Inequalities in scientific knowledge are the subject of increasing attention, so how factual science knowledge is measured, and any inconsistencies in said measurement, is extremely relevant to the field of science communication. Different operationalizations of factual science knowledge are used interchangeably in research, potentially resulting in artificially comparable knowledge levels among respondents. Here, we present data from an experiment embedded in an online survey conducted in the United States (N = 1,530) that examined the distribution of factual science knowledge responses on a 3vs. 5-point response scale. Though the scale did not impact a summative knowledge index, significant differences emerged when knowledge items were analyzed individually or grouped based on whether the correct response was "true" or "false." Our findings emphasize the necessity for communicators to consider the goals of knowledge assessment when making operationalization decisions. Abstract


Advances in technology – particularly in the field of online communications – have revolutionized the way modern videogames are made and experienced. The evolution of many games from standalone products to constantly updating online services has all but upended the industry, creating new game features, new types of interactivity, and new monetization strategies. Mining player data has incredible potential to benefit both developers and players alike. Nevertheless, the shift to games as a service also means that players must put their faith in developers to consistently respect their personal privacy.Today, videogames collect and generate enormous amounts of information about their players, much of which may be considered highly sensitive. This data includes information relating to the real world, ranging from a player's voice or physical appearance to his location or social network. It also includes detailed information from the player's actions within the game world, which may be analyzed to create in-depth profiles of a player's cognitive abilities and personality. Information collected within a game has many uses both within and outside the gaming ecosystem. Among other things, a player's psychographic information can be used to create personalized gaming experiences, drive educational games, and dynamically adjust a game's difficulty or mechanics to keep players engaged (and spending money). This paper surveys some of these applications, revealing the potential for both major innovations in the games industry as well as major risks for player privacy and trust.The game industry must confront and address the privacy issues raised by player data collection, lest it becomes the latest scandal to draw the ire of policymakers, parents, and players. This paper briefly surveys the many laws, agreements, and regulations that affect data collection and use by games, such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), intellectual property laws, international privacy law, the Federal Trade Commission's Section 5 authority, and other relevant frameworks. Privacy guidelines for developers remain underdeveloped when it comes to fully capturing player's privacy expectations. Rather than proposing strict rules or attempting to balance benefits to players versus harms, this paper simply aims to show where users are most likely to be unpleasantly surprised by data use. By better understanding player's privacy expectations, developers will be better able to reduce surprise and foster player trust.


Population growth in the next few decades will increase the need for food production, while the yields of major food crops could be impacted by the changing climate and changing threats from pests and pathogens. Crop breeding, both through conventional techniques, and GM assisted breeding could help meet these challenges, if adequately supported by appropriate information on the future climate. We highlight some of the major challenges for crop breeders and growers in the coming decades, and describe the main characteristics of crop breeding techniques and other adaptation options for agriculture. We review recent uses of climate information to support crop breeding decisions and make recommendations for how this might be improved. We conclude that there is significant potential for breeders to work more closely with climate scientists and crop modellers in order to address the challenges of climate change. It is not yet clear how climate information can best be used. Fruitful areas of investigation include: provision of climate information to identify key target breeding traits and develop improved success criteria (e.g. for heat/drought stress); identification of those conditions under which multiple stress factors (for example, heat stress, mid-season drought stress, flowering drought stress, terminal drought stress) are important in breeding programmes; use of climate information to inform selection of trial sites; identification of the range of environments and locations under which crop trials should be performed (likely to be a wider range of environments than done at present); identification of appropriate duration of trials (likely to be longer than current trials, due to the importance of capturing extreme events); and definition of appropriate methods for incorporating climate information into crop breeding programmes, depending on the specific needs of the breeding programme and the strengths and weaknesses of available approaches. Better knowledge is needed on climate-related thresholds important to crop breeders, for example on the frequency and severity of extreme climate events relevant to the product profile, or to help provide tailored climate analyses (particularly for extreme events). The uncertainties inherent in climate and impact projections provide a particular challenge for translating climate science into actionable outcomes for agriculture. Further work is needed to explore relevant social and economic assumptions such as the level and distribution of real incomes, changing consumption patterns, health impacts, impacts on markets and trade, and the impact of legislation relating to conservation, the environment and climate change.


The exchange of technical personnel between organizational actors in a supply network has become known as Guest Engineering (GE). Despite increasing popularity as an inter-organisational arrangement (especially in the automotive sector) it has generated relatively little academic research and therefore this paper seeks to extend our understanding of GE by exploring how its scope is determined, what motivates the participants and how the relationships evolve. The paper draws on extant GE, supply networks and Resource-Based View (RBV) literature to derive research propositions that are used to analyse empirical work carried out with four automotive suppliers and four automotive OEMs. A number of preliminary conclusions are drawn. At a micro-project level, the criticality of the individual 'playing the GE role' is highlighted, as are related concerns that collaborative team structures often fail to address broader social/cultural characteristics. At a macro-project level, the study argues that difficulties and mistrust will often characterise integrated and competitively successful GE relationships. Finally, at a strategic level, GE needs to be understood as a process of resource transfer and transformation, and therefore the management of interdependency and power asymmetry are core considerations in effective adoption. The paper concludes with recommendations for further critical and practical work.


This paper seeks to understand the inter-cultural relationships between the notions of Europe, the professions and interprofessional education (IPE) in developing an argument for the necessity of interprofessional education for meeting the complex challenges for the professions and society in the 21st century. The concept of "strange loops" is used to explore the paradoxes and recursions in understanding what Europe, the professions and interprofessional education really are. After questioning perceptions of the professions in a changing Europe, I challenge interprofessional education to greater heights. IPE has to accompany all professional exchanges across borders as a critical, constructive process that focuses on differences in theory and practice within the different professional fields to overcome their problems of adjustment to changing user needs and cultural requirements.


Breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL) is a very rare type of T-cell lymphoma, uniquely caused by a single environmental stimulus. Here we present a comprehensive genetic analysis of a relatively large series of BIA-ALCL (n=29), for which genome-wide chromosomal copy number aberrations (CNA) and mutational profiles for a subset (n=7) were determined. For comparison, CNAs for ALK-negative nodal-ALCLs (n=24) were obtained. CNAs were detected in 94% of BIA-ALCLs with losses at chromosome 20q13.13 in 66% of the samples. Loss of 20q13.13 is characteristic for BIA-ALCL as compared to other classes of ALCL, such as primary cutaneous ALCL, systemic type ALK-positive and -negative ALCL. Mutational patterns confirm that the IL6-JAK1-STAT3 pathway is deregulated. Although this is commonly observed across various types of T-cell lymphomas, the extent of deregulation however is significantly higher in BIA-ALCL as indicated by pSTAT3 immunohistochemistry. The characteristic loss of chromosome 20 in BIA-ALCL provides further justification to recognize BIA-ALCL as a separate disease entity. Moreover, CNA analysis may serve as a parameter for future diagnostic assays for women with breast implants to distinguish seroma caused by BIA-ALCL from other causes of seroma accumulation such as infection or trauma.


This essay explores representations of parasitism and crisis in queer theory and public climate discourse in order to situate queer critiques of reproduction in the context of neoliberalism's ongoing carbon-driven extinctions. Focusing on racialized climate research that predicts the spread of mosquito-borne diseases from South to North in a warming world, the essay argues for the significance of ambient forms of reproduction that move across both species and geographic zones of waste and surplus. In contrast to queer-negative arguments for the sovereign refusal of reproduction, this essay contends that queer publics are always already locked into complex ecologies of reproduction embedded in the carbon economy. A queer-inhumanist critique thus requires understanding lateral forms of affective entanglement that link geographically and temporally distant bodies through ecological and economic processes of extermination.


This study examines the grounding functions of eight basic clause types in Chinese written narrative. It demonstrates that variations in constituent order and clause structure are a major means to designate events versus states at the clause level and ultimately a device to encode foregrounding versus backgrounding distinction. While perfective clauses in the canonical SV(O) word order typically designate major events and are signposts of foregrounding, deviations from this prototype tend to be interpreted as stative predications in the background. Variations in constituent order and clause structure even override the verb form in indicating situation types and grounding functions.


Water wetting on a hydrophobic surface at ambient conditions is disallowed by the nonpolar nature of the surface and high vapor pressure of water. However, the presence of sub-millimeter sized hydrophilic patches allows the waxy wings of desert beetles to become wettable by morning mist. Here, we show that a sprinkle of graphene oxide nanoflakes (nanoGOs) is effective in condensing water nanodroplets and seeding ice epitaxy on graphite at ambient conditions. By controlling relative humidity and nanoGO density, we are able to study the formation of a complete ice wetting layer on a time scale of 20 hours. This presents an unprecedented opportunity to visualize ice nucleation and growth in real time using non-contact atomic force microscopy. The stages of crystallization, as proposed by Ostwald in 1897, is fully unfolded at a microscopic level for the first time. We obtain real-time imaging of sequential phase transition from amorphous ice to a transient cubic ice Ic stage and finally to the stable hexagonal ice Ih. Most interestingly, we discover that ice nucleation and growth can be influenced by modifying the functional groups of nanoGO, and by intermolecular hydrogen-bonding between nanoGOs. This affords a strategy to control heterogenous ice nucleation and snow crystal formation.


ABSTRACT Utilising data from Understanding Society (2010–2013), this study examined the contribution of young people's psychosocial and background factors and home environment to their educational aspirations in the UK. Young people's general well-being and self-efficacy emerged as good predictors of their educational aspirations as did some aspects of their home environment. Interestingly, filial dynamics such as emotional closeness to parents and cultural capital (e.g. participating in cultural events, discussing books) were better predictors of 10–15-year-olds' aspirations than were more school-driven parent–child interactions (e.g. homework, extra-curricular activities). Furthermore, the findings from this study showed no shortage in young people's educational aspirations although interesting demographic trends emerged with certain groups (i.e. preadolescents, males) being less aspirant than middle adolescents and females. These findings have significant implications for family and educational policy, especially with regard to 'raising aspirations' and reducing early school leaving and, also, for reconsidering the role of the home environment as a web of emotionally and intellectually charged relationships between parents and children rather than an extension of the school day. Finally, discussions on young people's educational aspirations should not be polarised but informed by notions of opportunity (structure) and what young people make of it (agency).


Economic growth in Chile since the mid 1980s has been remarkable for its high level and persistence. This paper attempts to shed light on the factors behind it and analyze the extent to which they can be sustained in the future. The first part of the paper presents some stylized facts. Taken together, they suggest that the jump in growth was driven by policies and macroeconomic conditions that affected the economy's overall productivity. The second part of the paper considers the recent empirical growth literature to examine the extent to which a cross-country approach can explain Chile's growth. We formulate and estimate – using techniques suited for dynamic models of panel data— a basic model containing the most popular variables in the literature. Our basic model allows us to explain about 45% of the change in the growth rate between 1970-85 and 1986-1998, which was 4.74%. When we expand the basic model to include the quality of the political system and governance, the comprehensiveness and compl ementarity of policy reforms, and the availability of public services and infrastructure, we can explain 73% of the growth improvement. The last part of the paper starts the evaluation of possible new growth sources for Chile by, first, projecting the country's growth rate for the next decade under various assumptions and, second, proposing some areas with potentially large returns.


By discussing the history of the center for the Great Patriotic War veterans opened on the Island of Valaam (the Republic of Karelia, Russia) in the early 1950s, the article searches for the roots and reasons for the "social oblivion" that affected the war wounded veterans, many of them amputees. The author tries to point to the mechanisms that account for the discrepancies between the official myth of the brave and simple soldier, respected and admired by the younger generations, and the grim fate of the crippled war veterans doomed to oblivion. She emphasizes that when it comes to the Great Patriotic War, social oblivion has often "competed" with social remembrance. She also shows what kind of filters have been applied to the Russian collective memory, and how the elements not fitting the official gala image of war veterans have been excluded as they could potentially undermine the shared group identity.


I examined the conservation opportunity for Golden-cheeked Warbler habitat represented by the initiation of the Fort Hood Recovery Credit System in the area immediately outside the boundaries of Fort Hood, Texas. Conservation planning requires a thorough and thoughtful examination of the landscape to achieve conservation goals as efficiently as possible in the face of limited financial resources. To successfully accomplish this challenging task, various components of Golden-cheeked Warbler habitat needs must be assessed to ensure that the patches with the greatest value to the species are conserved. However, the "best" sites are frequently not obvious or necessarily adequate in conservation planning scenarios. To aid in the conservation planning process, areas of Golden-cheeked Warbler habitat within 15 km of Fort Hood were identified and delineated using a Geographic Information System (GIS). Habitat patch values with respect to area, quality, and connectivity were also determined. Calculations for the area and quality metrics were fairly straightforward using GIS. The connectivity portion of this analysis used graph theory to examine the relationships among patches in the context of the surrounding landscape. Four aspects of connectivity were assessed using graph theory: (1) source/sink strength of each patch, (2) change in landscape traversability with patch removal, (3) the centrality (betweenness) of each patch, and (4) patch connection to important habitat areas within Fort Hood. The resulting product of this analysis is a table of values (area, effective area, and four connectivity metrics) to accompany each patch identified in the region surrounding Fort Hood. This information can help guide the conservation planning process in the face of financial constraints and varying levels of landowner cooperation.


The concern that an economy could experience persistent stagnation, caused by a structural weakness of aggregate demand, goes back to Alvin HansenOs (1939) thesis of `secular stagnation`. HansenOs thesis has been revived in recent times, when it became clear that productivity and potential growth in the OECD countries have been declining for decades. However, in line with deep-rooted theoretical beliefs, that inadequate demand can only affect growth in the short run, secular stagnation (of potential growth) is treated as an exclusively supply-side problem, the root of which is a worrying steady decline in productivity growth. This paper argues that it is a mistake to dismiss secular demand stagnation as main cause of declining potential growth in the OECD. We argue that the theoretical case for demand-caused secular stagnation is strong and empirical evidence that it has affected the U.S. economy after the mid-1970s is entirely convincing. Demand is leading supply, also in the long run. Hansen had it right, after all.


This paper reports on findings from research funded by the UK Higher Education Academy;
the study aimed to explore staff and student perceptions of quality feedback within the
context of transition between educational sectors. Whilst seminal research has been
conducted on the assessment experience of students in schools (Black and Wiliam, 1998;
Black et al, 2003) and universities (Hounsell, 2003), there are relatively few studies that
investigate the impact of the former on the latter. This qualitative study makes this cross
sector connection, presenting data collected across nine education institutions (three
schools, sixth forms and universities respectively) on perceptions of assessment. As a
result, our findings address a gap in the current literature, positioning first year
undergraduate expectations of quality feedback within the context of their prior experience
of formative assessment.
Current theory conceptualises assessment as a dialogic process (Higgins et al, 2001) in
which quality feedback is the most powerful single influence on student achievement
(Hattie, 1987); therefore, the provision of quality feedback is perceived as a key requirement
of effective teaching in higher education (Ramsden, 2003). In practice, lecturers often
believe their feedback to be more useful than students do (Careless, 2006; Maclellan, 2001)
and feedback has consistently been identified as the least satisfactory aspect of the student
experience in UK universities (National Student Survey, 2007, 2006, 2005). As a
consequence of this mis-match in staff and student perceptions, assessment in UK higher
education is being challenged.
Frameworks for good practice in assessment have been developed, but attempts to
conceptualise quality feedback within the context of higher education have been positioned
within a formative rather than a summative process (Gibbs & Simpson, 2004-5; Nicol &
Mcfarlane-Dick, 2004; 2006). However, resource constraints coupled with a widening
participation agenda of mass expansion in the UK have limited the opportunities for
formative assessment to be practised (Yorke, 2003; Gibbs, 2007), At the same time, within
the school sector a formative Assessment for Learning Culture (Assessment Reform Group,
1999) has been developed which means students experience a significant cultural gap in
feedback practices between educational sectors. In particular, our findings reveal students
perceive quality feedback as part of a dialogic, guidance process rather than a summative
event. Conversely, in higher education concerns relating to the 'dumbing down' of
Independent learning through spoonfeeding (Haggis, 2006) are leading to increasing
tensions between the theory of good practice and the practice of assessment.
This longitudinal study reports on the consequences of these conflicting expectations of
guidance and independent learning for first year undergraduates and their tutors in three
subject disciplines. These findings have informed recent initiatives to scaffold students'
autonomous learning through formative assessment and the presentation will provide an
opportunity to discuss these interventions. Thus, the presentation of our cross sector
findings aims not only to reframe the context of the debate challenging current assessment
practices in UK higher education, but also to contribute to the re-conceptualisation of
feedback practice for future learning (Hounsell, 2007; Boud & Falchikov, 2007).


A recent PVLDB paper reports on experimental analyses of ten spatial join techniques in main memory. We build on this comprehensive study to raise awareness of the fact that empirical running time performance findings in main-memory settings are results of not only the algorithms and data structures employed, but also their implementation, which complicates the interpretation of the results.

In particular, we re-implement the worst performing technique without changing the underlying high-level algorithm, and we then offer evidence that the resulting re-implementation is capable of outperforming all the other techniques. This study demonstrates that in main memory, where no time-consuming I/O can mask variations in implementation, implementation details are very important; and it offers a concrete illustration of how it is difficult to make conclusions from empirical running time performance findings in main-memory settings about data structures and algorithms studied.


The elevation of reperfusion therapy for acute STsegment elevation myocardial infarction are time-related and there are decreasing benefits with increasing delays to therapy. To determine whether the time interval between a patient's arrival at the emergency department of Hamad General Hospital, Qatar and initiation of thrombolytic therapy in the coronary care unit (door-to-needle time) is within the 30 minutes recommended by American College of Cardiology!American Heart Association guidelines, the medical records were reviewed of 213 patients with STsegment elevation myocardial infarction who were admitted through the Emergency Department to receive thrombolysis in the Coronary Care Unit in the twelve months May 2006-April 2007. Medians were calculated for door-to-needle and painto-needle times and intermediate points. The median painto-needle and pain-to-door times were 211 and 143 minutes respectively, both increasing significantly with the age of the patient and were shorter in men than in women. The median door-to-needle time was 60 minutes with 11.7% of the sample having a door-to-needle time within the recommended 30 minutes. It is concluded that the need for transferring such patients from the emergency department to the coronary care unit of the hospital before the administration of thrombolysis incurs inevitable delays that can be minimized by administering thrombolysis in the emergency department.


Colour vision defects associated with ocular disease have been reported since the 17th century. Kollner1 in 1912 wrote an acute description of the progressive nature of colour vision loss secondary to ocular disease, dividing defects into "blue-yellow" and "progressive red-green blindness".2 This classification has become known as Kollner's rule, although it is often imprecisely stated as "patients with retinal disease develop blue-yellow discrimination loss, whereas optic nerve disease causes red-green discrimination loss". Exceptions to Kollner's rule3 4 include some optic nerve diseases, notably glaucoma, which are primarily associated with blue-yellow defects, and also some retinal disorders such as central cone degeneration which may result in red-green defects. Indeed, in some cases, there might be a non-specific chromatic loss.

Colour vision defects in glaucoma have been described since 18835 and although many early investigations indicated that red-green defects accompanied glaucomatous optic neuropathy,1 later studies suggested that tritan defects predominate.6-9 This change of view largely reflected improved experimental design over time—in early studies no distinction was made between the various types of glaucoma, nor was any allowance usually made for the age distribution of subjects in the sample. A summary of the early research can be found in Drance et al .7

Although modern studies control for confounding factors such as increasing lens density and decreasing pupil size with age, some controversy still surrounds the nature of colour vision defects in primary open angle glaucoma (POAG). Comparing previous research evaluating chromatic discrimination in POAG is complicated by wide variations in methodology and experimental conditions.

In recent years, computer generated colour tests have provided the means for isolating the processing of chromatic signals from the accompanying achromatic cues.10-15 In these tests, typically, the subject is asked to report the presence of a coloured target such …


ABSTRACT The transition between carbonate platforms or isolated carbonate buildups and overlying evaporites commonly is marked by assemblages of stromatolites and interlaminated carbonates and evaporites. Stromatolites display lamination textures that vary from peloidal and discontinuous on a scale of a millimeter to a few centimeters, to isopachous and continuously laminated on a scale of a centimeter to a few meters. The isopachous lamination texture may be composed of either: (1) micritic or radial-fibrous calcite, or (2) dolomite. Isopachous stromatolitic laminae are remarkably uniform, varying little in thickness over a given lateral distance, in contrast to stromatolites formed of peloidal laminae, which show marked variation in thickness over an equivalent lateral distance. These isopachous textures are uncommon on most open-marine carbonate platforms and apparently developed in transitional carbonate-to-evaporite settings because of increasing temperature, salinity, and anoxia related to water stratification, which would have created ecologic restriction and an opportunity for stromatolite growth. Stromatolites with isopachous lamination are here interpreted to have formed as a result of in situ precipitation of sea-floor-encrusting calcite and possibly dolomite, whereas the stromatolites composed of peloidal, discontinuous lamination are inferred to have formed by trapping and binding of loose carbonate sediment in microbial mats. While the presence of microbes in almost all near-surface environments nullifies use of the term "abiotic" to describe most precipitated minerals, we interpret growth of the isopachous stromatolites to have been dominated by chemogenic precipitation in the absence of microbial mats, and the growth of peloidal stromatolites to have been controlled by sedimentation in the presence of microbial mats. These transitional stromatolite facies are best developed atop Proterozoic and Paleozoic carbonate platforms that underlie major evaporite successions. However, inspection of Jurassic and younger evaporite basins, such as the Messinian of the Mediterranean region, shows that stromatolites with thin, isopachous lamination and radial-fibrous textures, though present, are rare. Instead, these facies may have been replaced by stromatolites with peloidal, clastic textures and by low-diversity diatomaceous and coccolith mudstones. Accumulation of the mudstones would have imposed two important effects: (1) Production of coccoliths would have helped extract calcium carbonate from seawater, thus lowering the growth potential for precipitation of sea-floor-encrusting stromatolites. (2) Settling of both coccoliths and diatoms would have created a sediment flux to the sea floor, which would have served to impede growth of precipitated stromatolites because of smothering of growing crystals.


Real‐time monitoring of the cell/biomaterial interface for biomedical applications can significantly improve the assessment of biomaterials. However, currently there are no multiparametric real‐time monitoring systems for the ex vivo assessment of biomaterials. This study presents a method for monitoring of cell and tissue response to biomaterials based on microsensor read‐outs of pH, O2, and impedance. In vitro, the sensors are compatible with cells implants. For ex vivo measurements, either a biodegradable polymer poly(lactic‐co‐glycolic acid) or a protein‐repellent plasma polymer nanofilm is coated onto sensor arrays and placed on the chorioallantoic membrane of avian embryo ex ovo cultures. Signals related to dissolved oxygen, pH, and electrical impedance are continuously acquired for up to 90 h. Optical observation, immunohistochemical examination of CD45, and Haematoxylin and Eosin (H&E) staining show different unspecific immune responses. Tissue inflammation, capsule formation, and neovascularization are observed. These results correlate well with the type of coating material and the signal patterns acquired by the chemosensors. In addition, tissue death can be inferred from sensor signal patterns. This system is intended to enable continuous monitoring of biomaterials and is envisioned as a prescreening tool to provide real‐time monitoring of cell/biomaterial interface and also to reduce animal testing for biomaterial assessment purposes.


Non-formal schools play an increasingly important role in the delivery of educational services in poor communities, but little systematic evidence is available about their placement choices. We study location choice of "one teacher, one classroom" non-formal primary schools pioneered by BRAC vis-a-vis its first large scale replication under the government managed Reaching-Out-of-School (ROSC) project using school census data. Comparison is also made to another pro-poor educational institution – state recognized madrasas. We find that all three types of schools have a statistically significant presence in poor sub-districts within a district. However BRAC schools avoid pockets that lack public infrastructure and suffer from low female literacy rate while ROSC schools better target regions that have poor access to cities and roads, are less urbanized, more vulnerable to natural disasters, have fewer banks and working toilets. ROSC schools also have greater presence in regions that are under-served by government and government supported formal primary schools. On the contrary, the supply of BRAC schools and madrasas is significantly and positively linked to the presence of formal primary schools. Concerns over operational viability may explain why BRAC often leaves out remote regions where socio-economic circumstances are most likely to keep children out of school.


Contracts play a key role in many business to business relationships. Service organisations are no exception. Despite a growing interest of services and how services are managed, research on how to use contracts to manage services has been surprisingly sparse in service research. The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to a deeper understanding of using contracts to manage services in business-to-business relationships. Contract theories together with concepts from service research are used to enrich and understand how contracts are used to manage services and thus make contributions to service research. The thesis will give an empirically grounded understanding of managing services through contracts. The thesis consists of six separate papers, all based on data gathered from contractual relationships between contractors and service providers. The results are based on studies of authentic contracts which are not the case in most previous studies. The methods used for gathering and analysing data involve case studies, content analysis of authentic contracts, interviews and document studies of the public transport sector in Sweden which is an empirically rich area for studying contracts. The three main contributions of this dissertation are; firstly, an extended understanding of how contracts are used to manage the prerequisites for service quality for the parties involved. It was found that the concept service quality is brought forward on three interdependent managerial levels; from a detailed operational level, to a systemic oriented strategic level, and also a visionary rhetorical level each specifying the prerequisite for the services. To manage the prerequisites, the contracts rely on three identified means; laws and regulations, standards and measurements and economical incentives. Secondly, the detailed contents and rigidity of the contracts bring forward an inflexible and asymmetric relationship, where the parties are restricted in their activities. Here the contracts become a substitute for trust and commitment instead of supporting the development of trust and commitment. Finally, the thesis deepen the understanding of the role of contracts in governing services, from being a static abbreviator to a dyadic market based relationship, to becoming a dynamic tool for developing and sustaining a value creating and value driven collaborative network.


Polymorphisms in genes that encode for metabolic enzymes have been associated with variations in enzyme activity between individuals. Such variations could be associated with differences in individual exposure to carcinogens that are metabolized by these genes. In this study, we examine the association between polymorphisms in several metabolic genes and the consumption of tobacco in a large sample of healthy individuals. The database of the International Collaborative Study on Genetic Susceptibility to Environmental Carcinogens was used. All the individuals who were controls from the case‐control studies included in the data set with information on smoking habits and on genetic polymorphisms were selected (n = 20,938). Sufficient information was available on the following genes that are involved in the metabolism of tobacco smoke constituents: CYP1A1, GSTM1, GSTT1, NAT2 and GSTP1. None of the tested genes was clearly associated with smoking behavior. Information on smoking dose, available for a subset of subjects, showed no effect of metabolic gene polymorphisms on the amount of smoking. No association between polymorphisms in the genes studied and tobacco consumption was observed; therefore, no effect of these genes on smoking behavior should be expected. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Manufacturers of TV sets have recently started adding social media features to their products. Some of these products display microblogging messages relevant to the TV show which the user is currently watching. However, such systems suffer from low precision and recall when they use the title of the show to search for relevant messages. Titles of some popular shows such as Lost or Survivor are highly ambiguous, resulting in messages unrelated to the show. Thus, there is a need to develop filtering algorithms that can achieve both high precision and recall. Filtering microblogging messages for Social TV poses several challenges, including lack of training data, lack of proper grammar and capitalization, lack of context due to text sparsity, etc. We describe a bootstrapping algorithm which uses a small manually labeled dataset, a large dataset of unlabeled messages, and some domain knowledge to derive a high precision classifier that can successfully filter microblogging messages which discuss television shows. The classifier is designed to generalize to TV shows which were not part of the training set. The algorithm achieves high precision on our two test datasets and successfully generalizes to unseen television shows. Furthermore, it compares favorably to a text classifier specifically trained on the television shows used for testing.


The burden of proof is a central feature of all systems of adjudication, yet one that has been subject to little normative analysis. This Article examines how strong evidence should have to be in order to assign liability when the objective is to maximize social welfare. In basic settings, there is a tradeoff between deterrence benefits and chilling costs, and the optimal proof requirement is determined by factors that are almost entirely distinct from those underlying the preponderance of the evidence rule and other traditional standards. As a consequence, these familiar burden of proof rules have some surprising properties, as do alternative criteria that have been advanced. The Article also considers how setting the proof burden interacts with other features of legal system design, such as the determination of enforcement effort and the degree of accuracy of adjudication. It compares and contrasts a variety of legal environments and methods of enforcement, explaining how the appropriate evidence requirements differ qualitatively across contexts. Most of the questions raised and answers presented differ in kind — as well as in result — from those in prior literature.


Today, three factors relating to fresh water sources are universally recognized: first, fresh water is a finite and shrinking resource, essential to sustain life, development, and the environment; second, the effective development and management of fresh water resources requires the participation and cooperation of all users, planners, and policy makers; and third, fresh water has an economic value in all its compelling uses and should, therefore, be recognized as an economic good. More than two decades ago, recognizing that many nations share international watercourses, members of the international community felt that an agreement was needed to codify the rules regulating international watercourses, to minimize environmental damage, and to ensure each state an equitable share in the use of such watercourses. The international community also recognized that because any such international agreement would require the harmonization of a variety of concepts, principles, and interests, and would involve addressing a host of political, legal, economic, and geographic factors implicating vital state interests, an umbrella agreement for regulating international watercourses was needed. The international community envisaged that such an umbrella agreement would set out general rules applicable to all international watercourses and would be complimented by other, more specific, local agreements. The duty to cooperate and notify other riparian states about planned measures for shared watercourses and the obligation not to cause significant harm to other states' watercourses were among the cornerstone articles of customary law for the envisaged umbrella agreement. Bangladesh has always attached paramount importance to the evolution and elaboration of universal rules of law that regulate international watercourses through comprehensive national, regional, and global regimes. This essay traces the international community's progress over the last quarter century towards establishing an umbrella agreement and analyzes the resulting implications for countries such as Bangladesh.


George Weinberg's introduction of the term homophobia in the late 1960s challenged traditional thinking about homosexuality and helped focus society's attention on the problem of antigay prejudice and stigma. This paper briefly describes the history and impact of homophobia. The term's limitations are discussed, including its underlying assumption that antigay prejudice is based mainly on fear and its inability to account for historical changes in how society regards homosexuality and heterosexuality as the bases for social identities. Although the importance of Weinberg's contribution should not be underestimated, a new vocabulary is needed to advance scholarship in this area. Toward this end, three constructs are defined and discussed: sexual stigma (the shared knowledge of society's negative regard for any nonheterosexual behavior, identity, relationship, or community), heterosexism (the cultural ideology that perpetuates sexual stigma), and sexual prejudice (individuals' negative attitudes based on sexual orientation). The concept of internalized homophobia is briefly considered.


A common problem in the world's most widely-used cellular telephone system, the GSM system, is the interfering signal generated by the switching nature of TDMA cellular telephony in handheld and other terminals. Signals are sent as chunks of data, speech frames, equivalent to 160 samples of data corresponding to 20 ms at sampling rate of 8 kHz. This paper describes a study of two different software solutions designed to suppress such interference internally in the mobile handset. The methods are 1) notch filtering, which is multiplicative in frequency, and 2) subtractive noise cancellation, which is an alternative method employing correlators. The latter solution is a straigtforward, although somewhat unorthodox, application of "in-wire" active noise control. Since subtraction is performed directly in the time domain, and we have access to the state of the mobile, it is also possible to consider a recurring pause in the interference caused by the idle frame in the transmission, when the mobile listens to other base stations communicating. More complex control algorithms, based on the state of the communication between the handset and the base station, can be utilised.


Program management is the process of managing several related projects, often with the intention of improving an organization's performance. In practice and in its aims it is often closely related to systems engineering and industrial engineering. The Program Manager has oversight of the purpose and status of all projects in a Program and can use this oversight to support project-level activity to ensure the overall program goals are likely to be met, possibly by providing a decision-making capacity that cannot be achieved at project level or by providing the Project Manager with a program perspective when required, or as a sounding board for ideas and approaches to solving project issues that have program impacts. Typically in a program there is a need to identify and manage cross-project dependencies and often the PMO (Program or Project Management Office) may not have sufficient insight of the risk, issues, requirements, design or solution to be able to usefully manage these. The Program manager may be well placed to provide this insight by actively seeking out such information from the Project Managers although in large and/or complex projects, a specific role may be required. However this insight arises, the Program Manager needs this in order to be comfortable that the overall program goals are achievable.


A series of 41 patients with posttraumatic unilateral diffuse cerebral swelling was studied in order to assess clinical, radiological and operative findings, to determine the incidence and outcome, and to seek features that might identify patients at high risk of unilateral cerebral swelling and a poor outcome. Diffuse and massive expansion of a single cerebral hemisphere, causing marked midline shift on computed tomography was used for diagnosis of these cases. Of 280 severely head injured patients, 14.64 % had a diagnosis of unilateral diffuse cerebral swelling. The most common associated intracranial pathology was subdural hematoma, found in 68.29 % of patients. The mortality rate was 53.65 %, and 34.14 % of patients had functional recovery. This study indicates that the patients at greatest risk of developing posttraumatic unilateral diffuse cerebral swelling are; those with acute subdural hematoma on the initial cranial computed tomography, low post-resuscitation Clasgow Coma Scale score, one or more abnormal pupils, or systemic injuries especially if major chest trauma or hypotension is involved.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: An increased risk of febrile seizure (FS) was identified with concomitant administration of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (IIV3) and pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) 13-valent during the 2010–2011 influenza season. Our objective was to determine whether concomitant administration of IIV3 with other vaccines affects the FS risk. METHODS: We examined the risk of FS 0 to 1 day postvaccination for all routinely recommended vaccines among children aged 6 through 23 months during a period encompassing 5 influenza seasons (2006–2007 through 2010–2011). We used a population-based self-controlled risk interval analysis with a control interval of 14 to 20 days postvaccination. We used multivariable regression to control for receipt of concomitant vaccines and test for interaction between vaccines. RESULTS: Only PCV 7-valent had an independent FS risk (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 1.98; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.00 to 3.91). IIV3 had no independent risk (IRR, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.21 to 1.02), but risk was increased when IIV3 was given with either PCV (IRR, 3.50; 95% CI, 1.13 to 10.85) or a diphtheria-tetanus-acellular-pertussis (DTaP)-containing vaccine (IRR, 3.50; 95% CI, 1.52 to 8.07). The maximum estimated absolute excess risk due to concomitant administration of IIV3, PCV, and DTaP-containing vaccines compared with administration on separate days was 30 FS per 100 000 persons vaccinated. CONCLUSIONS: The administration of IIV3 on the same day as either PCV or a DTaP-containing vaccine was associated with a greater risk of FS than when IIV3 was given on a separate day. The absolute risk of postvaccination FS with these vaccine combinations was small.


ABSTRACT Limited data on pollutant emissions from poultry operations are available to assess the effect of these operations on the environment and to put their contribution in perspective with other sources of pollutants. To alleviate this problem, numerous studies at various poultry facilities have been undertaken to improve the knowledge base in quantifying emissions of NH3 and size-fractionated particulate matter (PM). For these emission data to be of practical use for government agencies and policy makers, the emission rates must be reported as an emission factor with a production unit that enables the emissions from one poultry operation to be correlated to another poultry operation. This paper presents a compilation of NH3 and PM emission data from several studies in the form of emission factor on a per-500 kg of live weight or animal unit basis. In addition, best management practices that lower pollutant emissions from poultry operations have been reported along with their effectiveness at reducing NH3 and PM. Unfortunately, the compiled data were insufficient to characterize the variability in emissions caused by differences in house design, suggesting that more studies are needed to complete a comprehensive emission inventory. Once complete, this inventory will enable poultry producers to estimate emissions from their facilities and, if necessary, select management practice(s) to lessen their emissions of NH3, PM, or both.


The Bronsted acidity of synthetic mica–montmorillonite (SMM) clay was studied by periodic DFT calculations. Different structural models were compared to determine the Bronsted acidity of protons of the SMM clay based on (i) isomorphous substitution of Si4+ by Al3+ in the tetrahedral silicate layer and additional NiF-doping (ii) in the platelets and (iii) at the edge terminations of the clay platelets. The acid strength was judged from the computed adsorption energies of ammonia and pyridine. The SMM acidity is mainly determined by the composition of the clay platelets. The strongest acidity is found in structures in which octahedral [AlO]+ is replaced by [NiF]+ adjacent to tetrahedral [Si–(OH)–Al] moieties in the tetrahedral layer. For the Bronsted acid sites in the interlayer of SMM, modification with either Ni2+ or F− in the octahedral layers has only a minor influence on the acidity. Our data indicate that Bronsted acid sites, properly modified in the second coordination shell by electron-withdrawing F, in the interlayer and at defect sites at the edges of clay platelets (intralayer sites) can contribute to the enhanced acidity in NiF-modified SMM. Although the predicted acidity of SMM by ammonia adsorption is higher than that of faujasite zeolite, the reactivity judged from propene protonation demonstrates that zeolites are more reactive than clays. This difference seems to be the result of the curved nature of the micropores of zeolites, which stabilizes the transition states for an acid-catalyzed reaction more than flat surfaces of clays do.


Employees' proactive behaviour is increasingly important for organizations seeking to adapt in uncertain economic environments. This study examined the link between leadership and proactive behaviour. We differentiated between organizational leadership and team leadership and proposed that transformational leadership by team leaders would enhance commitment to the team, which would predict team member proactivity. In contrast, transformational leadership by leaders of the organization would enhance commitment to the organization, which we expected to predict organization member proactivity. Transformational leadership on both levels was expected to increase employees' role-breadth self-efficacy, the confidence necessary to engage in proactive behaviour. Our results demonstrate the importance of leadership as an antecedent of proactive work behaviour and suggest that leadership at different levels influences proactivity via different mediators. Transformational team leaders seem to facilitate proactivity by increasing employees' confidence to initiate change. Transformational organizational leaders on the other hand increase proactivity by enhancing employees' commitment to the organization.


Over the past decade, practitioners and scholars have intensified the discussions around people's expectations from their jobs and how public and private organizations can succeed in the war for talent. In this context, it has become obvious that people not only seek high salaries and career opportunities but also meaningfulness in their daily tasks. Although many public service jobs offer opportunities to help others (prosocial impact) or contribute to society (societal impact), employees tend to become accustomed to these positive aspects or forget about them. This article tests whether a microintervention that emphasizes employees' prosocial or societal impact can positively affect their well-being, intention to stay in the job, and willingness to recommend their respective jobs to others. The combined results of three preregistered experiments reveal that microinterventions can indeed have these effects, particularly if they focus on creating awareness about the jobs' societal impact.


We present a new approach to defining the "beam quality" of a broadband terahertz beam as it propagates through a first-order optical system. A new definition to beam variance is exhibited, taking into account the spectral weight function of the beam. The near-field far-field propagation product is presented by the general averaged M2, marked as (M¯Broadband)2. This parameter is invariant while the beam propagates through optical systems, and it obeys the rule of (M¯Broadband)2≥1. Moreover, we show that, in the special case of monochromatic radiation, the definitions we made are reduced to the known expressions of single frequency radiation. We demonstrate a practical procedure for measuring the beam quality of a broadband radiation. The importance of this procedure is emphasized by our experimental results.


Family law is evolving towards non-adversarial dispute resolution processes. As a result, some family lawyers are representing clients who are trying to reach settlements that recognize their interests, instead of just pursuing their legal rights. By responding to the full spectrum of client needs, lawyers are required to behave differently than they do when they are representing a client in a traditional civil litigation file. They consider the emotional and financial consequences of relationship breakdown – things that are not typically within the purview of the family law lawyer. They objectively reality check with their clients, and they approach interest-based negotiations in a client-centric way. These lawyers view their role as that of a non-adversarial advocate, and their clients as whole people with interests that are not just legal. This paper draws on an empirical study involving focus groups with family law lawyers, to argue that the Federation of Law Societies of Canada'sModel Code of Professional Conductneeds to be updated to incorporate non-adversarial advocacy. The lawyers in the study viewed non-adversarial advocacy as being responsive to client needs, and in the interest of clients' children. This paper draws from the study to establish what constitutes non-adversarial advocacy and then it presents a proposal for revising Rule 5 (Advocacy) of the Model Code.


: War veterans oft en constitute a specifi c category of citizens as they inspire and bring forward particular claims on recognition and resources of the state. Th e authors featured in this special section each explore pr ocesses of the construction of categories of war veterans in diff erent contemporary contexts. Drawing on ethnographic data, the contributions explore the interactions between (those identifi ed) as war veterans and the state, and the processes concerned with granting value to participation in war. Th is involves (the denial of) rights and privileges as well as a process of identity construction. Th e construction of war veterans as a specifi c kind of citizens is a political phenomenon, subject to negotiation and contestation, involving both the external categorizations of war veterans as well as the self-making and identity politics from former fi ghters "from below."


The global crisis of 2007–09 affected developing Asia largely through a decline in exports to the developed countries and a slowdown in remittances. This happened very quickly, and by 2009 there were already signs of recovery (except on the employment front). This recovery was led by China's impressive performance, aided by a large stimulus package and easy credit. But China needs to make efforts toward rebalancing its economy. Although private consumption has increased at a fast pace during the last decades, investment has done so at an even faster pace, with the consequence that the share of consumption in total output is very low. The risk is that the country may fall into an underconsumption crisis. Looking at the medium and long term, developing Asia's future is mixed. There is one group of countries with a highly diversified export basket. These countries have an excellent opportunity to thrive if the right policies are implemented. However, there is another group of countries that relies heavily on natural resources. These countries face a serious challenge, since they must diversify.


The thymus is the primary organ for T cell differentiation and maturation. Its stroma forms a characteristic sponge-like 3D structure mainly composed of thymic epithelial cells. Despite of this unconventional epithelial architecture, TECs express markers associated with epidermal specification and differentiation. We have uncovered that the human thymus contains a population of clonogenic TECs that can be extensively expanded in a culture system originally developed for skin keratinocyte stem cells. In vitro, human TECs (hTECs) can give rise to four morphologically distinct colony-types and express markers of stratified epithelia's basal layers, such as P63, K5/K14 and CD49f. We were able to demonstrate that cultured hTECs can be split in two distinct subpopulations based on their EpCAM expression level. EpCAM+ hTECs only give rise to stratified colonies that contain squame-like cells and express markers of epidermal differentiation, whereas EpCAM- hTECs mostly give rise to non-stratifying colonies but have the capacity to generate EpCAM+ hTECs. EpCAM- hTECs maintain a basal epithelial identity but display hallmarks of EMT, such as the upregulation of ZEB1, the loss of CDH1 and a reduced expression of the miR-200 family members. We were also able to show that miR-200c overexpression is sufficient to convert EPCAM- hTECs into EpCAM+ ones, implying a crucial role for the ZEB/miR-200 double-negative feedback loop in the control of stratification and EMT in cultured hTECs. Our work suggests that hTECs possess an intrinsic stratification program of functional importance, not likely to result from promiscuous gene expression. We speculate that the maintenance of the thymic tridimensional epithelial network requires a fine balance between stratification and EMT, which could be regulated by the ZEB/miR-200 double-negative feedback loop. In this context, cultured hTECs represent an insightful system to better understand the mechanisms governing epithelial stratification and plasticity


An intranet is what you get when applying web technology inside an organisation and therefore – seen from a strictly technical perspective – intranets are almost identical to the public Web on the Internet. Reviewing available intranet research, it appears most academics seem to assume that intranets and Internet are identical also in other aspects. In this argumentative paper it is suggested that this is assumption is erroneous and instead I argue that usage of and attitudes towards intranet differ significantly from that of Internet. Since these differences seem to have evaded academic interest, intranet research has been too single-dimensional, and in this article the organisational culture perspective is suggested as a theoretical lens for understanding intranets. The effects of organisational culture on web technology use and management are highlighted and discussed and the paper presents implications for both research and practice.


This article traces a genealogy of the use of the term "wilding" in the 1989 Central Park Jogger rape. It analyzes the modern social construction of racial savagery, the liberal progressivism of domesticated "nature" in Frederick Olmsted's design of Central Park, and the performance of primitivism and wilderness in both hip-hop culture and the literary naturalism of Charles Chesnutt and Richard Wright. It theorizes that the wrongful convictions of the five boys originally found guilty of the rape may have been spurred on in part by the misinterpretation of the word "wilding," thus offering not only a significant etymological corrective to the history of "wilding," but also a means of locating that history in a broader black literary tradition of reappropriation and subversion.


S-wave splitting (SWS) from microseismic events may be used to estimate anisotropy in the region around hydraulic fracture stimulations. The anisotropy can then be used to characterize the distribution of fractures in a reservoir. In addition to fracture orientation, SWS can be used to estimate the ratio of normal to tangential compliance (ZN/ZT). ZN/ZT is sensitive to (1) the stiffness of the infilling fluid, (2) fracture connectivity and permeability, and (3) the internal architecture of the fracture (e.g. fracture roughness, degree of cementation). Here we demonstrate the use of SWS to infer the evolution of ZN/ZT from two hydraulic stimulation datasets from tight gas reservoirs. In both examples we observe an apparent increase in ZN/ZT as the stimulation progresses. We suggest that this increase may be produced by the development of new, clean fractures that have a greater normal compliance than their natural counterparts, combined with increases in fracture network connectivity and permeability. The ability to monitor ZN/ZT during stimulations provides a means to gain insight into the evolving flow properties of the induced fracture network, and may be beneficial for assessing the success of drilling and stimulation strategies.


In patients with mastocytosis, gastrointestinal symptoms are a frequent phenomenon. However, there are only limited data about the quantity and distribution pattern of mast cells in the gastrointestinal mucosa. We stained gastroduodenal biopsy specimens from 27 patients with mastocytosis and 48 control subjects for mast cell tryptase, CD117, and CD25. The numbers of mucosal mast cells per high-power field showed wide variation in all groups and were decreased markedly in biopsy specimens of corpus and duodenum and statistically significantly decreased in antrum biopsy specimens from patients with systemic mastocytosis compared with patients with pure urticaria pigmentosa and with control subjects. Staining for tryptase showed highly significant correlation with staining for CD117. All mast cells were negative for CD25, which is expressed characteristically by neoplastic mast cells. Causes of the decrease of mucosal mast cells remain enigmatic, but our results show that gastrointestinal symptoms of patients with mastocytosis are most likely mediator-related and not due to an increase of local mast cells.


Genetic linkage maps provide a genomic framework for quantitative trait loci identification applied in marker assisted selection breeding in crops with limited resources. It serves as a powerful tool to breeders for analysing the mode of inheritance of genes of interest and monitoring of the transmission of target genes from parents to progeny. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers have a great influence on mapping research studies: for faster development of new varieties of crops due to its abundance and high number of polymorphism. Thus, this research work aimed at constructing genetic linkage map of cowpea using SNP markers. This will facilitate development of new varieties of cowpea. Single seed descent method of breeding was used to generate mapping population between IT-95K-19312 and Ife-Brown. Fresh leaves from both parental lines and F1 hybrids were genotyped with 135 SNP markers. Data from125 polymorphic SNP markers were used to construct linkage map. Results revealed 12 linkage maps with an average of 10 markers to a chromosome and average marker distance of 3.02 cM between the markers. Constructed map provides basic information that could assist in genetic improvement of cowpea, most especially in developing brown blotch resistant cowpea varieties through detection of quantitative trait loci (QTL) responsible for brown blotch resistance in cowpea when utilizing marker assisted selection method.


On November 30, 1961, the deepest known pressure injection disposal well for liquid toxic waste was completed on the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. Total depth of the well was 12,045 ft, with the injection interval being 11,975 ft to 12,045 ft in the fractured granite. With this example in mind, the feasibility of subsurface industrial waste water disposal is examined. For a number of years the oil industry has used subterranean waste disposal methods. An ideal subterranean waste disposal reservoir would provide the following requisites: (1) An accumulation of rocks with sufficient pore volume to contain desired or commercial quantities of waste water under pressure available from injection facilities; (2) sufficient permeability to accept waste water at commercial rates with available injection pressures; (3) natural barriers at horizontal and vertical extremities of the pore volume to assure confinement of waste water; and (4) no natural resources of commercial or domestic value within the pore volume. Because of the essential reservoir evaluation, the simple drilling of a hole in the ground to dispose of waste fluids is far short of the requirements of a disposal well.


INTRODUCTION
There are more than 20 drugs, that are widely used as medical expulsive therapy after extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL). Herbal plants are actively used along with the drug therapy in order to improve the efficiency of the treatment.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
to evaluate the efficiency of the drug "Renotinex" in patients with kidney stones, as medical expulsive therapy.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
A total of 41 patients with kidney stones who undergone ESWL were included in the study. Patients were divided into two groups of 21 patients. In the main group, patients received the dietary supplement "Renotinex" 2 capsules 2 times a day for 1 month, along with standard medical expulsive therapy (NSAIDs [Diclofenac suppositories 50 mg in case of pain] + alpha blockers [Tamsulosin 0.4 mg in the morning for 1 month). The efficiency of treatment was evaluated after 2 and 4 weeks by means of ultrasound and x-ray. A presence and mean size of the stone and dilatation of the collecting system were assessed. In addition, complete blood count (hemoglobin, level of red blood cells and white blood cells), as well as urinalysis (microhematuria and leukocyturia) were performed. For statistical analysis, Student's criterion and the Fishers method were used.

RESULTS
After 2 weeks of treatment, a decrease in the hemoglobin level, number of leukocytes and erythrocytes in urine, as well as a significant decrease in pelvis size and the average size of the urinary stone were seen in the main group. In the control group, there was also a slight decrease in the hemoglobin and a significant increase in the grade of leukocyturia and microhematuria. After 4 weeks, significant intergroup differences were documented in the level of microhematuria, pelvis size and the presence of stone in the collecting system, as confirmed by ultrasound and X-ray study. Stone-free rate in the main group was 47.6%, compared to 20% in the control group.

CONCLUSION
Medical expulsive therapy in combination with dietary supplements "Renotinex" after ESWL is more efficient than standard medical expulsive therapy (NSAIDs and -blockers) as monotherapy.


We present an energy-based technique to estimate both microphone and speaker/talker locations from an ad hoc network of microphones. An example of such ad hoc microphone network is a set of microphones built in the laptops that some meeting participants bring in a meeting room. Compared with traditional sound source localization approaches based on time of flight, our technique does not require accurate synchronization, and it does not require each laptop to emit special signals. We estimate the meeting participants' positions based on average energies of their speech signals. In addition, we present a technique, which is independent of the volumes of the speakers, to estimate the relative gains of the microphones. This is crucial to aggregate various audio channels from the ad hoc microphone network into a single stream for audio conferencing.


ABSTRACT The present study aimed to investigate the censorial interference in the Persian dubbing of the first four seasons of House of Cards (2013–2017) broadcast on the Iranian national television. To that end, a multi-modal comparison was made between the Persian-dubbed version and the original one to find out firstly, the content considered inappropriate for public broadcasting and secondly, what cases had the potential to be censored but have been kept purposefully. Based on the results, in both visual and acoustic modes, censorship was applied to several verbal and non-verbal issues, which were categorized into three thematic groups: religious, socio-cultural, and political. It was also found that, although a considerable number of issues were censored in this dubbed version, some issues typically censored in official dubbed films and series were kept intact for ideological and political reasons. This leniency in censorship seems to serve as an effective propaganda tool against the American government.


Identified as an important force toward intellectual growth, peer argument is now promoted within educational policy. Nevertheless, implementation of policy is unclear, particularly when effective argument is known to be possible during the preschool years. One source of uncertainty is data indicating that the form of preschool argument varies with socioeconomic status (SES) and gender, and the study to be reported here was intended to probe this matter further. The study was based on recordings of the arguments held by 125 nursery school children. Observations were made in four activity contexts. Most children displayed sophisticated tactics, for example, justifying positions and selecting alternatives. However, sophisticated tactics were interspersed with rudimentary ones, for example, physical force and bland assertions, and (even with activity context taken into account) the manner of interspersion was dependent on SES and gender. The implications for educational policy and pragmatic theory will be discussed.


This article analyzes the different forms and features of equity volatility exposure and reviews the merits of incorporating equity volatility exposure in portfolio management. The main goal is to show the diversification power of tradable equity volatility-based products, such as VIX futures and products based on VIX futures indexes, and to compare their value in a risk-management context with other strategies traditionally used for modifying investment risk. Features examined include correlation and tail-risk properties, betas to the VIX and S&P 500, and the impact of rolling futures positions on returns. Different investment applications of short-term and mid-term VIX futures and VIX futures indexes are reviewed and the risk–return characteristics of these forms of volatility exposure are compared to those of other risk-modification strategies. The analysis shows that for investors with longer term investment horizons, mid-term VIX futures and futures indexes have the most attractive features for managing risk and are more capital efficient than fixed-income. However, the main significance of the analysis from a portfolio management perspective is that volatility exposure is a viable and attractive alternative to adding cash-equivalent and fixed-income exposure for reducing risk.


The honeybee standard brain (HSB) serves as an interactive tool for relating morphologies of bee brain neurons and provides a reference system for functional and bibliographical properties (http://www.neurobiologie.fu-berlin.de/beebrain/). The ultimate goal is to document not only the morphological network properties of neurons collected from separate brains, but also to establish a graphical user interface for a neuron-related data base. Here, we review the current methods and protocols used to incorporate neuronal reconstructions into the HSB. Our registration protocol consists of two separate steps applied to imaging data from two-channel confocal microscopy scans: (1) The reconstruction of the neuron, facilitated by an automatic extraction of the neuron's skeleton based on threshold segmentation, and (2) the semi-automatic 3D segmentation of the neuropils and their registration with the HSB. The integration of neurons in the HSB is performed by applying the transformation computed in step (2) to the reconstructed neurons of step (1). The most critical issue of this protocol in terms of user interaction time – the segmentation process – is drastically improved by the use of a model-based segmentation process. Furthermore, the underlying statistical shape models (SSM) allow the visualization and analysis of characteristic variations in large sets of bee brain data. The anatomy of neural networks composed of multiple neurons that are registered into the HSB are visualized by depicting the 3D reconstructions together with semantic information with the objective to integrate data from multiple sources (electrophysiology, imaging, immunocytochemistry, molecular biology). Ultimately, this will allow the user to specify cell types and retrieve their morphologies along with physiological characterizations.


Background: Esophageal atresia (EA) and treacheo-esophageal fistula occur in 1 out of every 3500 live births. Children born with EA have a higher incidence of prematurity than the general population EA. The treatment of EA and tracheo-esophageal fistula, although still a challenge, represents one of the true successes of newborn surgery. Objective: The aim of this study cases with EA and/or tracheo-esophageal fistula in Rapareen pediatric surgery center, Erbil, Iraq, regarding management, and early outcome. Materials and Methods: Fifty-three neonates were enrolled in this study from October 2011 to September 2015. Preoperative investigations included chest X-ray, ultrasound of the abdomen, and echocardiography. All patients were resuscitated before surgical intervention. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20 was used for data analysis. Results: Out of 53 cases, 21 survived and 32 died. Thirty patients were male and 23 were female (male-to-female ratio 1.3:1). Twelve were premature and 41 term babies. The most common type was EA and distal fistula in 47 cases, pure atresia in 5 cases, and EA with both distal and proximal fistula in one case. Presenting features were excessive salivation in all cases, failure to pass nasogastric tube in 98.1%, cyanosis in 69.8%, and chocking in 37.7%. Prenatal history of polyhydramnios was present in 67.9%. Eighteen cases had associated anomalies, most of them were cardiac. Conclusion: EA with distal tracheo-esophageal fistula is the most common type of anomaly. Early diagnosis, weight, maturity, and associated anomalies are the most important factors that affect the outcome. Postoperative respiratory care is necessary, especially for those who have a preoperative chest infection.


The ease of Internet stock trading has lured relatively inexperienced investors into the financial markets. This paper is a study of the consequences of the influx of these uninformed traders with a dynamic equilibrium framework. The results show that these strategic, uninformed online traders who adopt feedback strategies cannot outperform those who do not follow feedback strategies and that feedback trading cannot affect market equilibrium. The results also show that an informed trader's equilibrium strategy and expected profit remain unchanged with or without feedback trading. The presence of feedback trading in the market does not affect the speed at which information gets incorporated into prices. If uninformed traders aggregately adopt a more aggressive feedback trading strategy, they bear a higher risk. It is therefore important to manage and contain these uninformed traders' risks. The implications for regulating and designing such Internet trading systems are also discussed.


The huge amount of knowledge in web forums has motivated great research interests in recent years. However, tracking semantic dependencies in each thread in web forums has posed a challenging problem for researchers. In this paper, we explore an unsupervised topic model to burst through this issue by simultaneously modeling the semantics and the reply relationship in a thread. The proposed model is a dynamic extension of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for the structure of web forum threads, where each post is considered as a mixture of topics that vary along the asynchronous conversation. The experimental results on two different forum data sets show encouraging performance of our proposed PPM in ranking the influence of posts.


Muslim fundamentalist movements pose major challenges to international law. Yet, the field of international law has failed to offer a significant response. Seeking to provide simple counter-narratives to the admittedly problematic narratives of some governments in the context of the "war on terror", international lawyers have often omitted discussion of Muslim fundamentalism altogether. While Edward Said's notion of Orientalism may manifest in stereotypical approaches to fundamentalism, it may also surface in the refusal to address the question at all because it is deemed to be embedded in Muslim culture. The silences of international law with regard to Muslim fundamentalism speak volumes about the discipline. There are a number of explanations for such lacunae. These include decreasing confidence in universality, the misapplication of legitimate concerns about discrimination, and narrow discourses about victimhood. Whatever their causes, the result of these silences is that international legal scholarship and the human rights policy it informs may misrepresent significant global controversies. For example, the admittedly flawed "war on terror" becomes solely a misguided assault on an undifferentiated Muslim population (which it sometimes has been, sometimes not), while the existence of an organized jihadist international, the "other" side of the "war on terror," is disappeared. Such narratives undercut opponents of fundamentalists in Muslim populations. Why does any of this matter? Consequently, the very governments that international lawyers seek to constrain may cease to take us seriously. Potential allies among anti-fundamentalists of Muslim heritage (whose projects are critical to the success of international law) may be further disempowered. Worse still, international law may be misused to the benefit of social movements antithetical to its goals. To better respond to the challenges posed by Muslim fundamentalism, international lawyers must apply their discipline's universalist principles with scrupulous consistency. Moreover, they need to confront the complexity of international law and construct a non-discriminatory, yet unashamedly critical, human rights account of Muslim fundamentalism. Ultimately, international lawyers need to reconceptualize international law's world. They must cease opposing Samuel Huntington's problematic paradigm of the "clash of civilizations" with what is simply a post-colonial inversion of this same construct. By accepting his basic binary dividing "the West" and "Islam," even in the name of "difference," this approach actually reifies Huntington's notion of immutable inter-cultural fault lines that delimit the contemporary moment. The only way to refute Huntington is to recognize that the clashes about international law and human rights within civilizations, such as those between fundamentalists and their opponents, are as determinative as those between civilizations.


Fifty years after the British annexed the Punjab and made Lahore its provincial capital, the city-once a prosperous Mughal center that had long since fallen into ruin-was transformed. British and Indian officials had designed a modern, architecturally distinct city center adjacent to the old walled city, administered under new methods of urban governance. In Making Lahore Modern, William J. Glover investigates the traditions that shaped colonial Lahore. In particular, he focuses on the conviction that both British and Indian actors who implemented urbanization came to share: that the material fabric of the city could lead to social and moral improvement. This belief in the power of the physical environment to shape individual and collective sentiments, he argues, links the colonial history of Lahore to nineteenth-century urbanization around the world. Glover highlights three aspects of Lahore's history that show this process unfolding. First, he examines the concepts through which the British understood the Indian city and envisioned its transformation. Second, through a detailed study of new buildings and the adaptation of existing structures, he explores the role of planning, design, and reuse. Finally, he analyzes the changes in urban imagination as evidenced in Indian writings on the city in this period. Throughout, Glover emphasizes that colonial urbanism was not simply imposed; it was a collaborative project between Indian citizens and the British. Offering an in-depth study of a single provincial city, Glover reveals that urban change in colonial India was not a monolithic process and establishes Lahore as a key site for understanding the genealogy of modern global urbanism. William J. Glover is associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan.


Integrated medicine (or integrative medicine as it is referred to in the United States) is practising medicine in a way that selectively incorporates elements of complementary and alternative medicine into comprehensive treatment plans alongside solidly orthodox methods of diagnosis and treatment. The concept is better recognised in the US than in the United Kingdom, but a conference in London next week, organised by the Royal College of Physicians and the US National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, may help to raise its profile in the UK.

Integrated medicine is not simply a synonym for complementary medicine. Complementary medicine refers to treatments that may be used as adjuncts to conventional treatment and are not usually taught in medical schools. Integrated medicine has a larger meaning and mission, its focus being on health and healing rather than disease and treatment. It views patients as whole people with minds and spirits as well as bodies and includes these dimensions into diagnosis and treatment. It also involves patients and doctors working to maintain health by paying attention to lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, quality of rest …


Tandem mass spectrometry is a powerful experimental tool used in molecular biology to determine the composition of protein mixtures. It has become a standard technique for protein identification. Due to the rapid development of mass spectrometry technology, the instrument can now produce a large number of mass spectra which are used for peptide identification. The increasing data size demands efficient software tools to perform peptide identification. In a tandem mass experiment, peptide ion selection algorithms generally select only the most abundant peptide ions for further fragmentation. Because of this, the low-abundance proteins in a sample rarely get identified. To address this problem, in [16], the authors develop the notion of a 'dynamic exclusion list', which maintains a list of newly selected peptide ions, and it ensures these peptide ions do not get selected again for a certain time. In this way, other peptide ions will get more opportunity to be selected and identified, allowing for identification of peptides of lower abundance. However, a better method is to also include the identification results into the 'dynamic exclusion list' approach. In order to do this, a real-time peptide identification algorithm is required. In this thesis, we introduce methods to improve the speed of peptide identification so that the 'dynamic exclusion list' approach can use the peptide identification results without affecting the throughput of the instrument. Our work is based on RT-PSM, a real-time program for peptidespectrum matching with statistical significance [40]. We profile the speed of RT-PSM and find out that the peptide-spectrum scoring module is the most time consuming portion. Given by the profiling results, we introduce methods to parallelize the peptide-spectrum scoring algorithm. In this thesis, we propose two parallel algorithms using different technologies. We introduce parallel peptide-spectrum matching using SIMD instructions. We implemented and tested the parallel algorithm on Intel SSE architecture. The test results show that a 18-fold speedup on the entire process is obtained. The second parallel algorithm is developed using NVIDIA CUDA technology. We describe two CUDA kernels based on different algorithms and compare the performance of the two kernels. The more efficient algorithm is integrated into RT-PSM. The time measurement results show that a 190-fold speedup on the scoring module is achieved and 26-fold speedup on the entire process is obtained. We perform profiling on the CUDA version again to show that the scoring module has been optimized sufficiently to the point where it is no longer the most time-consuming module in the CUDA version of RT-PSM. In addition, we evaluate the feasibility of creating a metric index to reduce the number of candidate peptides. We describe evaluation methods, and show that general indexing methods are not likely feasible for RT-PSM.


There are at least 2 types of cannabinoid receptor, CB1 and CB2, both G protein coupled. CB1 receptors are expressed predominantly at nerve terminals and mediate inhibition of transmitter release, whereas CB2 receptors are found mainly on immune cells, their roles including the modulation of cytokine release and of immune cell migration. Endogenous agonists for cannabinoid receptors also exist. These "endocannabinoids" are synthesized on demand and removed from their sites of action by cellular uptake and intracellular enzymic hydrolysis. Endocannabinoids and their receptors together constitute the endocannabinoid system. This review summarizes evidence that there are certain central and peripheral disorders in which increases take place in the release of endocannabinoids onto their receptors and/or in the density or coupling efficiency of these receptors and that this upregulation is protective in some disorders but can have undesirable consequences in others. It also considers therapeutic strategies by which this upregulation might be modulated to clinical advantage. These strategies include the administration of (1) a CB1 and/or CB2 receptor agonist or antagonist that does or does not readily cross the blood brain barrier; (2) a CB1 and/or CB2 receptor agonist intrathecally or directly to some other site outside the brain; (3) a partial CB1 and/or CB2 receptor agonist rather than a full agonist; (4) a CB1 and/or CB2 receptor agonist together with a noncannabinoid, for example, morphine or codeine; (5) an inhibitor or activator of endocannabinoid biosynthesis, cellular uptake, or metabolism; (6) an allosteric modulator of the CB1 receptor; and (7) a CB2 receptor inverse agonist.


The response of the soil carbon cycle to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration has far reaching consequences for the ecosystem carbon balance under future climatic conditions. We report on work carried out in the Swiss free‐air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiment, where we used in situ 13CO2 labelling to determine whether elevated CO2 (+230 μL L−1) concentration changes the fate of recently assimilated carbon in the soil microbial community.

Elevated CO2 (eCO2) concentration had an overall positive effect on microbial abundance (P < 0·001) with the gram‐negative bacteria showing significantly increased quantities.

Gram‐negative bacteria and saprotrophic fungi tended to utilize a higher amount of recently assimilated carbon under eCO2. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) utilized plant‐assimilated carbon within 1 day after the 13CO2 pulse and 13C uptake patterns in AMF suggest that carbon transfer is faster under eCO2 concentration than under ambient CO2 (aCO2). Additionally, the respiration of recently assimilated carbon was significantly higher under eCO2 than aCO2 concentration.

Our data suggest that elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration accelerated and increased the utilization of recently assimilated carbon by the microbial community without changing the microbial community composition drastically.

We conclude that a higher standing soil microbial biomass under eCO2 concentration was the key cause for the higher carbon flow through the plant–soil system. Carbon utilization by microbial functional groups was only little affected by a decade of CO2 enrichment.


This study attempts to identify profit, profit efficiency as well as determinants of profit efficiency among rice farmers in Tra Vinh province, Vietnam based on the data collected from 196 sample rice farmers in two districts of Tra Vinh province. The CobbDouglas stochastic frontier profit function incorporating profit inefficiency effects was employed to analyze the data. The results revealed that the net income and the net income over gross income ratio of rice production were 9.5 million VND/ha (~ 420 USD) and 30.6 percent, respectively; profit efficiency ranged between 33.87 to 97.22 percent, with an average of 75.61 percent. Significant factors found negatively affect the rice farm profit include prices of fertilizer and pesticide, while positive effects came from seed price, wage rate and land area (fixed factor). Significant determinants that were found positively affect profit efficiency of rice farmers were education attainment, household farm labor, farm size dummy, training dummy, and farmer's association membership.


334 Lyme disease (LD) is a tick-borne multisystem disease caused by infection with the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. LD is associated with numerous neurologic, rheumatologic, and cardiac manifestations. Neurologic manifestations are seen in 12-15% of untreated patients. LD is endemic in North America and Northern Europe. It is easy to diagnose LD in an endemic area if tick bite is recognized and the typical lesion erythema migrans is seen; however, it is a diagnostic challenge if the typical lesion is not seen in a country in which LD is not endemic. These cases may be underdiagnosed in Turkey because of the imitator nature of the disease and the belief that LD does not exist in Turkey. We report a patient who presented with acute asymmetrical paraparesis and was diagnosed and treated as having LD and discuss our case accompanied a literature review.


Strong evidence implicates prefrontal cortex (PFC) as a major source of functional impairment in severe mental illness such as schizophrenia. Numerous schizophrenia studies report deficits in PFC structure, activation, and functional connectivity in patients with chronic illness, suggesting that deficient PFC functional connectivity occurs in this disorder. However, the PFC functional connectivity patterns during illness onset and its longitudinal progression remain uncharacterized. Emerging evidence suggests that early-course schizophrenia involves increased PFC glutamate, which might elevate PFC functional connectivity. To test this hypothesis, we examined 129 non-medicated, human subjects diagnosed with early-course schizophrenia and 106 matched healthy human subjects using both whole-brain data-driven and hypothesis-driven PFC analyses of resting-state fMRI. We identified increased PFC connectivity in early-course patients, predictive of symptoms and diagnostic classification, but less evidence for "hypoconnectivity." At the whole-brain level, we observed "hyperconnectivity" around areas centered on the default system, with modest overlap with PFC-specific effects. The PFC hyperconnectivity normalized for a subset of the sample followed longitudinally (n = 25), which also predicted immediate symptom improvement. Biologically informed computational modeling implicates altered overall connection strength in schizophrenia. The initial hyperconnectivity, which may decrease longitudinally, could have prognostic and therapeutic implications.


Architecture is destiny. As much as information today determines the contemporary wealth of nations, the physical world retains its relevance. Architecture affects crime rates, arguably even collegiality among professors. The interplay between the physical and the ethereal likewise shapes the constitutional doctrine that facilitates the free flow of ideas. The structure of a communicative medium dictates its performance. Awareness of the structure of information markets improves the calibration of intellectual property and refines legal responses to potential electronic bottlenecks. This article takes the next logical step: revealing the deep doctrinal structure of legal efforts to influence the design and maintenance of communicative conduits. This article's examination of free speech jurisprudence begins by describing how any communicative medium can be visualized as three distinct physical, logical, and content-based layers. End-to-end design, the Internet's operative ideal, also provides a crucial doctrinal metaphor. Like the conduits through which communications pass, free speech jurisprudence can also be analyzed layer by layer. Cases involving the regulation of the time, place, or manner of speech comprise the physical layer, in which regulatory prerogative generally prevails. By contrast, most forms of content-based regulation draw strict scrutiny. In a perverse twist of the end-to-end principle, the intelligence in first amendment jurisprudence resides at its edges. Though the Supreme Court has achieved doctrinal stability in reviewing content-based restrictions and time-place-manner rules, the Justices have behaved erratically whenever they have examined the intermediate logical layer - cases involving the regulation of specific communicative conduits. The Court has not developed a cogent approach to regulations designed to structure channels of communication that mediate between physical space and eventual expression. A generation ago, decisions affirming comprehensive federal power over broadcasting practically defined conduit-based regulation of speech. Broadcasting cases cannot be squared with strict scrutiny of content-based regulation of speech. Since 1978 the Supreme Court has proved quite uneven in keeping pace with technological changes in communications. After locating the doctrinal baseline established in the broadcasting cases, this article surveys more recent cases involving cable television and sexually explicit speech in a variety of media. Four interrelated rationales for conduit-based regulation of speech have emerged: scarcity, regulatory intensity, the government's interest in enhancing voices, and a conduit's pervasiveness. Although each of these rationales is superficially plausible, deeper inspection counsels a skeptical regard for the notion that conduit-based regulation merits distinctive first amendment treatment. This article accordingly disavows the strategy of adjusting first amendment standards of review in response to putative differences among conduits. In reviewing conduit-based restrictions on speech, courts should remain wary of disguised efforts to control content. The end-to-end principle counsels simple standards for reviewing regulation aimed at the logical layer of speech. Real information is ideally transmitted on simple protocols that allow speakers and listeners to control all intelligence within a network. Likewise, a constitutional jurisprudence that minimizes reliance on conduit-based distinctions best protects free speech.


This paper investigates the ethnic and gender diversity of the corporate board of UK companies, placing particular emphasis on links to board size and industry characteristics. We employ a novel dataset that covers a large sample of UK PLCs and describes a director's gender, ethnicity and position held. We find both ethnic and gender diversity to be very limited, and that diversity is somewhat less pronounced among executive positions. We find significant cross‐sector variation in gender diversity, with an above average prevalence of women in Retail, Utilities, Media and Banking, while such variation in ethnic diversity is considerably less pronounced. Our evidence suggests that a close proximity to final consumers plays a more significant role in shaping board diversity than does the female presence among the industry's workforce. We argue that this shows that board diversity is influenced by a firm's external business environment and particularly an imperative to reflect corresponding diversity among its customers.


UNLABELLED

PREMISE OF THE STUDY
The Cucurbitaceae genus Cayaponia comprises ∼60 species that occur from Uruguay to the southern United States and the Caribbean; C. africana occurs in West Africa and on Madagascar. Pollination is by bees or bats, raising the question of the evolutionary direction and frequency of pollinator shifts. Studies that investigated such shifts in other clades have suggested that bat pollination might be an evolutionary end point. •

METHODS
Plastid and nuclear DNA sequences were obtained for 50 accessions representing 30 species of Cayaponia and close relatives, and analyses were carried out to test monophyly, infer divergence times, and reconstruct ancestral states for habitat preferences and pollination modes. •

KEY RESULTS
The phylogeny shows that Cayaponia is monophyletic as long as Selysia (a genus with four species from Central and South America) is included. The required nomenclatural transfers are made in this paper. African and Madagascan accessions of C. africana form a clade that is part of a polytomy with Caribbean and South American species, and the inferred divergence time of 2-5 Ma implies a transoceanic dispersal event from the New World to Africa. The ancestral state reconstructions suggest that Cayaponia originated in tropical forests from where open savannas were reached several times and that bee pollination arose from bat pollination, roughly concomitant with the shifts from forests to savanna habitats. •

CONCLUSIONS
Cayaponia provides the first example of evolutionary transitions from bat to bee pollination as well as another instance of transoceanic dispersal from the New World to Africa.