D image sequences. Such images are misaligned because of variations in placing the ultrasound transducer and stress-induced anatomical changes. We have developed a technique to temporally align 3-D images of the two sequences first and then to spatially register them to rectify probe placement error while preserving the stress-induced changes. The 3-D spatial registration is mutual information-based. Image registration used in conjunction with 3-D stress echocardiography can potentially improve the diagnostic accuracy of stress testing.


BACKGROUND
The goal of the current study was to describe the distribution and characteristics of malignancy related deaths among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients with use of data obtained from a national survey conducted in France in 2005 and to compare with results obtained from a similar survey conducted in 2000.

METHOD
The underlying cause of death was documented using a standardized questionnaire fulfilled in French hospital wards and networks that were involved in the treatment of HIV-infected patients.

RESULTS
Among the 1042 deaths reported in 2005 (964 were reported in 2000), 344 were cancer related (34%), which represented a significant increase from 2000 (29% of deaths were cancer related) (P=.02); 134 of the cancer-related deaths were AIDS related and 210 were not AIDS related. Among the cancer-related causes of death, the proportion of hepatitis-related cancers (6% in 2000 vs. 11% in 2005) and non-AIDS/hepatitis-related cancers (38% in 2000 vs 50% in 2005) significantly increased from 2000 to 2005 (P=.03 and P=.01, respectively), compared with the proportion of cancer that was AIDS related and adjusting for age and sex. Among cases involving AIDS, the proportion of non-Hodgkin lymphoma-associated deaths did not change statistically significantly between 2000 and 2005 (11% and 10% of deaths, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS
In this study, an increasing proportion of lethal non-AIDS-related cancers was demonstrated from 2000 to 2005; meanwhile, the proportion of lethal AIDS-related cancers remained stable among HIV-infected patients. Thus, cancer prophylaxis, early diagnosis, and improved management should be included in the routine long-term follow-up of HIV-infected patients.


The class Litostomatea is a highly diverse ciliate taxon comprising hundreds of species ranging from aerobic, free-living predators to anaerobic endocommensals. This is traditionally reflected by classifying the Litostomatea into the subclasses Haptoria and Trichostomatia. The morphological classifications of the Haptoria conflict with the molecular phylogenies, which indicate polyphyly and numerous homoplasies. Thus, we analyzed the genealogy of 53 in-group species with morphological and molecular methods, including 12 new sequences from free-living taxa. The phylogenetic analyses and some strong morphological traits show: (i) body polarization and simplification of the oral apparatus as main evolutionary trends in the Litostomatea and (ii) three distinct lineages (subclasses): the Rhynchostomatia comprising Tracheliida and Dileptida; the Haptoria comprising Lacrymariida, Haptorida, Didiniida, Pleurostomatida and Spathidiida; and the Trichostomatia. The curious Homalozoon cannot be assigned to any of the haptorian orders, but is basal to a clade containing the Didiniida and Pleurostomatida. The internal relationships of the Spathidiida remain obscure because many of them and some ''traditional'' haptorids form separate branches within the basal polytomy of the order, indicating one or several radiations and convergent evolution. Due to the high divergence in the 18S rRNA gene, the chaeneids and cyclotrichiids are classified incertae sedis. 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Retailers routinely allow consumers to negotiate a discount off the posted price for big-ticket items such as home appliances and automobiles, and on online platforms such as Amazon and eBay. The profitability of such a strategy, relative to selling only at posted prices, depends on consumers' willingness to initiate a negotiation and ability to negotiate a discount. In this article, the authors incorporate consumers' decision of whether to negotiate into a demand model. The decision to negotiate hinges on how the expected discount from negotiation compares with the magnitude of a nonpecuniary cost that the consumer incurs by initiating the negotiation. The current study shows how this cost can be nonparametrically identified, separately from consumers' ability to get a discount and marginal utility of income. The application of this model to individual-level data on refrigerator transactions reveals that, conditional on negotiating, consumers get, on average, 41% of the available surplus and incur an average cost of $28 to initiate a negotiation. The magnitude of these nonpecuniary costs' not only affects retailer profits but also has implications for pricing strategy and consumer surplus. Ignoring these costs results in biased estimates of consumers' willingness to pay, translating to annual losses of $1.6 million in the current study setting.


Phylogenetic trees can be rooted by a number of criteria. Here, we introduce a Bayesian method for inferring the root of a phylogenetic tree by using one of several criteria: the outgroup, molecular clock, and nonreversible model of DNA substitution. We perform simulation analyses to examine the relative ability of these three criteria to correctly identify the root of the tree. The outgroup and molecular clock criteria were best able to identify the root of the tree, whereas the nonreversible model was able to identify the root only when the substitution process was highly nonreversible. We also examined the performance of the criteria for a tree of four species for which the topology and root position are well supported. Results of the analyses of these data are consistent with the simulation results.


To enhance denitrification performance of soil infiltration, a soil infiltration system incorporated with heterotrophic denitrification (TSISHD) for urban runoff treatment was developed. Sawdust and grass powders were added in the anaerobic stage (ANS) to provide organic carbon sources for the denitrification process, and the reduction environment was improved by iron addition in the ANS. Aerobic respiration and nitrification primarily occurred in the upper aerobic stage (AES), which removed 86.68% of the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and 91.80% of the NH+4-N. Moreover, heterotrophic denitrification occurred in the bottom ANS when added sawdust and grass powders were used as a carbon source. Overall, the TSISHD showed remarkable removal efficiencies of 88.29%, 82.50%, 92.05%, and 78.10% for COD, NO−3-N, NH+4-N, and total phosphorus, respectively, and the corresponding effluent concentrations met the national quality standard of China for class V surface water. The removal efficiencies were significantly higher than those of the previous soil infiltration systems without inoculated microbes. The developed system has the potential to treat urban runoff.


The implementation of an automatic fault diagnosis approach for analogue circuits is facing a
number of problem areas. They are typically: component and measurement tolerances, circuit size,
limited observability constraints, multiple fault conditions, non-linear behaviour, speed and
generic applicability. Since such fault finding techniques utilize circuit simulations sometime during the diagnostic process, the preferred form of classification amongst researchers is a taxonomy of Simulationbefore-Test (SbT) and Simulation-after-Test (SaT) methods.A survey of related work following these two strategies has been carried out, which concludes:
The main advantage of the SaT strategy is their diagnostic power to cope with above problem
areas, their main disadvantage is the often considerable computational on-line effort. The main
advantage of the SbT strategy is on-line speed, but diagnostic power is often limited. What is
needed is a workable solution to combine the advantages of the two strategies, whilst minimizing
their disadvantages. The thesis is focused on this need. Subject of the research programme was
therefore to look into the feasibility of a Simulation-before-Test approach for diagnosing
toleranced analogue non-linear networks in the presence of multiple faults and from there to
research the concepts, strategies and algorithms required to form a diagnostic approach.


What if, like in It's a Wonderful Life, we were able to go back and see what life would be like without a particular legal rule? In other words, what if we could be the George Bailey of law for a day? It is through this "what if" lens that this essay tackles the already well-discussed cases of Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal. But, unlike the scholarship that has addressed these cases so far, this essay stakes out a completely different methodological approach. Rather than predicting what courts might do with Twombly and Iqbal going forward, it asks what might have been had Twombly and Iqbal existed decades ago. To engage in this exercise, the essay looks at actual complaints in cases that have become common parlance in legal circles, Bakke v. The Regents of the Univ. of Cal. and Hopkins v. Price Waterhouse, and applies the standards enunciated in Twombly and Iqbal to them. By doing so, the essay attempts to concretely think about the consequences of a Twombly/Iqbal pleading regime by considering the potential impact that a granted motion to dismiss might have had on cases that we take for granted today. This requires both micro and macro considerations. At the micro level, it is worth thinking about whether the complaint could have been re-filed and ultimately survive a motion to dismiss. At the macro level, the exercise involves a broader consideration of what would have happened had the case never been decided. In other words, how would the doctrines defined by that seminal case have been affected? And, even more broadly, how might the development of particular kinds of law practice changed and how might other modes of social change been utilized? By considering the effect of Twombly and Iqbal in this manner, the essay offers yet another way to consider the benefits and drawbacks of a Twombly/Iqbal regime.


This thesis will provide a thorough examination of counterterrorism in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the United States. A multifaceted analysis of Jordan's counterterrorism (the socio-economic and political drivers of terrorism, historical efforts of counterterrorism, and its contemporary successes and failures) will be complimented by a generalized report of United States counterterrorism. The successes of Jordanian counterterrorism were analyzed to reveal whether or not certain practices could be implemented in America. While considering the political, social, and cultural differences between the two countries, it was clear that the two allies understandably operate on a similar agenda when it comes to fighting the war on terror. However, Jordan has a unique approach to easing the threat of violent extremism that could potentially benefit the United States.


In ambient conditions, nanometric water layers form on hydrophilicsurfaces covering them and significantly changing their properties and characteristics. Here we report the excitation of subharmonics in amplitude modulation atomic force microscopy induced by intermittent water contacts. Our simulations show that there are several regimes of operation depending on whether there is perturbation of water layers. Single period orbitals, where subharmonics are never induced, follow only when the tip is either in permanent contact with the water layers or in pure noncontact where the water layers are never perturbed. When the water layers are perturbed subharmonic excitation increases with decreasing oscillation amplitude. We derive an analytical expression which establishes whether water perturbations compromise harmonic motion and show that the predictions are in agreement with numerical simulations. Empirical validation of our interpretation is provided by the observation of a range of values for apparent height of water layers when subharmonic excitation is predicted.


Purpose: to present a proposal of a surface electromyography evaluation method for cervical muscles specific and detailed protocol, with a standardized collection method of electrical signal in these muscles. Method: the researchers took as reference the existing publications about this subject which evidenced a need for standardization, clarity, better reproducibility and greater specificity for the surface electromyography evaluation of the upper trapezium and sternocleidomastoid muscles fibers. The proposal preparation process for the current protocol included the cleaning of the target area, placing the electrodes, required tasks in order to collect and register the electrical signal and interpretation of the electromyography signal parameters. This evaluation method was carried out in 24 healthy volunteers of both genders, with an average age of 26 years. We used the electromyography Miotool 400 with 4 channels. Result: an evaluation surface electromyography method for upper trapezium and sternocleidomastoid muscles fibers was developed and tested in order to determine the best form of electrical signal data collection for these muscles. Conclusion: we submitted a protocol proposal to evaluate the cervical muscles by a surface electromyography, allowing the healthy professionals and researchers to get more information about this electrical potential evaluation method for the sternocleidomastoid and the upper trapezium muscles fibers. This knowledge will be an adjuvant in a more specific therapy.


"The Politics of Earthquake Prediction" is a suspenseful account of what happens when scientists predict an enormous earthquake for a specific day--an earthquake that did not, in this instance, happen, but which, if it had, would have been one of the most destructive of our century. Working in a field where uncertainty abounds, Dr. Brian Brady of the U.S. Bureau of Mines and Dr. William Spence of the U.S. Geological Survey gradually came to the conclusion that a catastrophic quake would occur on June 28, 1981, off the coast of central Peru, near the great population center of Lima-Callao. Their research was based on a theory challenging scientific notions widely accepted in the seismological "establishment." This book is a fast-paced but thorough and sensitive description of how this scientific dispute became a political controversy.The work portrays in detail the struggles of scientists and government officials in both the United States and Peru attempting to "do the right thing" as the target date approached. The authors emphasize the political, economic, and moral dilemmas of earthquake prediction, the impact of the media, and the potentially drastic consequences of ignoring a valid prediction.Originally published in 1989.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


This paper will explore how breakthroughs in neuroscience, specifically neuroimaging, can be used to validate eyewitness testimony. Though the use of direct evidence is decreasing, due to findings of numerous wrongful convictions that were based on eyewitness testimonies, it is still an element of many criminal trials today. Cross-examination is used to validate eyewitness testimony because memories are fallible. Cross-examination can successfully determine if a witness is telling the truth, but it cannot determine if a memory is true. This has resulted in juries convicting individuals based on questionable eyewitness testimony. Neuroscientists have found that neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans, can be used to distinguish between true and false memories and can determine if a witness is telling the truth. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys alike stand to benefit from using neuroimaging to validate eyewitness testimony that is brought into trial. Though the jury can use neuroimaging evidence to more accurately assess eyewitness testimony, as with all scientific data, the jury should be properly instructed when neuroimages are used, in order to reduce the prejudicial value of the evidence. Abstract This paper will explore how breakthroughs in neuroscience, specifically neuroimaging, can be used to validate eyewitness testimony. Though the use of direct evidence is decreasing, due to findings of numerous wrongful convictions that were based on eyewitness testimonies, it is still an element of many criminal trials today. Cross-examination is used to validate eyewitness testimony because memories are fallible. Cross-examination can successfully determine if a witness is telling the truth, but it cannot determine if a memory is true. This has resulted in juries convicting individuals based on questionable eyewitness testimony. Neuroscientists have found that neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans, can be used to distinguish between true and false memories and can determine if a witness is telling the truth. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys alike stand to benefit from using neuroimaging to validate eyewitness testimony that is brought into trial. Though the jury can use neuroimaging evidence to more accurately assess eyewitness testimony, as with all scientific data, the jury should be properly instructed when neuroimages are used, in order to reduce the prejudicial value of the evidence.


Infections are among the leading causes of neonatal mortality, and about 75% of the burden occurs in developing countries. Diagnosis of neonatal sepsis in these countries is dependent on the recognition of a set of nonspecific clinical signs that maximize sensitivity because staff making initial assessments may not have specialist pediatric training. Accurate diagnosis is usually limited by the unavailability of reliable microbiological investigation. The World Health Organization recommends ampicillin (or penicillin; cloxacillin if staphylococcal infection is suspected) plus gentamicin for empiric treatment of neonates with suspected clinical sepsis or meningitis. However, there is a lack of comprehensive data on the causes of infection and antimicrobial susceptibility in developing countries to support these recommendations, especially in rural settings. Bacterial pathogens (predominantly Gram negative) with reduced susceptibility to empiric medication have been reported, with variations both between and within regions. Nosocomial infections with resistant organisms and high case fatality challenge the first-line use of cephalosporins. Improving local surveillance data using standardized antimicrobial susceptibility testing methods and validation of diagnostic algorithms against microbial findings are essential. Standardized reporting of treatment outcomes is required to evaluate practice, provide guidance on second-line regimes and for studies of new approaches, such as simplified community-based regimens, and to determine the appropriate duration of empiric treatment for apparently low-risk neonates with early resolution of clinical signs, or where available, negative blood cultures. Thus, a multifaceted approach, with attention to microbiological quality assurance, is needed to better guide antimicrobial use and reduce mortality and long-term impairments.


The prevalence of adult obesity now exceeds underweight in most countries of the world where obesity prevalence data are available, except in some Asian and sub-Saharan African countries.1 The most recent South African Demographic and Health Survey (SADHS 2016) provides updated information on the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the adult population. Based on the body mass index (BMI) categories, 68% of South African women and 31% of men were overweight or obese.2 The higher prevalence of overweight and obesity among women as opposed to men in South Africa is consistent with results from some other lowand middle-income countries (LMICs) and an obesity prevalence of higher than 30% among South African women is similar to the obesity prevalence in high-income English-speaking countries and in north Africa.1 In contrast to these findings, some countries in sub-Saharan Africa still reported a higher prevalence of underweight than obesity among adults in 2014.1 Obesity is an important risk factor for several noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).3 Therefore halting the increase in obesity prevalence is one of the global NCD targets4 and also one of the targets of the South African Department of Health in its Strategic Plan for the Prevention and Control of NCDs.5 In the current issue of SAJCN a high prevalence of overweight and obesity is described among two distinct groups of South African women, namely university students6 and adult women living with HIV.7 Although both studies had small sample sizes, similar findings were reported in studies with larger sample sizes.2,8 People living with HIV and AIDS are noted as a vulnerable group at higher risk for developing NCDs in the South African Strategic Plan for the Prevention and Control of NCDs.5


In this paper a detailed mathematical procedure is described to evaluate modal scattering parameters conventionally defined in planar multilayered structures excited by wave ports. Combined Field Integral Equation technique is implemented and solved using method of moments. The developed formulation then is successfully applied to analyze waveguide structures and proved to be very efficient in the term of accuracy and performance.


During the last half-century a growing concern has taken place in the world regarding water shortage and public health associated to water pollution. Safe discharges of industrial effluents and water reuse within the industry have been encouraged and several initiatives have promoted the development of wastewater treatment technologies with the main focus on industrial sectors that generate large volumes of wastewater. On the other hand, searching for onsite technological options to treat small volumes of highly polluted wastewaters generated by industrial sectors that have no water in their production processes (i.e. wooden floor and furniture industry) has been neglected. To minimize and prevent environmental effects through innovative approaches, onsite treatment options for wastewater generated by cleaning/washing activities in a wooden floor industry in Sweden have been investigated. It was found that different wastewater streams generated after cleaning/washing of machinery and surfaces at different stages of the wooden floor production can pose negative effects to aquatic organisms. Since they are intermittently and manually generated, these wastewater streams have high variability both in volumes and chemical composition. During treatability studies, equalization/sedimentation process was found to be an important pre-treatment step responsible for reduction of chemical oxygen demand (COD) of about 19%. Sorption/filtration with activated carbon and anaerobic biological treatment were found to be technically feasible for both COD and formaldehyde removal. Wood fly ash (waste material with negligible cost) showed moderate sorption efficiency as compared to commercial activated carbon and leaching of secondary pollutants might prevent the use of this material unless pretreatment is carried out. In the anaerobic treatment process, the treatment efficiency of COD in an anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) was decreased 50% when the C/N ratio dropped below 3. A successful treatment of the cleaning wastewater with soluble COD removal of about 83% and FA removal higher than 99% was achieved by the ABR operated with hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 5 days. Mole ratio of Mg:N:P and pH were key parameters for ammonium precipitation in the wastewater. At Mg:N:P of 1:1:1 or higher and pH of 8.0, the highest ammonium removal (83%) was achieved. Combinations of treatment processes (e.g. sorption and electrocoagulation or biological treatment and chemical precipitation) improved the quality of the final effluent. However, process optimization is still required in order to improve even more the quality of the final effluent and reduce operation and maintenance costs. From the water reuse/recycle perspective, the application of advanced oxidation in combination with the above-mentioned processes seems to be a promising approach.


The liberalisation of the European gas market is becalmed. Meanwhile
regulatory uncertainty looms on the investment horizon.
During the last ten years, European gas markets have gone through profound restructuring processes. Initially ambitious, regulatory targets from the European Commission (EC) boiled down to a very basic introduction of competition and liberalisation in the form of the first Gas Directive. Since then, the EC has accelerated the reforms and deepened competition by progressively releasing new directives, regulations and guidelines, while at the same time remaining resolute during the energy sector inquiry. Since the beginning, attempts to liberalise European gas markets have faced strong opposition and resistance from the gas industry and industry-oriented governments, aiming to maintain the status quo of the market organisation, while leaving energy policy as a national issue.


The undergraduate student experience is a unique phase of life, encompassing independence, social group membership, self-identity formation and changing support systems. In addition to their social evolution, students strive to perform well, driven by self and familial expectations, and peer competition native to collegiate environments. I explored these experiences at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), particularly with respect to a student's work-life balance and how non-academic campus spaces play a role in affecting the personal and social emotional environment for students on campus. In my research, I uncovered a persistent state of anxiety resulting from a constant focus on the self, a world-view limited to the CMU work-home bubble and peer-induced stress-all of which contributed to a negatively heightened emotional environment. Non-academic spaces provided on campus, such as recreational, exercise, eating and green savannah and garden spaces, which aimed to serve as coping mechanisms, were found to be difficult to access on a regular basis for various reasons, such as scheduling issues, membership requirements, inconvenient visibility and further, some facilities were found to be overcrowded or had broken equipment. Hence, they did not successfully allow students daily opportunities to mentally suspend themselves from their anxiety. My project looks at transitional environments as new sites for short playful interactions. The Nirvana Play pole is a technologically enhanced environment platform that is embedded on existing infrastructure present within the landscape of a campus i.e. street light posts in outdoor pathways. It has been designed to currently run three applications-the Shadow, the Tower and the Swarm. It aims to provide students with daily opportunities to break away and mentally suspend their anxiety. It strives to contribute to the creation of a preferred emotional environment within the CMU bubble.


"Small states have learned in recent decades that capital accumulates where taxes are low; as a result, tax havens have increasingly competed for the attention of international investors with tax and regulatory concessions. Economically powerful countries including France, Britain, Japan, and the United States, however, wished to stanch the offshore flow of domestic taxable capital. Since 1998 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has attempted to impose common tax regulations on more than three dozen small states. In a fascinating book based on fieldwork and interviews in twenty-two countries in the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, J. C. Sharman shows how the struggle was decided in favor of the tax havens, which eventually avoided common regulation. No other book on tax havens is based on such extensive fieldwork, and no other author has had access to so many of the key decision makers who played roles in the conflict between onshore and offshore Sharman suggests that microstates succeeded in their struggle with great powers because of their astute deployment of reputation and effective rhetorical self-positioning. In effect, they persuaded a transnational audience that the OECD was being untrue to its own values by engaging in a hypocritical, bullying exercise inimical to free competition."


We have analyzed the pattern of core histone acetylation across 250 kb of the telomeric region of the short arm of human chromosome 16. This gene-dense region, which includes the α-globin genes and their regulatory elements embedded within widely expressed genes, shows marked differences in histone acetylation between erythroid and non-erythroid cells. In non-erythroid cells, there was a uniform 2- to 3-fold enrichment of acetylated histones, compared with heterochromatin, across the entire region. In erythroid cells, an ≈100-kb segment of chromatin encompassing the α genes and their remote major regulatory element was highly enriched in histone H4 acetylated at Lys-5. Other lysines in the N-terminal tail of histone H4 showed intermediate and variable levels of enrichment. Similar broad segments of erythroid-specific histone acetylation were found in the corresponding syntenic regions containing the mouse and chicken α-globin gene clusters. The borders of these regions of acetylation are located in similar positions in all three species, and a sharply defined 3′ boundary coincides with the previously identified breakpoint in conserved synteny between these species. We have therefore demonstrated that an erythroid-specific domain of acetylation has been conserved across several species, encompassing not only the α-globin genes but also a neighboring widely expressed gene. These results contrast with those at other clusters and demonstrate that not all genes are organized into discrete regulatory domains.


The proposition that "housing prices can't continue to outpace growth in household income" (Wall Street Journal; July 25, 2002) is the received wisdom among many housing-market observers. More formally, many in the housing literature argue that house prices and income are cointegrated. In this paper, I show that the data do not support this view. Standard tests using 27 years of national-level data do not find evidence of cointegration. However, it is known that tests for cointegration have low power, especially in small samples. I use panel-data tests for cointegration that have been shown to be more powerful than their standard time-series counterparts to test for cointegration in a panel of 95 metro areas over 23 years. Using a bootstrap approach to allow for cross-correlations in city-level house-price shocks, I show that even these more powerful tests do not reject the hypothesis of no cointegration. Thus the error-correction specification for house prices and income commonly found in the literature may be inappropriate.


We review in historical order the key contributions to the development of the theory of diffractions. The work of Grimaldi, Huygens and Young provides the first part of this story, giving an understanding of diffraction and interference phenomena. Huygens was able to explain the laws of reflection and refraction, but lacked a deeper understanding of interference. This was provided by Young who used it to show how diffraction could arise from the interference of two waves. Fresnel, Helmholtz and Kirchhoff chose a different path and developed a full mathematical expression of Huygens' principle, incorporating wave phase and interference. Sommerfeld and his students were able to reformulate the Huygens-Helmholtz-Kirchhoff integral as the sum of an incident geometrical-optics wave and a diffraction integral, which is interpretable as the contribution of the diffracted rays from the boundary. From our modern vantage point, this provides a rather pleasing analogy to Young's early attempts at a theory of diffraction, using just two rays. A full ray-theoretical theory of diffraction, the Geometrical Theory of Diffraction, was given by Keller and extended by Klem-Musatov and Aizenberg to the case of seismic diffraction analysis.


Indicators provide a signal to decision makers by indicating whether, and to what extent, a variable of interest has changed. They can be used at all levels of the results framework from inputs to impacts, and should be linked to the programme's theory of change. Most important at the lower levels of the causal chain are monitoring indicators such as inputs (e.g., immunization kits supplied), activities (e.g., immunization days held) and outputs (e.g., clinics built). For higher-level indicators of outcomes and impact, however, monitoring tells us what has happened but not why it happened. To understand this, impact evaluation must be used to increase our understanding of the factors behind achieving or not achieving the goal.


Family planning services represent one of the most common managed care services, particularly in the case of Medicaid. In 1986, Congress enacted legislation exempting family planning services from mandatory managed care requirements. The effect of this legislation was to permit beneficiaries enrolled in mandatory managed care plans to continue to obtain family planning benefits from the providers of their choice, regardless of the providers' network status. The purpose of the law was to assure that managed care would not impede individuals' access to benefits. Subsequent experiences surrounding implementation of this provision indicated that the Health Care Financing Administration failed either to define the scope of the exemption or to provide guidance to states regarding the various issues that would have to be resolved in exempting certain primary care services from mandatory managed care. States, in turn, developed working definitions of exempt family planning services that omitted treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and also delegated to their managed care contractors the responsibility to design implementation and payment arrangements. This systematic failure to articulate the scope and functional elements of the exemption consequently led to nonpayment of providers, and ultimately, to denial of care in some cases. Moreover, plans and community providers alike relied on the exemption to justify their failure to come to grips with the requirements and challenges of managed care. We conclude that exempting primary care services from managed care requirements may raise as many questions as it answers, and instead recommend that states, plans, and community providers focus on developing managed care systems that are responsive to patient needs.


The catalytic and durable electrode coating of ruthenium dioxide (RuO2), applied on nickel (Ni) substrates, is today utilized as electrocatalytic cathodes for hydrogen production, e.g., in the chlor-alkali process and alkaline water electrolysis. The drawback is, however, the sensitivity to reverse currents obtained during power shutdowns, e.g., at maintenance, where the RuO2-based electrodes can be severely damaged unless polarization rectifiers are employed. Through the material characterization techniques X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, we can now reveal that RuO2 coatings, when exposed to hydrogen evolution at industrially relevant conditions, transforms into ruthenium oxyhydroxide (RuO(OH)(2)). The study further shows that as the hydrogen evolution proceeds the formed RuO(OH)(2) reduces to metallic ruthenium (Ru).


Head injuries are the most common injuries sustained by children in motor vehicle crashes regardless of age, restraint and crash direction. Previous research identified the front seat back as relevant contact point associated with head injuries sustained by restrained rear seated child occupants. The objective of this study was to conduct a test series of headform impacts to seat backs to evaluate the energy management characteristics of relevant contact points for pediatric head injury. A total of eight seats were tested: two each of 2007 Ford Focus, Toyota Corolla, 2006 Volvo S40, and 2008 Volkswagen Golf. Five to six contact points were chosen for each unique seat model guided by contact locations determined from real world crashes. Each vehicle seat was rigidly mounted in the center track position with the seatback angle adjusted to 70 degrees above the horizontal. A 3.5 kg child pedestrian headform was fired at a velocity of 24 km/h (6.67 m/s) in accordance to FMVSS 201 at 22 degrees above the horizontal starting from 10 cm from the center of the target. Resultant acceleration and HIC (15 ms and 36 ms) were calculated for each impact. Within the class of small family vehicles, there was substantial variation in underlying seat structure across the locations of head impact identified in the case series resulting in a wide range of maximum resultant head acceleration - 27-165 g. Several impact locations, particularly those around the edge of seat back resulted in head acceleration greater than 80g used in regulatory tests. These data highlight the need to re-examine the current FMVSS 201, Occupant Protection in Interior Impact, to account for the typical impact locations of child occupants in crashes. In addition, further study is needed to understand the tolerance of the pediatric skull and brain to these types of impacts. Language: en