DomansKa, K., T. KijeK and a. nowaK, 2014. agricultural total factor productivity change and its determinants in european Union countries. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 20: 1273-1280 The present study concerns the measurement of changes in agricultural total factor productivity in 27 european Union (eU) countries. The analysis included the years 2007--2011. The study was conducted based on malmquist productivity index completed with decomposition on technological changes and technical efficiency changes. In addition, the determinants of total productivity were identified in the study, and econometric modeling of their effect on total factor productivity (TFP) was conducted using Tobit model. The study demonstrated a small increase in agricultural TFP for the whole sample of 27 EU countries over the examined period. The reason of this increase was mainly the changes in technical efficiency. An effect of technological changes was in turn relatively low and of negative character. The analysis of the factors determining TFP changes demonstrated that factors like: percentage of farm managers with complete agricultural education, average farm area and economy openness measured as a ratio of total export to total import are the stimulants. in turn, the variable like the share of farm managers aged above 55 years appeared to be dissimulated. it is worth to emphasize that soil quality, additional payment to investments and number of students' in agricultural and related fields of study was insignificant from the total productivity changes point of view.


If a partnership agreement either fails to allocate an item of partnership income, gain, deduction, credit, or loss, or does so invalidly, section 704(b) requires the item to be allocated "in accordance with the partners' interests in the partnership" (PIP). A brief portion of the section 704(b) regulations interpret this reallocation standard, providing guidelines of varying specificity. Commentators agree that the guidelines are vague and puzzling. The courts have not often had to apply this portion of the regulation. However, in the event that the courts do employ section 704(b), they have assigned an implicit priority to the different guidelines, eliminating some from discussion without comment, and avoiding any general discussion of the reallocation problem. This elliptical judicial practice follows that of the examples in the regulation itself. As a consequence, reallocation presents, apart from a few straightforward safe harbors, straits of uncertainty for taxpayers and their advisors. This article examines the regulatory guidelines and offers a taxonomy of situations to which they apply. The article concludes that the guidelines do not provide systematic answers - so that the courts have been right to apply them selectively and intuitively - because the guidelines represent policy concerns that cannot be readily harmonized. When properly analyzed, the relevant portion of the regulation appears to contemplate two standards of allocation (or reallocation). The first standard would allocate partnership items that have tax consequences, whether they affect non-tax economic consequences or not, in the same proportion as the partners would share the economic consequences of partnership operations, distributions and liquidation in a no-tax world (the virtual-economic-agreement standard). The second standard requires allocations that eliminate capital account deficits of partners who have no deficit restoration obligation, or otherwise match economic risk and tax advantage, without regard to the partners' intended economic arrangement (the curative standard). It is characteristic of curative allocations to depart from the partners' economic agreement. Thus, the two standards often have incompatible consequences; they are certainly not interchangeable or equivalent. Despite the regulation's unambiguous imposition of both standards, it is written as if it established a univocal standard; the regulations extensive reliance on the phrase "in accordance with the partner's interest in the partnership" suffices to suggest this. This equivocation creates a risk of discordant allocation decisions by courts and confusion for taxpayers and their advisors.


The response of bridges when subjected to seismic excitation may be significantly influenced by the dynamic properties of their foundations. With current design practice, foundation elements are typically considered as elastic springs without consideration of material and radiation damping. The objectives of this research were to identify general foundation models that are suitable for modeling soil-structure interaction in seismic bridge analysis, to modify an existing nonlinear seismic bridge analysis computer program to include a new element capable of representing such models, and to conduct a parametric study to assess the effect of the increased energy dissipation mechanisms on the response of bridge substructures. For spread footing foundations, three different models were identified and applied to a typical two-column bridge bent. For pile foundations, four models were derived and applied to a five-column bent. The seismic response for each model was compared with conventional elastic and fixed-base models. Several soil stiffness values and earthquake records were considered for analysis. Maximum values of displacement, plastic hinge rotation, and cumulative plastic hinge rotations were noted and compared. It was concluded that the use of the foundation models can produce an important change in the bridge response when compared to that of the fixed-base model, depending on the frequency content of the earthquake and the stiffness of the soil. The effects of radiation damping were observed to be insignificant for foundations on stiff soil, but important for those on soft soil. In addition, the performance of the simpler damped foundation models was found to be quite similar to that of the more complex models.


In the last decade, the research of the usability of mobile phones has been a newly evolving area with few established methodologies and realistic practices that ensure capturing usability in evaluation. Thus, there exists growing demand to explore appropriate evaluation methodologies that evaluate the usability of mobile phones quickly as well as comprehensively. This study aims to develop a task-based usability checklist based on heuristic evaluations in views of mobile phone user interface (UI) practitioners. A hierarchical structure of UI design elements and usability principles related to mobile phones were developed and then utilized to develop the checklist. To demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the proposed checklist, comparative experiments were conducted on the usability checklist and usability testing. The majority of usability problems found by usability testing and additional problems were discovered by the proposed checklist. It is expected that the usability checklist proposed in this study could be used quickly and efficiently by usability practitioners to evaluate the mobile phone UI in the middle of the mobile phone development process.


Plastic has penetrated everyday life, and the disadvantages of plastics are becoming more and more visible: large quantities of plastics leak into rivers and oceans, with adverse effects to marine ecosystems and related economic activities. This report is one of the first of its kind to quantify primary microplastics leakage and to demonstrate that these primary microplastics are globally responsible for a major source of plastics in the oceans.


OBJECTIVE
To present the results of early postpartum metabolic assessment in women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), to determine predictive factors for subsequent diabetes, and to investigate the association of postpartum glucose tolerance with other components of the metabolic syndrome.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
A total of 788 women were evaluated 3-6 months after a GDM pregnancy. A 75-g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed. Cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, BMI, and body fat distribution were assessed. Clinical and obstetric history, baseline variables at the diagnosis of GDM, metabolic control during pregnancy, and index pregnancy outcome were compared in women with diabetes and women without diabetes (American Diabetes Association [ADA] criteria) after pregnancy. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to ascertain independent predictors of subsequent diabetes. Correlation coefficients were assessed between postpartum glucose tolerance and lipid levels, blood pressure, BMI, and body fat distribution.

RESULTS
According to ADA criteria, 588 (74.6%) women were normal, 46 (5.8%) had impaired fasting glucose, 82 (10.4%) had impaired glucose tolerance, 29 (3.7%) had both impaired fasting glucose and impaired glucose tolerance, and 43 (5.4%) had diabetes. Prepregnancy obesity, recurrence of GDM, gestational age at diagnosis of GDM, glucose values in the 100-g OGTT, number of abnormal values in the 100-g OGTT, fasting C-peptide levels in pregnancy, C-peptide/glucose score in pregnancy, insulin requirement in pregnancy, 3rd trimester HbA1c levels, and macrosomia differed significantly in women with subsequent diabetes. Independent predictors of postpartum diabetes were prepregnancy obesity, C-peptide/glucose score during pregnancy, and the number of abnormal values in the 100-g diagnostic OGTT. The area under the postpartum glucose curve was positively associated with BMI, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, triglycerides, and systolic and diastolic blood pressures.

CONCLUSIONS
Low C-peptide/glucose score during pregnancy together with prepregnancy obesity and severity of GDM (number of abnormal values in the 100-g diagnostic OGTT) are independent predictors of subsequent diabetes. Our data suggest that regardless of obesity and severity of GDM, a beta-cell defect increases the risk of postpartum diabetes. The association of postpartum glucose tolerance with triglyceride levels, blood pressure, obesity, and regional distribution of body fat suggests that postpartum glucose intolerance anticipates a high-risk cardiovascular profile that comprises other risk factors besides diabetes.


Laser ultrasound is a technique based on lasers to generate and detect ultrasound remotely. The thermal expansion arising from the optical absorption of a short laser pulse generates ultrasonic wave. By using finite element method, this study presents a source model for laser ultrasonic generation in thin transversely isotropic laminate composite in the thermoelastic regime. According to the thermoelastic theory, the transient temperature is equivalent to a body source to generate ultrasonic waves. The numerical results indicate that the symmetric and antisymmetric Lamb wave is excited in thin transversely isotropic laminate composite plate, the evolution of the dispersive waveform is a function of the source-receiver distance, the plate thickness, and the parameters of the fiber-reinforced composite. These results are very useful for evaluation materials parameters of the composite plate.


The hydrological regime of the Okavango River Basin is the main driver of ecological change in the delta. The delta supports a small-scale fishery which is a source of livelihood for communities within its fringes. The fish resource is particularly important to subsistence fishers, who have limited access to socio-economic opportunities. However, fish availability is subject to 'concentration and dilution' effects because of the hydrological regime. As a copying strategy, fishers use a variety of fishing methods to effectively harvest the delta's fish community across all its trophic levels. This exploitation regime helps to maintain the delta's species diversity and only reduces fish biomass proportionally across the different trophical levels. Furthermore, fishers have developed different fish-processing techniques to preserve their harvest for low fishing season periods to cope with low food availability. The aim of this paper therefore, was to explore spatio-temporal variations in fish availability and to show how the delta's subsistence fishers cope with this dynamicity.


In 1981 the General Accounting Office implored U. S. businesses to adopt gainsharing as a means of productivity, yet its usage is far from universal (Markham et al., 1992). In its simplest form, gainsharing is a team or group incentive system which provides employee bonuses based on performance improvements (Welbourne et al., 1995). Team-based incentives have the advantage of focusing independent-minded employee efforts on a common goal (Martell et al., 1992). Company benefits from gainsharing include stronger employee focus on cost reduction, quality improvement, employee involvement, improved labor relations, and more responsive managers (Rock and Berger, 1991). When properly implemented, gainsharing integrates teamwork, communication, goal orientation and performance improvements into one system. The motivational and productivity benefits of gainsharing have the potential to enhance corporate competitiveness. For this reason, several major organizations have adopted gainsharing systems (e.g., Motorola, General Electric, 3M). However, the popularity of gainsharing is a fairly recent phenomenon. In 1986, O'Dell noted that only 13% of firms were using gainsharing, and the large majority (73%) of the gainsharing systems had only been implemented since 1980 (O'Dell and McAdams, 1987). Only four years later, the percentage of firms using gainsharing had doubled to 26%, and gainsharing had become the fastest growing nontraditional pay-for-performance system in the U.S. (Hanlon and Taylor, 1991). At this time, the majority of gainsharing systems were still found in the manufacturing sector of the economy (Markham et al., 1992), however gainsharing was rapidly growing in the service sector. Given this sudden popularity, it is surprising that only a small number of studies have examined gainsharing in field settings (e.g., Bullock and Lawler, 1984; Bullock and Tubbs, 1991). Moreover, the published gainsharing studies have been primarily limited to manufacturing firms. This raises the question of generalizability to the growing service sector. Service industries comprise more than three-fourths of the gross national product, and nine out of ten new jobs (Zeithaml et al., 1990). Service industries have, however, begun rapidly adopting gainsharing (Markham et al., 1992). This implies a widespread assumption within the service sector that the gainsharing benefits found in manufacturing industries are replicable in a service environment. However, this is a largely unsupported assumption. Importantly, there are differences that may make the implementation of gainsharing more difficult in service industries. In particular, there are questions regarding the objective measurement of productivity which may undermine the benefits of gainsharing in service industries. Without objectivity, the necessary trust between labor and management may not develop, which would then undermine the motivational aspects of gainsharing. Given the remarkable growth in the service sector, and its growing adoption of gainsharing, it is important to ask if gainsharing is appropriate in a service setting. We accepted the charge proposed by Hanlon and Taylor who said, "To broaden the scope of gainsharing research, the focus should be on the question of how gainsharing operates to produce final outcomes . . ." (italics added) (1991:240). This study examined three of those processes through which gainsharing may affect firm outcomes. We argue that the benefits of gainsharing are due to increased organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and satisfaction with pay administration. Various authors have defined OCB as behavior that is discretionary and not explicitly recognized by the formal reward system, but which promotes the proper functioning of the organization (cf., Konovsky and Pugh, 1994; Organ, 1988; Van Dyne et al., 1994). Yet we believe that OCBs are likely impacted by rewards. This study hopes to extend the generalizability of prior research by providing the first known quasi-experiment of gainsharing within service organizations. …


This paper investigates the effect of Inflation Targeting (IT) on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Based on panel data of 53 developing countries over the period 1980-2007, this study is the first, to the best of the author's knowledge, to evaluate directly the effect of IT on FDI. Using a variety of propensity scores-matching methods which allow controlling for selfselection in policy adoption, it finds that the treatment effect of IT on FDI is positive, statistically significant and robust to a set of alternative specifications. In terms of policy recommendations, this finding therefore suggests that if well implemented, IT adoption can be a legitimate part of the policy toolkit available to policymakers in developing countries in their competition to attract more FDI.


At head of title: State of Illinois ... Department of registration and education ... Division of the State geological survey ...


This compelling book retells and revises the story of the German Renaissance and Reformation through the lives of two controversial men of the sixteenth century: the Saxon court painter Lucas Cranach (the Serpent) and the Wittenberg monk-turned-reformer Martin Luther (the Lamb). Contemporaries and friends (each was godfather to the other's children), Cranach and Luther were very different Germans, yet their collaborative successes merged art and religion into a revolutionary force that became the Protestant Reformation. Steven Ozment, an internationally recognized historian of the Reformation era, reprises the lives and works of Cranach (1472-1553) and Luther (1483-1546) in this generously illustrated book. He contends that Cranach's new art and Luther's oratory released a barrage of criticism upon the Vatican, the force of which secured a new freedom of faith and pluralism of religion in the Western world. Between Luther's pulpit praise of the sex drive within the divine estate of marriage and Cranach's parade of strong, lithe women, a new romantic, familial consciousness was born. The "Cranach woman" and the "Lutheran household"-both products of the merged Renaissance and Reformation worlds-evoked a new organization of society and foretold a new direction for Germany.


As part of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) Multibend Achromat lattice upgrade two new beamlines for spectroscopy will be constructed on a canted undulator source at Sector 25. The programs at the 20-ID beamline at the APS need to move to sector 25 to make room for a planned long beamline. These will be combined with some other APS spectroscopy programs at sector 25 to use two new beamlines on a canted undulator. These two beamlines will service existing and upgraded endstations covering a variety of spectroscopy applications. There will be a microprobe branch that will provide sub-micron beams for fluorescence imaging, and microXAFS. These can be combined with confocal optics for micron level depth sensitivity. This branch will also have a station for XAFS experiments requiring a high-brilliance high-flux beam such as doped thin films or ultra-dilute samples. The second Advanced Spectroscopy branch will provide beam to two inline hutches. The first will have stations for both an enhanced LERIX spectrometer for non-resonant inelastic scattering (x-ray Raman), and spectrometers for high resolution emission spectroscopy. The second hutch will provide space for experiments requiring extensive setup, such as time-resolved pump-probe experiments. Both hutches will have a variety of focusing options providing beam sizes down to a few microns. To provide greater beam separation, both lines will have side deflecting mirrors for harmonic rejection, and focusing/collimation. The planned energy ranges are 4-32 keV for the microprobe branch, and 440 keV for the Advanced Spectroscopy branch. The horizontal deflection mirrors allow use of small offset monochromators equipped with liquid nitrogen cooled Si (111) crystals for monochromatic beam, and wide-bandpass multilayers providing higher flux for experiments that do not need high resolution such as imaging and non-resonant emission spectroscopy. The Advanced Spectroscopy branch will also have a secondary monochromator for experiments needing better resolution than provided by Si (111).


Published in 1964, My Years with General Motors was an immediate best-seller and today is considered one of the few classic books on management. The book is the ghostwritten memoir of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (1875-1966), whose business and management strategies enabled General Motors to overtake Ford as the dominant American automobile manufacturer in the 1920s and 1930s. What has been largely unknown until now is that My Years with General Motors was almost not published. Although it was written with the permission of General Motors—and slated for publication in October 1959—at the last minute General Motors tried to suppress the book out of fears that some of the material in it could become evidence in an antitrust action against the company. This book, by John McDonald, Sloan's ghostwriter, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the book's writing, its attempted suppression, and the lawsuit that eventually led to its publication. McDonald's narrative is partly the David-and-Goliath story of a lone journalist taking on the world's then-largest corporation and partly a study of strategy in its own right. McDonald's struggle to publish the book led him to navigate a complicated course among the competing interests of General Motors, Fortune magazine (his employer), and Time, Inc. (Fortune's owner). In many ways this "book about the book" parallels the Sloan book as a tale of successful, brilliantly planned strategy.


OBJECTIVES
We explored whether various key stakeholders considered cost sharing with state telephone-based tobacco cessation quitlines, because including tobacco cessation services as part of the required essential health benefits is a new requirement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

METHODS
We analyzed qualitative data collected from interviews conducted in April and May of 2014 with representatives of state health departments, quitline service providers, health plans, and insurance brokers in 4 US states.

RESULTS
State health departments varied in the strategies they considered the role their state quitline would play in meeting the ACA requirements. Health plans and insurance brokers referred to state quitlines because they were perceived as effective and free, but in 3 of the 4 states, the private stakeholder groups did not consider cost sharing.

CONCLUSIONS
If state health departments are going to initiate cost-sharing agreements with private insurance providers, then they will need to engage a broad array of stakeholders and will need to overcome the perception that state quitline services are free.


Background/Purpose: The US Department of Health and Human Services recommends that children participate daily in 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA). A threshold of >4.0 METs (metabolic equivalent of task) is considered MVPA in children. Physical education classes are ideal settings for the promotion of MVPA through the practice of continuous (walking, running) and discrete (kicking, throwing, striking) skills. Recent research in adults has determined the energy expenditure of discrete skill practice to be high while participants' rate of perceived exertion (RPE) was low. The replication of this phenomenon in children would provide evidence for the inclusion of discrete skill practice in curricula aiming to promote MVPA. Thus, this study examined energy expenditure (METs), rate of perceived exertion (RPE), and level of fun during object projection skill performance (kicking, throwing, and striking) at three different practice intervals in children. Method: Children (N = 42, Mage = 8.1 ± 0.8 years) participated in three nine-minute experimental sessions where participants performed rounds of 5 kicks, 5 throws, and 5 strikes in blocked fashion, at three practice intervals (i.e., 30, 12, and 6 seconds). Each participant completed the three sessions in a randomized order. Participants were instructed to perform all trials with maximum effort and to report their RPE (1 "Not tired at all" – 10 "So tired, I can't go anymore") and level of fun (1 "Not fun at all" – 10 "The most fun I've ever had") using 10-point scales. The average energy expenditure (METs) during minutes 4-8 of each nine-minute session were calculated using a COSMED K4b2 gas analyzer. Analysis/Results: Three one-way repeated measures ANOVAs for METs, RPE, and fun were conducted to examine differences across groups and sex. Data indicated a main effect for interval condition (F = 94.36, p < .001, η2 = 0.605) with decreased interval times between performance trials yielding significantly higher METs across conditions (4.5 ± 0.8, 6.3 ± 1.3, 8.3 ± 1.6 at 30-, 12-, 6-sec interval respectively). There also was a main effect for sex (F = 52.28, p < .001, η2 = 0.305), with boys demonstrating higher METs at each performance trial interval. RPE and fun analyses determined a main effect for each interval (RPE; F = 91.16, p < .001, fun; F = 96.61, p<.001) with no difference in gender at each interval. The average RPE responses were low (3.3 ± 1.8, 4.1 ± 2.2, and 4.9 ± 2.7 at 30-, 12- and 6-sec interval respectively) while average fun levels remained high (8.0 ± 1.4, 8.3 ± 1.4, and 8.7 ± 1.4 at 30-, 12-, 6-sec interval respectively). Conclusions: Results indicate that skill practice in all three interval conditions resulted in MVPA. Boys and girls reported equivalent low levels of RPE and high levels of fun. These data demonstrate that the practice of discrete skills yield high levels of energy expenditure (METs), low levels of perceived exertion, and high levels of fun. This study provides positive evidence for the inclusion of discrete skills in physical activity interventions and physical education curricula attempting to promote MVPA.


Most of our information about the evolution of Earth's ocean-climate system comes from the analysis of sediments laid down in the past. For example, the microfossil assemblage reflects the temperature, salinity and nutrient abundance of the water in which the organisms lived, while the chemical and isotopic composition of biogenic carbonates may be used to reconstruct past variations in the operation of the carbon cycle, as well as changes in ocean circulation. Nevertheless, understanding the link between these sediment variables (or 'proxies') and environmental conditions is not straightforward. This volume adopts a novel approach by bringing together palaeontologists, geochemists and palaeoceanographers, who contribute evidence that is required to better constrain these proxies. Topics include: (i) processes of biomineralization, and their effect on the chemical and isotopic composition of different organisms; (ii) proxy validation, including field, laboratory and theoretical studies; (iii) the links between modern and fossil organisms.


The Paradox of Anti-Semitism, by Dan Cohn-Sherbok. London: Continuum, 2006. 242 pp. $26.95. Is antisemitism good for Jewishness? Dan Cohn-Sherbok thinks it is. The paradox of antisemitism, he writes, is that"hatred can be a positive force in Jewish history." "Rather than being our most ferocious enemy, anti-Semitism has . . . often fostered Jewish survival." In fact, the decline in antisemitism in modern times has led to the "disintegration" of traditional Judaism. The idea of tolerance, a product of the Enlightenment, has insidiously undermined Judaism by disarming its most overt, yet stimulating opponent. The result is that Jews today are "deeply divided over the central tenets of the faith," many separating themselves altogether from the Jewish heritage. This leads Cohn-Sherbok to conclude, provocatively, that "anti-Semitism and Jewish survival must be intrinsically interconnected." It is antisemitism which has the paradoxical power "to renew and enrich Jewish life." The decline of antisemitism began when the Enlightenment ideal of tolerance was transformed by the French Revolution into the universal political rights of man. The Code Napoleon established in law what the revolutionaries had aspired to through politics: Jews were no longer to be a special "estate" within France, but were to be fully citizens, indistinguishable from former aristocrats and Africans. Jewish leaders quickly assured Napoleon that Judaism was indeed compatible with citizenship, and when not all Jews went along with this the fragmentation of Judaism began. Reform Judaism was created in the 19th century as a response to the emancipation brought about by the French Revolution. 18lh-century intellectuals such as Moses Mendelssohn and Baruch Spinoza had found points of compatibility between Judaism and the often secular ideals of the Enlightenment. Reform Judaism provided a theological framework for this by denying the divine authorship of the Torah and limiting the binding laws of the Torah to those which were easily understood. Between the middle of the 19th and the 20th centuries, new schools of Jewish thought found further common ground between Judaism and the increasingly secular European world. Neo-orthodoxy attempted to harmonize Judaism with the claims of science and modernist biblical scholarship. Conservative and Reform Judaism would emphasize the role human reflection played in the Jewish faith-generally at the expense of orthodoxy's insistence on the Divine Revelation at Sinai. In 1971, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) would make belief in God not essential to the Jewish faith: "There is room in Reform Judaism . . . for a variety of understandings of God's reality, including individuals who are not sure whether they believe in God or think that they do not believe in God." Mordecai Kaplan's Reconstructionist Judaism and the "Radical Judaism" of Sherwin Wine further assimilated the meaning of Jewishness to the Diaspora. …


This study began with the idea that the drone attacks launched by the United States on the northwest region of Pakistan since 2004 have not helped in the expressed aim of the US to win the war on terror. The study asked three main questions. It wished to discover why drone attacks in Pakistan had not helped to win the war on terror, the main reasons that these attacks have not been successful and how these attacks have led to the increase of the anti-US feeling in Pakistan. The study used a case study methodology that focused on gaining a qualitative insight from a range of perspectives including official government stances, the reaction of media and social media and the public reactions in Pakistan. The study analysis is supported by the theory of neoliberalism and neo realism as it deemed the most appropriate in this type of work. Conducted within the neoliberal and positivist perspective, the study concluded that the drone strikes have not helped to win the war on terror and that they are actually a major part of why this victory has not yet occurred. The cold-hearted manner with which the US seem to launch drone strike attacks have led to the development of the views that the US does not care for international laws and has no desire to take Pakistan sovereignty into account. The role of the media has helped spread the anti-US feeling far more rapidly than would have been previously possible in the region. The access to the Internet, the use of social media websites and the global coverage of the situation means that reports of civilian casualties has been a common occurrence over the past 10 years, and this has seemingly strengthened the terrorist resolve, turned the public against the US strategy and also led in some cases to the further radicalization of the Pakistani youth. When assessed through a neoliberal perspective, it was apparent that the strategy does not fit with the concept of international co-operation and that the actions of the US have led to the growth of anti-US sentiment. The main failing of the drone strike strategy could be said to be the fact that it was devised using a neorealist attitude in an increasingly neoliberal global society. The study also presented a number of policy recommendations and future areas of study based on the findings from this work.


The study aims at exploration of causal relationship among golf club employees 'training reactions, training learning, training behaviors and organization commitment (result level) with Kirkpatrick's four-level evaluation model as the foundation of ideas and verification of causal model. With questionnaire survey, we gather sample in convenience sampling in central Taiwan for empirical study. Effective sample is 494 persons who responded to hypothesis of the purpose and validation study through SEM statistics technique. From SEM statistics, overall fit indexes pass theory threshold. Empirical results show golf club employees' training reactions affect the result of organization commitment through training learning and training behaviors. Thus, training learning and training behaviors are mediating in overall causal model. The conclusion of the study is golf club employees show stronger learning achievements and learning behaviors when they have better reactions to education training. They have, as a result, higher organization commitment. The key to promote organization commitment is to enhance golf club employees' positive reactions after education training to have stronger learning achievements and learning behaviors. It is hoped that findings in this study will help proprietors of golf clubs understand how employees feel after education training. We also offer suggestions for reference of golf club proprietors in operation management. (ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.) 1. Introduction Leisure sports have become common in Taiwan people thanks to economic development, open society, awareness of health and sports programs on media. Among various leisure sports, we are seeing rapid growth of number of golf players. Other than basic needs of leisure sport, golf is a major medium of social intercourse and leisure. As demand grows, golf market means a huge business opportunity. Proprietors invested a great amount of funds in golf clubs everywhere to meet market demand. This shows great potential of golf market. Yet, the result is consumers have more selections and competition becomes tougher among golf clubs. High amount of funds means high barrier of retreat. Proprietors invested lots of funds in hardware at golf clubs. Consumers are no longer satisfied with only hardware. Only those with highly different service quality meet customers' expectations to win competitors. For golf clubs that provide service as product, employees are the most important asset. Service is provided in different ways and quality is subject to service providers who often restraint service quality control. It is difficult to convey products in consistence, have good education training, apply skills from training into work and make employees meet professional quality requirements in order to have good results. A number of studies have shown that results of education training affect overall performance of an organization such as productivity, turnover rate, absence rate and organization commitment, etc. (Huang, 2001; Acton & Golden, 2003; Gberevbie, 20 10). Organization commitment brings strong psychological attachment of employees, enhances their will to serve at the organization and become loyal to the organization. It is an important intangible asset of a company. With high organization commitment, employees have lower turnover rate and absence rate but higher productivity. In addition to reactions of golf club employees after education training, we also explore the relation among employees' training learning, training behaviors and organization commitment in order to understand golf club employees' behavior model after education training and discuss the causal relationship. It is hoped that findings in this study will enable golf club proprietors better understand overall evaluation of their employees after education training and help proprietors pay more attention to essential content of education training for due education training. …


Ageism is defined as the intentional and/or subconscious discrimination against elderly people. Despite the prevalence of ageism, nurses are able to offset prejudice against the elderly and improve the quality of health care for older patients by educating patients, families, and health care providers about the effects of ageism and by advocating for the delivery of unbiased care. In order to discuss the extent to which ageism affects the quality of health care and nursing practice, this paper reviews the published literature pertaining to ageism. Elderly cancer patients are even more affected by ageist attitudes and beliefs, and as a result experience poorer health outcomes. Future research should continue to explore the effects that ageism has on the health of the elderly so that changes to nursing practice and health care policy can be made, thereby providing all patients with high-quality health care.


International trade law, human rights law and development studies share the common objective of promoting higher standards of living in the poorer countries of the world. Human rights and development scholars have been critical of the law of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), as implementing a development strategy which dominates and constrains the development strategy options of developing countries but which perceives development only in a narrow, economic sense. In this paper, the different theoretical underpinnings of international trade law and international human rights law are described and compared and their differing conceptions of development are examined from the perspective of the broader development discourse. The package of rights and obligations of developing countries under WTO law (the 'WTO-Minus strategy') is also described and examples of significant constraints placed by this package on the development strategy options open to developing countries regarding trade in goods are examined from the perspectives of the broader development discourse and international human rights norms. The capacity of the WTO to incorporate new and multidisciplinary knowledge about development is considered.


OBJECTIVES
To examine uptake of screening for all individuals born between 1945 and 1965 (referred to by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the "birth cohort") and outline preliminary HCV prevalence data in the New York City jail system.

METHODS
Data were extracted from electronic health records for all individuals screened for HCV between June 13, 2013, and June 13, 2014, in New York City jails. We used the Abbott EIA 2.0 HCV antibody assay for testing.

RESULTS
In the year of study, 56 590 individuals were incarcerated; 15.1% were born between 1945 and 1965, and 84.6% were born after 1965. HCV screening was completed for 64.1% of the birth cohort and for 11.1% born after 1965, with 55.1% and 43.8% of cases found in these groups, respectively. The overall seropositivity rate was 20.6%.

CONCLUSIONS
Birth cohort screening in a large jail system identified many HCV cases, but HCV infection was common among younger age groups.

PUBLIC HEALTH IMPLICATIONS
Universal screening may be warranted pending further study including cost-effectiveness analyses.


Summary Construction of the M5 Motorway over recent soft clays within the Somerset Levels left behind a legacy of geotechnical information which has been assembled on a computer file containing the findings of 243 borings between Clevedon and Huntsworth. The paper gives examples of the use of the file for production of representative profiles of moisture content, strength, Atterberg limits and compression behaviour. These serve to highlight many of the now familiar characteristics of Somerset Alluvium and similarities with other recent deposits in the U.K. In particular they indicate the variability to be anticipated due to changes in consistency of the material, its sensitivity and some reflection on the method of sampling and testing. The profile of over-consolidation within the zone of desiccation is also clearly seen. Some tentative correlations are made between Atterberg limits and corresponding measurements of sensitivity, strength and compression constants (Cc, λ) on the basis of Critical State theory, which serve to show a more consistent and more useful pattern.


Background A review by Chalmers et al. (2004), rugby coaches have a role in preventing injuries and a perspective by Bahr et al. (2005), understanding the mechanisms of injury in sport identified a number of factors. Objective To design an information resource for coaching sport. Design An information resource develops modules of learning, retrospective injury data are reviewed and ethical approval is sought. The inquiry is based on rugby union. Setting Structured interviews are held with senior level coaches. Participants Five qualified senior grade coaches in rugby union. Intervention The coaches remarked that safety is practicable, athlete conditioning beneficial and technique is important. Injury data linked to game events illustrated the relevance of Newtonian Physics. Results Qualitative data highlights safety as being practicable but game rules had less certainty. From the injury data the total consults: n=367 (08/09), n=377 (09/10) shoulder 39, 42; 81 due to the tackle (inertia & interaction), low back 104, 41; 145 due to scrum, tackle (interaction), hamstring 38, 42; 80 due to running (inertia) and the ankle 52, 59;111 due to running, tackle (inertia). Conclusion Safety in coaching sport is practicable, but the game rules need more recognition. Applying Newtonian Physics to injury events enabled an understanding of game actions. Integrating into the modules of learning; the game rules, the applications of Newtonian Physics and attention to safety, injuries can be prevented.


Investigating how fluids flow inside the complicated geometries of porous rocks is an important problem in the petroleum industry. The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) can be used to calculate porous rockst' permeability. In this paper, we show how to implement this method efficiently on modern GPUs. Both a sequential CPU implementation and a parallelized GPU implementation is developed. Both implementations were tested using three porous data sets with known permeabilities. Our work shows that it is possible to calculate the permeability of porous rocks of simulations sizes up to 3683, which fit into the 4 GB memory of the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 card. Our single floating-point precision simulation resulted in respectbale 0.95-1.59 MLUPS whereas our GPU implentation achieved remarkable 180+ MLUPS for several lattices in the 1603 to 3683 range allowing calculations that would take hours on the CPU to be done in minutes on the GPU. Techniques for reducing round-off errors are also discussed and implemented.


Abstract : Single-station group velocities at periods between 4 and 70 seconds and single-station phase velocities at periods between 10 and 50 seconds are obtained for a broad region of the eastern United States for both Rayleigh and Love waves. These data were obtained by the single-station method using earthquakes with known fault-plane solutions in the central United States. The group velocity data are combined with earlier acquired attenuation data to yield Q values for Rayleigh and Love waves in the eastern United States. Inversions of the dispersion curves for shear-velocity models of the crust and upper mantle indicate that all of the data can be explained satisfactorily by a single model which is isotropic in its elastic properties. This model includes a surface layer of low-velocity sediments, and is characterized by upper crustal shear- wave velocities which increase from 3.4 to 3.7 km/sec with increasing depth, by lower crustal shear-wave velocities between 4.0 and 3.8 km/sec, and by an upper- most mantle shear-wave velocity of about 4.8 km/sec. The fundamental-mode data of this study do not require a low-velocity zone in either the crust or upper mantle. Higher-mode velocities and wave forms, although having potentially greater resolving power than the fundamental-mode data, were too inconsistent to contribute to the elucidation of detailed features of the crust-upper mantle model.


This article uses price data and editorial commentaries from the contemporary financial press to measure the impact of political events on investors' expectations from the middle of the nineteenth century until the First World War. The main question addressed is why political events appeared to affect the world's biggest financial market, the London bond market, much less between 1881 and 1914 than they had between 1843 and 1880. In particular, I ask why the outbreak of the First World War, an event traditionally seen as having been heralded by a series of international crises, was not apparently anticipated by investors. The article considers how far the declining sensitivity of the bond market to political events was a result of the spread of the gold standard, increased international financial integration, or changes in the fiscal policies of the great powers. I suggest that the increasing national separation of bond markets offers a better explanation. However, even this structural change cannot explain why the London market was so slow to appreciate the risk of war in 1914. To investors, the First World War truly came as a bolt from the blue. Copyright Economic History Society 2006.


Our aim was to define the distribution of monocyte subsets in a cohort of congestive heart failure (CHF) patients, to verify whether increased severity of CHF is linked to the expansion of specific monocyte subsets, and finally to investigate the relationship between monocyte subset relative frequencies, laboratory parameters of inflammation, and monocyte ACE expression. Thirty consecutive CHF patients and 26 healthy control subjects were evaluated for peripheral blood monocyte expression of CD14, CD16 and CD143 (ACE) by flow-cytometry, and for endothelial-derived soluble CD146 levels by ELISA. CD14++CD16+ frequency was significantly higher in CHF patients than in Controls (%, median value and IQ) (12.3, 8.7–14.8 vs 5.9, 4.7–6.9, p++CD16+ levels. Frequencies of CD14+CD16+ monocytes were significantly lower in CHF patients as compared to Controls, and negatively correlated with levels of soluble CD146 (r = −0.529; p 0.048). In conclusion, monocytic CD14++CD16+ frequency and CD143 levels are increased and reflect disease status and progressive cardiac deterioration in CHF patients. The CD14+CD16+ subset is depleted in CHF and is linked to endothelial damage in this group of patients. Although the question of whether differences in monocyte CD14CD16 expansion are causal or whether they represent a marker of HF progression which is potentially relevant for risk prediction remains unanswered, we believe that our data represent an important tool for exploring the role of selective inflammatory pathways in CHF progression.


Massive Millimeter Wave (mmWave) Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems utilize hybrid beamforming techniques to alleviate the implementation complexity of combining a large number of antennas. To solve the optimization problem in the hybrid design supporting multiple users and multiple data streams per user, we first propose a coordinated Radio Frequency (RF) beamforming technique based on the Generalized Low Rank Approximation of Matrices (GLRAM) approach and then develop an efficient Modified GLRAM (MGLRAM) algorithm. The proposed scheme only requires the information of the composite channel, instead of the complete physical channel matrix which is assumed to be known in the existing literature. It takes advantage of the coordination between the base station and users to achieve a maximal array gain and has no dimensionality constraint. The multiplexing gain is then exploited by applying the Block Diagonalization (BD) technique. It is shown that our proposed scheme is a practical and competing solution, which can be easily applied to both the Time Division Duplex (TDD) and Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) systems.


Analysing investments in ISs in order to maximise benefits has become a prime concern, especially for private corporations. No formula of equilibrium exists that could link the injected amounts and accrued returns. The relationship is simply not straightforward. This thesis is based upon empirical work which involved sketching organisational ethnographies (four organographies and a sectography) into the role and value of information systems in Jordanian financial organisations. Besides deciphering the map of impacts, it explains the attributions of the variations in the impacts of ISs which were found to be related to the internal organisational processes: culturally and politically specific considerations, economically or technically rooted factors and environmental factors. The research serves as an empirical attempt to test out the applicability of adopting the interpretive paradigm to researching organisations in a developing country. The fieldwork comprised an exploratory stage, a detailed investigation of four case studies and a survey stage encompassing 16 organisations. Primary and secondary data were collected from multiple sources using a range of instruments. The evidence highlights the fact that little long term strategic planning was pursued; the emphasis was more focused on short term planning. There was no noticeable adoption of any strategic fit principle linking IS strategy to the corporate strategy. In addition, the benefits obtained were mostly intangible. Although ISs were central to the work of the organisations surveyed as the core technology, they were considered as tools or work enablers rather than weapons for competitive rivalry. The cultural specificity of IS impacts was evident and the cultural and political considerations were key factors in explaining the attributions of the variations in the impacts of ISs in JFOs. The thesis confirms that measuring the benefits of ISs is the problematic. However, in order to gain more insight, the phenomenon of "the use of ISs" has to be studied within its context.


Trypanosomosis, or sleeping sickness, is one of the most important livestock diseases in Africa. Some West African cattle breeds show a degree of resistance to a trypanosome infection: they are trypanotolerant. At the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, Kenya, an F2 experiment has been established to unravel the genetic background of trypanotolerance. This thesis had two main aims: First to determine the genetic background of trypanotolerance, and second to investigate opportunities to incorporate this information in a breeding scheme to increase performance of cattle in tsetse-infested areas. Based on the results from the F2 experiment, several traits were defined, which reflected features of trypanotolerant cattle. Subsequently, based on preliminary results from an analysis to determine chromosome fractions containing genes (QTL) involved in trypanotolerance performed at ILRI, the mode of expression of these QTL was investigated and one of the QTL was found to be maternally imprinted. These QTL could be utilised in an introgression scheme, but also for within breed selection. Both options were investigated. When introgressing QTL for disease resistance the optimal number of backcross generations from genetic or economic point of view was found to be different. The number of animals required is increasing very rapidly with increasing number of QTL to be introgressed. Within breed selection to increase production under constant infection pressure can be applied with or without aid of QTL for disease resistance. Mass selection on production under infection can be applied if no QTL information is available. A non-linear selection response is achieved in both potential production and disease resistance. Important advantage of QTL information for disease resistance is that animals can be selected outside the infected environment. In implementing a breeding scheme it is important to take into account that social-economic values and environments are very different in large parts of Africa as compared to Western countries. This thesis has demonstrated that there are good opportunities for using selection to improve the results of local farming systems.


In this study, we used genetic and linguistic data that we collected in Central Asia, to better understand how genetic and linguistic diversity correlates in a contact zone. We assessed the levels of genetic differentiation with mitochondrial, Y-chromosomal and autosomal data from 26 populations (1300 individuals) from the two major linguistic groups in Central Asia: Indo-European and Altaic. We computed the linguistic distance between populations with lexical data from several individuals per population.Our results show that the genetic diversity in the area clearly clusters in two groups explained by the linguistic, one that includes the Indo-Iranian populations and the other one the Turkic populations except for Uzbek populations. Also, for two populations we have detected a shift in language that occurred likely through elite-dominance effect. Furthermore computing linguistic distances based on lexical data (Levenstein distance) we find a strong correlation between genetic distances and linguistic distances but no correlation between genetic and geographical distances.In conclusion, Central Asia is an area where linguistic but not geography correlates with genetic diversity, highlighting the importance of a cultural trait in shaping genetic diversity in our species.


Agents acting in the natural world aim at selecting appropriate actions based on noisy and partial sensory observations. Many behaviors leading to decision making and action selection in a closed loop setting are naturally phrased within a control theoretic framework. Within the framework of optimal Control Theory, one is usually given a cost function which is minimized by selecting a control law based on the observations. While in standard control settings the sensors are assumed fixed, biological systems often gain from the extra flexibility of optimizing the sensors themselves. However, this sensory adaptation is geared towards control rather than perception, as is often assumed. In this work we show that sensory adaptation for control differs from sensory adaptation for perception, even for simple control setups. This implies, consistently with recent experimental results, that when studying sensory adaptation, it is essential to account for the task being performed.


BACKGROUND
In mammals, oocyte activation at fertilization is thought to be induced by the sperm-specific phospholipase C zeta (PLCzeta). However, it still remains to be conclusively shown that PLCzeta is the endogenous agent of oocyte activation. Some types of human infertility appear to be caused by failure of the sperm to activate and this may be due to specific defects in PLCzeta.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Immunofluorescence studies showed PLCzeta to be localized in the equatorial region of sperm from fertile men, but sperm deficient in oocyte activation exhibited no specific signal in this same region. Immunoblot analysis revealed reduced amounts of PLCzeta in sperm from infertile men, and in some cases, the presence of an abnormally low molecular weight form of PLCzeta. In one non-globozoospermic case, DNA analysis identified a point mutation in the PLCzeta gene that leads to a significant amino acid change in the catalytic region of the protein. Structural modelling suggested that this defect may have important effects upon the structure and function of the PLCzeta protein. cRNA corresponding to mutant PLCzeta failed to induce calcium oscillations when microinjected into mouse oocytes. Injection of infertile human sperm into mouse oocytes failed to activate the oocyte or trigger calcium oscillations. Injection of such infertile sperm followed by two calcium pulses, induced by assisted oocyte activation, activated the oocytes without inducing the typical pattern of calcium oscillations.

CONCLUSIONS
Our findings illustrate the importance of PLCzeta during fertilization and suggest that mutant forms of PLCzeta may underlie certain types of human male infertility.


Object detection plays an important role in successfulness of a wide range of applications that involve images as input data. In this paper we have presented a new approach for background modeling by nonconsecutive frames differencing. Direction and velocity of moving objects have been extracted in order to get an appropriate sequence of frames to perform frame subtraction. Stationary parts of background are extracted from differenced frames and joined as patches to complete the background model. There is also a special stage to handle changing regions of dynamic scenes. During the detection phase, the modeled background is updated for every new frame. Since it's not necessary to estimate each pixel gray value like the most common statistical methods, modeling process is not timeconsuming. Different experiments show successful results even for challenging phenomena like environmental changes.


Argentina's economic and institutional decline has long posed a conundrum to economists and social scientists. In particular, it challenges theories that seek to explain cross-country growth differences over time. Those theories that claim that institutions have a first-order effect on growth cannot explain the persistent economic decadence of a country that in 1930 was among the most institutionally advanced in Latin America. Theories that claim that that education and growth precede inclusive institutions face a similar problem, since Argentina was one of the most educationally advanced countries in Latin America. The same can be said of theories that claim that social capital is the determinant factor that explains long-term growth. This paper emphasizes the key role played by recurrent cycles of populism in pushing the country into secular decadence and posits that, in Argentina, rising commodity prices have driven the cycles of populism.


In this article, we build a simple engineering-economic model to evaluate the incentives of various network players to deploy distributed storage nodes (content stores and caches) to support information-centric network (ICN) architectures and the implications of those incentives on protocol design, industry structure and other policy issues, such as competition and network- neutrality. We find that without some explicit monetary compensation from publishers, networks will fail to deploy the socially optimal number of caches. We also study the social welfare implications of different cache deployment scenarios and identify two deployment scenarios that maximize social welfare. Finally, we show that ICN architectures provide numerous opportunities for large eyeball networks to leverage their terminating access monopoly to extract more profits from other network players. Hence, regulators must take steps to address issues such as interconnection and the role of caching infrastructure in differential quality of service provisioning in an ICN-based network architecture, in order to ensure socially desirable outcomes from their deployment.


Background: Recent investigations demonstrated that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is an important precipitating factor of atrial fibrillation (AF). This study attempts to determine whether OSA can affect success rate of biatrial ablation in patients with persistent AF. Method: Fifty-six patients with longstanding persistent atrial fibrillation (LPAF) (Mean age 57±9.9) had undergone radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) including pulmonary vein isolation and 3-D complex fractionated atrial electrogram (CFAE) guided ablation at both atria. OSA was assessed by the Berlin Questionnaire (BQ). The primary endpoints during RF ablation were defined as complete elimination of the areas with CFAEs and conversion of AF to sinus rhythm. Result: Compared to patients with LPAF termination by biatrial ablation, patients who did not terminate AF (n=28, 50%) had a higher pulmonary pressure [33.1±6.4 mmHg vs. 29.0±3.5 mmHg, p=0.012] and greater number of the patients for high risk of OSA (n=17, 73.3%, vs. n=11, 41.5%, p=0.032]. Univariate analysis revealed that age (OR 0.94, p=0.038), pulmonary arterial pressure (OR 1.19, p=0.023) and high risk for OSA (OR 3.38, p=0.04) were related with failure of biatrial ablation. On multivariate analysis, age (OR 0.842, CI: 0.74–0.96, p=0.01) and high risk for OSA (OR 11.9, CI: 1.1–129.2, p=0.04) were independent predictors for RFCA failure. Conclusion: High risk for OSA predicts RFCA failure after extensive biatrial ablation in patients with LPAF.


Accurate seafloor maps serve as a critical component for understanding marine ecosystems and guiding informed ocean management decisions. From 2004 to 2015, the Atlantic Ocean continental margin offshore of the United States has been systematically mapped using multibeam sonars. This work was done in support of the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) Project and for baseline characterization of the Atlantic canyons, but the question remains as to the relevance of these margin-wide data sets for conservation and management decisions pertaining to these areas. This study utilized an automatic segmentation approach to initially identify landform features from the bathymetry of the region, then translated these results into complete coverage geomorphology maps of the region utilizing the coastal and marine ecological classification standard (CMECS) to define geoforms. Abyssal flats make up more than half of the area (53%), with the continental slope flat class making up another 30% of the total area. Flats of any geoform class (including continental shelf flats and guyot flats) make up 83.06% of the study area. Slopes of any geoform class make up a cumulative total of 13.26% of the study region (8.27% abyssal slopes, 3.73% continental slopes, and 1.25% seamount slopes). While ridge features comprise only 1.82% of the total study area (1.03% abyssal ridges, 0.63 continental slope ridge, and 0.16% seamount ridges). Key benefits of the study's semi-automated approach include computational efficiency for large datasets, and the ability to apply the same methods to large regions with consistent results.


The use of electric buses is expected to rise due to its environmental benefits. However, electric vehicles are less exible than conventional diesel buses due to their limited driving range and longer recharging times. Therefore, scheduling electric vehicles adds further operational dificulties. Additionally, various labor regulations challenge public transport companies to find a cost-effcient crew schedule. Vehicle and crew scheduling problems essentially define the cost of operations. In practice, these two problems are often solved sequentially. In this paper, we introduce the integrated electric vehicle and crew scheduling problem (E-VCSP). Given a set of timetabled trips and recharging stations, the E-VCSP is concerned with finding vehicle and crew schedules that cover the timetabled trips and satisfy operational constraints, such as limited driving range of electric vehicles and labor regulations for the crew while minimizing total operational cost. An adaptive large neighborhood search that utilizes branch-and-price heuristics is proposed to tackle the E-VCSP. The proposed method is tested on real-life instances from public transport companies in Denmark and Sweden that contain up to 1,109 timetabled trips. The heuristic approach provides evidence of improving efficiency of transport systems when the electric vehicle and crew scheduling aspects are considered simultaneously. By comparing to the traditional sequential approach, the heuristic finds improvements in the range of 1.17-4.37% on average. A sensitivity analysis of the electric bus technology is carried out to indicate its implications for the crew schedule and the total operational cost. The analysis shows that the operational cost decreases with increasing driving range (120 to 250 kilometers) of electric vehicles.


Charities or interest groups need to attract supporters, who offer both financial support and participation, to achieve their overall goal of influencing public affairs. They can use political marketing to help them attract and retain such supporters. Existing literature indicates they use marketing techniques such as direct mail to communicate to potential new supporters, but new research has discovered that the influence of political marketing is much more comprehensive. The most effective groups are now using political marketing to design the package they offer to supporters. They go through a four-stage process. First, they conduct market intelligence to understand what supporters want from the organisation and second, they design their product accordingly. Third, they communicate this to potential supporters and then finally deliver campaign progress and they communicate this to existing supporters. They use marketing concepts: they adopt a market orientation and build an organisation designed to take account of its users' needs and wants. Although such charities are often associated with non-business behaviour, the most successful groups are adopting the concepts and techniques of comprehensive political marketing as the means to increase their influence on government and public affairs. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications


Severe storms have gained more attention in recent years. Improved metocean data have led to new insight into severe wave conditions for marine design. Therefore, there exists an industrial demand for fast and accurate numerical tools to estimate the hydrodynamic loads during e.g. green water events.Model tests generally play an important role in these studies. In the recent past, several practical engineering tools have also been developed, based on the experience from the experimental data bases in combination with simplified but still theoretical formulations. One such tool is Kinema2, which is based on non-linear random wave modeling combined with 3D linear diffraction theory to initially identify green water events, and then finally apply a simplified water-on-deck and slamming load estimation. This forms the background for the work presented in this paper which shows the feasibility of a new technique based on the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). This method can give more detailed forecast of the hydrodynamics on the deck than the simplified water-on-deck estimation. SPH uses a Lagrangian framework (particles) to describe the fluid dynamics. The water propagation and kinematics of the green water events are, in this introductory stage of the study, reproduced by using a SPH inlet condition where particles are injected with given velocity from a curved rectangular area against the deck and the deckhouse. The relative wave height and water particle velocities found from KINEMA2. Numerical results for water elevation and velocity on deck are compared against model test time series and previous results from other numerical simulation methods. The present Lagrangian nature (compared to traditional Eulerian-VOF methods) can in principe significantly reduce the CPU demand and increase the simulation speed. Slamming pressures can then be calculated e.g. from simple slamming formula calculations. In principle, pressures can also be found directly from the SPH calculations, while this would demand a significantly larger number of particles which increases CPU demand of the SPH method.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


An often cited weakness of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) concept is that the chloride salt-based radioactive waste generated by its electrorefiner (ER) cannot be vitrified. Although that assertion is literally true, it is also misleading because it would be quite simple to recycle that waste's chloride and vitrify its cationic components (mostly alkali metals and fission products). Producing this alternative to Argonne National Laboratory's ceramic waste form would entail vitrification of a mixture of orthophosphoric acid, ferric oxide, and powdered ER salt with a melter able to efficiently disengage gas bubbles, e.g., a Stir Melter. The HCl evolved by this process would be absorbed by an aqueous lithium/potassium hydroxide scrub solution, which would then be dried and recycled as fresh ER electrolyte. Because radioiodide would otherwise accumulate in the ER salt, the caustic scrub solution would occasionally be contacted with cuprous or silver chloride before recycle. This scenario's primary advantages would be much lower cost and approximately fivefold greater effective waste loading. This paper describes the experimental work supporting these contentions.


BACKGROUND
Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) development is affected by a range of risk factors.

METHODS
A retrospective, observational study processing data on all consecutive intensive care patients older than 18 years of age between 1 January 2011 and 31 December 2015. The aim was to determine the incidence of potential risk factors and their impact on the development of HAP.

RESULTS
A total of 2229 patients. The overall mortality was 24.0%; the mean APACHE II score 21.4. The mean length of ICU stay was 5.9 days and the mean length of hospital stay was 20.5 days. The criteria for HAP were met by 310 patients (13.9%). Early- and late-onset HAP was diagnosed in 45 (14.5%) and 265 (85.5%) patients, respectively. The mean APACHE II score was 22.1, the mean length of ICU stay was 7.6 days and the mean length of hospital stay was 23.5 days. The most important non-modifiable factors increasing the risk of HAP were multiple organ failure (OR 13.733; P<0.0001), cardiac heart disease (OR 2.255; P<0.0001) and chronic renal failure (OR 2.194; P<0.002). The most common modifiable factors were intolerance to enteral nutrition (OR 3.055; P<0.0001), urgent tracheal intubation (OR 1.511; P<0.024), reintubation (OR 1.851; P<0.001), and bronchoscopy (OR 2.558; P<0.0001). Stress ulcer prophylaxis was administered to 83% of HAP patients and 68% of patients without HAP. Prophylaxis with famotidine was associated with a lower risk of HAP in 40.0% of patients (non-HAP in 49.9%), (OR 0.669; P=0.001) than prophylaxis with pentoprazol in 42.6% and 49.5% of patients, respectively (OR 0.756; P=0.027).

CONCLUSIONS
. Factors associated with the highest risk of the development of HAP can be determined. Pharmacological prophylaxis of gastric and duodenal stress ulcers was identified as an independent risk factor for HAP. The study was registered in the ClinicalTrials.gov database under the number NCT02779933.


The remarkable phenomenon of limb regeneration in vertebrates is limited to some, but not all, amphibians. Despite this, it is widely believed that the ancestor of all vertebrates was capable of limb regeneration, suggesting that this ability could be reawakened in humans. Research into limb regeneration has benefited from the use of two complementary model systems. The urodele amphibians (newts and salamanders) can regenerate perfect limbs even as adults, initiating a programme of wound healing, blastema formation and redevelopment. Urodeles can be used to investigate how common wound-healing processes can subsequently activate a regeneration programme. Anuran amphibians (frogs and toads), on the other hand, progressively lose the ability to regenerate as they progress through their life cycle, and can be used in gain of function experiments to test potential regeneration factors. Using both of these models, growth factor signalling pathways have been identified as being involved in regulating all stages of the limb regeneration process.

Key Concepts

Regeneration of the limb is perfect in urodeles (newts and salamanders), declines with age in frogs and is absent in mammals.
Urodele regeneration is divided into three distinct phases, wound healing, blastema formation and redevelopment.
Mechanisms unique to regeneration are likely to be involved in the transition from phase I to phase II.
Growth factors are important in regulating all three phases of limb regeneration.
Amphibians are good models for studying the role of growth factors in limb regeneration, as both loss and gain of function experiments can be performed.

Keywords:

regeneration;
growth factors;
blastema;
axolotl, Xenopus


As knowledge has become the most valuable asset for organizations in the knowledge economy age, the related issue of knowledge management has attracted increasing attention. In particular, the concept of knowledge sharing, a necessary process for organisations seeking fruitful knowledge transfer and creation can help organisations gain and sustain a competitive advantage. In this study, we investigate the issue of knowledge sharing based on the input-process-output (IPO) model at the team level. Fifty-three teams composed of 205 employees participated in this exploration of the relationships among team personality composition (based on a five-factor personality model), team process (affective ties) and team outcomes (knowledge sharing). With respect to team personality composition, higher team mean levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience and extroversion corresponded with higher levels of knowledge sharing. Agreeableness and extroversion also were associated with knowledge shari...


The purpose of this research project is to study an innovative method for the stability assessment of structural steel systems, namely the Modified Direct Analysis Method (MDM). This method is intended to simplify an existing design method, the Direct Analysis Method (DM), by assuming a sophisticated second-order elastic structural analysis will be employed that can account for member and system instability, and thereby allow the design process to be reduced to confirming the capacity of member cross-sections. This last check can be easily completed by substituting an effective length of KL = 0 into existing member design equations. This simplification will be particularly useful for structural systems in which it is not clear how to define the member slenderness L/r when the laterally unbraced length L is not apparent, such as arches and the compression chord of an unbraced truss. To study the feasibility and accuracy of this new method, a set of 12 benchmark steel structural systems previously designed and analyzed by former Bucknell graduate student Jose Martinez-Garcia and a single column were modeled and analyzed using the nonlinear structural analysis software MASTAN2. A series of MATLAB-based programs were prepared by the author to provide the code checking requirements for investigating the MDM. By comparing MDM and DM results against the more advanced distributed plasticity analysis results, it is concluded that the stability of structural systems can be adequately assessed in most cases using MDM, and that MDM often appears to be a more accurate but less conservative method in assessing stability.


We re-evaluate two forms of fiscal illusion in local public finance: debt illusion and renter illusion. The Ricardian Equivalence Theorem for local governments suggests the form of finance of a public program (tax or debt finance) has no effects on substantive outcomes. For the local case, this results from the capitalization of local fiscal differentials into property values. We show that this version of the model is quite restrictive. In particular, in the U.S, context, where state and local interest is exempt from federal taxation, rational behavior may be inconsistent with Ricardian equivalence if local governments can borrow on more favorable terms than individuals. We also suggest a new test for renter illusion (or the renter effect). In particular, whether or not renters are more likely to support public investments in general, the renter effect suggests that renters are more likely to support them when financed with property taxes than with sales taxes. Using data from hundreds of open space referenda in the U.S. using a variety of finance mechanisms, we find evidence that households do prefer debt financing to tax financing, but find no evidence of the renter effect.


The various pronouncements of the nation's dissolution seem to have been premature. Literary history is still very much within the nation, especially if one considers the realm of the middle- and lowbrow, or indeed the vast swaths of genre fiction. What has changed in literary history is the position of literature itself. The discipline of literary study (whether one thinks of it as literary history or literary criticism) institutionalized itself during a period of literary dominance. Now that that dominance is over—now that the field of narrative aesthetic culture includes television, film, and video games, and now that those genres dominate not only markets but the forms of representativity that used to belong almost exclusively to literature—what is the future for literary studies, either as a scholarly discipline or as an institutional field?


Functional surfaces are of paramount engineering importance with applications in non-wettable components, adhesion, anti-biofouling, static or dynamic optical properties, and energy scavenging. Traditionally, such functional surfaces have been produced through conventional methods of manufacturing like photolithography, hot embossing, and laser ablation which are generally very complex and costly. Likewise, it has been shown that using material damage or instabilities in an organized manner can lead to the generation of functional surfaces. The purpose of this review is to bring to attention these new fabrication pathways together by disclosing their importance as new practical manufacturing methods that would benefit researchers and engineers in various fields. In this review, three categories of mechanical damage and instabilities have been selected through which functional surfaces could be manufactured. The first category encompasses surface-scale damage mechanisms for creating functional surfaces. Although surface destructive mechanisms such as surface cracking are regarded as unwanted phenomena in surfaces, several studies have implemented them in micro-/nanoscale surface patterning, sensors, and superhydrophobic surfaces. The second category introduces techniques that use severe damage like cutting or breaking the bulk material to create new functional surfaces with applications in non-slip surfaces, hydrophobicity, and increased toughness. Instability-induced techniques are selected as the third category addressed in this review. Buckling in structures and surfaces is recognized as a blister anomaly; however, a number of studies demonstrate using buckling in a disciplined manner would lead to generating functional surfaces for applications including flexible electronics, surface patterning, wettability, and anti-icing surfaces. As discussed in this review, such inspiring and counter-intuitive methods of fabrication will shed light on the ability of common failure mechanisms to be employed as a sustainable design approach for generating new functional materials and surfaces with value-added properties.


Purpose: Human interleukin-21 (IL-21) is a class I cytokine that mediates activation of CD8+ T cells, natural killer (NK) cells, and other cell types. We report final clinical and biological results of a phase II study of recombinant human IL-21 (rIL-21) in patients with metastatic melanoma. Experimental Design: Open-label, single-arm, two-stage trial. Eligibility criteria: unresectable metastatic melanoma, measurable disease by Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors, no prior systemic therapy (adjuvant IFN permitted), adequate major organ function, good performance status, no significant autoimmune disease, and life expectancy at least 4 months. Primary objective: antitumor efficacy (response rate). Secondary objectives: safety, blood biomarkers, and generation of anti-rIL-21 antibodies. rIL-21 (30 μg/kg/dose) was administered by intravenous bolus injection in 8-week cycles (5 dosing days followed by 9 days of rest for 6 weeks and then 2 weeks off treatment). Results: Stage I of the study comprised 14 patients. One confirmed complete response (CR) was observed, and as per protocol, 10 more patients were accrued to stage II (total n = 24: 10 female and 14 male). Best tumor response included one confirmed CR and one confirmed partial response, both with lung metastases. Treatment was overall well tolerated. Biomarker analyses showed increases in serum soluble CD25, frequencies of CD25+ NK and CD8+ T cells, and mRNA for IFN-γ, perforin, and granzyme B in CD8+ T and NK cells. Conclusions: rIL-21 administered at 30 μg/kg/d in 5-day cycles every second week is biologically active and well tolerated in patients with metastatic melanoma. Confirmed responses, including one CR, were observed.


With the growth of successes in pattern recognition and signal processing, mobile robot applications today are increasingly equipping their hardware with microphones to improve the set of available sensory information. However, if the robot, and therefore the microphone, ends up in a poor location acoustically, then the data will remain noisy and potentially useless for accomplishing the required task. This is compounded by the fact that there are many bad acoustic locations through which a robot is likely to pass, and so the results from auditory sensors often remain poor for much of the task.
The movement of the robot, though, can also be an important tool for overcoming these problems, a tool that has not been exploited in the traditional signal processing community. Robots are not limited to a single location as are traditionally placed microphones, nor are they powerless over to where they will be moved as with wearable computers. If there is a better location available for performing its task, a robot can navigate to that location under its own power. Furthermore, when deciding where to move, robots can develop complex models of the environment. Using an array of sensors, a mobile robot can build models of sound flow through an area, picking from those models the paths most likely to improve performance of an acoustic application.
In this dissertation, we address the question of how to exploit robotic movement. Using common sensors, we present a collection of tools for gathering information about the auditory scene and incorporating that information into a general framework for acoustical awareness. Thus equipped, robots can make intelligent decisions regarding control strategies to enhance their performance on the underlying acoustic application.


Both unemployment insurance (UI) extensions and the availability of disability benefits have disincentive effects on job search. But UI extensions can reduce the efficiency cost of disability benefits if UI recipients delay disability application until they exhaust their unemployment benefits. This paper, the first to focus on the effect of UI extensions on disability applications, investigates whether UI eligibility, extension, and exhaustion affect the timing of disability applications and the composition of the applicant pool. Jobless individuals are significantly less likely to apply to Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) during UI extensions, and significantly more likely to apply when UI is ultimately exhausted. Healthier potential applicants appear more likely to delay, as state allowance rates increase after a new UI extension. Simulations find that a 13-week UI extension decreases SSDI and Medicare costs, offsetting about half of the increase in UI payments; this suggests that the benefits of UI extensions may be understated — permanent disability benefits are diverted to shorter-run unemployment benefits and, potentially, new jobs, while easing the burden on the nearly insolvent SSDI Trust Fund.


International law is increasingly referred to and utilised in English courts,in fields as diverse as criminal proceedings, children's rights, tort law, and asylum cases. Despite this use, there is currently no book on the market (whether a practitioner text or otherwise) which addresses this subject-matter in detail. Hence the need for this book - by a practitioner and for practitioners, regardless of their specialist area of practice - on how international law is and can be used in the domestic courts. The book presents in a distilled format the relevant principles of law, and their application in this area and provides a guide to relevant international instruments and the way(s) in which these instruments have been referred to or used in English courts. While the emphasis is on stating the law as it is, the author also identifies the principles which are likely to guide practitioners in an otherwise unstructured area, supported by specific examples which will provide a subject guide to relevant instruments and sources and how they can be used.


Abstract The influence of particle size fractions on infiltrability was investigated in soils sampled across Namibia and western South Africa. Infiltrability was determined using a laboratory technique calibrated with rainfall simulation, which measures the passage of a suspension of soil particles through a packed soil column. Water-dis-persible soil particle size fractions were determined using a high definition digital laser particle size analyser. Total (calgon-dispersed) particle size fractions were determined by hydrometer. Dispersion of soil particles resulting in crust formation on the soil surface appeared to be a main mechanism reducing infiltrability. Water-dispersible clay and fine silt determined by laser analyser showed higher correlation with infiltrability (r2 = −0.43 for clay and −0.47 for fine silt) than total clay and fine silt determined by hydrometer (r2 = −0.30 and −0.28, respectively). Clay, fine silt, coarse silt, very fine sand and fine sand fractions (<120 µm) showed a probable plasmic role in soil crusts. At a content of these fractions > 5% infiltrability was inevitably restrained. The 120–200 µm fraction showed no clear relationship with infiltrability. It played either a plasmic or skeletal role, depending on its ratio to the <120 µm and >200 µm fractions. Fine, medium and coarse sand fractions (>200 µm) showed a probable skeletal role in soil crusts, i.e. forming pores that enhanced infiltrability. At levels >50% of these fractions, infiltrability was potentially maximal. This potentially maximal infiltrability was also explained by the concomitant decrease in plasmic fraction content with an increase of the skeletal fraction.


Abstract Many insects rely on bacterial symbionts to supply essential amino acids and vitamins that are deficient in their diets, but metabolic comparisons of closely related gut bacteria in insects with different dietary preferences have not been performed. Here, we demonstrate that herbivorous ants of the genus Dolichoderus from the Peruvian Amazon host bacteria of the family Bartonellaceae, known for establishing chronic or pathogenic infections in mammals. We detected these bacteria in all studied Dolichoderus species, and found that they reside in the midgut wall, that is, the same location as many previously described nutritional endosymbionts of insects. The genomic analysis of four divergent strains infecting different Dolichoderus species revealed genes encoding pathways for nitrogen recycling and biosynthesis of several vitamins and all essential amino acids. In contrast, several biosynthetic pathways have been lost, whereas genes for the import and conversion of histidine and arginine to glutamine have been retained in the genome of a closely related gut bacterium of the carnivorous ant Harpegnathos saltator. The broad biosynthetic repertoire in Bartonellaceae of herbivorous ants resembled that of gut bacteria of honeybees that likewise feed on carbohydrate-rich diets. Taken together, the broad distribution of Bartonellaceae across Dolichoderus ants, their small genome sizes, the specific location within hosts, and the broad biosynthetic capability suggest that these bacteria are nutritional symbionts in herbivorous ants. The results highlight the important role of the host nutritional biology for the genomic evolution of the gut microbiota—and conversely, the importance of the microbiota for the nutrition of hosts.


Social media platforms make tremendous amounts of data available. Often times, the same information is behind multiple different available data sets. This lends growing importance to latent variable models that try to learn the hidden information from the available imperfect versions. For example, social media platforms can contain an abundance of pictures of the same person, yet all of which are taken from different perspectives. In a simplified scenario, one may consider pictures taken from the same perspective, which are distorted by noise. This latter application allows for a rigorous mathematical treatment, which is the content of this contribution. We apply a recently developed method of dependent component analysis to image denoising when multiple distorted copies of one and the same image are available, each being corrupted by a different and unknown noise process. In a simplified scenario, one may assume such a distorted image to be corrupted by noise that acts independently on each pixel. We answer completely the question of how to perform optimal denoising, when at least three distorted copies are available: First we define optimality of an algorithm in the presented scenario, and then we describe an aymptotically optimal universal discrete denoising algorithm (UDDA).


Abstract: The Waco Mammoth National Monument (WMNM) potentially represents the only recovered Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) herd to date, but the "herd" interpretation is dependent on the demographics of the accumulation as well as a catastrophic kill mechanism. The demographics are consistent with an extant elephant herd that is lacking only infants, and the generally accepted cause of death is a catastrophic flood and rapid burial based primarily on fossil articulation and associations with an ancient river channel and aquatic fauna. Herein we present new ichnological evidence of post-mortem biogenic bone modification contrary to a flood scenario with rapid burial. Traces on bone include branching furrows (Corrosichnia type), paired grooves (Machichnus regularis and M. bohemicus), arcuate grooves that penetrate the cortical material (Brutalichnus brutalis), roughly triangular punctures with jagged margins (Nihilichnus nihilicus), and hemispherical borings (Cubiculum isp.). The branching furrows are interpreted as root-dissolution features, whereas the remaining suite of traces demonstrate scavenging of the mammoths by rodents, carnivores, and hide beetles during a period of dry-decay and prolonged subaerial exposure. We propose that a drought scenario is a more plausible kill mechanism for this particular assemblage because: (1) a diminishing watering hole concentrating the local fauna explains the high taxonomic diversity; (2) migration to a distant water source explains the absence of M. columbi calves; and (3) a drought provides a parsimonious explanation for the site history in light of new observations regarding vertebrate and invertebrate scavenging. Under this scenario, the mammoths of WMNM represent at least one social group that perished during an anomalously dry season.


A-type felsic magmatism associated with the Cambrian Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen began with eruption of voluminous rhyolite to form a thick volcanic carapace on top of an eroded layered mafic complex. This angular unconformity became a crustal magma trap and was the locus for emplacement of later subvolcanic plutons. Rising felsic magma batches ponding along this crustal magma trap crystallised first as fine-grained granite sheets and then subsequently as coarser-grained granite sheets. Aplite dykes, pegmatite dykes and porphyries are common within the younger coarser-grained granite sheets but rare to absent within the older fine-grained granite sheets. The older fine-grained granite sheets typically contain abundant granophyre. The differences between fine-grained and coarse-grained granite sheets can largely be attributed to a progressive increase in the depth of the crustal magma trap as the aulacogen evolved. At low pressures (<200MPa) a small increase in the depth of emplacement results in a dramatic increase in the solubility of H2O in felsic magmas. This is a direct consequence of the shape of the H2O-saturated granite solidus. The effect of this slight increase in total pressure on the crystallisation of felsic magmas is to delay vapour saturation, increase the H2O content of the residual melt fractions and further depress the solidus temperature. Higher melt H2O contents, and an extended temperature range over which crystallisation can proceed, both favour crystallisation of coarser-grained granites. In addition, the potential for the development of late, H2O-rich, melt fractions is significantly enhanced. Upon reaching vapour saturation, these late melt fractions are likely to form porphyries, aplite dykes and pegmatite dykes. For the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, the progressive increase in the depth of the crustal magma trap at the base of the volcanic pile appears to reflect thickening of the volcanic pile during rifting, but may also reflect emplacement of earlier granite sheets. Thus, the change in textural characteristics of granite sheets of the Wichita Granite Group may hold considerable promise as an avenue for further investigation in interpreting the history of this rifting event.


Two surveys of young college students (N1=134; N2=372) were used to examine what perceived familial and educational factors influenced former high school journalism students' comfort levels with controversial stories running in the student newspaper. Using theory from developmental psychology, newsroom sociology, communications, and legal studies, this dissertation develops a model for understanding both direct and indirect influences on freedom of expression in the scholastic press. Specifically, results suggest that perceptions of peers' and advisers' comfort with publishing controversial stories influences individual comfort levels. Contrary to suggestions from other scholastic journalism research, former scholastic journalists' perceptions of their principals' opinions were not predictive of individual comfort levels with running controversial stories. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.


The aim of this experiment was to evaluate histology and physical variables of buffalo meat at different sex and ages. Thirty head of buffaloes were used in this experiment. Muscle fiber diameter, fasciculus diameter, thickness of connective tissue, pH, water holding capacity, Warner-Bratzler shear force and cooking loss were measured in this experiment. Analysis of variance of randomized factorial design was used to analyse the data. The differences were analysed by Tukey test. The result showed that muscle fiber diameter was influenced by ages. The difference muscle fiber diameter among ages indicated that 8-12 mo and 1.5 yr old have smaller diameter compared to three year old (P<0.05), but there was no differences between two, three and four years old. The fasciculus diameter, thickness of connective tissue, tenderness, pH value, water holding capacity, and cooking lost indicated no significant found in all stage of age and sex of samples. Meat qualities of buffaloes were not affected by age (2-4 yr) and sex.


Of primary concern to late eighteenth-century society was the sheer volume of printed work being produced in England. The response of authors troubled by this perceived crisis was an outpouring of works on taste, aesthetics, genre and literature, which attempted to describe and provide corrective solutions to the problem of over-publication. Yet this response itself, of course, only added to the number of works within Britain. How did the solution to a deluge of print become more printed materials? Did these authors envision print's agency as a self-corrective process? And, if so, how can we recover and perhaps even model the connections between works that encompassed the responses to print? This essay outlines a potential solution to this problem by sampling a highly focused selection of digitized texts that raise the issue of over-publication. Through a quantitative analysis of these texts, it identifies the lexical patterns that may reveal the ways in which authors of the period envisioned the work of aesthetics. In particular, this article identifies an emerging consensus on how printed objects became agents within the socio-cultural world of the long eighteenth century: both as objects which could act on readers and as objects which could act on other printed texts. By comparing the language that these clusters of texts deploy to discuss the agency of print to their traditional generic, theoretical or historical groupings, we can begin to examine the process by which the potential power of print became the solution to the dangers it, itself, presented.


Bioadhesion is said to occur when two materials, at least one of which is biological in nature, are held together for extended periods. Bioadhesion includes cell-to-cell adhesion, bacteria binding to surfaces, adhesion to mucous membranes and the use of adhesive materials in medical treatments (such as in drug delivery devices, tissue adhesives or wound dressings). There are two stages in the formation of the bioadhesive joint, the first is the contact stage, when two surfaces are brought together into intimate contact, the second is the consolidation stage, when the adhesive interactions occur. There are several theories as to how such interactions arise, based around surface 'wetting', macromolecular interpenetration, mechanical interlocking, adsorption, fracturing of the adhesive bond and electron transfer across an interface. The bioadhesion process is usually complex, and requires the application of more than one of these theories. A knowledge of the mechanism of bioadhesion will permit a greater understanding of the processes that happen in the natural world, and allow the development of more effective systems that can be used in medical therapies.