PURPOSE OF REVIEW
Consumer products are often overlooked as sources of children's exposures to toxic chemicals. Various regulatory bodies have developed lists of chemicals of concern that can be found in products contacted by children. However, this information has not been summarized for health practitioners. This review organizes such chemicals and products into four categories, with the antibacterial agent triclosan used to illustrate the potential risks to children from a common ingredient in consumer products.

RECENT FINDINGS
Biomonitoring, house dust, indoor air, and product testing document children's exposures to a wide variety of chemicals. An increasing number of epidemiology studies have shown associations between these exposures and health effects in children. Triclosan is an example of a chemical contained in high contact products (e.g., soaps, lotions, and toothpaste) not necessarily designed for children. Triclosan exposure in children has been associated with increased responsiveness to airway allergens, with it also capable of endocrine disruption. However, the utility and necessity of this chemical in consumer products has not been demonstrated in most cases.

SUMMARY
Triclosan and the other examples provided show that a changing marketplace with little regulatory oversight of chemical uses can lead to unanticipated exposures and potential health risks to children.


This paper summarizes the proceedings of an NIAID-sponsored workshop on statistical issues for HIV surrogate endpoints. The workshop brought together statisticians and clinicians in an attempt to shed light on some unresolved issues in the use of HIV laboratory markers (such as HIV RNA and CD4+ cell counts) in the design and analysis of clinical studies and in patient management. Utilizing a debate format, the workshop explored a series of specific questions dealing with the relationship between markers and clinical endpoints, and the choice of endpoints and methods of analysis in clinical studies. This paper provides the position statements from the two debaters on each issue. Consensus conclusions, based on the presentations and discussion, are outlined. While not providing final answers, we hope that these discussions have helped clarify a number of issues, and will stimulate further consideration of some of the highlighted problems. These issues will be critical in the proper assessment and use of future therapies for HIV disease.


Formaldehyde is one of the main gases that contribute to poor indoor air quality since it is so widely used in the manufacturing of goods. Over time, formaldehyde leaches out of various materials and reduces the quality of air. Formaldehyde, even at very low concentrations, can cause respiratory problems and a general feeling of unwellness. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that formaldehyde exposure should not exceed 0.08 ppm over a 30 minute period. Therefore, formaldehyde sensors are needed to ensure optimal indoor air quality. Polyaniline (PANI), as well as PANI doped with NiO or NiO and Al2O3, were tested to determine their suitability as sensing materials for formaldehyde. It was found that at higher concentrations of formaldehyde (above 1 ppm), PANI doped with 5% NiO and 15% Al2O3 was the most suitable sensing material with respect to both sensitivity and selectivity. At lower concentrations (below 1 ppm), however, PANI doped with 5% NiO and 15% Al2O3 did not detect formaldehyde. PANI doped with 15% NiO only was a much better option since it was able to detect the highest concentration of formaldehyde at very low concentrations (0.09 ppm) and still have moderate selectivity. A special test system was designed that could test single or multiple gases at various concentrations. Ethanol, acetaldehyde and benzene were chosen as interferents for formaldehyde and nitrogen was used to dilute the gases to achieve lower concentrations. A specialized gas chromatograph (GC) was used to determine the amount of gas or analyte that interacted with the sensing material being tested. Replicate polymer samples of varying dopant concentrations were tested with different gases at different concentrations and statistically analyzed. Both sensitivity and selectivity towards formaldehyde was taken into consideration. Among all tests conducted with single and multiple gases, it was concluded that PANI doped with 5% NiO and 15% Al2O3 was the best sensing material at high concentrations of formaldehyde (above 1 ppm), whereas PANI doped with 15% NiO was the best sensing material at low concentrations (below 1 ppm).


Background Very little is known about neural tube defects (NTDs) in Iraqi Kurdistan. This study was undertaken in Sulaymaniyah province in order to describe these defects in the area and report on the outcome of patients. Methods This descriptive study involved a case series of 50 patients admitted with NTD to the department of neurosurgery at Sulaimaniyah Teaching Hospital during 2006-2010. Results Ninety eight patients were admitted to the centre of whom 50 patients were included in the study. The estimated incidence at birth was 3.5 per 10,000, 56% of the patients were females and 44% were males with a female to male ratio of 1.27. The median age at first visit was 9 days (Interquartile range 1, 36). The maternal age ranged from 17-42 years with a mean age of 28 years (SD 6 years). Eight percent of the children had siblings with NTDs, 6% had other anomalies and 12% of their parents were relatives in blood. The majority of lesions (76%) were myelomeningocele, 14% were meningocele and 10% were myeloschisis. Only half of the patients were diagnosed during pregnancy and 30% of all patients had hydrocephalus at time of diagnosis. There was no significant association between sex and site of lesion (P=0.3) and between sex and type of the lesion (P=0.5). Conclusion Establishment of prenatal screening is essential in order to help parents to be prepared and make an informed decision about pregnancy. Antenatal care must be strengthened for all pregnant women and folic acid supplementation should be emphasized.


Measurements of Rayleigh scattering from atoms and molecules in the gaseous state at 1-atm pressure are described. The use of a Q-switched ruby laser of 8-MW average power and care in minimizing spurious light permitted the determination of very small depolarizations. No depolarization could be detected in the scattering from argon and helium. However, finite depolarization ratios ρν (for vertically polarized incident light) were measured for xenon and methane: 1.55(±0.25) × 10−4 and 1.27 (±0.23) × 10−4, respectively. Departures from ideal-gas behavior provide the most plausible explanation for these findings.Depolarization ratios were also measured in hydrogen, deuterium, nitrogen, and nitrous oxide, and were found to be lower than generally accepted values. Measured differential-scattering cross sections at 60° for He, Ar, Xe, CH4, H2, D2, N2, and N2O were within experimental error of values calculated from known indices of refraction. The angular dependence of Rayleigh scattering in N2 as a function of the polarization states of both incident and scattered radiation was studied from 30° to 150°, and was found to be in agreement with theory.


nrDNA ITS sequence variation of Ferula species were studied by comparing with the other species of Ferula, Leutea and Dorema to clarify relationships amongst the taxa and infrageneric delimitation of the genus Ferula. In total, 35 nrDNA ITS sequence accessions (34 species) of Ferula, Leutea and Dorema were included in the analyses. 10 of these accessions were newly sequenced and belonged to Turkish species. Possible phylogenetic relationships amongst the species were determined using Maximum parsimony and neighbour joining tree methods. The analyses showed that the genus might be monophyletic upon the addition of Leutea and Dorema, but did not support the classification of the genus dividing into the subgenera.


Plant breeders have attempted to enhance yield by selecting for individual traits since the beginning of plant breeding. This approach has been broadened to encompass the breeding of model plants or ideotypes. An ideotype is a hypothetical plant described in terms of traits that are thought to enhance genetic yield potential. Ideotype breeding is defined as a method of breeding to enhance genetic yield potential based on modifying individual traits where the breeding goal (phenotype) for each trait is specified. The purposes of this paper are to elaborate on and evaluate ideotype breeding as a method to enhance genetic yield potential and to describe an ideotype for barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). Successes that have occurred in breeding to enhance yield with individual traits, the value of genetic diversity for individual traits, and benefits from goal setting are presented as arguments in support of ideotype breeding. Alternatively, information is presented on the requirement of symmetry in size among plant parts, compensation among plant parts, pleiotropy, and genetic background, all factors that may slow progress in ideotype breeding. Ranges of genetic diversity, heritability estimates, and introgression information are presented for 27 barley traits. A barley ideotype consisting of 14 traits and the target or goal for each trait are described. Ideotype breeding is recommended as a methodology to augment traditional plant breeding, when the breeding goal is enhancing genetic yield potential. Breeding experience and research to date suggest that ideotype breeding is not a suitable substitute for traditional yield breeding.


Aside from traditional neurotransmission and regulation of secretion, gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) through GABA(A) receptors negatively regulates proliferation of pluripotent and neural stem cells in embryonic and adult tissue. There has also been evidence that GABAergic signaling and its control over proliferation is not only limited to the nervous system, but is widespread through peripheral organs containing adult stem cells. GABA has emerged as a tumor signaling molecule in the periphery that controls the proliferation of tumor cells and perhaps tumor stem cells. Here, we will discuss GABA's presence as a near-universal signal that may be altered in tumor cells resulting in modified mitotic activity.


Disseminating shared information to many vehicles could incur significant access fees if it relies only on unicast cellular communications. We consider the problem of efficient content dissemination over a vehicular network, in which vehicles are equipped with two kinds of radios: a high-cost low-bandwidth, long-range cellular radio, and a free high-bandwidth short-range radio. We formulate and solve an optimization problem to maximize content dissemination from the infrastructure to vehicles within a predetermined deadline while minimizing the cost associated with communicating over the cellular connection. We examine numerically the tradeoffs between cost, delay and system utility in the optimum regime. We find that, in the optimum regime, (a) system utility is more sensitive to the cost budget when the allowed delay for the dissemination is not large, (b) the system requires relatively smaller cost budget as more vehicles participate and more delay is allowed, (c) when the cost is very important, it is better not to spread the content if it needs small delay. We also develop a polynomial-time algorithm to obtain the optimal discrete solution needed in practice. Finally, we verify our analysis using real GPS traces of 632 taxis in Beijing, China.


Background: Normal coronary angiogram following abnormal exercise stress test puts patients at higher risk of developing future coronary heart disease. Even with no occlusion in coronary arteries, patients are at risk of recurring coronary events such as myocardial infarction and death. However, research performed at the University of Bologna suggests that those with nonobstructive coronary disease are still at high risk for future cardiac events. Aim of study: is to study the demographic clinical and biochemical profile of patients with angina, positive exercise treadmill test and normal coronary angiogram and to determine the incidence of cardiac syndrome X in study population Materials and Methods: Study conducted in Department of Cardiology, Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai, This is a Cross Sectional study done from period March 2014 to February 2015. Selection of study population Total sample size N = 253,Divided into 2 study groups, Group 1( N=108) male TMT positive normal CAG patients satisfying inclusion and exclusion criteria, Group 2(N=145) female TMT positive normal CAG patients satisfying inclusion and exclusion Statiscal Analysis: Continuous variables were analysed with the unpaired t test and categorical variables were analysed with Fisher Exact Test. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the independent relation between risk factors and outcomes of the study. The data was analysed using SPSS Version 16. Conclusion •Higher incidence of Treadmill Test positive and normal Coronary Angiogram are found in younger age especially women with no effect of Smoking, alcoholism, family history of Coronary Artery Disease, physical activity and BMI •The incidence of Diabetes, Hypertension, Dyslipedemia, Atypical Angina were higher in women with Treadmill test Positive and normal Coronary Angiogram.


Drawing on their extensive fieldwork in Zambia, the authors address these central concerns: the social origins and motivations of African entrepreneurs, and the determinants of their success; the impact of government policies on business growth; the relative performance of Zambians in business; and the effects of small business on Zambian society.Originally published in 1979.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


In order to test whether changes in forest composition observed while sam- pling portions of the landscape originating from different fires may be explained by stand- level processes, I reconstructed species and stand dynamics for mesic sites in the mixed- boreal forests of Quebec. The stands studied are located in the forest surrounding Lake Duparquet in northwestern Quebec and originated from eight successive fires representing a chronosequence of 230 yr. Tree composition and ecological characteristics were assessed in 313 quadrats distributed systematically within the burned areas; one representative stand per fire, presenting the average species composition for clay soils with a moderate moisture regime, was selected for detailed dendroecological analysis. All living and dead stems (> 1 cm dbh) were mapped and cut down in a 20 x 20 m quadrat. Cross sections collected at the root collar and at every meter were analyzed using standard dendrochronological techniques. The age of the stand before the last fire was estimated using snags and logs located in, or in the vicinity of, each quadrat. A PCA (principal-components analysis) ordination of all quadrats shows a gradual change with time since fire from stands dominated by hardwoods (aspen and paper birch), to mixed stands with an important white spruce component, to coniferous stands dominated by balsam fir and white cedar. Despite variations in the age and composition of the stands before the last fire, they generally follow a common pattern characterized by post-fire hardwood dominance. Age structures show successive waves of aspen, birch, and fir re- cruitment, corresponding respectively to the post-fire cohort, the gradual dismissal of the first aspen cohort, and spruce budworm outbreaks. Each of these waves corresponds to a decrease in hardwoods and an increase in the conifer component of the stand. Suppressed white spruce individuals, recruited primarily as part of the post-fire cohort, experienced growth releases following the dismissal of the first aspen cohorts. White cedar increased in abundance late in succession and tended to outcompete balsam fir in old coniferous stands severely affected by spruce budworm outbreaks. The observed multi-cohort process contrasts with the simple replacement of hardwoods by conifers as suggested by observations of differential growth rates. The patchy distribution of conifer regeneration together with the poorer ability of conifers to rapidly fill gaps may explain why hardwoods are successfully recruited. This gradual rate of change, occurring over several generations, results in the maintenance of an important hardwood component in most stands even in the absence of fire. After 230 yr, stands are still mainly composed of trees originating from punctuated events such as fire, the gradual dismissal of the first aspen cohort, or spruce budworm outbreaks. This contrasts with old-growth boreal forests dominated by spruces in which a quasi-equilibrium is maintained by small canopy distur- bances. The study confirms that changes in forest composition observed while sampling portions of the landscape originating from different fires may be explained by simple processes occurring at the stand level.


The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation and understanding of developments in casemix and related information systems at a large regional hospital, Health Waikato (HW), in the centre of the North Island of New Zealand. The themes will be explicated and theorised, drawing on the sociology of translation (Latour). A central idea will be the use of accounting techniques to influence decision makers both within and outside the health institutions. The power of accounting in the translation and inscription of data (the fabrication of accounting systems per Preston et al.), will be a central theme in understanding the role of accounting systems as technology. Drawing from Latour has helped to provide a frame of reference to allow an assimilation of disparate changes and influences as they have come to affect the health sector at a national level, within New Zealand, and also at an organisational level, within a large regional health provider. This paper provides a detailed description of events at the research site, a large regional hospital (HW). The paper consists primarily of a descriptive case study of aspects of the change process as it has impacted on the research site.


We present a new technique to refit garments between characters of different shapes. Our approach is based on a novel iterative scheme that alternates relaxation and rebinding optimizations. In the relaxation step, we use affine-invariant coordinates in order to adapt the input 3D garment to the shape of a target character while minimizing mesh distortion. In the rebinding step, we reset the spacing between the refitted garment and the character body controlled by user-prescribed tightness values. Our method also supports additional constraints that encode the spatial and structural arrangement of multi-layers, seams, and fold-overs. We employed this refit tool in Pixar's feature film Soul to transfer garment pieces between various digital characters.


In recent years, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved remarkable success in various applications such as image classification, object detection, object parsing and face alignment. Such CNN models are extremely powerful to deal with massive amounts of training data by using millions and billions of parameters. However, these models are typically deficient due to the heavy cost in model storage, which prohibits their usage on resource-limited applications like mobile or embedded devices. In this paper, we target at compressing CNN models to an extreme without significantly losing their discriminability. Our main idea is to explicitly model the output reconstruction error between the original and compressed CNNs, which error is minimized to pursuit a satisfactory rate-distortion after compression. In particular, a global error reconstruction method termed GER is presented, which firstly leverages an SVD-based low-rank approximation to coarsely compress the parameters in the fully connected layers in a layerwise manner. Subsequently, such layer-wise initial compressions are jointly optimized in a global perspective via back-propagation. The proposed GER method is evaluated on the ILSVRC2012 image classification benchmark, with implementations on two widely-adopted convolutional neural networks, i.e., the AlexNet and VGGNet-19. Comparing to several state-of-the-art and alternative methods of CNN compression, the proposed scheme has demonstrated the best rate-distortion performance on both networks.


This paper presents the findings pertaining to the perceptions of non-taxpayers on ethics and equity in relation to tax compliance. A majority of these non-taxpayers agreed that if they were taxpayers, they themselves would, and they also believe that most other individuals would consider tax compliance as legal and social obligations. They would also comply if they believe that they would be paying only their fair of tax and that the tax system is fair. However, they believe that most other individuals would likely not comply if these individuals considered that the taxes payable are too high; that taxpayers' money are being misappropriated or spent on wasteful projects; that they are not getting a fair share of the benefits that are financed out of tax payers' money or that others are also not complying with their obligations. On the issues of under-reporting income; altering y\the incident of taxes and making fictitious claims for relief and expenses, in the context of ethics, although they considered such acts as unjustifiable, however they believe that such acts are being practiced by most individuals.Keywords: Tax Compliance / Tax Ethics? Equity in Tax


The collapse of empires is exceedingly difficult to understand. The author examined the distribution of imperial lifetimes using a data set that spans more than three millennia and found that it conforms to a memoryless exponential distribution in which the rate of collapse of an empire is independent of its age. Comparing this distribution to similar lifetime distributions of other complex systems—specifically, biological species and corporate firms—the author explores the reasons behind their lifetime distributions and how this approach can yield insights into empires.


ABSTRACT Welfare conditionality, where income support payments are tied to prescribed activities or alternatively good behaviour, has intensified in recent years. The toughest form of conditional welfare is arguably compulsory income management (IM), which involves the quarantining of between 50 and 90 per cent of a participant's benefit payment for spending on food, rent, and other essential items in order to reduce substance abuse, and enhance socially responsible behaviour particularly around the care of children. This qualitative study examines the views of IM participants and community stakeholders in the BasicsCard sites of Greater Shepparton and Playford. Findings are presented regarding practical experiences of IM, including financial management; the socio-emotional impacts of IM; and whether IM has addressed key program objectives. It is concluded that the social harms of IM outweigh any perceived benefits and may particularly disadvantage already vulnerable groups such as women and Indigenous Australians. IMPLICATIONS Compulsory IM contains significant hidden harms, including social stigma and shame, and does not seem to be an effective means of addressing chronic social problems. A voluntary targeted IM scheme may have more utility, particularly if allied with a suite of complementary holistic support services.


Related entity finding (REF) is a promising application, which aims to return a list of related entities given a query that describes the source entity, the specific type of target entities, and the relation between the source entity and target entities. One typical entity ranking strategy is to rank the candidate entities based on the co-occurrence between the candidate entities and the given query. However, such a strategy is inadequate to rank entities properly especially for those related but unpopular entities. In this paper, we propose a bipartite graph based entity ranking method, which leverage the Co-List relationship between candidate entities (i.e., entities co-occurring in the same structured/unstructured lists) to help improve the entity ranking. Specifically, we first estimate the initial relevance scores for the candidate entities based on a generative probabilistic model. We then construct a bipartite graph based on Co-List relation between candidate entities, and apply an iterative refinement process analogous to heat diffusion on the graph to propagate the relevance scores over entities. Finally the candidate entities are ranked according to their refined scores. We further develop an optimization framework for the iterative refinement process in our ranking method. Experimental results on the data collection from the TREC 2010 Entity Track show the effectiveness of our proposed method.


OBJECTIVE To evaluate the epidemiology of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) among men and women, as there are significant unanswered questions about the prevalence and impact of LUTS in different populations. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A population-based, cross-sectional survey was completed in Boxmeer (the Netherlands), Auxerre (France), Birmingham (UK) and Seoul (Republic of Korea), using culturally and linguistically validated versions of the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS). The aim was to estimate the distribution of symptoms of LUTS in men and women. Stratified random samples of men aged 40-79 years in each community were collected. Postal questionnaires were used in Europe and direct interviews in Korea. RESULTS In all, 4979 index men and 3790 women were recruited, with age-adjusted response rates among men of 72% in Boxmeer, 28% in Auxerre, 60% in Birmingham and 68% in Seoul. The percentages of men and women with an IPSS of 8-35, indicating moderate to severe symptoms, were, respectively, 20.7 and 18.0 (Boxmeer); 19.2 and 12.6 (Auxerre); 25.1 and 23.7 (Birmingham); 16.2 and 19.9 (Seoul). Among women the relationship between symptoms and age was not as strong as in men. The percentages of men and women with moderate to severe symptoms were by age group, respectively, 10.6, 15.5 (40-49); 19.0, 18.2 (50-59); 30.5, 23.8 (60-69); 40.4, 28.7 (70-79). Among those aged 40-49 the main differences between men and women were in the questions about frequency of urination during the day and holding back urine. Among the older groups men reported more symptoms on all questions apart from urination at night and difficulty in holding back urine, both of which were equally prevalent among men and women. CONCLUSIONS The overall prevalence of LUTS was high and showed no marked cultural variation. Prevalence increased with age, with severe LUTS commoner in older men. Women reported similar levels of the symptoms traditionally associated with LUTS in men. In each age group there were no major cultural differences in the frequency of LUTS. There were differences with age between men and women; younger men had a lower prevalence of LUTS than younger women but older men a much higher prevalence than older women. These findings emphasize that the IPSS should be confined to within-patient comparisons and not used as a diagnostic tool. The IPSS performs very similarly regardless of gender.


Virtualisation and virtual network slicing represent the main paradigms to enable efficient and effective end-toend service provisioning in future fifth generation and beyond networks. While practical aspects and implementation have been extensively investigated, the development of theoretic models to enable the design and analysis of advanced slicing algorithms has only recently started. However, even if existing models are useful to analyse specific aspects of network slicing performance in specific topologies, they still outline limitations and drawbacks for providing an actual theoretical basis for network slicing. This article proposes a novel general model for network slicing based on multilayer graphs, linear algebra and algebraic graph theory. The proposed framework generalises specific legacy models by allowing a more comprehensive study of different perspectives of network slicing in future generation networks.


The Critical Links Detection (CLD) Problem consists of finding for the smallest set of edges in a graph to be protected so that if a given number of unprotected edges are removed the diameter does not exceed a given value. The diameter of a graph is defined as the length of the All-PairShortest-Path (APSP). This thesis presents an algorithm that takes an instance of a graph and calculates the minimal set of protected edges. For k simultaneously failing edges it checks all possible tuples of k edges if after temporarily removing them the diameter of the graph exceeds the limit. Afterwards a Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model is built up and solved, which is equivalent to choosing the minimal amount of edges from these sets to get a feasible solution. Since the calculation of diameters takes most of the process time, the thesis presents an improvement on the performance of the algorithm. A massive parallel approach is implemented using CUDA, a framework to run calculations on graphic cards, also called GPGPU. The chosen algorithm solves one Single Start Shortest Paths (SSSP) algorithm on one GPU processor, running one thread per vertex of the graph. The performance of the algorithm shows a speedup of 30% using this approach on small instances and 70% improvement on large instances with over 1000 edges.


Continued range expansion of introduced eastern fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) in the western United States could lead to widespread damage to agricultural crops, facility infrastructures, and displacement of the native western gray squirrel (S. griseus). Because traditional management alternatives may not be feasible in many areas, public interest in the use of immunocontraceptive to control local populations has increased. We evaluated the efficacy of GonaCon™ immunocontraceptive vaccine for controlling eastern fox squirrel reproduction in Davis, California. We administered GonaCon to 33 male and 26 female fox squirrels, and a control substance to 33 males and 24 females. We subsequently compared the reproductive status, health, and serum concentrations of testosterone and progesterone of our treated and control populations. In our treated population, we also measured serum concentrations of antibodies to gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). To determine potential side effects of the vaccine, we recorded body weight and body condition of all animals, examined injection sites during each recapture, and observed the treated squirrels in the field for signs of discomfort and impaired mobility. Over 17 months, none of the recaptured GonaCon-treated females (n = 20) reproduced, compared to 12 of 15 control females. Treated males and females developed sufficient antibodies to GnRH to suppress reproduction, suggesting that GonaCon has the potential to be 100% effective in inhibiting reproduction in both sexes. We also observed a reduction in physical signs of reproductive activity for males (P < 0.001) and in hormone levels of both females (P < 0.001) and males (P < 0.001). Control and GonaCon-treated animals did not differ in body weight but vaccinated squirrels had poorer body condition scores and exhibited severe injection site abscesses. The abscesses may have been caused by the GnRH conjugate used in GonaCon. In our study, GonaCon was effective in reducing eastern fox squirrel reproduction. Changes in the conjugate or its preparation may reduce the severity of associated injection site reactions. © 2013 The Wildlife Society


There is a renewal of interest in the application of mediation in the field of public law, recently endorsed by the recommendation in the Family Justice Review Final Report 2011 for a new pilot in this use of mediation. This article examines the theoretical and practical context within which public law has developed in North America as well as its more limited evolution in the UK. Here a four year interdisciplinary pilot has already been conducted - the ADR Joint Project ( 1993- 1997) co-managed by the Child and Family Department of the Tavistock Clinic and National Family Mediation and funded by the Department of Health. The final Report of the findings of the project, called Specialist Child Care Mediation (SCCM), was published in 1998.

This article highlights the distinction that needs to be drawn, not only between SCCM and Family Group Conferences, but also between those cases which have a public law component and which are already being referred to family mediation services.

New initiatives need to take account of the body of knowledge that already exists in this country and the lessons that can learned from the Specialist Child Care Mediation project. Mediation has the potential to offer significant benefits in this delicate and complex area of practice, for children in particular, but there are significant obstacles that need to be addressed as well.


This article discusses the role of Gulag literature in connection to testimony, literature and historical documentation. Drawing on the thoughts of Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt, the article examines the difficulty of witnesses being believed in the absence of evidence. In particular, the article focuses on the vulnerability of the Gulag authors, due to the ongoing Soviet repression at the time of their writing. It examines the interplay between the repression and the literature that exposed it. The article contends that the fictionalization of Gulag literature enabled the authors to go further in challenging Soviet repression. Focusing on the fictional accounts written by Varlam Shalamov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, it argues that the fictionalized Gulag literature makes the experience of the camp universe possible to imagine for those outside, allowing readers to believe in an experience that otherwise seems incredible.


In Organizing Muslims and Integrating Islam in Germany, Kerstin Rosenow-Williams analyzes the challenges faced by Islamic organizations in Germany since the beginning of the 21st century, providing original empirical insights based on an innovative sociological research perspective.


The capability of laser-induced breakdown spectrometry (LIBS) to
resolve complex depth profiles is demonstrated. Electrolytically deposited
brass samples were analyzed by monitoring the emission corresponding to Cr
(357.8 nm), Ni (341.4 nm), Cu (327.4 nm) and Zn (334.5 nm). The nominal
thickness of the layers was known, which permitted an estimate of the
ablated mass in the range between 150 and 500 nm per pulse depending on
the matrix and laser irradiance. Laser irradiance was varied by
defocusing, and its effect on the depth-resolution of LIBS was tested. For
comparison purposes, a commercial zinc-coated steel was also studied by
following the Zn and Fe emission intensity depth profiles with a
commercial glow-discharge optical emission spectrometry system to obtain
information on the exact location of the Zn–Fe interface (12 µm).
The ablation rate in terms of ablated mass per pulse was found to be at
the ng per pulse level and depended on the laser pulse
irradiance.


Today's digital society implies interconnectivity between the online operations of different sectors of everyday life and economy alike. As a consequence, malicious activities targeted towards a single online service could hurt entire industries and multiple private and public organizations. This interdependence between online services and economic units is an imperative for targeted efforts ensuring the integrity and availability of individual systems and complex systems-of-systems alike. This article presents MonSys, a flexible, robust, and scalable monitoring platform, implemented as a cloud-based service and an onpremise solution, specifically designed to address the need for ensuring service availability at an individual level. MonSys provides several standardized services availability checks, such as web-based services from multiple geographical locations, and a flexible platform and tools for defining customized complex services. Particular attention is paid to the processes of metrics collection, processing, storage, and querying. MonSys can perform custom availability checks for different types of infrastructures, such as various black-box, grey-box, and white-box availability checks/metrics. The article presents also results from piloting the platform on performance and scalability and options for integration in early-warning and intelligent signaling, based on behavioral pattern analysis and predictive simulations. A R T I C L E I N F O : RECEIVED: 7 JULY 2020 REVISED: 31 AUG 2020 ONLINE: 7 SEP 2020 K E Y W O R D S : scalability, cyber threat, vulnerability analysis, cyber risk, resilience, early warning, situational awareness Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 G. Sharkov et al., ISIJ 46, no. 2 (2020): 155-167


Business platforms that utilise, or are based upon, internet technology are omnipresent in consumers daily lives. Since the dawn of the World Wide Web, the amount of web content has increased greatly. Simultaneously, business interests have sparked, meeting the arisen demand for particular online services. As a consequence, economists have defined a novel market in these sectors, namely that of multi-sided platform markets. To an important extent, these markets experience network effects, which can strengthen a platform operator's position in relation to competitors. In turn, competition authorities have witnessed various dominant undertakings emerging. The focus of this article is on one particular internet sector, to wit, that of World Wide Web Search, and on one firm in particular, Google Incorporated. It critically analyses how the Google Search algorithms are shaped from a technological perspective, how these are or can be categorised in accordance with the economic theory of multi-sided platform markets, and how these perform under current dominance law analysis in the European Union, more specifically Art. 102 TFEU. To that end, it will also take into account the recent Google Commitments procedure by the European Commission.


Introduction Education and research are two major functions of universities, which require proper and systematic exploitation of available knowledge and information. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the knowledge management status in an education system by considering the function of faculty members in creation and dissemination of knowledge. This study was conducted to investigate the knowledge management status among faculty members of the Kerman University of Medical Sciences based on the Nonaka and Takeuchi models in 2015. Methods This was a descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study. It was conducted on 165 faculty members at the Kerman University of Medical Sciences, who were selected from seven faculties as weighted using a random stratified sampling method. The Nonaka and Takeuchi knowledge management questionnaire consists of 26 questions in four dimensions of socialization, externalization, internalization, and combination. Scoring of questions was conducted using the five-point Likert scale. To analyze data, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients, and the Kruskal-Wallis test were employed. Results The four dimensions in the Nonaka and Takeuchi model are based on optimal indicators (3.5), dimensions of combination, and externalization with an average of 3.3 were found in higher ranks and internalization and socialization had averages of 3.1 and 3. According to the findings of this study, the average knowledge management among faculty members of the Kerman University of Medical Sciences was estimated to be 3.1, with a bit difference compared to the average. According to the results of t-tests, there was no significant relationship between gender and various dimensions of knowledge management (p>0.05). The findings of Kruskal-Wallis showed that there is no significant relationship between variables of age, academic rank, and type of faculty with regard to dimensions of knowledge management (p>0.05). In addition, according to the results of Pearson tests, there is no significant relation between employment history and dimensions of knowledge management (p>0.05). Conclusion Considering the function and importance of knowledge management in education and research organizations including universities, it is recommended to pay comprehensive attention to establishment of knowledge management and knowledge sharing in universities and provide the required background to from research teams and communication networks inside and outside universities.


Abstract The Olduvai Basin (3° S), situated just west of the East African Rift System in northern Tanzania, contains a two-million-year record of paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental change, as well as a rich archive of vertebrate paleontology (including hominins). Milankovitch precession cycles (∼ 20 kyr) regulate the mean annual precipitation (250–700 mm/yr), and the ∼ 2500 mm/yr evapotranspiration results in a negative hydrologic balance. Despite persistent aridity, extensive deposits of freshwater limestone punctuate the stratigraphic record. Between 2 and 1 Ma, Lake Olduvai occupied the basin, and its sediments are a proxy for climate-driven cycles. Three limestones (1.84, 1.80, and 1.36 Ma in age), which formed within lake-margin floodplains adjacent to the lake, were studied to determine their depositional environment using field relations, sedimentary structures, fossils, petrography, and stable-isotope and major-element geochemistry. The three limestones are similar in that they contain peloidal micrite, siliciclastic detrital grains, and rhizoconcretions. Abundant faunal remains (gastropods, ostracods, Charaphytes, and fish) indicate that ponded water was relatively fresh and alkaline. Geochemical and stable-isotope data indicate two types of groundwater-sourced carbonate-producing waters: a deeper-sourced fluid that was enriched in iron and manganese due to extended water–rock interactions, and a shallower groundwater that traveled through alluvial-fan deposits. Regional faults tapped the deeper groundwater, producing carbonate at spring sites, while seeps associated with basinward changes in alluvial-fan slopes drew on shallower groundwater sources. Isotope compositions indicate that fault-related waters experienced some evaporation as water moved away from the spring sites while compositions of the seep-related carbonate remained relatively constant. Pedogenic alteration and meteoric calcite cementation affected the carbonate when the spring and seep sites dried out. Secondary strontium-rich dolomite precipitated within the limestones during burial under paleo–Lake Olduvai sediments and fluids during periods of lake expansion. Integrating these data within the geological context of regional paleoclimatic and local environmental change indicates that the freshwater carbonates formed periodically when the conditions were just right, i.e., a "Goldilocks Effect." Carbonates near the basin center formed from groundwater flowing under a hydraulic head from faults or fractures during the falling limbs of Milankovitch cycles when the lake was in recession. Carbonates near the basin margin formed from an increased rate of groundwater seepage that occurred only on the rising limbs of cycles. In both contexts, the continuous flow of groundwater with surface evaporation and CO2 degassing optimizes the conditions for limestone formation in this arid environment. These results help explain the formation of freshwater limestones in the rift basin, link the carbonates to specific portions of Milankovitch cycles, and document that localized sources of potable water were present for use by hominins in Olduvai Gorge during an important period of human evolution.


In this research relatively simple computational models are used to gain insight in the processes and conditions that give rise to atypical marine sedimentation, i.e. black shales and evaporites, in mediterranean basins. The geometry of a mediterranean basin -- i.e. landlocked and with connections to the global ocean that are small compared to the basin size -- makes it particularly sensitive to changes in climate. The interactions of basin geometry, climate and marine sedimentation are investigated in the Atlantic and Mediterranean basins of the Cretaceous and Miocene, respectively.

The mid-Cretaceous proto-North Atlantic basin in the early stage of its opening is of the \emph{m}editerranean type and one of the most pronounced sites of black shale formation during Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE2, ~94 Ma). Results from an ocean circulation model show that changes in basinal geometry and sea level would affect the circulation and upwelling pattern in the Atlantic. A series of experiments set up to represent pre-OAE, OAE and post-OAE conditions shows that inflow from the Pacific could have brought nutrients to the Atlantic upwelling zones to fuel enhanced primary productivity during OAE2 and not before and after. More generally, upwelling and circulation during OAE2 is appropriate for extensive black shale formation in the proto-North Atlantic.

The most recent and one of the world's largest salt giants formed in the Late Miocene Mediterranean during the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC, 5.97 - 5.33 Ma). Although studied for 40 years, knowledge of this remarkable event is largely qualitative. A series of box and ocean circulation models is used to gain detailed insight in the main processes and mechanisms involved in the period running up to and in the first two stages of the MSC, test existing hypotheses quantitatively, examine the conditions with which observational data can be reproduced, and build towards a quantitatively supported scenario.

Model results show that a simple scenario fits all available data and observational constraints from marginal and deep water settings. In this scenario the progressive closure of the Atlantic-Mediterranean connections pushes the Mediterranean from pre-MSC open ocean conditions to the synchronous onset of gypsum deposition, followed by, at the acme of the crisis, synchronous halite formation with different deposition rates in the two Mediterranean subbasins. To accumulate the observed volume of gypsum and halite during the MSC, an Atlantic-Mediterranean connection must have accomodated two-layer flow, i.e. a gateway of > 10 m, up to stage 2 of the MSC. A blocked outflow scenario is not viable for the whole MSC but may have existed briefly during stage 2 before the connection with the Atlantic was temporarily disrupted and sea level dropped sharply.

During the MSC, Sr isotope ratios and salinity vary on a precessional timescale and can be used as a proxy for the Mediterranean water budget. The Late Miocene fresh water deficit is smaller than at present-day due to a considerably higher river discharge. Hence, Sr ratios and salinity in the Mediterranean are more susceptible to precession-driven climate variations. Noteworthy, and important for determining the exact age of MSC deposits, is that peak salinity and Sr values in the Late Miocene Mediterranean are reached a few kyr after, i.e. lag behind, each precession maximum


Why does wide incongruence exist between people's personal privacy concerns and their willingness to reveal personal information on social networking sites? We conducted an online survey to examine how people's Internet privacy concern and their trust regarding Facebook, friends, and all Facebook users impacted their willingness to share personal information with each of the three entities. Results show that people have different trust beliefs about the entities and these beliefs differentially impact their willingness to share with each entity. It was found that while privacy concern does impact people's willingness to share information with Facebook and all Facebook users, it does not appear to significantly impact people's willingness to share with their own Facebook friends. In addition, while trust in Facebook and trust in one's Facebook friends positively influences willingness to share with each of the two entities, respectively, trust in all users does not necessarily influence people's willingness to share in general. Thus, the study demonstrates that the privacy-trust issue on social networking sites as it relates to information sharing is potentially more complex than in the general e-commerce context.


The aim of this research is to make an economic assessment of the administrative burden, which is created by the construction regulation, on enterprises of Jelgava municipality in Latvia and to find solutions of how to reduce the administrative burden on enterprises by having no negative impact on the construction process. The research was carried out in the period 2009-2011. To evaluate the administrative burden, the Standard Cost Model with some modifications and adaptations was used. It was concluded that 9 legislative acts related to construction are creating a notable bureaucratic burden (EUR 2.94 million annually) on enterprises in Jelgava municipality. The authors have developed 37 recommendations to reduce the administrative burden and by implementing these recommendations, the administrative burden on enterprises could be reduced by 45% or EUR 1.33 million annually.


Bijan and Manijeh is an independent, love story in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. The present paper aims at investigating this story, which is regarded as a love story through which Ferdowsi had initiated his epic, in terms of lingual, literary, intellectual, and psychological aspects. For this purpose, then, this paper elaborates on the lyric and epic poetry, their primacy-recency relationship, and introduces the main characters of the story. In the section on interpreting the story, the introduction ( in terms of its prominent features) and the main text, in terms of the above-said aspects, will be discussed, and in the characterization section, the focus will be on the character of Bijan and the dominant guile in the beginning and the end of the story on the one hand, and the character of Manijeh and consequently the type of outlook Ferdowsi had taken and that of the traditional culture to the personality of women on the other hand.


While methods for genetic species delimitation have noticeably improved in the last decade, this remains a work in progress. Ideally, model based approaches should be applied and considered jointly with other lines of evidence, primarily morphology and geography, in an integrative taxonomy framework. Deep phylogeographic divergences have been reported for several species of Carlia skinks, but only for some eastern taxa have species boundaries been formally tested. The present study does this and revises the taxonomy for two species from northern Australia, Carlia johnstonei and C. triacantha. We introduce an approach that is based on the recently published method StarBEAST2, which uses multilocus data to explore the support for alternative species delimitation hypotheses using Bayes Factors (BFD). We apply this method, jointly with two other multispecies coalescent methods, using an extensive (from 2,163 exons) data set along with measures of 11 morphological characters. We use this integrated approach to evaluate two new candidate species previously revealed in phylogeographic analyses of rainbow skinks (genus Carlia) in Western Australia. The results based on BFD StarBEAST2, BFD* SNAPP and BPP genetic delimitation, together with morphology, support each of the four recently identified Carlia lineages as separate species. The BFD StarBEAST2 approach yielded results highly congruent with those from BFD* SNAPP and BPP. This supports use of the robust multilocus multispecies coalescent StarBEAST2 method for species delimitation, which does not require a priori resolved species or gene trees. Compared to the situation in C. triacantha, morphological divergence was greater between the two lineages within Kimberley endemic C. johnstonei, which also had deeper divergent histories. This congruence supports recognition of two species within C. johnstonei. Nevertheless, the combined evidence also supports recognition of two taxa within the more widespread C. triacantha. With this work, we describe two new species, Carlia insularis sp. nov and Carlia isostriacantha sp. nov. in the northwest of Australia. This contributes to increasing recognition that this region of tropical Australia has a rich and unique fauna.


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A metal insulator metal (MIM) waveguide structure which propagates a strongly confined sub-wavelength plasmon mode is proposed. In particular the structure permits electrical pumping of the waveguide core. The waveguide can in principle be fabricated with thin cores down to a few tens of nano meters wide. When quantum well material is employed, the waveguide core can be formed with self aligned quantum wire or quantum dot gain material. The performance of the proposed structure is compared to other plasmon mode and dielectric waveguide structures, and shown to provide significantly improved confinement of energy in the high index waveguide core. The implications of such waveguides when used as electrically pumped waveguides for optical amplifiers and nano-lasers is examined. It is shown that these electrically pumped waveguide structures offer the possibility of net modal gains in the region of 1900 cm-1, and nano-lasers with intrinsic optical modulation frequencies reaching into the THz regime with minimum pump currents on the order of sixty micro-amps.


This paper investigates the impacts of Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system on household car ownership and analyses how socioeconomic characteristics affect household car ownership. We employ a difference-in-difference (DID) strategy integrated with generalized Poisson regression models to examine the effects of MRT. The results are as follows: first, the establishment of Taipei MRT significantly reduced the level of household car ownership. Expanding the network of MRT system can be a feasible policy to control car ownership. Second, the levels of household car ownership are related to household's socioeconomic characteristics. Third, households with high dependence on public transport own fewer cars after Taipei MRT began operation. Hence, the traffic authority should adopt more effective methods to encourage public transit use in order to decrease household car ownership.


Trace element abundances in melt inclusions are commonly used to interpret melting and melt extraction processes. These interpretations, however, often assume that the chemical compositions of melt inclusions are identical to the liquid from which the host crystal grew, even though driving forces for postentrapment diffusion and modification are demonstrable. This paper begins to quantify the effects of diffusion on melt inclusions using a numerical model. The model calculates the compositional evolution of a spherical inclusion which initially is in equilibrium with a crystal host out to some distance rjump and out of equilibrium beyond. In particular we consider the end‐member scenario, whereby the trapped melt is initially out of equlibrium with the neighboring crystal as this sets the minimum time for reequilibration. A package of numerical codes is provided that allows the user to explore other initial conditions. The model calculates the change in inclusion composition and also the structure of diffusion halos that grow around the inclusion as it reequilibrates with the surrounding crystal. The detection of these profiles in naturally occurring inclusions may allow the time since entrapment and the initial inclusion concentration to be estimated. The extent of reequilibration is most strongly influenced by the partition coefficient, diffusivity, and the inclusion radius. Fast‐diffusing elements with high mineral/melt partition coefficients are modified rapidly, particularly in small inclusions. Because minerals have very different Dmineral/melt for the various elements, the effects of diffusive reequilibration differ substantially from one mineral to another. For example, the higher partition coefficients of the heavy rare earth elements (HREE) in olivine make HREE concentrations easier to modify than light rare earth elements (LREE) concentrations. In contrast, Sr, Eu, and Ba in plagioclase hosted inclusions equilibrate more rapidly than the other trace elements. Examination of published trace element concentrations of olivine hosted inclusions show little evidence for reequilibration, at least for the light REE and other highly incompatible elements. It is difficult, however, to provide firm constraints due to the uncertainties in olivine diffusivities and the initial condition. In contrast, trace element diffusivities in plagioclase have been determined experimentally [ Cherniak, 2001 ], and the trace element concentrations of published plagioclase hosted inclusions show evidence for extensive diffusive exchange with the host in a manner consistent with model predictions. Postentrapment modification therefore is likely an important factor in the interpretation of some melt inclusion data.


Successfully building complex service robotic systems that robustly operate in real-world environments gives a lot of insights into what are valuable patterns in architecting such systems. In this paper, we describe some of our insights with respect to robot control architectures and robotics software systems engineering. The focus of the paper is not on discussing specific functionalities but to explain some best practices that evolved out of our experience in building complex software intensive robotic systems. These behind-the-scenes insights are in particular relevant in moving forward towards a robotics business ecosystem with separation of roles and based on model-driven approaches for handling systems of systems.


Abstract. In ancient China, Huabiao was a type of ornamental column used to decorate important buildings. We carried out 3D scan of a Huabiao located in Peking University, China. This Huabiao was built no later than 1742. It is carved by white marble, 8 meters in height. Clouds and various postures of dragons are carved on its body. Two instruments were used to acquire the point cloud of this Huabiao, a terrestrial LiDAR (Riegl VZ-1000) and a hand-held imager (Mantis Vision F5). In this paper, the details of the experiment were described, including the differences between these two instruments, such as working principle, spatial resolution, accuracy, instrument dimension and working flow. The point clouds obtained respectively by these two instruments were compared, and the registered point cloud of Huabiao was also presented. These should be of interest and helpful for the research communities of archaeology and heritage.


Medicinal honey research is undergoing a substantial renaissance. From a folklore remedy largely dismissed by mainstream medicine as "alternative", we now see increased interest by scientists, clinical practitioners and the general public in the therapeutic uses of honey. There are a number of drivers of this interest: first, the rise in antibiotic resistance by many bacterial pathogens has prompted interest in developing and using novel antibacterials; second, an increasing number of reliable studies and case reports have demonstrated that certain honeys are very effective wound treatments; third, therapeutic honey commands a premium price, and the honey industry is actively promoting studies that will allow it to capitalize on this; and finally, the very complex and rather unpredictable nature of honey provides an attractive challenge for laboratory scientists. In this paper we review manuka honey research, from observational studies on its antimicrobial effects through to current experimental and mechanistic work that aims to take honey into mainstream medicine. We outline current gaps and remaining controversies in our knowledge of how honey acts, and suggest new studies that could make honey a no longer "alternative" alternative.


Background Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is typically managed with a reduced fat diet plus glucose-lowering medications, the latter often promoting weight gain. Objective We evaluated whether individuals with T2D could be taught by either on-site group or remote means to sustain adequate carbohydrate restriction to achieve nutritional ketosis as part of a comprehensive intervention, thereby improving glycemic control, decreasing medication use, and allowing clinically relevant weight loss. Methods This study was a nonrandomized, parallel arm, outpatient intervention. Adults with T2D (N=262; mean age 54, SD 8, years; mean body mass index 41, SD 8, kg·m−2; 66.8% (175/262) women) were enrolled in an outpatient protocol providing intensive nutrition and behavioral counseling, digital coaching and education platform, and physician-guided medication management. A total of 238 participants completed the first 10 weeks. Body weight, capillary blood glucose, and beta-hydroxybutyrate (BOHB) levels were recorded daily using a mobile interface. Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and related biomarkers of T2D were evaluated at baseline and 10-week follow-up. Results Baseline HbA1c level was 7.6% (SD 1.5%) and only 52/262 (19.8%) participants had an HbA1c level of <6.5%. After 10 weeks, HbA1c level was reduced by 1.0% (SD 1.1%; 95% CI 0.9% to 1.1%, P<.001), and the percentage of individuals with an HbA1c level of <6.5% increased to 56.1% (147/262). The majority of participants (234/262, 89.3%) were taking at least one diabetes medication at baseline. By 10 weeks, 133/234 (56.8%) individuals had one or more diabetes medications reduced or eliminated. At follow-up, 47.7% of participants (125/262) achieved an HbA1c level of <6.5% while taking metformin only (n=86) or no diabetes medications (n=39). Mean body mass reduction was 7.2% (SD 3.7%; 95% CI 5.8% to 7.7%, P<.001) from baseline (117, SD 26, kg). Mean BOHB over 10 weeks was 0.6 (SD 0.6) mmol·L−1 indicating consistent carbohydrate restriction. Post hoc comparison of the remote versus on-site means of education revealed no effect of delivery method on change in HbA1c (F1,260=1.503, P=.22). Conclusions These initial results indicate that an individualized program delivered and supported remotely that incorporates nutritional ketosis can be highly effective in improving glycemic control and weight loss in adults with T2D while significantly decreasing medication use.


A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age J. P. Telotte, A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 1999. 218 pp. $45 cloth; $19.95 paper. Most genre connoisseurs are familiar enough with the big films-Metropolis (1926), Paris qui dort (1924), Frankenstein (1931), and so on-but few scholarly texts deal specifically with the international science fiction of the 1920s and '30s. Author J. P. Telotte finally addressed that problem with the introduction of A Distant Technology: Science Fiction Film and the Machine Age (1999), a book that offers a comprehensive analysis of the technological spirit of the Machine Age. Although A Distant Technology unfortunately has its share of shortcomings, Telotte's singular text is generally an impressive recollection of the international opinion on scientific advancement as expressed through the art, architecture, literature, and cinema of the times. This marks Telotte's second analysis of technological attitudes and science fiction film, the first being an exploration of the "android" in Replications: A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film (1995). The years sandwiched between the World Wars boasted a wealth of science fiction literature and cinema that expressed the complex relationship between technological achievement, on one hand, and a society that had an entire generation of boys decimated by machine guns in the killing fields of the Great War, on the other. Telotte takes this fundamental relationship and combines it with other contemporary attitudes and literary theory to describe a reoccurring phenomenon that he sees in the technology-related cinema of the Machine Age, what Robert D. Romanyshyn calls a "dream of distance." For Telotte and his frequently quoted source, Romanyshyn, technology has several "distancing" qualities. On one hand, technology makes life more comfortable and eases the advancement of knowledge, mobility, and livelihood in modern society. On the other, this same technology has the power to alienate humans from each other and from nature. In A Distant Technology-perhaps, better titled "A Distancing Technology"-Telotte and Romanyshyn's philosophy of "distance" is used as the skeleton key for unlocking the various themes of Machine Age science fiction. Telotte's book is divided up into sections according to the nationality-Russian, German, French, American, and English-of the discussed movies and filmmakers. One or two model films are examined per section, complete with detailed plot and thematic analysis, while countless other examples from cinema, architecture, design, literature, painting, etc., are used for point solidification. The theory is that each country had its own unique version of the "dream of distance," and all looked at technology through slightly different goggles. For Soviet Russia, the Revolution was itself a kind of social machine necessary for the movement of society toward a better future. Lev Kuleshov's critical flop The Death Ray (1925), about a scientist whose dangerous invention is stolen by Fascists, shows the technological "distance" being bridged between the Soviets and its Western neighbors. Another Soviet film, Yakov Protazanov's Aelita (1924), urged society to focus first and foremost on the Revolution, and like most Soviet science fiction, showed an ambiguous attitude toward the idea of technology's role in the new, Lenin-Marxist society. In post-World War I Germany, there was a primary concern with how technology affected one's place in the "world picture." Fritz Lang's Metropolis warned against a possible drab life in a future technocracy where the scientific elite and society's dependency on the governing machinery alienates the working class from their basic human needs of sex, spirituality, and gratification. In the end, however, Metropolis shows that science can secure one's place in the world picture if social classes unite to control technology for the benefit of the whole. …


Current academic and policy debates focus on the impact of tort reforms on physicians' behavior and medical costs. This paper examines whether these reforms also affect incentives to develop new technologies. We develop a theoretical model that predicts that the impact of reducing liability risks for physicians on innovation may be positive or negative, depending on the characteristics of the technology. Empirically, we find that, on average, laws that limit the liability exposure of health care providers are associated with a significant reduction in medical device patenting. Tort reforms have the strongest impact in medical fields in which the probability of facing a malpractice claim is the largest, and they do not seem to affect the number of new technologies of the highest and lowest quality. Our results underscore the importance of considering dynamic effects in the economic analysis of tort laws.


If the news media covered anti-labor events such as anti-union fir ings, the publicity potentially could galvanize community support for workers' unionization efforts. But, when workers are illegally fired for supporting a union, do the news media cover the story? And if they do, under what circumstances? Utilizing the LexisNexis database of newspapers, I systematically searched for and analyzed the extent and nature of news media coverage of anti-union firings. The findings reveal that the news media consistently ignore anti-union firings. When covered, anti-union firings are treated as individualized and isolated events, diminishing the potential impact of the coverage on the public's understanding of U.S. labor movement struggles. The results suggest that the U.S. labor movement faces unique obstacles to gaining favorable news coverage.


Canada's response to the 1956-1957 Hungarian refugee crisis has generally been treated by scholars as a highpoint in Canadian immigration history. In late October 1956, pro-democracy, anti-Soviet demonstrations directed at the Soviet-backed government of Erno Gero broke out in Budapest. Fearing that its control of the Warsaw Pact was unraveling, the Kremlin ordered the Red Army to put down the revolution. On 4 November, events turned violent. Soviet forces clashed with protestors, prompting hundreds of thousands of Hungarians to flee across the border into Austria and Yugoslavia. (2) For its part, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was unprepared to intervene militarily for fear of provoking a conflict with the USSR. (3) NATO members were, however, able to relieve the pressure placed on Austria. In the days and weeks after the invasion, Canadian immigration officials reinforced the number of immigration officers at the Canadian Embassy in Vienna, loosened the normal requirements concerning proper travel documentation, medical exams, and security clearances, and enlisted commercial airplanes to transport the refugees out of Austria. These initiatives produced impressive results: by the end of 1957 more than 37,000 Hungarians had been accepted into Canada. But government actors were not solely responsible for this shift in policy; indeed, the response was truly a national one and would not have been possible without the support and assistance of a whole host of voluntary organizations from a wide range of sectors of Canadian society, all of which contributed greatly to the resettlement effort. (4) Most scholars of immigration, such as Gerald Dirks and Robert Key-serlingk, underline the importance of the reception of Hungarian refugees as having a liberalizing impact in the immigration policy arena in Canada, serving as a useful precedent for other refugee migrations during times of crisis. (5) The Hungarian situation also had an immediate impact on the operation of Canada's refugee program, as Freda Hawkins notes: ''Briefly, during the Hungarian crisis and refugee movement, there was a glimpse of what better leadership and a much more co-operative approach to immigration in Canada might achieve." (6) N. F. Dreisziger makes a crucial distinction, however, by detailing not only the cooperative efforts between the Canadian government and welfare agencies, but also the role of the Hungarian Canadian community in refugee reception. (7) Forgetting Canadian contributions to the resettlement of the displaced persons in Europe following the Second World War, Michael Lanphier describes the Canadian response to the Hungarian refugee crisis as "the first ever crisis to demand Canada's participation in the international resettlement effort." (8) It is also interesting to note that while some of the above-mentioned scholars claim that the decision to accept a significant number of refugees was reached only after pressure was exerted on policymakers from within and beyond the federal government, they do not indicate either the methods by which such pressure was applied or the international characteristics of the pressure itself The Canadian Council of Churches (CCC) was one of a number of voluntary organizations in Canada that offered assistance to the refugees during the Hungarian refugee crisis. (9) Like other domestic groups, it both assisted with the material needs of the Hungarians once they arrived in Canada, and lobbied Ottawa to include not just the most able in its selection of refugees. But what separates the CCC from other groups in Canada is the larger transnational context in which that agency advocated on behalf of the Hungarian refugees. Throughout the period from 1956 to 1958, it worked closely with its sister council in Europe, the World Council of Churches (WCC), which had direct contact with the Hungarians. The WCC worked on an international level to achieve a more efficient and judicious handling of the refugee crisis by lobbying governments, non-governmental organizations, and particularly its member groups, such as the CCC. …


Ask airline passengers what they see as they gaze out the window, and they will describe a fragmented landscape: a patchwork of desert, woodlands, farmlands, and developed neighborhoods. Once-contiguous forests are now subdivided; tallgrass prairies that extended for thousands of miles are now crisscrossed by highways and byways. Whether the result of naturally occurring environmental changes or the product of seemingly unchecked human development, fractured lands significantly impact the planet's biological diversity. In Ecology of Fragmented Landscapes, Sharon K. Collinge defines fragmentation, explains its various causes, and suggests ways that we can put our lands back together. Researchers have been studying the ecological effects of dismantling nature for decades. In this book, Collinge evaluates this body of research, expertly synthesizing all that is known about the ecology of fragmented landscapes. Expanding on the traditional coverage of this topic, Collinge also discusses disease ecology, restoration, conservation, and planning. Not since Richard T. T. Forman's classic Land Mosaics has there been a more comprehensive examination of landscape fragmentation. Ecology of Fragmented Landscapes is critical reading for ecologists, conservation biologists, and students alike.


This article questions the extent to which extant theoretical frames are apt for the task of interpreting the dynamics of administrative reforms under the conditionsof fiscal crisis that occurred in a number of euro-zone countries. The question addressed is: how can we interpret what happened in the field of administrative reforms in such countries as Greece, Ireland or Portugal, as well as in countries like Italy or Spain after the burst of the fiscal crisis in euro-zone countries? We discuss different theoretical perspectives and conclude by advocating a research agenda probing the influence that the changing relationships between the EU and the national levels of governance have on the administrative reform policy cycle. Such research work may lead to findings of interest both for the field of EU studies (questioning the extent to which the "new" European governance represents another embodiment of "integration by stealth" – a finding that would be problematic from a democratic normative theory perspective) and for the field of public administration and management (shedding light on the extent to which the dynamics of public-management reform unfold at the interface between the national and the supranational, rather than just within the boundaries of a country's national borders).


How is it that two broadly similar systems of competition law have reached different results across a number of significant antitrust issues? While the United States and the European Union share a commitment to maintaining competition in the marketplace and employ similar concepts and legal language in making antitrust decisions, differences in social values, political institutions, and legal precedent have inhibited close convergence. With The Atlantic Divide in Antitrust, Daniel J. Gifford and Robert T. Kudrle explore many of the main contested areas of contemporary antitrust, including mergers, price discrimination, predatory pricing, and intellectual property. After identifying how prevailing analyses differ across these areas, they then examine the policy ramifications. Several themes run throughout the book, including differences in the amount of discretion firms have in dealing with purchasers, the weight given to the welfare of various market participants, and whether competition tends to be viewed as an efficiency-generating process or as rivalry. The authors conclude with forecasts and suggestions for how greater compatibility might ultimately be attained.


This paper reports a formal methodology for verifying a broad class of synthesized register-transfer-level (RTL) designs by accommodating various register allocation/optimization schemes commonly found in high-level synthesis tools. Performing register optimization as part of synthesis process implies that the mapping between the specification variables and RTL registers is not bijective. We propose a formalization of dynamic variable-register mapping, and techniques based on symbolic analysis and higher-order logic theorem proving for verifying synthesized RTL designs. The proposed verification methodology has been successfully implemented using the PVS theorem prover.


The debut novel from the award-winning screenwriter of Bhaji on the Beach. The story of nine-year-old Meena, growing up in the only Punjabi family in the Black Country mining village of Tollington. It's 1972. Meena is nine years old and lives in the village of Tollington, 'the jewel of the Black Country'. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. As one of the few Punjabi inhabitants of her village, her daily struggle for independence is different from most. She wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities - but more than anything, she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang. Blonde, cool, aloof, outrageous and sassy, Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita's life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future, threaten to turn Anita's salad days sour. Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies, a childhood caught between two cultures, each on the brink of change.


This article mainly focuses on the soil conservation practices to counteract the soil degradation and to maintain the soil nutrients and organic matter. As the study area is highly prone to the soil erosion, the comparison study was initiated for the rill treatment with the help of sweet gum balls, riprap (different sizes of stones), mulch with coconut shells, bermuda grass with polyacrylamic (PAM) and a control. Five different rills of same size including an untreated control with four different materials used for making the protective covers were experimented initially using the triangular notches of 60 by maintaining the actual discharge of 0.001379 m sec. The rills were continuously kept under the visual observations for about two years which includes two monsoon seasons for each year. The changes in the size of the rills after every 4 rainy seasons are documented. The results of the experiments showed that the erosion control capacity of various protective covers are 68.4, 57, 51.2 and 44.8 respectively with the ingredients riprap, sweet gum ball, bermuda grass with PAM and the mulch with the coconut shells.


Over the past two decades, substantial progress has been made in reducing emissions from new petrol engined road vehicles, with regulations setting limits on various emissions. In order to ensure that vehicles in-use are not producing excessive emissions, many countries employ an Inspection and Maintenance (I/M) programme that include a check on the exhaust emissions. This report reviews the various I/M programmes from a number of countries - both current and proposed. For conventional vehicles (i.e. without catalytic converters), the test generally includes an idle check with measurement on the level of carbon monoxide (CO limits 0.5% - 4.5%) and, in some cases, hydrocarbons (HC limits 100ppm - 1200ppm). For vehicles fitted with a three way catalyst, the test often involves an idle test and a fast idle test. Again the level of CO is checked (limits 0.10% - 0.50%), with an additional check on HC (limits 50ppm - 100ppm) or the air/fuel ratio (which must be close to stoichiometric) or both. The idle and fast idle tests provide a fairly cheap and simple means of checking the emissions, although the conditions are not representative of real driving conditions. A more representative test requires the use of a chassis dynamometer to apply load to the engine. Canada is currently (1992) setting up a programme that involves subjecting the vehicles to steady state engine speeds and loads, while measuring the emissions. In the USA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have proposed a new test programme that involves driving a vehicle over a transient driving cycle. (A)


Holiday Inn, Historic District Philadelphia, PA Sponsored by the Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement The historical narrative of African peoples' ongoing quest for a liberated and righteous world is characterized by its imperatives toward social justice and ensuring human dignity. The 2012 Cheikh Anta Diop International Conference welcomes scholars, activists, educators, and the community to contribute papers and to convene around the theme of reigniting a Pan-African vision and reasserting an African ethic to move beyond the rhetoric of (1) "the age of Obama" and (2) "the African Renaissance" as an effort to more precisely confront the many global challenges facing African people. This year's theme is a reminder that we achieve victory through the uncompromising processes of applying consciousness, engaging in activism, and inspiring behaviors that are consistent with the ethical principles that have guided our struggles. We encourage scholar-activists to translate this consciousness of victory into intellectual initiatives that will help transform the Pan-African world. The Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement (DISA) is committed to utilizing scholarship in order to qualify and advance African agency at all levels. Each year, the Conference theme facilitates panels and papers on various aspects of African and African Diaspor a cultures, histories, thoughts and practices from within the Afrocentric intellectual framework. Outstanding books, articles, and other Afrocentric research initiatives are recognized each year at the Awards Luncheon. In line with the theme of this year's conference we are inviting papers and presentations that address the following topics: * Unearthing Sankofa in the Age of Obama--Assessments and Critiques of History, Public Policy, Foreign Strategy, and Domestic Social Justice * "Occupy Africanity"--Achievements of and Challenges to Africanity and the Legacy of Black Activism, Advocacy and Direct Action Engagement * The Rhetoric and Political Distractions of "African Renaissance" Discourse * The African Critique of Constricted Societies--The Meaning of and Public Responses to New Technologies and Contemporary Social Controls * The Role of African Culture in the Political and Economic Movements for African Liberation * The Afrocentric Paradigm as Restorative Discourse and the African Intelligentsia * Early and Recent Histories of the Re-Colonization of African Peoples and Lands * Advancing Pan-African Ideals in Contemporary Black Expressive Cultural productions * The Asantian Literature and the state of African Cultural Identity Studies * Pan-Africanism as a Pedagogical Tool for African Liberation in the K-12 Curriculum Requirements for Abstracts: 100 words limit; name, affiliation, academic title, email address; paper title, thesis and methodology. Please send via email as a Microsoft Word attachment; and please indicate if you need an LCD projector. Abstracts are due August 1, 2012: Diopian Institute for Scholarly Advancement P.O. Box 1156 El Cajon, CA 92022 firstname.lastname@example.com Notification of paper acceptance will be sent August 31, 2012. Unearthing Sankofa in the Age of Obama--Assessments and Critiques of History, Public Policy, Foreign Strategy, and Domestic Social Justice An Afrocentric assessment of the Sankofa paradigm and contemporary issues for African Descended Peoples; applying the "Return to the Source and bring to the future" principal; evaluating the importance of "learning from the past" to the ethics and relevance of the Age of Obama and the African world experience. …


Abstract This article explores connections between corporate cultures and corporate performance in various industries. First, it provides a brief background on the notion of "culture"; second, it sets out a brief typology of corporate culture. Third, it examines various corporate cultural types in relation to industry performance; and finally, some conclusions are drawn on the importance to corporate survival of organizational and cultural adaptation to competitive environments. INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT An expert on cross-cultural management, Geert Hofstede (1984, p.21) defines culture as "the collective programming of the mind, which distinguishes one human group from another ... Culture in this sense includes systems of values, and values are among the building blocks of culture." A few years later, his notion of culture broadened into "mental programming ... patterns of thinking and feeling, and potential acting" (Hofstede, 1991, p.4). Sociologists (Namenworth & Weber, 1987, p.8) see culture as a "system of ideas that constitute a design for living." For our purposes here, culture is viewed as a system of values, norms, and ideas, shared by a group of people, that when taken together provide a design for thinking, living and potential acting. There are, however, many types of cultures, including national, country or regional (Hofstede, 1984, 1991; Schneider & Barsoux, 1997; Terpstra & David, 1991); global electronic (Targowski, 1990); ethnic; gender; generational; business, professional; occupational; and organizational, or corporate (Bloor & Dawson, 1994). While this paper draws from the international management literature, which has long acknowledged the importance of national cultural characteristics as determinants of management behavior (Farmer & Richmond, 1965; Schneider, 1988), it serves only to position the notion of corporate culture within a broader context. This paper focuses on corporate culture and, specifically, the effects of corporate culture on a business' performance. CORPORATE CULTURE: WHO WE ARE, WHAT WE DO, WHAT WE STAND FOR What then is corporate culture? Why is it important? Does it relate to corporate success or failure? We reach back a paragraph or so for a definition that can be applied in the corporate context: culture is a system of values, norms, and ideas, shared by a group of people, that when taken together provide a design for thinking, living and potential acting. By values is meant the shared assumptions of what ought to be or, in other words, what a group believes to be right and desirable; norms relate to rules and guidelines that set out expected behavior in various circumstances. So corporate culture reflects the values of the founders, underpins the vision/ mission of the firm, establishes the main operating orientation of the company, and provides the basis for a shared identity for company members. Its importance lies in the fact that not only does culture constitute a kind of inter-personal glue that holds an organization together, but also it can function as an informal control mechanism that may help coordinate employee efforts. Although it is tempting to speak of "a" corporate culture, organizations have many subcultures. These can vary by business unit, geographical location, division, or department. Subcultures can clash. Again drawing from the international management sphere, a human resources manager from a global pharmaceutical company discovered that a major challenge in China, Korea and Taiwan was to persuade managers there to accept promotions. Among other things, their values were such that they did not wish to compete with their peers for career rewards and did not want to assume cross-national responsibilities (Alexander & Wilson, 1997). This example shows that national cultural values can affect company cultural values and policies. Thus culture has a broad importance to an organization because it can either be an ally or an enemy in the strategy implementation process. …


Diabetes refers to a group of metabolic diseases characterized by impaired insulin signalling and high blood glucose. A growing body of epidemiological evidence links diabetes to several types of cancer but the underlying molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. The signalling cascade connecting insulin and FOXO proteins provides a compelling example for a conserved pathway at the interface between insulin signalling and cancer. FOXOs are transcription factors that orchestrate programs of gene expression known to control a variety of processes in response to cellular stress. Genes regulated by this family of proteins are involved in the regulation of cellular energy production, oxidative stress resistance and cell viability and proliferation. Accordingly, FOXO factors have been shown to play an important role in the suppression of tumour growth and in the regulation of metabolic homeostasis. There is emerging evidence that deregulation of FOXO factors might account for the association between insulin resistance‐related metabolic disorders and cancer.


Battery-electric and fuel-cell trucks could be feasible in Europe within little more than a decade, concludes this study commissioned by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), and taking the steps necessary to turn that possibility into reality is crucial to meeting long-term climate goals in the transport sector.

Road freight is one of the fastest-growing contributors to CO2 emissions of the European transport sector. That trend must be reversed if the European Union is to achieve its goal of reducing total CO2 emissions by 80% in 2050, relative to 1990 levels. Fuel-efficiency and CO2-emissions policies targeting heavy-duty vehicles have lagged those for passenger cars and vans. But significant gains from road freight transport—emissions reductions of up to 90%, effectively decarbonizing that part of the transport sector—lie within reach, given sufficiently strong policy support and adequate investment in vehicle innovations and infrastructure.

The report, prepared by CE Delft (Netherlands) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for the ICCT, is a comprehensive survey of leading-edge zero-emissions technologies for short- and long-haul on-road freight carriers. Drawing on interviews with manufacturers, technical literature, and other data sources, the study projects that the total costs of ownership of diesel vehicles, battery electrics, and fuel cell vehicles will tend to converge between now and 2030, assuming policies are put in place to stimulate technological innovation and infrastructure investment.

The analysis anticipates that different zero-emissions technologies will find favor in different settings. Battery-electric trucks are best suited to short-distance transport, such as goods distribution in cities and regions, where range requirements are lower and vehicles can recharge during scheduled downtime. Fuel-cell trucks, with longer range and refueling times that are comparable to conventional vehicles, will be a better alternative for long-haul applications, though specialized infrastructure such as overhead catenary wires or in-road inductive charging could make battery electric vehicles viable over long distances too.

The total cost of ownership—purchase price plus operating costs—for zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles at present falls somewhere between 140% and 200% of conventional diesel vehicles, for short-haul trucks. But the study's analysis shows that ratio falling rapidly as fuel savings offset other costs, to between 110% and 140% in 2020, and achieving rough parity by 2030.

On their current path, CO2 emissions from truck transport in the EU will rise nearly 25% by 2050, due to increased transport volumes. But increasing the share of ton-kilometres transported by alternative vehicles (hybrid trucks as well as limited electric and fuel-cell vehicles) to half of the total overall would reverse that trend and cut 2050 GHG emissions by 8%, according to the study. And increasing alternative vehicles' share still further, to 90%, could result in an emissions reduction of 90%.


This workshop explored the contributions that software research can make to the challenge of climate change. Climate change is likely to be the defining issue of the 21st Century. Recent studies indicate that climate change is accelerating, confirming the most pessimistic of scenarios identified by climate scientists. Our past use of fossil fuels commit the world to around 2°C average temperature rise since the preindustrial era, and, unless urgent and drastic cuts are made, further heating is likely to trigger any of a number of climate change tipping points. The results will be a dramatic reduction of food production and water supplies, more extreme weather events, the spread of disease, sea level rise, ocean acidification and mass extinctions. We are faced with the twin challenges of mitigation (avoiding the worst climate change effects by rapidly transitioning the world to a low-carbon economy) and adaptation (re-engineering the infrastructure of modern society so that we can survive and flourish on a hotter planet).


Digital methods are increasingly applied to store, structure and analyse vast amounts of musical data. In this context, visualization plays a crucial role, as it assists musicologists and non‐expert users in data analysis and in gaining new knowledge. This survey focuses on this unique link between musicology and visualization. We classify 129 related works according to the visualized data types, and we analyse which visualization techniques were applied for certain research inquiries and to fulfill specific tasks. Next to scientific references, we take commercial music software and public websites into account, that contribute novel concepts of visualizing musicological data. We encounter different aspects of uncertainty as major problems when dealing with musicological data and show how occurring inconsistencies are processed and visually communicated. Drawing from our overview in the field, we identify open challenges for research on the interface of musicology and visualization to be tackled in the future.


In order to establish a reliable method for the detection of human herpesvirus‐6 (HHV‐6) B antigens in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) collected from HHV‐6 infected patients, we created a polyclonal antibody against the HHV‐6 B U90 protein (IEA/ex3) and used it to examine the expression of this protein in virus‐infected cells and patients' PBMCs. This antibody reacted with 170 and 195 kDa proteins in HHV‐6 B‐infected cord blood mononuclear cells. The IEA/ex3 antigen was detected in cord blood mononuclear cells at 6 hr post‐infection, and the number of infected cells reached its maximum at 48 hr post‐infection. The antigen stained in a punctate pattern and partially localized to the promyelocytic leukemia (PML) protein body. We also examined 60 PBMC samples from 60 febrile children (3–19 months old) and detected IEA/ex3 antigen in the PBMCs by laser‐scanning microscopy. HHV‐6 was isolated from 31 of the 60 samples. The sensitivity and specificity of the antigen detection were 84% (26/31) and 97% (28/29), respectively, in the samples with virus detected. The mean number of antigen‐positive PBMCs was 409/106 cells in 20 samples with viral isolation. A significant correlation (r = 0.566; P = 0.008) was observed between the viral load and number of antigen‐positive cells. Although IEA/ex3 antigen was detected by laser‐scanning microscopy in PBMCs (without cultivation) collected from six patients with isolated virus, it was detected in only one sample by conventional fluorescence microscopy. Increasing the intensity by cultivation (24 hr) resulted in a higher detection rate (5/6) even by conventional fluorescence microscopy, which is available in most hospital laboratories. J. Med. Virol. 75:86–92, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.