The title of this thesis is "The phonetics and phonology of an Aden dialect of Arabic." Three terms are necessary to be clarified here; these are Aden, dialect and Arabic. 1. "Aden colony and protectorates cover some 112000 square miles and stretch along the southern coast of Arabia from the Shaikh said peninsula opposite Perim Island eastwards for some 700 miles to the frontier of Oman. On the north west they are bounded by Yemen. Further to the east the frontier merges with the desert. Its depth from Hadramaut, or southern coast, varies from 50 miles in the west to 200 miles in the east." 2. "The Port of Aden is formed by two volcanic peninsulas - Aden (jabal Shamsan) and Little Aden (Jabal Insan) - which are connected with the mainland to the north by short necks of sand. The area of the Crown Colony is small, only 75 square miles, exclusive of its two dependencies - Perim Island (7 square miles), and Kuria Muria Islands (30 square miles). The population of the colony at the census in 1946 was 80,516 of whom 51000 were males. It includes Arabs (58,500), Somalis, Indians and Jews."1 The dialect studied here is of the 'Port of Aden' or more accurately of the part of this port known as "The Crater". "The term 'dialect' has a connotation in technical linguistic usage which is somewhat different from its ordinary meaning. To the linguist there is no real difference between a 'dialect' and a 'language' which can be shown to be related, however, remotely, to another language. By reference the term is restricted to a form of speech to be unintelligible to the speakers of the latter."2 The term 'Arabic' in the title includes a number of contemporary spoken dialects in the region between the Atlantic Coast of North Africa and the Western Persian frontier and from Syria to the Southern Sudan. Such term does not exclude Classical Arabic, which varies in pronunciation from one country in the region to the other, as the term 'Modern Arabic' would. This latter term covers the spoken unwritten dialects of the Arabs of today. 1. The Middle East. A Political and Economic Survey. RIIA.1950 - p.104. 2. Sapir, Selected Writings of Edward Sapir, p.83. The polycommunal character of the Aden population will, later, be related to the dialect studied as far as the vocabulary is concerned. The Arabs, as can be seen from the above quotations, are the largest single community, but they are not all 'Aden born'. The term 'Aden born' has, in the administrative context, a special implication as opposed to newcomers among the population. Those newcomers are chiefly from the neighbouring districts of the South such as the Protectorates and Yemen. As the town started in its history as a fishing village, the fishermen of the town claim to be the oldest group in settlement. This claim seems to win acceptance by all others. The fishermen are few in numbers. Second to these in antiquity of residence are some old families who planted themselves in the port long before the colonization of South Arabia and who are influential within the Aden town. The family of my informant is one of these; therefore, not only he, but also his father at least are 'Aden born'. These families, beside the fishermen, are the speakers of the Aden dialect. An educated member of an Aden family, such as my informant is, can be described as 'bidialectal' in different social settings. Within the circle of the family, as well as when talking to any fellow Adenese, he speaks Aden Dialect, but when talking to an educated Arab from outside the town, he speaks a modified 'Aden Dialect': a mixture of C.A. and A.D. words phonologically conforming to the characteristics of Aden Dialect. The contrast has then to be made between Aden Dialect and 'Aden Dialect', as this has to be made for every dialect of Modern Arabic as far as educated speakers are concerned. Care, however, has had to be taken to separate these two and to exclude 'Aden Dialect' of the educated speakers as far as possible from the data of this work, and to study an Aden dialect spoken by my informant as in his family circle.


Scholarly work on journalistic role conceptions is growing, but the assumption that what journalists conceive of as their roles depends in part on what they believe audiences expect from them remains underexplored. Through a nationally representative survey ( N = 1,200 ), this study sought to understand journalistic role expectations in Singapore, a country with a unique media system that brings together a highly developed information and communication infrastructure with media regulation. The study found that Singaporeans expect their journalists to serve the public, the nation, and the government—and in that order.


SUMMARY 1. The turnover of [24-14C]cholic acid and [3H]chenodeoxycholic acid and the faecal excretion of neutral steroids were studied in six normolipaemic subjects before and during the ingestion of 1-3-2.6 mmol(0-5-1-0 g) of deoxycholic acid/day. Before the second study the subjects had been fed deoxycholic acid for 2 weeks. 2. The administration of deoxycholic acid did not appear to influence cholesterol metabolism as judged by the absence of change in the serum concentrations and the overall transformation into primary bile acids and neutral faecal steroids. 3. During the deoxycholic acid feeding period the mean total synthesis of bile acids was reduced by about 30%, corresponding to approximately 0.25 mmol(100 mg)/day. In one subject the pool size and in another the synthesis of cholic acid remained unchanged; otherwise the cholic acid pool size and its rate of formation decreased in all subjects. No consistent effects were observed with regard to the turnover of chenodeoxycholic acid. 4. Assuming that the bile acid turnover is equivalent to bile acid excretion then the total amount of cholesterol eliminated as bile acids and neutral faecal steroids averaged between 1.6 and 1.8 mmol/day before and during the administration of deoxycholic acid.


Understanding the mechanisms plants use for acclimation to ultraviolet radiation stress is key in predicting plant responses to our changing environment. Maize inbred line B73 plants were grown in sterilized vermiculite in a greenhouse under low fluence white light for 16 h/day until the majority of the plants were at the three-leaf stage. Plants were then subdivided into five groups of approximately 20 plants for treatments of one, two, four, eight, or twelve hours of UV-B irradiation at a dose rate of 0.024 W m-2. A sixth, control group was placed the same distance under an identical pair of UV bulbs that were covered with Mylar to block all UV-B radiation. Using transcripts from pools of leaf tissue, cDNA microarrays were used to monitor UV-induced alterations in gene expression to gain a better understanding of global gene expression in response to UV-B. Array data were standardized using a variance stabilizing procedure accounting for the many sources of systematic variation that affect measured gene expression levels. Examination of the effects after irradiation at different times indicated that the largest transcriptome response was evident after 12 hr of UV exposure followed by 8 hr, 2 hr, 1 hr, and 4 hr It was also determined that different suites of genes are expressed after specific UV treatments. Overall, it was determined that after 2 hr of UV exposure, rapid transcriptome responses occurred followed by a decrease in gene expression after 4 hr of UV exposure. After 8 hr of UV an increase in gene expression occurred that appeared to level off after 12 hr of UV exposure. With the analysis of gene expression over time, we have been able to identify new gene regulatory patterns in response to UV.


Regulation of the cytosolic free Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]cyt) by an Na/Ca exchanger was studied in primary cultured rat cortical astrocytes. [Ca2+]cyt was measured by digital imaging in cells loaded with fura-2. The resting [Ca2+]cyt, approximately 150 nM, was only slightly increased by reducing the extracellular Na+ concentration ([Na+]o) to 6.2 mM, or by treating the cells with ouabain for 15 min (to raise cytosolic Na+). Following treatment with ouabain, however, lowering [Na+]o caused [Ca2+]cyt to rise rapidly to approximately 1300 nM. When Ca2+ sequestration in intracellular stores was blocked by thapsigargin, lowering [Na+]o increased [Ca2+]cyt to approximately 1500 nM in the absence of ouabain. The low-[Na+]o-stimulated rise in [Ca2+]cyt was abolished by removal of external Ca2+, but was not blocked by the Ca2+ channel blocker verapamil, or by caffeine or ryanodine, which deplete an intracellular Ca2+ store responsible for Ca(2+)-induced Ca2+ release. These data suggest that Na+ gradient reduction promotes net Ca2+ gain via Na/Ca exchange. Normally, however, a large rise in [Ca2+]cyt is prevented by sequestration of the entering Ca2+; this buffering of cytosolic Ca2+ can be circumvented by blocking sequestration with thapsigargin, or overwhelmed by enhancing net Ca2+ gain by pretreating the cells with ouabain. The presence of Na/Ca exchanger protein and mRNA in the astrocytes was confirmed by Western and Northern blot analyses, respectively. Immunohistochemistry revealed that exchanger molecules are distributed in a reticular pattern over the astrocyte surface. We suggest that the Na/Ca exchanger plays a role in regulating both [Ca2+]cyt and the intracellular stores of Ca2+ in astrocytes, and may thus contribute to the control of astrocyte responsiveness to neurotransmitters and neurotoxins.


Adequate sanitation is of great importance in addressing public health and plays an important role with
respect to poverty alleviation. A large proportion of population in Nakuru is not served with adequate
sanitation facilities. Worldwide experiences on financing of sanitation are widely scattered, and influenced by
very different local circumstances. Little, if any, real linkage and upscaling
has taken place, to draw
conclusions that would fit all circumstances. A study was conducted in Nakuru municipality using structured
questionnaires. Results from the data analysis indicated that majority of the households interviewed had low
monthly incomes ranging between Kshs. 500010000.
Sanitation therefore was not a priority with this meager
income. The finding indicated that the only way these residents were willing to contribute to sanitation would
be in kind labour, 44%. Majority of Nakuru residents, 65% admitted that they don't pay for garbage
collection services, reason being that of poverty and the notion that this is the responsibility of the municipal
council. On household improvement priority, many respondents, 35% would prefer to have water in their
residence followed closely with sanitation. They argue that with water availability, sanitation is guaranteed.
Potential financial constraints were identified as unwillingness and inability to pay due to poverty, lack of
political will and poor governance and low priority for sanitation in public sector spending due to competing
interest with other sectors such as health and education.


The colors of solar cells are very important when adopting them for future indoor and outdoor light energy harvesting devices with smart designs. Here we report the formation of vividly colorful hybrid organometal trihalide perovskite solar cells by a low-cost and scalable doctor-blade coating method. The perovskite films have a combination of a hundred micrometer size large domain structure and a concentric ring photonics structure in each domain which generates the vivid color. The convection during precursor solution drying in the doctor-blade coating process has been found to be responsible for the formation of the large domains and the coffee-ring like perovskite photonic structures after solvent drying, whose periodicity can be well tuned by the substrate temperature and the precursor solution concentration. Both the perovskite films and the finished devices are very colorful, and the efficiency of the vividly colorful solar cells is close to the optimized doctor-blade coated perovskite solar cell.


This paper develops an analytical framework to place the rise of open source urbanism in context, and develops the concept of the 'right to infrastructure' as expressive of new ecologies of urban relations that have come into being. It describes, first, a genealogy for open source technology, focusing in particular on how open source urban hardware projects may challenge urban theory. It moves then to describe in detail various dimensions and implications of an open source infrastructural project in Madrid. In all, the paper analyses three challenges that the development of open source urban infrastructures is posing to the institutions of urban governance and property: the evolving shape and composition of urban ecologies; the technical and design challenges brought about by open source urban projects; and the social organisation of the 'right to infrastructure' as a political, active voice in urban governance. In the last instance, the right to infrastructure, I shall argue, signals the rise of the 'prototype' as an emerging figure for contemporary sociotechnical designs in and for social theory.


An insect powder printed in 3d, a barbeque sauce made from mutationbred varieties of plants, and a datadriven cheese board. This collection of art and design projects uses the topic of food to embrace, problematize, or completely reject the Fordist values of industrial efficiency, order, and control. Each project establishes a complex and often ironic attitude toward human progress, scientific and technological advancement, rational planning, and increased efficiency. The topic of Fordism and food is especially relevant right now because conversations about agricultural production, food insecurity, and culinary futures in policymaking circles and the mainstream media still tend to emphasize efficiency, topdown planning, and technological solutions. Newer goals of resilience, food sovereignty, and appropriate technologies often require a repudiation of Fordist beliefs and measurements of success other than increased efficiency and rational control.


Consolation brings an understanding of suffering and loss that reorients a grieving person to the continuous flow of life. Commemoration can be an important aspect of consolation and is expressed in a number of ways in many cultures. This article examines the commemoration practices, or "folkways of faith," of a group of older adults who were interviewed about their practices and beliefs. SOCIAL ASPECTS OF COMMEMORATION Commemoration of others who have passed away from human life has long been understood in Western social and religious traditions as appropriately expressed in private and public settings (Kastenbaum, 2000). Memories are often expressed in specific public sites such as cemeteries, gardens, and sometimes entire buildings or complexes-along with material objects like statues, sculptural forms, and other works of art, and expected interactions such as liturgies and memorial services. The resting places of bodies, most compellingly seen in cemeteries and in battlefields from Gettysburg to Normandy, are additional examples of socially defined spaces that symbolically capture and memorialize the complicated events, stories, and lives of individuals and nations. These sites become repositories for remembrance. Though they are ever-present as reminders, the sites also evoke memories on specific anniversaries, at particular times that mark a passage of time away from an event. Unlike the recent penchant for naming buildings or parts of buildings with the intent of marking a person's or family's generosity to a particular organization, memorials of larger events and the process of commemorating outers in quiet or private ways inevitably stir and induce sentiment and remembrance that imparts more than a plaque can convey. Places and objects are meant to evoke a rich panoply of memories among the living, particularly those who shared the lived experience of the departed, and also among those who were distant or removed from the experience. We speak of "stirring memories." Auschwitz, for example, offers inspiration and hope at the same time that it reminds us of the unremitting hatred and murder directed toward Jews. In an important way, Auschwitz and the sites of other death camps commemorate, with an inescapable directness that cannot be found elsewhere in places like museums, the spirit of innocent people killed. Perhaps the most effective memorials and commemorative places are those that instill an idea best expressed in Shakespeare's words that the past is prologue. Capturing or distilling the spirit of an era in order to evoke memory and consolation is a delicate task. Imagine, for a moment, a granddaughter and grandmother hooked into headsets, swaying in private yet within a starkly public setting to the guitar rhythms of Jimi Hendrix in a corridor of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. The music, the album covers, and the black and white photographs of a four-year-old boy who would later mesmerize audiences with his electric guitar all re-create some range of meaning and memory for the grandmother. But what does the granddaughter take away? The memory that takes shape for her begins with a smile as she watches her grandmother sway and listen to the sound of some part of a past that is as ancient as Troy to the granddaughter. Their happiness becomes part of meaning, and it is not, except in the most general sense, a shared meaning, nor can it ever be. A social purpose of disparate collected memories that are captured in places and objects and housed in museums is to honor and to teach simultaneously. If it ever was the case, the scrapbooks of commemoration no longer are exclusively bound to one particular medium or to a single generation. And yet the kind of memorial erected or created is inextricably linked to a specific moment of time that will be reinterpreted within and across generations. Within the broadly defined conceptual space of memory described above, individuals understand and respond to the passage of personal and social time, in part, by creating mementos that spark recall and recollection of the meaning of particular people and social interaction in a specific moment. …


This paper synthesises the simulation studies concerning green tax reform (GTR) and employment double dividend (EDD) in European and non-European countries. The studies included investigate the effect of GTR on employment. We compared the simulation results between European and non-European countries to understand the impact of study region and our findings are fivefold. First, the simulation results suggest that GTR-driven EDD is observed in both European and non-European countries, but the average effect on employment in European countries (0.67%) is significantly greater than in non-European countries (0.18%). Second, optimal tax and tax revenue recycling policies in European and non-European countries for EDD are not identical. Reducing employers' social security contributions (SSC) has the potential to generate EDD in both countries. However, a reduction in value added tax (VAT) has the highest average effect on employment in European countries (1.62%), which negatively affects employment in non-European countries (-0.02%). Third, a reduction in personal income tax (PIT) as a tax recycling method creates a marginally average employment dividend in non-European countries (0.16%) but is counterproductive in European countries (-0.15%). Fourth, other taxes, which predominantly represent mixed taxes, exhibit the highest EDD potential in both European (1.01%) and non-European (0.46%) countries. Finally, employment dividend diminishes over time, but a weak quadratic pattern has been observed that reveals an accelerating effect on employment in the long term. These reflections should be considered before employing GTR in non-European countries in order to yield EDD.


The study looks at cognitions in parents that are hypothesised to be associated with the development of Post-Traumatic Stress in their children. As the main caregivers to young children, parents are known to play a key role in supporting their child's coping following trauma. There is a significant lack of knowledge about the specific mechanisms that distinguish parents who are able to effectively help their children resolve a trauma from those who are not. Specifically little is known about the parental cognitions that help or hinder a parent in providing support to children in distress following a trauma. An improved understanding of these cognitions may shed light on the familial processes that increase risk for PTS in children and may in the future help to improve therapeutic interventions for children with PTS or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Children attending accident and emergency departments following a potentially traumatic event (road traffic accident, fall, bum or assault) were seen with a parent within a month of the event, and at follow-up 3 months after the event. Self- report assessments of parental cognitions related to the event and to the child's coping were obtained. A battery of questionnaires on past traumatic experiences, current physical and mental health including PTSD symptoms was administered at time 1 to both parent and child. At time 2, outcome measures were re-administered. The hypotheses are (one) the presence of mental health problems, (two) trauma history and (three) specific parental cognitions about talking not being useful will predict a poorer child mental health outcome. The parental cognitions include endorsing statements that talking is not useful, talking upsets the parent, talking upsets the child and that they have not talked with their child about the trauma. The results are analysed using correlations and linear regression. An association was found between parental mental health and child mental health consistent with hypothesis 1. However this association was only present using the parent report measures of child mental health rather than the child report measures. An association was also found between a parental trauma history and poorer child mental health outcome, consistent with hypothesis 2. However as with hypothesis 1, the association was only present when child mental health was measured via a parental report measure. Finally parental distress and attitudes about talking were both significantly associated with the parent's report of the child's depression and the parents report of whether they had talked to their child about the traumatic event was significantly associated with the parent's report of the child's intrusion and avoidance symptoms. These results are discussed in light of the literature on parental mental health and parental cognitions. Limitations of the study are highlighted alongside areas for future research.


In this contribution, the role of progressive African intellectuals fifty years after independence in the context of African postcolonial, political and socio-economic conditions is examined. African intellectuals have been marginalized by the African state, and progressive intellectuals have been disunited in their struggle for relevance. The possibilities for African intellectual autonomy and international solidarity are shown through a recollection of the flourishing intellectual environment and local publishing output of post-independence Tanzania. The end of that era and the demise of publishing, including in African languages, has negatively impacted African economic and intellectual emancipation and can only be addressed by international solidarity among progressive intellectuals.


This research investigated the individual differences in theory of mind (ToM) and executive functioning (EF) in preschool-age children. The relationship between parenting styles and ToM was also investigated, and specifically examined EF as a possible mediator between parenting styles and ToM. A sample of 3.5to 5.5-year-old children (N = 25) were run through a series of EF and ToM tasks while parents filled out a Parenting Style Questionnaire. It was hypothesized that positive relationships would be found between parenting and ToM, parenting and EF, and EF and ToM. After running a correlational analysis, a significant relationship was found between ToM and Authoritative parenting styles, r = .43, p=.05. However, no significant relations were found between EF and parenting or EF and ToM. Future studies should use broader, more diverse populations to capture a more representative sample, as well as include supplementary tasks to further investigate EF skills. Limitations are also discussed. EF mediating parenting style and ToM 3 EXECUTIVE FUNCTION, PARENTING STYLE, AND THEORY OF MIND


Consideration is made of the early stages of trust in a tiny political economy. The article presents an embedded account of the social status and economic position of plastic bag sellers of Soko Kuu market in Mwanza, Tanzania, to demonstrate the dilemmas of trust faced and the solutions that are found. Evidence is taken from interviews with boys and young men whose profession consists of the wholesale purchase and individual retail of different types of plastic bag in the main market of Mwanza. The reputation and standing of bag sellers is very low, presenting a tough challenge for maintaining networks of trust within their own professional group or when bridging trustful relations to other economic groups. Plastic bag sellers tend to be young and bearers of a reputation for thievery. At the same time, the fact that they achieve relatively high levels of profit in such an informal setting presents a puzzle as to how the trust needed for all economic activity has been secured. Acknowledging the lack of institutional guarantees for entrenching or enforcing these relationships of trust, the phenomena of anchors of trust is identified as  having supported the early hardening of social norms between parties. Amongst plastic bag sellers, the dire need for short change in order to make a sale ignites participation and cooperation with goods sellers, who in turn come to distinguish between good and bad plastic bag sellers. Trust anchors are the positive opposite to social dilemmas: opportunities for building relationships of trust, based on mutually understood vulnerability. For future social policy attempting to grapple with the informal economy, such zones of trust creation must be identified and worked with.


Cognitive radio is a paradigm for wireless communication, in which either a network or a wireless node changes its transmission or reception parameters to communicate efficiently avoiding interference with licensed or unlicensed users. The OFDM based cognitive radio system is used for detection of signals. But in OFDM systems the performance of the signal is greatly affected by narrowband interference signals. In the proposed method Expectation maximization algorithm is used to detect signal even in the uncertainty condition. The literature survey discusses all the existing interference cancellation techniques.


A new incomplete data model, the trunsored model, in lifetime analysis is introduced. This model can be regarded as a unified model of the censored and truncated models. Using the model, we can not only estimate the ratio of the fragile population to the mixed fragile and durable populations, but also test a hypothesis that the ratio is equal to a prescribed value. A central point of the paper is that such a test can easily be realized through the newly introduced trunsored model, because it has been difficult to do such a hypothesis test under only the framework of censored and truncated models. Therefore, the relationship of the trunsored model to the censored and truncated models is clarified because the trunsored model unifies the censored and truncated models. The paper also shows how to obtain the estimates of the parameters in lifetime estimation, and corresponding confidence intervals for the fragile population. Typical examples applied to electronic board failures, and to breast cancer data, for lifetime estimation are demonstrated, and successfully worked using the trunsored model.


Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an emerging technique in studying cerebral hemodynamics; however, consensus on the analysis methods and the clinical applications has yet to be established. In this study, we demonstrate the results of a pilot fNIRS study of cerebral hemodynamic response (HR) evoked by pneumotactile and sensorimotor stimuli on the dominant hand. Our goal is to find the optimal stimulus parameters to maximally evoke HR in the primary somatosensory and motor cortices. We use a pulsatile pneumatic array of 14 tactile cells that were attached to the glabrous surface of the dominant hand, with a patterned stimulus that resembles saltation at three distinct traverse velocities [10, 25, and 45 cm/s]. NIRS optodes (16 sources; 20 detectors) are bilaterally and symmetrically placed over the pre-and post-central gyri (M1 and S1). Our objective is to identify the extent to which cerebral HR can encode the velocity of the somatosensory and/or motor stimuli. We use common spatial pattern for feature extraction and regularized-discriminant analysis for classifying the fNIRS time series into velocity classes. The classification results demonstrate discriminatory features of the fNIRS signal from each distinct stimulus velocity. The results are inconclusive regarding the velocity which evokes the highest intensity of hemodynamic response.


Tumor hypoxia is increasingly being recognized as a characteristic feature of solid tumors and significantly complicates many treatments based on radio-, chemo-, and phototherapies. While photodynamic therapy (PDT) is based on photosensitizer interactions with diffused oxygen, photothermal therapy (PTT) has emerged as a new phototherapy that is predicted to be independent of oxygen levels within tumors. It has been challenging to meaningfully compare these two modalities due to differences in contrast agents and irradiation parameters, and no comparative in vivo studies have been performed until now. Here, by making use of recently developed nanostructured self-quenched porphysome nanoparticles, we were able to directly compare PDT and PTT using matched light doses and matched porphyrin photosensitizer doses (with the photosensitizer being effective for either PTT or PDT based on the existence of nanostructure or not). Therefore, we demonstrated the nanostructure-driven conversion from the PDT singlet oxygen generating mechanism of porphyrin to a completely thermal mechanism, ideal for PTT enhancement. Using a novel hypoxia tumor model, we determined that nanostructured porphyrin PTT enhancers are advantageous to overcome hypoxic conditions to achieve effective ablation of solid tumors.


A report by National Drug Agency has revealed that a total of existing 32,808 addicts, 15,389 new addicts and another 17,419 relapsed addicts were registered with official agencies nationwide in 2005. In a country of just over 27 million, the figure is appalling. It means that almost 3,000 addicts are registered every month. This alarming figure, especially among relapsed addicts has brought into questions on factors contributing to the problem.
This study was conducted to examine the influence of three main factors, which are individual, social environmental and rehabilitation program effectiveness on the incidence of drug addict on relapse. Self- administered questionnaires were used to gather data. The sample consisted of 400 drug addict on relapse cases which were selected through the method stratified random sampling and systematic random sampling from eight Rehabilitation Centers throughout Peninsular Malaysia. Research Instruments were developed and adopted from various sources. The quantitative data were analyzed using various statistical data analysis methods; descriptive tests, Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis (stepwise).
The findings indicated that 93.6% of relapsed addicts surveyed have a medium and high degree potential of becoming relapse again. The analysis shows that relapsed addicts have the characteristics of having negative emotion, suffering social pressure and interpersonal conflict which puts them in a suffer high risk situation to relapse once freed from the rehabilitation program. The study also revealed that the great majority of the respondents surveyed had low self-confidence. The support from their respective employers and society was found not encouraging. The study discovered that individual factors (self-confidence r=-.790, p<.05) and social environmental factor (family support, r=-.207, p<.05, employer support r=-.193, p<.05 and society support (r=-.315, p<.05) bore significant relationship with drug addict on relapse. The study also identified three predictive variables: self-confidence (Beta=.743), support from society (Beta=.155) and family support (Beta=.086) with the total of 65.3% as the most influencing factors contributed to drug addict on relapse. Future research suggestions are made, in particular advocating the replication of this study to a wider population and to use more qualitative data. Also, confirmatory studies with regards to the findings would be beneficial.


Theologians speak of the silence of churches' prophetic voice in the 'new' South Africa, whilst the country features amongst the socio-economically most unequal countries in the world, and the urban areas in particular continue to be characterised by segregation. In this context I ask: where is liberation theology? I spell out my reading of some of the recent voices in the liberationist discourse. In dialogue with these scholars I, firstly, argue for the faith community to be made a conscious centre of liberationist debates and praxis. Secondly, I do this by suggesting two theoretical building blocks (i.e. critical deconstruction and radical friendship) for local faith communities that wish to grow in a liberationist fashion.


Book review: Awards and Recognition for Exceptional Teachers K-12 and Community College Programs in the U.S.A., Canada and Other Countries by Hans A. Andrews Matilda Press, Ottawa, III., 2006, 370 pp. with index, $24.95(TM) soft cover. If you want a detailed list of the teacher award and recognition programs currently being used at the K-12 level, then this book will provide an extensive compilation of these programs. Since there are fewer listings of awards and recognitions at the community college, it may be of less interest to those in higher education. The first three chapters of the book provide background on the philosophy and objectives for award and recognition programs; the subsequent seven chapters provide a fairly exhaustive list of current teacher award and recognition programs. For each award and recognition program, the author provides information about the sponsor of the award, the rationale behind the creation of the award, the amount of any stipend, certificates received by recipients and details about past recipients. The author arranges the chapters so that one can easily index awards by whether or not they are national, state, individual school-level, Canadian, or other international programs. A major weakness with the book is a failure by the author to support his main proposal that it is essential for institutions to increase the number of teacher award and recognition programs. The author even promises on the back cover that the reader will learn "Why all exceptional teachers must have local and state awards and recognition programs." Since there is little research throughout the book to substantiate his argument, one is left to simply trust on face value that award and recognition programs facilitate better teachers. In the first chapter, the author does attempt to document favorable outcomes of award and recognition programs by citing research findings, but his coverage is limited to a few studies where teachers simply extol the virtues of the award bestowed upon them (i.e., Andrews, 1995). These studies were also plagued by extremely small sample sizes (e.g., N


ABSTRACT The refusal of psychotropic medication is a challenge faced by many healthcare providers when treating patients with mental illness. Controversy surrounds medication refusal because some mental health professionals believe that psychiatric patients should be forced to take medications for the safety of the general public, while patients are often acutely aware of potential lifelong adverse side effects and are sometimes reluctant to comply. The proposed alternative to this problem begins with developing the patient-provider relationship through a patient-centered approach. This approach emphasizes the individual needs of patients and creates opportunities for input from patients about their care, which helps form relationships of mutual trust and respect between patients and providers. This article explores the literature to: (1) understand some of the challenges and controversies involved in patient medication refusal from a clinical and societal level; (2) identify some issues in a patient-centered approach; and (3) make some brief clinical and policy recommendations that might help to bring about an increase in the use of patient-centered care. Hopefully, as efforts are made toward a patient-centered approach, increased psychotropic medication adherence and decreased medication coercion will result as providers listen and act upon the needs of their patients.


Computational approaches to health monitoring and epidemiology continue to evolve rapidly. We present an end-to-end system, nEmesis, that automatically identifies restaurants posing public health risks. Leveraging a language model of Twitter users' online communication, nEmesis finds individuals who are likely suffering from a foodborne illness. People's visits to restaurants are modeled by matching GPS data embedded in the messages with restaurant addresses. As a result, we can assign each venue a "health score" based on the proportion of customers that fell ill shortly after visiting it. Statistical analysis reveals that our inferred health score correlates (r = 0.30) with the official inspection data from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). We investigate the joint associations of multiple factors mined from online data with the DOHMH violation scores and find that over 23% of variance can be explained by our factors. We demonstrate that readily accessible online data can be used to detect cases of foodborne illness in a timely manner. This approach offers an inexpensive way to enhance current methods to monitor food safety (e.g., adaptive inspections) and identify potentially problematic venues in near-real time.


Background:
The prevalence of cases of HIV among children below the ages of 15 years continues to increase and majority of these children acquired the infection through mother-to-child transmission.

Methodology:
The main objectives of the study were to explore the perceptions of local women regarding the PMTCT program, to evaluate the strength of these perceptions and to make recommendations. A qualitative method was used involving a number of focus group discussions among antenatal clinic attendees in the 27 primary health care clinics in Qwa-Qwa, Free State province of South Africa.

Findings:
The findings were organised under eight major themes: (1) Knowledge of the program -where the participants expressed high knowledge about the PMTCT program as they knew how MTCT of HIV occurs and how it can be prevented, (2) Perceived concerns about the program- which were mainly fear of resistance to ARVs, fear of stopping the treatment after delivery, potential for high numbers of orphans, depression and suicide when HIV result is positive, the fear of the family neglecting the baby if the mothers dies, the perception that the program cares for only the babies and not their mother, (3)Readiness to do HIV test- where majority of the participants said it was difficult doing the HIV test due to fear of positive result, (4) Ease of taking ARVs- Difficulty in taking the ARVs due to fear of resistance and harmful side effects, (5) Relationship with clinic staff- a majority of the participants were happy with their relationship with the clinic staff, (6) Reactions expected from family members when program advice is followed- more than half of the participants expected negative reactions from family members if the program advice is followed because of the negative attitudes of their male partners and the elders' of the resistance to change from their cultural beliefs, (7) Advantages of the program- according to the focus group participants, the advantages of the program include the knowledge gained about HIV, modes of MTCT of HIV and how to prevent MTCT of HIV. Other advantages mentioned were prevention of MTCT of HIV, pre-test counselling reducing the fear of doing HIV test, knowing one's HIV status as well as the potential of the program to have positive change on the cultural beliefs of the people, and lastly (8)How they felt being part of the program- where all the participants said they were excited .

Conclusions:
The findings were similar to those of other studies in many respects.
Recommendations: The recommendations were community and family HIV/AIDS education and their involvement in the PMTCT program in other to reduce misconceptions about the disease, and stigmatization against the women in the program. Other recommendations include: the concept of PMTCT-plus which provides ongoing support and treatment for the mothers, babies and infected family members; integration of innovative health education and culturally appropriate interventions into the program; provision of adequate maternity leaves to women in the PMTCT program as well as full integration of the PMTCT program into the District Health System (DHS) as part of the "horizontal" delivered package.


A crucial element of market regulation in Australia geared towards achieving and maintaining market integrity is the obligation of listed and other disclosing entities to continuously disclose material information to the market: ASX Listing Rule 3.1. ASX Compliance (a wholly-owned subsidiary of ASX Ltd) fulfils the ASX's market oversight obligations by monitoring and enforcing compliance with the market's operating rules. If concerned that less than transparent behaviour may have been responsible for unusual movement in a company's share price or trading volumes, the ASX may issue a query to the company concerned. Details of the response and the query sent by the ASX are then made available through the announcements platform on the ASX website. This paper represents an initial investigation into this element of the practical reality of enforcement of the continuous disclosure regime. It analyses company responses to ASX price queries with a view to gaining a deeper understanding of the explanations provided by listed entities and the frontline of ASX enforcement activity surrounding the regime.


This paper will summarize the quality improvement falls prevention project conducted by a University of San Francisco Clinical Nurse Leader student. Falls in the hospital setting are an ongoing problem in our healthcare system as they have great physical and financial impacts (Salamon, Victory, & Bobay, 2012). Hospital A, an urban teaching hospital, uses the Schmid scale for determining if a patient is a fall risk which includes the assessment of need for ambulatory aids, history of falls, and impaired cognition among other criteria (Schmid,1990). Fall rates are climbing in the United States and the trend is similar on Hospital A's hematologyoncology and BMT unit hereby referred to as Unit B. Because of the impact on patient safety, a falls prevention project performance improvement project was implemented. An assessment of Unit B's needs, diagnosis of Unit B's presenting problem, and the intervention implemented will be discussed followed by an evaluation with further recommendations. The implementation process and design of this paper follow the theory of change theories of Kurt Lewin and Ronald Lippitt (see Appendix A; Mitchell, 2013).


To determine the characteristics of new dental faculty and what factors influenced them to choose academic careers, a survey was sent to deans at all U.S. dental schools to be distributed to faculty with length of service of four years or less. Responses were received from 240 individuals. About half of the respondents had been in private practice for an average of eight years, and 20 percent had military experience averaging almost sixteen years. A majority had postgraduate training and 60 percent had specialty training. Nearly 32 percent of new faculty were female and 80 percent were U.S. citizens. Analyses of responses to survey items indicated that correlated factors in the survey fell into the following empirical categories: teaching and scholarship, income and indebtedness, research, work schedule, influence of mentors and role models, and long-term aspirations. In general, the respondents identified factors relating to teaching and scholarship to be the most important influences on their choice of academic careers, while concerns about income and indebtedness were the most important negative considerations in this regard. Other positive factors identified by the survey related to the influence of mentors and role models, long-term aspirations, and research. Age, private practice experience, and military experience were found to particularly influence the new faculty members' responses to items concerning income and indebtedness, and citizenship influenced responses to factors relating to research. The data from this select group of dentists support the current view that inequities in income of dental faculty compared to private practitioners and student debt are important concerns in choosing academic careers. Importantly, the desire to teach and participate in scholarly activities are important attractions in academic careers. Mentoring activities and creation of opportunities for career development are crucial factors in developing interest in academics among graduate dentists.


In recent years, ozone therapy as an effective therapeutic method has become more developed and well known. Russia and Cuba have recognized it in their legislation; it is regulated in more than 76% of the Autonomous Regions of Spain; and in Italy four Regions have specified the criteria for practicing it, in addition to two favorable court decisions. Ozone therapy is characterized by the simplicity of its application, its great effectiveness, good tolerance, and by the virtual absence of side effects. This document, based on the latest books and scientific articles on the subject, updates the recent findings that justify, from the scientific point of view, the medical use of ozone. For many years the application of ozone in medical practice was not well accepted due to unfounded ideas about its toxicity in relation to the high concentrations used in industry. As with any healing technique, ozone therapy is dependent on the dosage. It is important to understand that in clinical practice the concentrations of ozone are lower than the toxic levels by several orders of magnitude. In this concentration range, the ozone acts as a therapeutic substance and presents immunomodulating, anti-inflammatory, bactericide, antiviral, fungicide, analgesic properties and others. There are an increasing number of scientific societies and clinical papers, including meta-analysis studies. At the same time efforts are being reinforced to regularize this medical practice. ozone


This article investigates the extent to which young people are able to comprehend the political messages contained in satirical videos that circulate online. We do so through an analysis of responses to videos embedded within an online survey of 15- to 25-year-olds (N = 2070) conducted in 2011. Respondents were randomly assigned to view one of two short, humorous YouTube videos relating to immigration policy and were then asked questions that tested their comprehension of what they had seen. Substantial proportions of our sample were unable to answer these correctly. Further analysis indicates that individuals' levels of political knowledge and their predisposition to agree with the message contained in the video are strong predictors of comprehension. These findings indicate that the potential impact of incidental exposure to online political communications is smaller than many scholars have assumed, particularly when the message is inconsistent with the viewer's prior beliefs.


Rendering for Head Mounted Displays (HMD) causes a doubled computational effort, since serving the human stereopsis requires the creation of one image for the left and one for the right eye. The difference in this image pair, called binocular disparity, is an important cue for depth perception and the spatial arrangement of surrounding objects. Findings in the context of the human visual system (HVS) have shown that especially in the near range of an observer, binocular disparities have a high significance. But as with rising distance the disparity converges to a simple geometric shift, also the importance as depth cue exponentially declines. In this paper, we exploit this knowledge about the human perception by rendering objects fully stereoscopic only up to a chosen distance and monoscopic, from there on. By doing so, we obtain three distinct images which are synthesized to a new hybrid stereoscopic image pair, which reasonably approximates a conventionally rendered stereoscopic image pair. The method has the potential to reduce the amount of rendered primitives easily to nearly 50 % and thus, significantly lower frame times. Besides of a detailed analysis of the introduced formal error and how to deal with occurring artifacts, we evaluated the perceived quality of the VR experience during a comprehensive user study with nearly 50 participants. The results show that the perceived difference in quality between the shown image pairs was generally small. An in-depth analysis is given on how the participants reached their decisions and how they subjectively rated their VR experience.


The core of South Africa tourism industry is based on wildlife tourism.  Private game reserves and game farms which forms part of wildlife tourism constitute most of the wildlife products in South Africa.  On these private reserves and game farms, hunting is one of the major income generators for product owners.  The aim of this study is to analyse the economic impact of hunting on the regional economies of three of South Africa's most important hunting provinces. The study used economic multipliers, input-output analysis, and related modelling processes through input-output (supply-use) tables and social accounting matrices (SAM). The results differed significantly for the three provinces, with Limpopo receiving the biggest impact (R2.6 billion) and the Free State having the highest multiplier (2.08). The geographical location of the game farms, the number of farms per province and the species available all influenced the magnitude of the economic impact of hunters over and above the traditional determinants of economic impact analysis. The implication of the research is that it will help product owners in the development of game farms or hunting products, contribute to policy formulation, especially for government decisions on what products to offer where, and how to create more jobs.


Three end-plate moment connection configurations are prequalified for special moment frames for seismic applications in AISC 358-10. The eight bolt extended stiffened connection is the strongest of the three configurations, but it can only develop approximately 30 percent of currently available hot-rolled beam sections. The strength of this configuration is limited by bolt strength. There is a need for a stronger end-plate moment connection, hence the reason for the development and validation of a twelve bolt configuration. Equations were developed for the design procedure using various analytical methods, which included yield line analysis and an effective tee stub model. An experimental program was conducted, which consisted of the full-scale cyclic testing of four end-plate moment connections. The intention of the testing was to develop and validate the design procedure, and prequalify a new twelve bolt configuration. A displacement-controlled loading protocol was applied according to AISC 341-10. The experimental results showed that the model for thick end-plate behavior is conservative by 6.7%, the model for end-plate yielding is conservative by 8.8%, and the model for bolt tension rupture with prying conservatively predicts by 18.5%. The specimens that were designed to form a plastic hinge in the beam fractured in a brittle manner. The deep beam specimen fractured in the first 2% story drift cycle, and the shallow beam specimen fractured in the second 3% story drift cycle. The fracture of the prequalification specimens was determined to have been caused by stiffeners of high yield stress relative to the beam yield stress. DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A TWELVE BOLT EXTENDED STIFFENED END-PLATE MOMENT CONNECTION


Melbourne public culture, curator/artist Elizabeth Gertsakis assembled a visual arts project around the life and work of early twentieth century Melbourne entrepreneur, sports and entertainment manager John Wren1871-1953. Artmaking, curating, presentation and display 'in a broad not narrowly discipline-centric definition' are explored and unpicked. His world is, as Gertsakis argues, a constructed, directed one of effect and presentation within which Wren emerges as exemplar and victim in a process of image creation and narrative spinning that is central to social life in a media age.


We apply the maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT)-based spectral density estimation method to measure heart rate variability (HRV) from short-duration pulse wave signals produced by an automated oscillometric blood pressure (BP) monitor during routine measurements. To test the accuracy of this wavelet HRV metric, we study the linear correlations that it achieves with chronological age and BP in a healthy population of 85 subjects. We define accuracy as the quality of the linear regression of HRV with age and BP. Results are compared with a number of traditional HRV metrics and earlier published work. The MODWT HRV metric achieves higher (and more significant) correlations with age and BP compared to other metrics. Moreover, these correlations are in agreement with earlier published work on correlations of HRV (measured from much longer duration electrocardiogram signals) with age and BP. As a further enhancement, we combine the MODWT HRV metric with other HRV metrics inside a multiple-linear-regression model and show an improvement in the correlations between the predicted and actual ages and the predicted and actual BP. Our work thus indicates the suitability of the MODWT metric either as a stand alone or in combination with other metrics for characterizing HRV from short-duration oscillometric pulse wave signals. Based on our results, we conclude that oscillometric BP monitors can be used to measure HRV in addition to measuring BP.


Abstract. The influence of temperature on life history traits of four Acyrthosiphon pisum clones was investigated, together with their resistance to one genotype of the fungal entomopathogen Erynia neoaphidis. There was no difference among aphid clones in development rate, but they did differ in fecundity. Both development rate and fecundity were influenced by temperature, but all clones showed similar responses to the changes in temperature (i.e. the interaction term was nonsignificant). However, there were significant differences among clones in susceptibility to the pathogen, and this was influenced by temperature. Furthermore, the clones differed in how temperature influenced susceptibility, with susceptibility rankings changing with temperature. Two clones showed changes in susceptibility which mirrored changes in the in vitro vegetative growth rate of E. neoaphidis at different temperatures, whereas two other clones differed considerably from this expected response. Such interactions between genotype and temperature may help maintain heritable variation in aphid susceptibility to fungal pathogen attack and have implications for our understanding of disease dynamics in natural populations. This study also highlights the difficulties of drawing conclusions about the efficacy of a biological control agent when only a restricted range of pest genotypes or environmental conditions are considered.


Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third-leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in the USA. Despite consensus recommendations for screening, just over half of eligible adults nationally have undergone screening. We therefore implemented a programme to improve the rate of CRC screening. Methods: This study was conducted in the Utah Health Research Network and the University of Utah Community Clinics, a 100 000 patient, seven-practice, university-owned system offering primary and secondary care and ancillary services including endoscopy. We focused on patients aged ⩾50 who were seen between 1 January 2003 and 31 October 2006, and who were not current for CRC screening at the time of the visit. The study included a three-phase intervention: electronic medical record (EMR) reminders, physician and medical assistant (MA) education about CRC screening guidelines, and redesign of patient visit workflow with an expanded role for MAs to review patients' CRC screening status and recommend testing when appropriate. With patient agreement, the MA entered a preliminary order in the EMR, and the physician confirmed or rejected the order. The primary outcome measure was the rate of screening colonoscopy ordered for eligible patients. Results: The baseline colonoscopy referral rate was 6.0%. Provider education and electronic reminders had minimal immediate impact on screening rates. Addition of the expanded MA role was associated with a sustained increase in colonoscopy referral order rate to 13.4%, a relative improvement of 123%. Conclusions: The MA can play a key role in improving CRC screening rates as part of a redesigned system of primary care.


Building facades are protected from microbial attack by incorporation of biocides within them. Flow over facades leaches these biocides and transports them to the urban environment. A parsimonious water quantity/quality model applicable for engineered urban watersheds was developed to compute biocide release from facades and their transport at the urban basin scale. The model couples two lumped submodels applicable at the basin scale, and a local model of biocide leaching at the facade scale. For the facade leaching, an existing model applicable at the individual wall scale was utilized. The two lumped models describe urban hydrodynamics and leachate transport. The integrated model allows prediction of biocide concentrations in urban rivers. It was applied to a 15 km2urban hydrosystem in western Switzerland, the Vuachère river basin, to study three facade biocides (terbutryn, carbendazim, diuron). The water quality simulated by the model matched well most of the pollutographs at the outlet of the Vuachère watershed. The model was then used to estimate possible ecotoxicological impacts of facade leachates. To this end, exceedance probabilities and cumulative pollutant loads from the catchment were estimated. Results showed that the considered biocides rarely exceeded the relevant predicted no‐effect concentrations for the riverine system. Despite the heterogeneities and complexity of (engineered) urban catchments, the model application demonstrated that a computationally "light" model can be employed to simulate the hydrograph and pollutograph response within them. It thus allows catchment‐scale assessment of the potential ecotoxicological impact of biocides on receiving waters.


Title of Document: FUNCTIONAL INSIGHTS INTO HRG-1-MEDIATED HEME TRANSPORT Xiaojing Yuan, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Directed By: Associate Professor Dr. Iqbal Hamza, Department of Animal and Avian Sciences Heme is an essential cofactor involved in various biological processes including oxygen transport, xenobiotic detoxification, oxidative metabolism, gas sensing, circadian rhythm, signal transduction, microRNA processing and thyroid hormone synthesis. Heme is also an essential nutrient for parasites and is the major dietary iron source for humans. Despite our extensive understanding of the mechanisms of heme synthesis and degradation in eukaryotes, little is known as to how heme is transported and trafficked in eukaryotes. Recently, CeHRG-1 and CeHRG-4 were identified as the first bona fide heme importers/transporters using the heme auxotroph, Caenorhabditis elegans. To gain mechanistic insights into the heme transport function of HRG-1-related proteins, we conducted a structure-function analysis of CeHRG-1 and CeHRG-4 by exploiting yeast mutants that are genetically defective in heme synthesis. Our studies reveal that HRG-1-related proteins transport heme across membranes through the coordinated actions of strategically placed amino acids that are topologically conserved in both, the worm and human proteins. To further dissect the functional elements that dictate their intracellular localization, we generated a series of chimeras by swapping the amino and carboxy terminal segments of CeHRG-1 and CeHRG-4. Our analysis in yeast and mammalian cells demonstrate that the C-terminal domains are essential for membrane localization of the protein, while the N-terminal domains are important for proper function, and plausibly multimerization of HRG-1-related proteins. Currently, there are no pharmacological means to aid in the study of the cellular and physiological roles of eukaryotic heme transporters. We, for the first time, developed and executed a high-throughput screen of 233,360 compounds, to identify potential antagonists of HRG-1-related proteins by utilizing parasite heme transporters as the primary screening bait. Subsequent study in parasites will provide novel drug candidates against helminths that infect humans, livestock, and plants, as well as against genetic disorders of heme and iron metabolism in humans. Taken together, results from our studies will significantly advance novel functional and therapeutic insights into HRG-1 mediated heme transport in health and disease. FUNCTIONAL INSIGHTS INTO HRG-1-MEDIATED HEME TRANSPORT


Nearly half the world's population lives in urban centers, and these areas are increasingly important components of regional and global land cover. However, their ecological attributes are often overlooked, despite the presence of species, ecosystem services, and risks associated with the spread of pests or threatening processes such as fire. Movement and dispersal of organisms contribute to species persistence in urban landscapes; however, landscape patterns that promote ecological connectivity may also facilitate the spread of undesirable organisms or processes. I investigate how urban form can be used to predict ecological connectivity and assist in prioritizing urban landscapes for conservation activities and risk management. I examine the value of qualitative and quantitative descriptions of urban morphology as predictors of ecological connectivity by comparing sixty-six cities in the USA. Results show that qualitative categories are not adequate for describing ecological connectivity; multivariate descriptions are much better predictors, with urban area, number of urban patches, urban patch extent, level of aggregation, and perimeter area fractal dimension composing the significant synthetic variables. The dominance of area as a differentiating variable led to the development of a new urban connectivity index using a combination of urban area and state population size. This metric, based on readily available aspatial data, explains 78% of variation in ecological connectivity. These results provide a simple but novel tool for beginning to understand the role of urban morphology in promoting desirable environmental outcomes and managing environmental risks in urbanizing landscapes.


This article posits a definition and theory for "Library 2.0". It suggests that recent thinking describing the changing Web as "Web 2.0" will have substantial implications for libraries, and recognizes that while these implications keep very close to the history and mission of libraries, they still necessitate a new paradigm for librarianship. The paper applies the theory and definition to the practice of librarianship, specifically addressing how Web 2.0 technologies such as synchronous messaging and streaming media, blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging, RSS feeds, and mashups might intimate changes in how libraries provide access to their collections and user support for that access.


Background: Clinical practice protocols should consider both the psychological criteria related to a patient's satisfaction as a consumer of health services and the economic criteria to allocate resources efficiently. An electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) program was implemented in our hospital to treat psychiatric patients. The main objective of this study was to determine the cost associated with the ECT sessions implemented in our hospital between 2008 and 2014. A secondary objective was to calculate the cost of sessions that were considered ineffective, defined as those sessions in which electrical convulsion did not reach the preset threshold duration, in order to identify possible ways of saving money and improving satisfaction among psychiatric patients receiving ECT. Methods: A descriptive analysis of the direct health costs related to ECT from the perspective of the public health system between 2008 and 2014 was performed using a retrospective chart review. All of the costs are in euros (2011) and were discounted at a rate of 3%. Based on the base case, a sensitivity analysis of the changes of those variables showing the greatest uncertainty was performed. Results: Seventy-six patients received 853 sessions of ECT. The cumulative cost of these sessions was €1409528.63, and 92.9% of this cost corresponded to the hospital stay. A total of €420732.57 (29.8%) was inefficiently spent on 269 ineffective sessions. A sensitivity analysis of the economic data showed stable results to changes in the variables of uncertainty. Conclusion: The efficiency of ECT in the context outlined here could be increased by discerning a way to shorten the associated hospital stay and by reducing the number of ineffective sessions performed.


Streptococcus pneumoniae sepsis has high morbidity, particularly if complicated by renal injury. Four patients with S. pneumonia invasive infections complicated by renal disorders are presented. The first case was an 18-month-old girl with pneumococcal empyema complicated by haemolytic uraemic (HUS) syndrome. She made a full recovery after mechanical ventilation, inotropic support and haemodiafiltration. The second was a 4-year-old boy who presented with acute post-infectious glomerulonephritis associated with bilateral pneumococcal pneumonia. He too made a complete recovery. The third was a newborn girl with pneumococcal meningitis complicated by acute respiratory distress syndrome and acute renal failure. The fourth patient was an 8-month-old boy with pneumococcal pneumonia and meningitis complicated by HUS and with fulminant thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. Despite full support including mechanical ventilation and haemodiafiltration, he died 4 days after admission. On follow-up, all three survivors recovered completely from their pulmonary symptoms and had normal renal function and cardio-circulatory status in the mid-term.


The deregulation of energy industries in combination with internationalization and a changing Europe requires strategic efforts to be undertaken in a different way than earlier. Policy activitites do not control this sector to the same extent as before - corporate strategies and activities have also become important to understand. During 2002 the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences engaged more than one hundred experts from industry, government and academia to analyze energy within the project "Energy Foresight - Sweden in Europe". One part of the project, the structure foresight panel, sketched out four different scenarios that each describes a possible European setting for the energy industries - meaning: corporate action was in the center. In this article the aim is to evaluate the result from that scenario project in hindsight and to compare it with other similar scenario projects in this field.


Most of the existing algorithms for zero-shot classification problems typically rely on the attribute-based semantic relations among categories to realize the classification of novel categories without observing any of their instances. However, training the zero-shot classification models still requires attribute labeling for each class (or even instance) in the training dataset, which is also expensive. To this end, in this paper, we bring up a new problem scenario:"Can we derive zero-shot learning for novel attribute detectors/classifiers and use them to automatically annotate the dataset for labeling efficiency?". Basically, given only a small set of detectors that are learned to recognize some manually annotated attributes (i.e., the seen attributes), we aim to synthesize the detectors of novel attributes in a zero-shot learning manner. Our proposed method, Zero-Shot Learning for Attributes (ZSLA), which is the first of its kind to the best of our knowledge, tackles this new research problem by applying the set operations to first decompose the seen attributes into their basic attributes and then recombine these basic attributes into the novel ones. Extensive experiments are conducted to verify the capacity of our synthesized detectors for accurately capturing the semantics of the novel attributes and show their superior performance in terms of detection and localization compared to other baseline approaches. Moreover, we demonstrate the application of automatic annotation using our synthesized detectors on Caltech-UCSD Birds-200-2011 dataset. Various generalized zero-shot classification algorithms trained upon the dataset re-annotated by ZSLA show comparable performance with those trained with the manual ground-truth annotations. Please refer to our project page for source code: https://yuhsuanli.github.io/ZSLA/


Acoustic vector sensor (AVS) measures acoustic pressure as well as particle velocity, and therefore AVS signal contains 2-D (azimuth and elevation) DOA information of an acoustic source. Existing DOA estimation techniques assume that the source is static and extensively rely on the localization methods. In this paper, a particle filtering (PF) tracking approach is developed to estimate the 2-D DOA from signals collected by an AVS. A constant velocity model is employed to model the source dynamics and the likelihood function is derived based on a maximum likelihood estimation of the source amplitude and the noise variance. The posterior Cramér-Rao bound (PCRB) is also derived to provide a lower performance bound for AVS signal based tracking problem. Since PCRB incorporates the information from the source dynamics and measurement models, it is usually lower than traditional Cramér-Rao bound which only employs measurement model information. Experiments show that the proposed PF tracking algorithm significantly outperforms Capon beamforming based localization method and is much closer to the PCRB even in a challenging environment (e.g., SNR = -10 dB).


The ability to keep information in mind for processing is known as working memory and is vital for learning. Children who have difficulty keeping up in school may have working memory limitations rather than limitations in the specific tasks they are assigned. In particular, children with functional impairments at the sensory or cognitive level may have difficulty performing tasks, either because the impairment hinders the development of the working memory system as such or because it hinders the development of linguistic and cognitive skills underpinning working memory development.

Marshall et al. (2015) studied this issue by investigating working memory and its relation to language processing in two different groups of deaf children: native users of British Sign Language (BSL) and non-native BSL users, as well as in a control group of typically developing children with no hearing difficulties and no knowledge of sign language. The native signers had at least one deaf parent who had communicated in sign language with their child since birth. The non-native signers had acquired sign language later. All three groups performed two executively demanding non-verbal working memory tasks as well as an expressive vocabulary test and a narration task based on a filmed scenario enacted in BSL. Results showed that the non-native signers performed more poorly than the hearing participants on both working memory tasks while there was no difference in performance between the native signers and the hearing participants. The non-native signers had poorer vocabulary scores than the native signers who in turn had poorer vocabulary scores than the hearing children. However, there were no group differences on the narration task. Regression analysis showed that vocabulary was a significant unique predictor of performance on both of the working memory tasks. This association was all the more striking considering that there were no explicit demands on verbal skills in the working memory tasks. Marshall et al. (2015) argue that this pattern of results allows them to tease apart effects of auditory and language experience: while both of the deaf groups have experienced auditory deprivation, only one of them (non-native signers) has reduced language experience. In particular, the authors' interpretation is that while both auditory deprivation and reduced language experience have an impact on vocabulary development, reduced language experience, but not auditory deprivation as such, has an effect on the development of non-verbal working memory.

The connection between language experience and development of working memory is of both practical and theoretical importance. The interplay of linguistic and cognitive skills during language understanding under adverse conditions is described by the Ease of Language Understanding model (ELU, Ronnberg et al., 2013). This model proposes that when adverse listening conditions such as hearing impairment or background noise give rise to mismatch between the incoming language signal and cognitive representations, engagement of explicit working memory mechanisms is triggered. Such explicit processing is associated with a cost in terms of the cognitive resources that have to be diverted from other activities, such as learning. The ELU model has proved to have explanatory power for adults, but until recently it has not been applied to development.

In an experimental study conducted in Sweden (Holmer et al., 2016), imitation of manual gestures was elicited from deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing children and hearing non-signing children. The manual gestures used as stimuli belonged to three categories: lexical items in Swedish Sign Language (SSL, familiar to the DHH signing children but not the hearing children); lexical items in BSL (unfamiliar to both groups), and non-signs (phonotactically illegal and unfamiliar to both groups). Imitation of unfamiliar manual gestures can be compared to non-word repetition (Marshall, 2014), an established measure of working memory in the developmental literature (Gathercole, 2006). We hypothesized on the basis of the ELU model that pre-existing cognitive representations would allow the DHH signing children to imitate familiar signs more accurately than unfamiliar signs and that the performance of this group would be better than that of sign-naive hearing children. We found no difference between groups on initial testing, although both groups imitated lexical signs more accurately than non-signs. However, when imitation was elicited a second time, we found that the performance of DHH signing children improved more than that of hearing children across gesture categories. Further, the second set of imitation scores was predicted not only by domain general language skills for both groups but also by modality specific language skills. On the basis of these findings, we proposed that both domain general and language modality specific skills are brought into play during working memory processing and that this leads to the establishment of new cognitive representations as well as to redefinition of existing representations (Holmer et al., 2016). This proposed mechanism represents a developmental extension of the ELU model, D-ELU (Holmer et al., 2016), see Figure Figure11.

Figure 1

The Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) model. RAMBPHO stands for Rapid, Automatic, Multimodal Binding of PHOnology and LTM stands for Long-Term Memory. When input cannot be matched to long-term representations in the RAMBPHO buffer, ...

The results reported by Marshall et al. (2015) can be understood in terms of the D-ELU mechanism. Although congenital or early deafness may lead to impoverished speech input, development of domain general working memory in DHH children can be supported by ensuring that they are engaged from an early age in executively demanding linguistic activity in an appropriate language modality.


There has been growing interest in the last 25 years in new (or revived) forms of steering, such as networks, public-private partnerships, multi-level governance, the kooperativer Staat, and their contribution to solving complex coordination problems in and across a wide range of specialized systems and the lifeworld. The distinctive feature of these heterarchic steering mechanisms is the reflexive self-organization of independent actors involved in complex relations of reciprocal interdependence. Such actors are expected to engage in continuing dialogue and resource-sharing in order to develop mutually beneficial joint projects and to manage the inevitable contradictions and dilemmas associated therewith. Thus heterarchy can be distinguished from the 'invisible hand' of uncoordinated market exchange based on the formally rational pursuitof self-interest by isolated market agents; and from the 'iron fist' (perhaps in a 'velvet glove') of imperative coordination in pursuit of substantive goals established from above by business managers, state officials, etc.. Together, these three forms of coordination � markets, hierarchies, and heterarchies � provide the main poles around which economic, political, and social governance are organized in complex societies.


The solution of any engineering problem starts with a modelling process aimed at formulating a mathematical model, which must describe the problem under consideration with sufficient precision. Because of heterogeneity of modern engineering applications, mathematical modelling scatters nowadays from incredibly precise micro- and even nano-modelling of materials to macro-modelling, which is more appropriate for practical engineering computations. In the field of masonry structures, a macro-model of the material can be constructed based on various elasticity theories, such as classical elasticity, micropolar elasticity and Cosserat elasticity. Evidently, a different macro-behaviour is expected depending on the specific theory used in the background. Although there have been several theoretical studies of different elasticity theories in recent years, there is still a lack of understanding of how modelling assumptions of different elasticity theories influence the modelling results of masonry structures. Therefore, a rigorous approach to comparison of different three-dimensional elasticity models based on quaternionic operator calculus is proposed in this paper. In this way, three elasticity models are described and spatial boundary value problems for these models are discussed. In particular, explicit representation formulae for their solutions are constructed. After that, by using these representation formulae, explicit estimates for the solutions obtained by different elasticity theories are obtained. Finally, several numerical examples are presented, which indicate a practical difference in the solutions.


We adopt actor-network theory to examine how technical and human actors interact to reach agreement on the creation and adoption of wireless services and standards. We present a model in which actors formulate standardization strategies based on their perceptions of existing and future actor-network configurations in light of their interests. The model is used to explore changes in the US wireless industry in the midst of its transition to the third generation (3G) technologies. We interview top executives from key players in the US wireless industry and analyze a major US wireless network operator's standardization strategy using the model. The new technical potential offered by 3G has instigated a transformation of the industry's actor-network and stimulated renewed interest in standards setting and adoption. Operators have been among the most influential actors in initiating and enabling this transformation even though the technical potential has largely been brought to light and standardized by others. New relationships need to be established with, and among, diverse industry actors through specific standards exploitation plans. As a result new technological interfaces and inter-organizational arrangements are being forged to exploit the emerging technological potential. These strategies are, for the moment, ambiguous and open due to the uncertain nature of standards creation and adoption choices as well as rapid change in the market place (including the impact of ongoing mergers).


This article draws upon data generated through interviews with and classroom observations of Year 13 students and their teachers in New Zealand to propose that wellbeing is viewed as a multi-dimensional, complex phenomenon involving seven interrelated domains: Having, Being, Relating, Thinking, Feeling, Functioning, and Striving. Student and teacher commentary indicated that educational experiences reflect an emphasis on developing wellbeing-enhancing Assets including Having resources and support, Being an independent individual, and Relating well with teachers. In addition, Functioning efficiently in assessment-related activities and Striving towards acquisition of credits were considered important aspects of engaging in Actions that will lead to wellbeing in the future. In contrast, cognitive and affective Appraisals, such as Thinking creatively, critically, or meta-cognitively, or Feeling and expressing a wide range of emotions, were considered peripheral to their current educational experiences. Overall, data suggests that while understood in terms that reflected a view of wellbeing as a complex, learning system, wellbeing was experienced in the school context more simplistically. Implications for the development of wellbeing-enhancing educational experiences are discussed.


Recently we demonstrated that the C(7)-unsubstituted tetrahydro-1,8-naphthyridin-3-ol has more than an order of magnitude better peroxyl radical trapping activity than alpha-tocopherol (alpha-TOH) in inhibited autoxidations in benzene. In order to prepare analogues more structurally related to alpha-TOH for further studies in vitro and in vivo, we developed synthetic approaches to C(7)-monoalkyl and C(7)-dialkyl analogues using a sequence involving (1) AgNO3-mediated hydroxymethyl radical addition to 1,8-naphthyridine, (2) regioselective alkyllithium addition by cyclic chelation in a nonpolar solvent, (3) iodination of the naphthyridine at C(3), and (4) CuI-medidated benzyloxylation of the aryl iodide followed by catalytic hydrogenolysis. An alpha-TOH isostere was prepared by a Wittig coupling of a C16 side chain identical to that of alpha-TOH to the naphthyridinols. The C(7)-mono- and dialkyl analogues exhibited more than an order of magnitude higher antioxidant activity (k(inh) = (5.3-6.1) x 10(7) M(-1) s(-1)) than alpha-TOH (k(inh) = 0.35 x 10(7) M(-) s(-1)) in benzene, as determined by a newly developed peroxyl radical clock. In addition to the strong antioxidant activity in benzene, the closest alpha-TOH analogue (naphthyridinol-based tocopherol, N-TOH) showed excellent inhibition of the oxidation of cholesteryl esters in human low-density lipoprotein and spared endogenous alpha-TOH in these experiments. Lateral diffusion of N-TOH in 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine liposomes was comparable to that of alpha-TOH, suggesting that it will have good antioxidant characteristics in both membranes and lipoproteins. Furthermore, a binding assay using a fluorescent tocopherol analogue showed that N-TOH binds to recombinant human tocopherol transfer protein better than alpha-TOH itself, suggesting that distribution of unnatural antioxidants such as N-TOH in vivo is possible.


"Giroux refuses to give in or give up. The Violence of Organized Forgetting is a clarion call to imagine a different America--just, fair, and caring--and then to struggle for it."--Bill Moyers "Henry Giroux has accomplished an exciting, brilliant intellectual dissection of America's somnambulent voyage into anti-democratic political depravity. His analysis of the plight of America's youth is particularly heartbreaking. If we have a shred of moral fibre left in our beings, Henry Giroux sounds the trumpet to awaken it to action to restore to the nation a civic soul."--Dennis J. Kucinich, former US Congressman and Presidential candidate "Giroux lays out a blistering critique of an America governed by the tenets of a market economy...He cites French philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman's concept of the 'disimagination machine' to describe a culture and pedagogical philosophy that short-circuits citizens' ability to think critically, leaving the generation now reaching adulthood unprepared for an 'inhospitable' world. Picking apart the current malaise of 21st-century digital disorder, Giroux describes a world in which citizenship is replaced by consumerism and the functions of engaged governance are explicitly beholden to corporations."--Publishers Weekly In a series of essays that explore the intersections of politics, popular culture, and new forms of social control in American society, Henry A. Giroux explores how state and corporate interests have coalesced to restrict civil rights, privatize what's left of public institutions, and diminish our collective capacity to participate as engaged citizens of a democracy. From the normalization of mass surveillance, lockdown drills, and a state of constant war, to corporate bailouts paired with public austerity programs that further impoverish struggling families and communities, Giroux looks to flashpoints in current events to reveal how the forces of government and business are at work to generate a culture of mass forgetfulness, obedience and conformity. In The Violence of Organized Forgetting, Giroux deconstructs the stories created to control us while championing the indomitable power of education, democracy, and hope. Henry A. Giroux is a world-renowned educator, author and public intellectual. He currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. The Toronto Star has named Henry Giroux "one of the twelve Canadians changing the way we think." More Praise for Henry A. Giroux's The Violence of Organized Forgetting: "I can think of no book in the last ten years as essential as this. I can think of no other writer who has so clinically dissected the crisis of modern life and so courageously offered a possibility for real material change."--John Steppling, playwright, and author of The Shaper, Dogmouth, and Sea of Cortez "A timely study if there ever was one, The Violence of Organized Forgetting is a milestone in the struggle to repossess the common sense expropriated by the American power elite to be redeployed in its plot to foil the popular resistance against rising social injustice and decay of political democracy."--Zygmunt Bauman, author of Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All? among other works Prophetic and eloquent, Giroux gives us, in this hard-hitting and compelling book, the dark scenario of Western crisis where ignorance has become a virtue and wealth and power the means of ruthless abuse of workers, of the minorities and of immigrants. However, he remains optimistic in his affirmation of radical humanity, determined as he is to relate himself to a fair and caring world unblemished by anti-democratic political depravity."--Shelley Walia, Frontline


There is growing interest in the effectiveness of practitioner research for promoting teachers' professional learning. It is important to determine if and why practitioner research is effective for teachers, however, it is also necessary to determine what support they need to develop research skills to design and implement practitioner research. This article reports on a year-long pilot study that aimed to design a model of professional learning to enhance teachers' research skills and support them to conduct their own research. The study involved 11 participants from four schools. Eight full-day workshops were designed to develop research skills and scaffold the research projects. Participants were surveyed at the beginning of the study and interviewed mid-way and at the end. The findings indicated professional growth for all participants both in terms of research skills and other professional outcomes, such as enhanced classroom or school-wide practice.


The growing interest for high data rate wireless communications over the last few decades gave rise to the emergence of a number of wideband wireless systems. The resulting scarcity of frequency spectrum has been forcing wireless system designers to develop methods that will push the spectral efficiency to its limit. One such method is to have multiple systems utilize the same spectrum by allowing some unavoidable interference to occur between them. The idea of co-channel systems is tested in the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) bands and it is found to be a very beneficial approach. Therefore, it can be foreseen that co-channel systems might be a potential solution to the growing spectral crowding problem.
Besides the systems that are designed to be co-channel, it is sometimes also possible to encounter that multiple systems occupy the same band undesirably. This kind of unintentional co-channel system scenarios might occur especially due to the dense re-use of available frequency bands. Another reason for unwanted co-channel usage might be the coexistence of third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) systems. Since 4G systems will probably be targeting to use the same frequency bands as their 3G counterparts, and since the transition from 3G to 4G will take some time, unintentional co-channel scenarios might be observed between the 3G and 4G systems.
This dissertation consists of baseband receiver algorithms for OFDMA-based systems that target at handling the potential co-channel interference (CCI) in various co-channel system scenarios. Three CCI avoidance and two CCI cancellation algorithms are proposed that can be applied to intentional and unintentional co-channel systems. Femtocells, which have recently been introduced as a new class of personal-use base stations that can coexist with macrocell networks in a shared spectrum manner, might constitute an appropriate example for both types of co-channel systems. Therefore, they are considered to be one of the co-existing systems in most of the algorithms presented.


The advanced features of today's smart phones and hand held devices, like the increased memory and processing capabilities, allowed them to act even as information providers. Thus a smart phone hosting web services is not a fancy anymore. But the relevant discovery of these services provided by the smart phones has became quite complex, because of the volume of services possible with each Mobile Host providing some services. Centralized registries have severe drawbacks in such a scenario and alternate means of service discovery are to be addressed. P2P domain with it resource sharing capabilities comes quite handy and here in this paper we provide an alternate approach to UDDI registry for discovering mobile web services. The services are published into the P2P network as JXTA modules and the discovery issues of these module advertisements are addressed. The approach also provides alternate means of identifying the Mobile Host.


History textbooks in the Serbian language used in Serbian schools during the 19th century had a specific form, appearance and purpose. The form and appearance of the textbook was different from today's textbooks, but we could see from the title, content or introduction of the textbook that it was used in the teaching process. Their content was also different from modern textbooks and the teaching units were adapted to the political situation in which the Serbian people found themselves then. Ancient and Serbian heroes had an important place in the teaching units of these textbooks, and in this paper we have presented several examples that show similarities and differences between them, as well as their role in the education of Serbian youth during the 19th century.


The overall aim of the work detailed in this thesis was to design and analyse sugar-based (trehalose, raffinose and sucrose) carrier systems for the protection of naked plasmid DNA formulations generated by spray drying.
Trehalose exists in multiple crystalline anhydrous and hydrated forms and is thought to exist in two different amorphous forms. Reported thermal transitions of trehalose dihydrate vary with environmental conditions and particle size. The first area of this thesis focused on investigating the inter-conversion properties of trehalose dihydrate to observe if an in-depth understanding of its physical properties will provide an insight into its bio-protective properties. Within this area, two standardised forms of α,α-trehalose dihydrate were generated and characterised by performing a series of thermal, spectroscopic and X-ray diffraction techniques. This resulted in the identification of an intermediary anhydrous form.
Within the second area of this thesis the use of the fragility parameter m and the strength parameter D as predictors of amorphous stability of generated co-spray dried sucrose-raffinose and sucrose-trehalose samples was investigated. Results showed addition of both raffinose and trehalose improved predicted amorphous stability, with the greatest effect seen at highest additive concentrations.
The third area of the thesis was to evaluate the degree of degradation of plasmid DNA spray dried in the presence of amorphous sugars. Spray-drying can be used to develop biopharmaceutical particles for the pulmonary delivery. However, it runs the risk of loss of
biological activity, sample instability as well as thermal degradation of the biopharmaceutical. Results showed that plasmid DNA degradation was reduced when co-spray dried in the presence of raffinose and to a greater extent with trehalose. Co-spray drying of plasmid DNA in the presence of sucrose, sucrose-raffinose and sucrose-trehalose formulations offered less protection than trehalose and raffinose.
Overall, two key messages are concluded from the work detailed in this thesis. Firstly, the thermal transitions of trehalose dihydrate can be influenced by environmental factors as well as inter-batch variability. This can affect authenticity of polymorphous and amorphous forms identified. Secondly, addition of raffinose and trehalose to amorphous sucrose formulations improved the predicted amorphous stability of the formulations however; these co-spray dried samples offered less protection compared to plasmid DNA co-spray dried in the presence of trehalose and raffinose alone.


Halophyte species of United Arab Emirates are a source of unique active phytochemicals, potentially due to the extreme environmental conditions under which the plants grow in the UAE. These phytochemicals make the native halophytes possibly interesting crops for biorefining, where biofuel production is combined with the production of value added chemicals, improving the economic feasibility of both process. Phytochemicals found in these species are widely recognized and researched as potential pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products. We reviewed the literature for secondary metabolites from species from the following halophyte families: Aizoaceae, Amaranthaceae (incl. Chenopodiaceae), Avicenniaceae, Zygophyllaceae. The review revealed that plant species belonging to these families contain valuable phytochemicals, such as fatty acids, terpenoids, flavonoids, alkaloids, steroids, tannins, saponins, quinones and coumarins, many of which have been reported to have therapeutic effects in humans.


This is designed as an especially user-friendly volume. Thus it employs largely traditional nomenclature to describe grammatical phenomena. It also deals with the relatively simple noun before taking up the verbal system. Numerous examples and exercises are also provided, all culled from the Hebrew Bible itself, and the lesson vocabularies feature words which occur over 170 times in the Masoretic text. This book is designed to induct the student into the use of a printed Hebrew Bible, a Biblical Hebrew lexicon, and an advanced grammar, as well as a concise overview of how Hebrew fits within the Semitic languages. Verbal paradigms and a subject index are also included.