The fact that heterosexual couples still cannot form civil partnerships after the introduction of gender-neutral marriage contravenes Articles 8 and 14 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950. Albeit optional under the Convention (like adoption, parental leave or child benefits), civil partnership is an institution engaging the right to respect for family life and its domestic regulation demands conformity with Convention principles, including non-discrimination. This article contrasts states' wide margin of appreciation in matrimonial matters under Article 12 with the limited discretion under Article 8 and discusses the strict proportionality test applicable to differences in treatment exclusively based on sexual orientation. It dismisses the justifications espoused by executive and judicial authorities in recent litigation for the indefinite postponement of reform, namely the overestimated costs of legislative amendment, the subordination of the equality principle to the number of takers, and attempts to gauge social demand through post-2014 statistics on gay partnerships. Finally, it provides arguments for removing discrimination by opening civil partnership to opposite-sex couples rather than abolishing it: obviating hardship for family units lawfully constituted abroad, ensuring privacy for individuals whose disclosure of civil status reveals sexual orientation, and fostering a pluralist, tolerant society, accommodating ideological objections to marriage.


Abstract Background: The allocation of authorship of papers can lead to controversy. In medical journals, papers tend to be multi-authored and the contribution of each author is not always apparent. The International Committee for Medical Journal Editors provides clear guidelines regarding rights to authorship, and these guidelines are used by some journals. We wished to propose guidelines for the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of the Free State (UFS) and, in order to do so, first determined the practices and experiences regarding authorship in the Faculty. Methods: Personal confidential interviews were conducted by the researcher in the Faculty of Health Sciences with first authors of papers published in accredited journals in 2000. Results: Eighteen of the 19 first authors interviewed in relation to 28 papers were in favour of a guideline for the Faculty. The issue of authorship was discussed beforehand among the authors for just under half of the papers with more than one author (48%). No problems were experienced regarding authorship in relation to 64% of the papers. In only 9% of the papers with more than one author did all the authors fulfil all three criteria of the international guidelines. Conclusion: On the basis of the positive feedback from the respondents, and their suggestions and experiences, a guideline was drafted for the Faculty. This should assist researchers in problematic cases and ensure that all, and only those, authors who deserve authorship are in fact listed as authors.


Despite their ecological, economic and social importance, grasslands in areas with Mediterranean climates continue to receive limited scientific, political and media attention. The main objectives of this review are to compare and contrast dryland grasslands in the 'Old World' regions of the Mediterranean basin (southern Europe, western Asia and North Africa) with those of 'New World' regions with Mediterranean climates (Australia and Chile) and to identify common research priorities. The common characteristics and differences in climate, soils, native vegetation, importance of the livestock sector and the socio-economic background for the different Mediterranean environments are examined. Past trends and the current status of temporary and permanent Mediterranean grasslands are also described. Some common issues between these regions are as follows: (i) adaptation to climate change; (ii) increasing persistence and drought survival of both annual and perennial species; (iii) the important role of forage legumes; (iv) maintaining grassland plant diversity; and (v) improved ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, control of soil erosion and wildfires, and preservation of both wild and domestic biodiversity. The favourable climate in these regions, which allows year-round grazing and the growth of legumes, should be exploited to improve the sustainability of grassland-based, extensive farming systems and the quality of their animal products, while at the same time improving ecosystem services. The decreasing support for grassland research and development programmes requires increased international scientific and technical cooperation among the few institutions operating in the different Mediterranean-climate areas of the World to provide innovative and sustainable solutions to farmers.


This represents the first mesoscale study linking larval fish assemblages and water masses off
south-eastern Australia, aimed at characterising the pelagic shelf ecosystem within the region.
Data were collected during five intensive ichthyoplankton surveys carried out between 24.6°S
and 41.7°S (-1050 nm), that included the coastlines of southern Queensland (Qld), New
South Wales (NSW), eastern Victoria (Vic) and north-eastern Tasmania (Tas). Surveys were
conducted in spring 2002 and 2003 (Qld-NSW), summer 2003 (NSW-Tas), summer 2004
(NSW-Vic) and winter 2004 (Qld-NSW). A total of 371 vertical plankton samples were
obtained via a bongo sampler simultaneously with physical oceanographic variables to a
maximum depth of 200 m.
A novel multivariate approach was developed and employed to define water masses using
temperature frequencies from OTD-derived profiles. While this approach departs from
traditional methods, it proved to be an effective and objective method of delineating water
masses, even when indistinct current structures existed. Up to three discrete water masses
were identified during individual surveys, namely East Australian Current (EAO) to the
north, Tasman Sea (TAS) to the south, and a mixed water mass (MIX) containing EAOTAS
water in between.
Surveys yielded a total of 24,135 larval fishes representing 150 taxa from 101 families.
Epipelagic taxa dominated the larval fish community contributing 41-633 to the total
numbers caught across each survey, with Trachurus spp. (27.73), Sardinops sagax (17.93)
and Lophonectes gallus (3.83) being most abundant. Distinct larval fish assemblages
identified via multivariate analyses corresponded directly to identified water masses in terms
of their spatial distribution. Assemblage composition differed significantly between water
masses, with EAO and TAS being most dissimilar. Such contrast was due to tropical, subtropical
and temperate taxa in EAO, primarily temperate taxa in TAS, and a combination of
EAO and T AS taxa within MIX, the latter being consistent with the convergence of both
water masses. Discriminator taxa between the recurrent EAO and TAS assemblages included
labrids and Bregmaceros spp. in EAO, as well as L. gallus and Macroramphosus spp. in TAS.
Further, both water mass and assemblage boundaries were found to be dynamic, shifting
spatially and temporally depending on the strength of the EAO.
Analyses on individual taxa revealed larval habitats pointing to distinct water mass
preferences, while water mass interfaces often acted as a barrier to larval dispersal. Moreover,
habitats of the abundant small pelagic taxa, namely Etrumeus teres, S. sagax, Engraulis
australis, Trachurus spp. and Scomber australasicus, were similar, and appeared closely
linked to the extent, strength and timing of the seasonal EAO cycle.
Overall results highlight the strength of integrating ichthyoplankton dynamics and
oceanography, and set a foundation for future adaptive biophysical surveys, particularly in
relation to understanding larval transport mechanisms and spawning stock habitats for key
pelagic species. Ultimately, links between biological and physical factors will assist in
understanding the potential effects of climate change on the distribution and abundance of
fish stocks within the region.


Opioid addiction
has become a global epidemic and a national health crisis in recent years. In
2016, approximately 64,000 Americans under 50 years old were killed because of
opioid overdoses. The aim of developing an abuse deterrent opioid is to render
any form of manipulation that encourages abuse challenging and therefore,
non-profitable. With this goal, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is
extensively supporting research into the development of abuse deterrent
technologies and prioritizing their production as a public health
necessity. Abuse deterrent approaches include but are not limited to the
following: (1) using a physical
barrier (e.g., Polyethylene oxide PEO) that basically limit the release
of the drugs in the blood or the digestive tract and prevent mechanical
alteration of the drugs by crushing, grating, grinding, chewing etc, (2) using
chemical barriers that employ gelling agents that prevent the aqueous or organic
extraction of the drugs, and (3) combining
the drug with an antagonist that blocks
the post-abuse euphoria.

PEO is a popular
polymer used as a matrix in these complex opioid products. The polymer is
responsible for the abuse deterrent properties as well as extended release
behavior of opioid drugs. PEO hinders the extraction of Opioid drugs from Abuse
Deterrent Formulations (ADF), makes it challenging to be injected, and resists
mechanical stress and pulverization when crushed. PEO can be subjected to thermal processing such as thermal curing,
compression molding, melt extrusion, and injection molding owing to its
thermoplasticity.

Assessment of the
impact of using various manufacturing processes to develop ADFs and the effect
of using various grades of this polymer is essential to improve upon the next
generation of ADFs. There are three main
categories of premarket studies: Category 1 – laboratory based (in-vitro
manipulations and drug extractions), category 2 – pharmacokinetic and category
3 –clinical. These studies are required by the FDA to demonstrate that a given
formulation exhibit abuse deterrent properties before a drug product is
released to the market. In vitro laboratory based manipulation and
extraction studies which are used to assess AD properties of these
products are challenging, but essential for product development and
generic abuse deterrent product approvals. It is important to realize
that there is a great correlation between the laboratory based in vitro
manipulation and extraction studies and the expectations of potential abuse and
misuse of opioid drugs. The ability of these studies to mimic the manipulation
techniques applied by abusers to defeat the abuse deterrent properties of a given
formulation optimizes predictions on post-market abuse and misuse potential of
ADFs. These studies should also correlate well with in-vivo studies since there is a direct correlation with the
concentration (mg/mL in water) and the "high" obtained by an abuser.

This research aimed
to conduct laboratory based in vitro manipulation and extraction studies to investigate
failure modes of PEO-based
prescription opioids and Promethazine Hydrochloride PMZ HCl tablets. It
highlighted the formulation
components and the manufacturing parameters that might affect the dose dumping of
Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). Furthermore, this research identified
model compounds that can be used as surrogates for Oxycodone and the best
experimental setup that can be used to conduct smoking simulation experiments.
Moreover, it provided an overview of the societal impacts of the opioid crisis
in the state of Indiana.

Investigations of the
failure modes of the PEO-based prescription opioids and PMZ HCL tablets showed
that physical manipulation techniques via chopping or grinding are much more
effective in the destruction of the PEO matrix than thermal manipulation via
the application of heat thus promoting the fast release. The factor with the most
significant effect on the failure modes of PMZ HCL tablets was the application
of physical manipulation, while the one with the lowest impact was the polymer
grade. Moreover, producing PEO-based matrix tablets
via Direct Compression DC significantly affected dose dumping behavior of the
API from the drug products. The production of the PEO-based matrix tablets via DC
was found to be favored over the usage of the melt extrusion method and molding
techniques. It was clear that DC kept the integrity of the polymer, allowed for
slow and controlled release fashion of the API, and rendered the extraction
process relatively hard compared to the Hot Melt Extrusion HME and Molding
techniques.

Furthermore, the
release profile of the investigated PMZ HCL products consisted of various phases
of polymer swelling and API release. Thermal manipulations via the application
of heat were found to accelerate the dose dumping
behavior (90% release) of the APIs from the compressed, extruded, and molded
PEO-based matrix formulations similarly. On the other hand, heating was
much more effective in the extraction of APIs than chopping or grinding thus
promoting the ability to draw a
solution containing the API into a syringe for injection relatively easy and
facilitate higher % API recovery.

Among the formulation components that might have an
impact on the AD properties of the PEO-based drug products are; the choice of
the antioxidant, the use of complexing agents, chelating agents, and
plasticizers. On the other hand, manufacturing process variables that might
have a critical impact on AD properties of the PEO-based drug products include
but are not limited to; processing temperature compared to the melting point of
the polymer and time of exposure

PMZ HCl was used
as a model drug for Oxycodone in dissolution and extractability studies, while
Caffeine and L-Nicotine were used as model drugs in smoking simulation
experiments. The combination of the propane torch and Kugelrohr apparatus mimic
the real-world scenario for smoking Opioids; however, this experimental setup
caused thermal degradation rather than vaporization of some model drugs.

According to the National
Center for Health Statistics; a statistically significant increase in drug
overdose death rates was reported in 2016 in the state of Indiana among other
states. The number of deaths related to opioid pain relievers increased by 3732
folds in 2017 compared to the number of deaths in 2014. Moreover, Males were
more affected by the opioid crisis than females. On the other hand, the age
group 25-44 years, and white people were the most affected by the opioid crisis
in Indiana.


A laboratory experiment was conducted to examine the temporal dynamics of the particle size distribution (PSD) and associated optical variability caused by viral infection of marine heterotrophic bacteria. The PSD covering a broad range of particle size from ≈ 50 nm to 200 µm was measured in parallel with the spectral particulate absorption and beam attenuation coefficients, from which the particulate scattering coefficient, bp(λ), was determined. Within 12 h following infection, the host bacterial population collapsed, viral abundance increased, and submicron particles were produced as bacteria were disrupted and cell debris released, resulting in a large decrease in bp(λ) seen as an almost complete clearing of the particle suspension. Throughout the remainder of the experiment, significant changes in the PSD occurred primarily within the size range of relatively large particles (> 4 µm), likely as a result of the aggregation of smaller‐sized particles originating from the host lysis. The PSD data were used as input for Mie scattering calculations to evaluate the effects of these particle dynamics in terms of relative contributions of different particle size classes to the scattering and backscattering coefficients. This analysis showed a significant increase in the effect of particle aggregation on light scattering during the second and third days after infection. Viral lysis of bacteria and subsequent particle dynamics produce large variations in the PSD over a broad size range on timescales from hours to a few days, and such processes lead to correspondingly large changes in the suspension optical properties.


The terminology for brightness – characterising light-emission (dazzling, shining, glowing), refectivity (shiny, lustrous, matt), surface illumination (well- or poorly-lit), space illumination (brilliant, dim), transparency (transparent, translucent) – constitutes an important, yet poorly studied aspect of ancient Near Eastern colour vocabularies. This is because in most modern European languages, as in English, the meaning of colour words focuses primarily on hue (e.g. red, blue). However, research conducted since the late twentieth century has demonstrated that diferent speech communities divide colour space diferently. Many incorporate non-chromatic aspects like luminosity, transparency, the contrast between wetness/desiccation, patterns and even psycho-emotional values into the concept COLOUR . Moreover, it seems that certain basic hue categories that are so familiar to us, YELLOW , GREEN and BLUE for instance, are neither universal nor ancient. Drawing on written sources from the late Bronze and early Iron Ages, this article provides an overview of the Akkadian vocabulary for brightness. Many of the colour words in this language describe the behaviour of light – as it interacts with various surfaces and when it reaches the eye. Realising that the origins of colours in ancient Mesopotamia are found in the idea of brightness is essential, it is argued here, for understanding religious thought and also for appreciating for colour as an aesthetic and rhetorical feature of the literature, art and architecture produced by this culture.


Our understanding of unstable wetting phenomena in soils is limited. Therefore, lysimeter experiments were conducted in the laboratory to validate current wetting front instability theories. Four different grades of sieved and air-dried perlite and quartz sand were used as the experimental material. Water was applied by a sprinkler system at rates within the range of natural precipitation rates in New Mexico. Experiments were conducted in small lysimeters (diameter 30 cm, height 50 cm) as well as a large one (diameter 100 cm, height 150 cm). The experimental results show that wetting front instability will cause fingering phenomena in a homogeneous soil system. This observation confirms experimental and theoretical results of other workers. The diameter of fingers was observed to be a function of the grain size of the sand. Small fingers (3-4 cm diameter) were found in coarse sand (grain size 1.41-0.84 mm) ; large diameter fingers (12 cm diameter) were observed in fine sand (grain size 0.42-0.25 mm). Our experimental results in the coarse sand show that, for infiltration rates varying between 0.3 and 12 cm/h, finger diameters remain more or less constant. This observation also agrees with existing theories. However, at infiltration rates lower than 0.12 cm/h, the coarse sand experiments show that the wetting fronts became stable. For rates between 0.3 and 0.12 cm/h, the wetting is semistable ; that is, there is incomplete wetting without distinct development of fingers. A similar trend was observed in the experimental results of sands with grain sizes of 0.841 to 0.594 and 0.594 to 0.42 mm. This phenomenon has not been observed in previous experimental studies and is not predicted by current wetting front instability theories. Our experimental data under infiltration rates similar to natural precipitation intensities may explain why unstable wetting has rarely been observed in wettable field soils.


Growth behavior and microstructure of oxide scale formed on MoSi_2 coating by cyclic oxidation testing in aur at 500 °C were investigated using field emission scanning electron microscopy, cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy, glancing angle x-ray diffraction, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. MoSi_2 coating was prepared by chemical vapor deposition of Si on a Mo substrate at 1100 °C for 5 h using SiCl_4–H_2 precursor gas mixtures. After the incubation period of about 454 cycles, accelerated oxidation behavior was observed in MoSi_2 coating and the weight gaun increased linearly with increasing oxidation cycles. Microstructural analysesrevealed that pest oxide scale was formed in three sequential processes. Initially, nanometer-sized crystalline Mo_4O_11 particles were formed with an amorphous SiO_2 matrix at MoSi_2 interfaceregion. Inward diffusing oxygenreacted with Mo_4O_11 to form Mo_9O_26 nano-sized particles. At final stage of oxidation, MoO_3 was formed from Mo_9O_26 with oxygen and growth of MoO_3 took place forming massive precipitates with irregular and wavy shapes. The internal stress caused by the growth of massive MoO_3 precipitates and the volatilization of MoO_3 was attributed to the formation of many lateral cracks into the matrix leading to pest oxidation of MoSi_2 coating.


Numerous studies have explored the relationship between musical instruments and their associations with a particular gender. This study focussed on the developing association between gender and musical instruments in young children and further explored the interaction between gender, instrument and musical style. The research was carried out on 65 participants aged three and four years old. Each participant took part in a short musical game which involved matching 14 musical excerpts with photographs of the individuals who might play the instruments represented within each excerpt. The research used a 2 (gender) × 2 (musical style) × 7 (instrument) factoral design in which a 'feminine' or 'masculine' instrument was featured playing in a 'masculine' or 'feminine' associated style. Our results suggested that prominent gender stereotypes for some instruments do appear to exist in very young children whilst in other instruments, gender associations appear to be also linked to the musical style in which they are represented and possibly the performance context in which they are experienced.


Twenty-two adult, female mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus hemionus) were radio-collared with activity sensors and monitored with ground triangulation from mid-November through March, for 3 years (1982-1985) in the foothills west of Fort Collins, Colorado, to test 4 general hypotheses about habitat selection and activity: (1) The proportion of time deer spend feeding and resting varies with time of day. (2) Deer alter their activity patterns in response to environmental influences. (3) Selection of specific vegetation types for feeding and resting varies with time of day. (4) Ecotones are preferred habitats. Deer were monitored during 6-hr sampling periods: sunrise, daytime, sunset, and night. Deer fed most during sunset, night, and sunrise periods and least during the day. Feeding occupied similar proportions of an average deer's time during sunset, night, and sunrise periods. They preferred the grassland type for feeding and resting at night and the mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus montanus) type for both activities during all other periods. Preference deer showed for the ponderosa pine (Pinusponderosa) type for feeding activity was inversely related to canopy cover. Deer rested most during daytime and night periods. During periods of daylight, deer using the grassland type showed preference for ecotones with certain types offering escape cover. No such preference was observed at night. Deer fed less and rested more when snow depth exceeded 36 cm. No significant differences (P>0.05) in the proportion of time deer devoted to feeding were found in the following comparisons: clear versus cloudy full-moon nights (-50 vs. + 50% cloud cover), full-moon versus new-moon, low versus high wind speeds (0-32 vs. 32-56 km/hr), and warm versus cold temperatures (+18 to -15 vs. -15 to -23? C). No significant relationships were found for the same comparisons in proportion of time devoted to resting.


The so-called buffer time or buffer delay allows airlines to control for excessive delays by introducing extra time in their schedule in addition to what is technically required. . We study the differences between unregulated markets where airlines are free to fix their buffer times strategically and a situation where a social planner would control for time schedules, and in particular the buffer time. To do so, we use a calibrated model of a network of three cities one of them being a hub served by a single airline. Welfare losses that follow from delays are relatively small as compared to the potential benefits that would follow from a decrease in ticket prices. The model thus advocates that, at least for the connections that are considered, fares rather than delays should be the focus of institutions aiming at enhancing passengers' welfare. JEL Classification: R41, L50, L93


David Fincher (b. 1962) did not go to film school and hates being defined as an auteur. He prefers to see himself as a craftsman, dutifully going about the art and business of making film. Trouble is, it's hard to be self-effacing when you are the director responsible for Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network. Along with Quentin Tarantino, Fincher is the most accomplished of the Generation X filmmakers to emerge in the early 1990s. This collection of interviews highlights Fincher's unwavering commitment to his craft as he evolved from an entrepreneurial music video director (Fincher helped Madonna become the undisputed queen of MTV) into an enterprising feature filmmaker. Fincher landed his first Hollywood blockbuster at twenty-seven with Alien3, but that film, handicapped by cost overruns and corporate mismanagement, taught Fincher that he needed absolute control over his work. Once he had it, with Se7en, he achieved instant box-office success and critical acclaim, as well as a close partnership with Brad Pitt that led to the cult favorite Fight Club. Fincher became circumspect in the 2000s after Panic Room, shooting ads and biding his time until Zodiac, when he returned to his mantra that "entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay." Zodiac reinvigorated Fincher, inspiring a string of films--The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--that enthralled audiences and garnered his films dozens of Oscar nominations.


From the Publisher:
What is an 'all-IP' network? What difference will IP networking make to 3G services?
Third Generation (3G) mobile offers access to broadband multimedia services - and in the future most of these, even voice and video, will be IP-based. However 3G networks are not based on IP technologies, rather they are an evolution from existing 2G networks. Much work needs to be done to IP QoS and mobility protocols and architectures for them to be able to provide the functionality 3G requires.
IP for 3G gives a comprehensive overview of 3G networking functionality and examines how IP protocols can be developed to provide some of the basic building blocks of a mobile system (mobility, QoS and call control)
Features:
Clear explanation of how 3G works at the network level. Review of IP protocol and architectural principles. Extensive review, classification and analysis of IP mobility protocols - macro and micro- including IPv6. Analysis of IP QoS protocols and proposed solutions for mobile networks. Tutorial on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and how SIP can be used for multimedia session control. Description of latest UMTS developments - including Release 5. Discussion of 4G networks - what does 4G mean?
IP for 3G will appeal to mobile telecommunications and network engineers who want to know about future developments as well as system designers and developers. Students and academics on postgraduate courses related to telecommunications, especially 3G networking or IP protocols, will find this text ideal supplementary reading, only assuming a general knowledge of GSM and general networking principles.


We consider multi-armed bandit problems where the number of arms is larger than the possible number of experiments. We make a stochastic assumption on the mean-reward of a new selected arm which characterizes its probability of being a near-optimal arm. Our assumption is weaker than in previous works. We describe algorithms based on upper-confidence-bounds applied to a restricted set of randomly selected arms and provide upper-bounds on the resulting expected regret. We also derive a lower-bound which matches (up to a logarithmic factor) the upper-bound in some cases.


Background: Hypothyroidism is a widespread thyroid problem, but there are no reports on the incidence and prevalence of hypothyroidism in this part of our country, that is western UP.

Aims & Objective: The aim of the present study was to assess the prevalence of hypothyroidism in Meerut and nearby areas.

Material and Methods: This retrospective hospital based study involved 4739 patients having undergone thyroid function assay, in the central clinical biochemistry laboratory of Subharti Medical College and its associated hospital. These patients were evaluated for thyroid hormonal assay-tri iodo thyronine (T3), tetra iodo thyronine (T4) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) by Mini Vidas auto analyzer using enzyme linked fluorescent assay technique. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS version 17 software.

Results: Our study shows high prevalence of abnormal thyroid hormone levels (hypothyroidism was 8.2% & subclinical hypothyroidism was 8.4%) with female preponderance.

Conclusion: The study has defined thyroid function status in thyroid patients of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh (U.P). Higher prevalence of hypothyroidism was observed in patients (especially females) in their second & third decade of life. The findings also supports the usefulness of screening of thyroid function compulsory after age of 30 years, for early detection and treatment to reduce the ill effects of thyroid dysfunctions.


This paper studies the South African media's representation of undocumented migrants from 1998 to 2005. Recent literature that deals with media discourse on migration has focused on concepts of 'nation-building' and the emergence of a 'risk society'. This work builds on these themes by examining the relationship between the media's legitimation of state immigration control and South Africa's unique historical tradition of struggle. Contemporary journalists often encounter evidence of similarities between citizens' experiences of segregation during the Apartheid era and the government's recent treatment of undocumented migrants. However, reports tend to deny the moral and practical relevance of this uncomfortable likeness by representing contemporary undocumented migration as a new and subversive threat. The paper suggests that anti-Apartheid sentiments constitute a vital, albeit hidden, discursive resource for critics of contemporary immigration controls.


Abstract This paper explores the importance of the family and the role it plays in migration, especially from considering the influence and the impact these dynamics have on the overall well being of the child. In doing so, the paper also takes an opportunistic approach to discussing some untested views about migration, families and children and cautions utilizing them as the basis of policy formulation and programmatic interventions. In the context of migration, decision-making processes are far from linear, and the level of dynamism within the family, including that of the child, are important elements to take into consideration when looking at family roles in migration. Questions that are considered include: Should the child be allowed to or even urged to take on independent migration? Or, should the child be left behind with extended family members while one or both parents migrate? Or, should the migrating parents take the child along on the journey?


Wicked WordPress Themes is a step-by-step guide to creating beautiful themes for the world's most popular CMS, WordPress. By following the book's advice, readers can produce designs that are aesthetically stunning, consistent, and for-purpose -whether it's for their own use, or to drive a high price on the theme marketplace. All facets of theme design are covered: from design, coding, and deployment, to ensuring readers' designs are ready-to-go as soon as they're installed. Wicked WordPress Themes teaches readers how to leverage theme design frameworks to dramatically shorten development time, enabling them to enter the theme market faster.


Convolution has been the core ingredient of modern neural networks, triggering the surge of deep learning in vision. In this work, we rethink the inherent principles of standard convolution for vision tasks, specifically spatial-agnostic and channel-specific. Instead, we present a novel atomic operation for deep neural networks by inverting the aforementioned design principles of convolution, coined as involution. We additionally demystify the recent popular self-attention operator and subsume it into our involution family as an over-complicated instantiation. The proposed involution operator could be leveraged as fundamental bricks to build the new generation of neural networks for visual recognition, powering different deep learning models on several prevalent benchmarks, including ImageNet classification, COCO detection and segmentation, together with Cityscapes segmentation. Our involution-based models improve the performance of convolutional baselines using ResNet-50 by up to 1.6% top-1 accuracy, 2.5% and 2.4% bounding box AP, and 4.7% mean IoU absolutely while compressing the computational cost to 66%, 65%, 72%, and 57% on the above benchmarks, respectively. Code and pre-trained models for all the tasks are available at https://github.com/d-li14/involution.


Clostridium difficile is an obligate anaerobic, Gram-positive, endospore-forming bacterium. Although an opportunistic pathogen, it is one of the important causes of healthcare-associated infections.
While toxins TcdA and TcdB are the main virulence factors of C. difficile, the factors or processes involved in gut colonization during infection remain unclear. The biofilm-forming ability of bacterial pathogens has been associated with increased antibiotic resistance and chronic recurrent infections. Little is known about biofilm formation by anaerobic gut species. Biofilm formation by C. difficile could play a role in virulence and persistence of C. difficile, as seen for other intestinal pathogens.
We demonstrate that C. difficile clinical strains, 630, and the strain isolated in the outbreak, R20291, form structured biofilms in vitro. Biofilm matrix is made of proteins, DNA and polysaccharide. Strain R20291 accumulates substantially more biofilm. Employing isogenic mutants, we show that virulence-associated proteins, Cwp84, flagella and a putative quorum sensing regulator, LuxS, Spo0A, are required for maximal biofilm formation by C. difficile. Moreover we demonstrate that bacteria in C. difficile biofilms are more resistant to high concentrations of vancomycin, a drug commonly used for treatment of CDI, and that inhibitory and sub-inhibitory concentrations of the same antibiotic induce biofilm formation.
Surprisingly, clinical C. difficile strains from the same out-break, but from different origin, show differences in biofilm formation. Genome sequence analysis of these strains showed presence of a single nucleoide polymorphism (SNP) in the anti-σ factor RsbW, which regulates the stress-induced alternative sigma factor B (σB). We further demonstrate that RsbW, a negative regulator of alternative sigma factor B, has a role in biofilm formation and sporulation of C. difficile.
Our data suggest that biofilm formation by C. difficile is a complex multifactorial process and may be a crucial mechanism for clostridial persistence in the host.


Three different cap management maceration techniques were compared using Syrah (2015) and Pinot Noir (2016). The control, Traditional maceration (TM), of two plunges per day for 15 days total maceration was compared with a No Plunge (NP) trial and a Cold Maceration followed by No Plunge (CM) trial. Total phenolic, tannin and colour extractions were compared during and post maceration using the AWRI WineCloudTM. Differences were noted for both varieties. The Pinot Noir wine CM trial developed higher extractions and more stable colour over time compared with the NP and TM trials. Whereas with the Syrah wine, both the CM and NP trials displayed higher total phenolic, tannin and colour extractions with more stable colour over time compared with the TM trial.


Understanding the function of T cells at the maternal-fetal interface remains one of the most difficult problems in reproductive immunology. A great deal of work over the last two decades has led to the view that the T cells that populate the decidua have important roles in both normal and pathological pregnancies, but the exact nature of these roles has remained unclear. Indeed, the old assumption that decidual T cells are uniformly threatening to fetal survival because the placenta is fundamentally an 'allograft' has given way to the idea that different T cell subsets contribute in different ways to pregnancy success or failure. Accordingly, some T cells are thought to protect the placenta from immune rejection and facilitate embryo implantation, while others are thought to contribute to pregnancy pathologies such as preeclampsia and spontaneous abortion. Here, we review the current state of information on the behavior of decidual T cells with a focus on both mouse and human studies, and with an emphasis on the many unresolved areas within this overall emerging framework.


Invasive soil-borne pathogens are a major threat to forest ecosystems worldwide. The newly discovered soil pathogen, Phytophthora 'taxon Agathis' (PTA), is a serious threat to endemic kauri (Agathis australis: Araucariaceae) in New Zealand. This study examined the potential for feral pigs to act as vectors of PTA. We investigated whether snouts and trotters of feral pigs carry soil contaminated with PTA, and using these results determined the probability that feral pigs act as a vector. We screened the soil on trotters and snouts from 457 pigs for PTA using various baiting techniques and molecular testing. This study detected 19 species of plant pathogens in the soil on pig trotters and snouts, including a different Phytophthora species (Phytophthora cinnamomi). However, no PTA was isolated from the samples. A positive control experiment showed a test sensitivity of 0–3% for the baiting methods and the data obtained were used in a Bayesian probability modelling approach. This showed a posterior probability of 35–90% (dependent on test sensitivity scores and design prevalence) that pigs do vector PTA and estimated that a sample size of over 1000 trotters would be required to prove a negative result. We conclude that feral pigs cannot be ruled out as a vector of soil-based plant pathogens and that there is still a high probability that feral pigs do vector PTA, despite our negative results. We also highlight the need to develop a more sensitive test for PTA in small soil samples associated with pigs due to unreliable detection rates using the current method.


Perhaps more than any other tense, expressions of futurity are intricately linked with modality: the future is inherently uncertain. This article explores the outcomes of future markers grammaticalised from 'come' and 'go' in isiNdebele and several other South African Nguni Bantu languages, and shows that their semantic and pragmatic functions can mark contrasts in time, space, and modality, and can be used both subjectively (communicating speaker stance) and intersubjectively (communicating information about the relationship between speakers). Multiple factors influence the choice and interpretation of isiNdebele future markers in different contexts. These factors can all reasonably be traced to developments from 'come' and 'go', but the semantic and pragmatic force of these markers differs significantly, depending on context. Because different contrasts are emphasised in different contexts, there is significant functional overlap of 'come' and 'go' futures, despite their different origins and cognitive frames. Cross-linguistic distinctions are observed in the systems of future marking across South African Nguni languages, suggesting that even in a group of closely related languages that are often in heavy contact with one another, significant semantic and pragmatic differences can be maintained.


This paper presents the development of a method of perceptually optimising the acoustics and reverb of a virtual space. A spatial filtering technique was developed to group artificially rendered reflections by what spatial attribute they contribute to e.g. apparent source width, distance, loudness, colouration etc. The current system alters the level of different reflection groups depending on the desired type of optimisation. It is hoped that in the future this system could be coupled with machine learning techniques, such that it is able to determine the initial perceptual qualities of the artificial reverb, then optimise the acoustics depending on the user's needs. Such a system could ultimately be used to universally identify what spatial qualities are good and bad, then generically optimise the acoustics automatically.


In paraxial optics, the spatial and angular localization of a beam are usually characterized through second moments in intensity. For these measures, Gaussian beams have the property of achieving a minimum angular spread for a given spatial spread (or beam waist). For wide-angle fields, however, the standard measures of spatial and angular localization become inappropriate, and new definitions must be used. Previously proposed definitions [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 17, 2391 (2000)] are adopted, and the scalar monochromatic wave fields that achieve a minimum angular spread for a given spatial spread are found.


One of the orthodoxies appropriated by feminists from left-wing criticism is that the best way of reading something is to read it against the grain, as otherwise you'll be reduced to a mere function of the text, a puppet pulled by the strings of its rhetoric. If so, then men are well placed to read feminist criticism against the grain, and to be (in Judith Fetterley's sense) `resisting' readers. Not that K. K. Ruthven puts up very much resistance in Feminist Literary Studies: An Introduction (C.U.P., 1984). Once he has cleared a discursive space in which to operate, he writes sympathetically of the feminist project in literary studies, although he is more impressed by the intricacies of feminist theory than by some of the critical practices it has engendered.The central issue is whether or not Ruthven is right in assuming that his text is able to situate itself so far outside the discourses it describes as to be untouched by critiques mounted from inside feminism against tactics such as his. There are two aspects to this issue. The first, which originates outside of feminism, is the question of whether it is possible to engage non-polemically in the criticism of criticism. The second, endemic to feminist discourse, is that Ruthven, as a man, cannot possibly be neutral vis-a-vis feminism; and furthermore, that as a highly placed academic in a profession which historically has preferred to employ men rather than women, he cannot avoid political bias in his account of a discursive style which is highly critical of the system whose privileges he enjoys. In both respects Ruthven aspires to that position of neutrality which the politicised discourses of our time have rendered unfashionable. Nobody, it is assumed, can claim any longer to be neutral, objective and fair-minded, although we are expected to display precisely those qualities by the students whose work we assess and the tax-payers who underwrite our salaries. Nevertheless, in the most influential circles nowadays the `disinterested' reader, whom Matthew Arnold imagined to be free of vested interests, has gone the way of other new critical fictions, and may soon be imaginable only with the assistance of the OED now that the very word `disinterested' looks like becoming a mere synonym for `uninterested'. Clearly, Ruthven's stance is unfashionable, but is it therefore indefensible?What Ruthven claims to have written is not feminist criticism but criticism of such criticism, which he calls `metacriticism', no doubt to the annoyance of those who see in this manoeuvre the infiltration of liberal humanist practices from the domain of literary criticism -- where being interested in different things for different reasons is encouraged -- to the domain of critical theory, which liberal humanists are supposed to be ignorant about. To judge from Ruthven's own practice, metacriticism involves taking as given the basic premises of any type of critical analysis, and then inspecting the kind of criticism which results. It looks not only for internal inconsistencies in critical procedures, but also for evidence of mismatches between programmes and performances. In tolerating a variety of sometimes mutually incompatible basic premises, metacriticism differs markedly from critical theory. For critical theory concerns itself in a much more prescriptive manner with the ontological basis of criticism: in comparison with metacriticism, which is descriptive and eclectic, critical theory is prescriptive and progressive in its search for new and better grounds on which to base critical practice. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that radical critics should attempt to discredit metacriticism as an obstructionist activity which impedes the progressivist drive to establish a supersessional model of critical theory by which some theories can be described as better than others. The metacritic's `interest' in radical criticism might serve therefore as a striking instance inside the domain of literary studies of what Herbert Marcuse used to call `repressive tolerance'. …


The Java object-oriented programming language has been the subject of an important involvement from programmers and industry. Especially for applications related to the Web. The problem of such rapid penetration of Java programs into commercial product is that software engineers does not have any methodology and have to develop complex parallel applications. In this paper, we present, using a real (http://lglsun.epfl.ch/Team/GDM/DSGamma.html) but simple Web parallel application, a possible formal development methodology based on the stepwise refinement of CO-OPN/2 formal specifications. The application chosen is based on the Gamma paradigm, in which additions are realized across distributed multisets of integers maintained by local Java applets. CO-OPN/2 is an object-oriented specification formalism allowing the formal specification of abstract data types based on algebraic specification and of concurrent objects using a Petri net like approach. An interesting feature of CO-OPN/2 is that it gives a coherent solution for the expression of complex properties combining inheritance, concurrency and synchronizations. The refinement of formal descriptions for building progressively the Java program is presented in several refinement steps. This refinement process focuses on the distribution of data and treatments, and validation and verification are studied through the refinement of system properties.


Abstract. Observations from Earth observing satellites indicate that dark carbonaceous aerosols that absorb solar radiation are widespread in the tropics and subtropics. When these aerosols mix with clouds, there is generally a reduction of cloudiness owing to absorption of solar energy in the aerosol layer. Over the subtropical South Atlantic Ocean, where smoke from savannah burning in southern Africa resides above a persistent deck of marine stratocumulus clouds, radiative heating of the smoke layer leads to a thickening of the cloud layer. Here, satellite observations of the albedo of overcast scenes of 25 km2 size or larger are combined with additional satellite observations of clouds and aerosols to estimate the top-of-atmosphere direct radiative forcing attributable to presence of dark aerosol above bright cloud, and the negative semi-direct forcing attributable to the thickening of the cloud layer. The average positive direct radiative forcing by smoke over an overcast scene is 9.2±6.6 W m−2 for cases with an unambiguous signal of absorbing aerosol over cloud in passive ultraviolet remote sensing observations. However, cloud liquid water path is enhanced by 16.3±7.7 g m−2 across the range of values for sea surface temperature for cases of smoke over cloud. The negative radiative forcing associated with this semi-direct effect of smoke over clouds is estimated to be −5.9±3.5 W m−2. Therefore, the cooling associated with the semi-direct cloud thickening effect compensates for greater than 60 % of the direct radiative effect. Accounting for the frequency of occurrence of significant absorbing aerosol above overcast scenes leads to an estimate of the average direct forcing of 1.0±0.7 W m−2 contributed by these scenes averaged over the subtropical southeast Atlantic Ocean during austral winter. The regional average of the negative semi-direct forcing is −0.7±0.4 W m−2. Therefore, smoke aerosols overlaying the decks of overcast marine stratocumulus clouds considered here yield a small net positive radiative forcing, which results from the difference of two larger effects.


This Article presents a case study of a corporate governance innovation — the incentive compensation arrangement for activist-nominated director candidates colloquially known as the "golden leash." Golden leash compensation arrangements are a potentially valuable tool for activist shareholders in election contests. In response to their use, several issuers adopted bylaw provisions banning incentive compensation arrangements. Investors, in turn, viewed director adoption of golden leash bylaws as problematic and successfully pressured issuers to repeal them. The study demonstrates how corporate governance provisions are developed and deployed, the sequential response of issuers and investors, and the central role played by governance intermediaries — activist investors, institutional advisors, and corporate law firms. The golden leash also presents an opportunity to test the response of share prices to governance innovation. We conduct two cross-sectional event studies around key dates that affected the availability of the golden leash. Our core finding is that share prices of those firms facing activist intervention reacted positively to events that make golden leashes more available and negatively to events that make golden leashes less available. Moreover, we find that this governance innovation did not affect every firm in the same way. Only the share prices of those firms most likely to be subject to activist attention experienced statistically significant share price reactions. Our research contributes to the debate over how corporate governance is made and its economic significance. Although we find that corporate governance provisions may be priced, at least in some circumstances, our study also suggests that corporate governance is a complex story involving the actions and reactions not merely of the firm and its shareholders but a variety of intermediaries and interest groups that have agendas of their own.


Conservative models and code practices are usually employed for fatigue-damage predictions of existing structures. Direct in-service behavior measurements are able to provide more accurate estimations of remaining-fatigue-life predictions. However, these estimations are often accurate only for measured locations and measured load conditions. Behavior models are necessary for exploiting information given by measurements and predicting the fatigue damage at all critical locations and for other load cases. Model-prediction accuracy can be improved using system identification techniques where the properties of structures are inferred using behavior measurements. Building upon recent developments in system identification where both model and measurement uncertainties are considered, this paper presents a new data-interpretation framework for reducing uncertainties related to prediction of fatigue life. An initial experimental investigation confirms that, compared with traditional engineering approaches, the methodology provides a safe and more realistic estimation of the fatigue reserve capacity. A second application on a full-scale bridge also confirms that using load-test data reduces the uncertainty related to remaining-fatigue-life predictions.


Parents experience various stressors as they perform their roles in the family and these may influence
child development. The study aimed to determine the relationship of parenting stress levels on
selected cognitive processes of Grade Two students in public and private schools. Parent-respondents
accomplished a questionnaire to gather socio-demographic data and parental stress levels while three
psychometric tests were used to assess visual immediate memory, learning, and working memory of
the Grade Two students. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. Findings
show that 62% of the parents had low parental stress levels. More than half of the students had high
scores for visual immediate memory, more than three-fourths were in the high range for learning, and
more than half was in the low range for working memory. Educational attainment, career, household
income, income source, and primary caregiver role had significant relationships to parental stress
levels. Parental stress levels did not significantly affect the cognitive processes and the relationships
were generally negative. Parents should continuously practice effective stress management and
coping responses to prevent stress spillover to their children.


Given a community-contributed set of photos of a crowded public event, this paper addresses the problem of finding all images of each person in the scene. This problem is very challenging due to large changes in camera viewpoints, severe occlusions, low resolution and photos from tens or hundreds of different photographers. Despite these challenges, the problem is made tractable by exploiting a variety of visual and contextual cues–appearance, time-stamps, camera pose and co-occurrence of people. This paper demonstrates an approach that integrates these cues to enable high quality person matching in community photo collections downloaded from Flickr.com.


The paper discusses epistolary formulae and writing experience in Dutch private letters from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Reviewing research into the history of reading and writing skills in Early Modern Europe, we argue that writing experience varied in the language community across gender, social rank and time. Using the Letters as loot corpus compiled at Leiden University, we show that the distribution of two frequent epistolary formulae is fully in line with the distribution of writing experience. We explain this by arguing that the use of epistolary formulae was convenient to lesser-skilled writers. The paper also argues that there is no reason to assume a great influence of letter-writing manuals on the actual practice of letter writing.


Greenhouses have expanded from Northern areas to other climatic regions in the world, including arid and semi-arid regions. The main limiting factors for greenhouse cultivation in such areas are the high ambient temperatures with low humidity (sometimes with high humidity in coastal areas), typical of these regions during almost all the year, and the availability of good quality water for irrigation and eventually for cooling. Therefore, the technological options for protected cultivation in these areas are quite dependent on the average maximum temperatures along the year. If the area has average maximum temperatures not higher than 30-35°C during the autumn, winter and spring months, a lower technology approach can be used, combining the use of simple plastic covered structures, with high natural ventilation capacity (i.e. retractable roof greenhouses or similar technological approaches), selective mobile shading screens (NIR reflection) and/or evaporative cooling, provided that quality water is available or can be produced. During the summer months, cultivation could be moved to highlands, with cooler night-time temperatures, using screenhouses combined with fogging (low or high pressure, depending on the water quality). If temperatures are higher than 30-35°C during the whole year, pad and fan combined with selective shading is possibly the best option, avoiding cultivation during the summer months, but limiting the size of the greenhouses. Other more sophisticated technologies have been proposed for these regions, which involve in many cases closing the greenhouse and using highly energy dependent active cooling systems and different ways of seawater desalination. The high energy required to cool actively the greenhouses makes it essential to study carefully the possibilities of using renewable energies (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.) to cover at least, a part of large energy demand, as well as to establish resource conserving climate control strategies. In many cases and for some crops under extreme environments, food security concerns and urbanization makes reasonable to consider the possibility of indoor cultivation (plant factories) as potential economic option if they are demonstrated as resource conserving and profitable technologies and production mechanism.


We examine the extent to which different types of substantive project contributions as well as social factors predict whether a scientist is named as author on a paper and inventor on a patent resulting from the same project. Using unique survey data from over 2000 life scientists, we find that the predictors of authorship differ from those of inventorship. A wider range of project contributions may result in authorship, and social factors appear to play a larger role in authorship decisions than in inventorship decisions. We also find evidence that project contributions and social factors interact in predicting authorship, suggesting that the two sets of factors should be considered jointly rather than seen as independent determinants of attribution. In addition to providing novel insights into the functioning of the authorship and inventorship system, our results have important implications for administrators, managers, and policy makers, as well as for innovation scholars who often rely on patents and publications as measures of scientists' performance.


Establishing correspondence between images or scenes is a significant challenge in computer vision, especially given occlusions, viewpoint changes, and varying object appearances. In this paper, we present Siamese Masked Autoencoders (SiamMAE), a simple extension of Masked Autoencoders (MAE) for learning visual correspondence from videos. SiamMAE operates on pairs of randomly sampled video frames and asymmetrically masks them. These frames are processed independently by an encoder network, and a decoder composed of a sequence of cross-attention layers is tasked with predicting the missing patches in the future frame. By masking a large fraction ($95\%$) of patches in the future frame while leaving the past frame unchanged, SiamMAE encourages the network to focus on object motion and learn object-centric representations. Despite its conceptual simplicity, features learned via SiamMAE outperform state-of-the-art self-supervised methods on video object segmentation, pose keypoint propagation, and semantic part propagation tasks. SiamMAE achieves competitive results without relying on data augmentation, handcrafted tracking-based pretext tasks, or other techniques to prevent representational collapse.


"It is the purpose of this study to determine the type of appeal, the size and cost, the plan of insertions, and the extent superlatives are used in The Dallas Morning News used car advertisements of twenty automobile dealers during the month of April. Fourteen advertising appeals were used by the twenty automobile dealers advertising in The Dallas Morning News in the month of April. The fourteen appeals used were: efficiency, friendliness, style, curiosity, safety, convenience-comfort, economy reliability-reputation, durability-dependability, social distinction, fear-caution, ambition, pleasure, and family affection. The economy was the one most used appeal by the dealer. As shown in Table 12, the number of advertising appeals used corresponds or exceeds very little the total number of advertising insertions. Excepting one case, the dealers place the largest advertisements in the Sunday paper. The general procedure was that of placing large advertisements in the Sunday paper and smaller ones throughout the week. The total cost for the twenty automobile dealers was $6,452.08. The total advertising cost per dealer ranged from $38.20 to $1613.81. Only nine of the twenty dealers used superlatives in advertising during the month of April. The nine dealers used nine different superlatives for a total of 281 times."--leaves 1 and 35.


Abstract Introduction Sharps injuries (SI) among healthcare personnel (HCP) in Australia are of such concern the matter was brought before Parliament in 2013. Many SI from safety-engineered devices (SED) are due to nonactivation. Monitoring of activation is recommended. This paper outlines a sharps container (SC) contents audit conducted in Australian capital cities. Methods Reusable, 22 L SC (Sharpsmart, Daniels Corporation, Melbourne) were randomly selected from random healthcare facilities (HCF) in five cities. Wearing protective apparel, the operator opened and decanted SC and sorted hollow-bore needles (HBN) into: capped v. uncapped non-SED, and activated or non-fully activated SED. Volumes and weights were recorded for inter-study comparisons. WinPepi v2.78 was used to calculate probability (significance set at ≤ 0.05), relative-risk and 95% confidence limits. Results 1212 L of sharps (167.9 kg) from 102 SC from 27 hospitals were audited. Many devices were bloodcontaminated. Of the 9651 HBN, 30.4% were SED and 19.4% of the SED were not, or partially, activated. Of the 6718 non-SED, 30.6% were capped needles or capped needle-syringes. City averages for capped or naked sharps ranged from 64.2% (Sydney) to 97.8% (Adelaide) while hospital averages ranged from 32.6 to 100%. Overall, 54.2% of devices were discarded 'sharp'. Conclusions It is disturbing that 75.5% of hollow-bore needles were capped or naked, indicating a high proportion of Australian HCP are unnecessarily at risk of SI while handling sharps. The high non-use of SED and non-activation of SED needs researching.Widespread SED evaluation and adoption (automatic and semi-automatic SED where feasible), repetitive competency training and safety-ownership are needed. Legislation may be indicated.


Recent detailed field studies in several anorthosite complexes have shown that anorthosites are frequently associated with weakness zones in the crust which may have favoured their emplacement at mid‐crust levels. Recent experimental data have shown that the parent magma compositions of various anorthosite massifs lie on thermal highs in the relevant phase diagrams at 10–13 kbar, indicating that these magmas cannot be derived by fractionation of peridotitic mantle melts but by melting of gabbronoritic sources in the lower crust at 40–50 km depths. In the Sveconorwegian Province terne boundaries have been traced in deep seismic profiles to Moho offsets or to tongues of lower crustal material underthrust to depths higher than 40 km. In Southern Norway, we suggest that a lithospheric‐scale weakness zone (the Feda transition zone?) has channelled the Rogaland anorthosites through linear delamination, asthenospheric uprise and melting of a mafic lower crustal tongue.


Background and Purpose: By investigation the medical traditions infallible Imam, healing herbs is recommended for the prevention and treatment. Using herbals such as black beans, Qznfl (a bunch of cloves), white frankincense or horse radish are recommended for urinary disorders. A mixture of saffron, pellitory, cardamom, lavender, hemp, hellebore, white pepper and honey are listed for treatment of bladder stones. In this paper have been investigated valuable matters about prevention and treatment of the kidney, bladder and urinary tract disease in medical traditions. Methods and Materials: in order to, we searched in sites and valid books, the methods of treatment of kidney, bladder and urinary tract in medical traditions and those collected in an article. Conclusion: Instructions in this article about the prevention and treatment of Kidney and urinary tract diseases has been collected from the precious treasures of Islamic medicine and medicinal herbs that these have no side effects of chemical drugs and are easily available


Cover illustration courtesy of Mr Richard Keeler, curator of the museum of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists, UK. Cover photo: Mark Thomas.

Drops, ointments, gels, inserts and sprays are established modes of administering medication to the eye. Doctors and patients will not pause to give a second thought when instilling a drop of any drug in the conjunctival sac. It is difficult to comprehend that there was a time when this simple act was a challenge. What we take for granted today, required elaborate containers called 'Undines' and 'Drop bottles'.

The clear glass container on the left of the front page illustration is an undine. …


This paper studies the problem of RGB-D object recognition. Inspired by the great success of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) in AI, researchers have tried to apply it to improve the performance of RGB-D object recognition. However, DCNN always requires a large-scale annotated dataset to supervise its training. Manually labeling such a large RGB-D dataset is expensive and time consuming, which prevents DCNN from quickly promoting this research area. To address this problem, we propose a semi-supervised multimodal deep learning framework to train DCNN effectively based on very limited labeled data and massive unlabeled data. The core of our framework is a novel diversity preserving co-training algorithm, which can successfully guide DCNN to learn from the unlabeled RGB-D data by making full use of the complementary cues of the RGB and depth data in object representation. Experiments on the benchmark RGB-D dataset demonstrate that, with only 5% labeled training data, our approach achieves competitive performance for object recognition compared with those state-of-the-art results reported by fully-supervised methods.


A Message Authentication Code (MAC) is a key-dependent one way hash function. One popular way to construct a MAC algorithm is to use a block cipher in conjunction with the Cipher-Block-Chaining (CBC) mode of operation. The classic CBC-MAC algorithm, while secure for messages of a pre-selected fixed length, has been shown to be insecure across messages of varying lengths such as the type found in typical IP datagrams. This memo specifies the use of AES in CBC mode with a set of extensions to overcome this limitation. This new algorithm is named AES-XCBC-MAC-96.


The second part of the word autobiography – bio – means life, in this instance referring to the story or account of a person's life. But it can also be understood in the sense of being alive, of the fact of existence. Such interpretation of the concept of autobiography examines not only the construction of a life-story, but also other textual, poetic and stylistic devices that convey a personal perception of living. Such dimension of autobiography could also be referred to as self-writing. In this article, I seek to explore the meaning of the term self-writing, if it is not exactly the same as autobiographical writing: how a text as a whole might be a representation of a particular mode of "selfhood" expressed through textual figures distinct from the telling of a "story." The first part of the article is discussion of the concept of narrativity in the work of some philosophers such as Peter Lamarque and John Christman. According to them, narrativity is not a necessary precondition for coherent subjectivity; on the contrary, a steady and unified subjectivity is a precondition of autobiographical narrative identity. Paul Ricoeur distinguishes between identity and ipseity: identity can be changed without selfhood being lost; there is the role or contextual identification of the self, the "story" told of the self to the others. But the concept of ipseity is about the inner perception of selfhood and is not a "story", but expresses an idea of differentiating between self-writing and autobiography. In principle, this is a distinction where, on the one hand, the narrative identity as sameness is created in the past and, on the other hand, there is the ipseity, which is more oriented to the present and the future. While the story gives the "self" some coherence and teleology, we can, by different textual devices, observe the "gaps" in the coherence of the "self", the ambivalence of self-perception, and the fleeing of selfhood from the reflecting gaze, so that the text does not seem to recount the life of the "I" in retrospect, but seems to present it in the sense of living. It is not so important how these things are thematized in the text, as it is to observe what textual devices embody or represent it. This may also explain why the poetical/fictional devices have some advantage over the factual ones when it is about the self-perception of the writer, its necessity and uniqueness. The main part of the article attempts to describe and analyse some examples of self-writing, which are construed so that the identity is not based on the sameness of the role, but instead, they express the uniqueness of selfhood and a perception that is on the borderline of the present and the future. Tonu Onnepalu's diaries (Anton Nigov's Exercises and Onnepalu's Spring and Summer and) are discussed with regard to the motifs of the now-moment, devoid of identity; in this void a sharp perception of ipseity is most clearly felt, which is open to despair and uplift at the same time. In the light of Ricoeur's ideas the title of Nigov's Harjutused (Exercises) acquires a new meaning, stressing the wish to leave life as a habit (harjumus) and move towards life as an exercise (harjutus) – Ricoeur's ipse is something that emerges as the basis of an identity and is beyond the habit that creates sameness. In Onnepalu's diaries we can observe the writer's orientation to "nothing" in between the identities that are perceived as inauthentic, and by moving through the "nothing" for a moment we get a glimpse of the authenticity of ipseity. An autobiographical bestseller by Mihkel Raud, Musta pori nakku (Throwing Mud in the Face), recounting the story of the writer's youth when he was a punk musician and an alcoholic, is textually ambivalent, as the author's position and the subjective focus shift: there is a somewhat warning and moralistic I, who looks at his own past, but there is also a past I, who was carelessly and absolutely in love with punk lifestyle. The peculiarity of the text is that these points of view are not clearly distinguishable but are fused. However, it is precisely that which makes Raud's book an interesting example of self-writing, as he has abandoned teleological coherence that would enable the reader to arrange in order or to oppose the author's different identities. Consequently, an ambivalent gap has been created in which an authentic pattern of selfhood, which cannot be reduced to one-dimensional identity-narrative, is created. The six-part series of memoirs by Madis Koiv with a title Studia memoriae differs from the ordinary memoirs because in addition to or instead of objective restoration of memories, there is a search for precise subjectivity; it is an attempt to focus on the process of recollecting. Thus Studia memoriae strive to reach a moment that brings to mind the occurrences in the past in such a way that the person who remembers them would see something new that he has not seen before – as if one or another memory has come to his mind for the first time. The focus is not on the I as the recounting identity assembled over the past, but the present I (ipse) who relates and coheres with his own past. Self-writing is usually something outside the coherent I-narrative; it is essentially in the present and in the future, as the self itself is sliding towards an unknown future, towards something which is "not yet the self," towards something that is nothing in relation to the self, nor reducible to clear-cut ready-made identities. Such "not-yet-self"-being is one of the essential states of being oneself and being alive. What I mean by self-writing is the flash of the patterns which cannot be reduced to identities based on sameness, the gap that points to the unique in self perception or a puzzle in the texture of the self-account.


The Jurassic Dashibalbar granitoid pluton (∼300 km2) crops out in the Triassic North-Gobi rift of central Mongolia, just south of the 230 to 195 Ma Khentei batholith. The granitoids are shallow-seated dominantly, amphibole-bearing alkali feldspar granite that contain quartz-syenite/syenite enclaves. They are all composed of megacrystic mesoperthite, quartz, Ca-Na amphibole altered to biotite and rarely with pyroxene cores, magnetite and ilmenite. The pluton yielded a concordant U-Pb zircon age of 186 ± 1 Ma, which is similar to a published 189 ± 3 Ma 40Ar/39Ar amphibole age, and indicates rapid cooling through ca. 550 °C. This age is ca. 10 my younger than the 196 ± 4 Ma age of the bimodal volcanic complex intruded by the pluton. The volcanic complex is composed of augite-phyric transitional basalt and rhyolite/comendite. Both basalts and rhyolites/comendites are evolved within-plate varieties with positive εNd(t) (∼ +2.5) values. The granitoids are evolved alkaline, A-type granites and quartz-syenites/syenites that are enriched in light REE's, but show a distinct depletion in Eu, Sr and Ba, indicative of feldspar fractionation. The data are consistent with derivation of the granites from the syenites by an assimilation-fractional crystallization process involving a silicic crustal contaminant. The granitic rocks have εNd(t) values of ∼ +0.8 to +1.2, which are slightly lower than εNd(t) values +1.3 to +1.6 in the syenites, although both have similar TDM model ages (∼800-970 Ma). The ∼800 Ma model ages of the basalt and rhyolite/comendite are comparable to those of the intrusion and enclaves. The compositions of all these rocks, including εNd(t) and TDM, are within the range of A-type granites and volcanic complexes of the Early Mesozoic Mongolian-Transbaikalian igneous province. The results suggest derivation of a parent magma of the granitoids and felsic volcanic rocks from underplated, enriched, Neoproterozoic mantle-derived basaltic rocks in the lower crust, whereas the Dashibalbar basalts were derived from Neoproterozoic subcontinental lithospheric mantle; Neoproterozoic megablocks crop out in adjacent parts of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt. Melting of lower crust and subcontinental lithospheric mantle implies a rising heat source. Although such a heat source is consistent with both rifting and passage over the Mongolian mantle plume, only the latter explains the west-to-east migration of the magmatism and rifting.


To provide evidence on patterns of and changes in ownership structures both at the start and during early privatization, we develop different typologies of enterprise ownership and use new data for more than 1500 firms in the Baltic Republics. We find that: (i) by international standards, insider ownership is very common in all Baltic countries; (ii) ownership patterns differ much across the Baltic Republics with a much higher incidence of foreign ownership in Estonia; (iii) ownership patterns are quite heterogeneous within all countries (e.g. by sector and by size). In Estonia and Latvia more insider ownership is found in small enterprises, and in agriculture, less in services and transport, and also less in trade in Estonia. Similar tendencies are not found in Lithuania; (iv) In Estonia and Latvia capital intensity is significantly lower in insider owned enterprises and this is not the case in Lithuania; (v) changes in ownership category are relatively frequent in all countries; (vi) for firm that change ownership regime, typically levels of employee ownership fall and managerial and outside ownership rises; (vii) in Estonia employee dominated ownership tend to be most stable in small enterprises. There is great heterogeneity across firms both in the situation at the time of privatization and in the following ownership dynamics. These findings are consistent with an institutionalist perspective that predicts variation across and within countries and points to roles for factors both at societal and firm level in accounting for such differences and changes.


Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) duration until return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) influences survival and neurologic outcomes after delivery room (DR) CPR. High quality chest compressions (CC) improve cerebral and myocardial perfusion. Improved myocardial perfusion increases the likelihood of a faster ROSC. Thus, optimizing CC quality may improve outcomes both by preserving cerebral blood flow during CPR and by reducing the recovery time. CC quality is determined by rate, CC to ventilation (C:V) ratio, and applied force, which are influenced by the CC provider. Thus, provider performance should be taken into account. Neonatal resuscitation guidelines recommend a 3:1 C:V ratio. CCs should be delivered at a rate of 90/min synchronized with ventilations at a rate of 30/min to achieve a total of 120 events/min. Despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting this, the investigation of alternative CC interventions in human neonates is ethically challenging. Also, the infrequent occurrence of extensive CPR measures in the DR make randomized controlled trials difficult to perform. Thus, many biomechanical aspects of CC have been investigated in animal and manikin models. Despite mathematical and physiological rationales that higher rates and uninterrupted CC improve CPR hemodynamics, studies indicate that provider fatigue is more pronounced when CC are performed continuously compared to when a pause is inserted after every third CC as currently recommended. A higher rate (e.g., 120/min) is also more fatiguing, which affects CC quality. In post-transitional piglets with asphyxia-induced cardiac arrest, there was no benefit of performing continuous CC at a rate of 90/min. Not only rate but duty cycle, i.e., the duration of CC/total cycle time, is a known determinant of CC effectiveness. However, duty cycle cannot be controlled with manual CC. Mechanical/automated CC in neonatal CPR has not been explored, and feedback systems are under-investigated in this population. Evidence indicates that providers perform CC at rates both higher and lower than recommended. Video recording of DR CRP has been increasingly applied and observational studies of what is actually done in relation to outcomes could be useful. Different CC rates and ratios should also be investigated under controlled experimental conditions in animals during perinatal transition.


In 1975, the University of Pennsylvania published a remarkable item. Rather than being deemed an article, note, or comment, it was classified as an "Aside." The item was of course, The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule. This piece of legal scholarship was remarkable in numerous ways. First, it was published anonymously and the author's identity was not known publicly for decades. Second, it was genuinely funny, perhaps one of the funniest pieces of true scholarship in a field dominated mostly by turgid prose and ineffective attempts at humor by way of cutesy titles or bad puns. Third, it was short and to the point in a field in which a reader new to law reviews would assume that authors are paid by the word or footnote. Fourth, the article was learned and actually about something - how baseball's infield fly rule is consistent with, and an example of, the common law processes of rule creation and legal reasoning in the Anglo-American tradition. The article also was the launching point of the Law and Baseball movement. Legal scholars simply cannot keep their hands off the infield fly rule - either substantively or as a metaphor. An eminent antitrust scholar quickly responded to the Aside, arguing that the infield fly rule was in fact the product of law and economics concerns about efficiency (and potentially other more humanistic concerns) and that the Aside was fatally flawed in portraying the infield fly rule as inevitable or the product of a scientific legal regime. Metaphorically, the infield fly rule also has been used to analyze legal problems in tax, evidence, labor law, constitutional law, e-commerce, and the law of prostitution, as well as topics in areas as far afield as linguistics. It has been utilized to analyze problems in cases ranging from the law of sexual harassment to the law governing compromise and settlement. Indeed, the infield fly rule has even been cited as a possible topic of political protest and has been cited in religious sermons. The Common Law Origins of the Infield Fly Rule has been widely cited in articles dealing with both baseball and such diverse other subjects as legal theory, legal history, bankruptcy, criminal law, civil rights, constitutional law, and legal citation. For all its greatness, though, Common Law Origins is a creature of its time. Written with reference only to common law reasoning, it bears a striking resemblance to the legal process school's conception of the proper development of law through a process of politically neutral reasoned elaboration. Even in 1975, the concept of the Legal Process school as the appropriate jurisprudential tool to view law was under heavy attack. Moreover, Common Law Origins appears to have deliberately chosen not to address earlier jurisprudential movements such as legal positivism, legal realism, and natural law which would have offered quite different explorations for the evolution and significance of the infield fly rule. In addition, the Aside was published in 1975 at the very beginning of the flowering of what is now often referred to as Post-Modern jurisprudence with its many different approaches to challenging legal orthodoxy. Such challenges can be found in an array of sources ranging from law and economics, critical legal studies, feminist jurisprudence, and cultural studies. We propose to go beyond the common law origins of the infield fly rule and do what the author chose not to do: namely, explore the different spaces for an infield fly rule from the point of view of the great jurisprudential movements of the last hundred years. In so doing we conclude (i) that post-modern jurisprudence strongly suggests that the infield fly rule was far more socially constructed and historically contingent than previously acknowledged, and (ii) that it is much more difficult to be clever, funny, and insightful about Law and Baseball than it appears.


Public health can be achieved only through collective action, not through individual endeavor. Collective goods are essential conditions for health, but can be secured only through a well-regulated society. Yet, successive governments have eroded health and safety protections, with serious consequences. Think about the death of miners, lead in children's toys, industrial solvents in toothpaste, salmonella in peanut butter, e-coli in spinach, and unsafe or ineffective pharmaceuticals such as COX-2 inhibitors or non-statin cholesterol medications.Conservatives have waged a campaign against the administrative state that has created and reinforced deep-seated concerns about over-bearing government, particularly at the national level. The political dialogue used to describe agency action is pejorative and effective: "big government," "centralized top-down," "bureaucratic," "command and control." This anti-government narrative has set the terms of the debate about the role of government in protecting the public from market excesses and failures. It has quietly led to pervasive deregulation, allowing the market to dictate business and consumer behavior. The "Deregulatory State" takes many subtle forms, including self-policing, so that industry discloses and corrects its own safety violations; incapacitating, so that agencies are starved of expertise and resources; devolving, so that residual regulation is focused at the local level; preempting, so that the federal government denies states the authority to protect its citizens; and privatizing so that government functions are conducted by "for profit" or voluntary entities. In this column, I will focus on two broad categories of deregulation: federal preemption and privatization.


Abstract The concept of applying rapid manufacturing technology to maxillofacial treatment has been described previously; however, these reports did not take into account the practicality of its actual incorporation into clinical practice. Patents in the field are based on imaging techniques combined with rapid manufacturing, which theoretically lead to reconstruction of faces. Some cases studies reported have dealt with the manufacture of prostheses on the laboratory scale. Here two case studies are reported that used imaging and rapid manufacturing techniques for making an ear prosthesis and a burns mask for two patients. Laser scanning was chosen for imaging and Thermojet printing and fused deposition modelling for rapid manufacturing. Outcomes of the study were threefold: improvement in the process, improvement in patient care, and clinical application of existing technology to healthcare. With further research this technology may aid maxillofacial prosthetists in busy facial clinics, reduce patient clinic time, and improve the final product.


The height of scattering phase center retrieved from InSAR data is considered to be correlated with tree height and the spatial structure of the forest stand. Though some researchers have used simple backscattering models to estimate tree height from the height of scattering center, the effect of forest spatial structure on InSAR data is not well understood yet. A three-dimensional coherent radar backscattering model for forest canopies based on realistic three-dimensional scenes was used to investigate the effect. A fractal tree model (L-system) was used to simulate individual 3-D tree structure of different ages or heights. Trees were positioned in a stand in specific patterns resulting in a 3-D medium of discrete scatterers. The radar coherent backscatter model used the 3-D forest scene as input and simulated the coherent radar backscattering signature. Interferometric SAR images of 3D scenes were simulated and heights of scattering phase centers were estimated from the simulated InSAR data. The effects of tree height, and the spatial distribution patterns of trees on the scattering phase center were analyzed and discussed.


We developed 3D culture methods that reproduce in vitro mammary gland ductal morphogenesis. We are proposing a conceptual framework to understand morphogenetic events based on epistemologically sound biological principles instead of the common practice of using only physical principles. More specifically, our theoretical framework is based on the principle that the default state of cells is proliferation with variation and motility. We emphasize the role played by the agency of cells embedded in a gel and the circularity that is relevant for the intended process, whereby cells act upon other cells and on matrix elements, and are subject to the agentivity of neighboring cells. This circularity strongly differs from classical linear causality. Finally, our approach opens up the study of causal determination to multilevel explanations rather than to reductive ones involving only molecules in general and genes in particular.


Objectives: To determine the amount of change over time on the five dimensions of the 40-item Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Assessment Questionnaire (ALSAQ-40) that are subjectively meaningful to patients. Minimally important differences (MID), effect sizes (ES) and standardized response means (SRM) are calculated for respondents who indicate only a little change over the time of the study whilst mean change scores, ES and SRM statistics are calculated for those who indicated much change. Design: Postal survey. Copies of the ALSAQ-40 were completed on two occasions three months apart. Respondents were also asked to indicate how much change they had experienced since baseline on each of the five domains of the questionnaire. Setting: All patient members of the Motor Neurone Disease Association for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Subjects: Seven hundred and sixty-four patient members returned questionnaires at baseline and follow-up. Results: For those reporting minor change since baseline results varied across dimensions. For example a MID was reflected in a change of 6.67 (SD 16.52) points for the Communication dimension, whilst for the Emotional functioning dimension the change was 2.67 (SD 15.45) points. Similarly ESs and SRMs varied considerably across dimensions. Mean change over time, ES and SRM statistics for those who reported that their health was much worse at follow-up were substantially larger: for example, mean changes ranged from 6.87 (SD 15.87) to 13.79 (SD 22.60). Conclusions: Results indicate the minimum magnitude of change that is subjectively meaningful to patients. Results indicate that smaller changes than have been suggested previously as significant have a subjectively meaningful adverse effect upon patients.


An agent facing sequential decisions that are characterized by partial feedback needs to strike a balance between maximizing immediate payoffs based on available information, and acquiring new information that may be essential for maximizing future payoffs. This trade-off is captured by the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework that has been studied and applied when at each time epoch payoff observations are collected on the actions that are selected at that epoch. In this paper we introduce a new, generalized MAB formulation in which additional information on each arm may appear arbitrarily throughout the decision horizon, and study the impact of such information flows on the achievable performance and the design of efficient decision-making policies. By obtaining matching lower and upper bounds, we characterize the (regret) complexity of this family of MAB problems as a function of the information flows. We introduce an adaptive exploration policy that, without any prior knowledge of the information arrival process, attains the best performance (in terms of regret rate) that is achievable when the information arrival process is a priori known. Our policy uses dynamically customized virtual time indexes to endogenously control the exploration rate based on the realized information arrival process.


Studies on the preparation and physical properties of phase-pure 1T′-MoS2 are still scarce although a 1T′ phase MX2 (M = Mo and W; X = Se and Te) has recently been reported to be a Weyl semimetal, a quantum spin Hall insulator, and a superconductor. Herein, we report a perfect single-layer 1T′-MoS2 structure based on edge-sharing octahedra. Pure 1T′-MoS2 nanosheets were successfully prepared using LiMoS2 single crystals. The arrangement of zig-zag Mo–Mo chains in the 1T′-MoS2 layer evolved from that of parent Mo–Mo diamond-like chains in LiMoS2 crystals after the removal of all lithium ions. A well-defined 1T′-type lattice structure was observed and characterized by scanning transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. Surprisingly, superconductivity with an onset transition temperature (Tc) of 4.6 K has been observed in the lithium-free 1T′-MoS2 nanosheets, which is not observed in semiconducting bulk or single-layer 2H-MoS2.


C5-deficient mice differed from C5-sufficient mice both quantitatively and qualitatively in C5 protein, C5 mRNA, and the C5 gene. C5-deficient protein was present as decreased amounts of an unprocessed, single- chain precursor. C5-deficient mRNA was decreased in amount and present in two forms, the smaller of which was the same as the single form in normal cells. Nuclei from both normal and deficient cells contained the larger form of C5 mRNA, and C5-deficient DNA demonstrated differences from the normal pattern on Southern analysis for two restriction enzymes. These data suggest that the primary transcript of the C5- deficient gene is abnormal, retarding the processing of the C5 mRNA, and that the C5-deficient mRNA codes for an abnormal protein.


The aim of this paper is to determine the mobility of protein molecules inside oxidized potato starch polymer (OPSP) microgel particles (spherical, 10–20 µm in diameter). This provides relevant information for controlled uptake and release applications of such systems. The mobility of Alexa-488 labelled lysozyme inside the microgel is measured by fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) in combination with confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). CLSM images show that the protein molecules distribute quite homogeneously over the microgel particles. By fitting the FRAP data with a model based on exchange between bleached and unbleached protein molecules inside the gel, we identified several protein fractions of different mobility. Increasing the salt concentration (NaCl) or the pH causes a shift in the distribution towards the more mobile fractions. This is consistent with earlier uptake and release measurements, which showed that the binding affinity decreases with increasing salt concentration and pH. At low protein concentrations, at which the microgel is not saturated with protein, the mobility of the bound protein molecules is more restricted than at protein concentrations where the uptake is complete. This is attributed to binding of the protein molecules to multiple binding sites. The model explains reasonably the mechanism of protein mobility inside the microgel, indicating that embedded ingredients with charge properties comparable to those of lysozyme can be protected at low salt concentration and low pH. Increasing the salt concentration or the pH triggers the release.


Oceanic anoxic event 2 (OAE-2) occurring during the Cenomanian/Turonian (C/T) transition is evident from a globally recognized positive stable carbon isotopic excursion and is thought to represent one of the most extreme carbon cycle perturbations of the last 100 Myr. However, the impact of this major perturbation on and interaction with global climate remains unclear. Here we report new high-resolution records of sea surface temperature (SST) based on TEX86 and ?18O of excellently preserved planktic foraminifera and stable organic carbon isotopes across the C/T transition from black shales located offshore Suriname/French Guiana (Demerara Rise, Ocean Drilling Program Leg 207 Site 1260) and offshore Senegal (Cape Verde Basin, Deep Sea Drilling Project Leg 41 Site 367). At Site 1260, where both SST proxy records can be determined, a good match between conservative SST estimates from TEX86 and ?18O is observed. We find that late Cenomanian SSTs in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean (?33°C) were substantially warmer than today (~27°–29°C) and that the onset of OAE-2 coincided with a rapid shift to an even warmer (~35°–36°C) regime. Within the early stages of the OAE a marked (~4°C) cooling to temperatures lower than pre-OAE conditions is observed. However, well before the termination of OAE-2 the warm regime was reestablished and persisted into the Turonian. Our findings corroborate the view that the C/T transition represents the onset of the interval of peak Cretaceous warmth. More importantly, they are consistent with the hypotheses that mid-Cretaceous warmth can be attributed to high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and that major OAEs were capable of triggering global cooling through the negative feedback effect of organic carbon-burial-led CO2 sequestration. Evidently, however, the factors that gave rise to the observed shift to a warmer climate regime at the onset of OAE-2 were sufficiently powerful that they were only briefly counterbalanced by the high rates of carbon burial attained during even the most extreme interval of organic carbon burial in the last 100 Myr.


This paper is concerned with the prediction of oxygen diffusivities in fcc nickel from first-principles calculations and large-scale atomic simulations. Considering only the interstitial octahedral to tetrahedral to octahedral minimum energy pathway for oxygen diffusion in fcc lattice, greatly underestimates the migration barrier and overestimates the diffusivities by several orders of magnitude. The results indicate that vacancies in the Ni-lattice significantly impact the migration barrier of oxygen in nickel. Incorporation of the effect of vacancies results in predicted diffusivities consistent with available experimental data. First-principles calculations show that at high temperatures the vacancy concentration is comparable to the oxygen solubility, and there is a strong binding energy and a redistribution of charge density between the oxygen atom and vacancy. Consequently, there is a strong attraction between the oxygen and vacancy in the Ni lattice, which impacts diffusion.