The scientific evidence contained in the three volumes of the 6th IPCC report (AR6), published between August 2021 and April 2022, are another reminder of the urgent need to respect the 2015 Paris Agreement. 195 countries agreed to the goal of limiting long-term global temperature increase to "well below 2°C" compared to pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C by massively reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs).
 Water and climate questions are usually addressed from the perspective of adaptation to climate change. For urban water services the mitigation aspect has been less studied up till now. These considerations fit into the broader context of the interdependence of energy and water (Water-Energy Nexus). This report approaches the question from the angle of energy use in the water sector rather than the better-known water requirements for the energy sector. Reducing GHG emissions in urban water management requires reducing both fossil energy requirements and direct emissions of nitrous oxide and methane. Finally, it must be said that the need to reduce the GHG emissions of water and sanitation services goes with the growing demand for water. It should increase by 50% between now and 2030 worldwide due to the combined effects of population growth, economic development, and the shift in consumer patterns.
 This synthetic report aims to provide an overview of possible levers to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of water and sanitation services and provides an analysis of how adaptation measures can embrace this low-carbon approach.


This is a broad overview of the evolving serial killer genre in the two media most responsible for its popularity: literature and cinema of the 1980s and 1990s. The fictional serial killer, with a motiveless, highly individualized modus operandi, is the latest manifestation of the multiple murderers and homicidal maniacs that haunt American literature and, particularly, visual media such as cinema and television. The author theorizes that the serial killer genre results from a combination of earlier genre depictions of multiple murderers, inherited Gothic storytelling conventions, and threatening folkloric figures reworked over the years into a contemporary mythology of violence. Updated and repackaged for mass consumption, the Gothic villains, the monsters, the vampires and the werewolves of the past have evolved into the fictional serial killer, who clearly reflects American cultural anxieties at the start of the 21st century. Citing numerous sources, the author argues that serial killers' recent popularity as genre monsters owes much to their pliability to any number of authorial ideological agendas from both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. Serial killers in fiction are a kind of debased and traumatized visionaries, whose murders privately and publicly reempower them with a pseudo-divine aura in the contemporary political moment. The fascination with serial killer narratives can thus be explained as the latest manifestation of the ongoing human fascination with tales of gruesome murders and mythic villains finding a receptive audience in a nation galvanized by the increasingly apocalyptic tension between the extremist philosophies of both the New Right and the anti-New Right. Faced with a blizzard of works of varying quality dealing with the serial killer, Simpson has ruled out the catalogue approach in this study in favour of an in-depth analysis of the best American work in the genre. He has chosen novels and films that have at least some degree of public name-recognition or notoriety, including: "Red Dragon" and "The Silence of the Lambs", by Thomas Harris; "Manhunter", directed by Michael Mann; "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", directed by John McNaughton "Seven", directed by David Fincher; "Natural Born Killers", directed by Oliver Stone; "Zombie", by Joyce Caol Oates; and "American Psycho", by Bret Easton Ellis.


This research investigates the barriers and drivers of eLearning for healthcare professional students in rural Thailand. An initial deskstudy was undertaken to investigate the factors that had an impact on eLearning within a professional healthcare environment. This was followed by a pilot study in a university in rural areas of Thailand. The results from the investigation led to a model being created to identify the barriers and drivers for implementing eLearning programmes in rural Thailand. This research explores the challenges of eLearning within four domains (IFPC);infrastructure (I), financing eLearning courses (F), university policy (P), and cultural diversity (C). The research utilised mixed research methods to identify the impacts of eLearning; employing both quantitative and qualitative methods. The participants of this research included healthcare professionals associated with the eLearning environment within rural areas in Thailand. The fieldwork data from both quantitative and qualitative methods were analysed assisting by SPSS software and Nvivo software. The results and findings demonstrated that the IFPC domains impact on the uptake of eLearning for healthcare professionals and healthcare professional students. The results of statistical testing corroborated that healthcare professional students with their own computers perceived that eLearning was useful to their professional development. In addition, it showed that universities' policies on eLearning affected the use of the iv eLearning infrastructure, the participants' motivation to undertake eLearning courses and that eLearning course-uptake was affected by both healthcare professionals' motivation and their ability to use a computer. The subject of the financing of eLearning course was directly correlated to the level of computer skills held by the healthcare professional students and their attitude towards their own use of computers. The results identified how the elements of the IFPC model were related to each other and affected the implementation of eLearning programmes. It is hoped that these findings will make a significant contribution by informing lecturers about online teaching material, course delivery and design. They will also inform policymakers when considering budgets, plans and requirements for supporting healthcare professional students undertaking eLearning in rural Thailand. In particular the results will provide useful lessons for healthcare professionals undertaking similar programmes in other developing countries.


"A New Collectivism is a multi-author report on how trade unions can modernise to meet the challenges of the changing world of work. It is a follow-up to our hotly debated report on the future of the union movement in Britain. The report features an introduction from the current general secretary of the TUC Frances O'Grady setting out the need for unions to change their practices and a challenging joint chapter from former trade union leader John Monks and Labour's shadow minister for unions Jack Dromey MP setting out how a new model of trade unionism would work. The report includes chapters from leading trade unionists from across the movement (including senior officers from UNISON, Usdaw, Prospect, Community and the Musicians' Union), as well leading thinkers on the left."


This paper examines different properties of the regional currency unit (RCU) in Asia and estimates the value of the RCU as a weighted average of East Asian currencies according to the method used to calculate the ECU under the EMS. The basket feature of the RCU yields benefits and costs. First, the use of the RCU central rate can make the intervention burden of a central bank less onerous than the use of a bilateral exchange rate. Also, for any given band of margins, a basket unit offers more flexibility than a bilateral exchange rate. Another advantage of using the RCU is that the variance of RCU exchange rates is smaller than the variance of exchange rates of component countries. However, the usefulness of the RCU as a unit of account for domestic transactions and contracts will be very limited because of information costs and uncertainty about the value of the RCU. Also, theintroduction of the RCU raises the important problem of asymmetry for foreign exchange market intervention. Once such a problem is solved, the RCU can be then used as a divergence indicator to monitor the exchange rates of Asian currencies between themselves and against the US dollar or the euro. The creation of the RCU is a good way to coordinate policies and assure exchange stability between Asian countries.


This paper is the second of a two-part survey on noncooperative game theory relevant to agricultural markets. Part 1 of the survey focused on important game theory concepts, while this paper illustrates applications of the theory to agricultural markets. Game theory is relevant when markets are imperfectly competitive, and this paper argues that this condition is commonly met in agriculture. Specific topics of application include principal-agent models, auctions, and bargaining.


We present trellis networks, a new architecture for sequence modeling. On the one hand, a trellis network is a temporal convolutional network with special structure, characterized by weight tying across depth and direct injection of the input into deep layers. On the other hand, we show that truncated recurrent networks are equivalent to trellis networks with special sparsity structure in their weight matrices. Thus trellis networks with general weight matrices generalize truncated recurrent networks. We leverage these connections to design high-performing trellis networks that absorb structural and algorithmic elements from both recurrent and convolutional models. Experiments demonstrate that trellis networks outperform the current state of the art methods on a variety of challenging benchmarks, including word-level language modeling and character-level language modeling tasks, and stress tests designed to evaluate long-term memory retention. The code is available at this https URL .


Oceanic lithosphere sinks, stagnates, and is deflected sub-horizontally beneath western Pacific island arcs, requiring buoyancy in the slab that is inconsistent with a thermal origin. The transformation of pyroxene to majoritic garnet occurs by extremely slow diffusion, and pyroxene is therefore unlikely to transform at equilibrium pressures and temperatures in the cold interior of slabs. We present high-resolution numerical simulations showing that when slow diffusion inhibits the dissolution of pyroxene into garnet, the slab becomes buoyant relative to the ambient mantle and stagnates, whereas when the phase transformations occur in equilibrium, there is no effect on the slab. We test the model by comparing slab temperature and geometry and find that sub-horizontal slabs are more likely colder than average, consistent with our numerical simulations.


The concept of isogeometric analysis, where functions that are used to describe geometry in CAD software are used to approximate the unknown fields in numerical simulations, has received great attention in recent years. The method has the potential to have profound impact on engineering design, since the task of meshing, which in some cases can add significant overhead, has been circumvented. Much of the research effort has been focused on finite element implementations of the isogeometric concept, but at present, little has been seen on the application to the Boundary Element Method. The current paper proposes an Isogeometric Boundary Element Method (BEM), which we term IGABEM, applied to two-dimensional elastostatic problems using Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS). We find it is a natural fit with the isogeometric concept since both the NURBS approximation and BEM deal with quantities entirely on the boundary. The method is verified against analytical solutions where it is seen that superior accuracies are achieved over a conventional quadratic isoparametric BEM implementation.


Solfatara is part of the active volcanic zone of Campi Flegrei (Italy), a densely populated urban area where ground uplift and increasing ground temperature are observed, connected with rising rates of CO2 emission. A major pathway of CO2 release at Campi Flegrei is diffuse soil degassing, and therefore quantifying diffuse CO2 emission rates is of vital interest. Conventional in situ probing of soil gas emissions with accumulation chambers is accurate over a small footprint but requires significant time and effort to cover large areas. An alternative approach is differential absorption lidar, which allows for a fast and spatially integrated measurement. Here, a portable hard-target differential absorption lidar has been used to acquire horizontal 1-D profiles of column-integrated CO2 concentration at the Solfatara crater. To capture heterogenic features in the CO2 distribution, a 2-D tomographic map of the CO2 distribution has been inverted from the 1-D profiles. The scan was performed one-sided, which is unfavorable for the inverse problem. Nonetheless, the result is in agreement with independent measurements and furthermore confirms an area of anomalous CO2 degassing along the eastern edge as well as the center of the Solfatara crater. The method may have important implications for measurements of degassing features that can only be accessed from limited angles, such as airborne sensing of volcanic plumes. CO2 fluxes retrieved from the 2-D map are comparable, but modestly higher than emission rates from previous studies, perhaps reflecting an increase in CO2 flux or a more integrated measurement or both.


The authors used the random response technique (RRT) to measure frequency of induced abortion in Mexico, where its practice is illegal under most circumstances. They applied RRT to a national, multistage probabilistic sample of 1,792 women ages 15 to 55. The distribution of women who reported having had an induced abortion was analyzed by sociodemographic characteristics. Bivariate and multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to identify factors associated with having had an induced abortion. Overall prevalence of induced abortion was 16.3 percent. Three factors were associated with reported induced abortion: having grown up in the city (bivariate odd ratio [OR] 2.16, multiple logistic OR 2.24), having never given birth (bivariate OR 1.60, multiple logistic OR 2.06), and having had an unwanted pregnancy (bivariate OR 2.09, multiple logistic OR 2.81). RRT produced a better estimation of induced abortion compared with other methodologies. This technique works best with urban and educated women.


Purpose: Extensive research on public attitudes has documented stigma toward stuttering, obesity, and mental illness; however, most studies have focused on only one of these conditions. This study sought to compare public attitudes toward stuttering, obesity, and mental illness as well as to identify the predictive potential of four ratings relating to these and other neutral or desirable conditions.Method: Five hundred respondents who were selected from each of three international databases filled out the Public Opinion Survey of Human Attributes (POSHA) for stuttering, obesity, or mental illness. The POSHA surveys were as similar as possible, and all contained four general items asking respondents' "impression" of the attribute, extent to which he or she "wants to be/have" that attribute, "amount known" about the attribute, and "persons known" who manifest the attribute, for stuttering, obesity, and mental illness plus two others, namely, left-handedness and intelligence. The POSHA surveys also had the same summary scores, Beliefs, Self-Reactions, and an Overall Score.Results: Summary scores for the three POSHA surveys in the 500-respondent samples revealed negative attitudes toward all three conditions, the most positive being toward obesity, followed by stuttering and then by mental illness. Stepwise regression analysis indicated that various general items had significant prediction potential not only of attitudes for the same condition but also of attitudes for other conditions. The greatest other condition predictions were between stuttering and mental illness.Conclusions: Stuttering is regarded as less stigmatizing than mental illness but more stigmatizing than obesity. Additionally, positivity toward one condition results in limited positivity toward the others. Impressions and knowledge of—as well as experience with—stigmatized conditions can inform public awareness campaigns and individual clinical programs dealing with stigma.Supplemental Material S1. Description and results of two verification comparisons of the rank order of overall attitudes on the POSHA–S, POSHA–Ob, and POSHA–MI. Supplemental Material S2. POSHA–S, POSHA–Ob, and POSHA–MI demographic and attitudinal ratings for three triads of samples: 500 randomly selected respondents from the stuttering, obesity, and mental illness databases; 163 respondents who filled out early versions of all three POSHAs, and 50 U.S. respondents who filled out an earlier prototype of the POSHA–S as well as 50 U.S. respondents who filled out revised versions of the POSHA–Ob, and POSHA–MI.Supplemental Material S3. Subscore and overall scores for three triads of samples taking the POSHA–S, POSHA–Ob, and POSHA–MI: 500 randomly selected respondents, 163 same respondents, and 50 U.S. respondents.Supplemental Material S4. Stepwise regression models for Beliefs, Self Reactions, and Overall Scores for the POSHA–S, POSHA–Ob, and POSHA-MI. Each analysis shows statistically significant additions of variables to the model from most to least predictive potential, and these are listed below the table.St. Louis, K. O. (2020). Comparing and predicting public attitudes toward stuttering, obesity, and mental illness. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-20-00038


Murid herpesvirus 4 (MHV-68) has been widely studied as a model of gammaherpesvirus infection. Infection of Apodemus sylvaticus, a natural host for MHV-68, revealed that a virally-encoded chemokine binding protein (M3) influences the composition of the perivascular and peribronchiolar inflammatory infiltration and the formation of BALT in the lung during lytic infection. In addition, host genes were identified which were expressed at higher levels in the presence of MHV-68 M3 at 14 days post infection (dpi), including Clara cell secretory protein (CCSP), Short palate lung and nasal epithelium clone 1 (SPLUNC1) and Anterior gradient 3 (AGR3). The aim of this work was to further investigate the expression of these genes and their corresponding proteins in relation to respiratory viral infection. CCSP and SPLUNC1 have previously been shown to have antiinflammatory properties in models of virus, bacteria and allergen induced inflammation. AGR3 is thought to be homologous to AGR2, which is associated with the transition of Clara cells to mucous cells in the lung. Following MHV-68 infection in A. sylvaticus, levels of both CCSP and SPLUNC1 were reduced in the bronchioles at 7 dpi and increased at 14 dpi, compared to mock-infected controls. In the absence of M3, the level of CCSP was reduced compared to wild type MHV-68 infected animals at both timepoints, whereas no significant difference in the expression of SPLUNC1 in the bronchioles was present. The regulation of both of these genes has previously been associated with interferon γ (IFNγ); infection of 129 wild type and IFNγR-/- mice revealed that CCSP expression was increased and SPLUNC1 expression decreased in the presence of IFNγ. However, this effect was smaller than that due to MHV-68 infection. Expression of AGR3 in the respiratory tract was increased in response to MHV-68 infection, whereas AGR2 was decreased. To investigate whether these effects were specific to MHV-68, infection with other respiratory viruses, with different cellular tropisms in the respiratory tract were examined in BALB/c mice. Infection with Human respiratory syncytial virus, Sendai virus and several strains of Influenzavirus A led to a decrease in both CCSP and SPLUNC1 expression during acute infection, when this was associated with a significant inflammatory response in the lung. The findings of this work showed that CCSP and SPLUNC1 are constitutively expressed in the non-ciliated cells of the respiratory epithelium and support the hypothesis that they have an antiinflammatory role in the lung. Expression of both proteins is reduced in the event of acute viral infection resulting in significant inflammation. In MHV-68 infection of A. sylvaticus, increased expression of CCSP and SPLUNC1 at later timepoints suggests that these proteins are implicated in the resolution of the inflammatory response.


Amidst the post-war turn to transcend international law's traditional power structures in the narration and codification of individual rights, colonial interests and legal philosophies retained an influence on the framing of human rights discourse. This essay explores the extent to which the particular conception of the 'state of emergency' that was distilled into the normative framework of international human rights law at its inception stemmed specifically from Britain's traditions of colonial governance and legislation. The evolution of emergency law is traced from martial law in England and the 'first empire', through British emergency legislative codes in Ireland and India in the nineteenth century, to the wholesale resort to emergency powers in the colonies as the empire began to fragment. The genesis of the emergency derogation provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and European Convention on Human Rights is appraised in the light of the colonial emergency context that formed the backdrop to their drafting. The essay argues that the accommodation of colonial interests at that point embedded a hegemonic legal tool that remains ripe for exploitation by regimes of all stripes inclined to repress opposition and dissent in a 'post-colonial' era. In the illumination of the colonial shadows from which the doctrine of emergency emerged, the state of emergency is revealed as a vehicle for law's violence, grounded in dynamics of domination.


The Wars of the Roses (c. 1455-1487) are renowned as an infamously savage and tangled slice of English history. A bloody thirty-year struggle between the dynastic houses of Lancaster and York, they embraced localised vendetta (such as the bitter northern feud between the Percies and Nevilles) as well as the formal clash of royalist and rebel armies at St Albans, Ludford Bridge, Mortimer's Cross, Towton, Tewkesbury and finally Bosworth, when the usurping Yorkist king, Richard III, was crushed by Henry Tudor. Powerful personalities dominate the period: the charismatic and enigmatic Richard III, immortalized by Shakespeare; the slippery Warwick, the Kingmaker', who finally over-reached ambition to be cut down at the Battle of Barnet; and guileful women like Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret of Anjou, who for a time ruled the kingdom in her husband's stead. David Grummitt places the violent events of this complex time in the wider context of fifteenth-century kingship and the development of English political culture.Never losing sight of the traumatic impact of war on the lives of those who either fought in or were touched by battle, this captivating new history will make compelling reading for students of the late medieval period and Tudor England, as well as for general readers.


Relationship between poor inhibitory control and adolescent interpersonal difficulties is well-documented. However, the way in which an emotionally neutral cognitive process (i.e., response inhibition) can lead to interpersonal difficulties is less clear. The current study is based on multimodal longitudinal data from 3,826 adolescents followed over a 4-year period. The main aim of this study was to examine an ecophenotype conceptualization of the association between response inhibition and bullying perpetration through increasing vulnerability of peer victimization and a negative attributional style toward self and others. To test for potential mediations, we first tested the independent effects of the main predictor (response inhibition) and proposed mediators (victimization, hostile automatic thoughts, and self esteem). Multilevel models highlighted independent effects of response inhibition, hostility-related automatic thoughts, and self-esteem in susceptibility to peer victimization and bullying perpetration, both in terms of general liability and fluctuations at each time point over the 4-year period (i.e., between and within person effects). Moreover, results from multivariate multilevel path model were in line with the ecophenotype conceptualization. Indirect effects indicated that general liability of peer victimization mediated the effect of poor response inhibition on bullying perpetration. Likewise, general liability and concurrent fluctuations in hostility-related automatic thoughts and self-esteem mediated the effect of peer victimization on bullying perpetration. The current study highlights the need for a comprehensive understanding of bullying perpetration which is only possible through consideration of individual characteristics along with environmental factors. This framework has the potential to inform targeted intervention strategies aimed at reducing peer-to-peer violence.


A high-power diode-pumped Cr-doped LiSrAlF6 (Cr:LiSAF) laser with an output power of 400 mW cw is experimentally demonstrated. The power-scalable concept involving at least one cylindrical cavity mirror is discussed with respect to mode-matching requirements and thermal limitations. Simple arguments indicate that our approach allows one to scale the output power of a Cr:LiSAF laser to the multiwatt level. This is further supported by a comparison with other high-power concepts for diode-pumped solid-state lasers.


Why do some COVID-19 mitigation strategies fail? As the pandemic continues to spread, policymakers are struggling to find effective policies that lead to fewer infections at a reasonable cost. Although the elusive nature of the virus makes predictions difficult, the field of law and economics provides tools that can help understand how a given policy should affect behavior through its impact on incentives. Yet, existing studies mostly look at individual policies or specific activities in isolation. Policymakers thereby neglect the many possible interaction effects that may arise due to the simultaneous adoption of concurrent strategies and the heterogeneity of social and environmental attributes. When interaction effects are not accounted for, policymakers run the risk of drawing incorrect conclusions, which focus on partial effects that do not necessarily hold as a general equilibrium. In particular, it is crucial to consider substitution effects: even policies that successfully shift behavior away from problematic activities may be ineffective if individuals simply switch to other, equally harmful, activities. Similarly, complementarity effects may occur, where a policy that targets one harmful activity indirectly discourages other related activities. Our analysis, which builds on both traditional and behavioral law and economics, thus provides a new explanation for why some COVID-19 mitigation strategies may fail.


Blood samples collected from members of indigenous communities in the mid-20th century by scientists interested in human variation remain frozen today in institutional repositories around the world. This article focuses on two such collections—one established and maintained in the United States and the other in Australia. Through historical and ethnographic analysis, we show how scientific knowledge about the human species and ethical knowledge about human experimentation are coproduced differently in each national context over time. Through a series of vignettes, we trace the attempts of scientists and indigenous people to assemble and reassemble blood samples, ethical regimes, human biological knowledge, and personhood. In including ourselves—a U.S. historian of science and an Australian anthropologist—in the narrative, we show how humanistic and social scientific analysis contributes to ongoing efforts to maintain indigenous samples. [indigenous, biospecimens, science, genomics, postcolonial, ethics, cryopreservation]


Coronary artery aneurysm (CAA) is defined as a dilation of more than 1.5 times normal in a segment of the coronary artery. The incidence of CAA is highest in the right coronary artery (RCA); left main coronary artery or three-vessel involvement is extremely rare. Wide ranges of factors have been implicated in the cause of CAA; atherosclerosis is the most common at 50%. Congenital CAA occurs in 20-30% of cases followed by connective tissue disease at 10%. Blood stagnation and exposure of the underlying collagen make aneurysms prone to thrombosis, dissection, and vasospasm. Depending on the size, symptoms, and etiology of the aneurysms, a surgical, percutaneous, or medical approach may be used. In this paper, we present a patient who presented to the emergency department (ED) with chest pain due to acute coronary syndrome (ACS) that was found to be due to multi-vessel CAAs. The left main as well as RCA, left anterior descending (LAD) artery and left circumflex artery (LCA) were involved and urgent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) was required.


Bottled water serves an increasingly large percentage of urban poor populations in lower-income countries, yet receives little attention within international development research and policy. This study investigates the impact of packaged drinking water (refill water) on affordability and equity of drinking water access by the urban poor under SDG 6.1, comparing refill water cost and consumption across socioeconomic quintiles drawn from two sub-districts of Jakarta, Indonesia. Analysis of a customer survey ( n = 80) and in-depth interviews with 12 small-scale refill water providers reveals the significance of water quality, convenience, and reliability of water in defining affordable water access. Lower-income households perceive refill water to be the most affordable, safe drinking water source available to them, despite representing the second highest per unit cost source. Piped water is considered more expensive despite its low per unit volume cost, because of total costs associated with guaranteeing its reliability and quality. We suggest that the combined costs of securing domestic and drinking water for poorer households need to be considered for future approaches targeting the provision of inclusive water access under SDG 6.1 in Indonesia. Packaged water needs to be taken into account in the strategies designed to increase access, and measurements of affordability and equity of access.


A simple test was proposed to assess whether phosphorus in a wastewater can be removed using a biological phosphorus removal (BPR) process. The test includes the measurement of phosphorus release during 2 hours of the anaerobic stage in a batch reactor containing phosphorus‐accumulating organisms (PAOs) and estimation of the effluent phosphorus concentration using biochemical relationships. The BPR potential test developed allowed for the successful evaluation of BPR feasibility for five wastewater samples. The BPR potential test was validated by comparing the test results with the effluent phosphorus concentrations measured in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR). An effluent phosphorus concentration of 1.9 mg P/L predicted for the BPR potential test performed was close to the effluent phosphorus concentration of 1.8 mg P/L obtained from an SBR on the same day. During the anaerobic stage, phosphorus release was significantly affected by the sludge concentration initially, but became insignificant after 2 hours. The initial sludge concentration affected the phosphorus release rate; thus, it is recommended that the BPR potential test be conducted at a target mixed liquor volatile suspended solids concentration. It is also recommended that the BPR potential test be conducted at the site where the PAO‐containing sludge is available and the wastewater sample can be delivered at 4 °C in less than 24 hours. The PAOs in different sludges had almost identical phosphorus release after 2 hours; however, the characteristics of facultative bacteria in sludges affected the phosphorus release. If the wastewater is prefermented for at least 3 days before the BPR potential test, the amount of phosphorus released by various PAO‐containing sludges is expected to be identical.


Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN), a branch of Deep Neural Networks which use the deep graph with multiple processing layers, enables the convolutional model to finely abstract the high-level features behind an image. Large-scale applications using DCNN mainly operate in high-performance server clusters, GPUs or FPGA clusters; it is restricted to extend the applications onto mobile/wearable devices and Internet-of-Things (IoT) entities due to high power/energy consumption. Stochastic Computing is a promising method to overcome this shortcoming used in specific hardware-based systems. Many complex arithmetic operations can be implemented with very simple hardware logic in the SC framework, which alleviates the extensive computation complexity. The exploration of network-wise optimization and the revision of network structure with respect to stochastic computing based hardware design have not been discussed in previous work. In this paper, we investigate Deep Stochastic Convolutional Neural Network (DSCNN) for DCNN using stochastic computing. The essential calculation components using SC are designed and evaluated. We propose a joint optimization method to collaborate components guaranteeing a high calculation accuracy in each stage of the network. The structure of original DSCNN is revised to accommodate SC hardware design's simplicity. Experimental Results show that as opposed to software inspired feature extraction block in DSCNN, an optimized hardware oriented feature extraction block achieves as higher as 59.27% calculation precision. And the optimized DSCNN can achieve only 3.48% network test error rate compared to 27.83% for baseline DSCNN using software inspired feature extraction block.


Objectives The significance of sera with isolated reactive treponemal chemiluminescence immunoassay (IRTCIA) results is unclear. Women have this phenotype more commonly than men. Most cohorts examining this phenotype have included predominantly men and have demonstrated evidence of past or subsequently confirmed syphilis infection in a significant proportion of cases. We hypothesised that a proportion of sera with IRTCIA results would be positive on immunoblot testing and that sera from women with IRTCIA would have different results in immunoblot testing than men. Methods IRTCIA sera from a tertiary referral serology laboratory serving multiple clinical sites were analysed with a syphilis line immunoblot assay (LIA) and analysed by sex. Logistic regression was undertaken to assess factors associated with LIA status. Medical record review and descriptive analysis of a separate cohort of women with the IRTCIA phenotype from a single campus was also undertaken. Results Overall, 19/63 (30.1%) subjects with the IRTCIA phenotype were positive in the LIA, including 13 men and 6 women. Women were significantly less likely to have definitive results (positive or negative) than men (p=0.015). Pregnant women were less likely than non-pregnant women to have a negative LIA result (OR 0.57; p=0.03). Record review of 22 different women with IRTCIA reactivity showed that 2/22 (9.1%) had HIV and previous syphilis infection, 15/22 (68.2%) were pregnant and 3 (13.6%) had autoimmune disease. Conclusions A significant proportion of sera with IRTCIA results on serological tests are reactive on LIA testing and some may not be false positive results. The interpretation of IRTCIA results should be undertaken in conjunction with an assessment of factors such as sex, pregnancy, a history of syphilis and other STIs and syphilis risk.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine upper-body repeated sprint performance, physiological responses, and the relationships to technique and muscle co-ordination.Methods: Twelve male elite cross-country skiers (body mass: 75.4 ± 7.1, VO2max: 73 ± 4) were tested for repeated sprint ability during 8·8-s maximal poling with 22-s breaks sprint using a modified poling ergometer. Total mean power (i.e. mean power of all sprints added together) and the sprint decrement (i.e. difference in percent between total mean power and best single sprint power times 8) determined performance. Applied forces were measured with a force cell, the movement frequencies and velocity of the movement using high-speed infrared cameras, muscle activation by surface electromyography of biceps and triceps, oxygen consumption was continuously measured breath by breath and blood lactate in the breaks between each sprint. Furthermore, peak power was determined from the first 8-s sprint and VO2peak during a 3-min all-out ergometer poling test.Results: The average total mean power was 2246 ± 387 W. The average sprint decrement was 11.7 % after eight sprints. Poling rate did not change, while power per stroke decreased during the eight sprints (p<0.05). Activation of biceps brachii increased- and triceps brachii decreased during the repeated sprint exercise, however these changes did not correlate with the changes in performance. Furthermore there was a change in the timing of the triceps in the last two sprints. The greatest increase in VO2 occurred between sprint 1 and sprint 2 (p<0.05), after which the increase plateaued at a level of 75% of VO2peak. VO2peak during a 3-min all-out poling test correlated with power per stroke in the last three sprints (r = 0.6 – 0.7, all p<0.05). Total increase in blood lactate correlated with total mean power (r = 0.692, p<0.05) and sprint decrement (r = 0.604, p<0.05).Conclusions: During repeated sprint exercise with 22-s breaks a high decrement in power is apparent after the first sprint. The changes in power are related to reduced power per stroke, without any changes in poling rate over all eight sprints. The change in muscle activation suggests an alteration of technique during the two last sprints in order to withstand fatigue. VO2peak seems to be important in the latter stages of RSE. Increase in lactate is a fatiguing factor related to sprint decrement, however a large increase in lactate also seems to cause high total mean power, suggesting that the ability to enable lactic energy sources enhances high power outputs.Key Words: Repeated sprint ability, upper-body, performance, poling, kinematics, VO2, Lactate


It is well established that men suffer poorer health and die younger than their female counter parts. The health status of men is closely linked to economic opportunity in society and those in the lowest socio-economic group carry the disproportionate burden of ill health and have traditionally been difficult to engage. The impetus for this study was underpinned by recommendations made by the Irish National Men"s Health Policy and is particularly relevant in the current economic downturn. The Carlow Men"s Health Project (CMHP), a community based partnership, also recognised the need to support vulnerable men and thus developed a strategy to improve their health and wellbeing.

Using mixed methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups etc), this thesis investigated the specific components of the strategy; the delivery of short programmes (men"s health programme and physical activity programme) and awareness raising activities conducted by the CMHP over an 18 month period. Specifically, it will examine the individual components of the short programmes that were associated with effective engagement of men, the factors necessary to deliver an effective print media campaign, and the factors that contributed to successful partnerships working.

The researcher concludes that the CMHP successfully adopted a community development approach to address the needs of men in Carlow. The short programmes highlighted the need to find an effective "hook" or "incentive" to engage men and also men"s need for structure and tangible outcomes. The print media campaign found that localisation of stories is necessary to ensure issues alluded to are meaningful to men. It also demonstrated the importance of literacy demand and design in enabling men to interpret health messages. Although the CMHP experienced a number of challenges to partnership working, findings suggest that the REAIM planning tool was seen as a very beneficial to effective planning of interventions. Finally, the dedicated and enthusiastic partners involved with the CMHP was fundamental to their success.


'Buzz Marketing' is an alternative strategy of creating preference and demand among prospective customers. Though given caution, this geometrically progressive marketing strategy offers significant opportunities for firms. The popularity of online social media adds a new dimension of buzz marketing, as these social networking sites accommodate a massive exchange of views among the users. Companies planning to use online social media as a driver of their buzz marketing efforts inevitably face the challenge of acquiring favorable response from a versatile and almost uncontrollable mass of users. Hence, profiling the users of social media is valuable. This paper examines the users of online social media and creates profiles of these "buzz riders.†Qualitative in nature, this study also proposes strategic implications for the different categories of online social media users to elicit positive responses of the buzz marketing efforts of the companies.


In this paper, we propose a method to improve sound classification performance by combining signal features, derived from the time-frequency spectrogram, with human perception. The method presented herein exploits an artificial neural network (ANN) and learns the signal features based on the human perception knowledge. The proposed method is applied to a large acoustic dataset containing 24 months of nearly continuous recordings. The results show a significant improvement in performance of the detection-classification system; yielding as much as 20% improvement in true positive rate for a given false positive rate.


Traditionally, the verification effort is applied to the abstract algorithmic descriptions of the underlining software. However, even well understood protocols such as Petersons protocol for mutual exclusion, whose algorithmic description takes only half a page, have published implementations that are erroneous. Furthermore, the semantics of the implementations can be altered by optimizing compilers, which are very large applications and, consequently, are bound to have bugs. Thus, it is highly desirable to ensure the correctness of the compiled code especially in safety critical and high-assurance software. This dissertation describes two alternative approaches that bring us closer to solving the problem.
First, we present Compiler Validation via Analysis of the Cross-Product (Co-VaC) - a deductive framework for proving program equivalence and its application to automatic verification of transformations performed by optimizing compilers. To leverage the existing program analysis techniques, we reduce the equivalence checking problem to analysis of one system - a cross-product of the two input programs. We show how the approach can be effectively used for checking equivalence of single-threaded programs that are structurally similar. Unlike the existing frameworks, our approach accommodates absence of compiler annotations and handles most of the classical intraprocedural optimizations such as constant folding, reassociation, common subexpression elimination, code motion, branch optimizations, and others. In addition, we have developed rules for translation validation of interprocedural optimizations, which can be applied when compiler annotations are available.
The second contribution is the pancam framework for model checking multi-threaded C programs, pancam first compiles a multi-threaded C program into optimized bytecode format. The framework relies on Spin, an existing explicit state model checker, to orchestrate the program's state space search. However, the program transitions and states are computed by the pancam bytecode interpreter. A feature of our approach is that not only pancam checks the actual implementation, but it can also check the code after compiler optimizations. Pancam addresses the state space explosion problem by allowing users to define data abstraction functions and to constrain the number of allowed context switches. We also describe a partial order reduction method that reduces context switches using dynamic knowledge computed on-the-fly, while being sound for both safety and liveness properties.


Abstract Since 2011, geo-strategic interactions have exerted pressure on various political communities. In particular, uncertainty over the foreign policy intentions of new leadership elites and the nature of the unfolding regional security system in the Middle East have impacted the strategic questions Israel must answer: how can Israel rationally assess the new environment? What foreign policy approach would best serve Israel's distinct national interests? Using insights from the levels-of-analysis framework and from the realist theory of International Relations, this article aims to explore Israel's reading of recent regional developments and its attitudes and behaviours towards the attendant and emerging strategic challenges. The analysis reveals that the Arab Spring uprisings exacerbated the already anarchic Middle East environment, aggravating mistrust and antagonism in Israel. The urgency of the attraction of protectionism and militarism in Israel was an expression of the realist approach to Israel's primary strategic consolidation. With time, the regional dynamic has evolved into a more predictable—but still complex—structure than it was during its early phase (2010–2013). Although there have been signs of potential regional political eruptions, other developments have promoted continuity in the Middle East, which plays to Israel's strategic advantage.


This research examines the nature and impact of financial repression in the Trinidad
and Tobago economy using cointegration time series techniques and disequilibrium
econometrics. While the former is employed to estimate the impact on savings,
investment and growth, the latter is mainly used to test whether the characteristics
which depict a financially repressed economy are present in Trinidad and Tobago.
Trinidad and Tobago has not previously been the subject of such a study, and neither
estimation methods have been used to investigate financial repression.
While the real interest has been most frequently used to measure financial repression,
six proxies are utilised in this study: the real interest rate; dummy variables;
commercial banks' reserve requirement; inflation; the difference between the
domestic and the foreign interest rate and a variable to measure the overvaluation of a
country's currency. With respect to the latter there are two definitions: the difference
between the official and the blackmarket exchange rate and the degree of exchange
rate misalignment.
The results using real interest rates and inflation measures of financial repression
suggest that while liberalisation cannot be seen as the solution to increasing savings
and investment it may promote economic growth. When all the other proxies are
examined the impact of financial repression on the economy is negative albeit
statistically insignificant in most instances. There is some indication that exchange
rate should be devalued so as to reduce exchange rate misalignment and reduce the
widening gap between the official and blackmarket rate. On the basis of these results
the McKinnon-Shaw hypothesis cannot be rejected. However the results when
inflation and real interest rates are the relevant proxies for financial repression as well
as the low significance levels of other proxies, ought to serve as warning signals to
avoid implementing drastic liberalisation measures too quickly.


Drawing upon seminal and recent foundations of joint-decision making and social influence, we develop a model of dyadic relationships and test it in a family consumption context. Three kinds of social influence – social identity, group norms, and mutual expectations—were used to explain shared intentions to eat together in a restaurant with one's family. Shared intentions in turn, were found to significantly predict behavior a month later. One hundred and fifty husbands and their wives provided data. A multi-trait, multimethod matrix design was employed to establish construct validity of measures, and structural equation models were applied to test hypotheses, while explicitly controlling for random and systematic error. Prevention regulatory focus was found to moderate the effect of mutual expectations on shared intentions.


We consider the problem of efficiently processing subscription queries over data streams in large-scale interconnected sensor networks. We propose a scalable algorithm for distributed data stream processing, applicable on top of any platform granting access to interconnected sensor networks. We make use of a probabilistic algorithm to check whether subscriptions are subsumed by other subscriptions and thus can be pruned for more efficient processing. Our proposed methods are query driven, hence do not replicate data streams, but intelligently place join operators inside the global network of sources. We show by a performance evaluation using real world sensor data the suitability of our approach.


Background: The involvement of five specialist nurses in providing a stroke support service was evaluated quantitatively in a recent randomized controlled trial. This complementary study used qualitative methods to evaluate trial outcomes more comprehensively. Aims: To identify whether the nurses' intervention may have influenced the process of stroke recovery. Method: A purposefully selected subsample of 30 patients and 15 care-givers were interviewed within 1-3 months of their final quantitative assessment (12 months after recruitment to the randomized trial). Fifteen of the patients and eight of the care-givers had received visits from a specialist nurse. A semi- structured interview was designed to include questions on perceptions of the recovery process and evaluation of services received. Results: Some differences were evident between the accounts of control and intervention group subjects. The less tangible aspects of nurses' interventions - concern, attention, empathy and interest, when combined with sound professional knowledge, had identifiable value to the patients and care-givers. It appeared that the nurses had employed considerable sensitivity and skill in identifying and responding to particular needs at appropriate times. Conclusion: The qualitative evaluation offers a different picture to the quantitative results of the randomized controlled trial. In general, the findings of the qualitative study are more positive and encouraging than the quantitative results. The majority of patients and care-givers in the intervention group believed that they had benefited from the specialist nurse's visits.


Natural selection of organisms results in differences between populations in response to environmental conditions - that is, local adaptation. Understanding heterogeneity at this level requires identification of the different selection pressures that cause this differentiation. Tadpoles of the common frog, Rana temporaria, from northern Sweden show superior growth in warmer incubation conditions than tadpoles from the south, and vice versa in cooler conditions. A plausible explanation for this is that the thermal optimum in the northern population has been shifted by selection to correspond better with the relatively warmer developmental conditions experienced in the north compared with the south (northern ponds are warmer because they are shallower and tend to heat more quickly following the melting of snow). To test this hypothesis, we performed an experiment in which frogs from both regions were allowed to develop in water temperatures representative of those in their natural breeding ponds and in those at the other climatic extreme. Tadpoles in the 'warm' (northern) part of the range had markedly reduced survival at low temperatures compared with those from the cooler region in the south, with a non-significant difference at relatively high temperatures. Thus, northern frogs appear to have evolved towards becoming high-temperature 'specialists', with local adaptation being upheld by hard selection on tadpole survival.


Developing a framework for assessing interactions between multiple anthropogenic stressors remains an important goal in environmental research. In coastal ecosystems, the relative effects of aspects of global climate change (e.g. CO2 concentrations) and localized stressors (e.g. eutrophication), in combination, have received limited attention. Using a long‐term (11 month) field experiment, we examine how epiphyte assemblages in a tropical seagrass meadow respond to factorial manipulations of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2(aq)) and nutrient enrichment. In situ CO2(aq) manipulations were conducted using clear, open‐top chambers, which replicated carbonate parameter forecasts for the year 2100. Nutrient enrichment consisted of monthly additions of slow‐release fertilizer, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), to the sediments at rates equivalent to theoretical maximum rates of anthropogenic loading within the region (1.54 g N m−2 d−1 and 0.24 g P m−2 d−1). Epiphyte community structure was assessed on a seasonal basis and revealed declines in the abundance of coralline algae, along with increases in filamentous algae under elevated CO2(aq). Surprisingly, nutrient enrichment had no effect on epiphyte community structure or overall epiphyte loading. Interactions between CO2(aq) and nutrient enrichment were not detected. Furthermore, CO2(aq)‐mediated responses in the epiphyte community displayed strong seasonality, suggesting that climate change studies in variable environments should be conducted over extended time‐scales. Synthesis. The observed responses indicate that for certain locations, global stressors such as ocean acidification may take precedence over local eutrophication in altering the community structure of seagrass epiphyte assemblages. Given that nutrient‐driven algal overgrowth is commonly cited as a widespread cause of seagrass decline, our findings highlight that alternate climate change forces may exert proximate control over epiphyte community structure.


The multi-stage intermediate pressure turbine (IPT) is a key enabler of the thermodynamic cycle in geared turbofan engine architectures, where fan and turbine rotational speeds become decoupled by employing a power gearbox between them. This allows for the separate aerodynamic optimization of both components, an increase in engine bypass ratios, higher propulsive efficiency, and lower specific fuel consumption. Due to significant aerodynamic differences with conventional low pressure turbines (LPTs), multi-stage IPT designs present new aerodynamic, mechanical and acoustic trade-offs. This work describes the aerodynamic design and experimental validation of a fully featured three-stage IP turbine, including a final row of outlet guide vanes.
 Experiments have been conducted in a highly engine-representative transonic rotating wind tunnel at the CTA (Centro de Tecnologías Aeronáuticas, Spain), in which Mach and Reynolds numbers were matched to engine conditions. The design intent is shown to be fully validated. Efficiency levels are discussed in the context of a previous state-of-the-art LPT, tested in the same facility. It is argued that the efficiency gains of IPTs are due to higher pitch-to-chord ratios, which lead to a reduction in overall profile losses, and higher velocity ratios and lower turning angles, which reduce airfoil secondary flows and three-dimensional losses.


The first partially articulated scleritome of a tommotiid, Eccentrotheca sp., is described from the Lower Cambrian of South Australia. The Eccentrotheca scleritome consists of individual sclerites; fused in a spiral arrangement, forming a tapering tube-shaped skeleton with an inclined apical aperture and a circular to subcircular cross section. Traditionally, tommotiid sclerites have been assumed to form a dorsal armor of imbricating phosphatic plates in slug-like bilaterians, analogous to the calcareous sclerites of halkieriids. The structure of the Eceentrotheca scleritome is here reinterpreted as a tube composed of independent, irregularly shaped sclerites growing by basal-marginal accretion that were successively fused to form a rigid, protective tubular structure. The asymmetrical shape and sometimes acute inclination of the apical aperture suggests that the apical part of the scleritome was cemented to a hard surface via a basal disc, from which it projected vertically. Rather than being a vagrant member of the benthos, Eccentrotheca most likely represented a sessile, vermiform filter feeder. The new data suggest that the affinities of Eccentrotheca, and possibly some other problematic tommotiids, lie with the lophophorates (i.e., the phoronids and brachiopods), a clade that also possesses a phosphatic shell chemistry and a sessile life habit.


In this work, we are interested in the improvements attainable when multiscan processing of external knowledge is performed over a moving time window. We propose a novel algorithm that enforces the state constraints by using a Fixed-Lag Smoothing procedure within the prediction step of the Bayesian recursion. For proving the improvements, we utilize differential entropy as a measure of uncertainty and show that the approach guarantees a lower or equal posterior differential entropy than classical single-step constrained filtering. Simulation results using examples for single-target tracking are presented to verify that a Sequential Monte Carlo implementation of the proposed algorithm guarantees an improved tracking accuracy.


The high mutation rate of hepatitis C virus allows it to rapidly evade the humoral immune response. However, certain epitopes in the envelope glycoproteins cannot vary without compromising virus viability. Antibodies targeting these epitopes are resistant to viral escape from neutralization and understanding their binding-mode is important for vaccine design. Human monoclonal antibodies HC84-1 and HC84-27 target conformational epitopes overlapping the CD81 receptor-binding site, formed by segments aa434–446 and aa610–619 within the major HCV glycoprotein E2. No neutralization escape was yet observed for these antibodies. We report here the crystal structures of their Fab fragments in complex with a synthetic peptide comprising aa434–446. The structures show that the peptide adopts an α-helical conformation with the main contact residues F442 and Y443 forming a hydrophobic protrusion. The peptide retained its conformation in both complexes, independently of crystal packing, indicating that it reflects a surface feature of the folded glycoprotein that is exposed similarly on the virion. The same residues of E2 are also involved in interaction with CD81, suggesting that the cellular receptor binds the same surface feature and potential escape mutants critically compromise receptor binding. In summary, our results identify a critical structural motif at the E2 surface, which is essential for virus propagation and therefore represents an ideal candidate for structure-based immunogen design for vaccine development.


This paper describes a new hybrid regression method that combines the best features of conventional numerical regression techniques with the genetic programming symbolic regression technique. The key idea is to employ an evolutionary computing methodology to search for a model of the system/process being modelled and to employ parameter estimation to obtain constants using least squares. The new technique, termed Evolutionary Polynomial Regression (EPR) overcomes shortcomings in the GP process, such as computational performance; number of evolutionary parameters to tune and complexity of the symbolic models. Similarly, it alleviates issues arising from numerical regression, including difficulties in using physical insight and over-fitting problems. This paper demonstrates that EPR is good, both in interpolating data and in scientific knowledge discovery. As an illustration, EPR is used to identify polynomial formulae with progressively increasing levels of noise, to interpolate the Colebrook-White formula for a pipe resistance coefficient and to discover a formula for a resistance coefficient from experimental data.


The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a threat for the peace and security of all humanity. From Hiroshima in 1945, vertical and horizontal proliferation has increased considerably. Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons production technology and knowledge to nations that do not already have such capabilities. From its inception, 50 years ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been the primary international anti-proliferation organisation. Its Safeguards system was specified under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 and also under its Statues. The NPT has three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament and the right to peacefully use nuclear technology. Nuclear weapon-free zones were established by a General Assembly of United Nations resolution. Iran and North Korea are cases of extreme concern for all humanity and especially for the IAEA and for the United Nations. It is necessary to reinforce cooperation and negotiation in a pacific climate in order to achieve an effective regime of nuclear non proliferation.


The economic consequences of a long memory assumption about volatility are documented, by comparing implied volatilities for option prices obtained from short and long memory volatility processes. Numerical results are given for options on the S & P 100 index from 1984 to 1998, with lives up to two years. The long memory assumption is found to have a significant impact upon the term structure of implied volatilities and a relatively minor impact upon smile effects. These conclusions are important because evidence for long memory in volatility has been found in the prices of many assets.


It is now well established that NK cells recognize classical and nonclassical MHC class I molecules and that such recognition typically results in the inhibition of target cell lysis. Given the known structural similarities between MHC class I and non-MHC-encoded CD1 molecules, we investigated the possibility that human CD1a, -b, and -c proteins might also function as specific target structures for NK cell receptors. Here we report that expression of CD1a, -b, or -c can partially inhibits target cell lysis by freshly isolated human NK cells and cultured NK lines. The inhibitory effects of CD1 molecules on NK cell could be shown upon expression of individual CD1 proteins in transfected NK-sensitive target cells, and these effects could be reversed by incubation of the target cells with mAbs specific for the expressed form of CD1. Inhibitory effects of CD1 expression on NK-mediated lysis could also be shown for cultured human dendritic cells, which represent a cell type that prominently expresses the various CD1 proteins in vivo. In addition, the bacterial glycolipid Ags known to be bound and presented by CD1 proteins could significantly augment the observed inhibitory effects on target cell lysis by NK cells.


• • Farm subsidy programs have long been contentious both in domestic policy debate and in global policy forums. Now a recent World Trade Organization ruling against U.S. cotton subsidies has thrown a spotlight on an additional problem: the conflict between U.S. farm programs and the international obligations of the United States as a member of the WTO. That problem is not confined to cotton. The subsidies conferred on numerous other commodities besides cotton are vulnerable to WTO challenge as well. In addition, there is a strong argument that the United States has been and will be in violation of its WTO commitments regarding the overall level of trade-distorting subsidies. The cotton case has clarified the proper classification of U.S. farm subsidies into the "green" and "amber" boxes of the WTO Agriculture Agreement. The upshot of that clarification is that the United States has likely been exceeding the $19.1 billion cap on trade-distorting, amber-box subsidies that it agreed to abide by under the Agriculture Agreement. According to the calculations described in this paper, total U.S. amber-box subsidies to be included under the cap amounted to $29.1 billion in 2000 and $25.3 billion in 2001 and will likely total about $26.3 billion in 2006—all far in excess of the $19.1 billion limit. Furthermore, U.S. farm programs for a variety of commodities may be suppressing market prices in violation of the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Economic simulations based on a model developed here show that U.S. subsidies depress world corn prices by 9 to 10 percent, world wheat prices by 6 to 8 percent, and world rice prices by 4 to 6 percent.Those price effects, together with other data on subsidy rates and costs of production, are large enough to raise concerns about serious prejudice to the interests of other WTO members. U.S. farm programs are in need of a major overhaul to bring them into conformity with international obligations. Congress should therefore seize the opportunity to make real and durable improvements in agricultural policy when the current farm bill expires in 2007. Boxed In Conflicts between U.S. Farm Policies and WTO Obligations


Species distribution models rely on the assumption that species' distributions are at equilibrium with environmental conditions within a region – i.e. they occur in all suitable habitats. If this assumption holds, species occurrence should be predictable from measures of the environment. Introduced species may be poor candidates for distribution models due to their presumed lack of equilibrium within the landscapes they occupy, although predicting their potential distributions is often of critical importance to natural resource managers. We determined if the accuracy of species distribution models differed between 17 native and 17 introduced riparian plant species in the western United States. We also assessed if model accuracy was associated with both environmental and biological factors that can influence dispersal. We used Random Forests to model species distributions and linear regression to determine if model accuracy was associated with dispersal-related traits. Model accuracy for introduced species was higher than that for native species. Dispersal-related traits did not affect model accuracy or improvement, though two other traits, family affiliation and rarity on the landscape, did have an effect. Distance-based measures of dispersal potential improved model fit equally for both native and introduced species and for species with a variety of dispersal traits, suggesting that the importance of regional propagule pressure is relatively constant across species with different dispersal opportunities. Several lines of future questioning are suggested by our results, including why introduced species may in some cases produce more accurate distribution models than native species and how species dispersal traits relate to distribution model accuracy at different spatial scales.


Kernel SVM suffers from high computational complexity when dealing with large-scale nonlinear datasets. To address this issue, locally linear classifiers have been proposed for approximating nonlinear decision boundaries with locally linear functions using a local coding scheme. The effectiveness of such coding scheme depends heavily on the quality of anchor points chosen to produce the local codes. Existing methods usually involve a phase of unsupervised anchor point learning followed by supervised classifier learning. Thus, the anchor points and classifiers are obtained separately whereas the learned anchor points may not be optimal for the discriminative task. In this paper, we present a novel fully supervised approach for anchor point learning. A single optimization problem is formulated over both anchor point and classifier variables, optimizing the initial anchor points jointly with the classifiers to minimize the classification risk. Experimental results show that our method outperforms other competitive methods which employ unsupervised anchor point learning and achieves performance on par with the kernel SVM albeit with much improved efficiency.


Authors Bob Alexander and Donaly E. Brice grappled with several issues when deciding how to relate a general history of the Texas Rangers. Should emphasis be placed on their frontier defense against Indians, or focus more on their role as guardians of the peace and statewide law enforcers? What about the tumultuous Mexican Revolution period, 1910-1920? And how to deal with myths and legends such as One Riot, One Ranger?
Texas Rangers: Lives, Legend, and Legacy is the authors' answer to these questions, a one-volume history of the Texas Rangers. The authors begin with the earliest Rangers in the pre-Republic years in 1823 and take the story up through the Republic, Mexican War, and Civil War. Then, with the advent of the Frontier Battalion, the authors focus in detail on each company A through F, relating what was happening within each company concurrently. Thereafter, Alexander and Brice tell the famous episodes of the Rangers that forged their legend, and bring the story up through the twentieth century to the present day in the final chapters.


Abstract. The present thesis describes the development of a planet tool for an interactive school atlas using an eBook format. Especially the technical and cartographical capabilities of the open standard ePUB 3 are evaluated. An eBook application with interactive and dynamic 2-dimensional visualizations is developed especially to show whether the re-al-world dimensions and distances in the solar system can be mapped in a cartographical correct and for students easy understandable manner. In the first part of the work, the requirements of the planet tool are evaluated in co-operation with experts. The open standards PDF and ePUB 3 are investigated with regard to the requirements for the development of the planet tool. Another chapter describes in detail all significant steps of the development process for a prototype of the planet tool. A graphic file originally created for print production is prepared and enhanced with interactive features to generate one of the eBook pages. This serves to show a potential workflow for the generation of eBook pages in a cross-media atlas production. All sample pages of the prototype show different layouts and contain the entire spectrum of interactive features and multimedia content of modern eBooks. The sample pages are presented and discussed in an own chapter. The results of the present work aim at answering the question concerning the suitability of the open standard ePUB 3 for the development of a multimedia eBook for high school education.


We are living through an AI and data revolution. Artificial and augmented intelligence systems are already being used in the scientific discovery domain and have the potential to make a groundbreaking impact. However, using AI in this way comes with a wealth of ethical and societal considerations, from algorithmic bias to explainability and privacy concerns. Ethical frameworks covering many of these issues abound but are they enough? Tensions, trade-offs and transparency in AI were the themes running through the AI3SD Network+'s all-day workshop, part of the ACM Web Science 2020 conference. In a vibrant example of the interdisciplinary approach that is essential to addressing these big challenges, philosophers, computer and material scientists, sociologists, ethicists and many more gathered to explore the topic. Four presentations set out some of the key issues. Participants then tackled the ethical dimensions of a very current real-life application, using data from a Covid-19 contact tracing app for scientific research, in an interactive session using Moral IT cards. Due to the Covid-19 situation, the entire workshop was conducted via Zoom.


The PDIP strives to maintain situational awareness of the threat posed by prescription opioids in Pennsylvania, and to share these analyses with stakeholders in federal, state, and municipal governments. In 2013, the PDIP published a Pharmaceutical Threat Assessment for Pennsylvania that found prescription opioid availability and abuse at epidemic levels. In 2016 and 2019, the PDIP published updated assessments detailing prescription opioid availability and abuse trends; this 2020 assessment builds on the previous analyses.


The purpose of this study was to assess three-dimensional (3D) set-up errors using megavoltage computed tomography (MVCT) during image-guided intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for supine craniospinal irradiation (CSI) on helical tomotherapy (HT). Patients were immobilized in a customized 4-clamp thermoplastic head mask with or without whole-body vacuum cradle. Set-up was based primarily on a set of cranial fiducial markers. MVCT scans were acquired and co-registered with planning scan separately at three different levels (brain, upper, and lower spine) at every fraction. Only translational displacements were analysed, wherein positive sign denotes deviation in anterior, left, and superior direction; while negative sign denotes deviation in posterior, right, and inferior direction. Mean displacements, systematic, and random errors of the study population were calculated at all three levels separately. Local residual uncertainty of the upper and lower spine was also derived assuming perfect co-registration of the skull. Set-up margins for clinical target volume (CTV) to planning target volume (PTV) were derived at these three levels separately using published margin recipes. Data from 1868 co-registrations in 674 fractions on 33 patients was included. The mean displacements in the lateral, longitudinal, and vertical directions were −1.21, −1.36, and 1.38 mm; −1.25, −0.34, and 0.65 mm; and −1.47, −2.78, and 0.22 mm for the brain; upper spine; and lumbar spine respectively. The corresponding 3D vector of displacement was 2.28; 1.45; and 3.15 mm respectively. There was a distinct systematic trend towards increasing inaccuracy from the brain towards the lower spine. Using Stroom's formula, the minimum recommended CTV to PTV margins in absence of daily image-guidance were 6.5; 7.0; and 9.5 mm for the brain; upper spine; and lower spine respectively. This increased to 7.5; 8.5; and 11.5 mm using van Herk's formula. Subset and sensitivity analyses could not identify any factor predictive of increased inaccuracy. Residual uncertainty of the spinal column was lesser after daily co-registration referenced to the skull, suggesting that smaller set-up margins maybe appropriate while using daily image-guidance with an online correction protocol. Daily MVCT imaging during supine CSI on HT provides volumetric verification of the set-up process. There is substantial site-dependent variability in translational displacements that increases systematically from brain towards the lower spine with implications for differential set-up -margins for the brain, upper, and lower spine.


Objective. Conceptually sound subscales for the Middle-Childhood Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (MC-HOME) were created and evaluated utilizing 3 large-scale data sets including children ages 6 to 9 years: the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement (PSID-CDS), and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement (NLSY-CS). Design. Sample sizes were 459 children in the PHDCN, 152 children in the PSID-CDS, and 6,961 children in the NLSY-CS. We grouped items into subscales based on conceptual coherence and evaluated the reliability of the proposed subscales by examining individual item-to-scale correlations and Cronbach's alphas. We tested predictive validity by calculating correlations with cognitive and behavioral outcomes in each data set. Results. Results suggest 7 out of 9 conceptually based MC-HOME subscales are associated with children's cognitive status, even after adjustment for key demographic characteristics. In contrast, mixed results were found for children's behavioral outcomes. The Parental Warmth and Parental Lack of Hostility subscales are the most predictive of behavior problems. Conclusions. Conceptually meaningful subscales are promising to examine children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes, although more and finer-grained analyses of the ways these conceptually meaningful HOME subscales relate to children's later outcomes are needed to further validate the approach established here.


A time bank is a group of people that set up a common platform to trade services among themselves. There are several well-known problems associated with this type of time banking, e.g., high overhead costs and difficulties to identify feasible trades. This paper constructs a nonmanipulable mechanism that selects an individually rational and time-balanced allocation which maximizes exchanges among the members of the time bank (and those allocations are efficient). The mechanism works on a domain of preferences where agents classify services as unacceptable and acceptable (and for those services agents have specific upper quotas representing their maximum needs).


This paper explores the concept of the post-secular city by examining the growing presence of Street-Pastors in the night-time economy of British cities. Street-Pastors are Christian volunteers who work to ensure the safety of people on a 'night out'. We contribute to work that has called for greater attention to be placed on the ways in which religious faith and ethics are performed to create liminal spaces of understanding in urban areas. Drawing upon in-depth ethnographic research conducted in a range of UK towns and cities, we consider this distinct form of faith-based patrolling in relation to the spatial processes and practices of urban-nightscapes. By exploring the geographies of Street-Pastors, we not only contribute to more nuanced accounts of 'drinking spaces' but provide an empirical engagement with the growing body of work on urban rhythms and encounters.


Among matching techniques for observational studies, full matching is in principle the best, in the sense that its alignment of comparable treated and control subjects is as good as that of any alternate method, and potentially much better. This article evaluates the practical performance of full matching for the first time, modifying it in order to minimize variance as well as bias and then using it to compare coached and uncoached takers of the SAT. In this new version, with restrictions on the ratio of treated subjects to controls within matched sets, full matching makes use of many more observations than does pair matching, but achieves far closer matches than does matching with k≥ 2 controls. Prior to matching, the coached and uncoached groups are separated on the propensity score by 1.1 SDs. Full matching reduces this separation to 1% or 2% of an SD. In older literature comparing matching and regression, Cochran expressed doubts that any method of adjustment could substantially reduce observed bias of this magnitude. To accommodate missing data, regression-based analyses by ETS researchers rejected a subset of the available sample that differed significantly from the subsample they analyzed. Full matching on the propensity score handles the same problem simply and without rejecting observations. In addition, it eases the detection and handling of nonconstancy of treatment effects, which the regression-based analyses had obscured, and it makes fuller use of covariate information. It estimates a somewhat larger effect of coaching on the math score than did ETS's methods.


This paper was published in the Proceedings of the III International Conference of Physical Education and Sports Science, held in Singapore from 25 – 28 May 2010


ABSTRACT Bacteria can survive on hospital textiles and surfaces, from which they can be disseminated, representing a source of health care-associated infections (HCAIs). Surfaces containing copper (Cu), which is known for its bactericidal properties, could be an efficient way to lower the burden of potential pathogens. The antimicrobial activity of Cu-sputtered polyester surfaces, obtained by direct-current magnetron sputtering (DCMS), against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was tested. The Cu-polyester microstructure was characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy to determine the microstructure of the Cu nanoparticles and by profilometry to assess the thickness of the layers. Sputtering at 300 mA for 160 s led to a Cu film thickness of 20 nm (100 Cu layers) containing 0.209% (wt/wt) polyester. The viability of MRSA strain ATCC 43300 on Cu-sputtered polyester was evaluated by four methods: (i) mechanical detachment, (ii) microcalorimetry, (iii) direct transfer onto plates, and (iv) stereomicroscopy. The low efficacy of mechanical detachment impeded bacterial viability estimations. Microcalorimetry provided only semiquantitative results. Direct transfer onto plates and stereomicroscopy seemed to be the most suitable methods to evaluate the bacterial inactivation potential of Cu-sputtered polyester surfaces, since they presented the least experimental bias. Cu-polyester samples sputtered for 160 s by DCMS were further tested against 10 clinical MRSA isolates and showed a high level of bactericidal activity, with a 4-log10 reduction in the initial MRSA load (106 CFU) within 1 h. Cu-sputtered polyester surfaces might be of use to prevent the transmission of HCAI pathogens.


Modern supervised machine learning algorithms involve hyperparameters that have to be set before running them. Options for setting hyperparameters are default values from the software package, manual configuration by the user or configuring them for optimal predictive performance by a tuning procedure. The goal of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, we formalize the problem of tuning from a statistical point of view, define data-based defaults and suggest general measures quantifying the tunability of hyperparameters of algorithms. Secondly, we conduct a large-scale benchmarking study based on 38 datasets from the OpenML platform and six common machine learning algorithms. We apply our measures to assess the tunability of their parameters. Our results yield default values for hyperparameters and enable users to decide whether it is worth conducting a possibly time consuming tuning strategy, to focus on the most important hyperparameters and to chose adequate hyperparameter spaces for tuning.


In this article, I discuss whether the theory of justice as fairness famously proposed by John Rawls can justify the implementation of global principles of socioeconomic justice, contrary to what Rawls himself maintains. In particular, I dwell on the concept of the basic structure of society, which Rawls defines as "the primary subject of justice" and considers as a prerogative of domestic societies. In the first part, I briefly present Rawls's theory of socio-economic justice and his account of justice between peoples. I then proceed with the analysis of the cosmopolitan counterarguments that have been levelled against Rawls's dualism between domestic and international justice, which mainly revolve around the outlining of a global basic structure as a consequence of globalisation. Between these two opposing poles, I also discuss the intermediate stance taken by those authors who maintain that the empirical dispute between a domestic and a global basic structure is misleading, because the pressing question is whether the unfair practices and norms that characterise the global economy demand the existence of a global basic structure, regardless of the fact that it already exists or not. Lastly, I collect some points, both theoretical and empirical, that have emerged from the analysis and I argue that the theoretical requirement of a global basic structure can have practical implications even if its existence is contradicted in empirical terms.


In anticipation of the return of samples from Mars toward the end of the first decade of the next century, NASA's Office of Space Sciences chartered a panel to examine how Mars samples should be handled. The panel was to make recommendations in three areas: (1) sample collection and transport back to Earth; (2) certification of the samples as nonhazardous; and (3) sample receiving, curation, and distribution. This report summarizes the findings of that panel. The samples should be treated as hazardous until proven otherwise. They are to be sealed within a canister on Mars, and the canister is not to be opened until within a Biosafety Hazard Level 4 (BSL-4) containment facility here on Earth. This facility must also meet or exceed the cleanliness requirements of the Johnson Space Center (JSC) facility for curation of extraterrestrial materials. A containment facility meeting both these requirements does not yet exist. Hazard assessment and life detection experiments are to be done at the containment facility, while geochemical characterization is being performed on a sterilized subset of the samples released to the science community. When and if the samples are proven harmless, they are to be transferred to a curation facility, such as that at JSC.


Statistical applications in sports have long centered on how to best separate signal (e.g. team talent) from random noise. However, most of this work has concentrated on a single sport, and the development of meaningful cross-sport comparisons has been impeded by the difficulty of translating luck from one sport to another. In this manuscript, we develop Bayesian state-space models using betting market data that can be uniformly applied across sporting organizations to better understand the role of randomness in game outcomes. These models can be used to extract estimates of team strength, the between-season, within-season, and game-to-game variability of team strengths, as well each team's home advantage. We implement our approach across a decade of play in each of the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), National Basketball Association (NBA), and Major League Baseball (MLB), finding that the NBA demonstrates both the largest dispersion in talent and the largest home advantage, while the NHL and MLB stand out for their relative randomness in game outcomes. We conclude by proposing new metrics for judging competitiveness across sports leagues, both within the regular season and using traditional postseason tournament formats. Although we focus on sports, we discuss a number of other situations in which our generalizable models might be usefully applied.


BACKGROUND
Alcohol use is an established risk factor for several malignancies and is associated with adverse oncologic outcomes among individuals diagnosed with cancer. The prevalence and patterns of alcohol use among cancer survivors are poorly described.

METHODS
We used the National Health Interview Survey from 2000 to 2017 to examine alcohol drinking prevalence and patterns among adults reporting a cancer diagnosis. Multivariable logistic regression was used to define the association between demographic and socioeconomic variables and odds of self-reporting as a current drinker, exceeding moderate drinking limits, and engaging in binge drinking. The association between specific cancer type and odds of drinking were assessed.

RESULTS
Among 34,080 survey participants with a known cancer diagnosis, 56.5% self-reported as current drinkers, including 34.9% who exceeded moderate drinking limits and 21.0% who engaged in binge drinking. Younger age, smoking history, and more recent survey period were associated with higher odds of current, exceeding moderate, and binge drinking (P<.001 for all, except P=.008 for excess drinking). Similar associations persisted when the cohort was limited to 20,828 cancer survivors diagnosed ≥5 years before survey administration. Diagnoses of melanoma and cervical, head and neck, and testicular cancers were associated with higher odds of binge drinking (P<.05 for all) compared with other cancer diagnoses.

CONCLUSIONS
Most cancer survivors self-report as current alcohol drinkers, including a subset who seem to engage in excessive drinking behaviors. Given that alcohol intake has implications for cancer prevention and is a potentially modifiable risk factor for cancer-specific outcomes, the high prevalence of alcohol use among cancer survivors highlights the need for public health strategies aimed at the reduction of alcohol consumption.


Hong Kong is within the tropics and has a seasonal climate. In winter, shores support patches of ephemeral macroalgae and areas of seemingly bare rock close to crevices where mollus- can herbivores are abundant. Using a factorial design of herbivore exclusions in areas far and close to crevices, the development of algal assemblages was monitored in mid-shore, cleared areas, in win- ter. To estimate the role of herbivore mucus deposition, half the treatments received a mucus appli- cation. Algal development was estimated from macroalgal and biofilm development and chlorophyll a levels. In all areas, biofilms (diatoms, unicellular cyanobacteria) developed rapidly in herbivore exclusions followed by ephemeral macroalgae (Enteromorpha spp. and Porphyra suborbiculata). In herbivore access treatments, however, the algal assemblage was influenced by treatment location; few macroalgae developed in areas close to crevices, and the rock was dominated by cyanobacteria. A negative relationship between macroalgae and biofilms suggested that ephemeral algae were competitively dominant. In areas distant from herbivore refuges, ephemeral macroalgae did develop, illustrating that the effectiveness of molluscan herbivores was limited to 50 to 100 cm from these refuges. The absence of large herbivorous fish, and the sparse numbers of herbivorous crabs at this site, means that algae can achieve a spatial escape from consumption, and where this occurs compe- tition between producers is important in assemblage development. Mucus appeared to play a limited role, only sometimes stimulating initial stages of unicellular cyanobacteria and macroalgae. With the onset of summer, macroalgae died back, and rock space became available for colonization. Unicellu- lar cyanobacteria developed rapidly but were replaced in all treatments by the encrusting macroalga, Hapalospongidion gelatinosum, which dominated treatments until the end of the experiment. On seasonal, tropical shores processes influencing community structure can, therefore, be temporally variable and their relative importance, even at the same shore level, can change with season.


Objectives To evaluate repeated subgingival air-polishing in residual pockets with a new erythritol powder containing 0.3% chlorhexidine. Material and Methods Single-centre, examiner masked, randomized clinical trial of 12 months with a two-arm, within-subject parallel design. Fifty patients in periodontal maintenance were monitored in 3-month intervals. At months 0, 3, 6 and 9, all sites presenting with a probing depth (PD) >4 mm were subject to subgingival air-polishing (test side) or ultrasonic debridement (control side). The primary endpoint was presence/absence of PD >4 mm after 12 months. Results Totally 6918 sites were monitored at baseline, 457 of them had a PD >4 mm (range 5–9 mm). The number of pockets >4 mm per subject, PD and bleeding on probing were significantly lower at month 12. Differences between test and control were not significant. There was a significant difference in favour of air-polishing for the perception of pain/discomfort. Differences of frequencies at >1000 and >100,000 cells/ml of six microorganisms between baseline and month 12 were not significant. At month 12, test sites were less frequently positive for Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans at >1000 cells/ml than controls, and counts never exceeded 100,000 cells/ml. Conclusions Repeated subgingival air-polishing reduced the number of pockets >4 mm similar to ultrasonic debridement. It was safe and induced less pain.


Sediment load prediction is very important in planning, operation, and maintenance of water structures located on rivers. The sediment loads exhibit random characteristics due to the uncertain nature of sediment transportation in rivers. To predict suspended sediment load, stochastic processes, regression methods, neural network models, and fuzzy logic have been used in the literature so far. The purpose of this study was to develop a model that can make accurate predictions of suspended sediment loads. Here, a combination of wavelet and fuzzy logic techniques (WFL) is proposed as a new technique to model the behavior of sediment load. While the wavelet method is able to decompose the original series into its sub-bands, fuzzy logic method can be used as a predictive model for each sub-band. It is possible to detect significant power at specific intervals from average wavelet spectra. The WFL was compared with the stand-alone fuzzy logic approach based on the Nash–Sutcliffe Sufficiency Score (NSSS), mean absolute error (MAE), and square of correlation coefficient (R) used as performance indicators. The results of the study show that the WFL provides a considerable improvement over the stand-alone fuzzy logic approach in the prediction of sediment load.


The main scientific problem is the development of the cost modeling methodology of value-added accounting for the purpose of obtaining estimates of the value-added level of innovative products, which is necessary for making managerial, investment, production and other decisions at all levels of management and for monitoring the results of such decisions. The purpose of the article is to develop a methodology for accounting for the value added of innovative products, regarding the technology readiness levels for commercialization based on the analysis of problems and growth points of the national economy using the example of the BRICS international collaboration. The article revealed the features of innovative development of leading and developing countries, the need for the national economy in international collaborations to intensify innovative development, the existing problems in accounting for the value added of innovative products, the developed proprietary methodology for accounting for the value added of innovative products, regarding the technology readiness level for commercialization. The theoretical significance lies in the development of methodological foundations for accounting for the creation and distribution of value added, and the practical significance is determined by the fact that for the first time the methodology takes into account the technology readiness levels for commercialization, which gives a new approach to the practical assessment of the value-added innovation.


Active perception refers to a theoretical approach to the study of perception grounded on the idea that perceiving is a way of acting, rather than a cognitive process whereby the brain constructs an internal representation of the world. The operational principles of active perception can be effectively tested by building robot-based models in which the relationship between perceptual categories and the body-environment interactions can be experimentally manipulated. In this paper, we study the mechanisms of tactile perception in a task in which a neuro-controlled anthropomorphic robotic arm, equipped with coarse-grained tactile sensors, is required to perceptually discriminate between spherical and ellipsoid objects. The results of this work demonstrate that evolved continuous time nonlinear neural controllers can bring forth strategies to allow the arm to effectively solve the discrimination task.


AbstractThis study investigated effects of maternal elicitation style, repeated recall sessions, and retention interval on 2-year-olds' autobiographical memory. Ten mothers and their children from 24 to 30 months of age verbally recalled the same four events once a week for 4 weeks. Two weeks later, an experimenter interviewed children about the same events as well as about four new events. Half of the events had taken place in the recent past (up to 6 months); the other half were from the remote past (6 to 10 months). Children recalled specific information about events occurring up to 10 months in the past, although they recalled more information about recent events than about remote events. Chil-dren were very much dependent on an adult partner to cue their recall. If specific cues were not provided, children rarely volunteered information. Chil-dren's conversations with their mothers affected their recall with the experi-menter: Children responded to more information requests, produced more offers of information, and recalled more specific information about events they had previously discussed with mothers than when recalling new events with the experimenter. However, children recalled more information with their mothers than with the experimenter, and prior discussions with mothers did not increase the amount of information children recalled with the experimenter. Two mater-nal elicitation styles were identified that were related to differences in children's responsiveness and amount of recall: Children of high elaboration mothers were more responsive and recalled more information than children of low elaboration mothers. (Psychology)