This is an essential activities book for learning to read the news in Arabic. In light of the rapidly growing number of people studying Arabic - in academia, governments, NGOs, and business - "Media Arabic" is a unique and timely learning tool for anyone looking to access news information from this important global region firsthand. "Media Arabic" introduces the language of the newspapers, magazines, and internet news sites to intermediate and advanced-level students of Modern Standard Arabic. Using this textbook, students will be able to master core vocabulary and structures typical of front-page news, recognize various modes of coverage, distinguish fact from opinion, detect bias, and read critically in Arabic. Drawing on their long experience as Arabic instructors, Alaa Elgibali and Nevenka Korica have organized the book into six chapters, each covering a dominant news topic: Talks and Conferences, Demonstrations and Protests, Conflicts and Terrorism, Elections, Rule of Law, and Business. In addition, the book offers three self-assessment units and a glossary organized by theme. The book enables students to read extended texts with greater accuracy and speed by focusing on the relationships among meaning, language form, and markers of cohesive discourse. The activities include pre-reading discussions as well as extensive practice on vocabulary in context, organizing information, skimming, scanning, critical reading, and analyzing content.


Research impact is at the heart of institutional performance and reputation and is increasingly gaining prominence in academic library services. University of Wollongong (UOW) Library implemented a Research Impact Analysis Service (RIAS) in 2011 to help researchers, research centres and the University strengthen their impact by providing detailed, strategic reports based on citations analysis drawn from numerous datasets. As demand intensified, consideration needed to be given to issues of scalability and capacity to sustain and grow the service. An opportunity for collaboration arose, connecting the Library's business need with the software development skills of JoindUp, a local start-up company under the umbrella of UOW's iAccelerate business incubator program. The vision: to introduce efficiencies and innovation in the production of our Journal Impact Reports. The project brief: develop an application that draws journal metrics together to empower academics in their strategic publishing decisions. The Library's foray into innovative product development had begun. A project team was established to drive this opportunity forward. Key requirements were outlined in terms of data elements, data sources and functionality. These criteria were based on data points from our existing Journal Impact Reports in response to researchers' articulated needs. The product development process also offered the opportunity to introduce new service elements to provide synergy with UOW's Research Active and Open Access policies. A prototype of the app was developed and extensive User Acceptance Testing took place to address data integrity and functionality issues. The Publish for Impact app has been released and allows researchers to access a range of journal indicators in a user-friendly interface, providing simple, yet efficient comparison of relevant titles. A year on, we will evaluate the success of the project and explore the tangible outcomes the release of Publish For Impact has delivered to the Library business need and the strategic benefits it has brought to the academic community. The Publish for Impact app has demonstrated the capability of academic libraries to embrace the development of new technologies to bring strategic benefits and add value to Library services. The result is a product that introduces workload efficiencies and flexibility and provides a leading edge resource enabling academics to make informed decisions when choosing where to publish.


This thesis aims to investigate the industry restructuration of the Chinese film industry in the context of China integrating into the global neoliberal capitalist system since its WTO entry in 2002. By interrogating the power dynamics between the Party-state, domestic capital and transnational media capital, this thesis explores respective roles each of the three stakeholders have played in shaping the commercialization and marketization of the Chinese film industry. Methodically, this thesis primarily relies on elite interviews with industry professionals, together with critical discourse analysis of one key policy document, and secondary data collected from news outlets, trade publications, industry reports, etc. Drawing on the empirical data, I present four main arguments.

First, in light of China's culture system reform and the evolution of film policies since 2002, the Party-state continues to utilize film as an ideological instrument for consolidating the Party's hegemonic rule and sustaining its legitimacy. The Party-state proves ingenious in governing the Chinese film industry at the discursive level as China experiencing the integration into global neoliberalism. Second, despite the installation of the market mechanism in the film sector, the Party-state manages to retain control over the Chinese film industry, not only on the ideological front, but also in the economic sense by partaking in the competition with private capital, domestic and foreign. Third, the Chinese film industry has been profoundly transformed by the trend of conglomeration driven by other capital-intensive industry sectors in China, in particular the internet sector. Riding on their explosive success in the new century, several key tech giants seek to build Chinese media conglomerates that are competitive on the global scale. This process is further complicated by the keen participation of transnational media capital, mainly Hollywood players. Co-production film projects best epitomize the transnational collaboration which however, haven't achieved much success. Fourth, the Chinese film workers have developed professional skills that enable them to navigate between political imperatives, commercial demands, and personal fulfilment. The mental struggle of balancing individual artistic vision with political and commercial constraints is palpable for film practitioners on a daily basis, though to varying degree. One way of coping with the challenge is exercise agency in a highly depoliticized manner, channelling creative energy into filmmaking activities that are either considered politically safe, or in accordance with the official ideologies, in some cases pandering to the Party-state. The fact that Chinese film workers actively transform themselves into depoliticized subjects in their professional work, indicating neoliberalism as a national hegemonic project at its core.


BACKGROUND
Public reporting of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) outcomes is a performance metric and a requirement in many healthcare systems. There are inconsistent data on the causes of death after PCI, and the proportion of these deaths that are attributable to cardiac causes.

METHODS
All patients undergoing PCI in England between January 1, 2017 and May 10, 2020 (n = 273,141) were retrospectively analyzed according to their outcome from the date of PCI: no death, in-hospital death, postdischarge death, and total 30-day death. The present study examined short-term primary causes of death after PCI in a national cohort before and during COVID-19.

RESULTS
The overall rates of in-hospital and 30-day death were 1.9% and 2.8%, respectively. The rate of 30-day death declined between 2017 (2.9%) and February 2020 (2.5%), mainly due to lower in-hospital death (2.1% vs 1.5%), before rising again from March 1, 2020 (3.2%) due to higher rates of postdischarge mortality. Only 59.6% of 30-day deaths were due to cardiac causes, with the most common causes being acute coronary syndrome, cardiogenic shock, and heart failure, and this persisted throughout the study period. In the 30-day death group, 10.4% after March 1, 2020 were due to confirmed COVID-19.

CONCLUSIONS
In this nationwide study, we show that 40% of 30-day deaths are due to non-cardiac causes. Non-cardiac deaths have increased even more from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1 in 10 deaths from March 2020 being COVID-19 related. These findings raise a question of whether public reporting of PCI outcomes should be cause specific.


The purpose of this study was to construct a screening tool, the Early Childhood Behavior Screen (ECBS), to identify behavior problems and prosocial behaviors in very young children (1-5 years old) from low-income backgrounds. Field testing of the initial screening tool was conducted with a representative, diverse sample of 439 parents from a low-income, urban community. The final 20-item scale was written at a 3.9 grade reading level. Psychometric properties of the ECBS revealed that the items loaded on two factors, the Challenging Behavior factor and the Prosocial Behavior factor. Each factor demonstrated high levels of internal consistency (.87 and .92, respectively). The Challenging Behavior factor demonstrated adequate levels of concurrent validity (r = .75), sensitivity (r = .82), and specificity (r = .80) based on its relationship with the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (S.M. Eyberg & D. Pincus, 1999). The Prosocial Behavior factor is a clinically useful aspect of the ECBS, as it allows researchers and practitioners to identify the child's positive behaviors as part of a strength-based approach to treatment. The results suggested that the ECBS has potential as a brief screening tool that is useful in pediatric, psychological, and educational settings that serve low-income populations to aid in the identification of young children with challenging behaviors that may require intervention services.


Performance characterization of stereo methods is mandatory to decide which algorithm is useful for which application. Prevalent benchmarks mainly use the root mean squared error (RMS) with respect to ground truth disparity maps to quantify algorithm performance. We show that the RMS is of limited expressiveness for algorithm selection and introduce the HCI Stereo Metrics. These metrics assess stereo results by harnessing three semantic cues: depth discontinuities, planar surfaces, and fine geometric structures. For each cue, we extract the relevant set of pixels from existing ground truth. We then apply our evaluation functions to quantify characteristics such as edge fattening and surface smoothness. We demonstrate that our approach supports practitioners in selecting the most suitable algorithm for their application. Using the new Middlebury dataset, we show that rankings based on our metrics reveal specific algorithm strengths and weaknesses which are not quantified by existing metrics. We finally show how stacked bar charts and radar charts visually support multidimensional performance evaluation. An interactive stereo benchmark based on the proposed metrics and visualizations is available at: http://hci.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/stereometrics.


In 1420, after more than one hundred years of the Avignon Exile and the Western Schism, the papal court returned to Rome, which had become depopulated, dangerous, and impoverished in the papacy's absence. "Reviving the Eternal City" examines the culture of Rome and the papal court during the first half of the fifteenth century, a crucial transitional period before the city's rebirth. As Elizabeth McCahill explains, during these decades Rome and the Curia were caught between conflicting realities--between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, between conciliarism and papalism, between an image of Rome as a restored republic and a dream of the city as a papal capital.Through the testimony of humanists' rhetorical texts and surviving archival materials, McCahill reconstructs the niche that scholars carved for themselves as they penned vivid descriptions of Rome and offered remedies for contemporary social, economic, religious, and political problems. In addition to analyzing the humanists' intellectual and professional program, McCahill investigates the different agendas that popes Martin V (1417-1431) and Eugenius IV (1431-1447) and their cardinals had for the post-Schism pontificate. "Reviving the Eternal City" illuminates an urban environment in transition and explores the ways in which curialists collaborated and competed to develop Rome's ancient legacy into a potent cultural myth.


We demonstrate the combination of a rails and anchors microfluidic system with laser forcing to enable the creation of highly controllable 2D droplet arrays. Water droplets residing in an oil phase can be pinned to anchor holes made in the base of a microfluidic channel, enabling the creation of arrays by the appropriate patterning of such holes. The introduction of laser forcing, via laser induced thermocapillary forces to anchored droplets, enables the selective extraction of particular droplets from an array. We also demonstrate that such anchor arrays can be filled with multiple, in our case two, droplets each and that if such droplets have different chemical contents, the application of a laser at their interface triggers their merging and a chemical reaction to take place. Finally by adding guiding rails within the microfluidic structure we can selectively fill large scale arrays with monodisperse droplets with significant control over their contents. In this way we make a droplet array filled with 96 droplets containing different concentrations of fluorescent microparticles.


This thesis explores how self-employed barristers responded to the reforms that have reshaped the profession in the last 25 years, to assess if and how their professional lives and perceptions of Bar identity and culture have changed as a result. The loss of its advocacy monopoly, cuts to legal aid, the liberalisation of the rules governing the Bar's working structures and external regulation go to the core of the reforms. It is a qualitative study, based on semi-structured interviews with barristers and chambers staff, together with observation in chambers, at court and at informal and formal Bar events over a period of 18 months, triangulated by in-depth reading of the trade press, the national media, social media and official pronouncements from the profession's representative and regulatory bodies for the same period.

The study takes into account the literature on the sociology of the professions and tests its applicability to the Bar's distinct and idiosyncratic structures and ways of working. It considers Abbott's (1988) professional development thesis, which focuses on jurisdictional battles between professions for control over tasks and the attendant changes that emerge as a result of such conflicts. It further considers a range of studies on the concept of professionalism and, with reference to the legal profession, how it has been developed in the light of commercial, regulatory and managerial reform. It concludes that much of that literature focuses either on other professions or on the solicitor branch of the legal profession, which are different in structure, governance and professional culture and is thus not always applicable.

The findings develop existing research on the Bar or create new knowledge and point to a more commercially oriented and management driven Bar. The chambers model has evolved significantly, as have practitioners' views and methods of seeking work, in an effort to be more customer-centred and competitive. Regulatory reforms have reshaped chambers' organisation and accountability, as well as entry, selection and training processes. Pupillage numbers are down, obliging prospective new entrants to be even more highly qualified, motivated and entrepreneurial to get in. The dramatic reduction in legal aid, together with a decrease in work has resulted in a two-tier profession, with something of a winner/loser dichotomy. Although interviewees share a strong sense of professional identity and culture, there are those that feel the profession has fragmented.


Power-ordered sets are not always lattices. In the case of distributive lattices we give a description by disjoint of chains. Finite power-ordered sets have a polarity. We introduct the leveled lattices and show examples with trivial tolerance. Finally we give a list of Hasse diagrams of power-ordered sets.


Cultural context of every suicidal act exerts influence on what the act represents. Suicide has thus been described as a cultural artifact (Boldt, 1988).The meaning of suicide has become an important area of suicide research because when the meaning of the act is understood from a cultural context, it could inform sensitive suicide intervention programs. This thesis set out to understand suicide from the Ghanaian cultural context using a qualitative approach. Various groups of informants were interviewed. They include psychology students, psychologists, nurses, and lay persons. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyze the data. The results from these interviews form four papers in the thesis. Among the students, nurses and lay persons, suicidal behavior in Ghana was largely conceived as a moral issue with moral meanings. Some of these moral meanings of suicide include: suicide is a waste of potential, suicide is a social injury, suicide is a faith-failure, suicide is a crime, and suicide is a transgression These meanings classify suicide as a breach of two major moral rules: religious values and societal harmony. Within the postulations of the two forms of moral discourses within interdependent society as indicated by Shweder, Much, Mahapatra and Park (1997) two major moral meanings of suicide were gleaned: suicide is a violation of divine morality and suicide is a violation of communal morality. Consistent with those conceived moral meanings, the suicidal person was viewed as culpable and condemnable and facilitated a view of suicide prevention from a proscriptive perspective. The psychologists on the other hand generally viewed suicide from a mental health point of view and thus saw the act as health crisis and pathology. Consistent with their view of the act, suicidal persons were profiled as needful individuals who deserve empathy and help rather than condemnation. Suicide prevention to them should be best approached from a more prescriptive approach. On the whole, attitudes towards suicidal behavior in Ghana are in linear motion (i.e., the way suicide is conceived affects how suicidal persons are viewed and also how suicide prevention should be approached). Additionally, attitudes toward suicide lie between morality and mental health. The former (i.e., the moral view) is composed of religious and societal values and is deeply fused with the cultural context. The latter is a specialized view (since it is pervasive among trained health professionals, especially the psychologists) and although relative to the moral view, is not pervasive in the Ghanaian cultural context, does seem to hold promise of counteracting the stigma that is facilitated by the moral view. Implications for future studies and suicide prevention in the country are discussed. © Copyright Joseph Osafo, 2012


ABSTRACT Stable-isotope compositions were determined for 166 microsamples of aragonite from the bivalve Venericardia hatcheplata collected from the early Eocene Hatchetigbee Formation in southwestern Alabama. These were milled from two transects, one across the left valve hinge plate and one along the growth axis. Amplitude and spacing of about nine years of seasonal variation is very regular, with peaks and troughs occurring at equal intervals and reaching consistent compositions except for some attenuation in both parameters during the last three years of life. Assuming an ice-free world with an ocean 18O value of about -1.0‰, and using the aragonite-water fractionation equation of Grossman and Ku (1986), isotope-derived paleotemperatures are somewhat warmer ( 31 °C) than temperatures presently recorded anywhere on the Earth's surface, and exhibit significantly greater seasonality ( 12 °C) than regions with the warmest mean temperatures. It is therefore likely that these very negative and extremely seasonal 18O values reflect the influence of seasonal discharge of 18O-depleted river water into the Eocene Gulf of Mexico. Comparison of these data with (1) mean annual temperature versus seasonal temperature variation from modern climates, (2) isotopic compositions reported from coeval molluscs, and (3) isotopic compositions of global meteoric precipitation and United States rivers suggest that mean annual temperature along this portion of the Eocene Gulf coast was in fact about 26 °C, and varied seasonally from a winter low of about 25 °C to a summer high of 27 °C. Differences between these temperatures and those derived from direct conversion of oxygen isotope values reflect the influence of seasonal influx of fresh (18O value of -4.7‰) water. During deposition of this portion of the Hatchetigbee Formation, ambient water 18O values varied between winter values of about -1.0‰ to less than -3.5‰ during the summer. Freshwater discharge served to seasonally depress salinity to 10 to 16 ppt along this part of the Gulf coast. The early Eocene was perhaps the warmest time interval of the past 65 million years, primarily manifest as lower equator-to-pole temperature gradients. In this context, an Eocene mean annual temperature of 26 °C is not much higher than modern surface water temperatures of about 24 °C at 29° 30 N, immediately off the modern Alabama coast. Seasonal temperature variation of 2 to 3 °C about a mean of 26 °C, however, is significantly lower than that off coastal Alabama (19 to 30 °C), and occurs only along modern equatorial coasts at latitudes less than 19°. This implies that early Eocene tropical conditions extended well beyond modern latitudinal limits.


SUMMARY This article presents an overview on phosphoglycan-containing components secreted by the insect and mammalian stages of several species of Leishmania, the causative agents of leishmaniasis in the Old and New World. Firstly, promastigotes of all three species considered, L. mexicana, L. donovani and L. major, shed lipophosphoglycan (LPG) into the culture medium possibly by release of micelles from the cell surface. Like the cell-associated LPG, culture supernatant LPG is arhphiphilic and composed of a lysoalkylphosphatidylinositol-phosphosaccharide core connected to species-specific phosphosaccharide repeats and oligosaccharide caps. Secondly, all three species release hydrophilic phosphoglycan. Thirdly, all three species appear to secrete proteins covalently modified by phosphosaccharide repeats and oligosaccharide caps. In the case of promastigotes of L. mexicana, these components are organized as two filamentous polymers released from the flagellar pocket: the secreted acid phosphatase (sAP) composed of a 100 kDa phosphoglycoprotein and a protein- containing high-molecular-weight-phosphoglycan (proteo-HMWPG) and fibrous networks likewise composed of phosphoglycan possibly linked to protein. Structural analyses and gene cloning suggest that the parasites can covalently modify protein regions rich in serine and threonine residues by the attachment of phosphosaccharide repeats capped by oligosaccharides. We propose that the networks formed in vitro correspond to fibrous material previously demonstrated in the digestive tract of infected sandflies. In the case of L. donovani, the sAP is also modified by phosphoglycans but contains neither proteo-HMWPG nor does it aggregate to filaments. Finally, L. mexicana amastigotes release proteo-HMWPG via the flagellar pocket into the parasitophorous vacuole of infected macrophages. This material appears to be released into the tissue of the infected mammal upon rupture of infected macrophages during lesion development. This secretory product may contribute to the pathology of lesion development.


Estimating the date of undated medieval manuscripts by evaluating the script they contain, using document image analysis, is helpful for scholars of various disciplines studying the Middle Ages. However, there are, as yet, no systems to automatically and effectively infer the age of historical scripts using machine learning methods. To build a system to date medieval documents is a challenging problem in several aspects: (1) As yet, no suitable reference dataset of medieval handwriting exists, (2) relatively little is known about the evolution of writing styles in the Middle Ages, and especially in the later Middle Ages. Our Medieval Paleographic Scale (MPS) project aims at solving these problems. We have collected a corpus of charters from the Medieval Dutch language area, dating from the period 1300 to 1550. A global and local regression method is proposed for learning and estimating the year in which these documents were written, using several features which have been successfully used in writer identification. The proposed system can serve as a basic tool for the medievalist or paleographer. The experimental results of the proposed method demonstrate its effectiveness.


A passive water sampler with low‐density polyethylene (LDPE) as the sorbent phase was built and field‐tested for sensing freely dissolved concentrations of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) in fresh and coastal water. Based on the measured LDPE–water partition coefficients (Kpew) of 12 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its seven metabolites, the detection limits with the passive sampler containing 10‐g LDPE ranged from 0.04 to 56.9 pg/L in the equilibrium sampling mode. Furthermore, the utility of the passive sampler in measuring dissolved HOC concentrations in open waters was examined through a comparison with solid‐phase extraction combined with liquid–liquid extraction (SPE‐LLE) and poly(dimethyl)siloxane (PDMS) coated fiber samplers. The total concentrations of PAHs (3.8–16 ng/L) obtained by the passive sampler were lower than those (87.7–115.5 ng/L) obtained through SPE‐LLE. This large difference was probably attributable to slower water exchange in and out of the passive sampler as time progressed because of blockage by algae in eutrophia reservoirs and high dissolved organic carbon contents resulting in higher‐than‐expected PAH concentrations by SPE‐LLE. Furthermore, the concentrations and compositional profiles of DDXs (sum of p,p′‐DDT, p,p′‐DDD, p,p′‐DDE, o,p′‐DDT, o,p′‐DDD, o,p′‐DDE, and p,p′‐DDMU) at site A obtained by the passive sampler agreed with the results obtained with the PDMS‐coated fibers, suggesting that the passive sampler was able to reasonably quantify dissolved HOCs in seawater. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2012; 31: 1012–1018. © 2012 SETAC


Willingness to pay (WTP) estimates for novel products are needed to assess consumers' valuation of these products as well as for product adoption and optimal pricing strategies. Using experiments in a retail setting, we compare hypothetical and non-hypothetical WTP values between a Becker-DeGroot-Marshak (BDM) auction mechanism and conjoint analysis. Our results suggest that the auction WTP values are higher than conjoint analysis WTP values. Moreover, the hypothetical WTP values are higher than the non-hypothetical WTP values in both elicitation mechanisms.


The occurrence and diversity of vegetative compatibility (vc) types in
populations of Cryphonectria parasitica, the causal agent of chestnut
blight, were examined throughout five chestnut-growing areas in central
Sardinia (Italy).
The hypovirulent strains of the pathogen were more frequently
isolated with respect to virulent ones. Four vc types were identified among
the 131 isolates, obtained from 150 randomly selected cankers (30 for
each area) by means of European tester isolates (EU). EU-12 and EU-2
groups were the dominant vc types, reaching a percentage of 48,9% and
46,6% respectively, followed by EU-14 (3,8%) and EU-1 (0,7%). EU-12 was
found in all five populations investigated, whereas EU-2 was isolated from
four populations; EU-1 and EU-14 were found each in only one
population.
The low diversity of the Sardinian vc types was comparable with that
of other countries where the pathogen was recently introduced. The
composition pattern of Sardinian vc types is very peculiar because include
two dominant vc types: EU-2, usually dominant in North Italy and
Western Europe, and EU-12 more frequent in Southern Italy, Balkans and
Greece.
In conclusion, the low diversity in vc types and the natural
occurrence of superficial non-lethal cankers in all chestnut-growing areas
support the possibility of successful application of biological control
measures at local level in Sardinian chestnut forests.


Recurrence of papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) after optimized surgery requires a full understanding of the disease, especially as it has changed in the last 15 years, what comprises optimized surgery, and the different types and implications of disease relapse that can be encountered. PTC has evolved to tumors that are much smaller than previously seen, largely due to various high quality imaging studies obtained for different reasons, but serendipitously identifying thyroid nodules that prove to be papillary thyroid microcarcinomas (PTMC). With rare exception, these cancers are cured by conservative surgery without additional therapy, and seldom result in recurrent disease. PTC is highly curable in 85% of cases because of its rather innocent biologic behavior. Therefore, the shift in emphasis from disease survival to recurrence is appropriate. As a result of three technologic advances-high-resolution ultrasound (US), recombinant TSH, and highly sensitive thyroglobulin (Tg)-disease relapse can be discovered when it is subclinical. Endocrinologists who largely control administration of radioactive iodine have used it to ablate barely detectable or even biochemically apparent disease, hoping to reduce recurrence and perhaps improve survival. Surgeons, in response to this new intense postoperative surveillance that has uncovered very small volume disease, have responded by utilizing US preoperatively to image this disease, and incorporated varying degrees of lymphadenectomy into their initial treatment algorithm. Bilateral thyroid resection-either total or near-total thyroidectomy-remains the standard for PTC >1 cm, although recent data has re-emphasized the value of unilateral lobectomy in treating even some PTC measuring 1-4 cm. Therapeutic lymphadenectomy has universal approval, but when lymph nodes in the central neck are not worrisome to the surgeon's intraoperative assessment, although that judgment in incorrect up to 50%, whether they should be excised has reached a central point of controversy. Disease relapse can occur individually or in combination of three different forms: lymph node metastasis (LNM), true soft tissue local recurrence, and distant disease. The latter two are worrisome for potentially life-threatening consequences whereas nodal metastases are often persistent from the initial operation, and mostly comprise a biologic nuisance rather than virulent disease. A moderate surgical approach of bilateral thyroid resection, with usual central neck nodal clearance, and lateral internal jugular lymphadenectomy for node-positive disease can be performed safely, and with about a 5% recurrence rate.


We describe how a two-mode, above-threshold, optical parametric oscillator can generate nonclassical states of light with a large average number of photons: the fluctuation spectrum of the various fields is calculated, and several quantities are shown to have squeezed fluctuations. In particular, a perfect quantum noise suppression is predicted on the difference between the intensities of the two generated beams. We describe an experiment designed to demonstrate such an effect and show how it can be used to generate high-intensity amplitude-squeezed states.


Although there is much debate about whether lawyers should have gatekeeping duties to avert client illegality and prevent harm to the capital markets, few have examined the fiery rhetoric that fuels this ongoing controversy. This Article explores the rhetoric deployed by the legal profession to ward off the federal regulation of lawyers who appear and practice before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). After describing three canonical battles between the SEC and the bar, it identifies and examines the powerful rhetoric of "lawyer exceptionalism" – the notion that lawyers' societal function is unique and qualitatively different from that of other professionals who have legal obligations to avert fraud – and that this unique function is so valiant and virtuous that lawyers should be exempt from these gatekeeping obligations. The claim of lawyer exceptionalism hinges on the implicit invocation of particular images – the most important being the image of the lawyer as a litigator engaged in zealous advocacy. This Article demonstrates how these images – or, more accurately, "prototypes" – are used to persuade audiences that gatekeeping is fundamentally inconsistent with the practice of law. Moreover, it argues that the image of the litigator engaged in zealous advocacy is both exaggerated and misleading in the domain of the federal securities regulation of lawyers. This Article then offers suggestions on how to undermine the rhetoric of lawyer exceptionalism.


Radiation detectors based on the deposition of a 10 to 30 mum thick hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) sensor directly on top of integrated circuits have been developed. The performance of this detector technology has been assessed for the first time in the context of particle detectors. Three different circuits were designed in a quarter micron CMOS technology for these studies. The so-called TFA (Thin-Film on ASIC) detectors obtained after deposition of a-Si:H sensors on the developed circuits are presented. High internal electric fields (104 to 105 V/cm) can be built in the a-Si:H sensor and overcome the low mobility of electrons and holes in this amorphous material. However, the deposited sensor's leakage current at such fields turns out to be an important parameter which limits the performance of a TFA detector. Its detailed study is presented as well as the detector's pixel segmentation. Signal induction by generated free carrier motion in the a-Si:H sensor has been characterized using a 660 nm pulsed laser. Results obtained with a TFA detector based on an ASIC integrating 5 ns peaking time pre-amplifiers are presented. Direct detection of 10 to 50 keV electrons and 5.9 keV X-rays with the detectors are then shown to understand the potential and the limitations of this technology for radiation detection.


The growing general concern on limited resources (e.g. space) have led to the conviction that policy makers, that deal with urban development, need to consider their choices carefully, with respect to the effects on urban development on the long term. Models that describe the urban development provide quantitative insight in the effects of possible government policy and are a useful tool for policy makers. In the last decade new generation computers have drastically increased data handling capacity and graphically possibilities, allowing much more detail in spatial modeling. This has resulted in research efforts into urban models to quantify the effects of spatial policy. The research, which will be described in this paper, aims for an integrated approach to spatial modeling with special attention on the influence of transport networks and the role of the government. Main objective of the research is the development and application of an urban model to quantify the effects of planning policies on the spatial development. At micro level this urban model simulates the reaction of actors to changes in the urban system: the development or renewal of new urban areas and new infrastructure. These changes are imposed on the urban system by government and developers on macro and meso level. The paper will present the theoretical framework for the proposed urban model and the objectives of the research. This will be complemented with a description of spatial planning issues in the Netherlands. In the proposed urban model the spatial system (urban region) is represented by multiple linked sub-systems. Individual sub-systems are: the housing market, public facilities, the market for business real estate and the transport system. Each sub-system is represented as a market with a supply and demand side. The government and (project) developers define the supply side through spatial policy and investments. On the demand side, agents (households and companies) react at changes in these subsystems. These reactions expose themselves as individual decisions whether to move to other dwellings or to relocate businesses. Development and application of modeling techniques for the choice behavior of households and companies as entities, are main objectives in the research. The urban markets have a strong coherence for the spatial relations of each agent. Quantification of these relationships, by analyzing the transportation facilities, is important in analyzing the choice behavior of households and companies. This is why the transport system plays a central role in the urban model. For each subsystem an appropriate modeling technique has been selected, based on an exploration of available approaches in the literature and other research programs. Efforts are under way to collect and operationalize the extensive data necessary for the modeling task.


Democratization has been one of the main policy goals towards reducing internal conflicts in the last decade. However, recent conflict research, and recent events such as the many riots in European democracies, show that the relationship between democracy and internal peace is not as clear-cut as previously thought. This thesis uses new automatically coded event data to perform a statistical analysis of the relationship between regime and six types of internal conflict. I find strong support that democracies see more non-violent conflicts than other regimes. I also find strong support that authoritarian regimes see fewer of any conflicts than other regimes. Finally, I find mixed evidence on democracies and violent conflict; while democracies have a smaller chance of violent conflict initiation, they see more violent conflict events of some types than other regimes.


In this article, we combine quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate why post-tenure law professors of color and women professors within the US legal academy are differentially dissatisfied with their work lives. Previous social science research has indicated lingering difficulties for professionals from traditionally marginalized groups as they advance to higher levels. Post-tenure law professors have been understudied relative to similar senior-level professionals. Mixed methods allow us to isolate institutional structure and implicit cultural bias as key mediators of this dissatisfaction, converging on issues of respect, voice, and collegiality as crucial. We use the example of the legal academy to show how empirical research can shed important light on the realities of legal professionals—here, the faculty who are training the next generation of US attorneys. Following in the new legal realist tradition, we demonstrate the power of mixed empirical methodologies for grasping social realities pertinent to law.


This study optimises manually derived rule-based expert system classification of objects according to changes in their properties over time. One of the key challenges that this study tries to address is how to classify objects that exhibit changes in their behaviour over time, for example how to classify companies' share price stability over a period of time or how to classify students' preferences for subjects while they are progressing through school. A specific case the paper considers is the strategy of players in public goods games (as common in economics) across multiple consecutive games. Initial classification starts from expert definitions specifying class allocation for players based on aggregated attributes of the temporal data. Based on these initial classifications, the optimisation process tries to find an improved classifier which produces the best possible compact classes of objects (players) for every time point in the temporal data. The compactness of the classes is measured by a cost function based on internal cluster indices like the Dunn Index, distance measures like Euclidean distance or statistically derived measures like standard deviation. The paper discusses the approach in the context of incorporating changing player strategies in the aforementioned public good games, where common classification approaches so far do not consider such changes in behaviour resulting from learning or in-game experience. By using the proposed process for classifying temporal data and the actual players' contribution during the games, we aim to produce a more refined classification which in turn may inform the interpretation of public goods game data.


Aceclofenac (ACE) is NSAIDs of a phenyl acetic acid class. It is indicated in arthritis and osteoarthritis, rheuınatoid arthritis, anğlosing spondylitis. It has short elimination half life of 4 hours. The objective of the strıdy is to design, characterize and evaluate bioadhesive microspheres of ACE employing polycarbophil as bioadhesive polyner. Bioadhesive ııicrospheres of ACE were prepared by double emulsion solvent evaporation method. The prepared microsphereB were free flowing and spherical in shape and charucIerized for drug loading, ınucoadhesion test, infrared spectroscopy (IR), differential scanning coloriınetry (DSC) and scanning electron ınicroscopy (sEM). The in-vitro release studies were performed using pH 6.8 phosphate buffer. The drug loaded microspheres in a ratio of l:5 showed 38 % of drug entrapment; percentage ınucoadhesion was 79 Yo and 89 0/o release in l0 h. The infrared spectra and DSC showed stable character of aceclofenac in the drug loaded microspheres and revealed the absence of drug-polyner interactions. SEM studies showed that the microspheres are spherical and porous in nature. The in vitro release profiles from microspheres of different polymer-drug ratios followed Higuchi model.


This paper focuses on the relationship between Islam and the secular aspects of society which differentiate Islamic societies from other states. Bound up with this question is the issue of the extent to which Islamists challenge proposals that religion should be 'set aside' when people act as citizens by arguing that Islam embraces the whole of life. Using discourse analysis we examine extracts from media interviews with leaders of the Islamist Hamas movement about Islam and its application within the Gaza strip. The interviewees construct religion as being congruent with existing social practices within Gaza. This allows interviewees to make three claims: that the introduction of Islam will make no difference to existing society, that Islam will be tolerant of existing social practices, and that potentially criticisable political acts should be viewed in civic rather than religious terms. By so doing, the interviewees display sensitivity to potential distinctions between religious and civic practices and attend to inferences that might arise in respect of inter-group relations. Constructions of religion and of civic society can thus be viewed as participants' rather than analysts' concerns and should be examined for their functions within both distal and local contexts. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Quantitative online monitoring of iron corrosion product transport is an ongoing technical challenge. Total iron measurements require digestion of the particulate and colloidal iron oxides which constitute the majority of these products. Particle monitoring is fast and simple, but is not quantitative. The present study combines a modified total iron analysis with a laser nephelometer to create a quantitative online monitoring system. This system is applicable in the steady-state flow regime, where flow corrosion products are consistent. The calibration is specific to the particular corrosion product characteristics present at the individual nephelometer installation site.


Retrieval tasks typically require a ranking of items given a query. Collaborative filtering tasks, on the other hand, learn to model user's preferences over items. In this paper we study the joint problem of recommending items to a user with respect to a given query, which is a surprisingly common task. This setup differs from the standard collaborative filtering one in that we are given a query × user × item tensor for training instead of the more traditional user × item matrix. Compared to document retrieval we do have a query, but we may or may not have content features (we will consider both cases) and we can also take account of the user's profile. We introduce a factorized model for this new task that optimizes the top-ranked items returned for the given query and user. We report empirical results where it outperforms several baselines.


This memo defines a new suboption of the Dynamic Host Configuration
Protocol (DHCP) relay agent information option that allows the DHCP
relay to specify flags for the forwarded packet. One flag is defined
to indicate whether the DHCP relay received the packet via a unicast
or broadcast packet. This information may be used by the DHCP server
to better serve clients based on whether their request was originally
broadcast or unicast. [STANDARDS-TRACK]


Even if proper names play a central role in natural language processing (NLP) applications they are still under-represented in lexicons, annotated corpora, and other resources dedicated to text processing.  One of the main challenges is both the prevalence and the dynamicity of proper names. At the same time, large and regularly-updated knowledge sources containing partially-structured data, such as Wikipedia or GeoNames, are publicly available and contain large numbers of proper names. We present a method for a semi-automatic enrichment of Prolexbase, an existing multilingual ontology of proper names dedicated to natural language processing, with data extracted from these open sources in three languages: Polish, English and French. Fine-grained data extraction and integration procedures allow the user to enrich previous contents of Prolexbase with new incoming data. All data are manually validated and available under an open licence.


The assessment of the uncertainty of measurement results, an essential problem in environmental acoustic investigations, is undertaken in the paper. An attention is drawn to the – usually omitted – problem of the verification of assumptions related to using the classic methods of the confidence intervals estimation, for the controlled measuring quantity.

Especially the paper directs attention to the need of the verification of the assumption of the normal distribution of the measuring quantity set, being the base for the existing and binding procedures of the acoustic measurements assessment uncertainty. The essence of the undertaken problem concerns the binding legal and standard acts related to acoustic measurements and recommended in: 'Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement' (GUM) (OIML 1993), developed under the aegis of the International Bureau of Measures (BIPM). The model legitimacy of the hypothesis of the normal distribution of the measuring quantity set in acoustic measurements is discussed and supplemented by testing its likelihood on the environment acoustic results.

The Jarque-Bery test based on skewness and flattening (curtosis) distribution measures was used for the analysis of results verifying the assumption. This test allows for the simultaneous analysis of the deviation from the normal distribution caused both by its skewness and flattening. The performed experiments concerned analyses of the distribution of sound levels: $L_D$, $L_E$, $L_N$, $L_{DWN}$, being the basic noise indicators in assessments of the environment acoustic hazards.


How to allocate a partnership's tax items is the most fundamental issue in subchapter K of the Internal Revenue Code, which governs the taxation of limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships, limited partnerships, general partnerships, joint ventures, and other unincorporated business entities. The principal concern is that the flexibility afforded to partners under subchapter K could be used to trade tax attributes among the partners. For the past twenty-five years, an extremely lengthy and complex set of regulations, known as the substantial economic effect regulations, has been the government's primary defense against the trading of tax attributes through partnerships. However, despite their importance, age, length, and complexity, these regulations have not yet been adequately examined in detail. This Article identifies, for the very first time, a number of critical implicit assumptions underlying the substantial economic effect regulations. Most significantly, the Article shows that, unless partners are highly risk averse in seeking the benefits of trading in tax attributes, these regulations should be wholly ineffective. Even if partners are risk averse, the possibility of hedging or tacit agreements among the partners must be considered. Ultimately, whether the substantial economic effect regulations are reasonably effective depends on a number of empirical questions, such as partners' level of risk adverseness and the transaction costs of hedges and tacit agreements. In addition to identifying the critical implicit assumptions of the substantial economic effect regulations, this Article also makes specific recommendations for the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to implement in order to make them more effective.


Modification of bone implant materials with biofunctional surfaces that facilitate osteoblast adhesion and promote matrix mineralization is an attractive strategy to improve osseointegration. This manuscript discusses the preparation and properties of RGD peptide modified poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate-co-2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl phosphate) (P(HEMA-co-MEP)) brushes. Whereas the RGD peptide serves to mediate osteoblast adhesion, the MEP phosphate groups were incorporated to mimic the function of natural bone extracellular matrix phosphorylated proteins and stabilize the bone mineral phase. The polymer brush coatings were obtained via surface-initiated atom transfer radical copolymerization of HEMA and MEP followed by peptide post-polymerization modification. The functional properties of these polymer brushes were evaluated in vitro using MC3T3-E1 pre-osteoblast cells. Whereas cell proliferation and differentiation were not significantly influenced by variations in brush composition (MEP, peptide content), incorporation of MEP was found to promote matrix mineralization. Matrix mineralization was most pronounced on substrates that presented both phosphate groups and RGD peptide sequences, indicating that a simultaneous presentation of both of these cues is most favorable.


The current approach to build social networking systems is to create huge centralized systems owned by a single company. However, such strategy has many drawbacks, e.g., lack of privacy, lack of anonymity, risks of censorship and operating costs. In this paper the authors propose a novel P2P system that leverages existing, widespread and stable technologies such as DHTs and BitTorrent. In particular, they introduce a key-based identity system and a model of social relations for distributing content efficiently among interested readers. The system they propose, Blogracy, is a micro-blogging social networking system focused on: i anonymity and resilience to censorship; ii authenticatable content; iii semantic interoperability using activity streams. The authors have implemented the system and conducted various experiments to study its behaviour. The results are presented here, regarding i communication delays for some simulations of node churn, ii delays measured in test operations over PlanetLab, in direct communication, and iii through the I2P anonymizing network.


BACKGROUND
There is a lack of consensus about the safety of estrogen replacement therapy, especially with regard to its impact on a woman's risk for breast cancer. Elevated urinary or serum estrone and estradiol concentrations in postmenopausal women are associated with a moderately elevated risk of breast cancer.

METHODS
Twenty-four-hour urinary steroid hormone profiles, including the measurement of estrone, estradiol, and estriol, were conducted for 35 postmenopausal women receiving oral estradiol at doses from 0.025-2.0 mg/day.

RESULTS
Urinary excretion of estradiol exceeded premenopausal reference range values in women taking estradiol at doses greater than 0.5 mg/day. Urinary estrone excretion exceeded premenopausal reference range values in women taking estradiol doses of 0.25 mg/day or higher. Literature data indicate serum estrone concentrations also markedly exceed premenopausal reference ranges when estradiol is administered orally at a dose of 1 mg/day.

CONCLUSIONS
The previously recommended oral dose of estradiol (1-2 mg/day) results in urinary excretion of estrone at values 5-10 times the upper limit of the reference range for premenopausal women. Retrospective studies associating oral estradiol with increased risk of breast cancer may reflect overdose conditions. Based on current knowledge, a prudent dose ceiling for oral estradiol replacement therapy of 0.25 mg/day is proposed.


Attenuation of PKA activity may be required for P body formation in yeast experiencing glucose deprivation. Glucose deprivation causes the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to enter a stationary phase and accumulate proteins and mRNAs in cytoplasmic foci called P bodies, which are thought to store these macromolecules until needed. Glucose stimulates the activity of the cyclic adenosine monophosphate–dependent protein kinase (PKA) in S. cerevisiae, leading Ramachandran et al. to investigate the role of this kinase in P body assembly. Genetic manipulations that increased PKA activity, such as expression of an allele encoding a mutant form of an upstream activator (RAS2val19), resulted in the formation of fewer P bodies in response to glucose deprivation. Conversely, genetic manipulations that decreased PKA activity resulted in P body formation in the presence of glucose. Pat1, a scaffold for P body assembly that is also involved in repressing translation and stimulating mRNA decay, was phosphorylated at Ser456 and Ser457 by PKA in vitro and in cells, and glucose starvation reduced phosphorylation of Pat1 at these residues. Expression of a Pat1 mutant that could not be phosphorylated by PKA (Pat1-AA) rescued the defect in P body formation caused by increased PKA signaling. A Pat1 mutant that mimicked the PKA-phosphorylated form (Pat1-EE) showed reduced association with Dhh1, which has roles in repressing translation and stimulating mRNA decay, and expression of this mutant reduced the amount of various P body proteins, including Dhh1, in these foci. S. cerevisiae with constitutive PKA activity, such as those expressing RAS2val19, do not enter the stationary phase and do not survive nutrient deprivation, and loss of viability in RAS2val19 stationary cultures was prevented by expression of Pat1-AA. Thus, phosphorylation of Pat1 by PKA may prevent P body assembly in cells experiencing nutrient-rich conditions. V. Ramachandran, K. H. Shah, P. K. Herman, The cAMP-dependent protein kinase signaling pathway is a key regulator of P body foci formation. Mol. Cell 43, 973–981 (2011). [PubMed]


Both ballasted and non-ballasted railway superstructures have been highly affected by the increased traffic on railway lines, heavier axle loads and higher train speeds. These forces acting on rails can lead to rail damage that may cause derailments. Therefore, non-destructive inspection of rails has become more important. The primary purpose of this study is to detect rail defects using an ultrasonic inspection method on Aksaray-Airport Light Rail Transit Line which has a daily ridership of 320,000 passengers. Besides, this study aims to determine the characteristics of rail defects and to investigate the behaviour of defects on different rail welding types used on the track. Detection of rail defects is performed by an ultrasonic inspection car including ultrasonic probes which are capable of producing, transmitting and receiving ultrasonic waves that inspect the entire rail section. Ultrasonic probes enable the determination of basic characteristics of defects. Results of the ultrasonic inspection are evaluated on the basis of successive track sections between the stations in the track. In every track section, the "number of rail defects per km" is calculated and the distribution of defects in rail and rail welds is analysed comparatively. According to the results of ultrasonic inspection, the majority of rail defects are found to occur at rail welds. The "number of rail defects per km" in aluminothermic welded track sections is higher than the "number of rail defects per km" in flash-butt welded track sections. Besides, the defect rate in aluminothermic welds is higher than the defect rate in flash-butt welds. Although the majority of aluminothermic weld defects occur in the head region of the weld, the majority of flash-butt weld defects arise in the web region of the weld.


Solving soil unsaturated flow problems requires knowledge of the water retention θ(h) and unsaturated hydraulic conductivity K(θ) relationships. The purpose of this study was to investigate more thoroughly the properties and accuracy of an evaporation method described by Wind (1969) for determining θ(h) and K(θ) from laboratory cores. Evaporation from a vertical column of soil was first simulated using numerical solution of Richards equation for a given set of soil hydraulic properties. The simulated data were then used to evaluate the ability of Wind's method to provide estimations of the retention and unsaturated conductivity curves when measurement errors were taken into account. The main sources of error were (i) errors due to the position of the tensiometers in the sample, (ii) errors due to the calibration of the transducers used for the pressure head measurements, and (iii) errors due to layering in the soil column. The estimated water retention curves were sensitive only to soil layering. On the other hand, small uncertainties in the position of the tensiometers (1 or 2 mm) and in the calibration curve of the transducers for the pressure head measurements (1-5%) had a great influence on the estimated hydraulic conductivity curves. A correction procedure was proposed and was satisfactory when errors of position in the tensiometers were taken into account. Results also showed that temperature corrections related to viscosity of liquid water were large. Finally, this method gives poor estimates of hydraulic conductivities when raw tensiometric data are corrupted with small errors in their position or calibration.


Alexander Leung is a third year student in the Biomedical Sciences Specialization of the Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) Program. Under the supervision of Dr. Eric Brown, Alexander has been searching for novel thera-pies against the ubiquitous opportunistic pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Herein, he introduces the bacterium and provides a primer on antibiotics with a particular focus on those used to combat P. aeruginosa infections. The focus of his research, conducted at the High Throughput Screening Laboratory in McMaster's Centre for Microbial Chemical Biology, is to utilize high throughput screening to identify compounds that synergize with known antibiotics.


Background: Intermittent explosive disease (IED) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by intermittent attacks of rage and violence frequently resistant to pharmacological therapy. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the posteromedial hypothalamus has been applied with fair results and clinical improvement with some surgical morbidity due to neurovegetative side effects. The anterior limb of the internal capsule/ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS) has never been used alone as a target for this disease. Objectives: The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of bilateral DBS of the VC/VS for the treatment of IED. Methods: We performed bilateral DBS of the VC/VS in a 21-year-old patient with IED. This young man had a traumatic birth complicated by hypoxia, and he showed a mild mental impairment. Different pharmacological treatments were carried out with no results before DBS was proposed to the patient's relatives after multidisciplinary approval. Results: After 22 months of high-frequency monopolar bilateral DBS of the VC/VS, the patient showed a significant improvement. Postoperative 18F-FDG PET-CT studies ruled out a reduction of the hypermetabolic areas located in the limbic system previously detected in pre-operative investigations. Conclusions: Bilateral DBS of the VC/VS may be considered for the treatment of IED without the risk of neurovegetative side effects.


Within the forest of success stories of both life and business coaching, there continues to be a shadowy debate that struggles with the question: is it coaching, or is it therapy? While sharing some commonalities, the differences between therapy and coaching are vast and can be solidly delineated. This article seeks to clearly define the differences, but also raises some issues which every coach should consider. There are pitfalls for the coach who does not know and observe the boundary lines between these two disciplines, and wanders unknowing into a potentially perilous territory of psychotherapy.


Currently, teacher education is at the crossroads. Stimulated by a plethora of government reports and inquiries there are cries for reform, restructuring and change. As teacher educators we have grappled with the complexities, contradictions and tensions emanating from these reform efforts on two fronts. At the institutional level, we have suffered the alienating consequences of restructuring through budget cuts, staff sackings, 'efficiencies', and the casualisation of academic work. At the collegial level, we have struggled to make sense of the "teacher training business" and what it means to be a teacher and teacher educator in this increasingly hostile environment (Bullough & Gitlin, 1994; Knight, Bartlett & McWilliam, 1993).


An open secret in contemporary machine learning is that many models work beautifully on standard benchmarks but fail to generalize outside the lab. This has been attributed to biased training data, which provide poor coverage over real world events. Generative models are no exception, but recent advances in generative adversarial networks (GANs) suggest otherwise - these models can now synthesize strikingly realistic and diverse images. Is generative modeling of photos a solved problem? We show that although current GANs can fit standard datasets very well, they still fall short of being comprehensive models of the visual manifold. In particular, we study their ability to fit simple transformations such as camera movements and color changes. We find that the models reflect the biases of the datasets on which they are trained (e.g., centered objects), but that they also exhibit some capacity for generalization: by "steering" in latent space, we can shift the distribution while still creating realistic images. We hypothesize that the degree of distributional shift is related to the breadth of the training data distribution. Thus, we conduct experiments to quantify the limits of GAN transformations and introduce techniques to mitigate the problem. Code is released on our project page: this https URL


Abstract The Rajang Group, composed of the Belaga and Lupar Formations of Sarawak and the Embaluh Group and Selangkai Formation (in part) in Kalimantan, had a turbidite sedimentation history from Early Cretaceous to Late Eocene. These rocks generally young northwards. Inliers within the eastern Miri Zone have been mapped as the Kelalan and Mulu Formations. The Rajang Group was compressed into a steeply dipping quartz-veined phyllite-quartzite complex by the Sarawak orogeny and unconformably overlain locally in the north by the Upper Eocene continental to neritic Tatau Formation, extensively in the south by Middle to Upper Eocene basal continental sequences of the Ketungau, Mandai and Melawi basins, and widely in the north by the Upper Oligocene coastal to marine Nyalau Formation. In Sabah and East Kalimantan, the Upper Cretaceous to Upper Eocene Mentarang, Sapulut, Trusmadi, and possibly the East Crocker Formations, also belong to the Rajang Group. The West Crocker Formation demonstrates rapid facies changes into the more shaly Temburong Formation, and was deposited as sandy turbidites throughout the Oligocene. To the south their equivalents are the nearshore Kelabit and Long Bawang Formations. The West Crocker Formation was folded and uplifted in several Miocene pulses, resulting in regional unconformities and igneous events at Mount Kinabalu. The West Crocker Formation has not been metamorphosed, and dips are shallower than in the Belaga and Trusmadi Formations. Its provenance probably was from the uplifted Upper Cretaceous to Eocene Lurah and Kelalan formations of NE Kalimantan and East Sarawak. It is therefore proposed that the West Crocker and Temburong formations be excluded from the Rajang Group. Middle to Late Miocene Crocker Formation uplift and deformation, herein called the Sabah orogeny, was synchronous with spectacular basin inversion throughout the South China Sea and in the Meratus Mountains of Kalimantan. Uplift ceased in the Late Miocene and undeformed post-inversion formations unconformably overlie inverted folded structures. The Rajang Group flysch-belt may be interpreted as a north-facing accretionary prism. The Schwaner Mountains represent a subduction-related Lower to Upper Cretaceous volcanoplutonic arc. Scattered Eocene volcanism, Miocene Sintang intrusives and Pliocene Metalung volcanics in Central Kalimantan and Sarawak post-date subduction. The Rajang Basin (Danau Sea) rapidly narrowed and by Eocene time subduction was transformed to collision as the Rajang Group was compressed between the Schwaner Mountain Zone and the Luconia-Balingian-Miri block. The Ketungau Basin is in sharp contact with the Rajang Group along the bounding Lupar Fault, which can be traced northwards into the East Natuna region. Palaeocurrents show that the Upper Eocene basal sandstones have a provenance in the metamorphosed Sibu Zone. The Melawi and Mandai basins of Kalimantan also unconformably overlie the flysch-belt. The basins are not forearc and were formed after transformation of the accretionary prism to a landmass formed of a collisional orogenic complex.


We describe a new approach to the index reconstruction of three-dimensional optical systems with rotational symmetry, which is based on sampling ray paths that lie in the sagittal plane. Since the observed rays are distorted by the optical system itself, they cannot be used directly for index reconstruction. We present an iterative procedure to compute the true ray paths and then to find the index distribution. The utility of the method is verified on the model problem.


Canadian History: Pre-Confederation is a survey text that introduces undergraduate students to important themes in North American history to 1867. It provides room for Aboriginal and European agendas and narratives, explores the connections between the territory that coalesces into the shape of modern Canada and the larger continent and world in which it operates, and engages with emergent issues in the field. The material is pursued in a largely chronological manner to the early 19th century, at which point social, economic, and political change are dissected. Canadian History: Pre-Confederation provides, as well, a reconnaissance of historical methodology and debates in the field, exercises for students, Key Terms and a Glossary, and section-by-section Key Points. Although this text can be modified, expanded, reduced, and reorganized to suit the needs of the instructor, it is organized so as to support learning, to broaden (and sometimes provoke) debate, and to engage students in thinking like historians. Written and reviewed by subject experts drawn from colleges and universities, this is the first open textbook on the topic of Canadian history.


textabstractRapid growth since the mid-1990s in the Tibetan and Uyghur areas in Western China has been associated with the rapid transition of the local (mostly Tibetan and Uyghur) labour forces out of the primary sector (mostly farming and herding) and into the tertiary sector (services). The TAR, for instance, went from being one of the most agrarian populations in China in the late 1990s, with 76 percent of its labour force employed in farming and herding in 1999 (almost entirely Tibetan), to 56 percent by 2008. These changes reflect the rapid disembedding of these minority populations from their traditional socio-economic foundations, the speed of which, for better or worse, often astounds even regular researchers in these areas, even those accustomed to equivalent changes elsewhere in China. These changes are analysed through a longitudinal and comparative trend analysis of aggregate employment, wage and national accounting data, comparing the TAR and Xinjiang to several other provincial cases in Western China and the national average. The comparison sheds light on the exceptional speed and characteristics of the transitions that have been induced in these areas within a very short period of time - especially in the Tibetan areas - even after taking into account their very different starting points, as a means to reflect on the profound changes that are occurring to people's lives and livelihoods in very real and rapid ways, which are in many respects irreversible and are quickly transforming the landscape faced by the next generation. The fact that these changes have been happening within a state of political disempowerment for these minorities, which impedes their ability to mediate the speed and course of these transitions, in addition to the disadvantages these minorities face within these transitions vis a vis the Han Chinese (and largely migrant) dominant culture, offers particular insight into the recent outbursts of discontent in these regions.


Social network systems on the Internet, such MySpace and LinkedIn, are growing in popularity around the world. The level of such activity is now comparable to that associated with email and blogs. Our research addresses the question of whether people in different demographic groups use these systems in the same way. We also examined the relationship between membership in on-line social networks and face-to-face networks, especially with respect to different age cohorts. Older Americans tend to use email the same way as Americans in general. The usage of blogs, however, is different, with significant differences in the temporal and structural patterns of post and response in blogs being evident in different demographics. Our research has implications for the design of social network software for older Americans, as well as the algorithms used in search engines for such systems.


AC loss curves measured for the same conductors at SULTAN (CRPP) and at University of Twente (UT) in higher and respectively lower frequency range are compared to draw consistent results. From the unified curves, the coupling time constant (ntau) to be used in the loss formulae is a function of frequency. The envelope of ntau vs. frequency provides a practical basis to predict the coupling current loss under specific operating conditions for those cable-in-conduit conductors where a single value of ntau is not adequate to describe the behavior over a broad range of frequency. The comparison of SULTAN and UT results is also extended to the case of cyclic load for NbTi CICC up to 10000 cycles. At UT, the load is applied on the cable by a mechanical press. At SULTAN, the same load is obtained by a combination of operating field and current (body force)


We studied distributions and abundances of macroinvertebrates in relation to hyporheic water exchange (HWE) patterns of the upper Biebrza − a small, lowland, low dynamic European river located in Northeast Poland. On a 6-km stretch of the river; we determined the variability of water exchange in the hyporheic zone by using direct field measurements of the pressure gradient to determine groundwater–surface water interactions. We identified locations with upwelling and downwelling fluxes of HWE as well as ambiguous hydraulic contact between groundwater and surface water along the river. In these locations, we sampled bottom-dwelling macroinvertebrates. In total, 627 individuals of benthic macroinvertebrates of 34 taxa were identified. We revealed that bottom-dwelling macroinvertebrate fauna is more abundant and diverse in river stretches where water from the river infiltrates the hyporheic zone. Results also show higher taxonomic richness and abundances of benthic macroinvertebrates in stretches with diagnosed infiltrating conditions (downwelling flux in a hyporheic zone) compared to in stretches where the river drained groundwater (upwelling flux in a hyporheic zone), but the recorded differences were not statistically significant.


Abstract:For the first time since the beginning of Brazil's fertility decline, its schedule has stopped rejuvenating. A key factor for this phenomenon is the sharp decrease of fertility among teenagers in the first decade of the 21st century. This paper examines recent changes in two determinants of reproductive behavior of adolescents and young women in Brazil: the use of contraceptives and the ideal number of children. Using data from the 1996 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) and the 2006 Pesquisa Nacional de Demografia e Saúde (PNDS), changes in the use of contraceptives and reproductive preferences according to age groups and cohorts are examined. The results show a great increase in the use of contraception among adolescents and young women and indicate an increase in preference for low parity and a decrease in the average ideal number of children across cohorts. The early fertility schedule in Brazil in addition with lower expectations regarding future fertility strongly suggest that there is a lot of room for further decline of fertility in the country. The study emphasizes recent and not yet investigated changes in adolescents and young women' reproductive behavior in Brazil and sheds light on the likely continuation of changes in the Brazilian fertility schedule and level.


The paper presents the estimation of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the Slovenian economy and its applications. The model, which is built in the tradition of New Keynesian models, closely follows the structure of the model developed by Adolfson et al. (2007) and Masten (2010). We estimate the model using a Bayesian method on quarterly Slovenian macroeconomic data covering the period 1995-2014. Beyond evaluating the properties of the estimated model, we discuss the role of various shocks in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations in the Slovenian economy to illustrate the model's potential in structural business cycle analysis. DOI: 10.15458/ebr.87


Abstract. We present and evaluate the retrieval of high spatial resolution maps of NO2 vertical column densities (VCD) from the Airborne Prism EXperiment (APEX) imaging spectrometer. APEX is a novel instrument providing airborne measurements of unique spectral and spatial resolution and coverage as well as high signal stability. In this study, we use spectrometer data acquired over Zurich, Switzerland, in the morning and late afternoon during a flight campaign on a cloud-free summer day in June 2010. NO2 VCD are derived with a two-step approach usually applied to satellite NO2 retrievals, i.e. a DOAS analysis followed by air mass factor calculations based on radiative transfer computations. Our analysis demonstrates that APEX is clearly sensitive to NO2 VCD above typical European tropospheric background abundances (>1 × 1015 molec cm−2). The two-dimensional maps of NO2 VCD reveal a very convincing spatial distribution with strong gradients around major NOx sources (e.g. Zurich airport, waste incinerator, motorways) and low NO2 in remote areas. The morning overflights resulted in generally higher NO2 VCD and a more distinct pattern than the afternoon overflights which can be attributed to the meteorological conditions prevailing during that day with stronger winds and hence larger dilution in the afternoon. The remotely sensed NO2 VCD are also in reasonably good agreement with ground-based in-situ measurements from air quality networks considering the limitations of comparing column integrals with point measurements. Airborne NO2 remote sensing using APEX will be valuable to detect NO2 emission sources, to provide input for NO2 emission modelling, and to establish links between in-situ measurements, air quality models, and satellite NO2 products.


A ferroelectric liquid crystal spatial light modulator is used to generate up to 24 independently controllable traps in a holographic optical tweezers system using time-multiplexed Fresnel zone plates. For use in biological applications, helical zone plates are used to generate Laguerre-Gaussian laser modes. The high speed switching of the ferroelectric device together with recent advances in computer technology enable fast, smooth movement of traps that can be independently controlled in real time. This is demonstrated by the trapping and manipulation of yeast cells and fungal spores.


This paper evaluates accuracies of selected image classification strategies, as applied to Landsat imagery to assess urban impervious surfaces by comparing them to reference data manually delineated from high-resolution aerial photos. Our goal is to identify the most effective methods for delineating urban impervious surfaces using Landsat imagery, thereby guiding applications for selecting cost-effective delineation techniques. A high-resolution aerial photo was used to delineate impervious surfaces for selected census tracts for the City of Roanoke, Virginia. National Land Cover Database Impervious Surface data provided an overall accuracy benchmark at the city scale which was used to assess the Landsat classifications. Three different classification methods using three different band combinations provided overall accuracies in excess of 70% for the entire city. However, there were substantial variations in accuracy when the results were subdivided by census tract. No single classification method was found most effective across all census tracts; the best method for a specific tract depended on method, band combination, and physical characteristics of the area. These results highlight impacts of inherent local variability upon attempts to characterize physical structures of urban regions using a single metric, and the value of analysis at finer spatial scales.


The "Advanced Big Data Training School for Life Sciences" took place during September 3-7, 2018, organized by the Data Management Group (DAMA-UPC) at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain. It is the follow-up training school of the first "Big Data Training School for Life Sciences", held in Uppsala, Sweden, in September 2017, which was defined and structured at the "Think Tank Hackathon", held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in February 2018. The aim of this training school was to get participants acquainted with emerging Big Data processing techniques in the field of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.This article explains in detail the development of the training school, the covered contents and the interaction of the participants within and out of the training event by the student, organizer and lecturer perspective.


Charge transfer in organic fluorophores is a fundamental photophysical process that can be either beneficial, e.g., facilitating thermally activated delayed fluorescence, or detrimental, e.g., mediating emission quenching. N-Alkylation is shown to provide straightforward synthetic control of the charge transfer, emission energy and quantum yield of amine chromophores. We demonstrate this concept using quinine as a model. N-Alkylation causes changes in its emission that mirror those caused by changes in pH (i.e., protonation). Unlike protonation, however, alkylation of quinine's two N sites is performed in a stepwise manner to give kinetically stable species. This kinetic stability allows us to isolate and characterize an N-alkylated analogue of an 'unnatural' protonation state that is quaternized selectively at the less basic site, which is inaccessible using acid. These materials expose (i) the through-space charge-transfer excited state of quinine and (ii) the associated loss pathway, while (iii) developing a simple salt that outperforms quinine sulfate as a quantum yield standard. This N-alkylation approach can be applied broadly in the discovery of emissive materials by tuning charge-transfer states.


The risks of patients acquiring an infection as a result of healthcare are considerable, with between 6.4% and 9.1% of patients in hospital found to have an healthcare associated infection (HCAI). These infections account for a considerable burden of disease; they are associated with significant morbidity and mortality, and incur costs to the patient, healthcare organisations and society. There is considerable evidence for measures that are effective in preventing HCAI, however there are challenges in ensuring that healthcare workers are aware of the risks and adhere to recommended practice. Surveillance systems that systematically capture, analyse and feedback data on rates of HCAI have been found to be a key component of effective infection control strategies, especially when they incorporate benchmarking. The large datasets captured by national surveillance systems also provide a unique opportunity to explore the epidemiology of HCAI, factors that contribute to their occurrence and their impact on public health.

This thesis concerns the design and application of surveillance systems for infections associated with healthcare. It reflects the programme of research originating from my involvement with the development and delivery of national HCAI surveillance systems in England from the mid-1990s. This research has addressed my underpinning hypothesis that: 'there are real differences in rates of HCAI which reflect variation in clinical practice and indicate where improvement may prevent these infections'. The thesis includes eight primary publications focused on two key types of HCAI, surgical site infections (SSI) and bloodstream infections (BSI). The publications related to SSI describe my work on: the risks of SSI in terms of mortality and increased length of hospital stay; significant independent risk factors for SSI following hip prosthesis; the relationship between duration of operations and risk of SSI; inter-country comparisons of rates; an innovative approach to performance monitoring based on funnel plots; and the impact of psot-discharge surveillance on benchmarking. They are based on the analysis of data contributed to the national SSI surveillance system. A further two publications related to BSI explored trends in causative pathogens and source of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The thesis describes the main methods and findings of these studies, their contribution to contemporary knowledge and subsequent contributions to the field, ilustrating my contribution to each of the works and my professional development as a researcher.

The body of work has identified important trends in pathogens causing BSI, in particular the emergence of Escherichia coli as a major cause of these infections, and provided evidence of possible contributory factors. It has also identified factors contributing to the reduction of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus as a cause of BSI. It has added to the body of knowledge on outcomes of SSI, demonstrating that SSI doubles the length of hospital stay and the more severe infections significantly increases the risk of mortality in some types of surgery. It has informed the design and delivery of SSI surveillance systems in England and Europe through identifying the impact of key risk factors, such as the duration of operation and type of hip replacement procedure, and exploring the impact of variation in application of surveillance methods, in particualr post-discharge surveillance, on rates of SSI. It has enhanced the value of surveillance as a performance monitoring through the application of innovative approaches to adjusting and comparing rates, such as the use of funnel plots for the detection of outliers. In conclusion, these analyses of data on HCAI have informed the development of national surveillance systems, improved understanding of variation in rates, and identified factors that may influence them. Further work is required to enhance and develop surveillance systems in order that they can continue to support the evaluation of effective infection prevention strategies in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.


The advantages of high-precision dosing, manufacturing efficiency, and patient compliance make tablets the most popular dosage forms. Compaction, an essential manufacturing step in the manufacture of tablets, includes compression (i.e., volume reduction and particle rearrangement), and consolidation (i.e., interparticulate bond formation). The success of the compaction process depends not only on the physico-technical properties of drugs and excipients, especially their deformation behavior, but also on the choice of instrument settings with respect to rate and magnitude of force transfer. This review discusses various properties of drugs and excipients, such as moisture content, particle size and distribution, polymorphism, amorphism, crystal habit, hydration state, and lubricant and binder level of the blend that have an influence on compaction. Tableting speed and pre/main compression force profile, also have a bearing on the quality of the final tablet. Mechanistic aspects of tableting can be studied using, instrumented punches/dies, instrumented tableting machines, and compaction simulators. These have potential application in pharmaceutical research and development, such as studying basic compaction mechanism, process variables, scale-up parameters, trouble shooting problem batches, creating compaction data bank, and fingerprinting of new active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) or excipients. Also, the mathematical equations used to describe compaction events have been covered. These equations describe density-pressure relationships that predict the pressures required for achieving an optimum density. This understanding has found active application in solving the analytical problems related to tableting such as capping, lamination, picking, sticking, etc. Mathematical models, force-time, force-distance, and die-wall force parameters of tableting are used to describe work of compaction, elasticity' plasticity, and time dependent deformation behavior of pharmaceuticals. Various indices of tableting performance such as the bonding index, brittle fracture index, and strain index can be used to predict compaction related problems. Compaction related physico-technical properties of commonly used tableting excipients have been reviewed with emphasis on selecting suitable combination to minimize tableting problems. Specialized tools such as co-processing of API and excipients can be used to improve their functionality.


Purpose: Tinidazole is used in treatment of amoebiasis and other protozoal infections in doses of 2.0 g/ day (60 mg/kg) for three days. In the present paper, controlled release formulation of tinidazole was developed with an objective to achieve colon specific drug delivery with reduced frequency of dosing, to minimize gastric side effects and thus to increase patient compliance. Methods: Matrix systems of tinidazole (500 mg) were prepared by using swellable and pH dependent polymers like hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC K4M and K15M) and eudragit (eudragit L-100 and S-100). Prepared tablets were enteric coated in order to overcome variability in gastric emptying time and delay in the release, to reduce gastric side effects and to provide prolonged localized action in colon. Process of manufacture was optimized during the scale up studies. Bioavailability study (using parallel group design) was carried of on conventional marketed, developed uncoated and enteric coated tablets in healthy human volunteers. Results: Bioavailability study showed that greater portion of tinidazole was released in the large intestine and drug level in plasma was above 4 µg/mL in blood for 24 hours. Conclusion: From the results of this study it appears that, the proposed single enteric coated tinidazole (500 mg) tablet per day could be used in place of 3-4 doses of 500 mg tinidazole conventional tablet with better control of drug release for targeted drug delivery. In addition developed colon-specific drug delivery system (CDDS) was relatively inexpensive and easy to manufacture using conventional pharmaceutical coating technique.


The stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1) is an alpha chemokine that binds to the CXCR4 receptor. Knock-out studies in mice demonstrate that this ligand-receptor pair is essential in hematopoiesis. One function of SDF-1 appears to be the regulation of migration of hematopoietic progenitor cells. We previously characterized signal transduction pathways induced by SDF-1alpha in human hematopoietic progenitors and found tyrosine phosphorylation of focal adhesion components, including the related adhesion focal tyrosine kinase (RAFTK), the adaptor molecule p130 Cas, and the cytoskeletal protein paxillin. To better understand the functional role of signaling molecules connecting the CXCR4 receptor to the process of hematopoietic migration, we studied SDF-1alpha-mediated pathways in a model hematopoietic progenitor cell line (CTS), as well as in primary human bone marrow CD34(+) cells. We observed that several other focal adhesion components, including focal adhesion kinase (FAK) and the adaptor molecules Crk and Crk-L, are phosphorylated on SDF-1alpha stimulation. Using a series of specific small molecule inhibitors, both protein kinase C (PKC) and phosphoinositide-3 kinase (PI-3K) appeared to be required for SDF-1alpha-mediated phosphorylation of focal adhesion proteins and the migration of both CTS and primary marrow CD34(+) cells, whereas the mitogen-activated protein kinases ERK-1 and -2 were not. These studies further delineate the molecular pathways mediating hematopoietic progenitor migration and response to an essential chemokine, SDF-1alpha. (Blood. 2000;95:2505-2513)


We focused this research on the composition of the organic aerosols transported in the two main airflows of the subtropical North Atlantic free troposphere: (i) the Saharan Air Layer – the warm, dry and dusty airstream that expands from North Africa to the Americas at subtropical and tropical latitudes – and (ii) the westerlies, which flow from North America over the North Atlantic at midand subtropical latitudes. We determined the inorganic compounds (secondary inorganic species and elemental composition), elemental carbon and the organic fraction (bulk organic carbon and organic speciation) present in the aerosol collected at Izaña Observatory, ∼ 2400 m a.s.l. on the island of Tenerife. The concentrations of all inorganic and almost all organic compounds were higher in the Saharan Air Layer than in the westerlies, with bulk organic matter concentrations within the range 0.02–4.0 μg m−3. In the Saharan Air Layer, the total aerosol population was by far dominated by dust (93 % of bulk mass), which was mixed with secondary inorganic pollutants (< 5 %) and organic matter (∼ 1.5 %). The chemical speciation of the organic aerosols (levoglucosan, dicarboxylic acids, saccharides, n-alkanes, hopanes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and those formed after oxidation of α-pinene and isoprene, determined by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry) accounted for 15 % of the bulk organic matter (determined by the thermooptical transmission technique); the most abundant organic compounds were saccharides (associated with surface soils), secondary organic aerosols linked to oxidation of biogenic isoprene (SOA ISO) and dicarboxylic acids (linked to several primary sources and SOA). When the Saharan Air Layer shifted southward, Izaña was within the westerlies stream and organic matter accounted for ∼ 28 % of the bulk mass of aerosols. In the westerlies, the organic aerosol species determined accounted for 64 % of the bulk organic matter, with SOA ISO and dicarboxylic acids being the most abundant; the highest concentration of organic matter (3.6 μg m−3) and of some organic species (e.g. levoglucosan and some dicarboxylic acids) were associated with biomass burning linked to a fire in North America. In the Saharan Air Layer, the correlation found between SOA ISO and nitrate suggests a large-scale impact of enhancement of the formation rate of secondary organic aerosols due to interaction with anthropogenic NOx emissions.


Required disclosures under U.S. securities laws, whether mandated by line-item disclosure rules, gap-filling regulations, or antifraud provisions, tend to focus principally, although not exclusively, on corporate facts - information about an issuer of securities or a transaction involving an issuer of securities. Although there are line-item disclosure rules that require the public revelation of personal facts about executive officers (both by the issuer and by the executive himself or herself), these rules are limited in scope. However, public disclosure of executives' personal facts not covered by these line-item rules still may be required under applicable gap-filling regulations or antifraud provisions. The analysis of whether and, if so, when to disclose personal facts about an executive officer under these regulations and provisions may be difficult. The lynchpin in that analysis is a decision as to whether the personal facts are material under applicable formulations of the judge-made materiality standard. These materiality determinations may be complex and emotionally laden. This paper argues for an enhancement of federal disclosure rules as they relate to personal facts about executive officers of public companies. The paper first summarizes significant existing requirements for disclosure about executive officers. Then, the paper argues that the existing federal securities law regime applicable to public company executive disclosures of personal facts is deficient in three respects. Specifically, existing disclosure requirements place too much discretion in the hands of executives, cause pressure on important individual rights, and tend to cause investors and markets to overreact. As a response, the paper proposes limited federal securities rule changes designed to more effectively and efficiently manage the public release of personal facts about public company executives.


From September 2015 through January 2016, the staff of the Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at The George Washington University (GW) participated in a staff-designed and -led professional development discussion series. The group met four times and included both SCRC staff who had collection development responsibilities and those who had none. In addition, several librarians from outside of the SCRC joined the group. Participants read and discussed seminal articles about collection development, reviewed aspects of current collection development activities, and drafted a collection development policy template that is now used by all SCRC curatorial staff. Responses to a survey following the series as well as participants' informal comments indicated that the series met its stated goals. As of June 2016, the majority of the SCRC collecting areas had posted new collection development policies online using the template drafted by series participants. Furthermore, this series captured and focused the existing collaborative and collegial atmosphere in the GW libraries system and led to other partnerships and innovations.