DNA polymerases are complex enzymes which bind primer-template DNA and subsequently either extend or excise the terminal nucleotide on the primer strand. In this study, a stopped-flow fluorescence anisotropy binding assay is combined with real-time measurements of a fluorescent adenine analogue (2-aminopurine) located at the 3'-primer terminus. Using this combined approach, the exact time course associated with protein binding, primer terminus unstacking, and base excision by the 3' --> 5' exonuclease of bacteriophage T4 (T4 pol) was examined. T4 pol binding and dissociation kinetics were found to obey simple kinetics, with identical on rates (kon = 4.6 x 10(8) M-1 s-1) and off rates (koff = 9.3 s-1) for both single-stranded primers and double-stranded primer-templates (at 100 microM Mg2+). Although the time course for T4 pol-DNA association and dissociation obeyed simple kinetics, at suboptimal Mg2+ concentrations (e.g., 100 microM), non-first-order sigmoidal kinetics were observed for the base-unstacking reaction of the primer terminus in double-stranded primer-templates. The observed sigmoidal kinetics for base unstacking demonstrate that T4 pol is a hysteretic enzyme [Frieden, C. (1970) J. Biol. Chem. 245, 5788-5799] and must exist in two DNA bound conformations which differ greatly in base-unstacking properties. A Mg2+-dependent time lag of 10 ms is observed between primer-template binding and the beginning of the unstacking transition, which is 50% complete at 22 +/- 1 ms after addition of 100 microM Mg2+. Following the hysteretic lag, a simple first-order primer terminus unstacking rate of 130 s-1 is resolved, which is protein and Mg2+ concentration-independent. For the processing of single-stranded primers, all kinetic complexity is lost, and T4 pol binding and primer end base-unstacking kinetics can be superimposed. These data reveal that the kinetic processing of double-stranded primer-template DNA by T4 pol is much more complex than that of single-stranded primers, and suggest that the intrinsic "switching rate" between the polymerase and exonuclease sites may be much faster than previously proposed.


BACKGROUND
Advanced systemic mastocytosis comprises rare hematologic neoplasms that are associated with a poor prognosis and lack effective treatment options. The multikinase inhibitor midostaurin inhibits KIT D816V, a primary driver of disease pathogenesis.

METHODS
We conducted an open-label study of oral midostaurin at a dose of 100 mg twice daily in 116 patients, of whom 89 with mastocytosis-related organ damage were eligible for inclusion in the primary efficacy population; 16 had aggressive systemic mastocytosis, 57 had systemic mastocytosis with an associated hematologic neoplasm, and 16 had mast-cell leukemia. The primary outcome was the best overall response.

RESULTS
The overall response rate was 60% (95% confidence interval [CI], 49 to 70); 45% of the patients had a major response, which was defined as complete resolution of at least one type of mastocytosis-related organ damage. Response rates were similar regardless of the subtype of advanced systemic mastocytosis, KIT mutation status, or exposure to previous therapy. The median best percentage changes in bone marrow mast-cell burden and serum tryptase level were -59% and -58%, respectively. The median overall survival was 28.7 months, and the median progression-free survival was 14.1 months. Among the 16 patients with mast-cell leukemia, the median overall survival was 9.4 months (95% CI, 7.5 to not estimated). Dose reduction owing to toxic effects occurred in 56% of the patients; re-escalation to the starting dose was feasible in 32% of those patients. The most frequent adverse events were low-grade nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. New or worsening grade 3 or 4 neutropenia, anemia, and thrombocytopenia occurred in 24%, 41%, and 29% of the patients, respectively, mostly in those with preexisting cytopenias.

CONCLUSIONS
In this open-label study, midostaurin showed efficacy in patients with advanced systemic mastocytosis, including the highly fatal variant mast-cell leukemia. (Funded by Novartis Pharmaceuticals and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00782067.).


This revealing memoir by Aldo Rossi (1937--1997), one of the most visible and controversial figures ever on the international architecture scene, intermingles discussions of Rossi's architectural projects -- including the major literary and artistic influences on his work -- with his personal history. Drawn from notebooks Rossi kept beginning in 1971, these ruminations and reflections range from his obsession with theater to his concept of architecture as ritual. The book originally appeared as one of the landmark titles in the MIT Press's Oppositions Books series, but has been out of print for many years. This newly issued paperback reprint includes illustrations -- photographs, evocative images, and a set of drawings of Rossi's major architectural projects prepared particularly for this publication -- selected by the author himself to augment the text.


The main objective of the paper is to identify the appropriate temporal scale for modeling the behavior of rainwater harvesting tanks in relation to the purpose they are built for, i.e., water saving, stormwater retention potential, etc. A tank water balance model coupled with a specific procedure to determine long-term series of rainfall (tank inflow) and toilet flushes (tank outflow) at different daily and sub-daily resolution timescales was developed. The model was applied to a household case study for which detailed water demand data are available from measurements. Simulations show that the daily scale may be reliably chosen to evaluate the tank water saving efficiency. In contrast, sub-daily resolutions (at least the hourly time step) are needed for the evaluation of the tank retention efficiency to limit inaccuracies, especially for small tanks and for high values of the water demand. Moreover, preliminary results at the 5 min time step show that rainwater tanks can help in reducing the rainfall intensity peak, basically depending on the tank storage and on the rainfall event characteristics.


A brain-computer interface (BCI) establishes a direct output channel between the human brain and external devices. BCIs infer user intent via direct measures of brain activity and thus enable communication and control without movement. This book, authored by experts in the field, provides an accessible introduction to the neurophysiological and signal-processing background required for BCI, presents state-of-the-art non-invasive and invasive approaches, gives an overview of current hardware and software solutions, and reviews the most interesting as well as new, emerging BCI applications. The book is intended not only for students and young researchers, but also for newcomers and other readers from diverse backgrounds keen to learn about this vital scientific endeavour.


Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being deployed in high-stakes domains, such as disaster relief and radiology, to aid practitioners during the decision-making process. Explainable AI techniques have been developed and deployed to provide users insights into why the AI made certain predictions. However, recent research suggests that these techniques may confuse or mislead users. We conducted a series of two studies to uncover strategies that humans use to explain decisions and then understand how those explanation strategies impact visual decision-making. In our first study, we elicit explanations from humans when assessing and localizing damaged buildings after natural disasters from satellite imagery and identify four core explanation strategies that humans employed. We then follow up by studying the impact of these explanation strategies by framing the explanations from Study 1 as if they were generated by AI and showing them to a different set of decision-makers performing the same task. We provide initial insights on how causal explanation strategies improve humans' accuracy and calibrate humans' reliance on AI when the AI is incorrect. However, we also find that causal explanation strategies may lead to incorrect rationalizations when AI presents a correct assessment with incorrect localization. We explore the implications of our findings for the design of human-centered explainable AI and address directions for future work.


Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of a science-based environmental communication campaign at a university dining hall. The impacts are assessed in terms of student attitudes toward sustainability, food consumption choices and perceptions and understanding of the campaign and the information it communicated.

Design/methodology/approach

A communication campaign was designed to convey the water footprint of food entrees available at a university dining hall. This campaign was tested during a three-week field experiment in which students at the dining hall were exposed to information about the sustainability of their food. To measure behavior and attitude change, sales and production data were collected before, during and after the campaign, and pre- and post-test surveys were administered. To better understand perceptions, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with undergraduate students who frequented the dining hall.

Findings

Consumption patterns did not change significantly as a result of the campaign, and students' attitude scores actually became slightly less positive toward choosing low water footprint foods. Interview data helped explain these results by showing that the ability and desire of students to choose sustainable food were overwhelmed by convenience and time pressures; other food attributes often outweighed sustainability; limited food source information could not verify the benefits of sustainable food; and the science of water footprints was disconnected from students' subjective concepts of sustainability.

Originality/value

This paper empirically examines how students understand and interpret an environmental change campaign focused on sustainable food. It addresses an important gap in the literature by augmenting experimental and survey results with in-depth interview data, which help explain the often ineffective outcomes of behavior change campaigns. The research was conducted in the novel setting of a university dining hall.


BACKGROUND
In an effort to determine illness factors associated with criminality among bipolar patients, we identified bipolar arrestees housed in the psychiatric division of the Los Angeles County Jail who had a history of psychiatric treatment in the Los Angeles County community mental health system.

METHOD
Los Angeles County's computerized management information system was utilized to retrospectively identify all inmates evaluated over a 7-month period from July 1999 to Jan. 2000 with a DSM-IV diagnosis of bipolar I disorder, their symptoms at time of arrest, and the nature of community treatment preceding arrest. Criminal history was assessed using Sheriff's Department legal records. Demographic and clinical characteristics of these inmates were compared with characteristics present in a group of hospitalized bipolar patients without a history of arrest in Los Angeles County.

RESULTS
Of the 66 inmates identified as having a clear diagnosis of bipolar disorder with previous community treatment in the Los Angeles County Mental Health system, the majority were manic (49/66, 74.2%) and psychotic (39/66, 59%) at time of arrest. Manic arrestees were recently released from community inpatient treatment and most were not involved in outpatient treatment postdischarge. The bipolar inmates had significantly higher rates of comorbid substance abuse than did the hospitalized bipolar patients without an arrest history (75.8% [50/66]) vs. 18.5% [10/54]).

CONCLUSIONS
The results of this study suggest that manic symptoms place bipolar patients at significant risk for criminal offending and arrest. Intensive treatment intervention by the community mental health and criminal justice system may be needed, particularly in the immediate postmanic hospitalization period, in order to prevent incarceration of patients with bipolar disorder.


Armenia and Georgia are taking the climate change agenda seriously and contributing to efforts for mitigating global climate change through various ways, including preparation of low-carbon development strategies for their future economic growth. The improvement of energy efficiency is one of the key elements of the low-carbon development strategies. This study develops a methodology to estimate a marginal abatement cost curve for energy efficiency measures and applies it to the building sector in both countries. The study finds that among the various energy efficiency measures considered, the replacement of energy inefficient lightbulbs (incandescent lamps) with efficient lightbulbs is the most cost-effective measure in saving energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector. Most energy efficiency improvement options considered in the study would produce net economic benefits even if the value of reduced carbon is not taken into account.


The threat of climate change may be the greatest social and environmental
challenge of our time. Yet if the increase in warming is to be stabilised, then a
reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is needed. Sink technologies
such as ocean fertilisation claim to do this by stimulating phytoplankton to grow
into massive blooms, thereby drawing down large amounts of CO2 from the
atmosphere into the deep ocean. But the science is unproven and concerns have
been raised, not only about its feasibility, but also the environmental and legal
implications. This thesis examines the process of ocean fertilisation and the
capacity and effectiveness of current international and domestic legal regimes to
regulate it. The science and feasibility of ocean fertilisation, primarily as a carbon
mitigation measure, but also for carbon trading and seafood production, were
considered. Three case studies were used as models to test how each legal
instrument could be applied to the selected criteria to measure either capacity or
effectiveness. Criteria were drawn from two critical areas of concern — the
protection of the environment and enforcement. The research established that
current Australian domestic law would most likely have adequate checks and
balances to regulate ocean fertilisation activities within Australia's exclusive
economic zone and territorial waters, with the exception of some external
territories where compliance and enforcement may be problematic. The
international law was found to be less effective; the main concern was the use of
flags of convenience to bypass regulation on the high seas. Areas of conflict
were found, particularly between ocean fertilisation for scientific research and
commercial purposes. While there are no existing international legal instruments
for ocean fertilisation generally, there is a framework for the assessment of ocean
fertilisation for scientific research, leaving the future of commercial ocean
fertilisation operations still undetermined. A model for the development of a
new legal instrument to regulate ocean fertilisation activities, incorporating both
research and commercial applications, was suggested.


International Economics shows in the field of import tariff analysis that for small open economies the optimum import tariff is zero, while for a large economy the welfare-maximizing import tariff is given by 1/E' where E' is the foreign supply elasticity. This result, however, no longer holds if there is foreign direct investment in the respective export sector abroad. The higher the share of outward cumulated FDI in the foreign export sector is, the higher the dampening effect on the traditional optimum import tariff. As cumulated outward FDI has become rather important in the case of US and EU FDI in China, Japan, India and other countries, it is important to reconsider optimum import tariffs. It is argued that outward FDI could also affect optimum import tariffs through a macroeconomic channel, namely the effect of changes in net income from abroad. Since the optimum tariff will affect the real exchange rate, FDI in turn will be affected by the tariff policy – in line with the FROOT/STEIN argument on the real exchange rate affecting international FDI inflows and FDI outflows, respectively. Moreover, both outward FDI in the tradable and non-tradable sectors are relevant. In the US-China tariff conflict under President Trump, the FDI-related aspects have been ignored – and similarly in the UK with respect to No-Deal tariffs vis-a-vis the EU27 - so that import tariffs imposed/announced in several sectors are too high.


Rac1 binds to mTOR, influencing the localization and activity of both mTORC1 and mTORC2. The serine and threonine kinase mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), which acts as a component of two different complexes (mTORC1 and mTORC2) that have distinct functions and downstream targets, coordinates signals from growth factors with information about nutrient and energy status to regulate cell size and proliferation. Using cells derived from transgenic mice in which the Rho-family small guanosine triphosphatase (GTPase) Rac1 could be conditionally deleted, Saci et al. determined that loss of Rac1 led to a decrease in cell size [assessed in mouse embryonic fibroblasts and T and B lymphocytes]. Further analysis revealed that Rac1 deletion or knockdown led to a decrease in the serum-stimulated phosphorylation of both mTORC1 and mTORC2 targets. Phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)–Akt signaling can activate mTORC1; however, pharmacological analysis indicated that the effects of Rac1 on phosphorylation of mTORC1 targets were independent of PI3K; moreover, pharmacological and mutational analyses indicated that they were also independent of Rac1 binding to GTP. Immunofluorescence analysis revealed colocalization of Rac1 with mTOR and components of both mTORC1 (Raptor) and mTORC2 (Rictor and Sin1) and indicated that Rac1 loss led to mTOR mislocalization. A combination of mutational analysis, immunoprecipitation, and GST pull-down assays indicated that Rac1 associated with mTOR, as well as with Raptor and Rictor, and that its interaction with both complexes was independent of its GTP-binding status. Deletion of Rac2, which differs from Rac1 only in the C terminus, failed to affect cell size. Rac2 showed little interaction with mTORC proteins compared with Rac1, an observation echoed by analyses with biotinylated peptides corresponding to the C-terminal 10 amino acids of Rac1 or Rac2. The Rac1 peptide bound to mTOR that had been purified after disruption of the mTORC1 and mTORC2 complexes. The authors thus conclude that Rac1 binds directly to mTOR, thereby directing its localization and allowing it to participate in the regulation of both mTORC1 and mTORC2 activity. A. Saci, L. C. Cantley, C. L. Carpenter, Rac1 regulates the activity of mTORC1 and mTORC2 and controls cellular size. Mol. Cell 42, 50–61 (2011). [Online Journal]


As single-chip systems are predicted to soon contain over a billion transistors, design methodologies are evolving dramatically to account for the fast evolution of technologies and product properties. Novel methodologies feature the exploration of design alternatives early in development, the support for IPs, and early error detection – all with a decreasing time-to-market. In order to accommodate these product complexities and development needs, the modeling levels at which designers are working have quickly changed, as development at higher levels of abstraction allows for faster simulations of system models and earlier estimates of system performance while considering design trade-offs. Recent design advancements to exploit instruction-level parallelism on single-processor computer systems have become exceedingly complex, and modern applications are presenting an increasing potential to be partitioned and parallelized at the thread level. The new Single-Chip, Message-Passing (SCMP) parallel computer is a tightly coupled mesh of processing nodes that is designed to exploit thread-level parallelism as efficiently as possible. By minimizing the latency of communication among processors, memory access time, and the time for context switching, the system designer will undoubtedly observe an overall performance increase. This study presents in-depth evaluations and quantitative analyses of various design and performance aspects of SCMP through the development of abstract hardware models by following a formalized, well-defined methodology. The performance evaluations are taken through benchmark simulation while taking into account system-level communication and synchronization among nodes as well as node-level timing and interaction amongst node components. Through the exploration of alternatives and optimization of the components within the SCMP models, maximum system performance in the hardware implementation can be achieved.


Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have recently been applied to graph learning tasks and achieved state-of-the-art (SOTA) results. However, many competitive methods run GNNs multiple times with subgraph extraction and customized labeling to capture information that is hard for normal GNNs to learn. Such operations are time-consuming and do not scale to large graphs. In this paper, we propose an efficient GNN framework called Geodesic GNN (GDGNN) that requires only one GNN run and injects conditional relationships between nodes into the model without labeling. This strategy effectively reduces the runtime of subgraph methods. Specifically, we view the shortest paths between two nodes as the spatial graph context of the neighborhood around them. The GNN embeddings of nodes on the shortest paths are used to generate geodesic representations. Conditioned on the geodesic representations, GDGNN can generate node, link, and graph representations that carry much richer structural information than plain GNNs. We theoretically prove that GDGNN is more powerful than plain GNNs. We present experimental results to show that GDGNN achieves highly competitive performance with SOTA GNN models on various graph learning tasks while taking significantly less time.


This study investigates a linguistic measure known as idea density (ID) calculated from two different genres of written language samples. ID has been previously used in research pertaining to language and aging and has been shown to have predictive validity for cognitive decline and severity of Alzheimer's neuropathy (e.g. Snowden et al., 1996); however, little is known about ID, including how it may differ between different types of language genres and how it correlates with vocabulary and level of education. This study compares ID of narrative and expository texts generated by young adults to provide preliminary information regarding the relationship between genre type and ID. It also explores the relationship between ID and various measures of academic achievement and vocabulary. In this study, ID was calculated by the Computerized Propositional Density Rater version 5.1 (CPIDR 5.1) (Brown et al., 2012) software. The results of this study found mean ID for personal narrative texts to be significantly greater than mean ID for expository texts; however, results suggest little correlation between ID and education level or vocabulary skill. These results suggest that, as research utilizing ID continues to expand, researchers should consider the potential presence of a genre effect when determining methods for elicitation of a language sample for ID analysis. Results are in line with other literature suggesting that ID is measuring aspects of linguistic functioning separate from those used to attain academic success. A discussion of ID in relation to genre effects, cognitive reserve hypothesis, and implications for future research is included.


Financial advisors are continually faced with the challenge of evaluating the quality of financial investments. Previous research has indicated that even among researchers of financial markets, diverse views exist about the meaning of risk and its relationship to returns. A survey study of 265 financial advisors and planners was undertaken to develop a deeper understanding of how financial judgment is related to other characteristics of asset classes, particularly perceptions of their risks, returns and return/risk relationships. Risk-related dimensions included volatility, investment time horizon, performance predictability, knowledge level and overall perceived risk. Return-related dimensions included overall perceived return, return/risk ratio and one & ten year rate of return. The results indicated a strong correlation between perceived risk and return, consistent with finance theory. However, a more complex, curvilinear picture emerged with respect to the relationship between perceived risk and perceived return/risk. The findings suggest that among financial advisors, risk can take on a variety of meanings when the concept is applied to evaluating different asset classes.


Abstract Pseudin-2 is a cationic α-helical peptide that was first isolated from the skin of the paradoxical frog Pseudis paradoxa on the basis of its antimicrobial activity. We have investigated the insulin-releasing properties and cytotoxicity of the peptide, together with selected analogues with increased cationicity and hydrophobicity. At concentrations in the range 10-9–10-6 m, pseudin-2, and its [Lys18], [Phe8], and [d-Lys3,d-Lys10,d-Lys14] derivatives, stimulated insulin release from the BRIN-BD11 clonal β-cell line without increasing release of lactate dehydrogenase. The [Lys18] analogue was the most potent (46% increase in insulin release at 10-9 m) and the most effective (215% increase in insulin release at 10-6 m). The more cationic [Lys3,Lys10,Lys14] and [Lys3,Lys10,Lys14,Lys21] analogues lacked insulinotropic action and the more hydrophobic [Phe16] analogue was cytotoxic at concentrations ≥10-7 m. Pseudin-2 and [Lys18]-pseudin-2 had no effect on intracellular calcium concentrations and stimulated insulin release in the absence of external calcium. [Lys18]-pseudin-2 (10-8 m) stimulated insulin release in the presence of diazoxide and verapamil. Our results demonstrate that pseudin-2 stimulates insulin secretion from BRIN-BD11 cells by a mechanism involving Ca2+-independent pathways and identify [Lys18]-pseudin-2 as a peptide that may have potential for development as a therapeutically valuable insulinotropic agent for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.


Climate change has been becoming a major order of business of all including researchers and academics. This is known that global, national and local organizations, institutions and even the individuals are partaking into the issues with their own perspectives and skills of negotiations. Despite the series of international efforts and attempts, there are also a series of national concerns, efforts and attempts in combating against the effects of global climate change. This paper is an attempt to draw on the overview of contexts and concerns of international communities for combating global climate change and its discursive influence in national policy discourses. Moreover, the paper attempts to assess the local socio-cultural discourses and dynamics of climate change in relation to global and national discourses. Finally the paper highlights on how global and local climate change knowledge networks and epistemic communities either from political processes or the socio-economic fabrics are interrelated and determinant to each other. Keywords : climate change; discourses; embeddeness; dynamics; global; local DOI: 10.3126/dsaj.v4i0.4518 Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol.4 2010 pp.143-180


Objectives To identify patient characteristics and surgical factors associated with patient-reported outcomes over 5 years following primary total hip replacement (THR). Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Seven hospitals across England and Scotland. Participants 1431 primary hip replacements for osteoarthritis. Main outcome measures The Oxford Hip Score (OHS) was collected preoperatively and each year up to 5 years postoperatively. Repeated measures such as linear regression modelling are used to identify patient and surgical predictors of outcome and describe trends over time. Results The majority of patients demonstrated substantial improvement in pain/function in the first year after surgery—between 1 and 5 years follow-up, there was neither further improvement nor decline. The strongest determinant of attained postoperative OHS was the preoperative OHS—those with worse preoperative pain/function had worse postoperative pain/function. Other predictors with small but significant effects included: femoral component offset—women with an offset of 44 or more had better outcomes; age—compared to those aged 50–60, younger (age <50) and older patients (age >60) had worse outcome, increasing body mass index (BMI), more coexisting diseases and worse Short Form 36 mental health (MH) was related to worse postoperative pain/function. Assessment of change in OHS between preoperative and postoperative assessments revealed that patients achieved substantial and clinically relevant symptomatic improvement (change), regardless of variation in these patient and surgical factors. Conclusions Patients received substantial benefit from surgery, regardless of their preoperative assessments and surgical characteristics (baseline pain/function, age, BMI, comorbidities, MH and femoral component offset). Further research is needed to identify other factors that can improve our ability to identify patients at risk of poor outcomes from THR surgery.


Large-scale Internet applications, such as content distribution networks, are deployed across multiple datacenters and consume massive amounts of electricity. To provide uniformly low access latencies, these datacenters are geographically distributed and the deployment size at each location reflects the regional demand for the application. Consequently, an application's environmental impact can vary significantly depending on the geographical distribution of end-users, as electricity cost and carbon footprint per watt is location specific. In this paper, we describe FORTE: Flow Optimization based framework for request-Routing and Traffic Engineering. FORTE dynamically controls the fraction of user traffic directed to each datacenter in response to changes in both request workload and carbon footprint. It allows an operator to navigate the three-way tradeoff between access latency, carbon footprint, and electricity costs and to determine an optimal datacenter upgrade plan in response to increases in traffic load. We use FORTE to show that carbon taxes or credits are impractical in incentivizing carbon output reduction by providers of large-scale Internet applications. However, they can reduce carbon emissions by 10% without increasing the mean latency nor the electricity bill.


Space elevators. Internet-enabled contact lenses. Cars that fly by floating on magnetic fields. This is the stuff of science fictionits also daily life in the year 2100.Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku details the developments in computer technology, artificial intelligence, medicine, space travel, and more, that are poised to happen over the next hundred years. He also considers how these inventions will affect the world economy, addressing the key questions: Who will have jobs? Which nations will prosper? Kaku interviews three hundred of the worlds top scientistsworking in their labs on astonishing prototypes. He also takes into account the rigorous scientific principles that regulate how quickly, how safely, and how far technologies can advance. In Physics of the Future, Kaku forecasts a century of earthshaking advances in technology that could make even the last centuries leaps and bounds seem insignificant.


Production machine engineering involves multiple engineering disciplines defining together the configuration of each machine. Each of these disciplines provides an engineering model, which influences engineering models from other disciplines and is itself influenced by other engineering models. Therefore, building a valid configuration of a production machine requires the reconciliation of engineering models of all involved engineering disciplines.
Up to now, execution of model reconciliations by model transformation systems was mainly considered for desktop model transformation environments. The analysis of engineering processes and customer applications of production machines revealed that the industrial application of model transformations requires the execution of the same model transformation specification on different execution environments depending on the initiator of the model reconciliation. An electrical engineer runs the model transformation on his desktop between locally installed engineering applications for small organizations or on his field programming device for commissioning scenarios. For complex systems and bigger organizations, model transformations are executed on an enterprise product lifecycle management (PLM) server. A machine operator triggers model transformations on the real-time system of an automation controller for on-site reconfigurable machines, e.g. by physically connecting a modular device to a production machine.
To tackle this scenario, this thesis presents a new application of the model driven architecture (MDA), which transforms a platform independent model transformation specifications (PIM-MT) to platform specific model transformation specifications (PSM-MT) by higher order transformations (HOT). For industrial usage, both the platform independent transformation specification and the platform specific execution reuse proven existing technology which is tailored and extended where needed. This allows for the stepwise introduction of model transformation technology in existing engineering and technology environments based on a classification scheme which was developed as part of this thesis. For the PIM-MT specification, the strict handling of references between engineering model elements from current model transformation specifications, which does not fit well the requirements of engineering models with temporarily violate references within the engineering workflow, was replaced by a weaker reference handling based on domain specific reference designators. An existing model transformation specification, the ATL language, has been tailored for PIM-MT specifications. For the PSM-MT desktop execution, the ATL desktop model transformation engine was reused. XSL transformations were adapted for enterprise model transformations executed on PLM servers. A PSM-MT engine for real-time IEC 61131 programmable logic controllers was developed as part of this thesis.
With the results of this thesis it is now possible to build a customized engineering environment as an extension of the existing infrastructure of a machine builder, which automates the configuration of production machines by using model transformations generated from a common platform independent specification on multiple execution platforms.


In a period of increased engagement with higher education in Australia, participation rates for low socio economic status (low-SES) students remains static. The national response in the wake of the Bradley Review into Higher Education (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008) has seen student aspirations emerge as central to policy and a critical site of action. This response is situated within a fluid national context where funding for social inclusion initiatives for higher education is not currently planned beyond 2015. Contributing to an uncertain future is an increasingly loaded national debate about the impact of increased participation in higher education on tertiary quality and an imminent federal election. In this paper, I provide an overview of perspectives on student aspirations underpinning current theory and programs discussed in the literature, with emphasis on current student outreach. From this overview, I arrive at a perspective grounded in critical theory that is based on the writing of Appadurai (2004) and the notion of aspirations as a navigational and cultural capacity. Implications for how this understanding of student aspirations will assist the planning and development of effective interventions in an uncertain future will be discussed.


For many it has been axiomatic that liberal democratic governments and the laws they impose must be "secular"; this assumption pervades both constitutional law and much political theory. But there are indications that this secular "paradigm of legitimacy" is losing its grip; thus, while urging a rehabilitation of secularism, Rajeev Bhargava suggests that "[o]nly someone with blinkered vision would deny the crisis of secularism." This essay considers that crisis. Part I of the essay discusses the nature of a "paradigm of legitimacy." Part II outlines the strategies of assimilation and marginalization that historically have supported such paradigms and considers the paradigm shifts that can occur when these strategies prove ineffective. Part III illustrates these observations by reviewing the process by which, beginning in the fourth century, a Christian paradigm replaced an earlier Roman one and then in turn declined in favor of a more secular view. Part IV, the longest in the essay, discusses the rise of the secular paradigm, the strategies that have supported it, and the increasing futility of those strategies that have led to the present distress.


The discipline of parallelization in the manifold of all possible measurement results is shown to be responsible for the existence of all quantum correlations, with the upper bound on their strength stemming from the maximum of possible torsion within all norm-composing parallelizable manifolds. A profound interplay is thus uncovered between the existence and strength of quantum correlations and the parallelizability of the spheres S^0, S^1, S^3, and S^7 necessitated by the four real division algebras. In particular, parallelization within a unit 3-sphere is shown to be responsible for the existence of EPR and Hardy type correlations, whereas that within a unit 7-sphere is shown to be responsible for the existence of all GHZ type correlations. Moreover, parallelizability in general is shown to be equivalent to the completeness criterion of EPR, in addition to necessitating the locality condition of Bell. It is therefore shown to predetermine both the local outcomes as well as the quantum correlations among the remote outcomes, dictated by the infinite factorizability of points within the spheres S^3 and S^7. The twin illusions of quantum entanglement and non-locality are thus shown to stem from the topologically incomplete accountings of the measurement results.


What does it mean for a generative AI model to be explainable? The emergent discipline of explainable AI (XAI) has made great strides in helping people understand discriminative models. Less attention has been paid to generative models that produce artifacts, rather than decisions, as output. Meanwhile, generative AI (GenAI) technologies are maturing and being applied to application domains such as software engineering. Using scenario-based design and question-driven XAI design approaches, we explore users' explainability needs for GenAI in three software engineering use cases: natural language to code, code translation, and code auto-completion. We conducted 9 workshops with 43 software engineers in which real examples from state-of-the-art generative AI models were used to elicit users' explainability needs. Drawing from prior work, we also propose 4 types of XAI features for GenAI for code and gathered additional design ideas from participants. Our work explores explainability needs for GenAI for code and demonstrates how human-centered approaches can drive the technical development of XAI in novel domains.


Background Quickness can be shown as whole body reaction time (WBRT) by measuring how quickly they can react for a stimulus. In addition, it is said that the onset timing of muscles contribute to stabilise joints and to prevent injury during the movement. Objective The purpose of this study is to clarify the correlation between WBRT and the onset timing of muscles during landing. Design Randomisation study. Setting Youth sports. Participants 15 healthy female college students volunteered in this study. Intervention WBRT was defined as the duration from light stimulus to the both feet apart from the floor. The onset timing of muscles were measured by bilateral landing from the 40 cm height box with the electromyography (EMG). EMG data were collected from vastus medialis (VM), vastus lateralis (VL), semimembranosus (SM) and biceps femoris (BF). The onset timing of the muscle was visually identified as the first point, which was the EMG amplitude of 100 ms after the start of landing movement that exceeded the mean baseline activity by three SD. The definition of the baseline was set as the EMG amplitude of the 100 ms after the toe-off from the box. Main outcome measurements The hypothesis was that there were the correlation between WBRT and the onset timing of muscles. Results The mean±SD of WBRT was 331.8±45.6 ms. VM onset timing during landing was 243.7±78.3 ms, VL was 259.6±75.5 ms, SM was 191.7±86.2 ms, BF was 237.5±73.8 ms. There were correlations between WBRT and SM and BF onset timings (p<0.05). Conclusion This study identified the correlation between WBRT and SM and BF onset timing. It might be possible to make SM and BF onset timing occur faster by reacting to certain stimulus faster.


Campylobacter jejuni has long been recognized as a main food-borne pathogen in many parts of the world. Natural reservoirs include a wide variety of domestic and wild birds and mammals, whose intestines offer a suitable biological niche for the survival and dissemination of the organism. Understanding the genetic basis of the biology and pathogenicity of C. jejuni is vital to prevent and control Campylobacter-associated infections. The recent progress in sequencing techniques has allowed for a rapid increase in our knowledge of the molecular biology and the genetic structures of Campylobacter. Single-molecule realtime (SMRT) sequencing, which goes beyond four-base sequencing, revealed the role of DNA methylation in modulating the biology and virulence of C. jejuni at the level of epigenetics. In this review, we will provide an up-to-date review on recent advances in understanding C. jejuni genomics, including structural features of genomes, genetic traits of virulence, population genetics, and epigenetics.


South Asian textiles have shaped British fashion and dress for centuries, from the fashionable chintzes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the silk and paisley Boteh patterns of the nineteenth century, to the orientalism of 1960s bohemian fashion. "British Asian Style" looks at the on-going importance of South Asian textiles to British culture and fashion, as styles move into the mainstream. Chapters by leading authors focus on contemporary British Asian designers, South Asian textile production and the presence of South Asian style in shops and urban spaces. Fully illustrated with a stunning array of images from the V&A's exceptional collections, alongside contextual and contemporary photographs from street fashion and the catwalk, "British Asian Style" is essential reading for anyone with an interest in fashion and textiles.


This popular text effectively combines a traditional case focus with clear and concise coverage of a wide range of up-to-date topics. Since most students will become businesspersons, the material is presented from the perspective of the professional non-lawyer.
This book offers the opportunity to learn key points of the law from the standpoint of a working professional. Unlike other books it does not get bogged down in the complexities of the law, but tries to focus, in a very straightforward manner, on the core legal concepts that will be most essential for the business manager to know.
Rather than conveying the material in the serious tone of many other legal environment books, the easy readability of this text, interjected with points of humor and levity, make it much easier for the key ideas to come across.


The objectives of this descriptive cross-sectional study were to assess the knowledge of the risk factors associated with, and detection methods of cervical cancer among female undergraduate students at Mangosuthu University of Technology. A total of 389 students were selected by stratified random sampling techniques. Participants' mean age was 20 years (SD=2). Results indicated that 51.2% students were currently involved in a sexual relationship, with 19.2% reporting two or more sexual partners in the past year. Less than half (42.9%) of the participants had heard of cervical cancer and of these, 26 (15.6%) did not know any risk factors for cervical cancer, while 96 (58.6%) of 164 participants who knew of risk factors, did not know that cervical cancer is preventable. One-hundred and sixty-three (41.9%) participants had heard about the Pap smear test. That the Pap smear test is used for detection or prevention of cervical cancer, was known to 62 (38%) of the respondents. Only 16 (9.8%) participants had had a Pap smear test. Among those who knew about the Pap smear test (n=136), 86 respondents did not have the test done mainly because of personal factors such as fear of the procedure, cultural or religious reasons, and were not ill (61.1%). Findings suggest low level of knowledge on cervical cancer and its risk factors and detection method among these female university students. The university should thus concentrate on developing policies on health education and promotion, particularly targeting preventable health conditions, eg. cervical cancer and strategies to prevent transmission of the human papillomavirus.


The Jamaican 1960s represented a critical phase in the island's political history. The era provoked a second round of decolonization politics as the culturally Eurocentric political class that won power in the first round, during the 1930s, encountered stiff opposition to its autocratic power, antiblack racism, and perceived accommodation to the island's dependency on the economic, cultural, and political institutions of the world system. A myriad of dissident organizations, personalities, and social forces challenged this dependency and rejected the unapologetic "coloniality of power" that defined political rule in Jamaica. However, despite success in discrediting this power, serious weaknesses—including disunity, belief in radical will, all-consuming preoccupation with taking power, and naïveté about the modern power arrayed against them—kept dissidents at bay, with little success in winning the majority of Jamaicans to their cause.


China, a country developing at unprecedented levels, has experienced drastic changes throughout its recent economic history. Of primary interest is the continuing development and improvement of the rural agricultural sector, with even the slightest changes in this sector having dramatic ripple effects on rural economies. Estimates of rural households involved in agricultural production range from 65 to 70 percent (de Brauw & Rozelle, 2008; Rozelle, Taylor, & de Brauw, 1999). Improvements in agricultural production therefore have a direct impact on the livelihood of rural households in China. Thus, of primary interest are the factors influencing the smallholder farmers' agricultural investment strategies to improve agricultural yields. Households involved in agricultural production can primarily improve their yields through the use of various agricultural improvements made available by ongoing agricultural research. Of utmost interest is the following question: If the returns to agricultural technologies, such as fertilizers, pesticides, genetically-modified seeds, and fixed land improvements, have had positive effects for agricultural households, then what constrains households from applying them? Due to the complexities of the household production decision, literature devoted to finding the answer to this question is limitless and spans almost all regions of the world. However, this analysis focuses on the barriers to investment, potential strategies used to overcome them, and their joint impacts on agricultural investment in rural China. Data in this analysis are cross-sectional, collected over a period of three years between 2006 and 2008 from rural villages within six provinces in China. This analysis is applied over Hunan, Yunnan, and Heilongjiang provinces, intended to capture effects on the investment decision that may differ by region. Households surveyed over the three years total to 4,178, with a total of 3,718 used in this analysis. Of these households, 3,347 (90%) were registered under agricultural hukou, with 3,269 (87.9%) involved in agricultural production during the year of 2008. Major contributions of this analysis stem from the joint assessment of four main factors that influence the household's agricultural investment decision. More specifically, the impacts of land tenure security, access to credit, education, and migration on agricultural investment are examined. Analysis of each of these four factors is conducted using a Heckman sample selection model across three surveyed provinces. Use of the Heckman model allows us to account for the existence of sample selection bias that exists between those farmers who choose to invest and those who do not. In the first stage of the Heckman model, impacts of each of the four core factors on the likelihood of agricultural investment are quantified. This is followed by a second stage examination of factors influencing the intensity of investment, conditional on the fact that the investment decision has been made. Preliminary findings indicate that each of the four core factors have an influential role on both the likelihood and intensity of investment across rural agricultural households. Across all provinces, agricultural households with more than 80 percent of their landholdings being rented in are less likely to invest. However, conditional on investments being made, these households will tend to invest more intensively than those farmers with a greater proportion of allocated land. Additionally, access to credit has a significant positive impact on both the likelihood and intensity of investment across all agricultural households. Lastly, impacts of education and migration have been mixed, with larger positive impacts noticed from remission income sent home from migrant household laborers. Given negative impacts of land tenure insecurity on the likelihood of investment, it is clear that more should be done to improve the security of rental contracts. The need for this is real and apparent, as nearly 88 percent of rental contracts had not set a clear duration of the lease, and so many rented plots of land are rented under insecure terms (Gao, et al., 2012). Additionally, given positive impacts of credit access on the likelihood and intensity of investment, expansions to the rural credit market could encourage further agricultural investment. Combined, policy improvements and expansions to the rural credit market will produce positive multiplier effects and thus help improve the rural economies within China.


This paper proposes the post-integration technology based on sub-pixel image registration and image fusion to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of remote sensing images without motion degradation caused by satellite vibration. A two-dimensional vibration system is set up to simulate satellite disturbance. Image sequences with different exposure times are captured using a high-speed CMOS camera. The displacement plots are compared with the motion data measured by the grating linear encoder. These plots indicate that the accuracy of the registration algorithm is better than 0.1 pixels. The sub-pixel image fusion shows an improvement in image quality, thus indicating that this technology is powerful for staring imaging systems in geostationary orbit.


Recent work examined five-year-old children's perceptual sensitivity to musical beat alignment. In this work, children watched pairs of videos of puppets drumming to music with simple or complex metre, where one puppet's drumming sounds (and movements) were synchronized with the beat of the music and the other drummed with incorrect tempo or phase. The videos were used to maintain children's interest in the task. Five-year-olds were better able to detect beat misalignments in simple than complex metre music. However, adults can perform poorly when attempting to detect misalignment of sound and movement in audiovisual tasks, so it is possible that the moving stimuli actually hindered children's performance. Here we compared children's sensitivity to beat misalignment in conditions with dynamic visual movement versus still (static) visual images. Eighty-four five-year-old children performed either the same task as described above or a task that employed identical auditory stimuli accompanied by a motionless picture of the puppet with the drum. There was a significant main effect of metre type, replicating the finding that five-year-olds are better able to detect beat misalignment in simple metre music. There was no main effect of visual condition. These results suggest that, given identical auditory information, children's ability to judge beat misalignment in this task is not affected by the presence or absence of dynamic visual stimuli. We conclude that at five years of age, children can tell if drumming is aligned to the musical beat when the music has simple metric structure.


The marine food web is considered to be a factor of key importance for the global carbon balance. The concept of the 'Biological Pump' refers to the mechanism by which CO2 fixed by photosynthesis is transferred to the deep ocean through biologically-driven processes, resulting in sequestration of carbon for a period of decades or longer. Stressors affecting the efficiency of the biological pump include water column stability, sea temperature, acidity, excessive nutrients inputs, overfishing, pollution and other anthropogenic changes. The aim of the EU-FP7 project OCEANCERTAIN is to reduce the uncertainties in our understanding of the impacts of these stressors on the mechanisms underlying the biological pump, and the resilience of coastal and marine stakeholders for the social-economic impacts of changes in the marine food web. Modelling, field sampling and stakeholder workshops are combined for three case studies in the Arctic, the Eastern Mediterranean and Patagonia. The central paradigm of the project is 'Consilience' referring to the integration of data, information and scientific knowledge from different domains and sources to achieve an added value surpassing that of the individual elements. A close collaboration between natural and social scientists, and software engineers is inherent to the concept of consilience. The project results are used to design a Decision-Support System (DSS) integrating scientific knowledge with data and stakeholder expertise, serving as platform for policy analysis. Consilience, and more in particular systems analysis, are the basis for the DSS architecture but by themselves these cannot solve all the practical and methodological issues encountered. A challenge for the project is the integration of the findings and knowledge of the behavioral and natural sciences in the DSS. A combination of three techniques is used to address the issue: a component-based architecture, meta-modelling to represent the biophysical processes described by the components, and fuzzy cognitive mapping to represent narrative scenarios derived from local knowledge.


Introduction Science is the coordination of fact with fact, fact with principle, and principle with principle. It depends on the rigorous use of words. Neither fact nor principle nor coordination can rise into full consciousness until phrased in unimpeachable terms. Unceasing attention to the use of words therefore represents a principal duty of every scientific investigator. Experience shows how hard it is, in a fluid science like geology, to hold technical words to constant, universally accepted definitions. The causes of this unrest are many: progress in the discovery of facts, progress in coordination, progress in interpretation or theory, and, one must add, the varying subjectivity, if not carelessness, of writers. Few geological topics are as far-reaching and profoundly important as rock metamorphism. Few have had, and are having, such increase of content, both empirical and theoretical. Invented eighty years ago, the words "metamorphic" and "metamorphism" are almost as old as scientific . . .


With the signing of the EU-ACP Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in January 2009, Uganda as a member of the ACP, should endeavour to re-strategize itself to benefit from the opportunities such trading blocks create through increased trade. Trade is likely to increase with EPA in place and this is likely to lead to biodiversity conservation challenges amidst the need for increased production. Uganda signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on 12th June 1992 and 8th September 1993 respectively. The objectives of CBD are the conservation of biodiversity; sustainable use of bio diversity; and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources. Although Government has made significant progress in achieving these objectives, balancing trade and biodiversity under EPA presents challenges. In this brief we focus on fresh fruits and vegetables production and suggest some trade options that would be beneficial under EPA and also ways on how to mitigate biodiversity loss. In addition, some key policy interventions that can lead to sustainable trade in fresh fruits and vegetables are recommended.


The core of classical economic analysis represented by William Petty and Adam Smith concentrated on the field of development economics. This classical footing of the study of development is different from the neoclassical perspective in two important respects: (a) it focuses on division of labor as the driving force of development, and (b) it emphasizes the role of the market (the "invisible hand") in exploiting productivity gains that are derived from division of labor. However these aspects have received little attention in the body of literature that represents the modern field of development economics — which largely represents the neoclassical application of marginalism. A notable exception is research that utilizes inframarginal analysis of individuals' networking decisions in an attempt to formalize the classical mechanisms that drive division of labor. This book is a first attempt to collect relevant key contributions and is intended for active researchers in the field of development economics.


In this series, 45 patients had 54 trapezial resection arthroplasties for carpometacarpal osteoarthritis, with nine of the patients having bilateral arthroplasties. A major slip of the abductor pollicis longus tendon was used as a sling, with the underlying flexor carpi radialis tendon as stabilizer. Palmaris longus tendon, when present (42 cases), and absorbable gelatin sponge, when palmaris was absent (12 cases), served as interpositional material. Review was done an average of 4.3 years (range, 1 to 11 years) after the procedure. The average space maintenance of resection site was 4.4 mm. This decreased to an average of 3.5 mm on the key pinch stress maneuver. Subjectively, the patients judged their results to be good to excellent in 49 instances (91%) and fair in 5 (9%).


Contemporary political analysis makes a distinction between politics that are secular in nature and politics that are religiously based. This article questions whether there is such a thing as secular politics. Firstly, it examines the roots of the secular/religious dichotomy in Western thought and concludes that it is the creation of particular intellectual developments in the West. And then it argues that modern politics is best viewed in terms of a number of "sacred projects" that are generated out of the supposedly secular nature of the modern West. There can be no real politics without such projects, only administration. Even liberalism, which prides itself on its secular nature, is a form of sacred project. Hence the idea that the modern West represents a progressive and secular politics, as opposed to the more backward religious politics of other parts of the world, is a fallacy. There are only competing sacred projects.


The rise of the use of mobile technologies in the world, such as smartphones and tablets, connected to mobile networks is changing old habits and creating new ways for the society to access information and interact with computer systems. Thus, traditional information systems are undergoing a process of adaptation to this new computing context. However, it is important to note that the characteristics of this new context are different. There are new features and, thereafter, new possibilities, as well as restrictions that did not exist before. Finally, the systems developed for this environment have different requirements and characteristics than the traditional information systems. For this reason, there is the need to reassess the current knowledge about the processes of planning and building for the development of systems in this new environment. One area in particular that demands such adaptation is software estimation. The estimation processes, in general, are based on characteristics of the systems, trying to quantify the complexity of implementing them. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to present a proposal for an estimation model for mobile applications, as well as discuss the applicability of traditional estimation models for the purpose of developing systems in the context of mobile computing. Hence, the main objective of this paper is to present an effort estimation model for mobile applications.


The issue of light-water reactor (LWR) safety has been the subject of a part-time, year-long study sponsored by the American Physical Society. The goal of the study was the assessment of some of the technical aspects of the safety of large light-water nuclear power reactors typical of present commercial practice in the Unted States. The report examines issues related to safe operation of LWRs; the research and development program responsible for establishing and enhancing safety; and the consequences of accidents for public health and welfare. The report in no way deals with the need for nuclear power or its benefits, and should not be considered as a net assessment of the risks versus the benefits of nuclear reactors. Since the risks of ecological impacts of other energy technologies are not addressed, no recommendations are made concerning the specific reactor program which should be followed in the immediate future. Among the areas covered in the report are primary pressure-vessel integrity; quality assurance; accident initiation from operator error, transients, and sabotage; the adequacy of present emergency core-cooling system designs; the calculation of long-term consequences to health of one particular low-probability accidental release of radioactivity; and the experimental and calculational (computer-code-development) aspects of the present reactor safety research program. A number of recommendations are contained with the report, mainly addressed to ways in which the safety of the present LWRs can be improved or better understood.


Introduction: Although the antioxidant and antibacterial properties of Labiatae herbs are well known, the effects of different drying methods are yet to be determined. In this study, the antioxidant and antibacterial properties of fresh and oven-dried herbs of oregano, marjoram, rosemary, sage, basil, thyme, peppermint, and spearmint were investigated, in comparison with commercial brands of dried herbs. Methods: Antioxidant properties of total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, caffeoylquinic acid content, free radical scavenging activity, and ferric reducing power were assessed using the Folin-Ciocalteu, aluminium chloride, molybdate, DPPH radical scavenging, and potassium ferricyanide assays, respectively. Antibacterial properties were assessed using the disc-diffusion assay based on minimum inhibitory dose (MID). Bacteria tested were Gram-negative Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Salmonella typhi, and Gram-positive Bacillus cereus, Micrococcus luteus, and Staphylococcus aureus. The three drying treatments were oven drying at 50°C (OD 50 ), oven drying at 80°C (OD 80 ), and oven drying at 50°C with microwave pre-treatment (MOD 50 ). Results: Fresh and commercial rosemary, and oven-dried oregano had the strongest antioxidant properties. Generally, MOD 50 herbs had the strongest antioxidant properties followed by OD 50 and OD 80 herbs. Oven-dried rosemary had lower phenolic content and antioxidant activity than commercial rosemary, while oven-dried oregano, spearmint, thyme, peppermint, and basil had higher values. All herbs showed no antibacterial activity against Gram-negative E. coli, P. aeruginosa, and S. typhi. Rosemary, sage, peppermint, and spearmint inhibited the growth of Gram-positive B. cereus, M. luteus, and S. aureus. Compared to green and black teas of Camellia sinensis, rosemary and sage have stronger antibacterial properties. Conclusion: Labiatae herbs can have enhanced antioxidant and antibacterial effects when used in combination. Further research is needed to study the synergistic behaviour of these herbs.


The results of magnetic and structural investigations of binary and complex alloyed iron-chromium (Fe-Cr)-based high-damping alloys (HDA) have been generalized on the basis of recent data obtained with the authors' participation. Alloys have been tested in the high damping state as well as in the state with a strongly suppressed intrinsic damping capacity. An internal friction method, different mechanical tests, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray scattering, diffraction and refraction of neutrons in the range of small angles, magnetic hysteresis loops, and magnetostriction investigations have all been used. The combination of the last three methods allows us to reveal information concerning magnetic domain structure in the bulk samples. Relaxation and hysteresis internal friction effects in applied magnetic fields allow us to obtain information about interstitial redistributions and dislocation mobility. The increase of annealing temperature of cold-worked alloys leads to the nonmonotonic increase of damping capacity due to magnetomechanical damping (MMD). Simultaneously, a strong structural modification as well as modifications of the magnetic domain structure take place. For a reasonable interpretation of the high intrinsic damping capacity, both aforementioned structures have to be considered. The magnetic domain structure of Fe-Cr HDAs fundamentally differs in the high damping state and after heat treatment which decreases damping capacity. A good correlation between average magnetic domain size in the bulk of material (obtained by the neutron refraction method) and the specific damping capacity (Ψ) has been obtained. This correlation represents a maximum for Ψ in the average domain size of about 8 μm for different binary and additionally alloyed Fe-Cr alloys. This domain structure may be realized for various alloys with the help of different heat treatments. Therefore the damping capacity of Fe-Cr-based alloys fundamentally depends on the type and parameters of the magnetic domain structure and its interaction with crystalline lattice imperfections in an applied stress.


This thesis is about the multicultural and multilingual aspects of the UAE society and the school education system. It investigates the educational system in the minority schools in Dubai and explores the effects of this heterogeneity on teaching in general and language teaching in particular. The focus however, is the teaching of the UAE language, Arabic, in minority schools. The study also attempts to answer questions related to changes in curriculum. Chapter 1 introduces the study and describes the UAE geographically and gives its historical background from the 1960s. It then describes the multilingual population and the statement of the problem and the areas for research are identified. The significance of the study, its limitations and finally an overview of the chapters are given. Chapter 2 is concerned with the general view of private and public education. It also includes the sociolinguistic situation and the diglossia situation of Arabic. The language policy and the education system are described. The Mulla System of Education is discussed. Modem education system and education after the establishment of the state of the UAE also find a place here. The school system is detailed with the education policy in the UAE. It finally deals with the place of language in education. Chapter 3 is the theoretical framework of the study. The concept of minority and the unusual minority in the UAE are described through the literature. Studies on immigrants and on their education are reviewed. Literature related to issues of minority education and second language teaching to these immigrants and recommendations for bettering their education is discussed with relevance to the UAE. Finally, the research questions are formulated. Chapter 4 covers the methodology and design of the study. It explains the approach, the population and samples and the main steps. The study is both quantitative and qualitative In that it uses both, the questionnaire and structured interviews to research facts and collect opinions concerning central issues of language teaching and the teaching of Arabic. The respondents are students, teachers and principals of minority schools and some officials from the Ministry of Education. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 present the data for the seven research questions and the analysis. Along with explanation of the variations, statistically significant variations are also calculated. It includes the various results that come up from the analysis. Chapter 7 summarises the findings, presents cautious conclusions and tentative recommendations for the situation described in the study. It also points out areas for further research.


In The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus gives an extended argument on behalf of the "Open Society." Instead of claiming that it is uniquely best from some privileged moral perspective, he argues for the Open Society by showing why it is acceptable to many perspectives. In this way, Gaus argues for a liberal market-based society in a way that treats deep diversity as a fundamental feature of social life. However, the argument falters at four important points. When taken together, these four problems significantly limit the significance of Gaus's conclusions.


This essay considers the ramifications of the Delaware Supreme Court's December 2017 Dell appraisal decision within the context of Delaware's more sweeping clampdown on shareholder litigation protections in recent years, beginning with Corwin in 2015.
While the Delaware Supreme Court rejected the "judicial gloss" of a formalized deal price rule in Dell, the gloss has, for all intents and purposes, been applied. The appraisal remedy had already been enfeebled in recent years by a slew of at-or-below deal price rulings, but Dell's promulgation of a de facto procedural safe harbor marks a more systematic curtailment.
The efficacy, as well as the public policy coherency, of Dell is tied to the notion that procedural "best practices" lead to, or are reflective of, fair dealing. Unfortunately, this is often not the case because the actors who are most likely to be conflicted are also the ones most likely to be in control the narrative presented in public-facing materials, particularly amid a broader boardroom shift—the "lone-insider" effect—which has undermined the monitoring capabilities of independent directors.
In addition to lower deal premia and higher agency costs, the primary effects of Delaware's post-2015 effort to dull shareholder defenses, culminating in Dell, will likely be: 1) faster CEO pay growth, and 2) more M&A and higher industry-specific measures of concentration, which research has shown to contribute to declining competition, lower levels of labor market mobility, wage stagnation, and increasing inequality in the United States.


Europeans today no longer develop their cities on virgin land, but on former agricultural land. The European answer to the how of the progressive urbanization of the landscape is therefore: we work in and with the field. "Fieldwork" presents 42 groundbreaking landscape architecture projects from Dublin to Athens, whose authors have done sensitive fieldwork, with sensitivity to materials and details, respect for customs and mentalities, and pleasure in the play of their own powers of invention. The projects are supplemented by seven essays on European cartography, the cultivated landscape, the intellectual history of landscape architecture, the development of suburbia, the profession, and pioneers in the field. The projects and texts have been selected by an independent jury of practicing landscape architects from various European countries, edited by a team of experienced European experts in the field, and abundantly illustrated and luxuriously presented by the makers of the successful "Dutch Yearbook Landscape Architecture and Town Planning."


The world is changing more rapidly than ever before. Today's most successful organizations are changing fast and having to make sure that its internal changes are keeping pace with what is happening in the external environment. The process of organizational change can be complex and messy. The responsibility of leaders is to guide employees and the organization through the change process. Employees often view change as disruptive and painful, resulting in stress. This study examines a company that has undergone, and continues to undergo a fast pace of change. The aim of this research is to examine the effect that employee perceptions of change leadership have on their level of stress with a view to exposing the linkages, if any, between these concepts. If such linkages are perceived to exist, then well-conducted and communicated organizational change will be successful in yielding the desired results. Effective change can only be achieved through employees that are motivated, participating in and owning the organizational change.


This paper embeds legal considerations in mainstream management theory and frameworks. It proposes a systems approach to law and management that explains how law affects the competitive environment, the firm's resources, and the activities in the value chain. This is a dynamic model that recognizes that firms and markets are part of a broader system of society and that managerial actions will affect the law and how it is interpreted and applied over time. The paper suggests that the ability of managers to communicate effectively with counsel and to work together to solve complex problems and leverage the resource advantages of the firm - what this paper refers to as legal astuteness - may in certain contexts be a dynamic capability providing competitive advantage. A key objective of the paper is to spark greater academic interest in the legal aspects of management and to provide a theoretical predicate for multi-disciplinary empirical work on the role of law and legal astuteness in the achievement and sustainability of competitive advantage.


Dzungar Tuvan is a Turkic language variety spoken in North-West China. This article describes the strategies of Dzungar Tuvan to express information source both in finite and infinite sentences. In finite sentences, the interplay between the suffixes - D , GAn , - ( I ) pdur and the copula irgin provide the means to distinguish direct-perceptive, inferential and reportive type of evidentiality. The functions of these elements are, however, text type dependent. Regarding infinite or a temporal interpretation, can be subordinated to an omitted sentences, the direct or indirect reading of perception verbs will be discussed, which depends on the aspecto-temporal marking of the complement predicate. Converbial -sA clauses, which allow a conditional perception clause to which the finite main clause constitutes a complement.


Background Vaccines have provided some of the greatest successes in the history of medicine, including the eradication of smallpox, the near eradication of polio, and the prevention of considerable morbidity and mortality from numerous infectious diseases each year. However, past strategies for vaccine development are unlikely to succeed in the future against major global diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. For such diseases, the correlates of protection are poorly defined, and the pathogens evade immune detection and/or exhibit extensive genetic variability. Limitations of animal models to predict human immune responses to vaccines, coupled with low success rates for vaccine development compared with biopharmaceuticals, suggest that new paradigms must be implemented for accelerating vaccine development. Accelerating next-generation vaccine development. Recent advances in vaccine discovery and immune monitoring will enable new human immunology–based clinical research studies to address major gaps in knowledge of vaccine-induced human immune responses and thereby accelerate development of next-generation vaccines. Advances Recent technological advances in molecular genetics, molecular and cellular immunology, structural biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, nanotechnology, formulation methods, and systems biology are ushering in a new era of vaccine discovery. For example, genomic-based antigen discovery is being exploited for the design of vaccines against multiple bacterial pathogens. Similarly, interrogation of the memory B cell and antibody repertoires from virus-infected subjects has led to the identification of broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV, influenza, and other viruses, which are now being exploited as tools to design highly conserved epitope-based vaccines. Advances in adjuvant and vector delivery technologies are providing novel approaches for immune potentiation of vaccines, offering new strategies for improving vaccine response rates in neonates and the elderly. However, translation of these advances into vaccines remains impeded by major gaps in our knowledge of human immune responses, including methods to focus immune responses on subdominant protective epitopes, to elicit long-term memory responses, and to drive antibody maturation processes. These gaps can now be addressed given the technological advances described, including the development of approaches to analyze immune responses at the single-cell and systems levels. Outlook Successful development of vaccines against the major global diseases for which vaccines do not currently exist would be transformational for public health, with huge benefits across society. To accelerate next-generation vaccine development, we propose that new human immunology–based clinical research initiatives be established, with the goal of elucidating and more effectively generating vaccine-induced protective immune responses. Collectively, such a "Human Vaccines Project" holds the potential to greatly accelerate the development of next-generation vaccines against major global killers such as AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases; enable more successful vaccine development against allergies, autoimmune diseases, and cancers; and provide a foundation for vaccine development against new and emerging diseases. Building Better Vaccines Vaccines are one of the most effective tools to protect against infectious diseases. Unfortunately, vaccines for diseases with the highest global health burdens, such as HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, are not yet available. Koff et al. (1232910) review the latest advances in vaccine development and why these particular diseases remain such a challenge. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a serious cause of morbidity and mortality in infants and young children worldwide. Although a prophylactic antibody is available for children at high risk, a vaccine is much needed. As a potential step toward this goal, McLellan et al. (p. 1113, published online 25 April) solved the cocrystal structure of a neutralizing antibody (D25) bound to the prefusion F protein of RSV. Knowledge of the structure of the prefusion protein should help to guide vaccine design and the development of additional therapeutics. Vaccines are among the greatest successes in the history of public health. However, past strategies for vaccine development are unlikely to succeed in the future against major global diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. For such diseases, the correlates of protection are poorly defined and the pathogens evade immune detection and/or exhibit extensive genetic variability. Recent advances have heralded in a new era of vaccine discovery. However, translation of these advances into vaccines remains impeded by lack of understanding of key vaccinology principles in humans. We review these advances toward vaccine discovery and suggest that for accelerating successful vaccine development, new human immunology–based clinical research initiatives be implemented with the goal of elucidating and more effectively generating vaccine-induced protective immune responses.


This case is a follow-up of 'Mistry Architects: Innovating for Sustainability' (A) (Case 609-044) and (B) (Case 609-086). In Case (A) Sharukh and Renu Mistry founded and run an architectural firm dedicated to being both client-oriented and environmentally responsible. The case uses a difficult design decision in a tsunami rehabilitation project to illustrate the challenges faced by professional services firms, and the role of innovation in meeting the needs of multiple stakeholders. The specific design decision is to make a choice between thatch roofs which are environmentally friendly, versus reinforced cement concrete roofs that the villagers desire for their functionality. Case (B) reveals and explains the firm's choice, while describing how the community rebuilds itself after the tsunami, as well as how the firms evolves. The (C) case discusses the future plans of the firm including growth and succession issues.


A community benefits agreement (CBA) is a private contract negotiated between a prospective developer and community representatives. In essence, the CBA specifies the benefits that the developer will provide to the community in exchange for the community's support, or quiet acquiescence, of its proposed development. The promise of community support may be especially useful to a developer seeking government subsidies or timely project approvals. The CBA is a relative newcomer to the toolbox of strategies that communities may utilize to ensure that development occurs consistent with the sometimes more narrow goals and desires of neighborhood residents, as opposed to the sometimes broader goals and desires of municipal and regional governing bodies. The CBA concept is still in its infancy. However, with only about ten years of experience with CBAs, a number of differences and similarities are emerging as case studies are developed and reviewed across the country. This article is intended to document a comprehensive review of major CBA processes in cities across the United States;some successful, some not so successful, and some still in the development stages to gain better insights into the legal, social, and political aspects of negotiating for social justice as part of the land development process.


Background: The expression levels of mRNAs and miRNAs in cancer tumors contain valuable information for cancer classification. The availability of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data provides a unique opportunity for extracting such information. An integrative method that incorporates information from both mRNA and microRNA and relates them to clinical features is desirable. Results: We propose a flexible LASSO method for identifying mRNA and miRNA signatures for important clinical features in endometrial tumors. These features are pathological stage, histological type, and grade. Conclusions: The proposed method has identified mRNAs and miRNAs that are known to be risk factors in endometrial cancer. It also identified some novel ones which warrant further investigation. This approach is applicable to studies that involve more types of features than two.


TSVETKOV, St., K. TSVETKOV and T. PETROVA, 2007. Genetic sources with high cold resistance in breeding of poly-rowed barley (Hordeum sativum Jess., ssp. vulgare L.): I. Cold resistance in F1. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 13: 39-43 New genetic sources of high resistance were determined in breeding of poly-rowed barley (Hordeum sativum Jess., ssp. vulgare L.). The inheritance of cold resistance in F1 in the reciprocal crosses occurred in the direction of the colder resistant parental component. Instances of super dominant heritability in F1 were registered. Involving the winter poly-rowed barley varieties Mironovskiy 87 and Skorohod, for the first time in Bulgarian agriculture winter forms of polyrowed barley varieties with unique high resistance were experimentally developed. They successfully survived the extremely low temperatures during the severe winter of 2003.


Among the areas in which the Keynesian revolution has been more unsuccessful in changing orthodox views, the relationship between savings and investment must certainly be the best known. Even today, after more than seventy years of publication of The General Theory, policy-makers are still advised to raise national savings rates in order to accelerate growth (and, more recently, end the crisis initiated in 2007 in the United States). Keynes?s proposition that investment creates savings, and not the converse, seems to violate fundamental intuitions of economists as well as of the general public. In fact, investment creates savings in monetary economies, the operation of which is harder to grasp than the corn economy that inspires the opposite causality. How is the relationship between savings and investment defined in Keynesian and orthodox theories? In this paper, Keynes's views are contrasted to Wicksell's and to Wicksellian approaches embodied in loanable funds theories. In particular, one searches to clarify the theoretical relationship between the concept of aggregate savings (non-consumed output) and financial savings (net demand for assets) that should be more relevant to a discussion of investment finance. The special concept of finance employed by Keynes is used to stress the role played by banks in Keynes?s theory and, in combination with his rejection of Say's law, to clarify the meaning of the »investment creates saving« proposition.


The camp solitary confinement block was old and decrepit. It looked as if a wall might fall down, the whole block crumble, and the beams collapse, if you just knocked against a wooden cell wall. But the solitary confinement block wasn't going to fall, and the seven cell blocks went on doing their job. Of course, any word spoken loudly would be heard in the neighbouring cell. But those who were imprisoned there were afraid of being punished.


BACKGROUND
Effective treatments for the behavioral and cognitive deficits in children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are lacking, and translational approaches using animal models can help develop rational interventions. One such model, binge-like alcohol exposure in neonatal rats during the period of brain development comparable with that of the human third trimester, causes structural and functional damage to the cerebellum and disrupts cerebellar-dependent eyeblink classical conditioning. The eyeblink conditioning deficits first demonstrated in this rat model predicted the similar deficits subsequently demonstrated in children with FASD.

METHODS
The current study extends this translational approach by testing the hypothesis that rehabilitation training involving 20 days of training on traversal of an obstacle course (complex motor learning) would ameliorate the deficits on classical conditioning of eyeblink responses produced by the neonatal alcohol exposure. We have previously shown that this training stimulates cerebellar synaptic plasticity and improves alcohol-induced deficits on motor coordination tasks.

RESULTS
The current studies found that rehabilitation training significantly attenuated alcohol-induced deficits in acquisition of eyeblink conditioning in females but not in males. These results are consistent with normalization of cerebellar-dependent learning, at least in alcohol-exposed females.

CONCLUSIONS
These findings extend previous studies in this model suggesting that rehabilitation of adolescents with FASD using training with complex motor learning tasks could be effective in ameliorating functional impairments associated with cerebellar damage. Eyeblink classical conditioning deficits are now well documented in children with FASD and could serve as an evaluation measure to continue to develop therapeutic interventions such as complex motor learning.


Betacellulin (BTC) was identified in mouse pancreatic beta cell tumors as a member of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) family, and was found to bind and activate the EGF receptor. BTC is also expressed in some human malignancies and may have an important role in tumor growth progression. We examined whether BTC and EGF have a growth stimulatory effect on human pancreatic cancer cell lines both in vitro and in vivo. We also investigated the BTC expression and autonomous induction of BTC in pancreatic cancer cells. in vitro, both BTC and EGF had almost the same proliferative effect on Panc-1, MIA PaCa-2 and AsPC-1. in vivo, in a Panc-1 inoculated athymic mice model, BTC-treated tumors grew approximately five times larger than in control. Immunocytochemistry showed that BTC expression occurred in three pancreatic cancer cell lines, with MIA PaCa-2 showing the strongest intensity. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR of MIA Paca-2 showed that mRNA levels of BTC gradually increased after treatment with 1 nM BTC. Immunocytochemistry also demonstrated that the intensity of BTC-like immunoreactivity was increased when treated with 1 nM BTC but was reduced after treatment with 100 nM of AG1478, an EGF receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor. BTC has thus a significant growth stimulatory effect on pancreatic cancer cells and might function as an autocrine and paracrine growth factor. BTC expression in pancreatic cancer cells is, at least in part, controlled by an auto-induction mechanism.


United States (U.S.) Iran energy sanction waivers expired May 2, 2019. The waivers permitted eight economies (China, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey) to temporarily continue buying oil from Iran. Based on KAPSARC modeling of the political decision-making process, this Instant Insight – the first such KAPSARC publication – finds that the international community, and indeed some of the waiver economies, will at best partially comply with reinstated sanctions. China, India and Turkey are particularly unlikely to comply with U.S. sanctions and will maintain much of their current oil trade with Iran, the modeling shows.

The paper also simulates the likely impact on the global oil price of ending the waivers in four scenarios which show: i) no oil price rise if the sanctions don't work at all, ii) an oil price rise of up to 12% by Q2 2020 if Iranian oil exports drop by an average 42%, iii) a 30%-plus price increase if the sanctions are 100% effective, and iv) no significant price change if Saudi Arabia offsets reduced Iranian crude oil exports by increasing its output and exports.


Brazilian Portuguese (BP) has been described as having undergone a selective loss of null subjects, with the categorical maintenance of null expletives, and a limited possibility of referential null subjects in the third person. In the I-language of most literate adults, a range of referential null subjects is still possible, competing with the innovative weak pronouns. The present study will claim that core grammars do not admit morphological 'doublets', and will give evidence that pre-school children do not have pronouns competing with referential null subjects. These are argued to be acquired as a second grammar, through schooling. The maintenance of anaphoric null subjects is observed in written texts, the object of diachronic studies. The conclusion is that the only null subject licensed in BP core grammars is the non-referential null subject, namely expletive and indefinite subjects without the clitic se. The study will also claim that the null subject recovered through schooling is not the same as the prototypical null subject that was lost, but is still an object possible in Universal Grammar (UG).


Specifications for sub-bases are based on knowledge that has been gained from past performance of a wide range of aggregates in conjunction with results of tests that define relevant properties. To assess the suitability of an aggregate samples have to be tested but it is extremely difficult to take a truly representative bulk sample of a large batch of material and to prepare that sample for test in a way that entirely excludes errors. This means that in those cases where a material just passes or just fails to meet a specification limit doubts can exist between customers and suppliers as to whether acceptance or rejection is really justified; it is therefore important to be able to make reasonable allowance for the errors likely to arise from deficiencies in sampling and testing. This report describes work done to establish the precision of some of the tests used to assess sub-base aggregates. (TRRL)


There is a widespread belief these days that the Danube River is a waterway which is by far underutilised. This is usually attributed to the problems blocking navigation on the river (mostly on the Hungarian section), and to the missing regulations of the navigation routes. We have to add, however, that there are many other factors that set back the development of navigation, including the endowments of our economy that result in limited demand for water transportation. Also, several further economic, geopolitical and geographical endowments contribute to the low level of utilisation. The starting point of our paper is that the Danube River now offers one single long navigation route. The competitiveness of this route is decreased by the fact that no waterway network has been established in the last two hundred years that could have made river transportation more rationally usable. Think of the navigability of the tributaries, the connecting and branch canals, and multimodal ports (connected to railway and road transportation). Because of all these factors, no macroregional economy was created at the adequate time, built on water transportation. Think of the fact that one single long railway line of motorway, without junctions and connections, cannot be operated economically, either, it will not become a system and its regional development impact will remain limited. Our paper focuses on those experiments that were made to contribute to the network development of the Danube River water system, with exact plans. Many of them were realistic plans in their days, but could not be realised because of the competition of railway, lack of capital or for geopolitical reasons.


Occurrence of a fault in a power system causes transients. To stabilize the system, Power System Stabilizer (PSS) and Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) are used. Load flow analysis is done to analyze the transients introduced in the system due to the occurrence of faults. The Flexible Alternating Current Transmission (FACTS) devices such as UPFC are becoming important in suppressing power system oscillations and improving system damping. The UPFC is a solid-state device, which can be used to control the active and reactive power. This thesis considers a typical three- machine nine-bus system as a case study for investigating the performance of UPFC is achieving stability. By using a UPFC the oscillation introduced by the faults, the rotor angle and speed deviations can be damped out quickly than a system without a UPFC. The effectiveness of UPFC in suppressing power system oscillation is investigated by analyzing their oscillation in rotor angle and change in speed occurred in the three machine system considered in this work. A proportional integral (PI) controller has been employed for the UPFC. It is also shown that a UPFC can control independently the real and reactive power flow in a transmission line. A MATLAB simulation has been carried out to demonstrate the performance of the UPFC in achieving transient stability of the three-machine nine-bus system.