Since the early 2000s, decentralization has been espoused as a major policy goal of successive Zambian governments. With the passing of the 2019 Local Government Act, a greater understanding is needed of how decentralization has progressed thus far in Zambia and how political economy dynamics have constrained the process. As such, a survey was conducted with 153 bureaucrats across 16 councils in four Zambian provinces, complemented by interviews with elected ward councilors. Three key findings emerge. First, the organizational setting in which councils operate undermines the continuity of service provision. In particular, transfers of staff by the Local Government Service Commission (LGSC), partially driven by the growth in the number of councils in recent years, increases pressure on the wage bill of local authorities, creates uncertainty for civil servants, and undermines institutional memory. Second, the unwillingness to cede genuine autonomy to local councils by the Ministry of Local Government (MLG) repeatedly emerged. A perception of low levels of consultation with council bureaucrats and elected councilors, especially when statutory instruments are issued, reinforce that accountability remains upwards to the MLG rather than downwards to citizens. Third, within the councils, there is a mismatch in incentives between the bureaucrats and politicians that can undermine policy implementation; while the former respect authority and attention to procedures, the latter are focused on constituents' priorities and may bypass formal procedures to deliver to their voters. Based on interviews with market committees and solid waste companies, these dynamics have negative externalities on citizen perceptions and service provision in urban areas. As one of the few analyses conducted with local bureaucrats to assess their experiences with decentralization, the study aims to advance both policy and scholarship about the political economy dynamics surrounding efforts to strengthen subnational capabilities in developing countries.


The study presented here is focused on the use of aqua-ammonia solution in a novel solar-powered refrigeration cycle intended to be suitable for use in the rural areas of developing countries. The cycle is referred to as a `intermittent regenerative' (IR) cycle, the term regenerative meaning in this context the use of heat recovery or recuperation. The first chapter describes the three better known cycles which may be considered for this application. The IR cycle is introduced as a hybrid development of these which offers the significant advantages of high efficiency while minimising complexity. Chapter 1 provides a methodology by which the novel aqua-ammonia system can be evaluated in comparison with existing systems. The second chapter surveys previous experimental work on solar driven aqua-ammonia cycles. Chapter 3 consists of a detailed design study of the new IR cycle based on computer modelling techniques. The study serves as an analysis of the cycle and allows the performance of the cycle, together with design features and component sizes, to be simulated in a variety of meteorological conditions. A number of original design proposals are evaluated through the modelling exercise. Chapter 4 summarises the results of a second separate modelling exercise which investigates the absorption phase of the cycle. Chapters 5 and 6 describe experimental work. The results of laboratory tests are compared with the predictions of the computer model and in the event serve to validate the theoretical characterisation made in chapter 3 of the performance of key components of the system. The energy efficiency of the system as measured by experiment is proved to correspond to theoretical prediction, so representing a significant advance on the performance of alternative systems. Chapter 7 addresses itself to the wider question of the social and economic validity of a device with the performance and cost of the IR device. A case study is undertaken which explores the potential role of the device in the fish trading economy of Zambia. The study provides data valuable in assessing the usefulness of the technology in helping to stimulate the under-capitalised rural economy of a developing country and in improving local food resource utilisation. Chapter 8 draws together the conclusions of the various chapters and provides an overall conclusion and comment on the value of the IR system. It is proved to have a high efficiency but not to have the robustness nor portability demanded for widespread application in remote locations. Nevertheless the likely life-time cost-effectiveness of the system is judged to be an improvement on existing alternatives and suggestions are made for further improvement.


Transverse intensity profiles from a model for a laser with a parabolic transverse excitation profile are shown to change from symmetric to asymmetric patterns, with bistability between some patterns, as the frequency spacing between the transverse cavity modes is decreased. The parabolic excitation profile suppresses some of the nonlinear coupling of the transverse modes that predominates when the excitation profile is uniform. Nonetheless there are substantial qualitative similarities between the results for uniform and parabolic excitation, suggesting some generic governing principles for the pattern formation caused by mode competition and mode correlation.


Natural and anthropogenic changes in basin lake levels in the western U.S. expose saline, alkaline substrates that are commonly colonized by shrubs in the Chenopodiaceae. On a chronosequence of recently exposed substrates at Mono Lake, California, Sarcobatus vermiculatus has greatest biomass accrual, seed production, seedling establishment, and leaf N at younger sites where soils are extremely saline and alkaline. These field observations and an understanding of the role of N-containing compatible solutes in salinity tolerance of halophytes led to our prediction that Na and N interactions stimulate Sarcobatus performance. To test this, we grew Sarcobatus juveniles for 2 years in the greenhouse at 4 levels of NaCl (5, 100, 300, and 450 mM) and 3 levels of N (0.04, 0.4, and 8 mM) in a randomized, complete-block design. Contrary to our expectations, high N availability did not induce salt-stimulated growth nor did it increase salinity tolerance in Sarcobatus . Increased N nutrition also had no significant effect on leaf cation ratios or selectivity. Plants grown at high salinity had significantly lower leaf K:Na, Ca:Na, and Mg:Na ratios than plants grown at lower salinity. However, plant selectivity for the macronutrient cations remained high, even at 450 mM NaCl. Without such high selectivity, the cation nutrition of Sarcobatus would decline to even lower levels, resulting in severe nutrient deficiencies. This study suggests that the ability of Sarcobatus to attain high leaf N, rather than an interaction between Na and N, enhances its performance at saline sites. In addition, the ability of Sarcobatus to maintain high macronutrient cation selectivity despite high salinity allows its distribution to extend to extremely saline and alkaline substrates in this arid system.


Phenotypic evolution and speciation depend on recombination in many ways. Within populations, recombination can promote adaptation by bringing together favorable mutations and decoupling beneficial and deleterious alleles. As populations diverge, crossing over can give rise to maladapted recombinants and impede or reverse diversification. Suppressed recombination due to genomic rearrangements, modifier alleles, and intrinsic chromosomal properties may offer a shield against maladaptive gene flow eroding coadapted gene complexes. Both theoretical and empirical results support this relationship. However, little is known about this relationship in the context of behavioral isolation, where coevolving signals and preferences are the major hybridization barrier. Here we examine the genomic architecture of recently diverged, sexually isolated Hawaiian swordtail crickets (Laupala). We assemble a de novo genome and generate three dense linkage maps from interspecies crosses. In line with expectations based on the species' recent divergence and successful interbreeding in the laboratory, the linkage maps are highly collinear and show no evidence for large-scale chromosomal rearrangements. Next, the maps were used to anchor the assembly to pseudomolecules and estimate recombination rates across the genome to test the hypothesis that loci involved in behavioral isolation (song and preference divergence) are in regions of low interspecific recombination. Contrary to our expectations, the genomic region where a male song and female preference QTL colocalize is not associated with particularly low recombination rates. This study provides important novel genomic resources for an emerging evolutionary genetics model system and suggests that trait–preference coevolution is not necessarily facilitated by locally suppressed recombination.


Objectives: To investigate and synthesize reasons for low access, initiation and adherence to antiretroviral drugs by mothers and exposed babies for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted. Four databases were searched (Medline, Embase, Global Health and Web of Science) for studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa from January 2000 to September 2012. Quantitative and qualitative studies were included that met pre-defined criteria. Antiretroviral (ARV) prophylaxis (maternal/infant) and combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) usage/registration at HIV care and treatment during pregnancy were included as outcomes. Results: Of 574 references identified, 40 met the inclusion criteria. Four references were added after searching reference lists of included articles. Twenty studies were quantitative, 16 were qualitative and eight were mixed methods. Forty-one studies were conducted in Southern and East Africa, two in West Africa, none in Central Africa and one was multi-regional. The majority (n 25) were conducted before combination ART for PMTCT was emphasized in 2006. At the individual-level, poor knowledge of HIV/ART/vertical transmission, lower maternal educational level and psychological issues following HIV diagnosis were the key barriers identified. Stigma and fear of status disclosure to partners, family or community members (community-level factors) were the most frequently cited barriers overall and across time. The extent of partner/community support was another major factor impeding or facilitating the uptake of PMTCT ARVs, while cultural traditions including preferences for traditional healers and birth attendants were also common. Key health-systems issues included poor staff-client interactions, staff shortages, service accessibility and non-facility deliveries. Conclusions: Long-standing health-systems issues (such as staffing and service accessibility) and community-level factors (particularly stigma, fear of disclosure and lack of partner support) have not changed over time and continue to plague PMTCT programmes more than 10 years after their introduction. The potential of PMTCT programmes to virtually eliminate vertical transmission of HIV will remain elusive unless these barriers are tackled. The prominence of community-level factors in this review points to the importance of community-driven approaches to improve uptake of PMTCT interventions, although packages of solutions addressing barriers at different levels will be important.


Abstract Objective: This qualitative, longitudinal, descriptive study aimed to understand the lived experience of enacting agency, and to describe the phenomenon of agency and the meaning structure of the phenomenon during the year after a stroke. Agency is defined as making things happen in everyday life through one's actions. Methods: This study followed six persons (three men and three women, ages 63 to 89), interviewed on four separate occasions. Interview data were analysed using the Empirical Phenomenological Psychological method. Results: The main findings showed that the participants experienced enacting agency in their everyday lives after stroke as negotiating different characteristics over a span of time, a range of difficulty, and in a number of activities, making these negotiations complex. The four characteristics described how the participants made things happen in their everyday lives through managing their disrupted bodies, taking into account their past and envisioning their futures, dealing with the world outside themselves, and negotiating through internal dialogues. Conclusions: This empirical evidence regarding negotiations challenges traditional definitions of agency and a new definition of agency is proposed. Understanding clients' complex negotiations and offering innovative solutions to train in real-life situations may help in the process of enabling occupations after a stroke.


In Germany, processes can be observed that have long been out of keeping with the principle of equality of opportunity. Unemployment is concentrated in the structurally weak peripheral areas, in Eastern Germany in particular; emigration of young and better-educated people to the West is not diminishing, but contrary to expectation is again on the increase; aging pro-cesses have set in already, and when it comes to the provision of infrastructure, e.g. in the field of professional training, some regions are already suffering from considerable problems. These difficulties are frequently interpreted as differences between East and West and are explained away as problems resulting from reunification, such as the deindustrialization and restructuring of the economy and the enormous decline in the birth rate in Eastern Germany. Although these problems cannot just be attributed to social transformation and the birth rate crisis alone, being subject to more general processes of intensified globalization and the aging of society, the increasing regional disparities are rarely considered in the overall context of regional development patterns throughout Germany. Moreover, the difficulty of even obtaining data for purposes of comparison generally means that an international yardstick is lacking when regional developments are analyzed. The present study investigates regional disparities over a period of time in the light of subjective and objective indicators of the quality of life for individuals. To this end, we make use of data from the Wohlfahrtssurvey [Welfare Survey] from 1978 to 2001, among other sources. On the basis of the Euromodule that has been established at the WZB, we compare current regional patterns in Germany with those in other European countries. This approach makes it possible to provide information on the scale of regional disparities in various different countries, and to identify privileged and handicapped regions with reference to standards of living and the sense of wellbeing. The study's findings show that, in the past twenty-five years, welfare in Western Germany has evened out at a higher level, but currently a trend towards increasing economic disparity is discernible. In comparison with other European countries, on the other hand, the differences (regional differences) within Germany are comparatively slight.


The debate over chlorine in industrialized economies has become extremely polarized in the last decade. Environmental pressure groups are striving for a virtual phaseout of chlorine and chlorinated hydrocarbons (CHCs), because they are convinced that the risks cannot be managed. Industry argues this is not necessary because environmental risks can be controlled, nor is it feasible, because at least 60% of all firms use CHCs, produds made with CHCs, or elemental chlorine. In an attempt to give this discussion a more factual basis, the Dutch minister of environment launched a strategic study on chlorine (see Kleijn et al. I997;Tukker et al. 1995). Using all available knowledge about emissions and contemporary evaluation methods, the study found only a limited number of environmental issues outstanding related to the chlorine chain: however, it also found important uncertainties. This article describes the outstanding uncertainties in more detail. It defines which uncertainties have to be regarded as chlorine‐specific and the extent to which additional research can resolve them. For the remaining uncertainties the potential benefts of uncertainty reduction strategies are evaluted, relying mainly on the precautionary principle


The equations for performance evaluation of the laser time-of-flight velocimeter (LTV) for atmospheric wind-speed measurement with single-particle digital-correlation analysis have been derived theoretically. Using an inverse power law for aerosol-size distribution and a simple expression for backscatter-differential cross section, the minimum-detectable number of signal photon counts, the photon-count distribution of signal particles, and the scaling law for LTV measurement rate are expressed in terms of correlator settings and parameters of a Gaussian laser beam. It is shown, both theoretically and experimentally, that these equations can be used to evaluate the system performance and assess the potential usefulness of the single-particle LTV.


In this thesis we take several different analytic and numerical approaches to studying the classical J-K model. This model describes an interacting many-body system of spins with continuous symmetry which interact via 2-site nearest-neighbour exchange terms and 4-site ring-exchange terms. We begin by looking at the traditional solution of the XY model, in order to gain insight into the behaviour and general properties of the system. Classical Monte Carlo simulations will then be used to study the properties of the J-K model in different regimes of phase space. We will see that we can use properties from the theoretical solution of the XY model to study the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition numerically. We then extend our simulation to study the aspect ratio scaling of the superfluid density in the XY model. It will also be shown that there exists a finite temperature phase transition in the pure-K ring-exchange model. After this we will develop a mapping from the 1D quantum Bose-Hubbard model to the 2D J-K model and use this mapping to search for topological phases in classical Hamiltonians. However, we find that our mapping fails to reproduce the topological phase present in the quantum model. Finally we will look at the XY model using tools from information theory. A method for measuring mutual information in classical Monte Carlo simulations is developed. We then show that this measurement of mutual information can be used as a completely new way to identify the Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition in Monte Carlo simulations.


5G network evolution results in new challenges for mobile network management and orchestration. The emerging SDN and NFV technologies are transforming the network infrastructure and network service components into compositions of programmable virtualized functions. The resulting flexibility allows the network to be conceived as services, which are aware of vertical application QoS/QoE requirements. While most recent works focus on flexible network control and improved resource utilization in emerging mobile network architectures, an end-to-end orchestration of both network infrastructure and vertical application is not adequately explored. In this work, we identify the challenges and propose a service oriented framework for application-aware end-to-end mobile network orchestration. We also present a prototypical realization of the proposed framework, which is an orchestration platform for virtualized mobile networks. To address the challenges of multi-stakeholder and multi-layer mobile network architecture, we employ event calculus for modeling the network layers, and abductive reasoning approach for autonomous policy translation and service provisioning in a 2-phase algorithm. The framework is validated with a 5G enhanced mobility management application as a service on our software defined mobile network testbed. Initial performance measurements are analyzed for practical insights into the proposed framework, as well as suggestions for its future development.


Visual attention plays an important role to understand images and demonstrates its effectiveness in generating natural language descriptions of images. On the other hand, recent studies show that language associated with an image can steer visual attention in the scene during our cognitive process. Inspired by this, we introduce a text-guided attention model for image captioning, which learns to drive visual attention using associated captions. For this model, we propose an exemplar-based learning approach that retrieves from training data associated captions with each image, and use them to learn attention on visual features. Our attention model enables to describe a detailed state of scenes by distinguishing small or confusable objects effectively. We validate our model on MS-COCO Captioning benchmark and achieve the state-of-the-art performance in standard metrics.


With India's growing economy and status as an emerging world power, a new consciousness is developing in the country about the need to reinvest in public services. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) is an advisory body constituted by the Prime Minister to provide recommendations for improving India's knowledge infrastructure. As part of this Commission, a set of recommendations has been developed to improve India's long neglected library system. This article explores the implications of these recommendations, with a specific focus on India's public library system and the social development gains that are often associated with public libraries. The potential of India's public libraries to serve as community information centres (CICs) is highlighted, as well as the challenges that lie ahead in implementing a new vision for public library revitalization. The article serves as an invitation for concerted action, reflection, and dialogue with regard to this important and pressing issue.


Context. The dominating reionization source in the young universe has not yet been identified. Possible candidates include metal poor dwarf galaxies with starburst properties. Aims. We selected an extreme starburst dwarf, the Blue Compact Galaxy Haro 11, with the aim of determining the Lyman continuum escape fraction from UV spectroscopy. Methods. Spectra of Haro 11 were obtained with the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE). A weak signal shortwards of the Lyman break is identified as Lyman continuum (LyC) emission escaping from the ongoing starburst. From profile fitting to weak metal lines we derive column densities of the low ionization species. Adopting a metallicity typical of the H II regions of Haro 11, these data correspond to a hydrogen column density of ∼ 10 19 cm − 2 . This relatively high value indicates that most of the LyC photons escape through transparent holes in the interstellar medium. We then use spectral evolutionary models to constrain the escape fraction of the produced LyC photons. Results. Assuming a normal Salpeter initial mass function we obtain a Lyman continuum escape fraction of f esc ∼ 4–10%. We argue that in a hierarchical galaxy formation scenario, the upper limit we derive for the escape rate allows for a substantial contribution to cosmic reionization by starburst dwarf galaxies at high redshifts.


Previous research has demonstrated that working safely is often problematic and is subject to many competing pressures that workers must navigate. People want to be safe at work but they often prioritise other workplace imperatives over their own health and safety. The research described in this thesis focused on the relationships between power, subjectivity and agency in learning to work safely. The purpose of this study was to understand how workers learn to become effective OHS subjects by examining how they come to constitute themselves in relation to OHS. To achieve this, an interpretive, hermeneutic framework within poststructural theories of subject formation was used as a basis for the research methodology. It is influenced by Foucauldian and poststructural understandings of language, meaning, subjectivity, discourse and truth, and power/knowledge. Qualitative ethnographic methods were used for data collection such as interviews, participant observations, open ended questionnaires, field notes, document analysis and researcher reflections. A large portion of the data was produced through people"s stories as they tried to make sense of their OHS experiences. Data analysis was informed by the poststructural concept of agency in which people are not freely agentic but think and act within the range of choices offered by particular discourses. The language used in speaking OHS into existence is couched in a vocabulary of compliance and conflict and workers often situate themselves within oppositional binaries. It became clear from the data that OHS subjectivity is constituted within competing pressures, and that individual agency is constrained by discourses that often privilege costs and production over worker health and safety, which are deeply embedded in the power relations at work. Workers often do not speak up about their health and safety concerns because of these power relations that threaten them with perceived negative consequences. A post modern emergent methodology enabled the conceptualising of new subjectivities and new knowledges, including alternative modes of representation such as poetry, creative writing, drama and cartoon. A politics of xii hope was developed by finding examples of where workers had disrupted historically produced binaries and found energy for change in the space between the arbitrary and unhelpful oppositions. It was suggested that learning to constitute proactive agentic OHS subjectivities is more likely in workplaces that ensure workers have adequate OHS knowledge and skills, provide ample opportunity to use this knowledge/skills, and kindle their desire to do so. Success is enhanced in workplaces where all the actors and stakeholders are acutely and reflexively aware of how power operates in all its micro locations.


Large-scale knowledge graphs (KGs) are shown to become more important in current information systems. To expand the coverage of KGs, previous studies on knowledge graph completion need to collect adequate training instances for newly-added relations. In this paper, we consider a novel formulation, zero-shot learning, to free this cumbersome curation. For newly-added relations, we attempt to learn their semantic features from their text descriptions and hence recognize the facts of unseen relations with no examples being seen. For this purpose, we leverage Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to establish the connection between text and knowledge graph domain: The generator learns to generate the reasonable relation embeddings merely with noisy text descriptions. Under this setting, zero-shot learning is naturally converted to a traditional supervised classification task. Empirically, our method is model-agnostic that could be potentially applied to any version of KG embeddings, and consistently yields performance improvements on NELL and Wiki dataset.


Acid mine drainage from a rock dump at an abandoned mine in Dalarna, Sweden, has contaminated the groundwater and created a leachate plume characterized by low pH and high concentrations of Fe, SO4, and heavy metals. Groundwater samples have been collected in order to explain the observed spatial variations in groundwater chemistry. The mineralogy of soil samples collected at the water table has been identified by X-ray diffraction analysis In order to determine which processes may be controlling the evolution of the leachate plume, the geochemical mass-transfer model PHREEQE is used to evaluate a possible reaction pathway controlling the reaction of the leachate plume with uncontaminated groundwater and the till aquifer. The results suggest that silicate weathering and goethite precipitation are the processes primarily controlling observed pH, pe, and Fe concentrations in groundwater direct down-gradient of the rock dump. Increases in K, Na, and Al concentrations along the flow path can be attributed to the feldspar weathering while Al and SO4 concentrations further down-gradient can be controlled by the precipitation of AlOHSO4. The attenuation of heavy metal concentrations may be the result of adsorption and coprecipitation with goethite and other Fe xides.


All managers, whether brand new to their positions or well established in the corporate hierarchy, can use a little "brushing up" now and then. The skills-based "Briefcase Books" series is filled with ideas and strategies to help managers become more capable, efficient, effective, and valuable to their corporations. Today's workplace is often complex and unpredictable, yet most project management books address only the topic of managing individual projects and solving specific problems. "Managing Multiple Projects" presents a realistic method for developing the individual and group skills needed to cope with competing demands. It shows readers how to develop a reliable system for taking on multiple projects, work with others to allocate conflicting workloads, cope with the stress that comes from managing multiple projects, and more.


In this paper, the authors investigate the relationship between managerial performance of national football coaches and their length of contract term to consider the extent to which relatively higher turnover may have affected team performance outcomes. The contract periods of coaches from the top twenty national teams during a thirteen year period from 1993 to 2006 are examined alongside their respective FA©dA©ration Internationale des Football Associations (FIFA) team performance rankings. The findings are evaluated in comparison with some of the main theoretical viewpoints traditionally relied upon to assess this phenomenon. The results suggest that broadening both theoretical and methodological approaches is needed to assess more adequately the complexity of these activities.


In many statistical problems, stochastic signals can be represented as a sequence of noisy wavelet coefficients. In this paper, we develop general empirical Bayes methods for the estimation of true signal. Our estimators approximate certain oracle separable rules and achieve adaptation to ideal risks and exact minimax risks in broad collections of classes of signals. In particular, our estimators are uniformly adaptive to the minimum risk of separable estimators and the exact minimax risks simultaneously in Besov balls of all smoothness and shape indices, and they are uniformly superefficient in convergence rates in all compact sets in Besov spaces with a finite secondary shape parameter. Furthermore, in classes nested between Besov balls of the same smoothness index, our estimators dominate threshold and James-Stein estimators within an infinitesimal fraction of the minimax risks. More general block empirical Bayes estimators are developed. Both white noise with drift and nonparametric regression are considered.


The diphenyl(phenylethyny1)phosphine complexes cis-PtX(Y)(Ph2PCCPh)2 [X = Y = C1, I, CF3, C6F5, Me; X(Y) = o-C6H4O2, Me(Cl)] have been synthesized, and for all of the complexes except the dimethyl complex, intramolecular coupling of the phosphinoacetylene ligands occurs on heating to form cis-PtX(Y){o-C16Hl0(PPh2)2]. A mixture of the two possible structural isomers is formed for {cis-PtMe(Cl){o-C16H10(PPh2)2T)}. The complex {cis-PtMe2(o-C16Hl0(PPh2)2)} has been obtained by reaction of the dichloro analogue with methyllithium. The unsymmetrical diphosphine l-phenyl-2,3-bis(diphenylphosphino)naphthalene [o-C16H10(PPh2)2], produced as a coordinated ligand via these intramolecular coupling reactions, has been isolated in moderate yield from the dichloro complex and its structure determined by X-ray diffraction. Crystals of O-C1610(PPh2)2 are triclinic, space group P1-bar, with a = 11.437(13) A, b = 9.628(12) A, c = 16.712(21) A, alpha = 82.31(9)O, beta = 119.08(3)', gamma = 110.03(5)O, and Z = 2. The structure was solved and refined to R = 0.058, R, = 0.070. Structure determinations of cis-PtCl2(Ph2PCCPh)2.2MeCN, cis-PtMe(Cl)(Ph2PCPh)2.0.5CH2Cl2, and cis-PtMe2(Ph2PCCPh)2 have been carried out to evaluate interligand interactions in the complexes. Crystallographic data: cis-PtC12(Ph2-
PCCPh)2.2MeCN, monoclinic, space group P21/c, a = 11.604(2) A, b = 18.416(5) A, c = 19.344(3) A, beta = 98.63', Z = 4, R = 0.031, R, = 0.035; cis-PtMe(Cl)(Ph2PCCPh2)2.0.5CH2Cl2, orthorhombioc, space group Pbca, a = 16.910(2) A, b = 17.207(1) A, c = 25.300(2) A, Z = 8, R = 0.039, R, = 0.044; cis-PtMe2(Ph2PCPh)2, orthorhombic, space group Pbca, a = 11.934(2) A, b = 16.885(3) A, c = 34.098(8) A, Z = 8, R = 0.037, R, = 0.042. Factors affecting the occurrence of intramolecular coupling are assessed, together with a comparison of this reaction with related reactions of organic diacetylenes. The complex ci2-PtMe(Cl)(Ph2PCCPh)2 reacts with diphenylphosphine to form a mixture of the two structural isomers of cis-PtMe(Cl){Ph2PCH=C(Ph)PPh2].


Life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) has been defined as a method to assess the total cost of a project. It is a simple tool to use when a single project has different alternatives that fulfill the original requirements. Different alternatives could differ in initial investment, operational and maintenance costs among other long term costs. The cost involved in building a bridge depends upon many different factors. Moreover, long-term cost needs to be considered to estimate the true overall cost of the project and determine its life-cycle cost. Without watchful consideration of the long-term costs and full life cycle costing, current investment decisions that look attractive could result in a waste of economic resources in the future. This research is focused on short and medium span bridges (between 30-ft and 130-ft) which represents 65\% of the NBI INDIANA bridge inventory. Bridges are categorized in three different groups of span ranges. Different superstructure types are considered for both concrete and steel options. Types considered include: bulb tees, AASHTO prestressed beams, slab bridges, prestressed concrete box beams, steel beams, steel girders, folded plate girders and simply supported steel beams for dead load and continuous for live load (SDCL). A design plan composed of simply supported bridges and continuous spans arrangements was carried out. Analysis for short and medium span bridges in Indiana based on LCCA is presented for different span ranges and span configurations. Deterministic and stochastic analysis were done for all the span ranges considered. Monte Carlo Simulations (MCS) were used and the categorization of the different superstructure alternatives was done based on stochastic dominance. First, second, almost first and almost second stochastic dominance rules were used to determined the efficient set for each span length and all span configurations. Cost-effective life cycle cost profiles for each superstructure type were proposed. Additionally, the top three cost-effective alternatives for superstructure types depending on the span length are presented as well as the optimum superstructure types set for both simply supported and continuous beams. Results will help designers to consider the most cost-effective bridge solution for new projects, resulting in cost savings for agencies involved.


By putting the tools for media creation in the hands of the consumer, there will be exponential growth in the distribution and hosting of media on the Internet. We expect this growth to parallel that of HTTP traffic. Our position is that we need to confront the issues related to the potential exponential growth in the number of media sources and services. Further, we believe that significantly higher quality streaming and context-sensitive personalization of multimedia services are key enablers of this whole technology area. Our vision differs from the delivery of video-on-demand services because we believe that there will be a vast number of sources of copyleft content. In this paper we focus on four key areas: the distributed discovery of content; the concurrent manipulation of multiple media streams; media sensitive mechanisms for providing end-to-end services over the Internet; and the subjective assessment of delivered media quality.


Abstract Stanniocalcin (STC) is a hormone in fish that regulates calcium levels. Mammals have two orthologs of STC with roles in calcium and phosphate metabolism and perhaps cell differentiation. In the kidney and gut, STC regulates calcium and phosphate homeostasis. In the mouse uterus, Stc1 increases in the mesometrial decidua during implantation. These studies determined the effects of pregnancy and related hormones on STC expression in the ovine uterus. In Days 10–16 cyclic and pregnant ewes, STC1 mRNA was not detected in the uterus. Intriguingly, STC1 mRNA appeared on Day 18 of pregnancy, specifically in the endometrial glands, increased from Day 18 to Day 80, and remained abundant to Day 120 of gestation. STC1 mRNA was not detected in the placenta, whereas STC2 mRNA was detected at low abundance in conceptus trophectoderm and endometrial glands during later pregnancy. Immunoreactive STC1 protein was detected predominantly in the endometrial glands after Day 16 of pregnancy and in areolae that transport uterine gland secretions across the placenta. In ovariectomized ewes, long-term progesterone therapy induced STC1 mRNA. Although interferon tau had no effect on endometrial STC1, intrauterine infusions of ovine placental lactogen (PL) increased endometrial gland STC1 mRNA abundance in progestinized ewes. These studies demonstrate that STC1 is induced by progesterone and increased by a placental hormone (PL) in endometrial glands of the ovine uterus during conceptus (embryo/fetus and extraembryonic membranes) implantation and placentation. Western blot analyses revealed the presence of a 25-kDa STC1 protein in the endometrium, uterine luminal fluid, and allantoic fluid. The data suggest that STC1 secreted by the endometrial glands is transported into the fetal circulation and allantoic fluid, where it is hypothesized to regulate growth and differentiation of the fetus and placenta, by placental areolae.


Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics simulations are expected to provide the basis for a deeper understanding of the real behavior of vertical-axis wind turbines. The prediction of the flow field past Darrieus rotors, a popular turbine of this type, requires a good resolution of both the unsteadiness caused by the periodic variation of the modulus and direction of the relative velocity perceived by the blades, and the interaction between the wakes shed by the blades in the upstream region of the rotor and the downstream blades traveling through such wakes. This paper presents a comparative assessment of the predictive capabilities of two substantially different timedependent Navier-Stokes Reynolds-averaged-based approaches to the analysis of Darrieus turbines. One is based on a commercial code, and the other on an academic research code. A Darrieus rotor configuration previously analyzed by other researchers was selected for this study, which focused on the turbine flow at a tip-speed ratio of 3.3. Aggregate power coefficient comparisons at other regimes are also provided. Solution sensitivity analyses to spatial and temporal grid refinement, domain size and boundary condition modeling aspects for each of the two approaches are provided in the study. A very good agreement is obtained between the two simulation sets, and a fairly good agreement is found between both simulations and available measured data.


A wavy hair phenotype reveals channel-receptor crosstalk in the mouse. Cheng et al. report that the TRPV3 [transient receptor potential (TRP) vanilloid 3] calcium channel, previously linked to detection of changes in ambient temperature, functions in mouse skin cells in a complex with the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase to regulate proper formation of skin and hair. The authors discovered the connection because knockout mice lacking TRPV3 that they created had wavy hair and curly whiskers, a phenotype also caused by mutations that prevent signaling by transforming growth factor–α (TGF-α) and epidermal growth factor (EGF). TGF-α and EGF have important roles in both the proliferation and differentiation of skin cells. In young mice lacking TRPV3, the amount of TGF-α mRNA was reduced, and the amount of active (phosphorylated) EFGR (the receptor for both EGF and TGF-α) was also reduced. TRPV3 can also influence TGF-α signaling by increasing the intracellular concentration of free calcium, which increases the production and release of TGF-α and EGF. In the other direction, receptor tyrosine kinases can also influence TRP channel function, and treatment of keratinocytes in culture with TGF-α sensitized the response of TRPV3 to agonists that enhance its conductance. Pharmacological inhibitors of EGFR or of phospholipase C or extracellular signal–regulated kinases (ERKs) reduced the effect of TGF-α. Coimmunoprecipitation of TRPV3 with EGFR was detected in samples from transgenic mice expressing a fusion protein of TRPV3 with green fluorescent protein. The authors point out that physical and functional interaction could be characteristic of other TRP channels and receptor tyrosine kinases and that TRPV3 may be a therapeutic target for treatments aimed at control of hair growth or of abnormal skin cells associated with skin cancer or dermatological diseases. X. Cheng, J. Jin, L. Hu, D. Shen, X.-p. Dong, M. A. Samie, J. Knoff, B. Eisinger, M.-i. Liu, S. M. Huang, M. J. Caterina, P. Dempsey, L. E. Michael, A. A. Dlugosz, N. C. Andrews, D. E. Clapham, H. Xu, TRP channel regulates EGFR signaling in hair morphogenesis and skin barrier formation. Cell 141, 331–343 (2010). [Online Journal]


Significant processes of change and adaptation are currently underway in relation to marriage and the land rights of single women living in 'communal' areas in South Africa. Scholars describe declining marriage rates, particularly among poor African women and argue that this downward trend has accelerated in the post-apartheid period. African women are the main recipients of government social security grants and are also those directly affected by the 1998 Recognition of Customary Marriages Act (RCMA), along with subsequent administrative processes put in place to register customary marriages and litigation over its meaning and content. Alongside changes in marriage patterns we see single women increasingly claiming, and being allocated, residential sites for themselves and their children in 'communal areas'. On the face of it, this practice appears to confound the customary law premise of land rights vesting exclusively in men. In this volume we ask how the significant and far reaching processes of change that are underway relate to one another, and to broader economic and political developments in South African society, and examine the impact of the implementation of the RCMA in this volatile arena.


What does it mean to unearth the dead? What is contemporary society's responsibility to the disappeared? How do we live with the ghosts of history? In the midst of the search for the body of Federico García Lorca in 2009, Emilio Silva, cofounder and president of Spain's Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH)—a national organization assisting in the location and exhumation of the graves of Spain's desaparecidos, or disappeared, during the Civil War and its aftermath—wrote of "the silent bones of Federico García Lorca and the skeleton of our democracy." This essay traces the ways in which the remains of one of Europe's most resonant twentieth-century dramatists haunt contemporary Spain. In mapping the wider ideological framework in which his work has been produced in Spain, it engages with the politics of a statesanctioned "official" history that has shaped his appropriation by the nation-state. Using the search for Lorca's corpse in 2009 as a central focus, it examines how the exhumation of mass graves undertaken in twenty-first-century Spain can be viewed as a move toward a more nuanced understanding both of the events of the past and the fissures of the present in a country where issues of justice have been compromised for too long by a culture of silence.


THE Editors are anxious to improve the clinical aspect of the Journal and would welcome more reports of interesting cases. These clinical records need not be at all elaborate and it would be unnecessary to go minutely into the aetiology or the literature of the subject. Senior Registrars have unique opportunities for seeing a large variety of cases, many with unusual features. It is in many ways regrettable that these should go unrecorded. It is hoped that all those in charge of clinics will help us in this matter and see that such cases are not overlooked. It is important that all illustrations should have captions and also that the author's name should be written on the back.


More modern and larger wind turbine (WT) generators are under continuous development. These exhibit more faults than smaller ones, which becomes critical offshore. Under this framework, operation and maintenance (O&M) is the key to improve reliability and availability of WTs, where condition-based maintenance (CBM) is currently seen as the preferred approach by the early detection and diagnosis of critical faults for WTs. The induction generator is one of the biggest contributors to failure rates and downtime of WTs, together with the gearbox and the drive train. In the present chapter, current signature analysis (CSA) will be introduced as a means for fault detection of WTs. CSA is a cost-effective and nonintrusive technique that can monitor both mechanical and electrical faults within the induction generator, as well as bearingand gearbox-related faults. Different test cases of in-service wind turbine generators will be used to illustrate its usefulness.


Introduction. Scleroderma induces heterogeneous skin changes due to collagen anomalies, including facial. The recommended therapy is, among others, topic cortisol derived products, so an issue of diagnosis differential regarding the etiological type of Cushing's syndrome (CS) is raised if a patient develops a suggestive phenotype. Case presentation. This is a 64-year female presenting (since the last few months) red face, high blood pressure, central obesity. She has a 6-year history of scleroderma, intermittently treated with local corticotherapy. On admission, she associated metabolic disturbances as lipid profile anomalies, high uric acid, insulin resistance and increased number of white blood cells (which were not connected with a relapse of scleroderma, neither to an inflammatory syndrome). Low baseline plasma ACTH and morning serum cortisol level (not high, yet detectable) with abnormal diurnal rhythm suggested an adrenal source of CS. A 3 cm right adrenal tumor was found on computer tomography and later removed through a classical intervention. Two weeks after, the patient voluntarily reduced her prednisone dose causing an adrenal crisis which required re-admission as an emergency. After discharge, daily oral adrenal replacement therapy is needed for the moment. Conclusions. Scleroderma, especially with skin involvement, and some of associated therapies may mask an endogenous CS as adrenal tumor derivate, thus delaying the adequate diagnosis and therapy. Patient's education regarding a potential life threatening condition as chronic adrenal insufficiency is necessary since post-operatory recovery of adrenal function is expected within 6 to 24 months.


Two applications of a binary tree data type based on a simple pairing function (a bijection between natural numbers and pairs of natural numbers) are explored. First, the tree is used to encode natural numbers, and algorithms that perform basic arithmetic computations are presented along with formal proofs of their correctness. Second, using this "canonical" representation as a base type, algorithms for encoding and decoding additional isomorphic data types of other mathematical constructs (sets, sequences, etc.) are also developed. An experimental application to a memory management system is constructed and explored using these isomorphic types. A practical analysis of this system's runtime complexity and space savings are provided, along with a proof of concept framework for both applications of the binary tree type, in the Java programming language.


Soil is one of the most biodiverse terrestrial habitats. Yet, we lack an integrative conceptual framework for understanding the patterns and mechanisms driving soil biodiversity. One of the underlying reasons for our poor understanding of soil biodiversity patterns relates to whether key biodiversity theories (historically developed for aboveground and aquatic organisms) are applicable to patterns of soil biodiversity. Here, we present a systematic literature review to investigate whether and how key biodiversity theories (species–energy relationship, theory of island biogeography, metacommunity theory, niche theory and neutral theory) can explain observed patterns of soil biodiversity. We then discuss two spatial compartments nested within soil at which biodiversity theories can be applied to acknowledge the scale‐dependent nature of soil biodiversity.


Noted social commentator and theologian Dorothee Soelle examines how the power of religion and faith can be used to transform an unjust world. Her discussions cross a broad range of topics. Soelle deals with the freedom bestowed by the Spirit of God, biblical roots of social liberation, and the need for a new religious language. This book will inspire all persons involved in working for God's will for the world.


This sequel to Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon's acclaimed Turning the Soul: TeachingThrough Conversation in the High School presents a case study of two people learning to teach. It shows them engaging two groups of fourth grade students in discussion about the meaning of texts-what the author calls "interpretive discussion. The two groups differ with respect to race, geographical location, and affluence. As the novice teachers learn to clarify their own questions about meaning, they become better listeners and leaders of the discussions. Eventually, they mix the students from the two classrooms, and the reader watches them converse about a text as the barriers of race and class seem to break down. In addition to the detailed analysis of the case study, Learning to Teach Through Discussion: The Art of Turning the Soul presents philosophical, literary, and psychological foundations of interpretive discussion and describes its three phases: preparation, leading, and reflection. A tightly argued work, the book will help readers learn to engage students of all ages in text interpretation.


We introduce Sparse Symplectically Integrated Neural Networks (SSINNs), a novel model for learning Hamiltonian dynamical systems from data. SSINNs combine fourth-order symplectic integration with a learned parameterization of the Hamiltonian obtained using sparse regression through a mathematically elegant function space. This allows for interpretable models that incorporate symplectic inductive biases and have low memory requirements. We evaluate SSINNs on four classical Hamiltonian dynamical problems: the Henon-Heiles system, nonlinearly coupled oscillators, a multi-particle mass-spring system, and a pendulum system. Our results demonstrate promise in both system prediction and conservation of energy, outperforming the current state-of-the-art black-box prediction techniques by an order of magnitude. Further, SSINNs successfully converge to true governing equations from highly limited and noisy data, demonstrating potential applicability in the discovery of new physical governing equations.


Despite an earlier Medicare payment rate reduction, the proportion of U.S. physicians accepting Medicare patients stabilized in 2004-05, with nearly three-quarters saying their practices were open to all new Medicare patients, according to a new study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). In 2004-05, 72.9 percent of physicians reported accepting all new Medicare patients, statistically unchanged from 71.1 percent in 2000-01. Only 3.4 percent of physicians reported that their practices were completely closed to new Medicare patients in 2004-05, also statistically unchanged from 2000-01. These trends indicate the decline in Medicare physician access observed between 1996-97 and 2000-01 leveled off in 2004-05. In fact, Medicare beneficiaries' access to primary care physicians increased between 2000-01 and 2004-05, reversing an earlier decline. Among privately insured patients, trends in physician access are similar to those for Medicare patients, suggesting that overall health system dynamics have played a larger role in physician decisions about accepting Medicare patients than have Medicare payment policies.


This article considers the English School as an underutilized reaserch resource in the field of international relations (IR). Its defining attributes are its methodologial pluralism, its historicism, and its interlinking of three main concepts: international system, international society and world society. Parallels are also drawn among the three IR traditions – international system, international society and world society – as the English School differentiates them. This paper points out that the current globalization process reinforces the transnational paradigm that focuses on non-state actors, with a new configuration emerging in which politics loses the hierarchical position implied by realism. Finally, a pluralist theoretical approach is proposed as the most appropriate for research in the area of international environmental politics.


In Klenow fragment DNA polymerase, a flexible 50-amino acid subdomain at the tip of the thumb which includes two α helices has been suggested to interact with the duplex template-primer (Beese, L.S., Derbyshire, V. and Steitz, T.A. (1993) Science 260, 352-355). The present study investigates the properties of Klenow polymerase containing a 24-amino acid deletion (residues 590-613) that removes a portion of the tip of the thumb. The mutant polymerase has relatively normal dNTP binding and catalytic rate. However, its DNA binding affinity is reduced by more than 100-fold relative to the intact polymerase and its ability to conduct processive synthesis is also reduced. Although the mutant polymerase has relatively normal base substitution fidelity, it has strongly reduced frameshift fidelity, being especially error-prone for single nucleotide addition errors in homopolymeric runs. The addition error rate increases as the length of the reiterated sequence increases, indicative of errors initiated by template-primer strand slippage. These observations suggest a role for the tip of the thumb of Klenow polymerase in determining DNA binding, processivity and frameshift fidelity, perhaps by tracking the minor groove of the duplex DNA. The results are discussed in light of remarkably similar observations with T7 DNA polymerase in the presence or absence of thioredoxin, an accessory subunit that affects these same properties.


The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change recognises that, in the formulation of a global strategy for reducing global emissions of carbon (the main factor in global warming) forests could play an important role. This book highlights that role and demonstrates how the forests of the world may be harvested judiciously and sustainably. The authors argue that the forests are more than just a source of timber and wood; they discuss the role that forests play in reducing global warming, in preventing soil erosion and in helping to minimise the loss of biodiversity. Drawing on the expertise of contributors associated with the analysis of forests, this book is an in depth and fascinating discussion as well as a policy guide for the sustainable management of forests.


Decades of faltering public commitment to investing in agriculture has hindered farmers' ability to cope with price volatility, climatic and economic shocks, or to pull themselves out of poverty. Yet donors and governments must see investing in agriculture as part of the long-term solution to the food, financial, and climate crises. Global agricultural growth and rural livelihoods cannot be improved nor poverty reduced without renewed public commitment to invest more, and more wisely in agriculture. Investments must include the forgotten poor people who live in marginalized areas, be context specific, demand-driven, participatory, and promote sustainable rural livelihoods through environmentally sustainable and empowering practices that treat men's and women's needs equitably.


Existing legal scholarship about constitutional war powers focuses overwhelmingly on the President's power to initiate military operations abroad and the extent to which that power is constrained by Congress. It ignores the allocation of legal power to threaten military force or war, even though threats – to coerce or deter enemies and to reassure allies – is one of the most important ways in which the United States government wields its military might. This paper fills that scholarly void, and draws on recent political science and historical scholarship to construct a richer and more accurate account of the modern presidency's powers to shape American security policy and strategy.As a descriptive matter, the swelling scope of the president's practice in wielding threatened force largely tracks the standard historical narrative of war powers shifting from Congress to the President. Indeed, adding threats of force to that story might suggest that this shift in powers of war and peace has been even more dramatic than usually supposed, at least in terms of how formal congressional checks are exercised. This paper shows, however, that congressional checks and influence – even if not formal legislative powers – operate more robustly and in different ways to shape strategic decision-making than usually supposed in legal debates about war powers, and that these checks and influence can enhance the potency of threatened force. As a prescriptive matter, this paper also shows that examination of threatened force and the credibility requirements for its effectiveness calls into question many orthodoxies of the policy advantages and risks attendant to various allocations of legal war powers, including the existing one and proposed reforms. Instead of proposing a policy-optimal solution, this paper concludes that the allocation of constitutional war powers is – and should be – geo-politically and strategically contingent; the actual and effective balance between presidential and congressional powers over war and peace in practice necessarily depends on fundamental assumptions and shifting policy choices about how best to secure U.S. interests against potential threats.


The sponsors of this project have been using the rigid heavily-crosslinked polyurethane foam detailed in this study for load-bearing applications. One of the main requirements of this material is that it must possess excellent recovery properties following extensive compressive periods over several years. For such long loading regimes, there is need for detailed understanding of the compressive behaviour of this material, and its subsequent recovery upon release.
More recently, there has been a growing interest in replacing the polyurethane foam with an alternative cellular plastic that possesses similar, if not identical, compressive recovery and behaviour. Attention was focused on the other primary polymer contingent, a polyethylene foam. A polyimide foam was also considered as it was already being used in applications similar to those of the polyurethane foam.
The structures of the foams were investigated by means of Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Scanning Electron Microscopy and Image Analysis. The deformation mechanisms that occur during the application of a compressive force were examined visually via a scanning electron microscope compression rig.
The mechanical analysis involved stress-strain testing whereby three stages of compression were identified ('linear elastic, stress plateau and densification'), as described in the literature. Quadratic relationships were found to exist between the foam density and the 'elastic modulus, plateau modulus and the compressive strength' respectively. Such relationships had previously been found to exist in the literature, but not for the rigid variety of foam at such a broad range of densities.
Further analysis included a detailed study of the recovery of the polyurethane (100 kg m[sup]-3 to 800 kg m[sup]-3) foams, a lightly-crosslinked polyethylene foam and a non-crosslinked polyimide foam. The foam samples were compressed by strains which spanned their linear elastic and stress plateau regimes i.e. by 2.5% to 35% for periods ranging from 3 days up to one year at ambient temperature. This analysis was also undertaken at elevated temperature as a means of accelerating the ageing process. Recovery of all of the samples was monitored for a minimum of 100 days at ambient temperature following release.
Recovery of all of the foams tested was found to occur in two stages; an initial rapid recovery within the first day following release followed by a much slower recovery phase over a period of approximately 100 days. The initial rapid recovery was attributed to the recovery of the bulk polymer whilst the recovery of the cellular structure was associated with the ensuing slower recovery phase. In addition, recovery of the foams was found to be dependent more upon the compressive strain than on other parameters, such as compressive period and foam density. For compressive periods exceeding two weeks, recovery is almost independent of the latter parameters.


High-intensity femtosecond pulses tunable in the 0.8–1.6-μm range have been generated by parametric amplification of a continuum white light in a new organic crystal, N-(4-nitrophenyl)-L-prolinol (NPP). The traditional concept of noncritical phase matching was revised in view of requirements linked to the observation of ultrafast subpicosecond nonlinear phenomena. The notions of θ (noncritical) and λ (noncritical) phase matching are introduced together with their applications. An experimental determination of phase-matching curves for both second-harmonic generation and three-wave mixing has been carried out. A θ noncritical phase-matching configuration for second-harmonic generation at 1.15 μm and a quasi-λ noncritical phase-matching configuration in the near IR for three-wave mixing were evidenced. Frequency and pump-intensity dependences of the gain have also been studied. Parametric emission at degeneracy was observed, with the emitted bandwidth extending from 1.0 to 1.4 μm. Time resolution of the amplified signal has been carried out by cross correlating the pump with the incoming signal, evidencing a reduced time broadening of the interacting pulses; a new spectroscopic method with subpicosecond time resolution is derived from the previous nonlinear optical characterization experiments by replacing the IR continuum from the water cell by any sample emitting in the same frequency range. This method, termed parametric amplification and sampling spectroscopy, was used for temporal analysis of amplified and emitted infrared signals generated in an NPP crystal.


OBJECTIVES
To evaluate the feasibility of using a biobehavioral approach to examine symptom burden in rural residents with advanced cancer.

SAMPLE & SETTING
21 patients with advanced lung, colorectal, or pancreatic cancer were enrolled at the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

METHODS & VARIABLES
Using Cleeland's cytokine-immunologic model of symptom expression, symptom burden (i.e., severity, count, and interference) and inflammatory cytokines were measured for 24 weeks. Potential predictors included demographics, clinical characteristics, optimism, social support, and cancer-related stress. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon rank-sum, and Fisher's exact test were used for analysis.

RESULTS
Recruitment and retention rates were similar for rural and nonrural patients. Demographics, optimism, and social support were no different between groups. The cancer-related stress total score for rural patients was nearly half of the score of nonrural patients, with rural patients reporting significantly less avoidance. Symptom severity for the five worst symptoms remained moderate during the 24 weeks, whereas nonrural residents reported steady declines in severity of their five worst symptoms. Significant differences in inflammatory cytokines between groups were only found at one time point.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Rural residents who seek care at a cancer center may be clinically and demographically more similar to their nonrural counterparts than to rural residents seeking local care.


Most gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed by the Swift satellite show an early steep decay phase (SDP) in their X-ray light curve, which is usually a smooth continuation of the prompt gamma-ray emission, strongly suggesting that it is its tail. However, the mechanism behind it is still not clear. The most popular model for this SDP is high-latitude emission (HLE), in which after the prompt emission from a (quasi-) spherical shell stops photons from increasingly large angles relative to the line of sight still reach the observer, with a smaller Doppler factor. This results in a simple relation between the temporal and spectral indexes, α = 2 + β where F ν ∝ t ―α ν ―β . While HLE is expected in many models for the prompt GRB emission, such as the popular internal shocks model, there are models in which it is not expected, such as sporadic magnetic reconnection events. Therefore, testing whether the SDP is consistent with HLE can help distinguish between different prompt emission models. In order to adequately address this question in a careful quantitative manner we develop a realistic self-consistent model for the prompt emission and its HLE tail, which can be used for combined temporal and spectral fits to GRB data that would provide strict tests for the HLE model. We model the prompt emission as the sum of its individual pulses with their HLE tails, where each pulse arises from an ultrarelativistic uniform thin spherical shell that emits isotropically in its own rest frame over a finite range of radii. Analytic expressions for the observed flux density are obtained for the internal shock case with a Band function emission spectrum. We find that the observed instantaneous spectrum is also a Band function. Our model naturally produces, at least qualitatively, the observed spectral softening and steepening of the flux decay as the peak photon energy sweeps across the observed energy range. The observed flux during the SDP is initially dominated by the tail of the last pulse, but the tails of one or more earlier pulses can become dominant later on. A simple criterion is given for the dominant pulse at late times. The relation α = 2 + β holds also as β and α change in time. Modelling several overlapping pulses as a single wider pulse would overpredict the emission tail.


This thesis aims to examine when democratic consolidation took place in Costa Rica from a maximalistic perspective. The hypothesis is that it's likely that the democracy was not consolidated as early as 1953 which would be the case if applying a minimalistic perspective. Linz and Stepan's theory about democratic consolidation has been chosen as the theoretical framework of the thesis and the research has been conducted by using a qualitative text analysis. The thesis comes to the conclusion that Costa Rica's democracy completed its consolidation 1978 when the previously banned communist party Partido Vanguardia Popular was allowed to compete for votes again in the 1978's presidential and parliamentary elections. From that point no party was excluded from taking part in free and fair elections.


A robust performance evaluation process greatly enhances a drinking water utility's ability to achieve and measure improvement in performance in many key areas. A major contribution from this study is the creation of a database and a comprehensive data collection process. Benchmarking helps utilities make policy and programmatic decisions that reduce operational expenses and increase productivity by: understanding areas for improvement, identifying customer needs, developing plans, and setting reasonable goals. A better understanding of the drinking water industry and what constitutes a high performance organization helps employees visualize improvement, which can be a strong motivator for change.

This report presents the results of web-based drinking water utility benchmarking. This was accomplished by performing a comprehensive and quantitative assessment by using a wide variety of indicators to evaluate the overall performance of utilities. Practical and robust methodologies were used to create a realistic benchmarking process. This process presents the current performance comparisons among multiple utilities for various areas that impact overall utility performance. Web-based benchmarking consists of two parts – data collection and result visualization. An online platform known as WATER i D has been created. Data are saved to this online database, allowing results from multiple years to be analyzed and compared. This enables utilities to internally study their performance trends and externally compare their performance to similar utilities.

This title belongs to WERF Research Report Series .

ISBN: 9781780405698 (eBook)


Paul Kammerer was the most outstanding neo-Lamarckian experimentalist of the early 20th century. He reported spectacular results in the midwife toad, including crosses of environmentally modified toads with normal toads, where acquired traits were inherited in Mendelian fashion. Accusations of fraud generated a great scandal, ending with Kammerer's suicide. Controversy reignited in the 1970s, when journalist Arthur Koestler argued against these accusations. Since then, others have argued that Kammerer's results, even if real, were not groundbreaking and could be explained by somatic plasticity, inadvertent selection, or conventional genetics. More recently, epigenetics has uncovered mechanisms by which inheritance can respond directly to environmental change, inviting a reanalysis of Kammerer's descriptions. Previous arguments for mere somatic plasticity have ignored the description of experiments showing heritable germ line modification. Alleged inadvertent selection associated with egg mortality can be discarded, since mortality decreased in a single generation, upon repeated exposures. The challenging implications did not escape the attention of Kammerer's noted contemporary, William Bateson, but he reacted with disbelief, thus encouraging fraud accusations. Nowadays, formerly puzzling phenomena can be explained by epigenetic mechanisms. Importantly, Kammerer described parent-of-origin effects, an effect of parental sex on dominance. Epigenetic mechanisms underlie these effects in genomic imprinting and experiments of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. In the early 20th century, researchers had no reason to link them with the inheritance of acquired traits. Thus, the parent-of-origin effects in Kammerer's experiments specifically suggest authenticity. Ultimate proof should come from renewed experimentation. To encourage further research, we present a model of possible epigenetic mechanisms.


INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE Lyme borreliosis is in Sweden the most common vector-borne disease with approximately 10.000 individuals affected each year. Previous studies have suggested that conscripts compose a population of high risk to tick-bites and others have linked tick attachment to different body odour. In several countries the peasant population have observed that garlic keep the cattle free from ticks. The purpose of this study was to determine if Swedish conscripts are a population of high risk to tick-bites and thereby tick-borne diseases and to study if tick-bites can be prevented by garlic consumption. METHODS The survey participants, n=100 (50 in each group) consumed garlic / placebo for eight weeks, had a wash-out period, then changed to placebo / garlic consumption for another ten weeks. The study drug contained 1200 mg Allium sativum, administrated 600 mg twice daily. During the study period the conscripts performed a daily inspection of their skin and filled in a diary-sheet. Questionnaires including questions on e.g. smoking habits, other medication, adverse events and tick-borne disease manifestations were answered when; entering the study, before and after the wash-out period and at the end of the study. RESULTS The total amount of registered tick-bites during the study period was 286. On average the participants registered 0.2 bites per week during military service compared to 0.03 bites per week during leave. Two of the participants developed an erythema migrans. When consuming garlic, results show a significant reduction in tick-bites, included and excluded a participant who reported 86 tick-bites on one occasion, compared to consuming placebo. Also, the incidence was lower when taking account the reported number of bitten participants both in intention to treat and per protocol. CONCLUSIONS Swedish marine conscripts are a population of high risk to tick-bites during their military service and preventive measures including vaccinations against diseases transmitted by ticks should be considered. Garlic had a preventive effect against tick-bites, however significantly differences were not seen in intention to treat calculations and more studies are needed.


The effects of inorganic, freeze-dried bone, alone or mixed with a dextran agglutinant, on the repair of experimentally created critical-size bone defects were evaluated in the rat mandible. Histological data demonstrated a progressive resorption of the freeze-dried bone particles, without osseous proliferation into the defect, and a posterior foreign-body reaction. These results indicate that the freeze-dried bone did not induce bony healing in the critical-size defect and that the addition of dextran agglutinant did not change the tissue response. Dextran may have other applications as a biocompatible, resorbable agglutinant.


Both the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) hold similar endeavors in establishing regional cooperation/integration. However, their disparities start with the means to this end, an identity that facilitates increasing consolidation and the support of their peoples. This article aims to examine the factors which enable the European people's intervention in the Community's decision-making process and at the same time, discuss the obstacles to similar action in the ASEAN integration process. Specifically, this article shows a comparison of Euro-groups and Southeast Asian people's organizations based on case studies on the activities of the EEC and ASEAN pressure groups in agriculture, labor and non-government organizations. In the end, it has shown that the EEC puts more premium on the participation of the people in the regional integration process whereas ASEAN member-states adopt policies that strengthen their respective economies in the world market. While the EEC has considerable influence as a regional bloc and won the confidence of its peoples as it tolerates and even accepts Euro-groups in regional affairs, the ASEAN is not as influential as a regional grouping and may even be considered isolated from its people as its member-states continue to pursue undemocratic national policies. However, despite the Southeast Asian people's dissatisfaction over the ASEAN, they still believe that the issue of underdevelopment may be resolved through a regional forum - provided that it is a forum initiated and sustained by the people with popular democracy and empowerment at its base.


Urinary incontinence (UI), defined as the involuntary loss of urine during the filling phase of the bladder (Abrams et al. 2002), is a commonly seen problem in veterinary practice. Urinary sphincter mechanism incompetence (USMI) after spaying is the most common micturition disorder, and its medical treatment is normally successful, even though the underlying pathophysiological mechanism is not fully understood. Hormonal changes inducing structural and functional alterations in the bladder, as well as in the urethra composition, are discussed. To manage incontinent patients successfully, possible underlying abnormalities besides USMI should be ruled out. In the majority of cases, history, physical examination and simple tests including urinalysis and urine bacterial culture lead to a presumed aetiology. If USMI is the most likely cause, then the advantage of further diagnostic tests should be discussed with the owner before starting a trial therapy with alpha-adrenergic drugs. Potential side effects of this therapy have to be mentioned even though they rarely occur. It is important to thoroughly evaluate the success of the initial treatment. Its failure should lead to further diagnostic testing. Specialized clinical assessments may provide an aetiological diagnosis, and this could serve as a basis for discussing further treatment options. Surgical procedures, which may in rare cases cause irreversible side effects, may be instituted. If incontinence reoccurs after initial treatment was successfully performed, the diagnostic work-up including urinalysis should always be repeated. As results of urinalysis did not correlate well with results of bacterial culture, a urine culture is recommended (Comer and Ling 1981). Cystocentesis is the preferred method of urine collection (Bartges 2004). Equivocal results of quantitative cultures of urine samples obtained during midstream voiding or by catheterization require repeat collection by cystocentesis (Comer and Ling 1981).


This paper revisits a construction that is rare in historical data, namely the combination of being with an infinitive, as in They being to arrive early that afternoon, all necessary preparations had been made. In early and late Modern English, the BE TO construction had a fuller paradigm than it does in Present Day English, where it is (almost) exclusively used in tensed forms. The focus in this paper is on part of the paradigm of the BE TO construction, i.e., instances with a present participle form of be. Relevant neighbouring constructions are being Ving and having to V, but the construction also needs to be discussed against the background of developments in the system of auxiliaries and future time expressions (Denison 1993; Warner 1993; Nesselhauf 2006, 2010). On the basis of evidence from historical text databases and corpora, this paper provides the first detailed description of the syntactic contexts, functions and distribution of the being to V construction. In a next step, corpus data are used to discuss possible reasons (i.e., system dependency, paradigmatic attrition, competition and distributional fragmentation) for its apparent demise. The study thus contributes to the still somewhat underexplored area of syntactic loss.


Book synopsis: An original and innovative recasting of constitutionalism, written by acknowledged experts in the field, this empirically grounded and theoretically informed volume addresses the strategies and philosophies that judges and lawyers bring to bear when creating European constitutional jurisprudence; investigating and promoting promotes the sustainability of a theory or praxis of 'procedural' constitutionalism.

Building upon European and American critical legal scholarship, Michelle Everson and Julia Eisner argue that constitutional adjudication has never been the neutral matter of a mere judicial 'identification' of the values, norms and procedures that each society seeks to concretise in its own body of constitutional law. Instead, a 'mythology' of comprehensive national constitutional settlement has obscured the primary legal constitutional conundrum that is created by the requirement that a judiciary must always adapt its constitutional jurisprudence to the evolving values that are to be found within any society; but must always, also, maintain the integrity and autonomy of the law itself.

European judges and lawyers, having been denied recourse to all forms of constitutional mythology, provide us with an alternative model of constitutionalism; one that does not require a founding myth of constitutional settlement, and one which both secures the autonomy of law, as well as ensures dialogue between law and society. This occurs, however, not through grand theories of 'constitutional adjudication' but, as The Making of a European Constitution documents, rather through a practical process.


ABSTRACT. We have studied a 33.7 m deep ice core from a small polythermal Scandinavian ice cap to determine whether it is possible to recover pre‐20th century climatic information from the glacier. Ice structural studies show a significant change from clear ice above 11 m depth (superimposed ice indicating refreezing) to bubbly ice below 11 m depth, indicating this is the transition between Little Ice Age (LIA) and 20th century ice. Calculations with a Nye‐age model, along with a mass balance reconstruction, show that this structural boundary likely formed in the last part of the LIA, which in this region ended about 1910. The ice below this boundary was sampled and analysed for stable isotopic composition and ionic content, which both show significant variations with depth. The stable isotope record likely contains cycles of annual duration during the LIA. The chemistry in the ice core indicates that the information is useful, and can be used to interpret climatic and environmental variables during the LIA. A comparison of Riukojietna ion chemistry and oxygen isotope records with similar records from other glaciers in this region reveals a clear continental‐maritime gradient. Changes in this gradient with time may be possible to resolve using such ice core records. Results from this study demonstrate that ice cores from glaciers in this climatic environment can be useful in revealing environmental conditions from climatically colder periods and yield pre‐industrial benchmark values for chemical loading and oxygen isotopes, but that hiatuses complicate the depth‐age relationship.


The capacity to engage in deep discussion about knowledge should be an expected outcome of all university graduates. This paper describes an attempt to develop teachers as a knowledge builder through a master's level course. Based on the socio-cognitive determinants of knowledge building proposed by Scardamalia and Bereiter, I identified and applied instructional tactics that could help foster knowledge building behaviors among the participants. These tactics include case study, reciprocal teaching, online discussion, and working on a consequential task. The participants consisted of 11 teachers aged between 27 to 50 years old. They actively contributed to the online forum by frequently querying, clarifying, adding and revising their notes. They led group discussions in class and introduced additional reference materials to their classmates. In short, the participants demonstrated high degree of epistemic agency by taking ownership of their learning and contributing to deep understanding of theories related to knowledge building.


The determination of bacterial identity at the strain level is still a complex and time-consuming endeavor. In this study, visible wavelength spontaneous Raman spectroscopy has been used for the discrimination of four closely related Escherichia coli strains: pathogenic enterohemorrhagic E. coli O157:H7 and non-pathogenic E. coli C, E. coli Hfr K-12, and E. coli HF4714. Raman spectra from 600 to 2000 cm−1 were analyzed with two multivariate chemometric techniques, principal component-discriminant function analysis and partial least squares-discriminant analysis, to determine optimal parameters for the discrimination of pathogenic E. coli from the non-pathogenic strains. Spectral preprocessing techniques such as smoothing with windows of various sizes and differentiation were investigated. The sensitivity and specificity of both techniques was in excess of 95%, determined by external testing of the chemometric models. This study suggests that spontaneous Raman spectroscopy with visible wavelength excitation is potentially useful for the rapid identification and classification of clinically-relevant bacteria at the strain level.


Electrochemically splitting water into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) is a promising method for clean energy generation, while the absence of highly active, stable, low-cost and earth abundant catalysts greatly impedes its large-scale application. Herein, we report a general and robust approach for the controlled synthesis of a class of NiM (M = Fe, Co, Mn) hydroxide nanosheets (HNSs) that have ultrathin thicknesses of around 2 nm. Such unique structures enable the HNSs to have promising oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performances, with the NiFe HNSs being the best candidate. Given the well-defined electrochemical bifunctionality, a full alkaline electrolyzer was constructed using NiFe HNSs as both the cathodic and the anodic catalysts. It can realize overall water splitting with a current density of 10 mA cm−2 at 1.67 V and has remarkable durability for 12 h. This work opens a new avenue to approach water splitting catalysis using efficient low-cost Ni-based HNSs.


Dracocephalum Kotschyi Boiss, is one of Dracocephalum species which has been used in traditional Iranian medicine with pharmacological and biological activities. The antioxidant properties and total flavonoid and phenolic contents of three different extracts of Dracocephalum Kotschyi Boiss were investigated. The antioxidant activity of the extracts was calculated using three different assay including DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl), FRAP (ferric reducing ability of plasma) and ABTS (2,2ʹ-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulphonic acid)). Among these extracts, the methanol extracts showed the highest radical scavenging activity 6.87±0.01 μmoL Trolox/g ferric reducing activity and the best activity in ABTS test (7.47±0.03 μmoL Trolox/g). The methanol extract of Dracocephalum Kotschyi showed also the highest total phenolic content 188.08±0.01 mg GAE/g, followed by ethyl acetate extract 95.58±0.01 mg GAE/g and also greatest total flavonoid content with 1037.00±0.01 mg quercetine equivalents/g. The results of this study showed that the potent antioxidant activity of Dracocephalum Kotschyi make use it as a natural antioxidant in food industries and other pharmaceutical purposes.


Cold rotary forging is an innovative incremental metal forming process whose main characteristic is that the workpiece is only partially in contact with a conical tool, reducing therefore the required forging loads. However, in spite of many benefits of such a process, wide industrial implementation of rotary forging is not possible without proper understanding of material behaviour. In the present work, the capability of rotary forging process was explored for the manufacturing of flared cylindrical parts by cold forming. Another main aim was to assess the cold formability of high-strength materials for aerospace applications (martensitic stainless steels) under incremental processes. In order to understand the impact of rotary forging on the final properties of formed components, microstructural and mechanical analysis were performed. Microstructural and hardness analysis were conducted on both axial and transverse sections along the cold formed flange in order to study the grain flow orientation and strain distribution. In a similar fashion, mechanical test specimens were machined from different positions and orientations along the rotary forged component. Further analysis was performed on the components in the as-treated condition in order to understand the response of cold-worked Jethete M152 components to subsequent heat treatments. Microstructural and hardness analysis clearly reveals a strong grain reorientation and strain localization around "pickup" defects (material attached to the upper tool) observed on the flange top surface, close to the flange edge. These results suggest that an excessive deformation is localized during the early stages of the flange formation. Another characteristic feature found in the rotary forged parts is the presence of a buckling phenomenon which appears in later stages of the rotary forging process. Strain hardening along with the increasing flange length requires higher levels of forging loads to keep forming the flange. This results into a significant accumulation of compressive stresses in the transition region between the flange and the straight region. Gradually the resultant compressive force exceeds the critical buckling load, leading to the occurrence of the buckling phenomenon. This latter issue determines the limit of the cold flaring process. This can help to determine the maximum length of the flange part, achievable in this process, which is of great importance for the design of these manufacturing technologies. From the mechanical testing results, large differences were found as a function of both position and orientation (axial, transverse) throughout the rotary forged components (anisotropic properties). Concerning the impact of heat treatments on cold-worked components, no differences were found in the as-treated condition, in terms of microstructural and mechanical properties between regions with a large difference in strain distribution. These results denote the normalizing effect of conventional hardening treatments on cold-worked Jethete M152 components, restoring the homogenous and isotropic properties across the whole component


Colonization of the human nasopharynx is a feature of some species of Neisseria, and is a prerequisite of invasive meningococcal disease. The likelihood of colonization by Neisseria meningitidis varies widely between humans, and very few develop invasive disease. Explants of nasal mucosa derived from adult patients with non-allergic nasal obstruction were infected experimentally with Neisseria spp. At intervals over 18 h incubation, washed explants were homogenized, and viable bacteria were counted. To estimate bacterial invasion of mucosa, explants were exposed to 0.25% sodium taurocholate for 30 s prior to homogenization. N. meningitidis was recovered from the mucosa and the organism invaded and replicated within the tissue, in contrast to N. lactamica and N. animalis (n=9, P<0.008). N. meningitidis isolates of clones ET-5, ET-37 and lineage III were recovered from and invaded tissue, but strains of clones A4, A:subgroup I, A:subgroup III and A:subgroup IV-1 did not invade (n=6). To measure host variation, survival of N. meningitidis within nasal mucosa of 40 different human donors was measured. Intra-class correlation of replicates was 0.97, but the coefficient of variation of recovered viable counts was 1335% after 4 h and 77% after 18 h incubation. It is concluded that the distinctive colonization and disease potential of Neisseria spp. may be partly a consequence of their ability to invade and survive within human nasopharyngeal mucosa, but that this is influenced greatly by genetic or environmental factors operating on the host mucosa. This is consistent with the unpredictable epidemiology of meningococcal disease.


A total of 291 stomachs of bigeye tuna caught in the Western tropical Atlantic Ocean ranging between 60 and 195 cm fork length, were analyzed between October 2004 and November 2005. The vertical distribution of prey was studied in relation to their feeding strategies. A total of 83 prey items were identified of which 46 were fishes, represented mainly by brephoepipelagic, and meso-bathypelagic fishes; 20 cephalopods, 13 pelagic crustaceans, one tunicate, one heteropod and one pteropod. The Caribbean pomfret Brama caribbea was the most important food item, followed by other mesopelagic fishes such as Alepisaurus ferox, Omosudis lowei, Gempylus serpens, Brama brama and Diretmus argenteus. The squid Ornithoteuthis antillarum was the main preyed-on cephalopod, and the crustaceans Caridea and Brachyuran megalopae were also important food items. The feeding may occur continuously, all the time, or at least during the greater part of the day or night, as part of the feeding strategy to prey upon a vertically scattered small prey distributed in the water column. The relative equality in the proportions of surface, mid-water and deep-water prey organisms reflects the behavior of constant vertical displacement in the search for prey. Although the bigeye tuna prefers subthermocline layers, most of its prey items perform diel migrations and can be preyed on both near the surface and in deeper waters.


The Kwangju Uprising - "Korea's Tiananmen" - is one of the most important political events in late twentieth-century Korean history. What began as a peaceful demonstration against the imposition of military rule in the southwestern city of Kwangju in May 1980 turned into a bloody people's revolt. In the two decades since, memories of the Kwangju Uprising have lived on, assuming symbolic importance in the Korean democracy movement, underlying the rise in anti-American sentiment in South Korea, and shaping the nation's transition to a civil society. Nonetheless it remains a contested event, the subject still of controversy, confusion, international debate, and competing claims. As one of the few Western eyewitnesses to the Uprising, Linda Lewis is uniquely positioned to write about the event. In this innovative work on commemoration politics, social representation, and memory, Lewis draws on her fieldwork notes from May 1980, writings from the 1980s, and ethnographic research she conducted in the late 1990s on the memorialization of Kwangju and its relationship to changes in the national political culture. Throughout, the chronological organization of the text is crisscrossed with commentary that provocatively disrupts the narrative flow and engages the reader in the reflexive process of remembering Kwangju over two decades. Highly original in its method and approach, Laying Claim to the Memory of May situates this seminal event in a broad historical and scholarly context. The result is not only the definitive history of the Kwangju Uprising, but also a sweeping overview of Korean studies over the last few decades.


We seek to study numerically two-phase flow phenomena with phase change through the finite-element method (FEM) and the arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) framework. This method is based on the so-called "one-fluid" formulation; thus, only one set of equations is used to describe the flow field at the vapor and liquid phases. The equations are discretized on an unstructured tetrahedron mesh and the interface between the phases is defined by a triangular surface, which is a subset of the three-dimensional mesh. The Navier–Stokes equation is used to model the fluid flow with the inclusion of a source term to compute the interfacial forces that arise from two-phase flows. The continuity and energy equations are slightly modified to take into account the heat and mass transport between the different phases. Such a methodology can be employed to study accurately many problems, such as oil extraction and refinement in the petroleum area, design of refrigeration systems, modeling of biological systems, and efficient cooling of electronics for computational purposes, which is the aim of this research. A comparison of the obtained numerical results to the classical literature is performed and presented in this paper, thus proving the capability of the proposed new methodology as a platform for the study of diabatic two-phase flows.


The recycling of organic material through bacteria and microzooplankton to higher trophic levels, known as the "microbial loop", is an important process in aquatic ecosystems. Here the significance of the microbial loop in influencing nutrient supply to phytoplankton has been investigated in Lake Kinneret (Israel) using a coupled hydrodynamic–ecosystem model. The model was designed to simulate the dynamic cycling of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus through bacteria, phytoplankton and zooplankton functional groups, with each pool having unique C : N : P dynamics. Three microbial loop sub-model configurations were used to isolate mechanisms by which the microbial loop could influence phytoplankton biomass, considering (i) the role of bacterial mineralisation, (ii) the effect of micrograzer excretion, and (iii) bacterial ability to compete for dissolved inorganic nutrients. The nutrient flux pathways between the abiotic pools and biotic groups and the patterns of biomass and nutrient limitation of the different phytoplankton groups were quantified for the different model configurations. Considerable variation in phytoplankton biomass and dissolved organic matter demonstrated the sensitivity of predictions to assumptions about microbial loop operation and the specific mechanisms by which phytoplankton growth was affected. Comparison of the simulations identified that the microbial loop most significantly altered phytoplankton growth by periodically amplifying internal phosphorus limitation due to bacterial competition for phosphate to satisfy their own stoichiometric requirements. Importantly, each configuration led to a unique prediction of the overall community composition, and we conclude that the microbial loop plays an important role in nutrient recycling by regulating not only the quantity, but also the stoichiometry of available N and P that is available to primary producers. The results demonstrate how commonly employed simplifying assumptions about model structure can lead to large uncertainty in phytoplankton community predictions and highlight the need for aquatic ecosystem models to carefully resolve the variable stoichiometry dynamics of microbial interactions.