The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 ("FOSTA") rescinded legal immunity for websites that intentionally host user-generated advertisements for sex trafficking. However, Congress's mechanism of choice to protect sex-trafficking victims has faced critique and backlash from advocates for those involved in commercial sex, who argue that FOSTA's broad legislative language does far more to harm sex workers—a group distinct from sex-trafficking victims—than it does to end sex trafficking, chilling significant protected speech in the process. These critics posit that FOSTA's results toward eradicating sex trafficking have been negligible and that its chief outcome has been to eliminate digital screening and security protections that consensual sex workers rely upon, thereby forcing the industry back into a far more dangerous street-based model. By eliminating protections for consensual sex workers, however, FOSTA endangers trafficking victims as well, and without online advertisements serving as a "smoking gun," law enforcement has struggled to find trafficked individuals.

This Note explores FOSTA's effects on consensual sex workers in the United States from two angles. First, it analyzes how FOSTA's chill on speech that advocates for sex workers' health, safety, and right to work in their industry contributes to the law's unconstitutional overbreadth. Second, it compares FOSTA's practical effects that are in line with its stated goals with the harmful consequences the law has inflicted upon the sex work community and beyond. While this Note proposes amended language to improve FOSTA, it ultimately advocates for FOSTA's repeal and suggests that if sex work were decriminalized and more pragmatic legislation were implemented to better inculpate traffickers, mitigate harm to trafficking survivors, and reduce future victimization, FOSTA's stated goals could be realized.


The society is aware of traffic noise and participates with local municipalities and cities in solving the noise problems. Positive economic indicators can be achieved when health is good. One of the important factors is restful sleep, which can be interrupted by traffic noise. The increased use of wind energy by windmills and various modes of transportation could increase the low frequency sound that could have a negative effect on the population. When humans are exposed to low frequency sound, only the high sound can be heard. The low intensity infrasonic sound could affect human health and induce various psychological disorders. The infrasonic sound could travel long distances and penetrate the openings in a welling occupied by humans and interrupt rest and sleep. The infrasonic measurements were performed using the Bruel & Kjaer instrumentation. Components of infrasonic energy frequencies were obtained by calculating the difference between the averaged sound pressure level and the A-weighted sound pressure level. Aerodynamic turbulent noise propagations over ground are affected by diffraction from jaggedness and stress viscosity from secondary sound sources. The noise barriers are effective in the diffraction process by reducing noise to the living environment. Measurements were performed using acoustic barriers for traffic noise reduction in the suburbs. At 15 m from the highway, a 2 m high barrier was constructed and the measurements were taken at 15 m and 45 m from the barrier. More intensive sound diffraction was observed at the measurement distance of 45 m. These observations indicate the importance of infrasonic diffraction and of the design of acoustic barriers for the reduction of low frequency noise. For the covering abstract see ITRD E129315.


Low visibility hazard detection in construction sites is a crucial task for prevention of fatal accidents. Manual monitoring of construction workers to ensure they follow the safety rules (e.g., wear high-visibility vests) is a cumbersome task and practically infeasible in many applications. Therefore, an automated monitoring system is of both fundamental and practical interest. This paper proposes an intelligent solution that uses live camera images to detect workers who breach safety rules by not wearing high-visibility vests. The proposed solution is formulated in the form of an anomaly detection algorithm developed in the random finite set (RFS) framework. The proposed system is comprised of three steps: 1) applying a deep neural network to extract people in the image; 2) extracting particularly engineered features from each blob returned by the deep neural network; and 3) applying the RFS-based anomaly detection algorithm to each set of detected features. The experimental results demonstrate that in terms of F1-score, the proposed solution (as the combination of the newly engineered features and RFS-based anomaly detection algorithm) significantly outperforms various combinations of common and the state-of-the-art features and anomaly detection algorithms employed in machine vision applications.


OBJECTIVE
Kaposi sarcoma (KS) lesions are purplish, reddish blue or dark brown/black macules, plaques or nodules which involve the skin and occasionally internal organs. Most patients with KS have a long indolent chronic course.

METHODS
A retrospective review was undertaken for all KS skin patients treated with radiotherapy at a tertiary cancer centre from Jan. 2, 1999 to Dec. 31, 2014 (inclusive).

RESULTS
A total of 47 patients with KS (43 classical, 0 African, 1 iatrogenic, 3 AIDS related) were seen in the multidisciplinary clinic. Out of this group, 17 patients (5 females and 12 males, 14 classical, 0 African, 0 iatrogenic, 3 AIDS related) with 97 KS skin sites were treated with local external beam radiotherapy. An additional 18 skin sites were treated with repeat radiotherapy. The radiotherapy dose ranged from 6 Gy in 1 fraction to 30 Gy in 10 fractions with the most common dose fractionation scheme being 8 Gy in 1 fraction or 20 Gy in 5 daily fractions. For the previously untreated KS sites, 87% responded to radiation [30% complete response (CR) and 57% partial response (PR)]. Thirteen percent of KS sites treated with radiation progressed. For the skin sites which were treated with repeat radiotherapy, 0% showed CRs, 50% PRs and 50% had continued progression.

CONCLUSIONS
The majority of KS skin lesions (87%) responded to radiotherapy. Patients experience minimal side effects from the palliative radiation regimens used. KS skin lesions which progress despite radiation are unlikely to show CR with repeat radiotherapy. In our experience 50% of skin KS will have partial regression with repeat radiotherapy and 50% will have continued progression.


Thermal performance testing was conducted on a 16/spl times/16 mm, 2-metal layer, 591-ball, 0.50 mm pitch, 1.20 mm overall height chip scale package (CSP) containing an offset pyramid configuration of three stacked Delco thermal test die. Die sizes from bottom-to-top were 10.16/spl times/10.16 mm (Delco PST-6), 6.35/spl times/6.35 mm (Delco PST-4), and 3.81/spl times/0.81 mm (Delco PST-2). Testing was carried out using eight different multi-die power configurations in a natural convection environment to highlight the effects of radiant and convective heat transfer. Measured data was obtained on a sample size of five packages to calculate Theta JA, Psi JT, and Psi JB values at each of the eight different multi-die power configurations. Furthermore, Theta JC and Theta JB cold plate measurements were also obtained. For the purposes of thermal testing, each of the five CSP test samples was mounted on a JEDEC standard 101.5/spl times/114.1/spl times/1.60 mm 1S2P thermal test board. Measured results are used to suggest a methodology for the generation of linear superposition matrix equations as a means to present multi-die package thermal test data such that it may account for changes in. thermal cross talk between die at varying die power configurations. The ANSYS finite element analysis modeling software was used to simulate the eight aforementioned thermal test configurations for the purpose of verifying the acquired test data. Both simplified and complex package substrate metal layer trace patterns were evaluated for simulation accuracy. The simplified patterns consisted of conductor traces that do not follow the detailed routing of the actual design, but instead extend straight outward towards the substrate edge. Alternatively, the complex patterns consisted of the detailed trace layers exactly as they are physically routed on the CSP substrate. In both the complex and simplified metal layer trace pattern finite element models, vias that connect the top and bottom trace layers were represented by two-dimensional thermal conduction elements. Simulated results for both the simplified and complex metal layer trace pattern models are compared to the acquired test data. The CSP package structure, thermal test data, and finite element models are presented and discussed.


In Western Australia, peat is distributed throughout the Swan Coastal Plain, in the South West and North West regions of the State. Peat is typically associated with wetlands and its distribution has significantly reduced over the past 100 years. The major threats to the current distribution of peat are fire and land use changes. Peat is thought to be at increased risk of fire in particular due to the proximity of residential development and the drying period being experienced in South Western Australia. Peat, largely arising from accumulated plant matter, burns very easily when dry and fire in these systems is often very hard to extinguish due to the depth of material. Peat smoke is made up of a complex mixture of water vapour, gases and fine particles. In general, peat smoke is characterized by high concentrations of organic carbon, elemental carbon, and potassium. The gases in peat smoke include carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, carbonyl compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and other irritant and hazardous volatile organic compounds. All of these have been shown to cause deleterious physiologic responses at high concentrations in laboratory studies of animals and a limited number of chamber studies of humans at lower concentrations. There is little known about the health effects of exposure to peat smoke as few studies have focused specifically on this potential source of air pollution. Information is, however, available on the composition of peat smoke and there are some studies arising from specific fires which resulted from burning of underground environments, including events in Russia, USA and Indonesia. Peat smoke therefore represents a concern for communities living in areas where there is an increased risk of fire and where duration of fire in these systems is lengthy. This paper presents a review of information available on adverse health effects, notably respiratory diseases and symptoms, associated with components of peat smoke. The health effects reported from epidemiological studies from which exposure to peat fires has been referenced is also reviewed, along with a summary of some of the literature on exposures to bushfire smoke which shares similar components to peat smoke.


As the secret negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement ("TPP") between the United States and eleven other nations approach the final stages, the recent release of the draft Intellectual Property Chapter provides a timely opportunity to examine its content. Among the myriad issues addressed in the draft is experimental use of patents, a topic that has been the source of much discussion and debate in recent years. This Article analyzes the proposed Experimental Use Clause and evaluates it in light of the policy considerations underlying the patent system.The analysis demonstrates that adoption of an international standard concerning experimental use of patents can have significant benefits in promoting uniformity and removing uncertainty. However, a close examination of the proposed Experimental Use Clause reveals that it falls short of attaining these goals due to a few notable shortcomings. First, the clause is drafted in a permissive manner, and thus, may end up having little impact on the laws of the member nations. Second, it does not provide guidance with respect to key doctrinal questions related to the application of the experimental use exception. Finally, the clause is drafted in too narrow a manner, and fails to include in its scope the important scenario of patented research tools used for the purpose of follow-on research and development. Thus, rather than facilitating the adoption of broad exceptions by member nations in an attempt to create a global legal environment supportive of cumulative research and development, the proposed Experimental Use Clause may actually have the opposite effect. The Article concludes with a proposal to revise the Experimental Use Clause in order to remedy its deficiencies.


This article focuses on the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Training (IY TCM) intervention as an example of an evidence-based program that embeds coaching within its design. First, the core features of the IY TCM program are described. Second, the IY TCM coaching model and processes utilized to facilitate high fidelity of implementation of IY TCM by classroom teachers are highlighted. The goal is to demonstrate the use of coaching as a support system toward effective generalization of the IY TCM strategies among teachers with diverse backgrounds and skills who work with students with varying developmental, academic, and social–emotional needs. Implications for school psychologists, researchers, and implementation science are discussed. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


We introduce Verification Modulo Versions (VMV), a new static analysis technique for reducing the number of alarms reported by static verifiers while providing sound semantic guarantees. First, VMV extracts semantic environment conditions from a base program P. Environmental conditions can either be sufficient conditions (implying the safety of P) or necessary conditions (implied by the safety of P). Then, VMV instruments a new version of the program, P', with the inferred conditions. We prove that we can use (i) sufficient conditions to identify abstract regressions of P' w.r.t. P; and (ii) necessary conditions to prove the relative correctness of P' w.r.t. P. We show that the extraction of environmental conditions can be performed at a hierarchy of abstraction levels (history, state, or call conditions) with each subsequent level requiring a less sophisticated matching of the syntactic changes between P' and P. Call conditions are particularly useful because they only require the syntactic matching of entry points and callee names across program versions. We have implemented VMV in a widely used static analysis and verification tool. We report our experience on two large code bases and demonstrate a substantial reduction in alarms while additionally providing relative correctness guarantees.


This highly regarded textbook provides a unique clinical reference for all pediatric surgeons. This new edition analyzes and updates what is known about long-term outcomes in pediatric surgery and urology. The editors have succeeded in bringing together critical reviews written by leading international experts in pediatric surgery and urology. The second edition of this successful and popular textbook has been completely revised and updated with new chapters on urolithiasis, small bowel transplantation, pancreatitis, breast disorders, and a completely new section on trauma.An understanding of long-term outcomes is critical if individual surgeons and health policy-makers are to achieve optimum results in current clinical practice. This is an essential reference source for pediatric surgeons and urologists, pediatricians, adult specialists, and others dealing with the sequelae of childhood surgical problems.


This experimental study provides an insight into failure mode analysis of adhesively bonded composite single lap joint that are tested in tensile shear after they have been subjected to cyclic heat and high relative humidity conditions. Glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite is used with a liquid type adhesive. Changes in static load transfer capacity is examined in light of the failure analysis of fracture surfaces. Fracture surfaces of the bonded area is divided into different regions, and they are examined with both Scanning Electron Microscope and Energy Dispersive Spectrometry, as well as the cross-section of the adherend by Optical Metallography. Test data show that the ultimate failure load of GFRP/GFRP single lap joint is tripled by heat cyclic at high relative humidity, as compared to the baseline value at ambient condition. Detailed failure analysis, discussions, and conclusions are presented.


This paper proposes adequate methods to improve the interference mitigation capability of a recently investigated switched-based interference reduction scheme for single downlink channel assignment in over-loaded small-cell networks. The model assumes that the available orthogonal channels for small cells are distributed among access points in close vicinity, where each access point knows its allocated channels a priori. Each cell has a single antenna, employs the open access strategy, and can reuse its allocated channels simultaneously, while scheduling concurrent service requests. Moreover, the access points can not coordinate their transmissions, and can receive limited feedback from active users. The paper presents low-complexity schemes to identify a suitable channel to serve the scheduled user by maintaining the interference power level within a tolerable range. They attempt to either complement the switched-based scheme by minimum interference channel selection or adopt different interference thresholds on available channels, while reducing the channel examination load. The optimal thresholds for interference mitigation at the desired receive station are quantified for various performance criteria. The performance and processing load of the proposed schemes are obtained analytically, and then compared to those of the single-threshold scheme via numerical and simulation results.


Although literature on postdiagnostic support for people affected by young onset dementia acknowledges financial concerns, this topic has remained underresearched. The aim of this study was to explore the financial impact of a diagnosis of young onset dementia on individuals and families. An online survey, comprising binary yes/no, multiple-response and open-ended questions, was codesigned with people living with young onset dementia. The survey was promoted via networks and online platforms. Data were collected from August to October 2019. Survey respondents across the United Kingdom (n = 55) who had received a diagnosis of young onset dementia were aged between 45 and 64, were at different stages of dementia and had been diagnosed with thirteen different types of dementia. Of the 55 respondents, 71% (n = 39) had received assistance from family members when completing the survey. The main financial impact of a diagnosis of young onset dementia resulted from premature loss of income and reduced and often deferred pension entitlements. In some cases, care-costs became unaffordable. Lack of clarity of processes and procedures around needs assessments, carers' assessments and financial assessments by different organisations resulted in some families having to ask for legal advice and, in some cases, involved lengthy appeal processes. Future research needs to involve Adult Social Care and Third Sector organisations to help codesign and test financial management interventions to support people affected by this progressive health condition.


The aim of this thesis project was to increase the understanding of the mechanisms for low-temperature oxidation of carbon monoxide and methane over supported platinum catalysts. In situ spectroscopic methods together with mass spectrometry were used to study the catalysts during both steady state and transient conditions.
The results show that the interaction between oxygen and platinum is crucial, but this interaction differs depending on the reaction and/or application. In specifc, for CO oxidation, when the reaction is self-poisoned by carbon monoxide, alternative channels of supplying oxygen to the reaction exist, e.g. by additional compounds, or via the support material. For oxidation of methane at oxygen excess, however, the catalyst surface is most likely covered with oxygen, thus hindering methane from adsorption and dissociation. By transient operation of the feed gas composition, it is possible to increase
the activity of methane oxidation at lean conditions. In situ XANES spectroscopy was used to monitor the surface O/Pt ratio during transient methane oxidation, and a new
method was developed and applied for analysis of the in situ XANES spectra. The time-resolved XANES data show that there likely is an optimal catalyst state with a
maximum activity for methane oxidation.
Further, the sensing mechanism of platinum based metal insulator silicon carbide sensors towards carbon monoxide was investigated. Infrared spectroscopy studies performed using model sensors show that the sensor response is likely related to the CO coverage of the sensor surface.


This study describes a five-hour interdisciplι nary experience involving sophomore dental hygi,ene students, dental hygi,ene faculty and medical technology faculty. This experience met the objectives of interdisciplinaηteaching while reinforcing and expanding on a present topic in a four-year dental hygi,ene curriculum. The results of this experience are docu mented by pre. and post-testing and student evaluations. Statistical analysis of the test results along with student commentaries sup port interdisciplinary education as a viable and positive teaching approach. Student ability to correctly answer topic-related cognitive ques tions increased significantly while their under standing of the medical technology profession and its relationship to dental hygi,ene also developed. The experience was included within the framework of the pre-clinical dental hygi,ene course which kept the implementation efficient and perhaps contributed to its success. This pilot project was a positive step toward cθntin ued interdisciplinary experiences between the dental hygi,ene and medical technology pro grams and created enthusiasm for expanding the experiences in the future to include the other health programs. INTRODUCTION Interdisciplinary activity is a collaborative


We describe a simple process for the fabrication of ultrathin, transparent, optically homogeneous, electrically conducting films of pure single-walled carbon nanotubes and the transfer of those films to various substrates. For equivalent sheet resistance, the films exhibit optical transmittance comparable to that of commercial indium tin oxide in the visible spectrum, but far superior transmittance in the technologically relevant 2- to 5-micrometer infrared spectral band. These characteristics indicate broad applicability of the films for electrical coupling in photonic devices. In an example application, the films are used to construct an electric field–activated optical modulator, which constitutes an optical analog to the nanotube-based field effect transistor.


Pb-Based piezoelectric materials such as Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 have been the mainstay for electromechanical devices; however, they encounter the challenge of sustainable environmental development, which requires Pb-free piezoelectric counterparts. The foremost obstacles in developing Pb-free piezoceramics are their low piezoresponse and inferior temperature stability. In this work, we reported Mn-modified ⟨00 l⟩c-textured (K,Na)NbO3-based ceramics to achieve thermally stable piezoelectric properties and enhanced fatigue resistance in conjunction with high piezoelectricity of d33 ∼ 560 pC/N. The in situ d33 measurement reveals that the temperature stability of the small signal d33 is mainly dependent on temperature-induced phase transition. However, the local piezoresponse force microscopy measurements imply that the excellent temperature stability of the large signal d33* (field-induced strain) benefits from the stable domain response to applied electric field at elevated temperatures. Moreover, the good fatigue resistance is proposed to be associated with the decreased defect concentration by Mn doping, based on the analyses of dielectric loss, leakage current, and thermally stimulated depolarization current.


Abstract The efficacy of sterile insect technique (SIT) depends on successful mating of released males with wild females. If the time of mating in a day of mass-reared and released males differs from those of wild females, the efficiency of SIT decreases. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms controlling mating time of the target pests is particularly important for SIT. The period (per) gene, which has been considered as a key clock gene controlling the mating time of the melon fly, Bactrocera cucurbitae (Coquillett) (Diptera: Tephritidae), was cloned from two strains having different times of mating during the day. DNA sites varied in the 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions and at synonymous sites, although protein sequences were identical. We also provide phylogenetic relationships among PER protein sequences of dipteran species including several tephritid pest species. The functional domains of PER in the melon fly are very similar to those in other tephritid species. A luciferase reporter assay showed that the melon fly PER can functionally complement that of Drosophila melanogaster (Meigen). The results implicate that the major genetic cause of the difference in circadian periods, and thus in reproductive isolation, is probably one or more other clock gene(s). Thus, the series of studies may provide a novel factor concerning genetic quality control of mass-reared insect pests for SIT, which depends on successful mating of released males and wild females.


OBJECTIVE
Observational studies suggest that long-term lithium treatment has a strong antisuicidal effect in mood disorders, but it is uncertain whether this association is a genuine therapeutic effect or is due to confounding factors in nonrandomized studies. The authors conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials to investigate the effect of lithium, compared to placebo and other active treatments, on the risk of suicide, deliberate self-harm, and all-cause mortality in patients with mood disorder.

METHOD
The data source was the Cochrane Collaboration Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Controlled Trials Register, incorporating results of searches of MEDLINE (1966-June 2002), EMBASE (1980-June 2002), CINAHL (1982-March 2001), PsycLIT (1974-June 2002), PSYNDEX (1977-October 1999), and LILACS (1982-March 2001). The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) was searched with the term "lithium" for new records entered into the database from 1999 to 2003. Studies selected included randomized, controlled trials comparing lithium with placebo or all other compounds used in long-term treatment for mood disorders (unipolar depression, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, dysthymia, and rapid cycling, diagnosed according to DSM or ICD criteria). Of 727 references identified in the search, 52 articles were marked as possibly relevant on the basis of the abstract, and 32 randomized, controlled trials were eligible for inclusion in the review. Two independent reviewers extracted the data, and disagreements were resolved by consensus with a third reviewer. Methodological quality was assessed according to the criteria of the Cochrane Collaboration. When the outcomes of interest were not reported, an attempt was made to obtain the required data from the original authors.

RESULTS
In 32 trials, 1,389 patients were randomly assigned to receive lithium and 2,069 to receive other compounds. Patients who received lithium were less likely to die by suicide (data from seven trials; two versus 11 suicides; odds ratio=0.26; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.09-0.77). The composite measure of suicide plus deliberate self-harm was also lower in patients who received lithium (odds ratio=0.21; 95% CI=0.08-0.50). There were fewer deaths overall in patients who received lithium (data from 11 trials; nine versus 22 deaths; odds ratio=0.42, 95% CI=0.21-0.87).

CONCLUSIONS
Lithium is effective in the prevention of suicide, deliberate self-harm, and death from all causes in patients with mood disorders.


Background:Many different tissues may be parasitized by Toxoplasma gondii, particularly, lung, heart, lymphoid organs, and the central nervous tissues. Tissue cysts of this parasite in the brain may spontaneously rupture, releasing parasites that cause antibody titers to rise. In immunocompetent subjects with acquired toxoplasmosis, the most frequent symptoms were lymphadenopathy and headache. In the neurogenic inflammation theory of the pathogenesis of migraine, the cause of initial release of ions and inflammatory agents has not been established. In this study, we aimed to investigate if T. gondii infection is a possible cause of neurogenic inflammation of migraines. Methods:The anti–T. gondii antibody status of 104 patients with migraine were studied and compared with those of control groups, 50 healthy subjects and 50 subjects with headache due to rhinosinusitis, by using a micro–enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay technique. Results:Forty-six (44.2%) patients with migraine, 13 (26.0%) healthy control subjects, and 12 (24%) control subjects with rhinosinusitis were positive for anti–T. gondii IgG antibody. The rate of positivity in the migraine patient group was statistically different from those of the control groups (P < 0.05). Conclusions:The results show the presence of chronic Toxoplasma infection in patients with migraine. Toxoplasma infection may contribute to neurogenic inflammation as the pathogenesis of migraine, as many studies in the literature have reported that Toxoplasma infection causes biochemical and immunologic changes.


This paper explores the concept that periodic imposed excess shear stress events to manage discolouration risk in trunk mains can also impact on the chlorine wall decay by changing the properties of the accumulated pipe wall material. By implementing a series of varying magnitude shear stress events in multiple trunk main demonstrated that significant material was mobilised, thereby cleaning the mains and reducing discolouration risk. Measured chlorine data also suggests that repeated shear stress intervention also reduced the chlorine wall decay relative to a control network and the larger the intervention greater the benefit. Calibrated first order chlorine decay simulations in EPANET supported this finding. The modelling results further show that the wall decay has a dominant influence on this change even for these large diameter pipes. The significance of these findings is to evidence the additional value of regular hydraulics based cleaning interventions for large diameter mains delivering service improvement in terms of both discolouration risk and persistence of chlorine residual.


The use of mathematics manipulative materials such as counters and Base Ten Blocks is common in many Australian classrooms. Seemingly there is an unchallenged assumption that the use of manipulative materials in the teaching of mathematics is a key to learning about mathematics concepts, and this is supported by the mathematics manipulatives industry. Teachers who are time poor and under pressure are either looking for a miracle manipulative to solve all their problems with teaching a particular topic such as fractions, or have abandoned the use of manipulatives in favour of textbooks. This paper reports on a survey and follow-up interviews designed to explore key issues in the use of mathematics manipulative materials in the teaching of mathematics. It also reports on the collaboration between Edith Cowan University, the Independent School sector in Western Australia and R.I.C. Publications, an international publisher and supplier of mathematics manipulative materials based in Western Australia. The aim was to look into the state of play of the use of mathematics manipulative materials in primary schools in Western Australia. To this end, a survey was sent to all teachers in primary and designated middle schools in Western Australia (Pre-Primary to Year Ten; ages 4 – 14), providing us with an initial insight into their use. Further evidence based on a comprehensive literature review, school visits, interviews and teacher workshops is used to review the current state of play as to the use of mathematics manipulative materials in classrooms and to respond to issues raised in the surveys and interviews. This paper compares the data obtained from the survey and interviews.


Communication of intent usually requires motor function, which can be limiting during military missions. Determining a soldier's intent from brain signals rather than using muscles would have numerous applications for tactical combat. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) translate brain signals into machine readable form and could optimize a soldier's interaction with the surrounding environment. However, current BCI devices have largely remained laboratory curiosities, because current techniques either require extended training or do not have the requisite signal fidelity, because they are highly invasive and thus not safe or practical for use in humans, or because they rely on equipment (such as magnetic resonance imaging scanners) that do not allow for real-time applications and/or field deployment. The objective of our research program is to create a prototype of a system for communication and monitoring of orientation that uses brain signals to provide, in real time, an accurate assessment of the users intentional focus and imagined speech. We expect that our efforts will provide a prototype of the first intuitive brain-based communication and orientation system for human use.


Distributed detection with conditionally dependent observations is known to be a challenging problem in decentralized inference. This paper attempts to make progress on this problem by proposing a new framework for distributed detection that builds on a hierarchical conditional independence model. Through the introduction of a hidden variable that induces conditional independence among the sensor observations, the proposed model unifies distributed detection with dependent or independent observations. This new framework allows us to identify several classes of distributed detection problems with dependent observations whose optimal decision rules resemble the ones for the independent case. The new framework induces a decoupling effect on the forms of the optimal local decision rules for these problems, much in the same way as the conditionally independent case. This is in sharp contrast to the general dependent case where the coupling of the forms of local sensor decision rules often renders the problem intractable. Such decoupling enables the use of, for example, the person-by-person optimization approach to find optimal local decision rules. Two classical examples in distributed detection with dependent observations are reexamined under this new framework: detection of a deterministic signal in dependent noises and detection of a random signal in independent noises.


Universal Design, Design for All and Inclusive Design are all aimed at dismantling physical and social barriers to inclusion in all areas of life. Engagement in universal design is on the increase worldwide as practitioners and researchers explore creative and desirable solutions to shape the future of universal design products and practices.
This book is a collection of the papers presented at UD2014, the International Conference on Universal Design, held in Lund, Sweden, in June 2014. The conference offered a creative and diverse meeting place for all participants to exchange knowledge, experiences and ideas, and to build global connections and creative networks for future work on universal design. The themes of UD2014 span many aspects of societal life, and the papers included here cover areas as diverse as architecture, public transport, educational and play environments, housing, universal workspaces, and the Internet of things, as well as designs and adaptations for assistive technology.
The book clearly demonstrates the breadth of universal design and its ongoing adoption in societies all over the world, and will be of interest to anyone whose work involves building a more inclusive environment for all.


Abstract:Across the West, political-party systems are disintegrating from the bottom up, as economic and social changes cause them to loose their moorings in the major cleavages that defined politics throughout the twentieth century. The experience of Bolivia, where an underinstitutionalized politics disintegrated earlier and faster, may offer analytical hints about the larger future. In societies where industrial workers as a self-conscious group have dwindled, a left-right axis of political competition based on the opposition between workers and capital is probably doomed. Identity politics anchored in ethnicity, religion, and place will most likely replace it. This is dangerous for democracy, as identity politics revolves around exclusive categories and zero-sum games. The rise of identity clashes is a sad turn for the West that may forever change who we are.


BACKGROUND
Combined supplementation with iron and zinc during infancy may be effective in preventing deficiencies of these micronutrients, but knowledge of their potential interactions when given together is insufficient.

OBJECTIVE
The goal was to compare the effect in infants of combined supplementation with iron and zinc and of supplementation with single micronutrients on iron and zinc status.

DESIGN
Indonesian infants (n = 680) were randomly assigned to daily supplementation with 10 mg Fe (Fe group), 10 mg Zn (Zn group), 10 mg Fe + 10 mg Zn (Fe+Zn group), or placebo from 6 to 12 mo of age. Venous blood samples were collected at the start and end of the study. Five hundred forty-nine infants completed the supplementation and had both baseline and follow-up blood samples available for analysis.

RESULTS
Baseline prevalences of anemia, iron deficiency anemia (anemia and low serum ferritin), and low serum zinc (< 10.7 micromol/L) were 41%, 8%, and 78%, respectively. After supplementation, the Fe group had higher hemoglobin (119.4 compared with 115.3 g/L; P < 0.05) and serum ferritin (46.5 compared with 32.3 microg/L; P < 0.05) values than did the Fe+Zn group, indicating an effect of zinc on iron absorption. The Zn group had higher serum zinc (11.58 compared with 9.06 micromol/L; P < 0.05) than did the placebo group. There was a dose effect on serum ferritin in the Fe and Fe+Zn groups, but at different levels. There was a significant dose effect on serum zinc in the Zn group, whereas no dose effect was found in the Fe+Zn group beyond 7 mg Zn/d.

CONCLUSION
Supplementation with iron and zinc was less efficacious than were single supplements in improving iron and zinc status, with evidence of an interaction between iron and zinc when the combined supplement was given.


The emergence of drug resistance in Plasmodium falciparum to available antimalarial drugs has challenged current antimalarial treatments. New antimalarials, particularly those with novel mechanisms of action and no cross resistance to current drugs, are therefore urgently needed. To identify new growth inhibitors of Plasmodium falciparum, 2D and 3D similarity-based virtual screening methods were employed in parallel with an in-house database of steroid-type natural products using fusidic acid as a search query. The resulting hit compounds were further filtered based on the predicted partition coefficient, log P. The virtual screening strategy resulted in the identification of nine new compounds that inhibited parasite growth with IC50 values of <20 μM. Four compounds exhibited IC50 values in the range of 1.39-3.45 μM and three of which showed a promising selectivity index. Further, the predicted ADME properties of the four most active compounds were found to be comparable to fusidic acid. These compounds can be further explored using structural modifications in the identification and development of more potent parasite growth inhibitors with improved selectivity.


The feasibility of employing the "acetonitrile stacking" method in micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) for the on‐line preconcentration and separation of enantiomers is demonstrated for the first time. The effects of various experimental parameters on the stacking and separation of three different pairs of optical isomers, i.e., two substituted naphthyl enantiomers and one dansylated‐DL‐amino acid, were examined. In particular, the effectiveness of the addition of acetonitrile and salt in the sample matrix to induce narrowing of the analyte bands was investigated in the presence of sodium cholate as the chiral surfactant micelle in the separation buffer. For example, it was found that the presence of both acetonitrile and 1% NaCl in the sample matrix (volume ratio = 2:1) led to a significant improvement of the peak height and resolution for the MEKC separation of a pair of R(−)/S(+)‐1,1'‐binaphthyl diyl hydrogen phosphate enantiomers when the injection sample size was relatively large (e.g., 12% capillary volume). Furthermore, the feasibility of combining salting‐out solvent extraction (off‐line) and acetonitrile stacking (on‐line) as a novel approach for sample preconcentration in capillary electrophoresis was also demonstrated.


Families of generalized spatially-coupled low-density parity-check (GSC-LDPC) code ensembles can be formed by terminating protograph-based generalized LDPC convolutional (GLDPCC) codes. It has previously been shown that ensembles of GSC-LDPC codes constructed from a protograph have better iterative decoding thresholds than their block code counterparts, and that, for large termination lengths, their thresholds coincide with the maximum a-posteriori (MAP) decoding threshold of the underlying generalized LDPC block code ensemble. Here we show that, in addition to their excellent iterative decoding thresholds, ensembles of GSC-LDPC codes are asymptotically good and have large minimum distance growth rates.


Radar clutter, the unwanted radar echoes, has a long history of being modeled a.s a stochastic process. The main reason for using this model is that radar clutter appears to be very random to our naked eyes. Due to this stochastic assumption, radar detection is based on statistical decision theory. More precisely, the probability distribution of noise or clutter is obtained to derive the likelihood function for making decision. In this thesis, we try to justify the stochastic assumption of radar clutter, in pa.rticular, sea clutter. We find that assuming sea clutter as a random process uses unnecessarily high degrees of freedom. In other words, sea clutter does not have to be modeled by a random process to handle its random behavior. Using different real-life sea clutter data, we show that the random nature of sea clutter is possibly a result of the chaotic phenomenon. After showing that sea clutter is not truely random, we then try to model sea clutter data by a deterministic dynamical system. To construct a useful model for sea clutter, we need to reconstruct the dynamics of sea clutter, and neural network is lIsed here as a tool to achieve this purpose. Two novel neural networks are developed to reconstruct the clutter dynamics. The first one is called ratio~al function neural network which has an unique local minimum and a rapid learning phase. The second network, which uses the idea that sea clutter can be embedded as a manifold, does not require any learning, and is very robust and accurate. Both networks have excellent performances in reconstructing the dynamics of the real-life sea clutter data. The model for sea clutter is then used for detection of small targets in ocean environment. Now detection is no longer a statistic decision problem, but rather a process of distinguishing two different dynamical systems. One dynamical system


We describe low-index porous alumina thin films deposited from aqueous solutions containing flat-Al13 clusters and the nonionic block copolymer Pluronic F127. The films exhibit surface roughness as low as 0.5 nm, a characteristic useful for the fabrication of multilayer optical devices. We have investigated the chemical, optical, and structural properties of the films and their formation by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, temperature programmed desorption, spectroscopic ellipsometry, transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. By varying the Pluronic F127 concentration, film porosities can be tuned to produce refractive indexes between n = 1.26 and 1.54 (λ = 550 nm).


Extracted from text ... African Security Review 15.1 Institute for Security Studies
Benin: Under new management
Richard Cornwell*
In the middle of the 1970s there were few observers who would have predicted that Benin would
come to provide Africa with examples of peaceful political transition. Benin's ethno-regionally
fractured polity traditionally has pitched the south-east, south-west and north of the country
into a bitter rivalry for national political power. Throughout the 1960s the army had frequently
intervened to break the political deadlock created by civilian administrations, and in 1972 Mathieu
K?r?kou seized power and then sought to broaden his appeal to the militant student ..


An unprecedented mortality crisis befell the former socialist countries between 1989 and 1995, representing one of the greatest demographic shocks of the period after the Second World War. While it is likely that country-level variation in the post-socialist mortality crisis in Eastern Europe can be explained by a constellation of political and socio-economic factors, no comprehensive review of the existing scholarly attempts at explaining these factors exists. We review 39 cross-national multi-variable peer reviewed studies of social determinants of mortality in post-socialist Europe in order to assess the social factors behind the post-socialist mortality crisis, determine the gaps in the existing literature and to make suggestions for future research. We propose a novel methodology to determine the relative importance of variables based on the ratio of significant to insignificant findings for each variable. The literature identifies inequality, welfare payments, religious composition, democracy, economic performance and unemployment as the leading factors that have a significant influence on mortality outcomes. Existing cross-country studies fail to establish a definitive connection between mortality and diets, drinking patterns, liberalisation, trust, health expenditure and war. We also point out that the level of analysis is not a neutral methodological choice but might influence the results themselves.


The Obama Administration came up with a great idea for a federally funded education experiment: Give money to nonprofits and universities to organize doctor's visits, prenatal parenting classes, eye exams, early literacy initiatives, and other steps to help schools in some 20 disadvantaged communities counter the destructive effects of poverty on their students. Education would be at the center of the Promise Neighborhoods project, the Department of Education declared in announcing the program earlier this year. And to protect taxpayers' pocketbooks, it would demand a 50% funding match from other sources for most grant winners. The response was overwhelming. Some 339 nonprofit and university coalitions nationwide entered the competition for grants. Then, Grover Whitehurst, a director of federal education research during the Bush Administration who's now at the influential Brookings Institution, attacked the plan and its underlying premise. "There is no compelling evidence that investments in parenting classes, health services, nutritional programs, and community improvement in general have appreciable effects on student achievement in schools in the U.S.," he wrote. A week later, a congressional appropriations committee slashed the Administration's planned $210 million Promise Neighborhoods funding to $20 million. Whitehurst's widely publicized claim was based on his study of a single charter school in Harlem, the Promise Academy run by the Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ), a nonprofit that is addressing the struggles of impoverished urban students by offering children in 97 blocks of central Harlem a suite of social services (among them, health care, prenatal help for parents, and intensive preschooling) and charter schooling. President Obama has pointed to HCZ as the model for his Promise Neighborhoods initiative. Not only is it difficult to make a sweeping declaration about the contribution of health care, nutrition, and other supports to learning from the experience of a couple of hundred students in one school (during his Bush years, Whitehurst argued for more rigor in education research), Whitehurst acknowledges that the Promise Academy has produced strong academic results. After three years at Promise, the school's students--overwhelmingly poor and black or brown--score as high as New York City's typical white students on state tests. His indictment of the Obama Promise Neighborhoods plan instead rests on the even narrower case that other charter schools in New York City have produced even better results than Promise Academy without providing any "social services" to their students. To help make his case, Whitehurst turns to a 2009 study of student achievement in the HCZ by Harvard researchers Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie, who compare the school performance of Promise Academy students who have participated in two of the HCZ's many community programs with the performance of students in the programs who didn't attend HCZ charter schools. They conclude that the impressive student achievement gains in the HCZ are a result of the quality of HCZ charter schools or a combination of the charters' quality and HCZ's social service programs, but not a function of those programs alone. Standards vs. Supports Whitehurst says his report was a standard think-tank analysis done to inform congressional policy priorities. But the HCZ rests on a deep fault line in the school reform landscape. Many of today's reformers are loath to acknowledge that addressing the physical and psychological aspects of poverty could be part of the school reform equation. Doing so would be an admission that students' backgrounds play a role in achievement. And that, these reformers fear, would allow reluctant educators to argue that impoverished students shouldn't be held to high standards and that the educators who teach them shouldn't be held accountable for students' lagging performance. …


A three-dimensional optical data storage system that combines a new recording material with a microholographic data format in which data are stored as single-bit microholograms is presented. This format offers less sensitivity to environmental conditions than the page-based holographic approach in addition to an increased compatibility with current storage technologies. The new recording material is based on a thermoplastic material. The results presented indicate that the dimensions of the microholograms are larger than those calculated by use of simple laser beam waist approximations and that multiple layers of microholograms would significantly affect signal levels. Data densities achievable with the microholographic format will likely be limited by those effects.


It is not uncommon that cover cracking, spalling, and delamination occur in many corroding RC structures. Previous research has mainly been concerned with corrosion levels leading to cover cracking along the main reinforcement, whereas corrosion of stirrups is often overlooked. Corrosion phenomena, including stirrup corrosion, were studied in an experimental investigation presented in this paper. High levels of corrosion were reached, up to 20% of the main bars and 34% of the stirrups legs. The occurrence of crack initiation, propagation, and cover delamination were examined. The specimens had the shape of a beam end and were corroded with an accelerated method; an imposed current was used, taking care to keep the current density as low as practically possible for the duration of the laboratory testing. The effects of this process were compared with those of natural corrosion using models from the literature. The location of the bar, middle and corner placement, the amount of transverse reinforcement, and the corrosion level of longitudinal reinforcement and of transverse reinforcement were studied. The results concerning the concrete cracking in the experimental campaign are presented. The crack patterns and widths were analyzed, showing differences between specimens with or without stirrups and whether stirrups were corroding. Finally, the effect of corrosion was simulated as the expansion of corrosion products in a finite-element (FE) model, and the results, mainly the crack pattern and width, were compared with the test results. The conclusions addressed the importance of taking into consideration both high corrosion levels and corrosion of stirrups for the assessment of deteriorated structures.


Quality degradation of near-end speech in mobile communication or hands free devices is mainly due to acoustic echoes and background noises. The received far-end speech gets reflected from the obstacles present in the surroundings creating acoustic echo. All other disturbances from the near-end environment are considered as background noises. A novel acoustic echo suppression scheme using speech uncertainty in modulation domain (MD) is proposed in this paper. State of the art acoustic echo suppression systems are based on either time domain or frequency domain analysis. In recent times, the modulation domain analysis is popularly used in speech processing, as it captures the human perceptual properties. Modulation domain provides the temporal variation of the acoustic magnitude spectra which acts as an information bearing signal. In this paper, a new method is developed and implemented to model the echo path and estimate the echo in modulation domain. Echo cancellation is done effectively by manipulating the modulation spectrum and employing speech uncertainty. In this method, the microphone input is modelled as a binary hypothesis process and the gain function is modified accordingly. The proposed method shows better performance as compared to other competitive methods for acoustic echo suppression with no audible degradation in the near-end speech.


Longan, a major fruit crop in Thailand, is a rich source of antioxidant polyphenic compounds, mostly gallic acid and ellagic acid. Dried longan seeds contain large amounts of antioxidant polyphenols. In this study, three fractions of dried longan seed extract were collected by Sephadex LH-20 column chromatography to determine the major compounds in each, and the amounts of gallic acid and ellagic acid were quantified. The first fraction was determined to be the major source of gallic acid, while ellagic acid was mainly found in fraction 3. Antioxidant activities were measured using total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging activity, and metal chelating activity. Fraction 1 had the highest antioxidant activity. In addition, the effect of each fraction on matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) activity was analysed using a fluorometric assay. Interestingly, fraction 3 had the greatest MMPs inhibitory effect. Notably, dried longan seeds have been established not only as major sources of antioxidants, but also as potent MMPs inhibitors. Since these properties are associated with anti-cancer effects, dried longan seeds could be a novel natural source for compounds used in chemoprevention and chemotherapy.


The basic premise of a teaching grammar (as opposed to a descriptive grammar or a prescriptive grammar) is that it must describe the grammar to be learned in terms of the grammar of the language known by the student. In this regard, Biblical Hebrew teaching grammars are woefully inadequate for non-Western students, since they teach the grammatical concepts of Biblical Hebrew from the standpoint of Indo-European languages. This is especially problematic in cases where the language of the student is closer to Biblical Hebrew than is the Indo-European language that is used as the reference point in the grammar. An example would be a language with an aspectual verbal system, which is closer to the Hebrew system than the tensed verbal system of English. In this paper we describe a research project in progress at the University of the Free State to produce a new teaching grammar of Biblical Hebrew based upon language typology, which allows students to learn Biblical Hebrew in terms of the ways in which various features of their language are the same or different from Biblical Hebrew from a typological viewpoint.


This month, Optometry and Vision Science (OVS) publishes a number of articles on contact lenses, cornea, and tears. In fact, more than one-half of the 16 articles are on this topic. In essence, we have a ''mini'' Feature Issue. Our lead article deals with the intriguing idea that orthokeratology can be used to create monovision for presbyopes by producing one myopic eye. The authors showed that, as with younger patients, orthokeratology is effective within a week and it reverses to baseline corneal curvature within 1 week cessation of overnight contact lens wear. No doubt that there will be some controversy and comments, but the authors address a most interesting concept and provide results that show the viability of such an approach. There will be some considerable public media response on this article, so clinicians may want to be prepared to answer patient questionsVthe media can report in such glowing ''breakthrough'' terms that are bound to peak patient interest! Three articles look at contact lens approaches to correcting keratoconus. They are common in the sense that they are focused on the possibilities and advantages of both personalized and template approaches to correcting optical aberrations of keratoconus with contact lenses, and in the approach to diagnosis in the third article. The first article reports customized correction of higher order aberrations into a scleral lens. It produces substantial visual acuity improvement in advanced keratotonic eyes to provide patients who have abnormally aberrated corneas with nearly a normal level of optical and visual quality. In the second, the authors feel, using 110 keratotonic eyes to develop templates for the subgroups, that the relatively common high-order aberrations in keratoconus can be characterized in subgroups that will allow feasible correction for these subgroups. In the third, the authors report that Placido imageYbased new corneal irregularity indices can be used as an effective tool for detection of early keratoconic and keratoconus-suspect eyes. Two articles deal with contact lens wear and comfort: one emphasizes the importance of the lens care and the other the impact of care compliance. In the first, the authors use data from seven prospective clinical trials involving 283 subjects. They report that a planned replacement silicone hydrogel contact lens, when worn on a daily disposable basis, reduces corneal surface adverse events and offers better ocular comfort compared with when it is reused with various lens care systems. In the second, perhaps not surprisingly, the authors are able to document that the interval between eye examinations is longer for patients who are less compliant with manufacturer-recommended replacement frequency. Three articles deal with tears and tear osmolarity. These range from tear sampling techniques, variability across patients in tear osmolarity with different commercially available eyedrops, and a method of measuring evaporation rates, respectively. In the first, our authors validate in situ tear osmolarity measurements by comparing the TearLab instrument with a traditional vapor pressure osmometer. Oneye measurements were repeatable and showed good agreement with vapor pressure measurements. In the second, each of 20 consecutive patients with moderate dry eye had one of two commercial eyedrops in the right eye and the other in the left eye. They report that the hypoosmotic drops with sodium hyaluronate reduced tear osmolarity at a greater and more sustained rate, although both were effective. In the third article, our authors demonstrated repeatability for a new method to measure tear evaporation based on infrared thermography. This month marks the final deadline (April 1, 2013) for submission of articles for a Feature Issue on myopia. Optometry and Vision Science creates an update on myopia about every other year, given the ongoing intensity of research efforts on this topic. The six guest editors are internationally renowned, and they are expecting to put together a firstrate Feature Issue to be published in September or October this year. The interest in myopia research remains high, especially as the research raises more and more interest in the prevention and progress of myopia (see Call for Papers topics in this issue of OVS). Next month, OVS features a Clinical Perspective, ''Optical Control of Myopia Has Come of AgeVOr Has It?,'' by two authors active in clinical care and research. It raises the kind of issues that clinicians will be interested in and calls for a more aggressive clinical approach and needed clinical trials to further validate those approaches. That same month, another top optometry journal, Optometry and Physiological Optics, will publish a feature issue on myopia. Later this year, the journal Experimental Eye Research will also publish its own feature issue on the topic and an International Conference is scheduled for August in Berkeley, California. Finally, this month, the membership will receive a very brief fivequestion e-mail survey on OVS. It is a follow-up of a survey done a year ago, then again just 6 months ago in September/October. This month, the focus is on readership digital access to the journal and the extent of the OVS iPad App penetration with members OVS reading habits. Do please take the 1 to 2 minutes needed to respond to the survey. It is most helpful in enabling the editors to bring you an everimproving journal. We have plenty to interest you in this month's OVS!


This scholarly work is the most comprehensive existing resource on human physical appearance - how people's outer physical characteristics and their inner perceptions and attitudes about their own appearance (body image) affect their lives. The encyclopedia's 117 full-length chapters are composed and edited by the world's experts from a range of disciplines-social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. The extensive topical coverage in this valuable reference work includes: important theories, perspectives, and concepts for understanding body image and appearance; scientific measurement of body image and physical attributes (anthropometry); the development and determinants of human appearance and body image over the lifespan: how culture and society influences the meanings of human appearance; the psychosocial effects of appearance-altering disease, damage, and visible differences; appearance self-change and self-management; and, the prevention and treatment of body image problems, including psychosocial and medical interventions. Chapters are written in a manner that is accessible and informative to a wide audience, including the educated public, college and graduate students, and scientists and clinical practitioners. Each well-organized chapter provides a glossary of definitions of any technical terms and a Further Reading section of recommended sources for continued learning about the topic. This title is available online via "ScienceDirect" or in a limited-release print version. "The Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance" is a unique reference for a growing area of scientific inquiry. It brings together in one source the research from experts in a variety of fields examining this psychological and sociological phenomenon. The breadth of topics covered, and the current fascination with this subject area ensure this reference will be of interest to researchers and a lay audience alike.


A pair of vertebrate-specific and brain-expressed pre-synaptic genes, NTNG1 and NTNG2, contributes to the Intellectual Quotient (IQ) test scores in a complementary manner. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of NTNG1 are associated with attenuated verbal comprehension (VC) or processing speed (PS) while NTNG2 SNPs affect working memory (WM) and perceptual organization (PO), forming cognitive endophenotypes in healthy and schizophrenia (SCZ)-affected human subjects. Regions of interest (ROIs), defined as 21 nucleotide (nu) long NTNG gene loci symmetrically embedding the IQ-affecting mutation alleles (VC/PS and WM/PO), underwent dramatic evolutionary changes from mice through primates to hominins, at the accelerated rates. Mutation alleles associated with the higher VC and WM IQ scores are found in the genomes of extinct hominins of Neolithic times, however, lower WM scores associated allele is also detectable in Mesolithic hunters genomes. Protein sequence of NTNG1 is 100% conserved among the primates, archaic and modern extinct hominins while NTNG2 underwent a recent selection sweep encoding a primate-specific S371A/V (~50,000 yrs BC), and a modern human (5,300 yrs BC) T346A substitutions. We show that a 500 mln yrs old genomic duplication of a synapse primordial gene provided a substrate for further synapse elaborations and its ultimate capacitive expansion of what evolved into a vertebrate cognitive superior complexity – intelligence.


We describe the cloning of a cDNA from the rat basophilic leukaemia cell line (RBL.2H3) encoding a novel member of the Rab family of small GTP binding proteins. The novel clone, which we call Rab8b, is most highly related to the Rab8 family with substantial divergence in the variable C-terminal domain. Northern blot analysis reveals highest levels of expression of Rab8b in the spleen, testis and brain, which is in marked contrast to the tissue distribution of Rab8. The Rab8b cDNA was modified to introduce a c-myc epitope tag at the extreme N terminus of the protein, and transient transfection studies were performed to analyse the intracellular localization of Rab8b by confocal microscopy. Transient expression of the c-myc/Rab8b fusion protein in both PC12 and RBL.2H3 cells shows staining of both the plasma membrane and ill-defined vesicular structures, and in the case of RBL.2H3 cells appears to induce striking outgrowths of the plasma membrane.


BEDOLLA-GUZMÁN Y., MASELLO J.F., AGUIRRE-MUÑOZ, A., LAVANIEGOS, B.E. & QUILLFELDT, P. 2017. Breeding biology, chick growth, and diet of the Least Storm-Petrel Oceanodroma microsoma on Islas San Benito, Mexico. Marine Ornithology 45: 129–138 The Least Storm-Petrel Oceanodroma microsoma is endemic to islands on both coasts of Baja California, in Mexico. It is the smallest seabird species and one of the least studied of the order Procellariiformes. We present a detailed account of its breeding success, chick growth, and diet at Islas San Benito, Baja California, during three consecutive breeding seasons (2013 to 2015) and of sex differences in adult morphology, a study conducted in 2012. Eggs hatched between late July and mid-September, and the fledging period started in mid-October. The timing of breeding varied from year to year: the hatching period began earlier in 2013 than in 2015 and was longer in 2014, while the fledging period started later in 2014 than in 2013. Hatching success (around 80%) and fledging success (about 90%) were consistently high in all three years. Nevertheless, nestlings fledged with longer wings, tails, and bills in 2015. Four species of euphausiids, two species of larval fish, and one species of squid were identified in food samples. Differences in the timing of breeding and chick growth during the period of this study may reflect a variation in food supply associated with anomalous climate conditions recorded in 2014 and 2015.


Anglican Approaches to Scripture: From the Reformation to the Present. By Rowan Greer. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2006. 288 pp. $29.95 (paper). It is a particular pleasure to review this book, since I was among some Episcopal ordinands at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale who were struggling to understand what it meant to he an Anglican. We asked Professor Rowan Greer for an extended reading course on the subject in the fall of 1978. He turned his expertise in Scripture and patristics to hear on this question, and this book is the fruit of almost thirty years of work. It is written in an easy style that belies his enormous erudition in the field. This is really a hook about Anglican identity and authority, though his transposing of those questions into the key of Scriptural interpretation makes those seemingly overtilled fields fruitful once again. In a time when Anglican identity is very much in play, and when the number who actually know the more detailed plotline and actors is few, this book is particularly welcome. While Greer is clear that his intention is to write a primarily descriptive work, the issues are live, the normative implications unavoidable. The issue at the heart of Greer's treatment is the relation between church and Scripture. He finds this in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century differences between "conversion" (protestant) and "ecclesiastical" (catholic) (p. 27) understandings of the Christian faith. For example, he finds in Richard Hooker's treatment of justification and sanctification, of baptism and Eucharist, a careful balancing act between the two approaches. Greer goes on to trace the same issue in the great nineteenth century figures of John Henry Newman and F. D. Maurice. And in between he treats generally forgotten figures like Joseph Hall, John Pearson, and William Chillingworth with a masterful touch. Intruding on this first tension is of course a second, the tsunami called modernity, which he traces from the Cambridge Platonists through the latitudinarians and on to the modernists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He shows with care and detail how. for example, the meaning of a word like "reason" changed tellingly over time. He also notes how the acids of criticism came to attack the very core of the faith in a way that a scholar like Charles Core thought could be avoided. For Anglicanism, as with other Western traditions, the categories of experience and history lacked the bulwarks to withstand this process. Greeer does seem to put more emphasis on the positive effect, the overcoming of a simple inerrantism, than on the negative effects of criticism as it was used in the last century. …


This widely respected resource continues to deliver practice-focused, useful information you won't see anywhere else. Topics in E-Health include "Novel Implementations of Information Technology in Support of Adolescent Health Knowledge Acquisition," "Extending Electronic Health Records to Improve Adolescent Health," "Office-Based Computerized Risk-Assessment and Health Education Systems," "Secure E-mail Applications," "Examining and Using Emerging Technologies in Adolescent Health Research," "Application of Computer Technology to Adolescent Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment," and "Engaging Youth in E-Health Promotion." "This is a very useful, timely, well organized collection of articles addressing the use of technology in adolescent healthcare. It should inspire both practitioners and researches alike to optimize and rethink their current practices." Julie Finger, MD, MPH, Tulane University School of Medicine, Doody's Review, 2009.


OBJECTIVE
Despite the rise of studies in the neurosurgical literature suggesting that patients with Medicaid insurance have inferior outcomes, there remains a paucity of data on the impact of insurance on outcomes after endonasal endoscopic transsphenoidal surgery (EETS). Given the increasing importance of complications in quality-based healthcare metrics, the objective of this study was to assess whether Medicaid insurance type influences outcomes in EETS for pituitary adenoma.

METHODS
The authors analyzed a prospectively acquired database of EETS for pituitary adenoma from 2005 to 2018 at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medicine. All patients with Medicaid insurance were identified. As a control group, the clinical, socioeconomic, and radiographic data of all other patients in the series with non-Medicaid insurance were reviewed. Statistical significance was determined with an alpha < 0.05 using Pearson chi-square and Fisher's exact tests for categorical variables and the independent-samples t-test for continuous variables.

RESULTS
Of 584 patients undergoing EETS for pituitary adenoma, 57 (10%) had Medicaid insurance. The maximum tumor diameter was significantly larger for Medicaid patients (26.1 ± 12 vs 23.1 ± 11 mm for controls, p < 0.05). Baseline comorbidities including diabetes mellitus, hypertension, smoking history, and BMI were not significantly different between Medicaid patients and controls. Patients with Medicaid insurance had a significantly higher rate of any complication (14% vs 7% for controls, p < 0.05) and long-term cranial neuropathy (5% vs 1% for controls, p < 0.05). There were no statistically significant differences in endocrine outcome or vision outcome. The mean postoperative length of stay was significantly longer for Medicaid patients compared to the controls (9.4 ± 31 vs 3.6 ± 3 days, p < 0.05). This difference remained significant even when accounting for outliers (5.6 ± 2.5 vs 3.0 ± 2.7 days for controls, p < 0.05). The most common causes of extended length of stay greater than 1 standard deviation for Medicaid patients were management of perioperative complications and disposition challenges. The rate of 30-day readmission was 7% for Medicaid patients and 4.4% for controls, which was not a statistically significant difference.

CONCLUSIONS
The authors found that larger tumor diameter, longer postoperative length of stay, higher rate of complications, and long-term cranial neuropathy were significantly associated with Medicaid insurance. There were no statistically significant differences in baseline comorbidities, apoplexy, endocrine outcome, vision outcome, or 30-day readmission.


The domination polynomial of a graph \(G\) of order \(n\) is the polynomial \(D(G,x) = \sum _{i=\gamma(G)}^n d(G,i)x^i\), where \(d(G,i)\) is the number of dominating sets of \(G\) of size \(i\), and \(\gamma (G)\) is the domination number of \(G\). In this paper, we obtain some properties of the coefficients of \(D(G,x)\). Also, by study of the dominating sets and the domination polynomials of specific graphs denoted by \(G^{\prime}(m)\), we obtain a relationship between the domination polynomial of graphs containing an induced path of length at least three, and the domination polynomial of related graphs obtained by replacing the path by shorter path. As examples of graphs \(G^{\prime}(m)\), we study the dominating sets and domination polynomials of cycles and generalized theta graphs. Finally, we show that, if \(n \equiv 0,2(mod\, 3)\) and \(D(G,x) = D(C_n, x)\), then \(G = C_n\).


South Africa and Argentina are both extraordinarily rich in cultural production and moreover share a common experience of transition from a traumatic near past; in South Africa the system of racial segregation known as Apartheid and the culmination of violence in the "interregnum years"; in Argentina the latest military dictatorship and its "dirty war" on the militant left, which took the character of extermination. The concept of transition has different connotations in the two cases, primarily due to the diametrically opposed political experiences. The demise of the apartheid state was conceived as the victory of the liberation struggle, whereas Argentina's return to democracy was in a way the result of a double defeat; the annihilation of the revolutionary guerillas was followed by the humiliation for their vanquishers in the disastrous war against Great Britain over the Falkland/Malvinas islands. The inventory of the cultural production of the transition distinguishes between reactive and proactive expressions with regard to the disputed near past. The first category applies to most of the books and films that were produced in the aftermath of the truth commissions. Like the contemporary media coverage of the Argentinean Conadep and the South African TRC, many of the early narrations had a sensationalist tinge and contributed to el show del horror, as it was called in Argentina. In South Africa, the horrors were to be played down for the reconciliatory purpose, whereas Argentina soon saw the emergence and prevalence of what could be regarded as another form of reactive response; the dissociation from "the failed utopias", through irony or mockery. The reactive expressions basically reproduce the fictions that are circulating in the society. The disputed past is signaled by common markers that tend to turn into cliches; in Argentina the Mother come Grandmother of Plaza de Mayo, the adopted orphan come adolescent in search of his/her disappeared parents, and, as counterpart, the distinguished gentleman next-door with a shady past as torturer and murderer; in South Africa the disillusioned former freedom fighter come drug addict and petty criminals vs. the incompetent affirmative action beneficiary or the noveau riche black businessman in his conspicuous BMW. Generally speaking, these narratives are mirroring the transition in a way that may be interesting from an ethnographic point of view, but neither as art nor as social critique. The proactive strategy, by contrast, implies an interrogation of society and history by means of fiction (or documentary forms with fictional elements). Both South Africa and Argentina abound with examples of such interrogations that arguably have played a proactive role in the transition process, displaying public lies and self-deceptions, deconstructing prevailing myths rather than forging new identities.


Recently, particle filters have been applied with great success to a variety of state estimation problems. In many real time applications, sensor information arrives significantly faster than the particle filter can process. The prevalent approach to this problem is to update the particle filter as often as possible and to discard sensor information that cannot be processed in time. In this paper we present an alternative approach. Our real time particle filter makes use of all sensor information by partitioning sample sets into mixtures of smaller sample sets. Each small sample set contains as many samples as can be processed between the arrival of two observations. These small sets are combined as soon as the total number of samples in the mixture is sufficiently high. Using efficient subsampling, we determine the mixture weights so as to minimize the KL-divergence between the mixture density and the true posterior. Thereby, our approach focuses computational resources on valuable sensor information. Experiments using data collected with a mobile robot show that our approach yields drastic improvements over alternative techniques.


Despite their prominence as species of great interest and conservation significance, currently our understanding of shark movement patterns and their ecological role as predators on small Odontocete populations is far from complete. The first component of my research investigated the movement patterns of the four main commercial species (sandbar, Carcharhinus plumbeus; dusky, Carcharhinus obscurus; whiskery, Furgaleus macki; gummy, Mustelus antarcticus) and several species occasionally caught off the coast of Western Australia (Chapter 2). I analysed long-term (1994 to 2013), conventional tagging data collected by the Department of Fisheries, Western Australia to provide a detailed account of observed movement patterns. The second component of my research investigated the predatory role of sharks on bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) off Bunbury, Western Australia (Chapter 3). I examined the prevalence of shark bites on systematically photographed dolphins over an eight year period (2007 to 2014). I also attempted to identify the shark species responsible for the attacks by seeking the expert opinions of three independent reviewers on the bite marks.

The analyses of movement patterns from the long-term tagging data (Chapter 2) found mean displacements of < 250 km for the four main commercial species. However, occasional displacements of more than 2,000 km were also observed for all four species. Displacement was positively correlated with time at liberty, size (fork length) and release condition. The swimming speed varied significantly between species, with faster movements observed for larger Carcharhinid sharks. Furthermore, significant differences in sex ratios at release and recapture were observed for gummy and whiskery sharks. A significantly higher proportion of females were released and recaptured for both species. Although, fork length was found to significantly vary for non-recaptured and recaptured sandbar and dusky sharks, results from the analyses were disregarded due to bias gear-selectivity and inaccurate measurements reported by fishermen. The highest recapture frequency for all other species occasionally caught was less than ten. Maximum displacements ranged from 0.70 to 1,143 km, these displacements were observed by wobbegongs (Orectolobus sp.) and copper whaler (Carcharhinus brachyurus) sharks, respectively. Maximum time at liberty ranged from 4 to 5,245 days for nervous (Carcharhinus cautus) and tiger (Galeocerdo cuvier) sharks, respectively. The estimated maximum swimming speed for occasionally caught species peaked at 0.42 km/hr for copper whaler (Carcharhinus brachyurus) sharks. Swimming speeds for all other species were less than 0.03 km/hr. No statistical analyses were completed for these species.

Analyses of the prevalence of external injuries believed to have been inflicted by sharks (Chapter 3) found that the total bite mark frequencies of systematically photographed dolphins varied significantly among age classes (calves, juveniles, adults) with the highest frequency of injuries sustained by adults (X2 = 38.436, P = < 0.001). Bite frequencies did not differ significantly between sexes or between mothers with or without calves (X2 = 0.111, P = 0.738; X2 = 1.316, P = 0.251, respectively). The total frequency of shark bites was significantly lower in the austral autumn and winter months than in the spring and summer (X2 = 15.333, P = 0.002). However, the frequency of fresh injuries was higher in the summer of 2013 (n = 8), than in other seasons (range = 0 - 1). When the data for 2013 were removed from the seasonal analyses the frequency of bites in summer (pooled over years) was higher but not significantly (X2 = 3.889, P = 0.274). The total frequency of injuries did not significantly differ among years (2008 – 2013) (X2 = 4.948, P = 0.422). After evaluating the photographed bite marks on dolphins, three independent reviewers suggested that the shark species responsible for the injuries were most likely white (Carcharodon carcharias), tiger (Galeocerdo cuvier), and several smaller Carcharhinid species (e.g., bull, Carcharhinus leucas; whaler, Carcharhinus brachyurus; dusky, Carcharhinus obscurus).

The results from Chapter 2 of the study provide a complete and meaningful representation of the movement patterns for the four main commercial species (sandbar, Carcharhinus plumbeus; dusky, Carcharhinus obscurus; whiskery, Furgaleus macki; and gummy, Mustelus antarcticus) and several species occasionally caught off Western Australia. The described movement patterns presented in this study can be incorporated into future conservation and management plans increasing their effectiveness and precision, ensuring west Australian shark stocks remain at target thresholds. The results from Chapter 3 refine our understanding of the interactions between sharks and small living Odontocetes (i.e., bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops aduncus). The results from the research confirm that sharks not only scavenge but actively hunt and predate living bottlenose dolphins. The ability and significant influence of these predatory sharks to shape and alter dolphin population dynamics is likely to be more important than previously recognised.


Cellular metabolic changes during kidney disease may induce higher production of oxygen radicals that play a significant role in the progression of renal damage and in the onset of important comorbidities. In this study, the effect of Silymarin (SM) on chemiluminescence of mitochondria and microsomes isolated from kidney rat was analyzed and reported. After incubation of mitochondria and microsomes in an Ascorbate (0.4 mM)-Fe++ (2.15 μM) system (180 min at 37°C), non-enzymatic peroxidation was observed and the total cpm/mg of protein originated from light emission (chemiluminescence) was lower in kidney mitochondria and microsomes obtained from SM group than the control group (without SM). Moreover, it was observed that the SM was reduced based on concentration (6.25, 12.5, 25 and 50 μg) of chemiluminescence, and the same was measured as total cpm. The analyses of chemiluminescence indicate that SM may act as antioxidant protecting rat kidney mitochondria and microsomes from peroxidative damage


In cognitive science, artificial intelligence, psychology, and education, a growing body of research supports the view that the learning process is strongly influenced by the learner's goals. The fundamental tenet of goal-driven learning is that learning is largely an active and strategic process in which the learner, human or machine, attempts to identify and satisfy its information needs in the context of its tasks and goals, its prior knowledge, its capabilities, and environmental opportunities for learning. This book brings together a diversity of research on goal-driven learning to establish a broad, interdisciplinary framework that describes the goal-driven learning process. It collects and solidifies existing results on this important issue in machine and human learning and presents a theoretical framework for future investigations.The book opens with an an overview of goal-driven learning research and computational and cognitive models of the goal-driven learning process. This introduction is followed by a collection of fourteen recent research articles addressing fundamental issues of the field, including psychological and functional arguments for modeling learning as a deliberative, planful process; experimental evaluation of the benefits of utility-based analysis to guide decisions about what to learn; case studies of computational models in which learning is driven by reasoning about learning goals; psychological evidence for human goal-driven learning; and the ramifications of goal-driven learning in educational contexts.The second part of the book presents six position papers reflecting ongoing research and current issues in goal-driven learning. Issues discussed include methods for pursuing psychological studies of goal-driven learning, frameworks for the design of active and multistrategy learning systems, and methods for selecting and balancing the goals that drive learning.A Bradford Book


Online polling is a popular tool to increase user involvement on all kinds of websites. Consumers are interested in sharing their opinion and so contribute to the website's content. Aggregated opinions, attitudes, and preferences convey a great deal of knowledge which is often unutilised as there exists no efficient method to explore them. An ongoing research project suggests methods, technologies, and processes to extract the knowledge that lies within the questions posed by website publishers and the answers given by users. This knowledge is saved in a triple store and enhanced by reasoning and other methods of the semantic web. One important technique is the visualisation of both the structure (entities and relations) and aggregated information of consumers in the knowledge base. Existing techniques often focus on only one of them although integration of both is required to explore the nature of the content and information about user groups such as size and intersections among them. The research described in this paper surveys current visualisation tools and libraries for the support of identified requirements in a case study. Based on the findings, an implementation of Agile Visualization for a specific polling system in specific and ontologies in general is proposed, which allows for a more customisable and flexible visualisation. A reusable transformation process for the ontology's data is discussed, which makes it possible to use the aforementioned knowledge base as input for the agile visualization approach.


Firms' sustainability orientation (SO) is widely understood as a strategic resource, which can lead to competitive advantage and superior (financial) performance. While recent empirical evidence suggests a moderate and positive relationship between SO and financial performance on a corporate level, little is understood about the influence of SO on new product development (NPD) success. Building on the natural-resource-based view (NRBV) of the firm, we hypothesize that firms' SO positively influences NPD success, because of efficiency gains and differentiation advantages. However, scholars have also argued that the win–win paradigm postulated by NRBV might not always hold because NPD managers might find it difficult to balance sustainability objectives with the needs of their customer and the competitive dynamics in their markets. It is, therefore, proposed that market knowledge competence (MKC) is an important capability, which helps firms to balance social and ecological objectives with economic goals such as profitability and market share. Using data from 343 international firms from 24 countries that was collected by the Product Development and Management Association, structural equation modeling results suggest that (1) SO positively influences NPD and that (2) this relationship is partially mediated by firms' market knowledge capabilities. The findings suggest that strategic-level SO and MKC are complementary in that they help in balancing trade-offs between sustainaility objectives and profitability goals. In this way, the study contributes to a better understanding of how critical NPD practices can help managers to translate firms' SO into NPD success. The article concludes by highlighting implications for product innovation managers.


This paper examines the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Marriage Equality logo as an example of a meme to further understandings of memetic transmission in social media technologies. The HRC meme is an important example of how even seemingly insignificant moves such as adopting a logo and displaying it online can serve to combat microaggressions, or the damaging results of everyday bias and discrimination against marginalized groups. This article suggests that even small moves of support, such as changing one's Facebook status to a memetic image, assist by demonstrating a supportive environment for those who identify with marginalized groups and by drawing awareness to important causes. Often dismissed as "slacktivism," I argue instead that the digital activism made possible through social media memes can build awareness of crucial issues, which can then lead to action.


The Philippine Archipelago is widely acknowledged as one of the world's major biodiversity and endemism 'hot-spots'. However, as a result of a burgeoning human population increase and resultant destruction and exploitation of the native forests over the past half century, the Philippines has gone from being one of the most biologically rich areas on earth, to one of the most endangered. Nowhere else in the world has this decline taken place so rapidly. Once, the Philippines had virtually a 100% forest cover, now this figure is down to less than 10%. The significance of this to Philippine owls cannot be overstated. This country has more threatened owls than any other part of the world, and of the 16 species recorded from this archipelago, 14 are almost totally dependent upon this habitat. Unless something is done quickly to protect the last few remaining forest remnants and replant those lost, virtually all of the Philippine owls, and certainly the endemic species, will soon join the New Zealand Laughing Owl Sceloglaux albifacies in the ranks of extinct birds. In an attempt to rectify this situation the World Owl Trust signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the Philippine Government to manage the 'Philippine Owl Conservation Programme' as part of the overall 'Philippine Biodiversity Conservation Programme' overseen by Fauna & Flora International. This has been very successful in carrying out field research, education and conservation-breeding programmes focused on some of the threatened taxa. Another major objective is to involve the local people in conservation initiatives by means of education, providing employment and alternative life-styles.


Fluorescence microscopic observation, for the indirect detection of IgG antibodies against Chlamydophila pneumoniae by micro-immunoflurescence (MIF) considered the gold standard serological. The test uses purified elementary bodies of C pneumoniae as the antigen and fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) as the marker compound. When present in patient serum, C pneumoniae antibodies will combine with C pneumoniae antigens, attached to the glass surface of a microscopic slide: the residual patient sample is removed by washing and flurescein conjugated anti-human antibodies are added, the slide is washed and green flurescence is detected microscopically at a magnification of 400x. The serum sample belonged to a patient at the time that he developed acute myocardial infarction, showing a high titer of 1:512.


Nothing in the papers, not the most vivid and heart-rending descriptions, have made me realise war like your letters' Vera Brittain to Roland Leighton, 17 April 1915. This selection of letters, written between 1913 & 1918, between Vera Brittain and four young men - her fiance Roland Leighton, her brother Edward and their close friends Victor Richardson & Geoffrey Thurlow present a remarkable and profoundly moving portrait of five young people caught up in the cataclysm of total war. Roland, 'Monseigneur', is the 'leader' & his letters most clearly trace the path leading from idealism to disillusionment. Edward, ' Immaculate of the Trenches', was orderly & controlled, down even to his attire. Geoffrey, the 'non-militarist at heart' had not rushed to enlist but put aside his objections to the war for patriotism's sake. Victor on the other hand, possessed a very sweet character and was known as 'Father Confessor'. An important historical testimony telling a powerful story of idealism, disillusionment and personal tragedy.


We consider the offline reinforcement learning (RL) setting where the agent aims to optimize the policy solely from the data without further environment interactions. In offline RL, the distributional shift becomes the primary source of difficulty, which arises from the deviation of the target policy being optimized from the behavior policy used for data collection. This typically causes overestimation of action values, which poses severe problems for model-free algorithms that use bootstrapping. To mitigate the problem, prior offline RL algorithms often used sophisticated techniques that encourage underestimation of action values, which introduces an additional set of hyperparameters that need to be tuned properly. In this paper, we present an offline RL algorithm that prevents overestimation in a more principled way. Our algorithm, OptiDICE, directly estimates the stationary distribution corrections of the optimal policy and does not rely on policy-gradients, unlike previous offline RL algorithms. Using an extensive set of benchmark datasets for offline RL, we show that OptiDICE performs competitively with the state-of-the-art methods.


Synmagmatic and solid-state structures within the Naxos pluton and its rim may provide insight into the interplay between plutonism and regional deformation at upper-crustal level. Within the hornblende–biotite granite of western Naxos, synmagmatic foliations display two distinct patterns, onion-skin in the north and tangential to the rim in the south. The two areas are separated by the NE-trending Glinadon fault. Deformed mafic enclaves in the pluton are prolate, with their long axes parallel to the synmagmatic lineation. In contrast, phenocryst distribution analysis, using the Fry method, defines an apparent oblate strain with a horizontal stretching lineation. Planar markers within the pluton progressively steepen through the vertical at the east pluton border. Several lines of evidence, such as dykes intruding axial areas of rim-parallel folds, foliated or folded aplite veins, folds and spaced cleavage in the mollase, and inverted stratigraphy, suggest pluton emplacement and deformation during transpressional deformation. A northward divergent flow regime with magma spreading out mainly from the Naxos fault, and the deflection of both the synmagmatic foliation pattern and the flow lines at the Glinadon fault, suggest that the NE–SW- and N–S-trending faults were active during pluton formation. In the south the pluton has grown by the expansion of dykes occupying P-shear positions with respect with the Naxos fault; in the north a piecemeal block down-drop complements this process and favours voluminous magma concentration. During the late evolutionary stages of pluton construction, the magma chamber was compartmentalized into NE-trending sectors affected by block rotation in an anticlockwise manner. Understanding the role of faults in the emplacement of the Naxos pluton is important for understanding emplacement of other plutons in the Aegean Sea region, since most of them are controlled by N–S- (Ikaria pluton) or NE- (Tinos, Serifos and Delos plutons) trending faults.