American monetary policy is formulated by the Federal Reserve and overseen by Congress. Both policy making and oversight are deliberative processes, although the effect of this deliberation has been difficult to quantify. In this book, Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey provides a systematic examination of deliberation on monetary policy from 1976 to 2008 by the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee (FOMC) and House and Senate banking committees. Her innovative account employs automated textual analysis software to study the verbatim transcripts of FOMC meetings and congressional hearings; these empirical data are supplemented and supported by in-depth interviews with participants in these deliberations. The automated textual analysis measures the characteristic words, phrases, and arguments of committee members; the interviews offer a way to gauge the extent to which the empirical findings accord with the participants' personal experiences. Analyzing why and under what conditions deliberation matters for monetary policy, the author identifies several strategies of persuasion used by FOMC members, including Paul Volcker's emphasis on policy credibility and efforts to influence economic expectations. Members of Congress, however, constrained by political considerations, show a relative passivity on the details of monetary policy. .


Personalization and recommendation systems are a solution to the problem of content overload, especially in large information systems. In this thesis, a personalized recommendation system enhanced with semantic knowledge has been developed in order to overcome the most common limitations of traditional approaches: the cold-start and the sparsity problems. The recommender consists of the following two main components. A user-profile learning algorithm combines user's feedback from different channels and employs domain inferences to construct accurate user profiles. A recommendation algorithm, using content-based filtering, exploits the semantic structure of the domain to obtain accurate predictions and generate the corresponding recommendations. The system's design proposed is flexible enough to be potentially applied to applications of any domain that can be properly described using ontologies. In addition to the development of the recommendation system, an existing Web-application in the tourism domain has been extended and adapted in order to be able to integrate the recommender into it. The overall recommendation system has been evaluated and the results obtained indicate that it satisfies the requirements established.


Tryptophan and serotonin were imaged with infrared illumination by three-photon excitation (3PE) of their native ultraviolet (UV) fluorescence. This technique, established by 3PE cross section measurements of tryptophan and the monoamines serotonin and dopamine, circumvents the limitations imposed by photodamage, scattering, and indiscriminate background encountered in other UV microscopies. Three-dimensionally resolved images are presented along with measurements of the serotonin concentration (∼50 mM) and content (up to ∼5 × 108 molecules) of individual secretory granules.


Objective:Escherichia coli-derived recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2 (E-BMP-2) has been shown to be as effective as mammalian cell-derived BMP-2. However, several in vitro and in vivo experiments are still necessary to validate the effectiveness of E-BMP-2 due to the difference in synthesis process, mainly related to protein nonglycosylation. The objective of this study was to investigate whether biodegradable polylactide-co-glycolide (PLGA) membrane is a suitable carrier for E-BMP-2 delivery for bone regeneration of critical-sized defects in rat calvaria. Materials and Methods: First, the osteoinductive effect of E-BMP-2 was confirmed in vitro in mouse bone marrow stromal cells by analysis of osteocalcin mRNA levels, and calcium deposition was detected by alizarin red staining. Before in vivo experiments, the release profile of E-BMP-2 from PLGA membranes was determined by ELISA. E-BMP-2 (0, 1, 5 and 10 μg/μl) was applied for ectopic and orthotopic bone formation and was analyzed by X-ray, micro-CT and histology. Results: Release-profile testing showed that PLGA membrane could retain 94% of the initially applied E-BMP-2. Ectopic bone formation assay revealed that combination of E-BMP-2/PLGA membrane strongly induced bone formation. Stronger osteoinductivity with complete repair of critical-sized defects was observed only with PLGA membranes adsorbed with 5 and 10 μg/μl of E-BMP-2, whereas no bone formation was observed in the groups that received no membrane or 0-μg/μl dose of E-BMP-2. Conclusion: PLGA membrane was shown to be a suitable carrier for sustained release of E-BMP-2, and the E-BMP-2/PLGA membrane combination was demonstrated to be efficient in bone regeneration in a model of critical-sized defects.


This paper discusses the research ideas behind a seminar session from the recent UKLA conference (2011). The seminar identified a potentially rich data source, i.e. children's literature, in order to investigate the way teachers are represented and the possible link with initial teacher education (ITE) students' conceptions of professional identity on entry to teacher education courses. This illuminative inquiry is based on the writer's current PhD study into the range of representations children are actually given access to within the school context, particularly in key stages 1 & 2, through a review of the teaching of narrative within the last decade, which would draw upon the findings of the UKLA research on Teachers as Readers (2006-8). An examination of the characters found in familiar classroom texts such as Roald Dahl's Matilda are used in conjunction with a focus upon recent literature regarding the cultural construction of the primary teacher within the UK to investigate and explore the potential interplay between imagined teachers and the recruitment of teachers in training. While other aspects of media no doubt have an impact upon the changing construction of ITE students' professional identity, I propose that the preceding literary influences within the classroom experience of ITE students have largely been ignored, and as a result valuable insights into their perceived professional identity upon entry to the programme, and a potential inhibiting factor for widening recruitment, has lain dormant and been thus far misunderstood.


Robust data are the base of effective gender diversity policy. Evidence shows that gender inequality is still pervasive in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Coastal geoscience and engineering (CGE) encompasses professionals working on coastal processes, integrating expertise across physics, geomorphology, engineering, planning and management. The article presents novel results of gender inequality and experiences of gender bias in CGE, and proposes practical steps to address it. It analyses the gender representation in 9 societies, 25 journals, and 10 conferences in CGE and establishes that women represent 30% of the international CGE community, yet there is under-representation in prestige roles such as journal editorial board members (15% women) and conference organisers (18% women). The data show that female underrepresentation is less prominent when the path to prestige roles is clearly outlined and candidates can self-nominate or volunteer instead of the traditional invitation-only pathway. By analysing the views of 314 survey respondents (34% male, 65% female, and 1% ''other''), we show that 81% perceive the lack of female role models as a key hurdle for gender equity, and a significantly larger proportion of females (47%) felt held back in their careers due to their gender in comparison with males (9%). The lack of women in prestige roles and senior positions contributes to 81% of survey respondents perceiving the lack of female role models in CGE as a key hurdle for gender equality. While it is clear that having more women as role models is important, this is not enough to effect change. Here seven practical steps towards achieving gender equity in CGE are presented: (1) Advocate for more women in prestige roles; (2) Promote high-achieving females; (3) Create awareness of gender bias; (4) Speak up; (5) Get better support for return to work; (6) Redefine success; and, (7) Encourage more women to enter the discipline at a young age. Some of these steps can be successfully implemented immediately (steps 1–4), while others need institutional engagement and represent major societal overhauls. In any case, these seven practical steps require actions that can start immediately.


A fundamental metaphor of Southeastern Indian belief was expressed by the structural relationship death:winter. Archaeological data and documentary accounts illuminate this relationship and demonstrate a widespread cognitive lore about the marking of the seasons by use of the sun and possibly other celestial bodies. The apparent timing of pre-contact mortuary ceremonialism with the winter solstice sunset consistent with Caddoan winter death imagery reflects a local manifestation of the North American Orpheus myth. Guidance to the meanings of prehistoric rituals may come from ethnohistoric accounts of indigenous beliefs and practices. We suggest the many parallels in eastern North American mythology provide a symbolic coherence transcending ethnic and language group affiliation. For reasons of geographic proximity and long-term cultural stability (for insightful evaluations see Roper [2006] and Story [1990:320-323, 346-356]), we believe that elements derived from Caddoan ethnohistories of the central and southern Plains may be used to guide our understanding of prehistoric mortuary rituals in the western Ozark highlands and adjacent portions of the southern Plains. These ethnohistoric details satisfy generally accepted criteria (Wood 1990:89-90; see also Echo-Hawk 2000) for believability: they were likely to have been of "little consequence" to the authors or "noncontroversial matters" for which early explorers would have had little to gain by reporting them; they also appear to be independently confirmed in ethnohistoric accounts at different times and places. We are specifically interested in the symbolic identification of death with winter that occurs across regions occupied by precontact Caddoans and their neighbors. The Caddoan study area is, as Griffin (1967) noted long ago, the location of renowned mound complexes of Spiro, Harlan, and Norman, and geographically it is on the western fringe of late prehistoric Southeastern developments. But in our opinion and that of many others, the study area and its multiplicity of agrarian settlement forms ought to be central to understanding the evolution of the Mississippian world. The structural relation death:winter is metaphorically represented in postcontact Caddoan symbols (Hatcher 1927a, 1927b; Swanton 1942; Weltfish 1965) and in ethnohistories for many other eastern North American groups (e.g., Gruber 1971; Hall 1997; Robinson et al. 1985). These associations are consistent with the archaeological data and further amplify the meaning of prehistoric mortuary or related rituals and their timing. The material referents of the rituals are amenable to archaeological analysis, too (Brown 1996, 1997, 2003; Goldstein 2000; Hall 2000; Knight 1986; Knight et al. 2001; Schnell et al. 1981; Sears 1961; Story 1990:340-342; Story 1998; Watson 2000). The ritual practices, as Rogers (1991) predicted, redefined society along new lines of non-kin-based authority while being structured by categories and principles borrowed from kinship idioms (Sabo 1998:171). They were vital to the evolution of ranked societies in southeastern North America and have general ethnographic parallels throughout this region (Knight 1986, 1989, 1990). We suggest that the death:winter symbolism provides a useful interpretive framework for understanding the functions of prehistoric, mound-related rectangular structures now found from northeast Texas to southwest Missouri. These structures differed from contemporary Mississippian constructions in the adjacent Midwest in having had hall-like, extended entryways. Entryway posts often were set in trenches. Insofar as may be judged from archaeological details of construction and ethnographic accounts (Swanton 1942), these buildings mostly had a single entryway and lacked windows. Daylight illumination of the interior most likely came from the entryway. The buildings were common in the Arkansas River drainage and western Ozark highland (for overviews, see Brown 1984, 1996; O'Brien and Wood 1998:268-271; Vehik 1993) but also occurred in the Sanders phase (Bruseth letter to Kay 1995; Bruseth and Perttula 1981; Bruseth et al. …


Summary In the absence of standards specific for testing the reduction robustness of the levels of harmful and potentially harmful constituents (HPHCs), the aerosol from the THS 2.2, a heated tobacco product, was compared with the mainstream smoke of the 3R4F reference cigarette over a broad range of machine-smoking regimes. The average reduction and the introduced concept of threshold limits of robust reduction were derived from HPHC concentrations, in mass per tobacco-stick normalized per total puff volume, to propose an alternative for the assessment of products where nicotine-adjusted yields would be inappropriate. In addition, this study explores the influence of 3R4F reference cigarette filter ventilation, and discusses the roles of temperature and precursors in the present context of robustness of HPHC reduction. Fifty-four HPHCs were analyzed under multiple regimes in THS 2.2 aerosol and 3R4F cigarette smoke. The average reduction of HPHC concentrations compared across all regimes characterized the robustness. Threshold limits of reduction of individual HPHCs were statistically determined across all regimes. The results observed under Health Canada Intense (HCI) and more intense regimes indicated that on average the reductions in HPHCs levels investigated in THS 2.2 aerosol were more than 90% and that the majority of the 54 HPHCs investigated in THS 2.2 aerosol showed more than 90% reduction. The robustness of THS 2.2 in maintaining the levels of reduction of representative HPHCs, whatever the puffing regime, can be quantified. The mass of HPHC per tobacco-stick normalized per total puff volume is a valuable approach to compare the robustness of the performance of a product over a large range of puffing conditions. Our findings will greatly complement the assessment for robustness of current and future similar products where classical approaches would present limitations.


BACKGROUND: SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, has caused havoc worldwide, with patients presenting a spectrum of complications that have pushed health care experts to explore new technological solutions and treatment plans. Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technologies have played a substantial role in solving complex problems, and several organizations have been swift to adopt and customize these technologies in response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature on the role of AI as a comprehensive and decisive technology to fight the COVID-19 crisis in the fields of epidemiology, diagnosis, and disease progression. METHODS: A systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science, and CINAHL databases was performed according to PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) guidelines to identify all potentially relevant studies published and made available online between December 1, 2019, and June 27, 2020. The search syntax was built using keywords specific to COVID-19 and AI. RESULTS: The search strategy resulted in 419 articles published and made available online during the aforementioned period. Of these, 130 publications were selected for further analyses. These publications were classified into 3 themes based on AI applications employed to combat the COVID-19 crisis: Computational Epidemiology, Early Detection and Diagnosis, and Disease Progression. Of the 130 studies, 71 (54.6%) focused on predicting the COVID-19 outbreak, the impact of containment policies, and potential drug discoveries, which were classified under the Computational Epidemiology theme. Next, 40 of 130 (30.8%) studies that applied AI techniques to detect COVID-19 by using patients' radiological images or laboratory test results were classified under the Early Detection and Diagnosis theme. Finally, 19 of the 130 studies (14.6%) that focused on predicting disease progression, outcomes (ie, recovery and mortality), length of hospital stay, and number of days spent in the intensive care unit for patients with COVID-19 were classified under the Disease Progression theme. CONCLUSIONS: In this systematic review, we assembled studies in the current COVID-19 literature that utilized AI-based methods to provide insights into different COVID-19 themes. Our findings highlight important variables, data types, and available COVID-19 resources that can assist in facilitating clinical and translational research.


Adults aged 60 or older are more likely than younger adults to experience severe complications or even death as a result of foodborne infections. This study investigated which specific groups of healthcare providers or other caregivers are most receptive to providing food safety information to older adults. Telephone-based focus groups were conducted with health care providers and caregivers to determine their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding foodborne illness prevention for older adults. Focus groups identified a gap between older adults' trust in healthcare providers as a credible source of food safety information and healthcare providers' lack of training, knowledge, and willingness to provide food safety information to older adults.


This volume presents two complementary medieval anthologies containing lyrics by two outstanding Latin poets of the second half of the twelfth century. The poet Peter of Blois was proclaimed by a contemporary of his to be a master composer of rhythmic verse. Peter's secular love-lyrics gathered in the "Arundel" manuscript give substance to that claim. Written with a technical virtuosity that rivals the metrical display of Horatian lyric, the poems give eloquent and learned expression to the cult of secular love that emerged in the twelfth-century. The collection is further augmented by verse as varied as Christmas poems and satires on the venality of the Roman Curia and immoral bishops, including a famous lament about church corruption by Walther of Chatillon. The cleric Hugh Primas won recognition and fame for compositions in which he reflects upon his experiences, good and bad, while traveling around the cities of northern France (such as the important sees of Rheims and Sens) in search of patronage. Artistic in conception and execution, the poems are memorable for the witty and often acerbic tone with which Primas engages the holders of ecclesiastical power.


There is a wealth of research addressing falls aetiology in older persons. This may be framed within western world, ageing demographics and financial concerns that require evidence of effective bio-medical interventions (Kingston 2000). Drawing on older persons' falls narratives and building on a small body of work (see, for example, Horton and Arber 2004; Kingston 2000; McKee et al 1999; Yardley 2004), this paper highlights ways in which fallers view falls and calls for complementary, social and cultural analyses. In so doing, negative culturally and linguistically embedded notions of falling in relation to ageing, usefulness, personal control, autonomy, social embarrassment and social standing, may be challenged. In turn, the 'faller' may position him- or herself beyond connotations of 'loss of control' and decline (Horton and Arber 2004; McKee et al 1999).


We describe and analyze a discriminative algorithm for learning to align a phoneme sequence of a speech utterance with its acoustical signal counterpart by predicting a timing sequence representing the phoneme start times. In contrast to common HMM-based approaches, our method employs a discriminative learning procedure in which the learning phase is tightly coupled with the forced alignment task. The alignment function we devise is based on mapping the input acoustic-symbolic representations of the speech utterance along with the target timing sequence into an abstract vector space. We suggest a specific mapping into the abstract vector-space which utilizes standard speech features (e.g. spectral distances) as well as confidence outputs of a frame-based phoneme classifier. Generalizing the notion of separation with a margin used in support vector machines (SVM) for binary classification, we cast the learning task as the problem of finding a vector in an abstract inner-product space. We set the prediction vector to be the solution of a minimization problem with a large set of constraints. Each constraint enforces a gap between the projection of the correct target timing sequence and the projection of an alternative, incorrect, timing sequence onto the vector. Though the number of constraints is very large, we describe a simple iterative algorithm for efficiently learning the vector and analyze the formal properties of the resulting learning algorithm. We report experimental results comparing the proposed algorithm to previous studies on forced alignment, which use hidden Markov models (HMM). The results obtained in our experiments using the discriminative alignment algorithm outperform the state-of-the-art systems on the TIMIT corpus.


Summary Th ere is noticeable negative impact on soil and water quality caused by nutrient leaching, especially nitrate. Five regions in Croatia are preliminary delineated as nitrate vulnerable zones, including potentially vulnerable zones (PVZ) and vulnerable zones (VZ), one of them being Varaždin County. Agricultural land spreads on 59% of its total area. Th e survey was carried out to analyze two available land use databases, ARKOD and CLC 2006, to determine relation between land use and vulnerability to nitrate. Results of on-going groundwater, soil and percolate research (nitrate concentrations) in the same area are used for more precise nitrate vulnerability determination. Database analysis revealed no signifi cant diff erence in land use within VZ and PVZ. Groundwater monitoring shows no consistency between nitrate concentrations and PVZ/VZ designation. Furthermore, the diff erence in the amount of residual soil nitrogen in two years of research was determined. Results of lysimeter study show that up to 32% of applied nitrogen is percolated to deeper soil layers indicating high agricultural impact on groundwater vulnerability to nitrate.


The main contribution of this paper is to provide best-possible approximability bounds for assortment planning under a general choice model, where customer choices are modeled through an arbitrary distribution over ranked lists of their preferred products, subsuming most random utility choice models of interest. From a technical perspective, we show how to relate this optimization problem to the computational task of detecting large independent sets in graphs, allowing us to argue that general ranking preferences are extremely hard to approximate with respect to various problem parameters. These findings are complemented by a number of approximation algorithms that attain essentially best-possible factors, proving that our hardness results are tight up to lower-order terms. Surprisingly, our results imply that a simple and widely studied policy, known as revenue-ordered assortments, achieves the best possible performance guarantee with respect to the price parameters.


Default correlation is a key driver of credit risk. In the Basel regulatory framework it is measured by the asset value correlation parameter. Though past studies suggest that the parameter is over-calibrated for mortgages — generally the largest asset class on banks' balance sheets — they do not take into account bias arising from small samples or non-Gaussian risk factors. Adjusting for these biases using a non-Gaussian, non-linear state space model I find that the Basel calibration is appropriate for UK and US mortgages. This model also forecasts mortgage default rates accurately and parsimoniously. The model generates value-at-risk estimates for future mortgage default rates, which can be used to inform stress-testing and macroprudential policy.


The 2-year-old boy shown here had been bitten on the left cheek by a medium-sized dog while at the home of his day-care provider. Immediately after the incident, the child was examined by his pediatrician and given a presciption for amoxicillin clavulanate. The next day, he presented to the emergency department with worsening cellulitis of the left cheek.


Abstract Fassinaite, ideally Pb22+(S2O3)(CO3), is a new mineral from the Trentini mine, Mount Naro, Vicenza Province, Veneto, Italy (holotype locality). It is also reported from the Erasmus adit, Schwarzleo District, Leogang, Salzburg, Austria and the Friedrich-Christian mine, Schapbach, Black Forest, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (cotype localities). At the Italian type locality it occurs as acicular [010], colourless crystals up to 200 μm long, closely associated with galena, quartz and anglesite. At the Austrian cotype locality it is associated with cerussite, rare sulphur and very rare phosgenite. At the German cotype locality anglesite is the only associated phase. Fassinaite crystals commonly have flat chisel-shaped terminations. They are transparent with vitreous to adamantine lustre and a white streak. Fassinaite is brittle with an irregular fracture and nodiscernible cleavage; the estimated Mohs hardness is 1½-2. The calculated density for the type material is 6.084 g cm-3(on the basis of the empirical formula), whereas the X-ray density is 5.947 g cm-3. In common with other natural lead thiosulphates (i.e. sidpietersite and steverustite) fassinaite has intense internal reflections, which do not allow satisfactory optical data to be collected; the crystals are length-slow and have very high birefringence. The mineral is not fluorescent. Fassinaite is orthorhombic, space group Pnma, with unit-cell parameters (for the holotype material) a = 16.320(2),b = 8.7616(6), c = 4.5809(7) Å, V = 655.0(1) Å3, a:b:c = 1.863:1:0.523, Z = 4. Single-crystal structural studies were carried out on crystals from all three localities: R 1(F) values range between 0.0353 and 0.0596. The structure consists of rod-like arrangements of Pb-centred polyhedra that extend along the [010] direction. These 'rods' are linked, alternately, by (CO3)2- and (S2O3)2- groups. The (S2O3)2- groups point alternately left and right (in a projection on [001] with [010] set vertical) if the apex occupied by the S2- in the thiosulphate group is defined to be the atom giving the direction. The lead atoms are nine-coordinated by seven oxygen atoms and two sulphur (S2-) atoms. The eight strongest X-ray powder-diffraction lines [d in Å (I/I0 ) (hkl)] are: 4.410 (39) (101), 4.381 (59) (020), 4.080 (62) (400), 3.504 (75) (301), 3.108 (100) (121), 2.986 (82) (420), 2.952 (49) (221) and 2.736 (60) (321). Electron-microprobe analyses produce an empirical formula Pb2.01(1)(S1.82(2)O3)CO3 (on the basis of six oxygen atoms). The presence of both carbonate and thiosulphate groups was corroborated by Raman spectra, which are discussed in detail. Fassinaite is named after Bruno Fassina (b. 1943), an Italian mineral collector who discovered the mineral in 2009.


For finite-dimensional quantum systems, such as qubits, a well established strategy to protect such systems from decoherence is dynamical decoupling. However many promising quantum devices, such as oscillators, are infinite dimensional, for which the question if dynamical decoupling could be applied remained open. Here we first show that not every infinite-dimensional system can be protected from decoherence through dynamical decoupling. Then we develop dynamical decoupling for continuous variable systems which are described by quadratic Hamiltonians. We identify a condition and a set of operations that allow us to map a set of interacting harmonic oscillators onto a set of non-interacting oscillators rotating with an averaged frequency, a procedure we call homogenization. Furthermore we show that every quadratic system-environment interaction can be suppressed with two simple operations acting only on the system. Using a random dynamical decoupling or homogenization scheme, we develop bounds that characterize how fast we have to work in order to achieve the desired uncoupled dynamics. This allows us to identify how well homogenization can be achieved and decoherence can be suppressed in continuous variable systems.


Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) is a rare proliferative disorder that occurs most commonly in the pediatric population as a result of pathological clonal proliferation of Langerhans cells with subsequent damage and destruction to surrounding tissue. Clinically, LCH presents in a variety of ways, which often results in prolonged time to diagnosis and subsequently poorer outcomes. In this case report, the authors describe an unusually early presentation of multisystem LCH in a patient at birth, which resulted in a 5-month delay to diagnosis and treatment. This patient presented both atypically young and with an uncommon initial manifestation of multisystem disease with multiple soft-tissue swellings rather than early skin involvement. Additionally, this patient had an unusual radiographic appearance with biparietal skull destruction on initial skull radiographs and biparietal soft-tissue lesions on CT resembling cephalohematoma at 3 months of age. The clinical and radiological evaluation, pathology, and treatment strategies are discussed, with particular attention paid to the importance of further workup of atypical nonresolving cephalohematomas to prevent disease progression and poorer outcomes.


ABSTRACT Introduction: Malignant mesothelioma (MM) is an aggressive malignancy of the pleura and other serosal membranes originating from mesothelial cells that, despite decades of research, continues to have limited therapeutic options and is associated with a poor prognosis. Areas covered: MMs induce a strong inflammatory response that is also associated with neoangiogenesis and activation of proangiogenic factors. Given this, several anti-angiogenic agents have been trialled in a variety of malignancies including mesothelioma. Herein we summarise the role of angiogenesis in MM and the current available data targeting these pathways. Expert commentary: The addition of bevacizumab to cisplatin/pemetrexed chemotherapy is currently a therapeutic option with a proven 2.7 month overall survival benefit in fit patients less than 75. Other antiangiogenics such as nintedinib show early promise, although the Phase III trial results are eagerly awaited before this therapy enters treatment paradigms. Beyond this, it is likely that combinations of antiangiogenics with immunotherapies will be investigated in future studies.


Extracted from text ... 70 - IMIESA OCTOBER 2006
One of the largest trenchless technology projects in South Africa,
began in May 2006, it was instituted by Johann Wessels,
the wastewater collection deputy manager for Tshwane.
"Approximately 15% of sewers are in bad need of replacement in
Tshwane. By replacing worn out sewers, we would be spending R23
075 per kilometre of pipe replaced each year (discounted over lifetime).
One would be avoiding potential costs of up to R468 for blockages,
R13 219 in infiltrated water purification costs and R77 254 in
potential additional costs due to forced open excavation. This adds
up to ..


[1] A shallow, stable boundary layer is ubiquitous over the cool waters of the Gulf of Maine in summer. This layer affects pollutant transport throughout the region by isolating overlying flow from the surface. In this paper, we explore how the stable boundary layer is formed and describe its characteristics. The temperature profile of the lowest 1–2 km of the atmosphere over the Gulf of Maine is remarkably similar regardless of transport time over water or the time of day when the flow left the land, provided only that the flow is offshore. This similarity is forced by the (roughly) constant water temperature and the (roughly) constant temperature of the free troposphere over the continent. However, the processes leading to the similar profiles are quite different depending on the time of day when the flow crosses the coast. Air leaving the coast at night already has a stable profile, whereas air leaving the coast at midday or afternoon has a deep mixed layer. In the latter case, the stable layer formation over the water is of interest. Using observations of surface fluxes, profiles, and winds on the NOAA Research Vessel Ronald H. Brown from the 2004 International Consortium for Atmospheric Research in Transport and Transformation (ICARTT)/New England Air Quality Study, we show that the formation of the stable layer, which involves cooling a roughly 50- to 100-m-deep layer by 5–15 K, occurs within 10 km and a half hour after leaving the coast. The internal boundary layer near shore is deeper than predicted by standard relationships. Historical data are explored and also show deeper internal boundary layers than predicted. We also describe one exceptional case where a 200-m-deep neutral layer was observed and discuss the degree of isolation of the stable boundary layer and its duration.


Beginning most explicitly with the American involvement in the Korean War, and continuing unabated until 1970, the demand for Ph.D.-trained physicists in the United States followed a particular Cold War
 logic of "manpower" and requisitions. This logic, rehearsed by senior physicists, university administrators, government commissions, individual senators, and newspaper reporters from across the country
 argued that young graduate students in physics constituted the nation9s most precious resource. The purported need to train ever-larger numbers of physics graduate students was often used to justify the
 structural rearrangements associated with "big science," from huge federally-subsidized budgets to factory-sized equipment. The exigencies of training roomfuls of graduate students, rather than mentoring
 handfuls of disciples, reinforced the prevailing American pragmatic, instrumentalist approach to theory.


Currency crises have become a serious threat for developing countries, especially since the financial deregulation process and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. In the past two decades, Turkey has experienced two major currency crises. This study aims to predict the determinants of currency crises in Turkey by using an ordered probit model. According to the results, short-term debt/GDP, real exchange rate, deposit interest rates, foreign exchange reserves/imports, and credit/deposit variables are all significant in explaining currency crises in Turkey.


We analyze stochastic gradient algorithms for optimizing nonconvex problems. In particular, our goal is to find local minima (second-order stationary points) instead of just finding first-order stationary points which may be some bad unstable saddle points. We show that a simple perturbed version of stochastic recursive gradient descent algorithm (called SSRGD) can find an $(\epsilon,\delta)$-second-order stationary point with $\widetilde{O}(\sqrt{n}/\epsilon^2 + \sqrt{n}/\delta^4 + n/\delta^3)$ stochastic gradient complexity for nonconvex finite-sum problems. As a by-product, SSRGD finds an $\epsilon$-first-order stationary point with $O(n+\sqrt{n}/\epsilon^2)$ stochastic gradients. These results are almost optimal since Fang et al. [2018] provided a lower bound $\Omega(\sqrt{n}/\epsilon^2)$ for finding even just an $\epsilon$-first-order stationary point. We emphasize that SSRGD algorithm for finding second-order stationary points is as simple as for finding first-order stationary points just by adding a uniform perturbation sometimes, while all other algorithms for finding second-order stationary points with similar gradient complexity need to combine with a negative-curvature search subroutine (e.g., Neon2 [Allen-Zhu and Li, 2018]). Moreover, the simple SSRGD algorithm gets a simpler analysis. Besides, we also extend our results from nonconvex finite-sum problems to nonconvex online (expectation) problems, and prove the corresponding convergence results.


The European Dada movement of the early 20th century has long been regarded as a male preserve, one in which women have been relegated to footnotes or mentioned only as the wives, girlfriends, or sisters of Dada men. This fascinating book challenges that assumption, focusing on the creative contributions made to Dada by five pivotal European women. Ruth Hemus establishes the ways in which Emmy Hennings and Sophie Taeuber in Zurich, Hannah Hoch in Berlin, and Suzanne Duchamp and Celine Arnauld in Paris made important interventions across fine art, literature, and performance. Hemus highlights how their techniques and approaches were characteristic of Dada's rebellion against aesthetic and cultural conventions, analyzes the impact of gender on each woman's work, and shows convincingly that they were innovators and not imitators. In its new and original perspective on Dada, the book broadens our appreciation and challenges accepted understandings of this revolutionary avant-garde movement.


Introduction The usage of a T-cell depleted, reduced intensity conditioning (RIC) approach to haematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) in adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) over 40 years of age and in first complete remission (CR) has resulted in encouraging rates of event-free and overall survival in a population of adults with high risk disease. However, relapse rates remain high—with disease progression being the major cause of treatment failure. Using different, more powerful conditioning approaches is the logical next step in examining the role of RIC allogeneic HCT in adult ALL. Methods and analysis The ALL-RIC trial is a two-arm, phase II, multicentre, randomised clinical trial in adult patients with ALL in first or second CR, who are undergoing allogeneic HCT. Comparison of a novel RIC transplant conditioning regimen using reduced-dose total body irradiation (TBI), cyclophosphamide and alemtuzumab, is made against a standardised RIC approach using fludarabine, melphalan and alemtuzumab. The primary outcome of the study is disease-free survival at 3 years, defined as time from randomisation to the first of either relapse or death from any cause. Patients who are still alive and progression-free at the end of the trial will be censored at their last date known to be alive. Secondary outcomes include overall survival and non-relapse mortality. Ethics and dissemination The protocol was approved by the East Midlands—Leicester Central Research Ethics committee (18/EM/0112). Initial approval was received on 12 June 2018. Current protocol version (V.6.0) approval obtained on 18 November 2019. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) also approved all protocol versions. The results of this trial will be disseminated through national and international presentations and peer-reviewed publications. Trial registration number EudraCT Number: 2017-004800-23. ISRCTN99927695.


Sustainable mobility policy for long-distance transportation services should consider emerging automobiles and aircraft as well as infrastructure and supply chain life-cycle effects in the assessment of new high-speed rail systems. Using the California corridor, future automobiles, high-speed rail and aircraft long-distance travel are evaluated, considering emerging fuel-efficient vehicles, new train designs and the possibility that the region will meet renewable electricity goals. An attributional per passenger-kilometer-traveled life-cycle inventory is first developed including vehicle, infrastructure and energy production components. A consequential life-cycle impact assessment is then established to evaluate existing infrastructure expansion against the construction of a new high-speed rail system. The results show that when using the life-cycle assessment framework, greenhouse gas footprints increase significantly and human health and environmental damage potentials may be dominated by indirect and supply chain components. The environmental payback is most sensitive to the number of automobile trips shifted to high-speed rail, and for greenhouse gases is likely to occur in 20–30 years. A high-speed rail system that is deployed with state-of-the-art trains, electricity that has met renewable goals, and in a configuration that endorses high ridership will provide significant environmental benefits over existing modes. Opportunities exist for reducing the long-distance transportation footprint by incentivizing large automobile trip shifts, meeting clean electricity goals and reducing material production effects.


Chaos, irrelevance, incompetence and exclusion, what do these "failures" tell us about the apparently self-evident understandings of plans, "planning" and "planned development" in Delhi? What implications does this have, in particular, for an urban politics and practice interested in the many forms and imaginations of a just and more equitable city? This paper argues that in Delhi the "chaos that is urban development" is not planned but is an outcome of planning. Plans do not control but they influence, determine and limit. The City was not planned as it is, but the City is an outcome of planning.1 –Peattie 1987:15


A profit maximization model and an ARIMA model were developed to forecast water demand for broiler production. Broiler production decisions are made in three successive stages -- primary broiler breeding flock, hatchery flock, and finishing broiler production. The forecasted numbers of broilers from structural and ARIMA models depart significantly from a USGS physical model. Analysis indicates 15% slippage in water demand forecasting related to disregarding the role of economic variables. We also found that an appropriate lag structure can fully capture the information used in structural models, assuming no structural change.


The aim of this paper is to construct the "space of capital" based on disaggregated measures of capital portfolios and to analyze the dynamics of class mobility over time. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the "social space", we argue that it is possible to directly assess the structural dimensions of the social space as a space of (economic and cultural) capital, including wealth as an important but often neglected form of economic capital. Using household panel data from 2002-2012 (SOEP), we apply latent class analysis in order to detect distinct classes based on specific capital portfolios. We find nine classes with diverging capital portfolios. When interpreting the nine latent classes, we find clear evidence for the two main axis of the social space, namely the vertical axis of the overall volume of capital, and the horizontal axis representing the composition of capital in terms of the relative weight of economic and cultural capital. Further exploration of class mobility reveals that the horizontal axis is even more stable over time. Most mobility occurs along the vertical axis of the social space, while there is only little horizontal mobility indicating that individuals rarely change their investment and accumulation strategies. This research adds to Bourdieu inspired class analysis as well as sociological perspectives on wealth and accumulation.


Water is the difference between living and non-living and water for drinking should be pollutant free. Thus, in supplies for urban and rural consumption, water quality is one of the most critical parameters to verify. Well and/or open-water systems are easily liable to anthropogenic contaminations, the source of most water-borne epidemics especially in developing countries like Sierra Leone. This study analyses 10 representative well-water systems for 18 water quality parameters in Kakua Chiefdom of Bo District, Sierra Leone. The study notes that well-water quality parameters such as total dissolved solids (TDS), turbidity, electrical conductivity, coliform and nitrate (NO3−) are fairly high above safe drinking water standard. The incidence of coliform in the well waters is highest in April and that of iron (Fe2+) and nitrate is highest in May. The Dipha Street well is amongst the most contaminated and has the highest scores for TDS, non-faecal coliform and fluoride (F−). Correlation analysis shows an interesting bond among the water quality parameters, ranging from strongly positive ( R = 1.0) to strongly negative ( R = −1.0). Fe2+ is strongly positively correlated with most of the well-water quality parameters. Irrespectively, the use of contaminated water in domestic and/or agro-industrial sectors could pose various health risks and epidemic outbreaks of different intensities.


This thesis investigates the complex relationality of sense of place and sense of self
to explore how, in circumstances of contemporary migration, wellbeing may be
engendered and provide opportunity for both people and place to flourish. Often,
environmental problems are attributed to alienation of people from places, and social
problems to people's dissociation and alienation from themselves. Some studies
attribute both conditions to high levels of migration and other mobilities in the
modern world, and address such problems of people and place as if the two were
separate. The case will be made that people and place are inextricably related, and
that taking their relationship into account can increase the efficacy of responses to
challenges of contemporary migration. Here, people and place are considered
together, and an investigation is made into the veracity of two claims: that belief in a
flawed human nature is a deeper, underlying cause of those alienations; and that the
relationality of sense of self and sense of place is key to wellbeing. The work
challenges ideas that comfort and security can only be achieved by staying in one
place, and seeks to demonstrate how it is possible to be both grounded in place and
mobile. Such labours draw on insights from several disciplines, and on select
theories to investigate politics of mobility and migration, identity and difference,
ethics, rights, and agency.
Several original qualitative case studies are presented, analysed, and synthesised;
these drawing on extended work with a disparate group of people with histories of
regular and irregular migration. Critical engagement with their narratives explores
beneath the surface of their utterances to find how, when faced with migration and
relocation, some people appear to generate better coping strategies that seem optimal
for them, and seem to express a sense of wellbeing more pronounced than others
who report considerable distress and a sense of displacement.
Part one critically outlines conceptual frameworks related to mobility, place, and
self; and investigates dynamics of the relationship of the self to itself that affect sense
of self and sense of place. Part two explores contemporary migration and introduces case study participants in categories of regular and irregular migration, and highly
mobile lifestyles. Part three investigates challenges of resettlement, multiple senses
of place, multiculturalism, racism, identity, and belonging. Discussion in part four
articulates distinctions between identity and self, and considers how that
understanding affects sense of self and sense of place. People's alienation from or
relational awareness of self and place is directly linked to the weakness or strength of
their senses of self and place, and insights are given into how those senses might be
strengthened. The final chapter summarises the research, documents its possible
applications, and comments on its contribution to discourse on political and cultural
geographies of migration, and mobilities of self and place.
The work, in total, challenges several people/place and human/nature dichotomies,
and demonstrates the value of a research perspective that holds self and place as
inseparable. The study's findings also illuminate certain ways in which people might
develop or deepen agency and optimise their sense of wellbeing in diverse
circumstances of migration and resettlement. Fostering such comfort and security for
people and place to flourish are political matters that gain urgency at a time when the
scale of migration and displacement of peoples is unprecedented, and predicted to
escalate. Significantly, the results of the research may contribute knowledge and
understanding to inform policy and practice that respond to the challenges of
migration and other mobilities.


Although qualitative methods, grounded theory included, cannot be reduced to formulaic procedures, research tools can clarify the process. The authors discuss two instruments supporting grounded theory analysis and interpretation using two examples from doctoral students. The conditional relationship guide contextualizes the central phenomenon and relates categories linking structure with process. The reflective coding matrix serves as a bridge to the final phase of grounded theory analysis, selective coding and interpretation, and, ultimately, to substantive theory generation.


Introduction: Exercise induced muscle damage (EIMD) can result in a condition commonly known as delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS). The influence the well-known anti-inflammatory effects of cannabidiol (CBD) can have on DOMS has yet to be determined. The aim of this study was to determine the influence CBD can have on EIMD DOMS. Materials and Methods: Twenty-three trained participants completed a lower extremity EIMD protocol prior to being randomly assigned to either a CBD, MCT or null group. Self-report visual analog scale (VAS) scores were used to determine the level of soreness the participant was experiencing throughout the study (pre-, post-EIMD protocol, 24-, 48-, 72- and 96-hours post-EIMD protocol). The CBD group was given a 1ml solution of CBD and MCT oil. This solution contained 16.67mg of CBD. The MCT group received 1ml of MCT. The null group received nothing. Results: Each group reported significantly different post-EIMD VAS score when compared to pre-EIMD. The CBD group reported significant differences in VAS score at post-EIMD to 24-hours post-EIMD, at 48-hours post- EIMD and 72-hours post-EIMD. At 96-hours post-EIMD the CBD group reported VAS scores closer to pre-EIMD levels than either the MCT or null groups. Conclusions: CBD appears to have a significant influence on muscle soreness associated with EIMD DOMS when consumed immediately after strenuous exercise. Additionally, the rate of recovery with CBD use is greater when compared to MCT only or no intervention.


ABSTRACT Growing numbers of school systems and employers now provide and mandate mentoring for novice teachers. Most studies, however, have focused on the extensive mentoring provided during the first year of teaching, and not on mentoring in the following years. There is little research on the functions and on the relational aspects of mentoring new teachers. To address these issues, the present study implemented a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 Israeli novice teachers during their second year of teaching supported by a mentor. The findings shed light on the perceived meanings of the role of mentoring and the types of relationships that develop between the mentors and novice teachers in their second year of teaching. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.


Abstract. Rates and apparent quantum yields of photomineralization (AQYDOC) and photomethanification (AQYCH4) of chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) in Saguenay River surface water were determined at three widely differing dissolved oxygen concentrations ([O2]) (suboxic, air saturation, and oxygenated) using simulated-solar radiation. Photomineralization increased linearly with CDOM absorbance photobleaching for all three O2 treatments. Whereas the rate of photochemical dissolved organic carbon (DOC) loss increased with increasing [O2], the ratio of fractional DOC loss to fractional absorbance loss showed an inverse trend. CDOM photodegradation led to a higher degree of mineralization under suboxic conditions than under oxic conditions. AQYDOC determined under oxygenated, suboxic, and air-saturated conditions increased, decreased, and remained largely constant with photobleaching, respectively; AQYDOC obtained under air saturation with short-term irradiations could thus be applied to longer exposures. AQYDOC decreased successively from ultraviolet B (UVB) to ultraviolet A (UVA) to visible (VIS), which, alongside the solar irradiance spectrum, points to VIS and UVA being the primary drivers for photomineralization in the water column. The photomineralization rate in the Saguenay River was estimated to be 2.31 × 108 mol C yr−1, accounting for only 1 % of the annual DOC input into this system. Photoproduction of CH4 occurred under both suboxic and oxic conditions and increased with decreasing [O2], with the rate under suboxic conditions ~ 7–8 times that under oxic conditions. Photoproduction of CH4 under oxic conditions increased linearly with photomineralization and photobleaching. Under air saturation, 0.00057 % of the photochemical DOC loss was diverted to CH4, giving a photochemical CH4 production rate of 4.36 × 10−6 mol m−2 yr−1 in the Saguenay River and, by extrapolation, of (1.9–8.1) × 108 mol yr−1 in the global ocean. AQYCH4 changed little with photobleaching under air saturation but increased exponentially under suboxic conditions. Spectrally, AQYCH4 decreased sequentially from UVB to UVA to VIS, with UVB being more efficient under suboxic conditions than under oxic conditions. On a depth-integrated basis, VIS prevailed over UVB in controlling CH4 photoproduction under air saturation while the opposite held true under O2-deficiency. An addition of micromolar levels of dissolved dimethyl sulfide (DMS) substantially increased CH4 photoproduction, particularly under O2-deficiency; DMS at nanomolar ambient concentrations in surface oceans is, however, unlikely a significant CH4 precursor. Results from this study suggest that CDOM-based CH4 photoproduction only marginally contributes to the CH4 supersaturation in modern surface oceans and to both the modern and Archean atmospheric CH4 budgets, but that the photochemical term can be comparable to microbial CH4 oxidation in modern oxic oceans. Our results also suggest that anoxic microniches in particulate organic matter and phytoplankton cells containing elevated concentrations of precursors of the methyl radical such as DMS may provide potential hotspots for CH4 photoproduction.


Reliability is of prime importance in computer-based safety critical systems where failure can lead to fatal consequences. Fault tolerant techniques in software have a vital role to play, because veri cation and validation techniques cannot guarantee that software is error free. Fault tolerance further improves the reliability of the system by ensuring it continues to operate safely when residual software errors are encountered. On line diagnosis is a critical aspect of software fault tolerance. At the present time however, there is a lack of any real guidance or understanding of how in practice to use online diagnostics e ectively and e ciently. For a particular program design it is di cult to reason about what an e ective diagnostic strategy should be, because our current level of understanding of software design errors is so poor. This thesis proposes that through a controlled process of experimentation, aimed at investigating the way software behaves in the presence of simulated faults, our understanding can be improved. In this thesis an empirical method is developed, and demonstrated, which aims to increase our understanding of the key factors in uencing the fault detection capabilities of on-line diagnostics. The experiments presented illustrate the potential of this approach and provide new insights of signi cance into the relevance of these factors. These experiments lay the foundations for a longer term progressive and controlled process of experimentation. Only by continuing the experimental process in this way will it be possible to move towards a better understanding of how to design e ective diagnostics for fault tolerant software.


Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) is a deciduous tree that produces large brown seed pods and thorny appendages, and is present throughout most of the US. The pods are highly nutritious for livestock and wildlife, and are easily spread by animals in dung pats. Honey locust is typically found in greatest concentrations in the central U.S. in the same general range as historical tallgrass prairie. Fire suppression and introduction of honey locust into shelter belts has allowed honey locust to increase into more arid regions associated with mixed grass prairie. When cut, honey locust is capable of producing abundant new sprouts from buds around the trunk and along the root system. Because of this, herbicides are usually required to effectively control trees when cut. Several herbicides have been labeled for honey locust control through various application techniques, including basal bark, thin line basal bark, cut stump, frill or girdle, and foliar applications. However, picloram, one of the most effective herbicides on honey locust, is not labeled for individual basal bark or cut stump treatment in grazed pasture. Aminopyralid recently received a new label addition for individual tree treatment of honey locust in grazed pasture.


Website development has always been an hard task: it consumes time and resources. What is new today is normally taken as granted tomorrow by users. This is to say that users always want more. Today they want up to date information and they want to access it according to their point of view or particular preferences. To cope with these demands, websites must be dynamic and must be able to reconfigure automatically their structure, content and appearance. This scenery has favored the creation of tools for automatic generation and management websites. In this paper we propose not a new tool of this kind but a new approach to the problem.In our approach we consider two layers. A physical layer that we call the resources layer, composed by databases, XML documents, directory subtrees, and the whole sort of files you can think of to represent your information. A metadata layer called the ontology layer, thatprovides a view to those resources. Our framework consists of several parts. In this paper the focus will be the navigation component.This component takes an ontology and uses it to navigate through the resources layer. We are using XML technology to implement the whole framework and this component is implemented through an XML transformation process.


From February 24, 2020, a COVID‐19 obstetric task force was structured to deliver management recommendations for obstetric care. From March 1, 2020, six COVID‐19 hubs and their spokes were designated. An interim analysis of cases occurring in or transferred to these hubs was performed on March 20, 2020 and recommendations were released on March 24, 2020. The vision of this strict organization was to centralize patients in high‐risk maternity centers in order to concentrate human resources and personal protective equipment (PPE), dedicate protected areas of these major hospitals, and centralize clinical multidisciplinary experience with this disease. All maternity hospitals were informed to provide a protected labor and delivery room for nontransferable patients in advanced labor. A pre‐triage based on temperature and 14 other items was developed in order to screen suspected patients in all hospitals to be tested with nasopharyngeal swabs. Obstetric outpatient facilities were instructed to maintain scheduled pregnancy screening as per Italian guidelines, and to provide pre‐triage screening and surgical masks for personnel and patients for pre‐triage‐negative patients. Forty‐two cases were recorded in the first 20 days of hub and spoke organization. The clinical presentation was interstitial pneumonia in 20 women. Of these, seven required respiratory support and eventually recovered. Two premature labors occurred.


We investigate how hybridization (single-quasiparticle scattering) between two superconducting bands induces odd-frequency superconductivity in a multiband superconductor. An explicit derivation of the odd-frequency pairing correlation and its full frequency dependence is given. We also find that the density of states is modified, at higher energies, from the sum of the two BCS spectra to also include additional hybridization gaps with strong coherence peaks when odd-frequency pairing is present. These gaps constitute clear experimentally measurable signatures of odd-frequency pairing in multiband superconductors.


A must-have prep guide for taking the CISSP certification examIf practice does, indeed, make perfect, then this is the book you need to prepare for the CISSP certification exam! And while the six-hour exam may be grueling, the preparation for it doesn't have to be. This invaluable guide offers an unparalleled number of test questions along with their answers and explanations so that you can fully understand the "why" behind the correct and incorrect answers. An impressive number of multiple-choice questions covering breadth and depth of security topics provides you with a wealth of information that will increase your confidence for passing the exam.The sample questions cover all ten of the domains tested: access control; telecommunications and network security; information security governance and risk management; application development security; cryptography; security architecture and design; operations security; business continuity and disaster recovery planning; legal, regulations, investigations, and compliance; and physical and environmental security. Prepares you for taking the intense CISSP certification exam with an impressive and unique 2,250 test prep questions and answersIncludes the explanation behind each answer so you can benefit from learning the correct answer, but also discover why the other answers are not correctFeatures more than twice the number of practice questions of any other book on the market and covers nine times the number of questions tested on the examWith CISSP certification now a requirement for anyone seeking security positions in corporations and government, passing the exam is critical. Packed with more than 2,000 test questions, CISSP Practice will prepare you better than any other resource on the market.


Genetically encoded reporter proteins are a cornerstone of molecular biology. While they are widely used to measure many biological activities, the current number of uniquely addressable reporters that can be used together for one-pot multiplexed tracking is small due to overlapping detection channels such as fluorescence. To address this, we built an expanded library of orthogonally-barcoded Nanopore-addressable protein Tags Engineered as Reporters (NanoporeTERs), which can be read and demuxed by nanopore sensors at the single-molecule level. By adapting a commercially available nanopore sensor array platform typically used for real-time DNA and RNA sequencing (Oxford Nanopore Technologies' MinION), we show direct detection of NanoporeTER expression levels from unprocessed bacterial culture with no specialized sample preparation. These results lay the foundations for a new class of reporter proteins to enable multiplexed, real-time tracking of gene expression with nascent nanopore sensor technology.


The characteristic curd phenotype of the Brassica cauliflower consists of proliferating, arrested inflorescence and floral meristems. Recent analysis of the similar phenotype in the ap1-1/cal-1 mutant of the related crucifer Arabidopsis thaliana has led to speculation that the orthologous genes from Brassica oleracea L. may be responsible for this characteristic trait.

Application of molecular genetic analysis to this hypothesis allows the presentation of a genetic model based on specific, mapped loci of BoCAL and BoAP 1. This model accounts for differences in the stage of arrest between the heading phenotypes of cauliflower (B. oleracea var. botrytis L.) and Calabrese broccoli (B. oleracea var. italica Plenck), and is also predictive in accounting for intermediate stages of arrest similar to those observed in Sicilian Purple types.

Further molecular genetic analysis characterised three independent loci of the floral meristem identity gene BoAP 1. Integration of this data into the genetic model proposed for curd development, suggests a combination of point mutations and expression thresholds of several copies of the key meristem identity genes BoCAL and BoAP 1 respectively may account for the development of curd tissue in the Brassica cauliflower.

The association of alleles of the BoCAL-a gene with the curding phenotypes of B. oleracea was also demonstrated through a survey of over 200 crop accessions. This reveals strong correlations between specific BoCAL-a alleles and discrete inflorescence morphologies, and allows the presentation of a possible scenario for the domestication of cauliflowers.

Molecular genetic analysis of BoCAL-a utilising monosomic addition lines has also demonstrated the potential for integration of the genetic and cytogenetic maps of B. oleracea. Such analysis may have significant utility for physical characterisation of replicated loci in B. oleracea, prior to the development of a strong physical map.

Further examination of inflorescence morphologies amongst the heading brassicas revealed a shared trait, termed Fused Inflorescence. Preliminary investigation suggests this trait may be under the control of multiple loci, providing a possible indication of the delineation between heading and sprouting B. oleracea crops.


An Opportunistic Network is an extreme network where the communication mainly depends on the mobility of the participating nodes to address the intermittent connectivity. This opportunistic routing utilizes a store-carry-forward paradigm exploiting node mobility and local forwarding to transfer the messages. The mobile nodes are normally low-power portable wireless communication devices employing as wireless ad hoc network for multi-hop transmission. With the limited resource, the performance of the routing protocols can be degraded. Thus, it is vital to consider the energy consumption of the mobile node in this opportunistic environment, especially with different mobility patterns. This paper aims to study and analyze the energy usage on the node mobility. The results from the simulations show that MapBased mobility models consume more energy than random based mobility models while gaining higher delivery ratio. In the random based models, random direction consume more power than random waypoint and random walk respectively.


Introductions: Post-infective glomerulonephritis (PIGN) is a common pediatric kidney disease in developing countries. This hospital based study aim to analyze clinical profile of PIGN in children in local scenario. Methods: This was a descriptive review of medical records of children admitted with a diagnosis of PIGN at Patan Hospital in three years period during 2013 to 2016. Hospital medical records were reviewed for demographic profiles, clinical features, laboratory data, treatment, and complications. The data was analyzed descriptively for frequencies and percentage values. Results: Out of 41 children with PIGN, 40 (97%) were between 5 to 15 years of age (mean 9.5), male to female ratio 1.7:1. Swelling of face and or leg and hypertension were seen in all, hypocomplementemia in 35 (85%), elevated ASO titer in 27 (66%), microscopic hematuria in 37 (90%). The complications of congestive cardiac failure were seen in five (12%), acute renal failure in four (10%) and hypertensive encephalopathy in two (5%). Conclusions: The common clinical and biochemical profile in children with PIGN were pedal edema, hypertension, hematuria and hypocomplementemia. Keywords: anti-streptolysin O titer (ASO), complement level C 3 , group A streptococcus, kidney biopsy, post-infective glomerulonephritis (PIGN)


The analysis of large-scaled 2D finite planar arrays with the Method of Momentsrelying on the RWG basis functions requires a huge amount of memory for saving theequation system and a long computation time for solving the surface current distribu-tion. In this project, the Array Scanning Method - Macro Basis Function (ASM-MBF)method created by Craeye is implemented in an existing MoM's code in order to verifythe reduction of the equation system keeping a good accuracy. Some improvementshave been implemented in the existing code in order to analyze arrays with rectangularand skew lattices. The time spent in the impedance matrix construction has also beenreduced. A program for solving 2D infinite arrays has been created for obtaining theinfinite surface current distributions necessary for the implementation of the ASM-MBF method. Finally, the definitive program has been tested with arrays of dipoleand bowtie antennas. In both cases, the computation time is reduced without affectingthe accuracy of the input impedance.


A BSTRACT — A new 40 Ar/ 39 Ar age determination of 28.88 ± 0.22 Ma for the ESE-trending, 16-km long Jones Camp dike con- firms it is part of the large diameter Magdalena radial dike swarm (MRDS), which is broadly focused on the large volume (5,000 km 3 ) Socorro-Magdalena caldera cluster (SMCC; 32.3-24.5 Ma) of the early Rio Grande rift. Precise 40 Ar/ 39 Ar ages and near horizontal flow lineations indicate that long basaltic andesite dikes of the MRDS were driven outwards and upwards from an inferred lower crustal basaltic sill complex that presumably fueled the SMCC. Long dikes at Pie Town, Jones Camp and Elephant Butte, were driven outwards—to the north, east, and south— presumably during periods of high magma pressure prior to eruption of the large volume (1250 km 3 ) La Jencia Tuff from the Sawmill Canyon caldera. A rhyolite lava dome immediately under the La Jencia Tuff provides a precise age of pre-caldera tumescence at 28.91 ± 0.11 Ma, which is equivalent to the age of Jones Camp dike. Locally exposed primary flow folds on the chilled margin of Jones Camp dike indicate the initial pulse of aphyric basaltic andesite magma was driven eastward at a shallow upward angle of about 25-30º, presumably along a deep penetrating Paleo- zoic shear zone of the Capitan lineament. From near Socorro, the east propagating subsurface trajectory of Jones Camp dike was about 50 km long and required about 5-10 km 3 of basaltic magma to fill a 10 m-wide dike (typical width of La Jencia-age dikes). We hypothesize that the inferred long trajectory of Jones Camp dike intersected a somewhat older and mostly crystalline hornblende-diorite pluton at depth in the Proterozoic basement under Chupadera Mesa. Minor volumes of the older horn- blende diorite contaminated the initial pulse of basaltic andesite magma, now apparent in the form of small hornblende-diorite xenoliths in the margins of the dike and adjacent mafic sills. Shortly thereafter (ca. 10 1 -10 3 years) a second and more forceful pulse of hybrid andesite magma mush carried abundant small to large xenoliths of coarse-grained hornblende diorite upward and re-inflated the still hot mafic core of the initial dike injection. A near horizontal paleomagnetic direction in a north dipping sill on the north flank of Jones Camp dike (determined in a previous thesis study) becomes coincident with the reverse paleomagnetic direction of the coeval La Jencia Tuff when 40º of northward tilt are removed from the sill. The mafic sill must have cooled quickly after the initial basaltic andesite dike injection that presumably fed the sill. The second pulse of hybrid andesitic magma injection then apparently domed the adjacent strata and pushed the sill up and away from the inflating core of the dike. The unusual width of Jones Camp dike (180 m) is attributed to its emplacement within incompetent evaporite beds of the Yeso Formation, which probably arrested the initial rise of the laterally propagating dike and later allowed it to mushroom outwards at the present level of exposure, about 1 km below the Oligocene land surface. The ENE-trending pyroxene-hornblende diorite dike at Bingham yields a less precise 40 Ar/ 39 Ar age of 28.4 ± 0.6 Ma. Field observations and significant differences in concentrations of immobile trace elements suggest the Bingham dike is probably not the offset lateral equivalent of the Jones Camp dike.


A selection of resources from Archives and Special Collections for alumni to revisit the past and explore memories from their time at Davidson.


Flux-controlled and metabolic chambers are often used for nutritional and environmental studies. However, the potential alterations of animal behaviour and welfare are so far not fully understood. In consequence, this study had 2 main objectives: to assess potential alterations of animal activity pattern and time budget inside a flux chamber, and to assess the importance of the "rearing up" behaviour. To this end, 10 growing rabbits of different ages (from 1 to 5 wk of the growing period) were housed inside a flux chamber. Their activity was continuously recorded and assessed, determining the frequency and duration of 8 different behaviours: lying, sleeping, sitting, eating, drinking, walking, rearing up and others. Nocturnal rabbit behaviour and time budget were not altered inside the chamber if compared to previously described rabbit activity under conventional cages. In addition, rabbits in this experiment presented a tendency to perform "rearing up" when housed inside the flux chamber.


Despite the potential health benefits of being able to monitor and log one's food and drink intake, manually performing this task is notoriously hard. While researchers are still exploring methods of automating this process for food, less work has been done in automatically classifying beverage intake. In this paper, we present a novel method that utilizes optical, ion selective electrical pH, and conductivity sensors in order to sense and classify liquid in a cup in a practical way. We describe two experiments, one that uses a high end commercial off-the-shelf spectrometer, and the other which uses a cheap sensor package that we engineered. Results show both that this method is feasible and relatively accurate (up to 79% classification for 68 different drinks), but also that we would be able to build this in such a way as to make it practical for real-world deployment. We describe the vision for building a sensor rich cup capable of determining the kind of liquid a person is drinking, as well as the opportunities that the success of such sensors may open.


Yield prediction is important for agricultural management, food security warning and food trade policy. Remote sensing has been a useful tool for predicting crop yields. In this study, a modified daily process-based ecosystem model (the Boreal Ecosystem Productivity Simulator) is employed in conjunction with land cover and leaf area index (LAI) products from MODIS to predict summer grain crop yields in the northern area of the Yangtze River in the Jiangsu Province, China. The model was driven by soil texture, land cover, daily meteorological and MODIS LAI data for 2004–2006. Simulated growing season net primary productivity (NPP) of summer grain crops (November–May) and census data of crop yields in 2004 were used to derive the county-level harvest index, which is then used in conjunction with simulated NPP to predict crop yields in 2005 and 2006. The model captures 89 % and 88 % of variations in crop yields at county-level compared with census data in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The root mean square errors are 265 and 277 kg ha−1 in these two years. The results show the usefulness of a process-based model driven by remote sensing in predicting crop yields. In such predictions, the considerable spatial variability of the harvest index should be taken into consideration.


Planetary Gearbox (PG) is widely used in many vital transmission systems with the advantages such as high power-weight ratio and high load capacity. To maintain the performance of these system, extensive attentions are paid in the vibration signal analysis for early fault detection and diagnosis of PGs. However, vibration signals are less accurate as they severely influenced by multi-interfaces energy dissipation and varying transmission paths. In contrast, Instantaneous Angular Speed (IAS) is directly related to the gear dynamics and free from the path varying effect. This paper evaluates the performance of an improved IAS measurement system to diagnose PG faults, in which a dual detector setup is adopted to suppress IAS errors caused by the setting parameters and encoder errors. Firstly, a PG dynamic model is established to simulate IAS responses from a PG with local faults on sun and planet gears. Secondly, the noise level of the demodulated IAS is studied under different system parameter configurations. Subsequently, a dual detector self-denoising method is developed to suppress the false IAS caused by encoder errors. Finally, the performance of proposed IAS measurement system is evaluated based on an industrial PG with sun and planet faults. Experimental results show PG faults can be effectively diagnosed from the simple IAS order spectra, indicating that the proposed IAS measurement system is a more promising and yet lower costing approach to monitor rotating machines.


Abstract Objective: To evaluate age-related differences in the independent/combined association of added sugar intake from soda and body adiposity with hyperuricaemia in gender-stratified US adults. Design: Consumption of added sugar from soda was calculated from 24-h dietary interviews and categorised into none, regular and excessive consumption. Hyperuricaemia was defined as serum uric acid levels >417 mmol/l in men and >357 mmol/l in women. Multiple regression models with interaction terms and logistic models adjusted for covariates were conducted under survey-data modules. Setting: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey during 2007–2016. Participants: 15 338 adults without gout, failing kidneys, an estimated glomerular filtration rate < 30 or diabetes were selected. Results: The age-stratified prevalence rate of hyperuricaemia was 18·8–20·4 % in males and 6·8–17·3 % in females. Hyperuricaemia prevalence of approximately 50 % was observed in young and middle age males who consumed excessive added sugar from soda. Excessive added sugar intake was observed to be associated with 1·5- to 2·0-fold and 2·0- to 2·3-fold increased risk of the probability of hyperuricaemia in young and middle age males and middle age females, respectively. Study participants, regardless of age or gender, who were obese and consumed excessive added sugar from soda had the highest risk of having hyperuricaemia. Conclusions: Our study revealed that the association between hyperuricaemia and consumption of excessive added sugar from soda may vary by age and gender. Obese adults who consumed excessive added sugar from soda had the highest risk of hyperuricaemia, a finding that was found across all age-specific groups for both genders.


Elevated enzyme activities in plasma may at times be attributed to the presence of macro-enzymes. The macro-enzymes are often serum enzymes in complex with immunoglobulins, resulting in a greater molecular mass that cannot be filtered by renal glomeruli and are, hence, retained in the plasma. The aspartate aminotransferase (AST) can exist as a macro-enzyme, although it has been rarely reported. We describe a pediatric patient with persistently elevated serum AST activity, due to macro-enzyme formation between AST and an immunoglobulin. This is to highlight the importance of early diagnosis of macro-AST in an otherwise asymptomatic pediatric patient with isolated AST-elevation and to avoid unnecessary costly testing.


Small mammals inhabiting environments that are either seasonally or perpetually dry, such as Medi- terranean or desert ecosystems respectively, commonly have physiological capabilities that enable them to deal with water shortage. We compared results of thermoregulatory responses of rodent species inhabiting different habitats and having varying activity periods, when salinity increases in their water source, as often occurs in their natural habitats during the dry period. Experimental animals were maintained on a diet of dry soy-beans and an increased salinity of their water source (2% agar gel), from 0.9% to 3.5% NaCl in mesic species and up to 7% in xeric species. While desert species could cope with high salinities in their water source, mesic species could not. Desert-adapted species depending on their preferred micro-habitats differ in their thermoregulatory responses. Rock dwellers, such as the golden spiny mouse Acomys rus- satus and the bushy tailed gerbil Sekeetamys calurus, reduce their resting metabolic rates (RMR) and increase nonshiv- ering thermogenesis (NST) capacity in response to increasing salinity. In contrast, the deep burrowing fat jird Meri- ones crassus, increases RMR and only slightly increases NST-capacity. Our study suggests that species occupying different habitats vary their thermoregulatory capabilities, in relation to dehydration and increasing salinity in the water source. This may be a consequence of adaptation from the original ecosystem to the current environment in which a species inhabits.


Hedging, as a rhetorical tool, has received considerable attention from scholars from diverse fields of study such as advertisement, politics, and religion. Despite the extensive exploration of the topic, it has not received much attention in health communication. Thus, this study, which employs Quirk, Greeenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik's (1985) functional principle for establishing word class and Hyland's (1998) model as frameworks, investigated the various linguistic realizations and functions of hedges in pharmaceutical leaflets (PL), which are also called Patient Information Leaflets. The study, which is based on 50 PLs obtained from some leading pharmaceutical shops within the Cape Coast metropolis and other areas, adopted both qualitative and quantitative content analysis. It was found that pharmaceutical companies employed certain lexico-grammatical hedging devices to mitigate their claims. The study has implications for both patient-pharmacist communication and hedging theories.


The present study focuses on the language socialization of parents in six bilingual families. The aim is to investigate how parents describe their linguistic identity and what kinds of changes over time can be traced in these identities. The present study is part of a wider ethnographic project which aims to deepen our understanding of how conceptions of language, bilingualism and bilingual development are manifested and negotiated in different situations and by different stakeholders in Finnish-Swedish bilingualism in Finland. The analysis identifies four major categories of bilingualism: language identity, realization, expanding language skills and frustration. The results show that children can have an active agency in socializing the parents in the new family language and that language socialization in a bilingual family does not necessarily mean altering one's language identity.


This article argues that professors of American literature should focus on a pedagogy of "wakefulness" that encourages connections between different writers and texts, between the past and the present, and especially between the classroom and the world beyond. The goal of this pedagogy is to encourage active citizenry in engaging the material conditions of the current moment. This is especially valuable at nonelite institutions, such as mine, where students are not as aware of how knowledge is contingent and contested. Ultimately, this approach privileges metacognition and transferring learning from the course to action as a citizen. This pedagogy ultimately fosters a liberal education that explicitly links private study with public concerns and that encourages students to see themselves as potential agents of change in a neoliberal state that identifies them merely as consumers or tools of production.


Background: Mental health and HIV disparities are well documented among sexual minorities, but there is a dearth of research on other chronic conditions. Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Although sexual minorities have high rates of several modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease (including stress, tobacco use, and alcohol consumption), there is a paucity of research in this area. Objectives: In this systematic review, we synthesized and critiqued the existing evidence on cardiovascular disease among sexual minority adults. Search Methods: We conducted a thorough literature search of 6 electronic databases for studies published between January 1985 and December 2015 that compared cardiovascular disease risk or prevalence between sexual minority and heterosexual adults. Selection Criteria: We included peer-reviewed English-language studies that compared cardiovascular disease risk or diagnoses between sexual minority and heterosexual individuals older than 18 years. We excluded reviews, case studies, and gray literature. A total of 31 studies met inclusion criteria. Data Collection and Analysis: At least 2 authors independently abstracted data from each study. We performed quality assessment of retrieved studies using the Crowe Critical Appraisal Tool. Main Results: Sexual minority women exhibited greater cardiovascular disease risk related to tobacco use, alcohol consumption, illicit drug use, poor mental health, and body mass index, whereas sexual minority men experienced excess risk related to tobacco use, illicit drug use, and poor mental health. We identified several limitations in the extant literature. The majority of included studies were cross-sectional analyses that used self-reported measures of cardiovascular disease. Even though we observed elevated cardiovascular disease risk, we found few differences in cardiovascular disease diagnoses (including hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol). Overall, 23 of the 26 studies that examined cardiovascular disease diagnoses used subjective measures. Only 7 studies used a combination of biomarkers and self-report measures to establish cardiovascular disease risk and diagnoses. Authors' Conclusions: Social conditions appear to exert a negative effect on cardiovascular disease risk among sexual minorities. Although we found few differences in cardiovascular disease diagnoses, we identified an elevated risk for cardiovascular disease in both sexual minority men and women. There is a need for research that incorporates subjective and objective measures of cardiovascular disease risk. Public Health Implications: Cardiovascular disease is a major health concern for clinicians, public health practitioners, and policymakers. This systematic review supports the need for culturally appropriate interventions that address cardiovascular disease risk in sexual minority adults.


Renal tubular sodium handling was investigated prospectively in 48 normotensive subjects, 53 untreated hypertensive patients, and 13 patients with white coat hypertension using endogenous trace lithium as a marker of proximal sodium reabsorption. A 12-hour daytime ambulatory blood pressure recording was performed in all patients to confirm the diagnosis of hypertension. Patients were included in the white coat hypertension group if their office blood pressure was above 160/90 mm Hg but the mean value of their 12-hour ambulatory recording was lower than 140/90 mm Hg. All participants were studied on their normal diet and ate salt freely. Fractional excretions of sodium (FENa), lithium (FELi), and potassium (FEK) were measured simultaneously before blood pressure recording. FENa was significantly higher in hypertensive patients (0.84 +/- 0.05%, P < .05) than in normotensive control subjects (0.60 +/- 0.06%), and FELi was comparable in the two groups (15.4 +/- 0.65% in hypertensive patients and 17.0 +/- 0.9% in control subjects). However, the relation between FENa and FELi was significantly different in normotensive subjects and hypertensive patients (P < .001), so that for a given increase in FENa a smaller increase in FELi was observed in hypertensive patients. In addition, the ratios of urinary lithium to sodium and urinary potassium to sodium were significantly reduced in hypertensive patients, suggesting an increased proximal reabsorption of sodium. Similar alterations in renal tubular sodium handling were observed in patients with white coat hypertension. These results suggest that an increased sodium reabsorption in the proximal tubule may contribute to the maintenance of hypertension and that white coat hypertension might represent a prehypertensive state.


On the territory of the Serbian part of Banat there are registered 9 internationally important bird habitats (Importan bird areas-IBA), which are an important resource of bio diversity, but also a significant market potential that can be marketed through tourism. The paper is based on Hilary du Cros model evaluation and analyses the tourism sector and management of IBA sites, investigating to what extent they are attractive to activate the tourism industry. In this way, we established utility value of IBA habitats with emphasis on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of subindicators.


Intercultural education is specific to the multicultural environment in Europe. The European focus on intercultural education is reflected in the documents, reports and measures taken through various financially supported projects. This article presents a research on the characterization of entrepreneurial potential in the case of an intercultural group of Romanian and Serbian trainees who became the target of a cross-border project between Romania and Serbia. The project, of which the designed Creative Entrepreneurship Training Program is part of, is entitled 'InclusiveArt – Access to Culture for Disadvantaged Children and Youth.' It implies a dynamic partnership formed by two NGOs (the Intercultural Institute Timisoara and 'Nevo Parudimos,' from Resita), one local public authority (the city of Zrenjanin) and one public cultural institution (the Centre for Fine and Applied Arts Terra, Kikinda). The proposed Creative Entrepreneurship Training Program (created in English) plans to help young potential entrepreneurs from the Banat Area in order to develop disadvantaged communities, by establishing commercially viable (self-sustaining) projects/businesses, based on a creative idea, as well as through the provision of a six-day training course for a group of 40 people aged 18 to 35. The training is delivered by a team of academics and training professionals from the Politehnica University Timisoara and the Intercultural Institute Timisoara, both from Romania. The proposed intercultural education program associated with the project implementation aims to the development of entrepreneurship competencies of young people that will be active in creative industries. The potential entrepreneurship characterization considered entrepreneurial traits, such as concerns, motivations, aptitudes and attitudes, as a result of data processing from a self-assessment test. The research results and conclusions support the definition of the structure, content and the didactic strategy adopted for the intercultural education program implementation.


Typical commercial 3D CAD tools provide modal tools such as pan, zoom, orbit, look, etc. to facilitate freeform navigation in a 3D scene. Mastering these navigation tools requires a significant amount of learning and even experienced computer users can find learning confusing and error-prone. To address this we have developed a concept called "Safe 3D Navigation" where we augment these modal tools with properties to reduce the occurance of confusing situations and improve the learning experience. In this paper we describe the major properties needed for safe navigation, the features we implemented to realize these properties, and usability tests on the effectiveness of these features. We conclude that indeed these properties do improve the learning experience for users that are new to 3D. Furthermore, many of the features we implemented for safe navigation are also very popular with experienced 3D users. As a result, these features have been integrated into six commercial 3D CAD applications and we recommend other application developers include these features to improve 3D navigation.


Abstract. This paper proposes a preliminary analysis of whether a schema matching approach can be applied for the comparison and possible the selection of geospatial standards. Schema matching is tested in the context of underground utility network modelling and, as an initial experiment, three geospatial standards are compared with user requirements: CityGML UtilityNetwork ADE, infraGML and IFC. The schema comparison is enabled by XSD files, and carried out from syntactic, structural and semantic points of view, making use of existing software. The findings of this preliminary investigation show that schema matching is applicable for the comparison of user needs and existing geospatial standards, and does show some potential, but the matching results are varied and not easy to interpret. In particular, the similarity scores between user needs and standards are very low and the comparison and the selection is not straightforward. Having a strategy - an iterative process - is required. While for this preliminary examination, the focus of this paper is on assessing the schema matching approach (which parameters to take into consideration, how to proceed, tools available, automation aspect), further work will include examining software options and performance, as well as exploring how to take the relatively complex preliminary results obtained here and use them to assist the selection of a specific standard.


The main mechanisms for supporting renewable energy sources (RES) in the wholesale electricity and capacity market, in the retail market and in isolated power systems have been studied. The article analyzes the ecological, social and economic effects of the development of renewable energy in the territory of Russia. Based on official information, the authors gave a quantitative assessment of the effects: Increasing export earnings, reducing environmental costs, creating jobs, etc. An integral effect was assessed for the Russian economy from the development of RES, including various levels of budgets and extra-budgetary funds in the form of duties, taxes and insurance contributions. During the analysis of the development of renewable energy in the territory of Russia, the authors identified the main effects of its use and proposed methods for quantifying the effects determined. The obtained results, like the methodological approaches described in the article, can be used at the federal and regional levels in the development of state support mechanisms for renewable energy, while carrying out technical and economic calculations for projects and programs in the field of renewable resources and energy sources.


Summary
Delays in malaria eradication programs are caused more by non-response of fully susceptible vectors to attack measures than by physiological resistance, though the latter receives more attention. Currently recommended methods for vector studies are reviewed, with suggestions for their extension.
Three principal South American vectors are shown to rest mainly outside houses by day; some exophily existed before the use of DDT. Their biting cycles are unimodal, with peak activity near midnight, contrasting with minor vectors and non-vectors with bimodal or crepuscular cycles. A. nuneztovari, hitherto thought an anomalous exophagic and crepscular vector, includes two species, a widely distributed non-vector, A. dunhami, and an endophagic nocturnal vector.
Observations, mainly from Colombia, on nocturnal contacts with indoor surfaces by vectors, and on entry to and exit from houses are described; contacts were mainly with the lowest parts of walls, well below the height to which they are sprayed.
The times of sighting of vectors resting unfed and fed showed normal distributions, their means separated by intervals of 30 to 150 minutes. In A. darlingi, the interval was 150 minutes in unsprayed, 78 minutes in sprayed houses; in A. punctimacula and A. nuneztovari in sprayed houses, the intervals were 96 and 30 to 60 minutes, respectively. The durations of the contacts showed skewed distributions with short periods, medians 1 to 2.5 minutes in all three species, predominating. Mean durations, biased by a few long periods, were greater, for A. darlingi reaching 12 minutes in sprayed houses, 6 in unsprayed.
Times of entry and exit to houses, studied in A. darlingi with a drop-net lowered to enclose a house at intervals through the night, showed that, before spraying, about half the mosquitoes entering fed inside, during a stay of about 2 hours. For 3 months after use of a DDT-HCH mixture, 65% of those entering failed to leave; mean stay was 3 hours. Later, with DDT treatment only, the proportion entering and failing to leave fell to 28%.
Vector attack, human receptivity, and infectivity of the plasmodial gametocyte, all reach maxima inside houses, late at night; this is the key to persistence of transmission by susceptible vectors. In spite of the prevailing daytime exophily, vectors make multiple short contacts with insecticide-treated surfaces, repeated on each gonotrophic cycle; these are inadeuate to halt transmission in areas of low elevation, high humidity, and temperature, occupied by poorly housed colonists; insecticides lacking the locomotor stimulant action of DDT may be the remedy.