In Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven firefighters case, the Supreme Court decided as a matter of law that New Haven had committed intentional disparate treatment discrimination against some of the white testtakers when it did not use the results of a promotion test because its use would have resulted in an adverse effect on black and Latino testtakers. A careful reading of Ricci establishes how it has a significant potential impact on all disparate treatment cases. Because liability was established simply on the fact that New Haven knew the racial consequences of deciding not to use the test scores, the Court has logically extended what amounts to a "color-blind" standard from the Court's earlier decisions challenging affirmative action plans to Title VII disparate treatment cases. This article develops how this "color-blind" standard applies as an easy way to establish the intent to discriminate element in all disparate treatment cases, whether in "reverse" discrimination cases like Ricci or in cases brought by members of racial minorities. With such an easy to prove standard for proving what had been the challenging intent to discriminate element in disparate treatment cases, it has become relatively easy for plaintiffs to prove discrimination whenever the employer knows the race of the affected workers. This reduces significantly the significance of the close to universal state law that presumes employment is at-will.This view of Ricci appears quite surprising because the decision was supported by the conservative wing of the Court. Nevertheless, it would be a return to the separate-but-equal standard of Plessy v. Ferguson if the Court failed to extend its Ricci analysis to disparate treatment claims of race discrimination brought by members of racial minority groups if it continued to view Ricci as good law. Even as conservative as the present Court is, that should be an unthinkable result. Further, reading Ricci as broadening the use of disparate treatment discrimination is consistent with the approach that the Court, through opinions by Justice Kennedy, has developed the earlier anti-animus jurisprudence to attack laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation. Finally, the application of the Ricci approach to proving intent to discriminate is justified since employment discrimination persists despite 50 years of application of Title VII. Given the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere, that persistence flows from the broad existence and effect of implicit bias.


Over the last decade the flying patterns and foraging behavior of bees have become a matter of public policy in the European Union. Determined to establish a system where transgenic crops can 'coexist' with conventional and organic farming, the EU has begun to erect a system of demarcations and separations designed to minimize the extent of 'gene flow' from genetically modified plants. As the European landscape is regimented through the introduction of isolation distances and buffer zones, bees and other pollinating insects have become vectors of 'genetic pollution', disrupting the project of cohabitation and purification devised by European authorities. Drawing on the work of Michel Serres on parasitism, this paper traces the emergence of bees as an object of regulatory scrutiny and as an interruptor of the 'coexistence' project. Along with bees, however, another uninvited guest arrived unexpectedly on the scene: The beekeeper, who came to see his traditional relationship to bees, crops, and consumers at risk. The figure of the parasite connects the two essential dynamics described in this paper: an escalation of research and the intensification of political attributes.


In the early 1990s, the debate on human trafficking was restricted to a handful of feminists and revolved around establishing "the trafficking of women" as a case of labor migration or one of "female sexual slavery." Two decades later, the debate is more complicated and widespread, yet within the proliferation of attention, a convergence among some of the most vocal and visible campaigns is discernible. This article takes up three prominent campaigns that dominate contemporary debates internationally—modern anti-slavery, abolitionist feminism, and celebrity humanitarianism—and considers the politics that emerge at the points of their convergence. It is argued that rather than getting to "the bottom of things," as Emma Goldman urged over a century ago in relation to the "traffic of women," a 21st-century version of the "white man's burden" is apparent, supported by contemporary western, neoliberal interests that maintain boundaries between the haves and the have-nots, while bolstering an image of a compassionate, benevolent West. The article points toward an alternate framework, one that is lodged in a commitment to social and economic justice, decolonization, a redistribution of wealth, and respect for subaltern experience and knowledge.


System time is increasing on enterprise workloads as multi-core and non-uniform memory architecture (NUMA) systems become mainstream. A defining characteristic of the increase in system time is an increase in reference costs due to contention of shared resources— instances of poor memory locality also play a role. An exploration of these issues reveals further opportunities to improve kernel scalability. This paper examines kernel lock and scalability issues encountered on enterprise workloads. These issues are examined at a software level through structure definition and organization, and at a hardware level through cache line contention characteristics and system performance metrics. Issues and opportunities are illustrated in the process scheduler, I/O paths, timers, slab, and IPC.


This study was to identify the relationship between students' oral proficiency score as measured by the School Based Oral English Assessment (SBOEA) and achievement result of English Language by grade in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) 1119 English Language paper. It was also conducted to determine whether Higher English Language Proficiency Students (HELPS) performed equally well on SBOEA and English language in SPM. The model used for the study is a framework based on the work by Bachman and Palmer (1996). The model displays correspondences between communicative language ability, language competence, language use and language performance. The language use tasks were the activities that involved students in using English language in the oral assessment (SBOEA) and in the SPM examination. About 382 Form Five students of SMK Muara Tuang, Kota Samarahan Sarawak were used as subjects for this study and these subjects were those who sat for their SPM examination in 2010. A correlational method and Paired-Samples t-Test were applied in this study in which it tried to find a relationship between scores of students in oral as measured by SBOEA and results of English language in SPM and also the differences on HELPS' scores on SBOEA and English language results. The findings indicated that there were high relationships between students SBOEA's scores and English language results. There were also differences between HELPS scores and English language results. Some pedagogical and methodological suggestions and recommendation were suggested for future studies such as improving techniques and styles on teaching and learning which can affect students' motivation in learning English. The future studies also can focus on results between male and female students and also between science and arts classes. The use of questionnaires and interviews also can be used as research instruments.


Abstract Over the past decade, journalists have created in-depth interactive narratives to provide an alternative to the relentless 24-hour news cycle. Combining different media forms, such as text, audio, video, and data visualisation with the interactive possibilities of digital media, these narratives involve users in the narrative in new ways. In journalism studies, the convergence of different media forms in this manner has gained significant attention. However, interactivity as part of this form has been left underappreciated. In this study, we scrutinise how navigational structure, expressed as navigational cues, shapes user agency in their individual explorations of the narrative. By approaching interactive narratives as story spaces with unique interactive architectures, in this article, we reconstruct the architecture of five Dutch interactive narratives using the walkthrough method. We find that the extensiveness of the interactive architectures can be described on a continuum between closed and open navigational structures that predetermine and thus shape users' trajectories in diverse ways.


A sense of certainty and unhesitating confidence is rare in the contemporary world. An unrelenting flow of choices confronts us at nearly every moment of our lives, and if we are honest about it then most of us will admit that we waver in the face of them. Dreyfus and Kelly examine some of the greatest books in the Western Canon to explain that the burden of choice is essentially a modern problem to which there is an age old solution. Dreyfus and Kelly explain the huge jump from Homer's polytheistic world to the monotheistic one in which Dante wrote his Divine Comedy and Martin Luther wrote his ninety-five theses. They then take the reader forward to the rejection of this Christian ideal, to the Superman of Nietzsche and further onto the spiritual cornucopia of Herman Melville's Moby Dick.Arrivingat the ennui and emptiness that pervades our modern world in which the work of Elizabeth Gilbert and David Foster Wallace arose, Dreyfus and Kelly offer a new-and very old-way to embrace the world, a fresh way to live a meaningful life in a secular world


We present an interactive breadboard activity simulation (IBAS) to educate users in acquiring psychomotor skills in electrical circuitry pertaining to the ammeter, voltmeter and multimeter instruments. Psychomotor skills learning involves the association of cognitive functions with motor functions to make the task autonomous with repeated practice, and promoting better recall. In electrical circuitry, this is demonstrated by the fine movements involved in handling and manipulating components on the electrical circuit, particularly while measuring electrical parameters that facilitates learning. Two display metaphors are currently implemented in IBAS, the FishtankVR (FVR) and head-mounted display (HMD) viewing conditions. In an initial user study, we found that users effectively learned the psychomotor skills pertaining to electrical circuitry using IBAS.


In numerous studies over the years, body image and dysfunctional attitudes toward food have shown to be related to the genesis of eating disorders. Recent research has particularly focused on the influence that families have on both the development of eating disorders as well as their impact on their child's body image and eating attitudes .. In general, higher levels of expressed emotion are often found in families with children who have either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. However, there is a lack of research on sub-clinical populations. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the influence that expressed emotion has on body image and eating attitudes, which are often markers of sub-clinical eating dysfunction. Ninety-nine female undergraduate students from Butler University completed questionnaires assessing eating attitudes, restraint, body shape, fear of becoming fat, and expressed emotion. My hypothesis is that a high level of expressed emotion in families is positively correlated with dysfunctional attitudes toward food and distorted body image. Pearson correlations showed that indeed there are significant relationships between high expressed emotion and negative eating attitudes, increased restraint in eating patterns, poor body image, and fear of becoming fat in college-aged women. Results are discussed in light of relevant theory.


The new plant for the treatment of water from the Wahnbach-reservoir went into operation at Siegburg, Germany in 2001. It will have a capacity of 3,600 to 4,800 m 3 /h and is intended for drinking water supply of the Bonn region. The relatively simple water treatment process achieves its high performance and safety from the sophisticated process layout and control developed from 40 years of research and experience at the Wahnbach Reservoir Association. According to temporal needs permanganate and/or powdered activated carbon can be applied for pretreatment. Flocculation is either possible with Al 3+ - or Fe 3+ -salt solutions introduced by optimized flash-mixing and destabilization. Immediately afterwards at the inlet into the 12 aggregation and filtration trains it is possible to inactivate motile planktonic organisms by means of cavitation fields generated by ultrasound at 40 kHz. In the following aggregation step flocs are generated tailored to optimum retention in the double media filters which are regenerated via high speed build-up backwashing. Release of plankton and microorganisms accumulated in the filter bed by motile plankton is inhibited by the ultrasound treatment. A continuously high filtrate quality is achieved by stacked filter-runs of the 12 filters adapted to the water quality with backwashes graded at equal time intervals after identical filter-run times, a filter to waste period after backwash first filtrate separation and permanent turbidity monitoring at the individual filtrate outlets. Disinfection is achieved with 3 closed UV-systems equipped, performance tested and certified according to the DVGW technical standard W 294 and is followed by conventional. de-acidification with addition of lime water. The paper will describe and explain the process concept which has been worked out and validated by WTV within the framework of several research projects.


Ensemble waveform analysis is used to calculate signal to noise ratio (SNR) and other recording characteristics from micromagnetically modeled heat assisted magnetic recording waveforms and waveforms measured at both drive and spin-stand level. Using windowing functions provides the breakdown between transition and remanence SNRs. In addition, channel bit density (CBD) can be extracted from the ensemble waveforms using the di-bit extraction method. Trends in both transition SNR, remanence SNR, and CBD as a function of ambient temperature at constant track width showed good agreement between model and measurement. Both model and drive-level measurement show degradation in SNR at higher ambient temperatures, which may be due to changes in the down-track profile at the track edges compared with track center. CBD as a function of cross-track position is also calculated for both modeling and spin-stand measurements. The CBD widening at high cross-track offset, which is observed at both measurement and model, was directly related to the radius of curvature of the written transitions observed in the model and the thermal profiles used.


The intent of this brief article is to answer the logical question, "What sort of mathematics could be used to explain how non-locality (entanglement) happens?" The interest here is that, although physicists agree that entanglement is a real phenomenon, thus far no physical or mathematical explanations of this phenomenon have been put forward. The present article takes a logical meta-mathematical approach searching for a plausible explanation. A Moebius topology is used to describe the relationship between matter and anti-matter, thereby pointing to an explanation of non-locality. What are the physical implications of this topology? How would it show up in the laboratory?


Dura-Bar 80-55-06 is a ferritic-pearlitic ductile iron that is used for continuous cast products. It offers higher strength and wear resistance when compared to Dura-Bar 65-45-12, while still possessing good machinability and surface finish. This datasheet provides information on composition, physical properties, hardness, elasticity, tensile properties, and shear strength. It also includes information on heat treating and machining. Filing Code: CI-71. Producer or source: Charter Dura-Bar, Inc.


The Internet evolved from a collection of computers to today's agglomeration of all sort of devices (e.g.
printers, phones, coffee makers, cameras and so on) a large part of which contain security vulnerabilities. The
current wide scale attacks are, in most cases, simple replays of the original Morris Worm of the mid-80s.
The effects of these attacks are equally devastating because they affect huge numbers of connected devices.
The reason for this lack of progress is that software developers will keep writing vulnerable software due to
problems associated with the way software is designed and implemented and market realities. So in order to
contain the problem we need effective control of network communications and more specifically, we need to
vet all network connections made by an application on the premise that if we can prevent an attacker from
reaching his victim, the attack cannot take place. This paper presents a comprehensive network security
framework, including a well-defined applications programming interface (API) that allows fine-grained and
flexible control of network connections. In this way, we can finally instantiate the principles of dynamic
network control and protect vulnerable applications from network attacks.


Recently, Hawking, Perry and Strominger described a physical process that implants supertranslational hair on a Schwarzschild black hole by an infalling matter shock wave without spherical symmetry. Using the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs-type symmetries of the Rindler horizon, we present an analogous process that implants supertranslational hair on a Rindler horizon by a matter shock wave without planar symmetry, and we investigate the corresponding memory effect on the Rindler family of uniformly linearly accelerated observers. We assume each observer to remain linearly uniformly accelerated through the wave, in the sense of the curved spacetime generalization of the Letaw-Frenet equations. Starting with a family of observers who follow the orbits of a single boost Killing vector before the wave, we find that after the wave has passed, each observer still follows the orbit of a boost Killing vector but this boost differs from trajectory to trajectory, and the trajectory dependence carries a memory of the planar inhomogeneity of the wave. We anticipate this classical memory phenomenon to have a counterpart in Rindler space quantum field theory.


Dope dyeing of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) filaments with Ratanjot extract as a colouring additive has been studied. The rheological properties of dope solution are investigated through Brookfield viscometer. The dope solution shows both shear thinning and shear thickening behavior. Different concentrations of Ratanjot extract ranging from 0.25 % to 1% (w/w) are incorporated in PAN dope solution (20% w/v) and filaments are spun on laboratory wet spinning machine using dimethyl formamide as solvent and water as non-solvent. The filaments are characterized for their mechanical, morphological, fastness and antibacterial properties. The colour obtained on acrylic filament is found to be magenta. With the increase in Ratanjot extract concentration the tensile strength of filament increases. The scanning electron micrographs of Ratanjot incorporated filament shows hollow structure with circular cross-section. The dope dyed filament shows excellent wash fastness properties and very little antibacterial activity.


Human–wildlife interactions have existed for thousands of years, however as human populations increase and human impact on natural ecosystems becomes more intensive, both parties are increasingly being forced to compete for resources vital to both. Humans can value wildlife in many contexts promoting coexistence, while in other situations, such as crop-raiding, wildlife conflicts with the interests of people. As our closest phylogenetic relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in particular occupy a special importance in terms of their complex social and cultural relationship with humans. A case study is presented that focuses on the Bossou chimpanzees' (Pan troglodytes verus) perspective of their habitat in the Republic of Guinea, West Africa, by highlighting the risks and opportunities presented by a human-dominated landscape, and detailing their day-to-day coexistence with humans. Understanding how rural people perceive chimpanzees and how chimpanzees adapt to living in anthropogenic environments will enhance our understanding of how people-wildlife interactions develop into situations of conflict and therefore can generate sustainable solutions to prevent or mitigate situations of conflict.


In developing a new field or reservoir, many parameters are important in understanding the success or possible areas for improvement in hydraulic fracturing. Estimating fracture geometry is essential to effectively calibrate a reservoir model to production results. Radioactive (RA) tracers have been used in hydraulic fracturing treatments to infer fracture dimensions. Three stable isotopes (i.e. Scandium, Iridium and Antimony) were used in various parts of the treatment to understand the progression of hydraulic fracture growth. Advanced sonic anisotropy logging tools, using a broader range of frequency acquisition, were used to enable shear measurement in cased hole environments over a wide range of interbedded coal, shale and sandstone sequences both before and after the hydraulic fracture treatment. Amplitude and anisotropy changes after a hydraulic fracture have been measured using sonic anisotropy logging and used to infer fracture height. Finally, the sonic anisotropy can be evaluated above and below the perforated interval and investigate hydraulic fracture height growth away from the wellbore, potentially visualising a greater distance than available with RA tracers. We will show how sonic anisotropy and radioactive tracer logging methods can be used to better understand the fracture geometry and aid further design work. The paper will present data from two (2) wells in the Walloon Coal Measures of the Surat Basin where both RA tracers and sonic anisotropy logs were used to infer fracture dimensions. Both wells used a combination of treated water stages, containing low concentrations of proppant, followed by borate-crosslinked gelled water stages with higher concentrations of proppant. This project contained a large amount of other hydraulic fracturing diagnostics including treatment pressure history-matching, microseismic monitoring and surface tiltmeters. In this paper we will note how those diagnostics compared with the results presented herein, but their results are discussed in greater detail elsewhere (Johnson et al. 2010a). Generally, the results indicate good agreement between these two fracture diagnostic methods and the authors will illustrate the complimentary nature of these diagnostics in gaining a fuller understanding of fracture height, especially in environments of complex fracture development.


Damage to the car machine happened resulting from negligence in carrying out the maintenance. The owner of the car just realised damage after the car could not operate as it should be. Because of that in the use of the big possibility car needed the periodic maintenance. Means of detecting damage what happened to the car. For example, if the speaking car did not rustle and have the picture why this matter happened, this that pushed the development of the expert's system to identify damage of the car machine. Information delivery was then carried out used equipment mobile with ask for request from user. This Request will be processed in the system afterwards results will be sent again to the user by being put forward in the equipment screen mobile. It isHoped this system could give information that was optimal from reciprocal user and the system. This research could it was hoped give information of all the matters that be connected with the problem of machine damage quickly and efficiently in a timbal manner good between user and the system but stayed optimal although in small device.  The key word: equipment mobile, the expert's system, , forward dan backward chaining, WAP, WML, PHP


Since 1978 the People's Republic of China has allowed small businesses in rural areas under the title township and village enterprises (TVEs). These were intended to absorb excess rural labour and initially they used locally available agricultural and industrial raw materials. Since the 1980s TVEs have expanded dramatically and they now employ 27 per cent of the rural workforce, and contribute half China's industrial value added. This article discusses how this remarkable growth came about, and charts the rising contribution of TVEs to the rural economy, and the importance of the TVEs to the economic growth of China. The TVEs can be classified into three patterns of growth. Comparison between TVEs and state-owned enterprises shows that although TVEs have received little subsidy and financial support over the years they have higher economic efficiency.


Have you heard of the Great Southern Reef?
Join Professor Seaweed and her friends Frankie and Sam to learn more about one of Australia's best kept secrets!
The Great Southern Reef spans thousands of kilometres along the coast from northern New South Wales to Western Australia. It is home to giant kelp forests and fascinating animals such as rock lobsters, sea snails and sponges. Explore the sandy beaches with this inquisitive trio, and discover marine curiosities that are washed up along the coast after a big storm.
You may be inspired to go beachcombing yourself, to learn and care about the animals and seaweed that you find!
Reading level varies from child to child, but we recommend this book for ages 6–9.


We consider extensions of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) where the extra degrees of freedom interact weakly with the Higgs sector. These models allow to relax the tension between the lower bound on the lightest CP even Higgs mass from direct LEP searches and the theoretical upper bound of the MSSM. We study the beyond MSSM (BMSSM) effects via an effective field-theory approach, assuming that the MSSM is valid up to a heavy physics scale M. We compute the masses, couplings and branching fractions of the Higgs sector, including all the relevant corrections up to order 1/M2. We find that the collider phenomenology can be greatly different with respect to both the SM and the MSSM.


A site in the western flank of Jabal Ja'alan (Oman Mountains) reveals an exceptional succession across the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary. The sampled interval comprises a series of carbonates deposited in shallow‐water platform environments and belonging to the Murka Formation, which lies between the Simsima and Abat formations of latest Cretaceous and Thanetian age, respectively. The larger foraminifera recovered from this interval belong essentially to the group of larger rotaliids (Rotaliidae). Two new genera and two new species are here described, Praelockhartia neoakbari gen. et sp. nov. and Rotaliidium parvum gen. et sp. nov. The former shows a very characteristic architecture of an umbilicus with strong piles and two types of umbilical cavities, while the latter has characteristic dorsal supplementary chamberlets. Other species such as Rotalia cf. jacobi, Rotorbinella hensoni, Rotospirella conica and Lockhartia sp. complete the rotaliid assemblage. The entire assemblage can be considered to be of late Danian age and to belong to shallow benthic zone SBZ 2. The larger rotaliids appear to have recovered and diversified earlier than any other larger benthic foraminifera in the region after the K–Pg crisis. The rotaliids from the Murka Formation also appear to be linked to the Lockhartiinae and to play a special role in improving our understanding of subsequent diversification in the Lockhartia Sea. A new subfamily, Praelockhartiinae, is erected to accommodate all primitive forms that are architecturally close to lockhartiines.


Afrikaner Mine Workers and the Mine Workers' Union. 1936 1948 Part I: Capital, labour and ideology: the struggle of the Afrikanerbond of Mine Workers against the Mine Workers' Union, 1936- 1937. Between the years of 1936 and 1948 a bitter struggle waged in the ranks of the white Mine Workers Union (MWU) for control of this large and influential organisation. In essence it was a struggle of the unskilled and semi-skilled Afrikaner mine workers against the gross maladministration of the Union management. This struggle was, however, organised and fanned from the outside by Afrikaner political and cultural leaders (""Die Nasionale Raad van Trustees"" or NRT) in an attempt to mobilise the Afrikaner workers for party political and Afrikaner national interests. Their vehicle was the ""Afrikanerbond van Mynwerkers"" (ABM) -which, as an opposing Christian national union, tried to oust the MWU. The first serious attempt was warded off by reinstating the closed shop principle and thus making a second union illegal. Thereafter the ABM tried to reform the MWU from within and during a lengthy struggle succeeded in bringing the maladministration of the MWU in the open. In 1947 the struggle was won when a new Afrikaner dominated board of management was elected. The article focuses on the role of the NRT and ABM and the ways in which it mobilised support from Afrikaners, the majority of whom did not have the same strong feelings of nationhood as the leaders of the ABM/NRT. In evaluating the role of the ABM/NRT the evidence indicates that in the initial phase of the struggle it played an important role, but in the latter stages it was partially pushed into the background by groups of mine workers committed to the basic principles of trade unionism and not in the first instance to Afrikaner solidarity.


We cast the problem of detecting and isolating regions of abnormal cortical tissue in the MRIs of epilepsy patients in an image segmentation framework. Employing a multiscale approach we divide the surface images into segments of different sizes and then classify each segment as being an outlier, by comparing it to the same region across controls. The final classification is obtained by fusing the outlier probabilities obtained at multiple scales using a tree-structured hierarchical conditional random field (HCRF). The proposed method correctly detects abnormal regions in 90% of patients whose abnormality was detected via routine visual inspection of their clinical MRI. More importantly, it detects abnormalities in 80% of patients whose abnormality escaped visual inspection by expert radiologists.


International Journal of Exercise Science 11(4): 269-280, 2018. Lacrosse is a field-based, intermittent sport that requires players to use a stick with a shaft and mesh pocket to manipulate the ball. However, there has been limited analysis of the characteristics of collegiate club-sport players, and whether stick carry influences the sprinting speed of lacrosse players. As a result, this study investigated the field test characteristics of collegiate club-sport female lacrosse players, and the effects of stick carry on linear and change-of-direction speed. Nine players (seven field players, two goalkeepers) volunteered for this study and completed: vertical jump and standing broad jump; 30-meter (m) sprint (0-5, 0-10, and 0-30 m intervals) and modified T-test without and with a stick; and the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test. Magnitude-based inference analyses via effect sizes (d) compared the field players and goalkeepers. Data was pooled for the 30-m sprint and modified T-test to examine the effect of stick carry via paired samples t-tests (p<0.05) and effect sizes. Field players performed better in most field tests (d=0.93-2.45), although goalkeepers generated greater vertical jump power (d=2.01). With regards to the effects of stick carry, there was a significant difference between the faster 0-5 m sprint interval without a stick compared to with a stick (p=0.02), but this had a small effect (d=0.25). There were no differences between the other sprint intervals and modified T-test (p=0.08-0.39; d=0.06-0.19). When contextualized with comparisons to other female collegiate athletes, the results indicated limitations in training exposure for collegiate club-sport lacrosse players. Furthermore, stick carry generally did not affect speed.


Previously, we reported the presence in mouse cells of a mitochondrial RNA which contains an inverted repeat (IR) of 121 nucleotides (nt) covalently linked to the 5′ end of the mitochondrial 16S RNA (16S mtrRNA). Here, we report the structure of an equivalent transcript of 2374 nt which is over-expressed in human proliferating cells but not in resting cells. The transcript contains a hairpin structure comprising an IR of 815 nt linked to the 5′ end of the 16S mtrRNA and forming a long double-stranded structure or stem and a loop of 40 nt. The stem is resistant to RNase A and can be detected and isolated after digestion with the enzyme. This novel transcript is a non-coding RNA (ncRNA) and several evidences suggest that the transcript is synthesized in mitochondria. The expression of this transcript can be induced in resting lymphocytes stimulated with phytohaemagglutinin (PHA). Moreover, aphidicolin treatment of DU145 cells reversibly blocks proliferation and expression of the transcript. If the drug is removed, the cells re-assume proliferation and over-express the ncmtRNA. These results suggest that the expression of the ncmtRNA correlates with the replicative state of the cell and it may play a role in cell proliferation.


This paper discusses plagiarism origins, and the ethical solutions to prevent it. It also reviews some unethical approaches, which may be used to decrease the plagiarism rate in academic writings. We propose eight ethical techniques to avoid unconscious and accidental plagiarism in manuscripts without using online systems such as Turnitin and/or iThenticate for cross checking and plagiarism detection. The efficiency of the proposed techniques is evaluated on five different texts using students individually. After application of the techniques on the texts, they were checked by Turnitin to produce the plagiarism and similarity report. At the end, the " effective factor " of each method has been compared with each other; and the best result went to a hybrid combination of all techniques to avoid plagiarism. The hybrid of ethical methods decreased the plagiarism rate reported by Turnitin from nearly 100% to the average of 8.4% on 5 manuscripts.


Bayesian approach for principal component analysis (PCA) is a novel method to determine the number of dimensionality through using different prior probabilities. In common strategy one often equally selects variances for the columns of mapping matrix by using the mixture priors. In this article, we generalize this approach by using the mixture priors with different variances in multivariate normal distribution. Further, we employ an orthogonal transformation to convert a set of observations of possibly correlated variables into a set of values of linearly uncorrelated variables. Estimations of principal component and number of effective dimensionality are performed via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm.


Objectives: We compared the commonly used Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II score and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score with the quicker and easier Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System (TISS)-28) to examine mortality in intensive care units (ICUs). Methods: Patients treated in the ICU at Bakirköy Dr. Sadi Konuk Research and Training Hospital between May 2012 and January 2017 were included in the present study. Patients who made a full recovery and were discharged were defined as group 1, whereas those who died were defined as group 2. TISS-28 scores recorded twice in the first 24 h and APACHE II and SOFA scores recorded at the end of 24 h were evaluated. The groups were compared based on demographic data; duration of nursing (h/day); and TISS-28, APACHE II, and SOFA scores. Results: Of 2191 patients in this 5-year study, 1405 (64%; group 1) were discharged from the ICU and 786 (36%; group 2) died. There was no significant difference in age between the two groups. The median TISS-28 score was 17 in group 1 and 25 in group 2. The median APACHE II score was 18 in group 1 and 29 in group 2. The median SOFA score was 6 in group 1 and 8 in group 2. All three scores were significantly higher in group 2. Conclusion: TISS-28 scores correlated with APACHE II and SOFA scores, predicting mortality.


OBJECTIVES
The research sought to determine if first-year medical students consulted and cited resources specifically highlighted during library instructional sessions.

METHODS
Students attended a library resources instructional session. Resources that pertained to the students' assignment were demonstrated and discussed. The students created a report including citations from relevant literature. The citations were analyzed and categorized as: a resource discussed at the instructional session, a resource found on the course LibGuide, a library resource, course material, or some other resource. All citations were subcategorized as print or electronic.

RESULTS
Three years (2008-2011) of data analyzing 2,983 citations showed that 49.55% of all citations were from resources discussed during library instructional sessions; 21.86% came from resources with links on the course LibGuide; 77.51% were from library resources; and 90.68% came from electronic resources.

CONCLUSION
Students cited resources specifically highlighted during library instructional sessions for their assignments. The percentage of all citations coming from resources highlighted during the instructional sessions or found on the course LibGuide indicates that library instruction had an impact on the students' work.


Oral-facial-digital type I (OFDI) syndrome is a X-linked male lethal developmental disorder and belongs to the heterogeneous group of developmental disorders known as Oral-facial-digital syndromes (OFDs). This syndrome is ascribed to ciliary dysfunction and is characterized by malformation of the face, oral cavity and digits. Conditional inactivation using different Cre lines allowed us to study the role of the Ofd1 transcript in limb and skeletal development at embryonic and post-natal stages. We generated three conditional mutants. The first mutants were generated by crossing the Ofd1fl line with the transgenic line (Msx2Cre) that express the Cre recombinase under the control of the Msx2 promoter in the AER and the ventral ectoderm starting from E9.5-10. Limbs of Ofd1fl|Msx2Cre mice, display no skeletal phenotype indicating that Ofd1 does not play a role in limb patterning and outgrowth, although we cannot exclude a role for Ofd1 at earlier stages or in the dorsal ectoderm. The second mutants were obtained by crossing Ofd1fl female mice with the Prx1Cre transgenic male mice that express the Cre recombinase in the limb bud mesenchyme from E9.5, when the expression of Prx1Cre is predominant in the forelimb mesenchyme. By E10.5 the expression is evident in both limbs. Ofd1fl|Prx1Cre mice display a more severe skeletal phenotype in the forelimbs than in the hindilmbs. Skeletal defects include polydactyly with unpatterned digits, partial fusion of carpal joint elements and shortened long bones. We demonstrated that polydactyly in Ofd1fl|Prx1Cre mice was associated with progressive loss of Shh signaling and an impaired processing of Gli3. Shortened long bones were due to defective Ihh signaling, decreased proliferation and to premature differentiation of hypertrophic chondrocytes. In addition Ofd1fl|Prx1Cre mice display defective formation of the bone collar. Immunofluorescence and ultrastructural studies allowed us to demonstrate that Ofd1 is necessary for correct ciliogenesis in the limb bud mesenchyme and chondrocytes of long bones. These results indicate that, contrary to what previously shown for the embryonic node, in the limb bud mesenchyme and in the chondrocytes, Ofd1 is necessary for normal ciliogenesis but not for cilia outgrowth. Overall, these results suggest that Ofd1 is required in the mesenchyme at early stages of limb morphogenesis for Shh signaling to determine anteroposterior patterning of the digits and at later stages for proper endochondral bone formation. Finally we generated a thirth mouse model with inactivation of Ofd1 in limb chondrocytes via Col2a-Cre-mediated recombination. Ofd1fl|Col2aCre display dwarfism by P30 days after birth that was accompanied by complete loss of growth plate and depletion of chondrocyte cilia. The results demonstrate a role for Ofd1 in the process of post-natal skeletal development.


The efficacy of the anaesthetic agents benzocaine, metacaine (MS-222), metomidate, 2-phenoxyethanol, quinaldine and isoeugenol was studied in Atlantic halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus). Fish with an average body weight of 33 g were anaesthetized at 8 °C and fish with an average body weight of 1243 g were anaesthetized at 8 and 15 °C. Agents were tested individually and as combination anaesthesia comprising pre-anaesthetic sedation, followed by anaesthesia. Induction and recovery times varied in relation to the body weight and water temperature. Large fish had longer induction times and shorter recovery times, and displayed reduced responsiveness to handling compared with small fish. A higher temperature resulted in shorter induction times, longer recovery times and increased responsiveness to handling. Lower dosages were used for all agents in combination anaesthesia. In small fish, this had no effect on the induction times but resulted in shorter recovery times and reduced responsiveness to handling. In large fish, combination anaesthesia resulted in shorter induction times whereas no uniform trend in recovery times and no differences in responsiveness to handling were observed. Neither individual agents nor combinations blocked all reflex reactions to external stimulation in all fish of any treatment group. MS-222 and benzocaine, used separately or in combination anaesthesia, were the most effective agents in reducing reflex reactions.


Although the depolymerizing effects of animal kinesin-13 proteins have been well characterized, little is known of the two Arabidopsis kinesin-13 proteins. This project aimed to investigate in more detail the functions of AtKinesin-13A/B and their effect on microtubule dynamics. The first aim was to analyse the function of both proteins in vitro using biochemical studies. Proteins were expressed in both bacterial and insect cells before undergoing co-sedimentation and turbidimetric assays to assess their activity and microtubule-interacting properties. The second aim of this project was to investigate the in vivo effects of these proteins on microtubule dynamics throughout the cell cycle. Tobacco BY2 cell lines were transformed with AtKinesin-13A and 13B, as well as human HsKinesin-13 for comparison under the expression of an estradiol-inducible promoter. This inducible system allowed transient expression of recombinant protein to analyse the effect of expression on cell growth, nuclear morphology and microtubule dynamics by immunofluorescence microscopy.

These experiments show that AtKin13B appears to function during metaphase in aiding activation of the metaphase spindle checkpoint and subsequent progression through the cell cycle. Biochemical studies into its relationship with microtubules, combined with in vivo induction data, suggest that AtKin13B may have a subtle destabilizing effect on microtubules. Biochemical studies with AtKin13A showed that it binds specifically to microtubules, and it localized to chromosome arms in a similar pattern to AtKin13B, but may have different effects in plants. Human Kinesin-13 localized exclusively to spindle microtubules throughout the cell cycle showing that the activity of kinesin-13 proteins is species-specific and animal kinesins have little effect in plant systems.


Asians and Pacific Islanders are typically aggregated in United States (US) cancer statistics even though the few studies that have considered subgroups separately have found marked differences in cancer incidence. The objective of this study was to evaluate trends in breast cancer incidence rates separately for US Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, South Asian and Vietnamese women overall and by age at diagnosis, histologic subtype and stage at diagnosis. Age‐adjusted incidence rates and annual percent changes (APC) of new, primary breast cancer diagnosed in the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry of Northern California (1990–2002) were calculated using SEER*Stat. In women under 50 years of age, annual incidence rates decreased for Japanese (APC = −4.1, p = 0.02) and Filipinas (APC = −1.9, p = 0.11), and increased or fluctuated in other subgroups over the study period. In women 50 years or older, rates of invasive breast cancer increased for most subgroups, except Filipinas (APC = −1.3, p = 0.32), and in Japanese until 1998–2000. Rates of breast cancer in situ increased in most subgroups from 1990 to 2002, as did rates of lobular breast cancer for Chinese (APC = +7.46, p < 0.01) women. In Japanese women, rates of lobular breast cancer were highest in 1995–1997 and decreased thereafter. Our data support the notion that the prevalence of established risk factors influence breast cancer incidence, as breast cancer rates increased for more recently immigrated groups and decreased among more established groups, and may suggest leads into other avenues of research, such as genetic differences, that may explain differences in incidence rates among Asian subgroups. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Recently, diffusion models have been used to solve various inverse problems in an unsupervised manner with appropriate modifications to the sampling process. However, the current solvers, which recursively apply a reverse diffusion step followed by a projection-based measurement consistency step, often produce suboptimal results. By studying the generative sampling path, here we show that current solvers throw the sample path off the data manifold, and hence the error accumulates. To address this, we propose an additional correction term inspired by the manifold constraint, which can be used synergistically with the previous solvers to make the iterations close to the manifold. The proposed manifold constraint is straightforward to implement within a few lines of code, yet boosts the performance by a surprisingly large margin. With extensive experiments, we show that our method is superior to the previous methods both theoretically and empirically, producing promising results in many applications such as image inpainting, colorization, and sparse-view computed tomography. Code available https://github.com/HJ-harry/MCG_diffusion


What happened when Near Eastern farmers moved into Europe and met native hunter-gatherers about 8500 years ago? DNA from ancient pigs suggests that fishing peoples in Germany may have adopted at least one custom from their farming neighbors: the keeping of domesticated pigs. If the claim holds up, it suggests that farming spread through locals adopting the technology, as well as farmers moving into new territory, processes that have often been seen as opposed to each other.


[1] In order to study the effects of ionospheric plasma densities on the thermosphere, the electron and O+ densities in the Thermosphere Ionosphere Nested Grid (TING) model were replaced by electron densities from the Global Assimilation of Ionospheric Measurements (GAIM) model at pressure level z = 0 (about 210 ∼ 230 km altitude) and above. This GAIM-derived TING model (G-TING) was then run for the period 1–4 April 2004. The TING model was also run as a stand-alone coupled model (S-TING), without using the GAIM electron densities, for the same period. The resulting thermospheric responses from the two simulations were compared at around the F region peak altitude. There was an extended quiet period during this interval followed by a moderate geomagnetic storm (Kp ∼ 6.0). The ingestion of the GAIM electron densities had little effect on the neutral temperature and composition during the quiet period before the storm, but there were noticeable global effects on the neutral winds, mainly as a result of changes in the ion drag force. During disturbed periods, changed electron densities produced much more significant effects on the global thermosphere. The increased auroral electron densities enhanced the Joule heating rate, in addition to the ion drag, which resulted in significant global changes not only in the neutral winds, but also in the neutral temperature and composition. The results of our study confirm that having correct ionospheric plasma densities is critical to accurately predicting the thermosphere in the coupled thermosphere-ionosphere model.


Since the 1980s, British-style brass bands - community ensembles modeled after the all-brass and percussion bands of Great Britain - have enjoyed a modest regeneration in the United States. During this same period, as many as 23 colleges and universities in the U.S. have founded their own curricular or extra-curricular brass band. The purpose of this research study was: to discover which schools sponsor a brass band currently; to discover which schools formerly sponsored a brass band but have since discontinued it; to describe the operational practices of collegiate brass bands in the U.S.; and to determine what collegiate brass band conductors perceive to be the challenges and benefits of brass band in the curriculum.
Data for the study were collected between February, 2015 and February, 2016 using four custom survey instruments distributed to conductors of college and university brass bands. The results showed that 11 American collegiate institutions were sponsoring a brass band during the period of data collection. Additional findings included descriptions of the operations of collegiate brass bands, such as availability of credit, rehearsal time, and instrumentation. Results also included the conductors' reported perceptions that both challenges and benefits are inherent in student brass band participation, and that brass band is a positive experience for students. An additional 3 community-based brass bands, not sponsored by but located near a college or university, were found to include collegiate students among their player personnel. A total of 9 schools formerly sponsoring brass bands were found to have discontinued their program. A repertoire analysis of 733 titles of compositions performed by both active and formerly active brass bands revealed that bands performed original works for brass band nearly as often as transcribed or arranged works.


Raw and under cooked barbeque chickenswhich harboring pathogens of public health and zoonotic impact concerning consumers and handler employees. Campylobacter jejuni considers one of the most prevalent chickenborne gastroenteric bacteria. This study spots light on this concept to indemnify zoonotic hazard of C. jejuni by molecular characterization and indirect fluorescent of Egyptian isolates from both chickens and human in contact. From various Egyptian governorates and clinics a total of 588 chicken visceral contents, eviscerated raw and barbeque chickens were collected from different restaurants. Plus, 96 samples from both symptomatic consumers with history of chickens poisoning and chicken handler. Samples were subjected to standard phenotypic identification of C.jejuni, and subsequently immunofluorescent technique (IFT) identification and genetic amplification by PCR using specific primers of hipO gene. The positive results were detected by IFT expressed by green fluorescence staining. PCR amplification of hipO gene. The overall positive ratio of C. jejuni in chicken was 59.2%, where the higher and the lower values were recorded with intestinal contents and barbeque tissues (72.1 and 32.1) respectively. The total positive ratio in contact personals was 51%.Wherever, the higher and the lower values were 75.9% and 40.3% corresponding to symptomatic consumers and handlers employees. Molecular characterization of chicken's isolates have shown identical fingerprints with human isolates at 323bp, signifying the high possibilities of zoonotic hazards of the collected samples. The present studycan be concluded that the high incidence of C. jejuni in raw and barbeque chickens incriminated in high infection rate within consumers and handlers' employees' .This provides background for the design of firm efficient control strategies.


The current study uses a novel method of multilevel neurons and high order synchronization effects described by a family of special metrics, for pattern recognition in an oscillatory neural network (ONN). The output oscillator (neuron) of the network has multilevel variations in its synchronization value with the reference oscillator, and allows classification of an input pattern into a set of classes. The ONN model is implemented on thermally-coupled vanadium dioxide oscillators. The ONN is trained by the simulated annealing algorithm for selection of the network parameters. The results demonstrate that ONN is capable of classifying 512 visual patterns (as a cell array 3 × 3, distributed by symmetry into 102 classes) into a set of classes with a maximum number of elements up to fourteen. The classification capability of the network depends on the interior noise level and synchronization effectiveness parameter. The model allows for designing multilevel output cascades of neural networks with high net data throughput. The presented method can be applied in ONNs with various coupling mechanisms and oscillator topology.


Partial suppression of lasing by intense stimulated Raman scattering of ethanol in a 10−4 M Rhodamine 6G-doped ethanol droplet can be observed at high input-laser intensity when the Raman signal overlaps with the lasing spectrum. Extra stimulated emission of the Rhodamine 6G caused by stimulated Raman scattering of ethanol can saturate the Rhodamine 6G lasing gain to below threshold.


__Editorial Introduction__
This section records the participation of Asian States in open multilateral law-making treaties which mostly aim at world-wide adherence. It updates the treaty sections of earlier Volumes until 31 December 2015. New data are preceded by a reference to the most recent previous entry in the multilateral treaties section of the Asian Yearbook of International Law. In case no new data are available, the title of the treaty is listed with a reference to the last Volume containing data on the treaty involved. For the purpose of this section, States broadly situated west of Iran, north of Mongolia, east of Papua New Guinea and south of Indonesia will not be covered.


We conducted a randomized trial in urban Ghana in which tailoring microenterprises received advice from an international consulting firm, cash, both, or neither. We designed the study with a hypothesis that large infusions of financial and managerial capital could be transformative. We find that all three treatments led to their immediate intended effects: changed business practices and increased investment. However, no treatment led to higher profits on average, and certainly not to the large effects hypothesized. In fact, each treatment at some point led to lower profits. Then, in the long run, we find that the microentrepreneurs in either consulting treatment group reverted back to their prior business practices, and that microentrepreneurs in the cash treatment group reverted back to their prior scale of operations. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


This article is inspired by the observation of a massive change of opinion on the part of economists regarding the question of the patent as a mechanism allowing an economically acceptable solution to be found to the so-called "imperfect appropriability" problem. This change is due partly to empirical observation of the system's disorientation, leading to situations where the ways in which intellectual property rights are used create more obstacles to innovation than they eliminate. On the other hand, this shift in opinion is also linked with empirical and theoretical analyses of situations where it seems that patents and other intellectual property rights can very well be dispensed with without innovation suffering. It is to these analyses that this article is devoted. It will first review works concerning historical economics and the economics of innovation and technology management that highlight innovation systems in which the absence of intellectual property rights or the weakening of the latter does not seem to undermine the capacity to invent and innovate. It will then move on to theoretical works that explore the conditions in which a competitive market can be characterised by optimal properties of resource allocation in R&D and innovation. Finally it will present works on experimental economics that attempt to reproduce an innovation process in a laboratory with a view to studying the respective merits of different institutions –patent or market– regarding their aptitudes to facilitate innovation.


This study applies financial portfolio theory to determine efficient frontiers in the provision of electricity for the United States and Switzerland. Expected returns are defined by the rate of productivity increase of power generation (adjusted for external costs), volatility, by its standard deviation. Since unobserved productivity shocks are found to be correlated, Seemingly Unrelated Regression Estimation (SURE) is used to filter out the systematic component of the covariance matrix of the productivity changes. Results suggest that as of 2003, the feasible maximum expected return (MER) electricity portfolio for the United States contains more Coal, Nuclear, and Wind than actual but markedly less Gas and Oil. The minimum variance (MV) portfolio contains markedly more Oil, again more Coal, Nuclear, and Wind but almost no Gas. Regardless of the choice between MER and MV, U.S. utilities are found to lie substantially inside the efficient frontier. This is even more true of their Swiss counterparts, likely due to continuing regulation of electricity markets.


We report on the recent development of ParZu, a German dependency parser. We discuss the effect of POS tagging and morphological analysis on parsing performance, and present novel ways of improving performance of the components, including the use of morphological features for POS-tagging, the use of syntactic information to select good POS sequences from an n-best list, and using parsed text as training data for POS tagging and statistical parsing. We also describe our efforts towards reducing the dependency on restrictively licensed and closed-source NLP resources.


Nuclear narratives convey responsibility (or lack thereof), and historical understandings are enlisted to stake out defensible positions in times of crisis. As historians, we need to be conscious of the discursive power of the stories we tell and to reflect critically on them. Otherwise we put ourselves in the position of reinforcing past narratives that were contrived in the first place to deflect blame, avoid responsibility, and frustrate accountability. The present essay presents motifs—recurrent themes—that implicitly assign or abrogate responsibility for harm. They are the Risk Society Motif, the Nuclear Watchdog Motif, and the Nuclear Fear Motif. All three reemerged in light of the Fukushima disaster.


The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and the almost daily news stories about abusive and violent police conduct are currently prompting questions about the appropriate use of force by police officers. Moreover, the history of police brutality directed towards women is well documented. Most of that literature, however, captures the violence that police do in their public capacity, as officers of the state. This article examines the violence and abuse perpetrated by police in their private lives, against their intimate partners, although the public and private overlap significantly to the extent that the power and training provided to police officers by the state makes them significantly more dangerous as abusers. Intimate partner abuse by police officers is a systemic, structural issue created and fueled by the ways in which police officers are socialized and trained. Police officers are more likely than others to abuse their partners, and as a result of their training and their state imprimatur, police abuse of partners is more problematic and more potentially dangerous than abuse by civilians. Changing the behavior of abusive police officers may be nearly impossible given the interplay of policing and masculinity. Policing is a male profession; it encourages and rewards many of the same notions of masculinity that underscore intimate partner abuse. Feminist theories about how intimate partner abuse serves a means of asserting control over one's partner may not explain officer-involved domestic violence; intimate partner abuse in law enforcement may be part of a larger pattern of violent behavior justified by problematic notions of masculinity. Moreover, the increasing militarization of police forces has given rise to a particularly pernicious type of masculinity, militarized masculinity, which is reflected in the attitudes and training of and methods used by police officers, both on the street and at home. Despite the high rates of intimate partner abuse by police officers, however, each incident is treated as an isolated event, rather than part of a systemic problem, and officers are largely able to act with impunity because of their centrality in the law and policy response to intimate partner abuse in the United States. The state has a serious stake in this conversation, not only because it trains and arms abusers, but because it depends upon these same abusers to enforce the very laws that they are violating in their own relationships. The U.S. response to intimate partner abuse relies heavily on the criminal justice system to enforce domestic violence laws; this article asks whether criminalization can succeed as a policy when police officers are disproportionately committing intimate partner abuse.


Oxylipins are metabolites with a variety of biological functions. However, the biosynthetic pathway is widely unknown. It is considered that the first step is the oxygenation of polyunsaturated fatty acids like linoleic acid. Therefore, a lipoxygenase (LOX) from the edible basidiomycete Agrocybe aegerita was investigated. The AaeLOX4 was heterologously expressed in E. coli and purified via affinity chromatography and gel filtration. Biochemical properties and kinetic parameters of the purified AaeLOX4 were determined with linoleic acid and linolenic acid as substrates. The obtained Km, vmax and kcat values for linoleic acid were 295.5 μM, 16.5 μM · min-1 · mg-1 and 103.9 s-1, respectively. For linolenic acid Km, vmax and kcat values of 634.2 μM, 19.5 μM · min-1 · mg-1 and 18.3 s-1 were calculated. Maximum activities were observed at pH 7.5 and 25 °C. The main product of linoleic acid conversion was identified with normal-phase HPLC. This analysis revealed an explicit production of 13-hydroperoxy-9,11-octadecadienoic acid (13-HPOD). The experimental regio specificity is underpinned by the amino acid residues W384, F450, R594 and V635 considered relevant for regio specificity in LOX. In conclusion, HPLC-analysis and alignments revealed that AaeLOX4 is a 13-LOX.


The dorsal midline of the neural tube has recently emerged as a major signaling center for dorsoventral patterning. Msx genes are expressed at the dorsal midline, although their function at this site remains unknown. Using Msx1nlacZ mutant mice, we show that the normal expression domain of Msx1 is interrupted in the pretectum of mutant embryos. Morphological and gene expression data further indicate that a functional midline is not maintained along the whole prosomere 1 in Msx1 mutant mice. This results in the downregulation of genes expressed laterally to the midline in prosomere 1, confirming the importance of the midline as a signaling center. Wnt1 is essential for dorsoventral patterning of the neural tube. In the Msx1 mutant, Wnt1 is downregulated before the midline disappears, suggesting that its expression depends on Msx1. Furthermore, electroporation in the chick embryo demonstrates that Msx1 can induce Wnt1 expression in the diencephalon neuroepithelium and in the lateral ectoderm. In double Msx1/Msx2 mutants, Wnt1 expression is completely abolished at the dorsal midline of the diencephalon and rostral mesencephalon. This indicates that Msx genes may regulate Wnt1 expression at the dorsal midline of the neural tube. Based on these results, we propose a model in which Msx genes are intermediary between Bmp and Wnt at this site.


The application of nanoparticles (NPs) in science and technology is a wide and fast growing field. Therefore, reliable and straightforward analytical methods are required to enable fast characterization of the size and concentration of NPs in various fields. Recently, we have reported a novel evaluation strategy for data obtained from graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GFAAS) in order to distinguish silver nanoparticles and ions in solid samples. Thereby, we introduced new parameters "atomization delay" (tad) and "atomization rate" (kat). In the present study, we applied these parameters for the investigation of aqueous suspensions of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and solutions of Au(III). The obtained results for kat and tad values show reproducible size correlations for both parameters in a particle size range from 2 to 100 nm. Accordingly, these correlations can be used for size calibration and allow size determination of AuNPs in monodisperse aqueous suspensions. Furthermore, absorbance, tad and kat of 20 nm-sized AuNPs were examined over a concentration range from 1 to 50 μg L−1 revealing that tad is the most robust parameter. Finally, multimodal mixtures of 3 to 4 different sizes of AuNPs were studied. Here, deconvolution of the obtained sum peaks led to agreeable accuracy in the determination of AuNP size distribution. Hence, the proposed method has great potential for easy and fast measurement of size distribution of polydisperse AuNP suspensions.


A chirped continuum, generated in a photonic bandgap fiber by 120 fs Ti:Sapphire laser pulses, is parametrically amplified in a BBO crystal pumped by an injected and frequency doubled nanosecond Nd:Yag laser pulse. Without changing the frequency of the Ti:Sapphire, a spectral tunability of the amplified pulses is demonstrated. The possibility to achieve broader spectral range amplification is demonstrated for a non-collinear pump-signal interaction geometry.


Acknowledging that the external context visibly affects any organization, this investigation seeks to constitute a specific contribution to the study of the importance of public image in organizational administration. To that end, a collection and documentary analysis of news stories from the newspaper O Fayalense on the Asylum for the Disadvantaged Children of Horta [Asilo de Infância Desvalida da Horta], an institution located on Faial Island, Azores, Portugal, covering the time period of 1858 to 1895, is performed. In the presentation and discussion of the results, a comparison is made between two periods that involve a single president because they vary in the type of news stories published (at the level of sources and subjects). It is concluded that the news stories published cover three large types of references, which, given the period in question, vary substantially: factual information (on the celebrations occurring in the asylum, communications about donations received and appreciation of benefactors, or institutional information on the elections of the asylum directorate), praise (regarding the asylum's mission, operation, or administration), and censures (including responses to external criticism, criticism of previous managements, and stories regarding the asylum's precarious circumstances). The implication of the study is that the importance of a positive public image, especially a positive image that is supportive of the leadership, should not be overlooked for the organizational administration to have greater chances of success.


Dispersion of carbon nanotubes in solutions of polyvinyl-alcohol is required for solution casting of composite materials with improved interfacial adhesion where chains adsorbed on the nanotubes serve in the dual role of dispersant and compatible "connector" to the polyvinyl-alcohol matrix. Yet polyvinyl-alcohol is known to induce coagulation of nanotubes in aqueous solutions and thus far, it has not been used for dispersing pristine nanotubes. Here, we report that non-fully hydrolyzed (80-90%) polyvinyl-alcohol can be used for the preparation of stable, surfactant-free, dispersions of multi-wall carbon nanotubes in ethanol-water mixtures (of at least 50 vol% ethanol). Cryo-TEM imaging and rheological measurements of stable, long-lived dispersions reveal the formation of random networks of suspended tubes, with an averaged mesh size of ∼500 nm, indicating that the individual tubes do not aggregate or coagulate. We hypothesize that the polyvinyl-acetate sequences found in non-fully hydrolyzed polymers swell in the presence of ethanol, leading to the formation of a long-ranged steric (entropic) repulsion among polymer-decorated nanotubes. The unexpected role of the polyvinyl-acetate sequences along with a detailed dispersion mechanism are described.


Given the number of adolescents who present with mental health issues, it is important to explore the best treatment options for this population. Group psychotherapy has been described in the literature as the ideal choice for adolescents who engage in mental health treatment. It is considered a "natural" fit, as adolescents are focused on their peer group during this developmental period. There has been an abundance of research examining behavioral oriented group psychotherapy with adolescents suggesting positive clinical benefits and outcomes. However, process oriented group psychotherapy research with adolescents has been lacking. In particular, the "voice" and perspectives of adolescents who attend group psychotherapy is significantly sparse. The aim of this research study was to address this gap in the literature by interviewing adolescents about their experiences of participating in an interpersonal psychotherapy group. A qualitative descriptive method was the design of choice for this study. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with eight adolescents who attended an interpersonal psychotherapy group for a period of three months. The data was analyzed using qualitative inductive manifest content analysis. All eight participants described their experiences and the meaning of their experiences. Surprisingly, all eight participants also described and focused on the group process rather than the content. A number of therapeutic factors including universality, cohesion, interpersonal learning, altruism and instillation of hope emerged from the data which are consistent with Yalom's theoretical framework. The participants described a number of benefits resulting from their participation and made recommendations for future group therapists related to the physical space, group composition and characteristics and style of the group leader. Implications for knowledge development, research, education and clinical practice, were discussed. Recommendations included future qualitative studies with a broader representation of adolescents participating in heterogeneous and homogenous psychotherapy groups. Increasing psychiatric nurses' awareness of the benefits of interpersonal psychotherapy groups is warranted along with training opportunities for group leaders in interpersonal psychotherapy.


The objective of this study is to examine the economic policies and socio-economic changes which have taken place in South Asia for the last six decades. However, my focus will be mainly on India and Pakistan to try to examine how capitalism has been developing differently in these two countries. It seems to me that this study is important because the proponent of free-market polices (i.e. mainstream economists) ignore the poverty issues and emphasise mainly growth rates and unquestionably assume that 'trickle down' would solve poverty problems. We should also not forget that India is home to the largest number of poor in the world, and as such is an obvious test case for whether pro-market reforms work or not. The ruling elites cite high GDP (gross domestic products) growth rates as indicative of economic development and consequently the well-being of the people. Growth is seen as a panacea and in order to achieve higher economic growth rates both countries had earlier adopted import-substitution-industrialization (ISI) and later on neo-liberal (i.e. 'free market') economic policies. The study will also analyse the impact of neo-liberal economic reforms on socio-economic situation both in India and Pakistan and its impact on reducing poverty. In Pakistan these reforms were launched in 1988, while in India in 1991 under the IMF supervision. As a result both economies have witnessed an upsurge in GDP growth rates (especially in India). Despite the high GDP growth rates for the last two decades in India, for example, over all employment has not been growing. The service sector, which witnessed a rapid economic growth, accounts for a much smaller share in employment relative to their contribution to GDP. The study finds that capitalism has failed to remove poverty and inequality despite its long history of penetration in South Asia under colonial and neo-colonial regimes and in spite of being backed by the new technology and increased amounts of credits. The experience of Pakistan clearly illustrated this fact. There is a lack of discussion about the presence of a large proportion of people living in sub-human conditions and lack of overall and holistic development of human being.


We studied parents' direct involvement in adolescent sibling relationships, including parents' reactions to sibling conflict and their time spent in the company of the sibling dyad. Participants were 185 White, working- and middle-class families; firstborns averaged 15 and secondborns averaged 13.5 years of age. In separate home interviews mothers, fathers and both adolescents described their personal and family relationship qualities and experiences. In a series of 7 evening phone calls, family members reported on each day's activities including the time they spent and their companions in 63 daily activities (e.g., do dishes, play sports, talk on phone). Analyses revealed 3 general conflict reactions by parents: (a) noninvolvement (e.g., tell siblings to work out problem themselves); (b) intervene (e.g., step in and solve problem); and (c) coach (e.g., give advice about how to solve problem). We found mother-father differences in conflict reactions and time spent with siblings; differences in parents' direct involvement as a function of the gender constellation of the sibling dyad also were evident. Direct involvement was linked to sibling relationship qualities and explained variance beyond that accounted for by an index of indirect involvement, that is, parental warmth. Further, parents' orientations toward autonomy were linked to the indices of involvement such that parents with stronger autonomy orientations were less involved, and parents' orientations explained variance in their involvement beyond that explained by adolescent characteristics. Language: en


A 680,000 kg (750 ton) per day ammonia unit was shut down following a fire near the outlet of the waste heat exchanger. The fire had resulted from leakage of ammonia from the type 316 stainless steel outlet piping. The outlet piping immediately downstream from the waste heat exchanger consisted of a flange made from a casting, and a reducing cone, a short length of pipe, and a 90 deg elbow, all made of 13 mm thick plate. A liner wrapped with insulation was welded to the smaller end of the reducing cone. All of the piping up to the flange was wrapped with insulation. Investigation (visual inspection, 10x unetched images, liquid-penetrant inspection, and chemical analysis of the insulation) supported the conclusion that the failure occurred in the area of the flange-to-cone weld by SCC as the result of aqueous chlorides leached from the insulation around the liner by condensate. Recommendations included eliminating the chlorides from the system, maintaining the temperature of the outlet stream above the dewpoint at all times, or that replacing the type 316 stainless steel with an alloy such as Incoloy 800 that is more resistant to chloride attack.


The premier historical Jesus scholar joins a brilliant archaeologist to illuminate the life and teaching of Jesus against the background of his world.There have been phenomenal advances in the historical understanding of Jesus and his world and times, but also huge, lesser known advances in first-century Palestine archaeology that explain a great deal about Jesus, his followers, and his teachings. This is the first book that combines the two and it does it in a fresh, accessible way that will interest both biblical scholars and students and also the thousands of lay readers of Biblical Archaeology Review (150,000+ circulation), National Geographic, and other archaeology and ancient history books and magazines. Each chapter of the book focuses on a major modern archaeological or textual discovery and shows how that discovery opens a window onto a major feature of Jesus's life and teachings.


INTRODUCTION
Single-implant mandibular overdentures (SIMOs) are one of the least invasive implant treatments for edentulism. The new Novaloc attachment system can improve the clinical performance of implant-retained overdentures but has not been tested for SIMOs.

OBJECTIVES
To compare Novaloc and a gold standard system (Locator) for SIMOs in an edentate elderly population in terms of patient-reported outcomes and device- and treatment-related complications.

METHODS
In this single-center crossover randomized clinical trial (RCT), 10 edentulous participants received an implant in the lower midline and had their lower complete dentures converted to SIMOs. The participants received each attachment system for 3 mo in a randomized order, followed by measurement of patient satisfaction and oral health-related quality of life via the McGill Denture Satisfaction Questionnaire and the Oral Health Impact Profile for Edentulous People questionnaire, respectively. Complications were registered throughout the RCT. Patients were interviewed for their experiences with SIMOs and preference for one of the attachment systems. Quantitative analysis employed mixed linear models and chi-square tests (α = 0.05), whereas interview data underwent thematic analysis and, in turn, integration into quantitative data (mixed methods explanatory design).

RESULTS
All 10 randomized participants completed the trial. Mean ± SD general satisfaction was 92% ± 8% with Novaloc versus 85% ± 13% with Locator (mean difference, 9%; 95% CI, 1% to 17%). For specific McGill Denture Satisfaction Questionnaire items, only denture stability was significantly increased for Novaloc. Seven participants preferred Novaloc over Locator at the end of the RCT (chi-square, P = 0.045). No difference was found between the attachments in terms of oral health-related quality of life based on the Oral Health Impact Profile for Edentulous People and complications. Thematic analysis revealed high patient satisfaction with SIMOs, with denture stability the main criterion for their satisfaction and attachment preference.

CONCLUSION
Among elderly edentulous patients wearing SIMOs, Novaloc led to increased patient satisfaction and preference. Better patient-perceived denture stability may explain this result. The attachment systems exhibited similar short-term maintenance needs.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03126942 (first registered on April 13, 2017). Secondary identifiers: A03-M07-17A (McGill University, Institutional Review Board) and 2018-3873 (McGill University Health Centre, Research Ethics Board).

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER STATEMENT
The results of this mixed methods study can be used by clinicians when choosing which attachment system to use for SIMOs. Results suggest that edentulous patients prefer attachments with a better-defined seating position, such as that of the Novaloc system, as opposed to the nylon matrix on metallic abutment of the Locator system.


When investment is repeated, previous outcomes (winning/losing) as well as the current budget level (gain/loss domain) influence decisions. The first is related to the so-called "gamblers fallacy". The second to value function relative to some reference point. Both effects have been extensively studied, however not their interaction. We present a meta-study of five experiments initially conducted to investigate myopic-lossaversion. We observe that investment is related to the number of previous winning rounds as well as to the current budget position relative to a reference point. These effects persist when the analysis is extended to settings with restricted flexibility concerning investment.


Abstract Intensive care unit mortality is strongly associated with organ failure rate and severity. The sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score is assessed to evaluate its efficacy as a diagnostic indicator. Statistical analyses investigate the SOFA score distributions in the days leading up to patient mortality and patient discharge. It is found that the SOFA score is not an effective predictor of patient mortality, but it is a useful tool for prediction of patient discharge from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The distribution of overall SOFA score was observed not to change notably in the days leading up to patient death. However, the SOFA score distribution was observed to have a trend towards lower SOFA scores in the days leading up to patient discharge. Finally, assessment of the individual components of the overall SOFA score indicated that the coagulation and cardiovascular scores showed the highest correlation to mortality and are therefore the most useful individual groups to be used as diagnostic indicators.


Today's generation of Internet devices has changed how users are interacting with media, from passive and unidirectional users to proactive and interactive. Users can use these devices to comment or rate a TV show and search for related information regarding characters, facts or personalities. This phenomenon is known as second screen. This paper describes SAM, an EU-funded research project that focuses on developing an advanced digital media delivery platform based on second screen interaction and content syndication within a social media context, providing open and standardised ways of characterising, discovering and syndicating digital assets. This work provides an overview of the project and its main objectives, focusing on the NLP challenges to be faced and the technologies developed so far.


National decisions and behaviors are strictly interdependent and each of them may affect the whole planet; hence, the harmonization and coordination of the policy are the key issues. This is particularly true in the energy sector, where scarce resources, which are presently unevenly shared by the various nations with the possibility of conflicts arising need to be allocated to keep the pace with economic growth and in a manner compatible with the preservation of the environment. In this paper, we use the concept of "smart energy" as a way to embrace the target to meet commitments to the world's sustainability, and a comparison of the energy policies of two key-world players, the EU and China, is undertaken in this context. A framework for quantitatively assessing the effectiveness of various specific policy tools is proposed. The policies are defined and analyzed with reference to the general goals, the tools to pursue those goals and their outcomes, possibly in a quantitative manner resorting to a set of meaningful metrics.


We establish the importance of team-specific capital in the typical inventor's career. Using administrative tax and patent data for the population of US patent inventors from 1996 to 2012, we find that an inventor's premature death causes a large and long-lasting decline in their co-inventor's earnings and citation-weighted patents (–4 percent and –15 percent after 8 years, respectively). After ruling out firm disruption, network effects, and top-down spillovers as main channels, we show that the effect is driven by close-knit teams and that team-specific capital largely results from an "experience" component increasing collaboration value over time.


Wireless adhoc networks consist of users that want to communicate with each other over a shared wireless medium. The users have transmitting and receiving capabilities but there is no additional infrastructure for assisting communication. This is in contrast to existing wireless systems, cellular networks for example, where communication between wireless users heavily relies on an additional infrastructure of base stations connected with a high-capacity wired backbone. The fact that they are infrastructureless makes wireless adhoc networks inexpensive, easy to build and robust but at the same time technically more challenging. The fundamental challenge is how to deal with interference: many simultaneous transmissions have to be accommodated on the same wireless channel when each of these transmissions constitutes interference for the others, degrading the quality of the communication. The traditional approach to wireless adhoc networks is to organize users so that they relay information for each other in a multi-hop fashion. Such multi-hopping strategies face scalability problems at large system size. As shown by Gupta and Kumar in their seminal work in 2000, the maximal communication rate per user under such strategies scales inversely proportional to the square root of the number of users in the network, hence decreases to zero with increasing system size. This limitation is due to interference that precludes having many simultaneous point-to-point transmissions inside the network. In this thesis, we propose a multiscale hierarchical cooperation architecture for distributed MIMO communication in wireless adhoc networks. This novel architecture removes the interference limitation at least as far as scaling is concerned: we show that the per-user communication rate under this strategy does not degrade significantly even if there are more and more users entering into the network. This is in sharp contrast to the performance achieved by the classical multi-hopping schemes. However, the overall picture is much richer than what can be depicted by a single scheme or a single scaling law formula. Nowadays, wireless adhoc networks are considered for a wide range of practical applications and this translates to having a number of system parameters (e.g., area, power, bandwidth) with large operational range. Different applications lie in different parameter ranges and can therefore exhibit different characteristics. A thorough understanding of wireless adhoc networks can only be obtained by exploring the whole parameter space. Existing scaling law formulations are insufficient for this purpose as they concentrate on very small subsets of the system parameters. We propose a new scaling law formulation for wireless adhoc networks that serves as a mathematical tool to characterize their fundamental operating regimes. For the standard wireless channel model where signals are subject to power path-loss attenuation and random phase changes, we identify four qualitatively different operating regimes in wireless adhoc networks with large number of users. In each of these regimes, we characterize the dependence of the capacity on major system parameters. In particular, we clarify the impact of the power and bandwidth limitations on performance. This is done by deriving upper bounds on the information theoretic capacity of wireless adhoc networks in Chapter 3, and constructing communication schemes that achieve these upper bounds in Chapter 4. Our analysis identifies three engineering quantities that together determine the operating regime of a given wireless network: the short-distance signal-to-noise power ratio (SNRs), the long-distance signal-to-noise power ratio (SNRl) and the power path-loss exponent of the environment. The right communication strategy for a given application is dictated by its operating regime. We show that conventional multi-hopping schemes are optimal when the power path-loss exponent of the environment is larger than 3 and SNRs ≪ 0 dB. Such networks are extremely power-limited. On the other hand, the novel architecture proposed in this thesis, based on hierarchical cooperation and distributed MIMO, is the fundamentally right strategy for wireless networks with SNRl ≫ 0 dB. Such networks experience no power limitation. In the intermediate cases, captured by the remaining two operating regimes, neither multi-hopping nor hierarchical-MIMO achieves optimal performance. We construct new schemes for these regimes that achieve capacity. The proposed characterization of wireless adhoc networks in terms of their fundamental operating regimes, is analogous to the familiar understanding of the two operating regimes of the point-to-point additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. From an engineering point of view, one of the most important contributions of Shannon's celebrated capacity formula is to identify two qualitatively different operating regimes on this channel. Determined by its signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR), an AWGN channel can be either in a bandwidth-limited (SNR ≫ 0 dB) or a power-limited (SNR ≪ 0 dB) regime. Communication system design for this channel has been primarily driven by the operating regime one is in.


Polycystic ovary syndrome is characterized by enlarged ovaries, multiple peripherally arranged cysts and increased stromal density(1). Polycystic ovary syndrome is responsible for approximately 25-30% of infertility in women, which is mainly anovulatory(2). Ovulation can be induced with antiesterogens in many women but a proportion fail to respond and even in those who ovulate, the pregnancy rate is often low and the miscarriage rate is high.


ABSTRACT Van Dongeren, A., Ciavola, P., Viavattene, C., De Kleermaeker, S., Martinez, G., Ferreira, O., Costa C., R. McCall, 2014. RISC-KIT: Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts–toolkit. In: Green, A.N. and Cooper, J.A.G. (eds.), Proceedings 13th International Coastal Symposium (Durban, South Africa), Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 70, pp. 366–371, ISSN 0749-0208. Recent and historic high-impact events have demonstrated the flood risks faced by exposed coastal areas. These risks will increase due to climate change and economic development. This requires a re-evaluation of coastal disaster risk reduction DRR strategies and prevention, mitigation and preparedness PMP measures. To this end, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction formulated the Hyogo Framework for Action, and the EU has issued the Floods Directive. By their nature, neither is specific about the methods to be used to assess coastal risks, particularly those risks resulting from dune and structure overtopping, the non-stationarity of surge and flash flood events, and coastal morphodynamic response. This paper describes a set of open-source and open-access methods, tools and management approaches to fill this gap. A Coastal Risk Assessment Framework will assess coastal risk at a regional scale. Thus critical hotspots can be identified for which an impact-oriented Early Warning System/Decision Support System is developed. This can be applied in dual mode: as a forecast and warning system and as an ex-ante planning tool to evaluate the vulnerability. The tools are demonstrated on case study sites on a range of EU coasts with diverse geomorphic settings, land use, forcing, hazard types and socio-economic, cultural and environmental characteristics. Specific DRR plans will be developed for all sites. A management guide of PMP measures and management approaches is to be developed. The toolkit will benefit forecasting and civil protection agencies, coastal managers, local government, community members, NGOs, the general public and scientists.


"The Dhammapada" is a collection of aphorisms that illustrate the moral teachings of Buddha - the spiritual path to the supreme Truth. Probably compiled in the third century BCE, the verses are arranged according to theme, covering ideas such as self-possession, good and evil, watchfulness and endurance. Together they describe how an individual can attain the enlightenment of Nirvana, the supreme goal of Buddhism. The road to Nirvana, as illustrated in "The Dhammapada", is narrow and difficult to negotiate, but the reward of eternal life gives hope and determination to the traveller.


We introduce and demonstrate the utility of a method to localize and quantify inter-domain congestion in the Internet. Our Time Sequence Latency Probes (TSLP) method depends on two facts: Internet traffic patterns are typically diurnal, and queues increase packet delay through a router during periods of adjacent link congestion. Repeated round trip delay measurements from a single test point to the two edges of a congested link will show sustained increased latency to the far (but not to the near) side of the link, a delay pattern that differs from the typical diurnal pattern of an uncongested link. We describe our technique and its surprising potential,carefully analyze the biggest challenge with the methodology (interdomain router-level topology inference), describe other less severe challenges, and present initial results that are sufficiently promising to motivate further attention to overcoming the challenges.


The main objective of this study was to determine the current family labour use patterns of farm households in hair goat farming systems using gender analysis. The study focused on investigating male and female labour use within the family in traditional hair goat farming activities by hair goat farming calendar. A survey was conducted using a face to face questionnaire with 92 hair goat farmers from 26 villages in Central, Atabey, Keciborlu, Egirdir and Sutculer districts of the Isparta province where there is intensive hair goat farming. The farms were chosen by stratified random sampling method. The average household size was 4.75 members with the number of male (2.48) and female (2.27) respectively; in other words 52.18 per cent male and 47.82 per cent female. It was also found that mean family labour use 14.70 h/daily, total average time spent by female and male in goat farming activities was 6.47 (55.99 per cent) and 8.23 (44.01 per cent ) hour per day, respectively. Hair goat farming activities such as grazing, kid selling, barn disinfection, cheese selling, vaccination, bathing for mites, shearing, internal and external parasitical disinfection, are male dominated activities, whereas activities like milking and barn cleaning are female's domain and the rest of the activities were carried out both male and female.


Traditional biosurveillance algorithms detect disease outbreaks by looking for peaks in a univariate time series of health-care data. Current health-care surveillance data, however, are no longer simply univariate data streams. Instead, a wealth of spatial, temporal, demographic and symptomatic information is available. We present an early disease outbreak detection algorithm called What's Strange About Recent Events (WSARE), which uses a multivariate approach to improve its timeliness of detection. WSARE employs a rule-based technique that compares recent health-care data against data from a baseline distribution and finds subgroups of the recent data whose proportions have changed the most from the baseline data. In addition, health-care data also pose difficulties for surveillance algorithms because of inherent temporal trends such as seasonal effects and day of week variations. WSARE approaches this problem using a Bayesian network to produce a baseline distribution that accounts for these temporal trends. The algorithm itself incorporates a wide range of ideas, including association rules, Bayesian networks, hypothesis testing and permutation tests to produce a detection algorithm that is careful to evaluate the significance of the alarms that it raises.


Instance selection techniques have received great attention in the literature, since they are very useful to identify a subset of instances (textual documents) that adequately represents the knowledge embedded in the entire text database. Most of the instance selection techniques are supervised, i.e., requires a labeled data set to define, with the help of classifiers, the separation boundaries of the data. However, manual labeling of the instances requires an intense human effort that is impractical when dealing with text streams. In this article, we present an approach for unsupervised instance selection from text streams. In our approach, text clustering methods are used to define the separation boundaries, thereby separating regions of high data density. The most representative instances of each cluster, which are the centers of high-density regions, are selected to represent a portion of the data. A well-known algorithm for data sampling from streams, known as Reservoir Sampling , has been adapted to incorporate the unsupervised instance selection. We carried out an experimental evaluations using three benchmarking text collections and the reported experimental results show that the proposed approach significantly increases the quality of a knowledge extraction task by using more representative instances.