In less than a decade, foreign investors have erected more than 3,200 wind turbines across the Isthmus of Techuantepec investing billions of dollars and generating more than 90 per cent of Mexico's wind energy. The isthmus is also home to more than one thousand indigenous communities whose ancestors settled in the region roughly 3,000 years ago. In most cases, wind farm construction has proceeded without significant community opposition. More recently, however, some indigenous communities have begun to protest against the wind turbines that are taking over their land and transforming their landscape. An intersectional approach highlights two distinct features of the politics of horizontal inequality. First, political strategies and demands may shift over time and across issue areas—opposition to windmills may be generated by exclusion from decision-making, inadequate compensation, or the violation of sacred land. Second, the lens of intersectionality focuses attention on the ways that such categories as race, class, ethnicity, gender, language and region intersect to challenge the 'group-ness' of any one of these categories. In the case of indigenous opposition to wind technology in Mexico, intersectionality explains the particular challenges inherent in securing 'free prior and informed consent', a cornerstone of contemporary policy toward indigenous peoples.


Trends in Chinese and U.S. approaches to regional integration are likely to profoundly affect other states and even the future of global economic governance. Showing a possible paradigm shift, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation reflect the latest major developments in China and the U.S. regarding regional integration. In particular, the U.S. pursues managed trade, shifts to bilateralism, and adopts an aggressive approach. This article analyses a core question: will Chinese and U.S. trade approaches converge, diverge or both, and why? For the analysis of the convergence or divergence, four aspects will be covered: the objectives of regionalism, the instruments for regionalism, the approaches to multilateralism, and the role in rulemaking. This paper argues that Chinese and U.S. trade approaches are likely to diverge and converge, leading to crossvergence (a simultaneous convergence and divergence of regulatory approaches). Divergence can be found in fundamental areas and particularly the approaches to regionalism and multilateralism. Convergence appears to occur only in selected areas (e.g. investment and intellectual property). Uncertainties exist since both the BRI and trade policies of the Trump Administration are under development. The interaction between Chinese and American approaches will affect the shaping of the international economic legal order.


Abstract The standard model for transport through binary stochastic media involves two coupled transport equations. Previous research has shown that several types of source iterations applied to the solution of these equations can converge arbitrarily slowly when one or both of the materials is optically thick and diffusive. In this work, we derive, analyze, and implement an acceleration scheme for binary stochastic mixture transport iterations. The equations are derived using the modified four-step method and take the form of discretized coupled diffusion equations. A Fourier analysis indicates that for a wide variety of physical problems and spatial mesh sizes, the scheme is rapidly convergent. Spectral radii measured during these accelerated iterations compare very well with Fourier analysis predictions.


The design of novel dielectric polymers currently employs approaches on capitalizing main-chain and side-chain architectures respectively. This paper reports a concerted macromolecular architecture synergistically tuning both the polymeric backbone and side chain. Our approach relies on an oligomer thiophene side chain and a norbornene backbone. This architecture results in highly flexible and transparent dielectric polymers, superior to methacrylate polymer counterparts. A facile hydrogenation of the polynorbornene backbone results in more than two fold increase in the electric field breakdown strength with the conservation of low dielectric loss.


Asteroid impacts to the Earth can form global stratospheric soot and sulfate aerosols sourced from target rocks leading to global decreases in sunlight, temperature, and precipitation. Scale of the cooling-drought events is decided by amount of those aerosols. Their amounts vary widely depending on impact location and impact energy. However, impact site variation has not considered for calculation of probability of the cooling-drought events by asteroid impacts. We analyzed climate changes by different size of asteroids hitting various impact locations. Here we show that significant cooling in high-middle latitudes with drought in low and high latitudes occur in frequency of once/7 million years, which decreases to one eighth of previous thought. The cooling-drought events by bolide impacts become more rare events for humans, but can occur during the duration of anthroposphere. Cooling in high-middle latitudes by >5 °C on land and drought in low latitudes damage vegetation and agriculture globally, which can induce a significant decrease of number of animals including humans. In order to avoid the disasters, an asteroid orbit should be controlled to hit to the oceans when impacts cannot be avoided, because of low amount of stratospheric aerosol sources inducing cooling in the ocean areas, and a little amount of stratospheric sulfate aerosol formed by impacts.


Praise for Socialnomics "It's obvious that Erik Qualman's passion is social media." Dan Heath, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Made to Stick and Switch "People are hot for social media . . . Erik Qualman says it's about listening first, then selling." Forbes "Erik Qualman has been doing his homework on the social media phenomenon." The Huffington Post "This is a must-read for anyone trying to leverage the social graph rather than be squashed by it." Steve Kaufer, CEO, TripAdvisor "You learn a lot about someone from how they treat their moms. Erik is a trustworthy guy." Chris Brogan, New York Times bestselling author of Trust Agents and Social Media 101 "Qualman is to social media what Demming is to quality and Drucker to management." Scott Galloway, Professor, Stern School of Business, NYU The newly revised and updated guide to the social media revolution! Welcome to the world of Socialnomicswhere consumers and the societies they create online have profound effects on our economy and the businesses that operate within it. Online word of mouth, social search, social commerce, and the influence of peer groups are making traditional marketing strategies obsolete. As a result, we no longer have a choice on whether we do social media; the question is how well we do it. Join Erik Qualman in Socialnomics for a fascinating look at the business implications of social media, and tap its considerable power to increase sales, cut marketing costs, and communicate directly with consumers.


Purpose: Since 2005, community pharmacist workload has increased. This has been accompanied by an increase in stress and work pressures, and a decrease in job satisfaction. However, at present, it is unclear how these factors are impacting the ability of community pharmacists to ensure accuracy during the dispensing process. This research seeks to extend our understanding of the nature, outcome and predictors of dispensing errors, and explore community pharmacists' experiences following the occurrence of a dispensing error. Method: A mixed-methods approach was employed to conduct a series of three experiments: a quantitative and qualitative retrospective database analysis; a qualitative study of community pharmacists; and a cross-sectional survey of community pharmacists. Results: Staff shortages, being busier than normal/high workload and fatigue/insufficient rest breaks were most frequently reported contributory factors of dispensing errors throughout this research. Type of pharmacy ownership was found to be associated with deteriorating working conditions in community pharmacy and a predictor of dispensing errors in community pharmacy. Discussion: Increasing levels of workload, staff shortages, inadequately trained dispensary support staff, lack of rest breaks, the type of pharmacy setting and layout of the dispensary may be associated with the occurrence of dispensing errors. Increasing levels of corporatisation in community pharmacy may precipitate error-prone environments in which pharmacists perceive a high burden of responsibility towards their role. For some, this may have a considerable, and in some cases lasting impact on the pharmacist's physical and mental health.


Due to a significantly large mass moment of inertia many large vertical pump-turbines, used at pumped storage plants, for hydroelectric power generation are equipped with mechanical braking systems. After shutdown, these systems allow the unit to be brought to rest in a relatively short period of time. Even units which take advantage of electrical braking use mechanical brakes. The brakes are applied when the unit's angular velocity is sufficiently small; this reduces wear on the thrust bearing and other components. Additionally, mechanical brakes prevent slow rotation of the unit due to wicket gate leakage and are also used during routine maintenance.The brake dust generated from the braking process can contaminate various sections of the generator-motor, adversely impacting unit performance. To prevent this and improve unit reliability and availability, many larger units are equipped with brake dust collection systems. Brake dust collection systems utilize air to convey brake dust to a filtering apparatus, where the dust is collected and transported safely away from sensitive components. Such a system can be described as a dilute-phase pneumatic conveying system. The most significant design parameters are: pressure drop, solids flow rate, and gas flow rate. These parameters are optimized to ensure the correct saltation and pickup velocities are achieved to convey the material over the required distance.Some system designers employ equal flow as an inlet boundary condition (BC) for designing pneumatic conveying systems of this type. This study examines the validity of using equal flow versus equal pressure as an inlet BC; with the goal of demonstrating that equal pressure is more appropriate and results in a more robust system design.This was accomplished by developing a steady state flow model of the brake dust collection system in PIPENET™. Model results show that the equal pressure inlet BC is not only a more conservative BC, but its application also revealed potential short comings in the system's ability to attain adequate pickup velocities in various sections of the system. The selection of the appropriate BC is essential to the successful design of a robust pneumatic conveying system.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


The relationship between the physical intensity t of a stimulus and its perceived magnitude φ(t) can be described by Stevens' power law φ(t) = αt^β (Stevens, 1956). The exponent of the power function β, crucial for the shape of the psychophysical function, depends on the sensory modality studied and can be estimated via direct scaling experiments. As recent developments in axiomatic measurement theory have shown, the application of direct scaling is based on fundamental assumptions concerning the participants' scaling behavior: The observers' perception of the investigated modality needs to be ordered on a sensory continuum and has to be valid on a ratio scale. Furthermore, the numbers as presented in the experimental instructions have to be processed as exact mathematical values. Narens (1996) made these implicit assumptions empirically testable by expressing them in the behavioral axioms of monotonicity, commutativity and multiplicativity. However, rigorous axiomatic testing showed that most participants fail to veridically process the numerical instructions used in production or estimation tasks. Steingrimsson and Luce (2007) have thoroughly analyzed the kind of "numerical distortion" that appears to be operating and claimed that the relationship between perceived and mathematical numbers can be described by a power function. To make this assumption empirically testable, they formulated the axiom of k-multiplicativity. The present thesis aimed to empirically evaluate this axiomatic framework to the perception of short durations. This was accomplished by combining axiomatic testing strategies derived from different theoretical approaches (Augustin, 2008; Narens, 1996; Steingrimsson & Luce, 2007) in a single reinvestigation thereby affording a much more precise determination of the concept of ratio scalability than in the most earlier empirical studies. Furthermore, the application domain was human time perception, which had not been subjected to this kind of axiomatic approach before.
The aim of Manuscript A (N = 25) was to find out whether the basic assumptions for the application of direct scaling methods are valid for the perception of short durations. Furthermore it was tested whether the estimated power law parameters are invariant under changes of the reference stimulus and thus psychologically relevant. In accordance with previous findings for other sensory continua, monotonicity held for the duration adjustments of most participants. Significant violations of the commutativity axiom were found in 12.5% of all pertinent tests, whereas multiplicativity was violated in 32% of such tests. The axioms of weak multiplicativity and invertibility were violated in over 50% of the tests, indicating a problem with psychological relevance. Manuscript B examined whether a relationship between mathematical and perceived numbers can be described by a power function with a constant exponent and whether there is a difference between the processing of integers and fractions. To that effect, the validity of k-multiplicativity was evaluated for N = 35 participants. The axiomatic tests showed a power function with a constant exponent to appropriately describe the relationship between mathematical and perceived numbers. However, different values of k were found for integers and fractions indicating that they are processed differently. Manuscript C investigated whether the functional relationship between standard duration and power law parameters can be determined. Furthermore, it tested whether the standard dependency of the power law parameters is an artifact of the ratio production procedure or whether this finding is stable even if other measures of sensitivity are used. The power law parameters were estimated for six different standard durations t (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6 s) and compared to the corresponding Weber fractions. The results of two experiments with the same N = 10 participants show a positive power relationship between the duration of the standard and the estimated exponent of Stevens' power law, which can be described by the function β = 0.13t^0.3. A negative power relationship of the form W = 0.84t^−0.3 was found between the Weber fractions and the duration of the standard. In conclusion, the present doctoral thesis shows that if using ratio production of temporal intervals, the measurement is based on a sensory continuum and on a ratio scale. Therefore, the application of direct scaling methods in order to determine the power law parameters for perceived duration is legitimate. It was further found that a large proportion of the participants does not process the numerals that are presented in the experimental instructions at face value, i.e., an inherent numerical distortion impedes an unequivocal interpretation of the scale values. However, this numerical distortion does not reflect an entirely arbitrary or intractable interpretation of numbers, but a well-characterized mathematical relationship – a power function with a constant exponent. Because it was shown that fractions and integers are processed differently, they should not be intermixed within one ratio production experiment. Furthermore, the present thesis showed that modeling perceived time as a function of physical time, regardless of whether a power function or a linear relationship holds, is difficult: Even if both kinds of models seem to describe the relationship quite well, the estimated parameters depend on the magnitude of the reference stimulus used in the experiment and thus can hardly be interpreted in a psychologically relevant way. However, the influence of the standard on the size of the exponent seems to be systematic: Increasing standard durations go along with increasing exponents. Weber fractions measured under identical conditions were found to decrease with increasing standard durations and thus, combining both findings, it can be assumed that differential sensitivity for duration perception increases between 100 and 400 ms and remains at a constant level between 400 and 600 ms. A bias due to the ratio production procedure is thus ruled out.


In pile design, piles must be able to sustain axial loads from the superstructure without bearing capacity failure or structural damage. In addition, piles must not settle or deflect excessively in order for the serviceability of the superstructures to be maintained. In general, settlement controls the design of piles in most cases because, by the time a pile has failed in terms of bearing capacity, it is very likely that serviceability will have already been compromised. Therefore, realistic estimation of settlement for a given load is very important in design of axially loaded piles. This notwithstanding, pile design has relied on calculations of ultimate resistances reduced by factors of safety that would indirectly prevent settlement-based limit states. This is in part due to the lack of accessible realistic analysis tools for estimation of settlement, especially for piles installed in layered soil. Micropiles have been increasingly used, not only as underpinning foundation elements but also as foundations of new structures. Prevalent design methods for micropiles are adaptations of methods originally developed for drilled shafts. However, the installation of micropiles differs considerably from that of drilled shafts, and micropiles have higher pile length to diameter ratios than those of drilled shafts. Improved understanding of the load-transfer characteristics of micropiles and the development of pile settlement estimation tools consistent with the load-transfer response of these foundation elements are the main goals of the proposed research. A rigorous analysis tool for assessment of the load-settlement response of an axially loaded pile was developed in this study. The authors obtained explicit analytical solutions for an axially loaded pile in a multilayered soil or rock. The soil was assumed to behave as a linear elastic material. The governing differential equations were derived based on energy principles and calculus of variations. In addition, solutions for a pile embedded in a multilayered soil with the base resting on a rigid material were obtained by changing the boundary conditions of the problem. The authors also obtained solutions for a pile embedded in a multilayered soil subjected to tensile loading. They then compared the solutions with the results from FEA and also with other solutions available in the literature. Finally, they compared the results of a pile load test from the literature with the results obtained using the solutions proposed in this study. Using the obtained elastic solutions, extensive parametric studies on the load-transfer and load-settlement response of rock-socketed piles were also performed. The effects of geometry of rock socket, rock mass deformation modulus, and in situ rock mass quality were investigated. To facilitate the use of the analysis, a user-friendly spreadsheet program ALPAXL was developed. This program is based on the elastic solution obtained in this study and uses built-in functions of Microsoft Excel. ALPAXL provides the results of the analysis, the deformed configuration of the pile-soil system and the load-settlement curve in seconds. It can be downloaded at http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~mprezzi. In the context of an INDOT project, a fully instrumented load test was performed on a rock-socketed micropile. The results of this micropile load test, on a pile with high slenderness ratio and high stiffness of surrounding rock, confirmed that most of the applied load was carried by the pile shaft. The shaft capacity of hard limestone obtained from the load test at the final loading step was 1.4 times larger than the shaft capacity that is obtained using the highest value of limit unit shaft resistance suggested by FHWA. Using pile and soil properties, predictions were also made using ALPAXL. The results from ALPAXL were in good agreement with the measured data at the design load level.


This paper reports an approach to assessing the nature of the impact and benefit of library services, based on the concepts introduced in Urquhart's Value Project for healthcare information services. Two studies are described and compared. A project in the City of London public library service examined the benefits obtained from specific information requests. A project in several public library services in South West England examined the value obtained from the borrowing and reading of books, linking this with categories of learning objectives. These studies showed the promise, and also the difficulties, of adapting existing impact frameworks to understand the nature of the impact and value of library services


So let me plunge into my central matter at once: a challenge of time and space, a rejection of the platitudinous interpretations of the twenties. If the twenties has become a kind of fetish may it not be because the thirties has been isolated as a sort of Bluebeard's chamber where the key lies rusted in a pool of blood? The door has been shut and footsteps scamper past the room in an embarrassed rush to that pleasanter beyond, the twenties, where we were all presumed to have been so lighthearted, so irresponsible, so foolish and so lost. And so aesthetic! It is as if the events had been deliberately lost sight of or did not matter. As if it had been possible to have Hart Crane as a contemporary and not Al Capone; or Sacco and Vanzetti and not their executioners. This passage, from a typescript page of Josephine Herbst's memoirs, recently collected and published as The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs,(1) articulates the thoroughgoing challenge to conventional views of canonical modernist and proletarian writing posed by the work as a whole. Writing thirty or more years ago, Herbst anticipated recent reconceptualizations of the literary milieu of which she was a part. Like many critics today, Herbst points out the devastating effect of the Cold War upon the assessment of radical writing, including her own, stressing that standard definitions misrepresent the concerns of the proletarian writer as exclusively and dogmatically political, a definition that fails to describe her own Rope of Gold trilogy, commonly categorized as proletarian. But it is not only the concerns of the radical writer that have been misrepresented as a result of the Cold War critics' flight from what they characterize as the political and literary "mistakes" of the thirties.(2) While the proletarian novel has been constructed as "brutishly" political and lacking in formal complexity, canonical modernism has been defined as exclusively concerned with aesthetics and issues of consciousness. In contrast, Herbst's memoirs, which she intended to be read as literary history, along with her Rope of Gold trilogy, problematizes the relegation of the private to the province of the modernist writer, and the political to that of the proletarian writer.(3) In doing so, Herbst also challenges the relegation of the female to the private sphere and the male to the public one. In her memoirs as in her fiction, then, Herbst brings together several strands of recent criticism: reconceptualizations of modernism that acknowledge the political implications of work that has traditionally been read as abstracted from everyday social and political reality, analyses of the way in which modernism is gendered, and scholarship on radical women writers' challenges to the masculinist aesthetic of the proletarian novel.(4) Despite Herbst's intentions for her memoirs, such reconceptualizations of the literary twenties and thirties have only recently been seen as crucial. Perhaps if Herbst's memoirs, which she titled The Burning Bush, had been completed and published in a timely fashion, her intervention in literary history might have spurred this process on. However, although three sections of what Herbst intended to be The Burning Bush were published in journals during her lifetime, it remained incomplete and unpublished as a whole at her death in early 1969. The reason for Herbst's inability to complete her memoirs is not self-evident. A combination of psychological, formal, and economic difficulties seem to have conspired against her. Her biographer Elinor Langer notes that "to produce a portrait of her era that honestly reflected the complexity of her own experience she would have had to remove the veil over some very sorrowful private and political moments and this she could not bear to do" (344). Nora Ruth Roberts also cites the difficulties involved in constructing a self within language (164), difficulties Herbst was conscious of, as evidenced in a letter to Peter Davison, the director at Atlantic Monthly Press, which was to publish The Burning Bush: "I keep revising and I, too, am revising myself, for the better, I hope" (qtd. …


Optoelectronic information storage and processing systems offer many important advantages compared to their electronic and magnetic counterparts: speed, massive parallelism and insensitivity to interference. Optoelectronic devices are a pivotal technology in the implementation of such systems. Devices consisting of optical inputs and outputs and information processing circuits are needed to interface optoelectronic components and modules to electronic systems, and to perform operations that are more difficult to reliably implement using optics alone. The main thrust of our research is to develop and evaluate optoelectronic technologies conducive to highly integrated optoelectronic components and systems for cost-effective information storage and processing.

At the device level, we describe a simple and inexpensive method for fabricating liquid crystal modulators on silicon integrated circuits. The modulators provide analog amplitude or phase modulation at low voltages. They are compatible with mainstream very-large-scale-integration processes and require only a minimal amount of post-processing performed on conventionally fabricated die. Experimental data are presented and compared to theoretical predictions.

At the chip level, we present an innovative optoelectronic integrated circuit functioning as an optically or electrically addressed spatial light modulator. The device merges the functions of a spatial light modulator and a detector array in a holographic memory system. Moreover, it helps refresh dynamic holograms which slowly decay in a read/write photorefractive memory as a result of their exposure to the reference beam. When combined with the technique of conjugate readout, this device allows a lens-less data path and a very compact, self-aligning integration of the memory module. We also describe two neural arrays, using self-electro-optic-effect devices bonded to a silicon integrated circuit, and light-emitting diodes grown on a commercially processed gallium arsenide integrated circuit.

Finally, at the system level, we describe several integrated system architectures for holographic information storage and processing based on conjugate readout and the aforementioned device. We formulate storage density and cost projections. We report on laboratory prototypes of integrated modular holographic memory. Dynamic holograms were sustained over 50 refresh/decay cycles. Experimental data is presented.


The "Intended nationally determined contributions" (INDCs) communicated by both developing and developed countries represent a crucial element of the Paris agreement. This paper aims at analysing the INDCs submitted by Parties, through the different tools and approaches proposed by the research community. In particular, our analysis looks at the different ways to assess the effectiveness of the proposed emission reduction pledges, both in terms of aggregate and national efforts. However, we also consider other factors that will be critical in determining the success of the Paris talks, such as the coherence and fairness of single contributions.


With recent advances in deep learning, considerable attention has been given to achieving automatic speech recognition performance close to human performance on tasks like conversational telephone speech (CTS) recognition. In this paper we evaluate the usefulness of these proposed techniques on broadcast news (BN), a similar challenging task. We also perform a set of recognition measurements to understand how close the achieved automatic speech recognition results are to human performance on this task. On two publicly available BN test sets, DEV04F and RT04, our speech recognition system using LSTM and residual network based acoustic models with a combination of n-gram and neural network language models performs at 6.5% and 5.9% word error rate. By achieving new performance milestones on these test sets, our experiments show that techniques developed on other related tasks, like CTS, can be transferred to achieve similar performance. In contrast, the best measured human recognition performance on these test sets is much lower, at 3.6% and 2.8% respectively, indicating that there is still room for new techniques and improvements in this space, to reach human performance levels.


Citizen science continues to grow, potentially increasing competition among projects to recruit and retain volunteers interested in participating. Using web analytics, we examined the ability of a marketing campaign to broaden project awareness, while driving engagement and retention in an online, crowdsourced project. The campaign challenged audiences to support the classification of >9,000 pairs of images. The campaign was successful due to increased engagement, but it did not increase the time participants spent classifying images. Engagement over multiple days was significantly shorter during the campaign. We provide lessons learned to improve targeted recruitment and retention of participants in online projects. Abstract


Background: Cancer is most fearful disease and more than two-thirds of cancer patients are in advanced and incurable stage at the time of diagnosis. Public awareness about cancer can play a big role in prevention and early detection of cancer. Objective: To study the self-reported knowledge, attitude, and preventive practices on cancer among urban dwellers of Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Materials and Methods: A total of 880 men and women of 20 years and above, were interviewed using a pretested open questionnaire after having their consent. They were selected by systematic random sampling. Results: The study population consisted of 398 males and 342 females. More than 50% of respondents knew about the tobacco and alcohol as a risk factor for cancer with poor knowledge regarding other risk factors of cancer. Respondents were not much aware of common warning signs and symptoms of cancer, which are most important for early diagnosis and treatment. The major source of information related to cancers was T.V. (63.1%) followed by friends / relatives (58.3%).37.3% respondents think that cancer is never curable and 55.8% think it is preventable. Only 4.6%, 1.5%, 2.2% and 3.5% of study participants were aware about Breast self examination, Mammography, Pap smear test and Oral visual examination respectively. Conclusions: Knowledge about risk factors, warning signals and particularly screening of cancer was very poor and more so in lower educational and socioeconomic strata of the community.


BACKGROUND
Despite estimates that waste constitutes up to 20% of healthcare expenditures in the United States, overuse of tests and therapies is significantly under-recognized in medicine, particularly in pediatrics. The American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation developed the Choosing Wisely campaign, which challenged medical societies to develop a list of 5 things physicians and patients should question. The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) joined this effort in the spring of 2012. This report provides the pediatric work group's results.

METHODS
A work group of experienced and geographically dispersed pediatric hospitalists was convened by the Quality and Safety Committee of the SHM. This group developed an initial list of 20 recommendations, which was pared down through a modified Delphi process to the final 5 listed below.

RESULTS
The top 5 recommendations proposed for pediatric hospital medicine are: (1) Do not order chest radiographs in children with asthma or bronchiolitis. (2) Do not use systemic corticosteroids in children under 2 years of age with a lower respiratory tract infection. (3) Do not use bronchodilators in children with bronchiolitis. (4) Do not treat gastroesophageal reflux in infants routinely with acid suppression therapy. (5) Do not use continuous pulse oximetry routinely in children with acute respiratory illness unless they are on supplemental oxygen.

CONCLUSION
We recommend that pediatric hospitalists use this list to prioritize quality improvement efforts and include issues of waste and overuse in their efforts to improve patient care.


A new process decomposed calculation method is developed to compare the cycle based charge, discharge, net, and overall energy efficiencies of lithium-ion batteries. Multi-cycle measurements for both constant current (CC) and constant current to constant voltage (CC-CV) charge models have been performed. Unlike most conventional efficiency calculation methods with one mean open-circuit voltage (OCV) curve, two OCV curves are calculated separately for the charge and discharge processes. These two OCV curves help to clarify the intra-cycle charge, discharge, net, and overall energy efficiencies. The relationships of efficiencies versus state of charge, state of quantity, and scaled stresses are demonstrated. Efficiency degradation patterns versus cycle numbers and scaled stresses are also illustrated with the artificial neural network (ANN) prediction method. The decaying ratios of the overall efficiencies are about 2% and 0.3% in the first 30 cycles, for CC and CC-CV, respectively. Hence, efficiencies of the CC-CV model are more stable compared with the CC model, which are shown by both experimental and ANN prediction results.


Purpose: The validity of 'classic' Monte Carlo simulations of electron and positrontransport at sub‐1 keV energies is investigated in the context of quantum theory.Methods: Quantum theory dictates that uncertainties on the position and energy‐momentum four vectors of radiation quanta obey Heisenberg's uncertainty relation; however, these uncertainties are neglected in 'classical' MC simulations of radiation transport in which position and momentum are known precisely. Using the quantum uncertainty relation and electron mean free path, the magnitude of uncertainties on electron position and momentum are calculated for different kinetic energies; a validity bound on the classical simulation of electron transport is derived. Results: In order to satisfy the Heisenberg uncertainty principle,uncertainties of 4% or greater must be assigned to position and momentum for 1 keV electrons in water; at 100 eV, these uncertainties are 15% to 22% and are even larger at lower energies. In gaseous media such as air, these uncertainties are much smaller (less than 1% for electrons with energy 20 eV or greater). Conclusions: The classical Monte Carlotransport treatment is incorrect for sub‐1 keV electrons in water as uncertainties on position and momentum must be large (relative to electron momentum and the mean free path) to satisfy the quantum uncertainty principle. Simulations in condensed media (e.g., water) which do not reflect the quantum nature of electrons and positrons are not faithful representations of the physical reality at these low energies, calling into question the results of MC track structure codes simulating sub‐1 keV electron transport. Further, the large differences in the scale at which quantum effects are important in gaseous and condensed media suggest that track structure measurements in gases are not necessarily representative of track structure in condensed materials on a micrometer or nanometer scale.


Peace in Asia, like elsewhere in the Third World, has always been regarded as the superpowers' burden. It is a self-imposed responsibility that defines the essence of their being in the world. Accordingly, all other nations must align their respective national visions to the larger perspective that is supposed to inform the superpower's behavior. In contrast to this is the concept of non-alignment, an attempt to establish an autonomous peace.


Current research on the role of cognitive resources on emotional face recognition provides inconclusive support for the automaticity model. The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of working memory load and attentional control on emotion recognition. Participants (N=60) were shown photographs of fearful, angry, happy and neutral faces for 200 ms, 700 ms or 1400 ms while engaging in concurrent working memory load task. A restricted response time was employed. Data analysis revealed that presentation time did not affect the reaction time across emotions. Furthermore, reactions times were marginally affected by graded load. Reaction times to fear and anger were significantly greater compared to other emotions across load conditions. These findings are relatively congruent with the automaticity theory and negativity bias, suggesting that efficient emotion recognition can occur even in the expenditure of working memory processes, whereas longer reaction time for negative stimuli indicates the partial involvement of higher cognitive processes that are necessary for evaluating potential threats. It is suggested that although processing negative emotional faces can be carried out automatically, at the same it requires sufficient attention in order to be executed.


Populations of the garter snake Thamnophis sirtalis have evolved geographically variable resistance to tetrodotoxin (TTX) in a coevolutionary arms race with their toxic prey, newts of the genus Taricha. Here, we identify a physiological mechanism, the expression of TTX-resistant sodium channels in skeletal muscle, responsible for adaptive diversification in whole-animal resistance. Both individual and population differences in the ability of skeletal muscle fibers to function in the presence of TTX correlate closely with whole-animal measures of TTX resistance. Demonstration of individual variation in an essential physiological function responsible for the adaptive differences among populations is a step toward linking the selective consequences of coevolutionary interactions to geographic and phylogenetic patterns of diversity.


The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the virulence profiles of 52 recent clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa distinctly originated from patients with hospital-acquired infections and primary cardiovascular disease. The phenotypic screening evaluated seven soluble virulence factors (haemolysins, lipase, lecithinase, DN-ase, amylase, gelatinase, caseinase), as well as the adherence ability (Cravioto adapted method) and invasion (gentamicin protection assay) of HeLa cells. Eight virulence genes (lasB, plcH, protease IV, exo S, exo T, exo A, exo U, pvdA) were screened by PCR. The statistical analysis was performed using GraphPad InStat software. The most virulent were blood culture and tracheo-bronchial isolates. Although cited as mutually exclusive, a significant number of blood culture (30%) and wound secretion (24%) isolates exhibited both exoU and exoS genes. The tracheo-bronchial secretions harbored with high positivity pvdA and lasB, while the surgical wound isolates plcH and protease IV genes. The urinary tract infections isolates exhibited less virulent phenotypes, and harbored with a high positivity rate the lasB gene. Correlating virulence patterns and infection clinical outcome could be useful for setting up efficient preventive and therapeutic procedures in hospitalized patients with positive P. aeruginosa cultures.


Deep ultraviolet lasers have various applications in industries and scientific researches. For 266-nm ultraviolet (UV) laser generation, the good beam quality of 1064-nm laser and the elimination of gray-tracking effect of KTP crystal are two key factors. Using a dynamically stable resonator design, 1064-nm laser with an average power of 52 W is realized with repetition rate of 16 kHz. The measured M2 factor characterizing the beam quality is 1.5. By the elimination of gray-tracking effect of KTP crystal, an 18-W green laser is realized with the M2 factor of 1.6. Using a BBO crystal for the fourth harmonic generation, a 1.9-W 266-nm UV laser is achieved.


Internet connectivity, which was in experimental stages only a few years ago, is a reality today. Current implementations allow passengers to access the Internet for pleasure, and, in some cases, secure VPN access is provided to corporate networks. Several researchers are looking at the possibility of the existence a total of three networks: passenger network (PN), crew network (CRN), and the control network (CON). Researchers envision an architecture where these three networks will co-exist in an airplane. The available Internet connectivity can be utilized for transporting flight critical information like cockpit flight data recorder (CFDR) data, digital tight data recorder (DFDR) data, cockpit voice recorder (CVR) data and controller pilot data link communication. In addition, the internet connectivity could also be used for other safety mechanisms like video surveillance and remote control of the flight. Security is one of the major concerns that affect the successful deployment of aircraft data networks (ADN) and other safety features. Several studies have been carried out to secure the network using firewalls and intrusion detection systems but so far no study has focused on securing the communication channel (between the aircraft and the ground station) and its impact on the ADN. The scope of this research is to determine the viability and need of a security mechanism. The research will also focus on the performance of different security architectures and determine their usability in the framework of an ADN


Multiple Bragg nanograting stop bands are reported for the first time in single and multi-mode optical waveguides generated by femtosecond laser direct writing in bulk fused silica glass. The stop bands observed in the guided broadband light spectra originated with the orthogonal alignment of volume nanogratings co-generated with the waveguides. Rapid shifting of stop bands across the near UV and visible spectrum was sensitively controlled by laser exposure and sample scanning direction. Bragg periods anticipated from the observed stop bands concurred with the nanograting structural pitches revealed by scanning electron microscopy. The spectroscopic characterization of nanogratings along macroscopic-scale (12.5 mm long) waveguide sections constitutes a non-destructive, convenient and sensitive approach to examine long-range order and uniformity of the self-organized periodic structures that may assist to unravel the laser-glass interaction physics of nanograting formation.


Present work studied interaction between Surelease, Urea, and Eudragit RL100 (RL) polymers with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug FLP. Solid dispersions at different weight ratios were prepared by fusion (Method A) and coprecipitation (Method B). Characterization of solid dispersions (SDs) included elemental analysis, Fourier transform (FTIR), Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Powder-x-ray diffractometry (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) as well as wettability study, angle of repose, aqueous solubility determination, in vitro and in vivo drug release. FTIR studies showed the stability FLP. DSC and XRD studies confirmed the amorphous state of FLP in its SDs. SEM showed the formation of effective SDs of FLP with polymers. Pre-formulation studies showed increased hydrophilicity but a non-significant increase in lipophilicity of the SDs. IDR value is only 0.03±0.001 mg/cm2-min. whereas wettability of solid dispersions was found to be controlled. Angle of repose shows good flowability characteristics. The dissolution rate of FLPSDs prepared by method A was significantly greater than that from method B. Method A with urea and RL provides slower and more gradual increase in dissolution rate than those of FLP, when polymer ratios were increased. TF20 possess longer duration of action compared to FLP.


The key factor underlying China's fast development during the last 50 years is its ability to master and accumulate new and more complex capabilities, reflected in the increase in diversification and sophistication of its export basket. This accumulation was policy induced and not the result of the market, and began before 1979. Despite its many policy mistakes, if China had not proceeded this way, in all likelihood it would be a much poorer country today. During the last 50 years, China has acquired revealed comparative advantage in the export of both labor-intensive products (following its factor abundance) and sophisticated products, although the latter does not indicate that there was leapfrogging. Analysis of China's current export opportunity set indicates that it is exceptionally well positioned (especially taking into account its income per capita) to continue learning and gaining revealed comparative advantage in the export of more sophisticated products. Given adequate policies, carefully thought-out and implemented reforms, and skillful management of constraints and risks, China has the potential to continue thriving. This does not mean, however, that high growth will continue indefinitely.


For as long as data have been generated about cities various kinds of data-informed urbanism have been occurring. In this paper, I argue that a new era is presently unfolding wherein data-informed urbanism is increasingly being complemented and replaced by data-driven, networked urbanism. Cities are becoming ever more instrumented and networked, their systems interlinked and integrated, and vast troves of big urban data are being generated and used to manage and control urban life in real-time. Data-driven, networked urbanism, I contend, is the key mode of production for what have widely been termed smart cities. In this paper I provide a critical overview of data-driven, networked urbanism and smart cities focusing in particular on the relationship between data and the city (rather than network infrastructure or computational or urban issues), and critically examine a number of urban data issues including: the politics of urban data; data ownership, data control, data coverage and access; data security and data integrity; data protection and privacy, dataveillance, and data uses such as social sorting and anticipatory governance; and technical data issues such as data quality, veracity of data models and data analytics, and data integration and interoperability. I conclude that whilst data-driven, networked urbanism purports to produce a commonsensical, pragmatic, neutral, apolitical, evidence-based form of responsive urban governance, it is nonetheless selective, crafted, flawed, normative and politically-inflected. Consequently, whilst data-driven, networked urbanism provides a set of solutions for urban problems, it does so within limitations and in the service of particular interests.


An unresolved issue in international macroeconomics is the apparent lack of risk-sharing across countries, which contradicts the prediction of models based on the assumption of complete markets. We assess the importance of financial frictions in this issue by constructing an incomplete market model with stationary net foreign assets (NFA) and imperfect pass-through (IPT). In this paper, there is a cost of bond holdings that allows us to incorporate the dynamics of NFA into the risk-sharing condition. On theoretical grounds, our results suggest that the dynamics of NFA may account for the lack of risk-sharing across countries. In addition, the IPT mechanism, by closing the current account channel, does not help to explain this feature of the data. On empirical grounds, we test the risk-sharing condition derived in the paper, and we find that growth factors of consumption and real exchange rates behave in a manner that may be consistent with a significant role for the net foreign asset position.


The interaction between unsteady heat release and acoustic pressure oscillations in gas turbines results in self-excited combustion oscillations which can potentially be strong enough to cause significant structural damage to the combustor. Correctly predicting the interaction of these processes, and anticipating the onset of these oscillations can be difficult. In recent years much research effort has focused on the response of premixed flames to velocity and equivalence ratio perturbations. In this paper, we develop a flame model based on the so-called G-Equation, which captures the kinematic evolution of the flame surfaces, under the assumptions of axisymmetry, and ignoring vorticity and compressibility. This builds on previous work by Dowling [1], Schuller et al. [2], Cho & Lieuwen [3], among many others, and extends the model to a realistic geometry, with two intersecting flame surfaces within a non-uniform velocity field. The inputs to the model are the free-stream velocity perturbations, and the associated equivalence ratio perturbations. The model also proposes a time-delay calculation wherein the time delay for the fuel convection varies both spatially and temporally. The flame response from this model was compared with experiments conducted by Balachandran [4, 5], and found to show promising agreement with experimental forced case. To address the primary industrial interest of predicting self-excited limit cycles, the model has then been linked with an acoustic network model to simulate the closed-loop interaction between the combustion and acoustic processes. This has been done both linearly and nonlinearly. The nonlinear analysis is achieved by applying a describing function analysis in the frequency domain to predict the limit cycle, and also through a time domain simulation. In the latter case, the acoustic field is assumed to remain linear, with the nonlinearity in the response of the combustion to flow and equivalence ratio perturbations. A transfer function from unsteady heat release to unsteady pressure is obtained from a linear acoustic network model, and the corresponding Green function is used to provide the input to the flame model as it evolves in the time domain. The predicted unstable frequency and limit cycle are in good agreement with experiment, demonstrating the potential of this approach to predict instabilities, and as a test bench for developing control strategies.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


Background Inexpensive high-throughput DNA sequencing has democratized access to genetic information for most organisms so that research utilizing a genome or transcriptome of an organism is not limited to model systems. However, the quality of the assemblies of sampled genomes can vary greatly which hampers utility for comparisons and meaningful interpretation. The uncertainty of the completeness of a given genome sequence can limit feasibility of asserting patterns of high rates of gene loss reported in many lineages. Results We propose a computational framework and sequence resource for assessing completeness of fungal genomes called FGMP (Fungal Genome Mapping Project). Our approach is based on evolutionary conserved sets of proteins and DNA elements and is applicable to various types of genomic data. We present a comparison of FGMP and state-of-the-art methods for genome completeness assessment utilizing 246 genome assemblies of fungi. We discuss genome assembly improvements/degradations in 57 cases where assemblies have been updated, as recorded by NCBI assembly archive. Conclusion FGMP is an accurate tool for quantifying level of completion from fungal genomic data. It is particularly useful for non-model organisms without reference genomes and can be used directly on unassembled reads, which can help reducing genome sequencing costs.


Moral gender differences have been discussed in terms of Kohlbergian stages and content of orientations and taken to correspond to universal stable male and female features. The present study instead focuses on moral motivation and explains differences in terms of role expectations. We assessed moral motivation in 203 adolescents by a newly developed rating procedure based on participants' open-ended responses to hypothetical moral conflicts and validated this measurement by two self-reports and one experiment. We used independent measures for the content of gender stereotypes and gender identification. Male stereotypes comprise mostly negative and morally unfavorable traits, female stereotypes mostly positive and morally favorable traits. A marginally significant relationship is found between high gender identification and low moral motivation in boys, not in girls. We take gender differences in moral motivation to result from an interaction between individually differing degrees of gender identification and content of culturally shared gender stereotypes.


Despite the understanding of scholars that masculinity, far from being a natural or stable concept, is in reality a social construction, the culture at large continues to privilege an idealized, coherent male point of view. "The Privilege of Crisis" draws on the work of authors such as H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad - as well as contemporary postcolonial writers such as J.M. Coetzee, Hanif Kureishi, and Zadie Smith - to show how recurrent references to a "crisis" of masculinity or the decline of masculinity serve largely to demonstrate and support positions of male privilege.


Spectrum based fault localization techniques such as Tarantula and Ochiai calculate the suspiciousness score of a program statement using the number of failing and passing test cases that execute the statement. These techniques implicitly assume that all test cases are equally important. However, research on test case generation and selection techniques has shown that using certain test cases can lead to more effective fault localization than others. In this paper, we present an approach to improve the effectiveness of spectrum based fault localization by incorporating the relative importance of different test cases in the calculation of suspiciousness scores.


Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most frequent cardiac arrhythmia, especially in older people. This condition is associated with an increased risk of stroke, and long term anticoagulation treatment is therefore needed. Vitamin K antagonists are effective in reducing the risk of stroke but optimal use of these drugs remains difficult. The development of new oral anticoagulant drugs is therefore highly relevant. Dabigatran is an oral direct thrombin inhibitor. Its prodrug, dabigatran etexilate, is marketed under the name of Pradaxa ® and was initially approved for the prevention of thromboembolic events in major orthopedic surgery. It has been recently approved for stroke prevention in patients with AF. The purpose of this paper is to review - in light of current knowledge - the interests and limits of using dabigatran etexilate in AF. Briefly, dabigatran etexilate is not inferior to warfarin in AF. However many questions remain unanswered, including questions related to the concomitant use of dabigatran etexilate and acetylsalicylic acid, the possible increased risk of myocardial infarction and the need for drug monitoring.


Entrepreneurship clusters in regions that have a favourable business environment or habitat. Some entrepreneurs succeed, against all odds, in less favourable habitats; however, these cases are not the norm and do not give rise to clusters of entrepreneurship. There is now a considerable amount of study of entrepreneurial clusters in various regions of the world that include an analysis of the institutions necessary to facilitate and sustain such a cluster. Broadly speaking, the features of these entrepreneurial clusters include a favourable regulatory regime, advanced research universities and research institutes that are well connected to industry, a flexible and mobile work force, mechanisms for maintaining global linkages, and formal associations and informal mechanisms that foster collective learning for the whole cluster. We will explore the character and development of these institutions by drawing upon studies of a number of established entrepreneurial clusters.


Fig. 1: The EventFlow display including the control panel and legend (left), the aggregated record display (middle), and the individual record display (right). Abstract— Our work on searching point-based event sequences with the Align, Rank, Filter, and Summary concepts produced a powerful tool (Lifelines2) that is being applied in an increasing set of medical and other applications. The LifeFlow aggregation tool expanded the capabilities of Lifelines2 to show common patterns of events on a single-screen display, resulting in the ability to summarize millions of individual patient records. However, users found that point-based event sequences limited their capacity to solve problems that had inherently interval attributes, for example, the 3-month interval during which patients took a medication. This paper reports on our development of EventFlow, an application that integrates interval-based events into the original LifeFlow mechanisms. Interval events represent a fundamental increase in complexity at every level of the application, from the input and data structure to the eventual questions that a user might ask of the data. Our goal was to accomplish this integration in a way that appeared to users as a simple and intuitive extension of the original LifeFlow tool. In this paper, we present novel solutions for displaying interval events, simplifying their visual impact, and incorporating them into meaningful queries. Index Terms—EventFlow, temporal event sequence, temporal event querying.


Mathieson, A. C., Pederson, J. R., Neefus, C. D., Dawes, C. J., and Bray, T. L. 2008. Multiple assessments of introduced seaweeds in the Northwest Atlantic. - ICES Journal of Marine Science, 65: 730-741.Historical and recent floristic studies, rapid assessment surveys, and molecular investigations were used to evaluate the occurrence of 20 seaweeds introduced to the Northwest Atlantic, including 2 green, 4 brown, and 14 red algae. Based on floristic comparisons of Mount Desert Island and Casco Bay, ME, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, some initial records of seaweed introductions were documented, as well as increased numbers of non-indigenous taxa. Detailed floristic studies in southern ME and NH from the mid-1960s to 2007 have revealed expansive patterns for two Asiatic taxa (Codium fragile subsp. tomentosoides and Neosiphonia harveyi). Rapid assessment surveys conducted between the Bay of Fundy and Long Island, NY, during four summers (2002, 2004, 2005, and 2007) revealed seven introduced species and a recent expansion of the Asiatic red alga Grateloupia turuturu into the Gulf of Maine. Molecular evaluations confirmed the presence of several cryptic introduced species of Porphyra from Asia. A synopsis of the dates of introduction, probable vectors, and sources of these 20 introduced taxa in the Northwest Atlantic is given, as well as comparisons of numbers of non-indigenous taxa from other geographies.


We theoretically and experimentally analyze Q-switched cladding pumped ytterbium-doped fiber lasers designed for high pulse energies. We compare the extractable energy from two high-energy fiber designs: (1) single- or few-moded low-NA large mode area (LMA) fibers and (2) large-core multimode fibers, which may incorporate a fiber taper for brightness enhancement. Our results show that the pulse energy is proportional to the effective core area and, therefore, LMA fibers and multimode fibers of comparable core size give comparable results. However, the energy storage in multimode fibers is mostly limited by strong losses due to amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) or even spurious lasing between pulses. The ASE power increases with the number of modes in a fiber. Furthermore, spurious feedback is more difficult to suppress with a higher NA, and Rayleigh back-scattering increases with higher NA, too. These effects are smaller in low-NA LMA fibers, allowing for somewhat higher energy storage. For the LMA fibers, we found that facet damage was a more severe restriction than ASE losses or spurious lasing. With a modified laser cavity, we could avoid facet damage in the LMA fiber, and reached output pulse energies as high as 2.3 mJ, limited by ASE. Theoretical estimates suggest that output pulse energies around 10 mJ are feasible with a larger core fiber, while maintaining a good beam quality.


Low required reserve balances in 1991 led to a sharp increase in the volatility of the federal funds rate, but similarly low balances in 1996 did not. This paper develops and simulates a microeconomic model of the funds market that explains these facts. We show that reductions in reserve balances increase the volatility of the federal funds rate, but that this relationship changes over time in response to observable changes in bank behavior. The model predicts that a continued decline in required reserves could increase funds-rate volatility significantly.


Fifty-seven clonal selections of the horn-type Maricongo cultivar were evaluated at six locations. Five of these selections averaged 44 marketable fruits and 13.1 kg/bunch. Although asexually propagated, variability within the clonal population was quite high for all the bunch and plant characteristics studied. Reversion from the horn to the French type occurred in some plants and others produced horn-type bunches with fewer than 30 large fruits. Both of these "off-type" plantains appeared randomly in the clonal populations at all locations. These "off-type" plants produced "true to type" offspring in subsequent Pn generations. An explanation of the possible mechanism responsible for this occurrence is discussed. Irrespective of clone, all plant and bunch characteristics were affected by location. Considering the variability observed within the clonal population as well as effects of the environment, it is estimated that 85% of the suckers originating from a Maricongo stump with a yield potential of 50 or more marketable fruits/bunch will produce bunches containing 40 or more fruits in the plant crop. If the 15% of the "off-type" plants are allowed to continue mingling within the population, they will multiply "true-to-type," and after Pn generations will constitute a majority in a clonal selection that once had a high yield potential.


Nineteenth and early twentieth-century Tunisia attracted a significant number of British Travellers. The majority of these were males, but there was a ubiquitous presence of women who recorded their perceptions of various aspects of the Tunisian culture and society. Yet the experience of these female travellers has not been taken as a subject of historical research in its own right. This paper seeks to fill in this historical gap by focusing on these women's representations of the Tunisian land and people in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. The period coincided with a notable increase in the number of women travellers who visited Tunisia such as Lady Herbert, Norma Lorimer, Francis Nesbitt, Erskine Stewart, and others. This paper argues that these women's travelogues cannot be dismissed as orientalist texts. It reveals that their representations of the Tunisian land and people are not homogenous but a mixture of condemnation and admiration .


As Heritage (1997: 166) notes, it is important to build an "overall 'map' of the interaction in order to look at the task orientation of particular institutional discourse." This paper depicts the overall structure of graduate peer tutoring, and more specifically, the components of an advising sequence oriented to by the participants in graduate peer tutoring. The data set consists of 15 graduate peer tutoring sessions collected over a period of four years at a US university. A detailed analysis yields a composite picture of the advising sequence, which appears to be driven by two preferences: (1) a preference for grounding one's advice in a specific problem in the manuscript, and (2) a preference for tutee-initiated solutions.


In the hunt of phages for Gram-negative multiple drug resistant organisms, we have collected lytic phages.These were characterized by identification of genome nucleic acids and proteins profile of capsid. However present study was proceed with the phages isolated form urine of athlete lady.Microbiological examination of urine sample revealed the presence of E.coli as etiologic agent in urinary tract infection (UTI) patient.Filter sterilized urine produced enornomous amount of phages as indicated by plaque assay on the lawn of two local strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, P5 and P6. Electron micrograph of the lysates prepared from urine in Ps5 and Ps6 strains indicated the particles similar to Siphovirideae and Myoviradeae respectively.Absence of Pseudomonas in urine sample during active disease and absence of phages in convalescent patient's urine was significant features that refer the association of these phages to E. coli. Urea induced E. coli lysate was used to raise lysates in P5 and P6 strain of Ps.aeruginosa called U9P5 and U9P6.Small clear and large clear plaques were exhibited on the lawn of P5 and P6 by these lysates.P5S and PS6 lysates were raised in P5 and P6 from single small plaque each on the lawn of P5 and P6 respectively.Similarly PL5 and PL6 lysates were produced in respective host from single large plaque each. Genomes of these Фs were identified as dsDNA. DNA restriction analysis of all four lysates revealed very similar restriction pattern.Hybridization with DNA probe of PS6 and PL5 has indicated the homology in the DNA from these lysates.Methylated and unmethylated CpG motifs were identified in genome DNA of these phages.To test the immuno- stimulatory effects mice and rabbits were vaccinated with killed cell of S.typhi with or without fragmented genome DNA of these phages.In addition adjuvant efficacy of CpG motifs was compared with mineral oil. In antisera, types of antibodies were determined by immunoelectrophoresis and Western blotting.ELISA was done for Quantative analysis, have shown IgG immunoglobulin was produced in BALB/c mice and rabbit when fragmented DNA was used as adjuvant.In antisera raised by Ф DNA vaccine, strong and specific immunogenicity has been attributed due to the presence of CpG motifs.Difference in immune response in animals immunized by Ф DNA vaccine was detected that may be associated with the frequency of CpG island in the DNA.Ps. Ф DNA has additional CpG sites, compare to E.coli Ф DNA and this may enhance immunopotentional of its CpG motifs.PS5 phage has shown cross reactivity with HCV antisera.In order to confirm the cross reactivity of phage and antisera, the 100 sera samples from the HCV +ve patients were tested by ELISA on coated plates with HCV antigen, phage and Ps.and have exhibited significant cross reaction with phage lysates.In order to determine genomic relation, PCR products raised by HCV specific primers were sequenced and aligned with HCV genome.BLAST, Gene locater and QuickAling software have shown homology with the 5'-UTR, 3'-UTR and NS3 regions of different HCV genotypes.A range of primers pair corresponding to different antibiotic resistance trait were used to see whether this phage is a carrier of any antibiotic resistant trait.ClustalW, BLASTn, BLASTx, ScanProsite and Swiss-Prot analysis of sequenced PCR products have shown that this phage carries VanA cassette implicated to vancomycin resistance.Van S & R primers have shown homology with histidine kinase and DNA-binding response regulators respectively.Interestingly Ps Ф genome was found to contain a composite transposon which was evolved from the combination of IS1216 and 1546 transposons.These transposons were associated with Gram-positive bacteria i.e.Enterococci.VanB gene primers highlighted seven signature sequence on phage genome correspond to Walker B motifs of ABC-transporter proteins of Enterococcus faecalis V583 in addition phage genome has reflected the presence of some functional domain i.e.SAM which is commonly present in eukaryotic proteins.Our studies provide the strong evidence that lytic life cycle of this phage has therapeutic implications, not only for superficial infection, but effective for systematic infections as well.It is interesting to note that CpG motifs of phage DNA may have potential to enhance efficacy of antimicrobial therapies supported by DNA vaccine.


Biomineralization is a process of creating crystalline structures under biological control. The process takes place in hard tissues, such as bones, cartilages, and teeth. Biominerals are a combination of a crystal phase deposited onto an organic matrix. Inorganic components are mainly responsible for the biomineral hardness, while the organic matrix controls the shape, size, and polymorph of the crystals. Within the organic matrix, proteins exhibit a special biomineralization activity. Among them, one can distinguish insoluble collagen and soluble noncollagenous proteins. It is particularly noteworthy that noncollagenous proteins are intrinsically disordered proteins. High flexibility, acidic nature, and susceptibility to modifications make them especially adapted to the biomineralization control. This review paper is dedi-cated to the proteins which are involved in biomineralization of bones and teeth.


Abstract Sudden cardiac death is a rare but socially devastating event. The most common causes of sudden cardiac death are congenital electrical disorders and structural heart diseases. The majority of these diseases have an incomplete penetrance and variable expression; therefore, patients may be unaware of their illness. In several cases, physical activity can be the trigger for sudden cardiac death as first symptom. Our purpose is to review the causes of sudden cardiac death in sportive children and young adults and its genetic background. Symptomatic individuals often receive an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, the preventive treatment for sudden cardiac death in most of cases due to channelopathies, which can become a challenging option in young and active patients. The identification of one of these diseases in asymptomatic patients has similarly a great impact on their everyday life, especially on their ability to undertake competitive physical activities, and the requirement of prophylactic treatment. We review main causes of sudden cardiac death in relation to its genetics and diagnostic work-up.


We consider the machine teaching problem in a classroom-like setting wherein the teacher has to deliver the same examples to a diverse group of students. Their diversity stems from differences in their initial internal states as well as their learning rates. We prove that a teacher with full knowledge about the learning dynamics of the students can teach a target concept to the entire classroom using O(min{d,N}log 1/ɛ) exam-ples, where d is the ambient dimension of the problem, N is the number of learners, and ɛ is the accuracy parameter. We show the robustness of our teaching strategy when the teacher has limited knowledge of the learners' internal dynamics as provided by a noisy oracle. Further, we study the trade-off between the learners' workload and the teacher's cost in teaching the target concept. Our experiments validate our theoretical results and suggest that appropriately partitioning the classroom into homogenous groups provides a balance between these two objectives.


SUMMARY: To determine whether an increase in the quantity of lipids ingested by sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) broodstock could improve egg quality, three year-old sea bass were fed three different diets: a natural diet (Control group), and two artificial diets containing 10% or 17% of total lipids. In two consecutive reproductive seasons, the spawning results, the lipid classes and the fatty acid composition of the eggs were studied. No differences in the absolute content of lipids or in the percentage of different lipid classes were observed between the eggs from the three groups. Both experimental groups fed with the artificial diets produced eggs of poor quality, with low percentages of buoyancy and hatching. Those observed in the eggs from the Control Group were significantly higher (p>0.01) than those of the experimental groups. The higher hatching rate of the eggs from the Control Group was associated with higher DHA:EPA and AA:EPA ratios. The data obtained showed that the fatty acid composition of the eggs was affected by the fatty acid composition of the diets but not by the total quantity of lipids administered to the broodstock.


We report a high power narrow-linewidth source at approximately 2 microm based on a Tm-doped fiber distributed-feedback master-oscillator and three Tm fiber amplifier stages. The master-oscillator and first two amplifier stages were in-band pumped by Er,Yb fiber lasers operating at 1565 nm, and the final stage amplifier was cladding-pumped at 795 nm by two spatially-combined diode-stacks. The MOPA yielded 100 W of single frequency output at 1943 nm with a beam propagation factor (M(2)) of 1.25 and with a polarization extinction ratio of >94%. The output power was limited by thermally-induced damage in the final amplifier stage. The prospects for further power scaling are considered.


Academic work on agents and ontologies is often oblivious to the complexities and realities of enterprise computing. At the same time, the practitioners of enterprise computing, although they are adept at the building of robust, real-life enterprise applications, are unaware of the academic body of work and the opportunities of applying novel approaches of academic origin. Enterprise applications are very complex systems that are designed to support critical business operations. This article outlines the technical and business foundations of enterprise application software and briefly discusses viable opportunities for agents and ontology research.


This paper explores the use of social media or Web 2.0 services for an international collaborative project. Participants in this collaboration used free and inexpensive social media tools to communicate and work together. This case study presents a model for using inexpensive social media tools to forge new partnerships among academic libraries. Academic libraries can now tap the expertise of fellow librarians in other countries and explore new cultures to improve and extend their services without the huge financial cost once attributed to international collaboration.


This study proposes an optimal scheduling model for rehabilitation based on the deterioration prediction of existing pipes by using the deterioration survey method for a water distribution system. The deterioration prediction model divides the deterioration degree of each pipe into 5 degrees by using the Probabilistic Neural Networks (PNN). Furthermore, the maximum residual service time is estimated by the calculated deterioration degree for each pipe and pipe diameter. The optimal rehabilitation model by integer programming (IP), based on the shortest path, can calculate the time and cost of maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. Consequently, the model proposed by the study can be utilized as a quantitative method for the management of a water distribution system.


This dissertation deals with the morphological development in written L2 French by Swedish learners. The thesis presents a detailed analysis of number marking and agreement in NPs and VPs, focusing mainly on the production of the morphemes –s (in NP) and the third person plural –nt (in VP). These agreements are particularly interesting in French where number morphology is often silent in the oral language and thus potentially difficult to produce in writing. The aim of the thesis is to describe the developmental sequence of number morphology in written L2 French, from an initial to a lower advanced level, and to discuss underlying factors that influence the morphological development in this domain. The results are interpreted through two different theoretical models: Pienemann's Processability Theory (1998) and Goldschneider's and DeKeyser's multiple factors approach (2001). The empirical part of the thesis is based on the CEFLE corpus (Corpus Ecrit de Francais Langue Etrangere) which includes approximately 400 texts written in L2 French by instructed Swedish learners and by a French control group. A cross-sectional and a longitudinal study of this material are presented. The cross-sectional study of four groups of learners (N=105) and the French controls (N=30) demonstrates a clear and gradual development in the L2 production of number morphology. The following sequence is observed: 1) plural marking on nouns/pronouns and quantifiers, 2) determiner-noun agreement, 3) subject-verb agreement, and, last of all, 4) noun-adjective agreement. It is argued that the lack of phonological saliency has a minor influence on the acquisition of plural morphology in written L2 French in the instructional setting as compared to L1 acquisition. It is also shown that the semantically motivated plural markers are used initially and that the high morphological regularity in the plural, and possibly transfer, has an impact on the acquisition process at initial levels. A multiple factors approach, as proposed by Goldschneider and DeKeyser, is necessary to understand the very late noun-adjective agreement in written L2 French. The longitudinal study of fifteen individual learners, framed within the Processability Theory, shows a similar developmental pattern to that of the cross-sectional study. In general terms, the morphological development observed in the data can be accounted for by Pienemann's processing hierarchy. However, the analysis calls for the notion of intra-stage sequencing in order to explain the differences within developmental stages, especially at the phrasal level (NP). Other factors than processing constraints, such as morphological regularity, syntactic status and frequency seem important to understand the details of the observed development. In conclusion, the learners show a gradual and rather early morphological development of plural marking in written L2 French. The two theoretical approaches meet different problems when applied to the written French L2 data. This observation raises the question of a possible synthesis of the two models discussed in this thesis. (Less)


Since Leeper's (1991, Journal of Monetary Economics 27, 129-147) seminal paper, an extensive literature has argued that if fiscal policy is passive, i.e., guarantees public debt stabilization irrespectively of the inflation path, monetary policy can independently be committed to inflation targeting. This can be pursued by following the Taylor principle, i.e., responding to upward perturbations in inflation with a more than one-for-one increase in the nominal interest rate. This paper analyzes an optimizing framework in which the government can only finance public expenditures by levying distortionary taxes. It is demonstrated that households' market participation constraints and Laffer-type effects can render passive fiscal policies unfeasible. For any given target inflation rate, there exists a threshold level of public debt beyond which monetary policy independence is no longer possible. In such circumstances, the dynamics of public debt can be controlled only by means of higher inflation tax revenues: inflation dynamics in line with the fiscal theory of the price level must take place in order for macroeconomic stability to be guaranteed. Otherwise, to preserve inflation control around the steady state by following the Taylor principle, monetary policy must target a higher inflation rate.


The perceptual organization of natural scenes requires a global evaluation of spatially separated retinal image features. In the encoding of border-ownership, for instance, information from remote image locations co-determines the belongingness of a boundary to one of the two abutting surfaces. In natural viewing conditions a stable perceptual organization is established in a split-second, despite the low quality and the inherent ambiguity of the retinal input. This quick inference seems only possible through the use of prior knowledge on the structure of both the world and the visual input resulting from that world. Over the past few decades, natural systems analysis has successfully identified local-scale structure in natural images, and has related this structure to locally defined principles of perceptual organization (e.g., good continuation, co-linearity). In the current study, we extract more global scene statistics related to contours, shapes and objects, and examine their role in global-scale organizational processes. First, we record the contrast-polarity of luminance-defined oriented edges in natural images. We then analyze the consistency of contrast-polarity within a pair of spatially separated edges. We find that this consistency statistically depends on the geometrical relationship between the edges. Specifically, the resulting pattern reveals a co-circular organization of edges in natural images. To investigate the source of the observed co-circularity, we apply the same analysis on a subset of edges that do or do not coincide with human-traced object boundaries. We show that co-circularity is mainly preserved when the analysis is constrained on edges that fall on object boundaries, while it is largely reduced for edges that do not coincide with object boundaries. We conclude that large-scale statistical regularities in the input can be exploited by the visual system in global processes of perceptual organization in general, and in the computation of border-ownership in particular. Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015.


We consider a wide class of functionals with the property of changing their growth and ellipticity properties according to the modulating coefficients in the framework of Musielak–Orlicz spaces. In particular, we provide an optimal condition on the modulating coefficient to establish the Holder regularity and Harnack inequality for quasiminimizers of the generalized double phase functional with (G,H)-growth for two Young functions G and H.


This study is the second of a series of seven, and belongs to the second Italian systematic replication of findings from two previous series (Widdowson 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2013; Benelli, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c) that investigated the effectiveness of a manualised transactional analysis treatment for depression through Hermeneutic Single-Case Efficacy Design. The therapist was a white Italian woman with 10 years of clinical experience and the client, Caterina, was a 28-year old white Italian woman who attended 16 sessions of transactional analysis psychotherapy. Caterina satisfied DSM-5 criteria for major depressive disorder with generalized anxiety disorder. The conclusion of the judges was that this was an outstanding good-outcome case: the depressive symptoms showed an early clinical and reliable improvement, maintained till the 6 months follow-up, accompanied by reductions in anxiety symptoms, global distress and severity of personal problems. Adherence to the manualised treatment for depression appears good to excellent. In this case study, transactional analysis treatment for depression has proven its efficacy in treating major depressive disorder in comorbidity with anxiety disorder.


The article, written at the peak of lockdown and closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic in Israel, describes the government's initial response to the employment crisis (up to the 10th of April 2020). A host of emergency regulations affected the continuation of employment, and the provision of a social security safety net. Following a short description of the legal developments, the article notes some problems in the immediate response at times of crisis, including the use of the social security (unemployment insurance) system in lieu of encouraging the continuation of work to the extent medically possible, a differentiation between categories of work-providers in the public and private sectors, the gendered aspect of responses and the exceptional difficulties faced by those who are part of the weaker segments in the workforce.


We examine the status of dark matter (heavy photon) in the littlest Higgs model with T parity (LHT) in light of the new results from the LHC Higgs search, the Planck dark matter relic density, and the XENON100 limit on the dark matter scattering off the nucleon. We obtain the following observations: (i) For the LHC Higgs data, the LHT can well be consistent with the CMS results but disfavored by the ATLAS observation of diphoton enhancement; (ii) for the dark matter relic density, the heavy photon in the LHT can account for the Planck data for the small mass splitting of mirror lepton and heavy photon; (iii) for the dark matter scattering off the nucleon, the heavy photon can give a spin-independent cross section below the XENON100 upper limit for m(AH) > 95 GeV (f > 665 GeV); (iv) a fit using the CMS Higgs data gives the lowest chi square of 2.63 (the standard model value is 4.75) at f similar or equal to 1120 GeV and m(AH) similar or equal to 170 GeV (at this point, the dark matter constraints from Planck and XENON100 can also be satisfied). Such a best point and its nearby favored region (even for an f value up to 3.8 TeV) can be covered by the future XENON1T (2017) experiment.


The role of water repellency in forming preferred how paths, and in accelerating solute transport, is explained on the basis of extensive field measurements in a grass-covered, extremely water-repellent sandy soil in the coastal region of the Netherlands. It was shown that following wetting of the 9-cm-thick humous topsoil to around 20–25 vol.%, preferred how paths, or fingers, were formed in the sandy subsoil. The fingers started at the layer interface at 'weak' spots with a relatively low degree of potential water repellency, and protruded vertically into the sandy subsoil. Flow through the fingers caused water-repellent substances to be leached from the topsoil to the subsoil, progressively fixating the finger positions. Laboratory analysis revealed that wetting of dry, water-repellent soil between the vertically directed fingers is an extremely slow process compared with wetting of dry, non-water-repellent, or slightly water-repellent, soil. Evidence was presented that fingers at the field site disappeared during dry periods and recurred at the same location during new rain events. Vertical solute leaching down the fingers was greater by a factor of 3 than that estimated on a piston flow basis. The development of new simulation models capable of predicting water and solute transport through water-repellent soils is urgently needed.


Creating open-ended algorithms, which generate their own never-ending stream of novel and appropriately challenging learning opportunities, could help to automate and accelerate progress in machine learning. A recent step in this direction is the Paired Open-Ended Trailblazer (POET), an algorithm that generates and solves its own challenges, and allows solutions to goal-switch between challenges to avoid local optima. However, the original POET was unable to demonstrate its full creative potential because of limitations of the algorithm itself and because of external issues including a limited problem space and lack of a universal progress measure. Importantly, both limitations pose impediments not only for POET, but for the pursuit of open-endedness in general. Here we introduce and empirically validate two new innovations to the original algorithm, as well as two external innovations designed to help elucidate its full potential. Together, these four advances enable the most open-ended algorithmic demonstration to date. The algorithmic innovations are (1) a domain-general measure of how meaningfully novel new challenges are, enabling the system to potentially create and solve interesting challenges endlessly, and (2) an efficient heuristic for determining when agents should goal-switch from one problem to another (helping open-ended search better scale). Outside the algorithm itself, to enable a more definitive demonstration of open-endedness, we introduce (3) a novel, more flexible way to encode environmental challenges, and (4) a generic measure of the extent to which a system continues to exhibit open-ended innovation. Enhanced POET produces a diverse range of sophisticated behaviors that solve a wide range of environmental challenges, many of which cannot be solved through other means.


Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA) is an autosomal recessive, degenerative disease that involves the central and peripheral nervous systems and the heart. A gene, X25, was identified in the critical region for the FRDA locus on chromosome 9q13. The gene encodes a 210-amino acid protein, frataxin, that has homologs in distant species such as Caenorhabditis elegans and yeast. A few FRDA patients were found to have point mutations in X25, but the majority were homozygous for an unstable GAA trinucleotide expansion in the first X25 intron.


Breastfeeding provides significant health benefits to both mother and child. The average rate of breastfeeding in the UK is around 67%. Rates in areas of high social deprivation are lower than this. In the wards of Walker and Byker in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, just 47% of women breastfeed their children at birth.

This paper explores how a biographical methodological approach has been used to elicit women's 'infant feeding stories' in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, helping to "make sense of what has been and what is happening in ... lives, cultures, communities and societies" (O'Neill, Roberts and Sparkes, 2015 p.1). These stories are part of a research study which aims to explore socio-cultural factors relating to infant feeding decisions. To date six women have been interviewed.

The use of one 'generative narrative question' (Riemann and Schutze, 1987, p.353 cited in Flick, 2009, p.177) has allowed the women to be in control of the interview process; to tell their story without interruption and through the use of their own frame of reference and vocabulary. This approach has allowed the women space to introduce others into their stories. These social actors, friends, family members and health professionals are often included though the use of direct speech (James, Hall and Collins, submitted). It is argued that this method produces 'a richer version of the events' (Flick, 2009, p.179) than by using other methods.

To conclude, this paper will map some of the women's stories. This will demonstrate the complexity surrounding influences present for women during this important decision making process.


In manufacturing processes, surfaces and their properties are as important as the bulk properties of the materials. Surface treatment is an important aspect of all manufacturing processes. It has been used to impart certain physical and mechanical properties, such as appearance, corrosion, friction, wear and fatigue resistance. Widely used methods of finishing treatment that create necessary parts with the given roughness usually do not provide optimum quality of the surface. Therefore, methods of surface plastic deformation (SPD) are used. One of the most effective representative is the diamond pressing. In this paper the effect of diamond pressing process with a different pressing force (50, 100,150,200,250) N on the state of heat-treated alloy steel surfaces was studied and the results of the experiments are presented. Enhancements on the micro hardness of the heat treated alloy steel surfaces that have been processed by diamond pressing up to the following percentages compared to the ground surfaces: 32, 28, 31 and 43% for D2, O1, H13 and 3115 hardened alloy steel surfaces, respectively. In addition, it has been shown that there is an enhancement on the surface quality of heat-treated alloy steel surfaces. The best enhancement of the average surface roughness (Ra) was 16.6, 45, 36 and 50% for D2, O1, H13 and 3115, respectively, which are heat-treated. For the microstructure analysis, micrograph of the processed surfaces of D2 heat-treated alloy steel was given. It has been shown that the depth of plastic deformed layer about 200 I¼m. Experimental scheme for wear testing of steel shaft in the friction couple type "shaft-cuff" and results has been given in this paper. It has been shown that Diamond pressing process has a considerable effect on the wear resistance of D2 heat treated alloy steel and it is concluded that the DPP has an improvement on the wear resistance of D2 heat treated alloy steel shaft that have been processed by diamond pressing relative to the ground shaft.


We describe a method for discovery of new tumor antigens that uses dendritic cells (DCs) as antigen-presenting cells to prime autologous naive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells from healthy donors against tumor proteins and peptides. For the identification of HLA class I-restricted tumor antigens, peptides were extracted from tumor HLA class I molecules, fractionated by reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography, and loaded onto in vitro-generated DCs to prime naïve CD8+ T cells. Our results show that we were able to prime naive CD8+ T cells in vitro to several peptide fractions and generate specificity for the tumor. Electrospray ionization mass spectrometry was used to confirm that these fractions contained peptides derived from MHC class I molecules, and the primed CD8+ T cells were used to further analyze the immunostimulatory peptide fractions. For the identification of HLA class II-restricted tumor antigens, we fractionated tumor protein extracts using reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography and loaded individual fractions onto DCs to prime naive CD4+ T cells. Our results show that we were also able to prime naive CD4+ T cells to several protein fractions and generate specificity for the tumor. These results illustrate the potential of this method to identify new immunostimulatory MHC class I- and class II-restricted tumor antigens.


Central to Robert Kane's libertarian free will is the distinction between two kinds of action: (1) undetermined self-forming actions by means of which we shape our characters, and (2) actions that are determined by our freely formed characters. Daniel Dennett challenges the coherence of this distinction, but I argue that his arguments rely on highly controversial assumptions. In an effort to improve on Dennett's criticism, I argue that some considerations about non-self-forming actions, when coupled with Kane's naturalistic framework, imply that all choices are undetermined, which undercuts the distinction between his two categories of action. I then show that this conclusion threatens to undermine the very idea of self-formation Kane seeks to develop.


Cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in the United States, and accounts for over 5% of health spending in the U.S. Further, both the disease and financial burden of cancer are predicted to grow in the coming years as the population ages and expensive new treatments are developed. While genomics will play a key role in understanding and treating cancer going forward, recent opinions of cancer treatment also reflect a focus on increasing the efficiency of treatment and strengthening the oncology infrastructure. Meeting these goals will be crucial to the maintenance of Public Health. The Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) epitomizes this outlook, and seeks to improve prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer by supporting academic-based cancer centers that receive support from the Nation Cancer Institute (NCI). Their Physician Clinical Leadership Initiative (PCLI) furthers this goal by uniting center leadership and helping them to share vital experience across the nation. As part of this essay, I analyzed data from a self-assessment exercise performed by PCLI at their 2016 annual meeting. Analysis revealed insight into where physician leaders felt their centers were positioned in several key subject areas (such as oncology quality programs, clinical operations, and translating research into practice), where they felt their centers should be, where there was variation in the state of centers across the nation according to physician leadership, and the extent of agreement or disagreement among centers regarding their goals. These results will be used to assess which subject areas are priority targets for improvement. Finally, AACI also reflects the advancing role of genomics in cancer care through their Molecular Diagnostics Initiative.