Objective: Focusing on dopaminergic system, which is regarded to be responsible for alcohol dependence in many studies on animals and human beings, it is aimed to investigate TaqI A and B allel polymorphisms of Dopamine 2 receptor and personality characteristics in alcohol dependents and the relationship between these two parameters. Methods: In this study 64 alcohol dependent patients (3 females and 61 males) diagnosed according to DSM-IV diagnosis criteria, and 54 healthy subjects (8 female, 46 male) who themselves or whose first or second degree relatives had no alcohol dependence history were included. In order to determine their TaqI A and B alleles, blood samples were drawn from the participants, and then they were applied Temperament and Character Inventory and Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test scales. Results: Subjects with and without alcohol dependence revealed no significant difference as regards the frequency of TaqI A1 and B2 minor allel polymorphisms of DRD2 gene. It was also determined that the alcohol dependents had significantly higher scores in novelty seeking and harm avoidance dimensions, and lower scores in self-directedness and cooperativeness dimensions than the controls. In alcohol dependents, no association was determined between the personality characteristics and TaqI A1 and B2 minor allel polymorphisms. Conclusion: Not only one gene, but also several other minor genes in addition to personality characteristics and environment may play a role in vulnerability to alcohol dependence. In alcohol dependents, high novelty seeking is associated with the increase in impulsive behaviour, and may be important for the onset of alcohol taking behaviour. High level of harm avoidance may lead to taking alcohol continuously in order to deal with stress.
Key words:


Many new technologies are being developed to improve the efficiency and productivity of nursing staffs. A key to the success of these technologies is acceptance by the nurse. Davis' Technology Assessment Model (TAM 1993) was developed to measure the likelihood that subjects will accept and use computer systems. This paper presents a discussion on nursing acceptance of computer systems, reviews the development of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), and reports findings of a study that examines nursing acceptance with TAM for bedside computer systems. Results of the study showed nursing staffs, in general, are accepting of bedside-computer technology. Though, those working full-time have a better attitude and are more accepting than those working part-time.


Artificial evolution of computer software (evolutionary neural networks, genetic programming, evolutionary fuzzy systems, etc.) has been shown to generate software that in many cases is more performant than that designed by engineers. Evolved software performs well under the same conditions used during evolutionary training. However, in situations where unpredictable change may affect normal operation, evolved systems often fail. In this paper we describe a new approach for evolving software that remains adaptive and is therefore very robust to unpredictable change after evolution. To illustrate the idea, we present the case of evolutionary robots that quickly and reliably adapt online to several types of new situations, including sensory, environmental, and mechanical change, while still performing their task. The core of the methodology consists of evolving the mechanisms of parameter adaptation instead of the parameters themselves. We shall conclude by showing how this methodology can be applied to a variety of other situations beyond robotics.


Moores law has meant that most households in the west countries own at least two perfectly functional computers. At the same time personal area networks are beginning to emerge, linking up mobile phones, PDAs,mp3/ogg,Vobis players, etc. These two types of small, local, single owner/administrator networks need an appropriate model of functionality and management to provide the users with the highest degree of functionality. This paper describes an effort to create a heterogamous networked system using Java and t JXTA project, model witch is based on clusters and grids concepts. The main function of the system is to allow central control of all peers from any peer and sharing of data resource. Another requirement is robustness and resilience to peer failure. The implementation and the test carried proved that a grid type model for home networking is a valid model.


We show that a polarization rotation of the fundamental, associated with type II second-harmonic generation, occurs when the e-wave and o-wave inputs carry unbalanced intensities. This effect is applied to a device exhibiting a self-induced transparency. Experimental results are reported. The same effect may be used to realize an optical limiter.


Porous anodic alumina (PAA) templates with branch structure are fabricated by the two-step anodic oxidation processes, and then the Y-branched Cu nanowires are synthesized in the templates using an alternating current (AC) deposition method. We observe the morphology image of the samples by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and measure the transmission spectrum and the polarization spectrum of the samples by the spectrophotometer. The results show that PAA films with Y-branched Cu nanowires have better transmittance in the near infrared region. An extinction ratio of 15~18 dB and an insertion loss of 0.1~0.4 dB are obtained in this region. Therefore PAA with Y-branched Cu nanowires can be used as a near-infrared micropolarizer, and this kind of micropolarizer would have a promising future in the field of photoelectricity integration.


The study aims the estimation of incidence of traumas and poisonings, and mortality from them at workers of the Russian nuclear industry, participants in the rectification of the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl Atomic Electric Power Station, in view of their social structure. Material and methods. Carrying out this research, we used the information base of the Register of the persons exposed by radiation after the Chernobyl accident. There had been registered as of January, 1, 1998: liquidators of 1986-1987 years — 12882 people (men — 84,3%), liquidators of 1988-1990 years —2313 people (men — 88,3%). There had been presented parameters of case rate and mortality of men, separately workers and employees of the given cohort. Results. Lower level of traumas and poisonings incidence at employees had been revealed (2-2,4 times lower), than at the workers, the mortality of traumas and poisonings at employees were also 1,1-2,9 times lower (on the average — in 2,0 times) is revealed. The alcoholism essentially raises a traumatism at liquidators. The traumatism above at the liquidators, suffering a chronic alcoholism, in 1,9-3,3 times. The distinctions in coefficients of the mortality from traumas and poisonings and the incidence by them for age groups of the men-liquidators were revealed. Conclusion. The essential difference in parameters of men-liquidators' health, workers of the nuclear industry, and workers shows that a social factor renders significant influence on health of a studied contingent of persons. Age features in many respects define value of parameters of incidence of traumas and poisonings and death rates from them a studied contingent. In radiation epidemiological researches it is necessary to consider biological and social factors necessarily.


Biomineralized composite materials found in nature have a compromise of good mechanical properties and relatively small embodied energies in the process of their formation. The Alternate Soaking Process (ASP) is a laboratory technique that has only recently been applied to replicating composite biomineralization. The nexus of the ASP - heterogeneous nucleation - makes it ideal for replicating biominerals where the mineral is templated onto an organic substrate, such as occurs in avian eggshell. Here we demonstrate the deposition of a calcium carbonate gelatin composite on either glass cover slips or demineralized eggshell membranes using an automated ASP. SEM images and FTIR spectra of the resulting mineral show that by altering the amount of gelatin in the growth solutions the final organic component can be controlled accurately in the range of 1-10%, similar to that of natural eggshell. This study shows for the first time the co-precipitation of a CaCO 3 - gelatin composite by an ASP and that the organic fraction of this mineral can be tuned to mimic that of natural biomineralized composites. © 2012 Materials Research Society.


This critical biography of Indu Mitha, a Pakistani dancer and choreographer, lays out an alternate, creative history of sixty-four years of post-Partition Pakistan. Her life and work enable choreographing an occluded space on stage and beyond, which I call space of hope --a space of alterity, a place where narratives countering the nation state boundaries enforced by the 1947 Partition of British India into the three independent states of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh (1971). This space is not a post-colonial one, but is based on a longer shared historical specificity of South Asia. Indu Mitha's life and work enable this journey into occluded spaces, into an alternate history of sixty-four years of post-Partition Pakistan. These spaces of hope are foci to probing broader questions about the place of the outliers, i.e. Muslims in India, and non-Muslims and non-Pakistanis in Pakistan (Post 1971), in the aftermath of the 1947 Partition of India. This dissertation stages the untold history of these minority voices of classical dancers and musicians in Pakistan, and in the process questions whether their marginal statuses are due to factors connected to the aftermath of Partition, or to a redundant pre-colonial baggage, or both.By taking a creative approach to writing a shared history of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh beyond Partition, this dissertation presents controversial, contested histories that are closer to the ground realities of people in the region. Methodology involved triangulating Indu's bharata natyam, kathak and Uday Shankar choreographies with her life history, parallel to key moments of South Asian history from the early twentieth century to the first decade of the twenty-first century. This new creative approach brings together, for the first time, cutting edge work in the fields of post-colonial histories and Partition aftermath studies with dance history scholarship, in particular critical bharata natyam studies. This project uses the rich lyric mode and story-telling tradition of bharata natyam, syncrethic aspects of kathak, and the creative style of Indu's Uday Shankar repertoire to narrate alternative histories that have been silenced and/or ignored in official narratives. These histories call for a rethinking of the occluded inclusive and secular vision of founding father Jinnah as protector-general of the minorities.


The thesis contributes to the debate on the efficient functioning of the human rights mechanisms at the universal level that were established by different human rights treaties – the treaty bodies. The system suffers from a number of deficiencies and in fact has been in need of a reform for the last thirty years. In 2014, several measures aimed at improving its functioning were adopted by the UN General Assembly. Within the thesis the major long-term problems of the treaty body system are identified. Furthermore, the extent to which the measures adopted in 2014 addressed the real problems of the system is assessed. It is concluded that out of nine issues, only one was properly addressed. As the General Assembly expects a review of the system in 2020, the thesis argues for a genuine reform of the system. It suggests that an Integrated Treaty Body System (ITBS) should be established that would not require an amendment of the current treaties and it would enable effective functioning of the system under its permanent growth. The main features of the proposal consist in transforming the Human Rights Committee into a permanent body monitoring both covenants on human rights, while the specialised committees would interact with the Human Rights Committee within regular post-sessional meetings. In addition, concrete measures are presented in order to reduce or eliminate the identified problems of the system.


The past cannot be changed, but we can learn from it. The purpose of this article is to explore some of the lessons that can be learnt from the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The first of these is that the génocidaires should not be dehumanised. This is simply to engage in the very process that made genocide possible in the first place. Rather, they should be given a voice. As the work of authors such as Hatzfield, McDoom, Mironko and Straus demonstrates, perpetrators' stories can offer an important 'insider' perspective into events and add richness and texture to top-down elitist accounts of the genocide. The second lesson is that while it may be comforting to believe that genocide is only carried out by monsters and psychopaths – by people 'not like us' – the reality is that it is ordinary people who, under certain circumstances, commit genocide. Hence, it should not be seen as a crime that can only occur in 'faraway' places. The final lesson, which pertains to how we deal with the perpetrators of genocide and mass crimes, is that retributive justice is not a panacea in either post-genocide Rwanda or in post-conflict societies more generally. Perpetrators should be held accountable for their crimes, but criminal trials have limitations, particularly in facilitating reconciliation. Rather than relying exclusively on retributive justice, therefore, post-conflict societies should wherever possible seek to combine criminal trials with restorative justice mechanisms.


A substantial body of comparative legal scholarship considers statements applicable to large, conceptually infinite numbers of countries. Such statements gain in credibility if they are supported by evidence from large samples of countries. Processing such vast evidence requires quantitative methods. Designing the requisite numerical measures of law is not straightforward, but an important insight from statistics suggests that this problem can be overcome by appropriate research design. While in practice considering more countries comes at the expense of less information per country, on balance large sample, quantitative research designs promise to yield interesting insights for comparative law.


Many nurse academicians are also advanced practice nurses (APNs) in the United States (U.S.). Such faculty are often involved in clinical practice activities which require specific competencies for meeting legal responsibilities and standards for safety. Maintaining practice expectations often takes away the time necessary to address traditional scholarship expected by U.S. institutions for advancement and promotion, and securing tenured academic positions. Scholarship activities for APNs should encompass broad and essential criteria during review and promotional processes; especially important is documentation for the scholarship of application as it applies to APN clinical practice. Nursing faculty who practice as APNs should become adept at documenting scholarship of practice. Appropriate recognition for valid non-traditional types of scholarship activities is essential. According to the Position Statement of the American Association of the Colleges of Nursing (AACN) on Defining Scholarship for the Discipline of Nursing, there are four different dimensions of scholarship. These expand upon the seminal work of Boyer (1990) and consist of: (a) the Scholarship of Discovery, (b) the Scholarship of Teaching, (c) the Scholarship of Application, and (d) the Scholarship of Integration. The purpose of this article is to describe each of the four types of scholarship and demonstrate how the APN/ nurse academician's clinical practice is an application of scholarship. APN practice is multidimensional and an important basis for review and promotion in academic and/or health care settings.


This article, part of a symposium on the use of foreign and international law in gay rights litigation in the United States, considers several basic questions about the use of such non-domestic law in American constitutional adjudication. It begins by considering the argument that structural constitutional provisions are especially resistant to foreign law borrowing, given a nation's unique social and economic composition and the unique historical situation it faced in its founding period. It concludes that these characteristics influence both a constitution's structural and rights provisions, and thus do not adequately distinguish between situations where borrowing is appropriate and those where it is not. The article then moves on to consider borrowing in constitutional rights adjudication, since most gay rights litigation is and will be based on rights provisions. Building on my earlier work in the area of congressional authority to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, I argue in the article that foreign law can play three important roles in constitutional rights adjudication. First, it can provide empirical inputs that feed into domestic constitutional doctrine. Second, it can form part of the social context against which courts apply constitutional doctrine. These constitute relatively modest uses of foreign law. A third and more aggressive use of foreign law sees it as a source of rules that should inform the actual meaning of analogous provisions in the U.S. Constitution. The article suggests that borrowing meaning in this way requires courts to determine whether the foreign provision is situated within that nation's set of constitutional commitments similarly to how the analogous American provision is situated with regard to the overall thrust of American constitutional law. The article expands on this understanding with several examples. The article also suggests that Justice Kennedy's focus on liberty in Lawrence v. Texas may well accelerate the process of foreign borrowing, not just because the opinion relies heavily on foreign law, but exactly because it focuses on the universal concept of liberty. The article then considers the special problems posed by borrowing from international, as opposed to foreign, law. It suggests first that congressional ratification of treaties should be taken, for constitutional adjudication purposes, as an authoritative national embrace of the values enshrined in that treaty. Thus, even if the treaty is not self-executing, congressional ratification provides strong evidence, for substantive due process purposes, of the basic value choices American society has made. Moving beyond treaties, the article then considers whether international agreements more generally or customary international law should influence American constitutional adjudication. The Court's recent use of international law in its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence reveals a role for such law. The article concludes by considering the possibility that international - and evolving global law - can play a similar role in the adjudication of constitutional gay rights claims.


In order to take account of the impact of the pandemic on the already changing scholarly communications and work-life of early career researchers (ECRs), the 4-year long Harbingers study was extended for another two years. As a precursor to the study (featuring interviews and a questionnaire survey), currently underway, an analytic review of the pertinent literature was undertaken and its results are presented here. The review focuses on the challenges faced by ECRs and how these compare to the ones more senior researchers have to tackle. In the examination of the literature three general questions are posed: Q1) What are the identifiable and forthcoming impacts of the pandemic-induced financial pressures felt in the Higher Education sector on ECRs' employment and career development prospects? Q2) What are the identifiable and forthcoming pandemic-associated disruptions in the pace/focus/direction of the research undertaking? Have any disruptions been predicted to exert an impact on ECRs' research activities, and if so, with what scholarly consequences? Q3) How is the work-life of ECRs shaping up under the virus-dictated rules of the 'new normal' in the research undertaking? What challenges, if any, arise from the changes in practices identified, and what might their potential consequences be for ECRs? The broad conclusion of the study is that the literature leaves little room for doubt: junior researchers are already disproportionally affected by and bear the burden of the ongoing pandemic-incurred hardships and they are likely to remain similarly impacted when more trials, still unfolding, materialise.


The Demonstration Test Catchments (DTC) project is a UK Government funded initiative to test the effectiveness of on-farm mitigation measures designed to reduce agricultural pollution without compromising farm productivity. Three distinct catchments in England have been chosen to test the efficacy of mitigation measures on working farms in small tributary sub-catchments equipped with continuous water quality monitoring stations. The Hampshire Avon in the south is a mixed livestock and arable farming catchment, the River Wensum in the east is a lowland catchment with predominantly arable farming and land use in the River Eden catchment in the north-west is predominantly livestock farming. One of the many strengths of the DTC as a national research platform is that it provides the ability to investigate catchment hydrology and biogeochemical response across different landscapes and geoclimatic characteristics, with a range of differing flow behaviours, geochemistries and nutrient chemistries. Although numerous authors present studies of individual catchment responses to storms, no studies exist of multiple catchment responses to the same rainfall event captured with in situ high-resolution nutrient monitoring at a national scale. This paper brings together findings from all three DTC research groups to compare the response of the catchments to a major storm event in April 2012. This was one of the first weather fronts to track across the country following a prolonged drought period affecting much of the UK through 2011–2012, marking an unusual meteorological transition when a rapid shift from drought to flood risk occurred. The effects of the weather front on discharge and water chemistry parameters, including nitrogen species (NO3-N and NH4-N) and phosphorus fractions (total P (TP) and total reactive P (TRP)), measured at a half-hourly time step are examined. When considered in the context of one hydrological year, flow and concentration duration curves reveal that the weather fronts resulted in extreme flow, nitrate and TP concentrations in all three catchments but with distinct differences in both hydrographs and chemographs. Hysteresis loops constructed from high resolution data are used to highlight an array of potential pollutant sources and delivery pathways. In the Hampshire Avon DTC, transport was dominated by sub-surface processes, where phosphorus, largely in the soluble form, was found to be transport-limited. In the Wensum DTC, transport was largely dominated by rapid sub-surface movement due to the presence of under-drainage, which mobilised large quantities of nitrate during the storm. In the Eden DTC, transport was found to be initially dominated by surface runoff, which switched to subsurface delivery on the falling limb of the hydrograph, with the surface delivery transporting large amounts of particulate phosphorus to the river, with a transport-limited response. The lack of exhaustion of nutrient delivery in response to such extreme flow generation indicates the size of the nutrient pools stored in these catchments, and highlights the scale of the challenges faced by environmental managers when designing mitigation measures to reduce the flux of nutrients to UK river systems from diffuse agricultural sources.


Rights abuse clauses are provisions in the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prevent individuals using rights to undermine the rights of others in society. They are most commonly used to restrict the free speech of extremist political groups. This paper argues that they are a reflection of an anti-totalitarian consensus behind both instruments. A critical examination of their history shows that these clauses are the products of a form of collective European memory which seeks to safeguard against a collective heritage of totalitarianism. Their substance seemingly privileges a complex historically contingent form of anti-racism and they can be used to justify seemingly far-reaching restrictions on free speech and freedom of association in order to prevent against totalitarianism. Rights abuse clauses, this paper concludes, are a form of collective juridical memory which has overshadowed the development of human rights law in certain areas.


Time is a central concept when attempting to capture how life develops as results of the interaction between the individual and those in his/her immediate environment. Chronic renal disease such as ESRD with chronic haemodialysis not only shortens life but also places everyday life on a thin line survival paramount. The haemodialysis is also a time-consuming treatment that makes it necessary to carefully plan of everyday life and involves next of kin to a large degree. The aim of this study was to explore the content of time in everyday life as experienced by the next of kin of haemodialysis patients. This study used explorative and descriptive design with a content analysis approach. The interviews, which were conducted in the informants' homes, lasted 20-60 minutes and were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim in order to not to lose any information. Twenty next of kin were selected purposive with the criterion of having at least one year of experience as a next of kin of a patient on haemodialysis. The content of time in everyday life can be described as follows: fragmented time, vacuous time and uninterrupted time. Conclusion which illustrate how time is minimised and life space contracted for next of kin and their family. They were aware of the prognosis of renal disease and the fact that haemodialysis is life-sustaining treatment, which forced them to live for the moment. It is important to gain insight into how time influences the next of kin's experiences of everyday life and how this knowledge can be communicated in the nursing science.


The paper contains an analysis of the market structure when the inferior process chain company supplies the superior company with input resources and at the same time is vertically integrated with one of the superior companies. The possible anticompetitive effects of such vertically integrated structures are analyzed as well as the influence of information flows between inferior and superior enterprises of the sector on drivers of innovation and national welfare. These issues are relevant, if important information, in particular, information technology, design and specific characteristics of the product is available to inferior and superior sector enterprises. This situation is typical for high-tech sectors in which the inferior and superior product information exchange needs ensuring compatibility of products and preventing the additional costs of adjustment and increased functionality. The problem of assessing the appropriateness of imposing a ban on various divisions of a vertically integrated company to exchange non-public information received by one of its divisions from external sources is important. In the case of such a restriction, the inferior organizational division of a vertically integrated company may use personal information of the superior competitor only within the powers of its supplier, and cannot make it public for its superior organizational division as an example. The aim of the research is to develop an economic and mathematical model of business struggle with a vertically integrated company in the market. The paper contains the hypotheses and supporting evidence.


This publication is primarily concerned with risks to arable and horticultural crops, and the applicability of insurance to managing these risks. Its purpose is to provide an introductory overview of crop and forestry insurance. It begins by defining the boundaries for these types of insurance products in order to assist those interested in exploring and exploiting this financial mechanism. It then outlines how to proceed with planning for crop insurance within the established boundaries. While recognising that classic, damage-based and yield-based insurance products account for the bulk of all crop insurance written globally, the booklet also points out the dynamism of research and development into new insurance mechanisms. It presents two fairly new insurance products: the first based on insuring a level of crop revenue, and the second where insurable damage is determined on the basis of an index derived from data external to the insured farm. While some of the example material is taken from agriculture and forestry in developed countries, the basic target group of readers is expected to be those concerned with crop and forest risk management in developing parts of the world. This publication will be of interest to farmer unions, producer/commodity groups, processors, marketing firms and others contracting with farmer producers, officials of Ministries of Agriculture, Planning and Commerce, and bankers and insurers with farming and forestry clients.


Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, floods and earthquakes not only damage and destroy the land, sea, forest and other resources vital to peoples' livelihoods but also impact the lives of the victims in an adverse way: physically, mentally, emotionally and
economically. In the immediate aftermath of disasters, unaffected individuals and
organisations often feel compelled to help in whatever capacity may be available to them -
including the provision of psychosocial interventions. However, there are also risks involved
with providing psychosocial interventions including unintentional harm due to "disaster
tourism" or "parachuting". It is not uncommon for those providing psychosocial interventions to violate cultural and social norms in ways that negatively impact the recovery process, and potentially impede resilient outcomes. Hence, the aim of the review was to identify and describe the psychological consequences, the types of interventions as well as resilience and coping skills of survivors of natural disasters, namely earthquakes, hurricane, tsunami and flood across different cultures. Twelve studies were identified for this review and PTSD was the most common psychological consequence identified. Even though there were some differences in resilience and coping strategies of natural disaster survivors, on a microenvironmental level, social support appeared to be common. On a macro-systemic level, community factors, such as community services, cultural factors, spirituality and religion contributed to resilience across several cultures. However, psychological interventions adopted varied across different cultures. In addition to understanding the culture, spiritual, and beliefs of the disaster survivors, the importance of working with appropriate community operations and adopting culturally sensitive screening instruments in the future cannot be overlooked.


Monitoring of blood transcriptional changes during disease or treatment could improve the understanding of cellular mechanisms associated with that particular condition. This can be achieved through serial sampling of small blood volumes. However, molecular analysis of gene expression from low volume samples remains a challenging task. To address this issue, we have developed a set of standard operating procedures (SOP), starting from collection of small volume blood to measurement of gene expression. Previously we published an SOP for the collection of a small volume of blood via finger stick and stabilization of RNA. The aim of this manuscript is to share a modified TempusTM solution based RNA extraction method, developed in our lab, for the extraction of total RNA from low volume whole blood samples collected via finger stick.


We introduce a new type of retinal oximeter able to capture multiple spectroscopic sensitive images of the retina in a single snapshot. The core of our apparatus is a multiaperture camera that can be easily interfaced with a fundus camera system. A lenslet array divides the image collected by a fundus camera into identical subimages. A bandpass filter array in front of the lens system is used to collect the subimages only at the wavelengths of interest. Two different instruments were designed based on this simple principle. The first system can collect six different images, while the second system can collect up to 18 different images in a single snapshot.


Measures of dispersion in the form of covariance control charts are the multivariate analog to the univariate R-chart, and are used in conjunction with multivariate location charts such as the Hotelling T2 chart, much as the R-chart is the companion to the univariate X-bar chart. Significantly more research has been directed towards location measures, but three multivariate statistics (|S|, Wi, and G) have been developed to measure dispersion. This research explores the correlation component of the covariance statistics and demonstrates that, in many cases, the contribution of correlation is less significant than originally believed, but also offers suggestions for how to implement a correlation control chart when this is the variable of primary interest.This research mathematically analyzes the potential use of the three covariance statistics (|S|, Wi, and G), modified for the special case of correlation. A simulation study is then performed to characterize the behavior of the two modified statistics that are found to be feasible. Parameters varied include the sample size (n), number of quality characteristics (p), the variance, and the number of correlation matrix entries that are perturbed. The performance and utility of the front-running correlation (modified Wi) statistic is then examined by comparison to similarly classed statistics and by trials with real and simulated data sets, respectively. Recommendations for the development of correlation control charts are presented, an outgrowth of which is the understanding that correlation often does not have a large effect on the dispersion measure in most cases.


A major problem in robotic vision is the segmentation of images of natural scenes in order to understand their content. This paper presents a new solution to the image segmentation problem that is based on the design of a rule-based expert system. General knowledge about low level properties of processes employ the rules to segment the image into uniform regions and connected lines. In addition to the knowledge rules, a set of control rules are also employed. These include metarules that embody inferences about the order in which the knowledge rules are matched. They also incorporate focus of attention rules that determine the path of processing within the image. Furthermore, an additional set of higher level rules dynamically alters the processing strategy. This paper discusses the structure and content of the knowledge and control rules for image segmentation.


This report describes an outbreak of an acute, highly lethal, Newcastle Disease (ND) in two broiler flocks that were intensively managed and vaccinated against Newcastle disease. The broiler flocks (325) were four weeks and (450) were six weeks old at the time of the outbreak. Clinical characteristics of the disease included a 100% morbidity, increasing high mortality i.e. 40 birds (day one), 70 birds (day two), 180 (day three) and the entire flocks consisting of 755 birds were lost by the fifth day. Clinical features observed included severe depression, gasping, anorexia, cyanosis and subcutaneous haemorrhages of the legs and shank. Gross lesions seen were severe congestion of skeletal muscles and visceral organs and severe haemorrhages and congestion of the proventriculus, cecal tonsils and trachea, air saculitis with severely congested and pneumonic lungs were observed as well. Ten cloacal swabs from dead and sick birds were tested using a Rapid Newcastle Disease and Avian Influenza Antigen Detection Test Kits. This Chromatographicimmunoassay tested positive for ND and negative for AI confirming the presence of ND viral antigen. Four dead and live birds taken to National Veterinary Research Institute (NVRI) Vom, Nigeria for further confirmation were tested using rapid test kit, haemagglutination inhibition test and viral isolation. These tests were also negative for AI but positive for vvND. Clinical signs and gross lesions of ND and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) seem not to be distinguishable in the field. This is likely going to affect disease reporting and actions to be taken. Vaccination against ND should not be totally relied upon especially when birds are not seromonitored pre and post vaccination.


The financial markets industry is at the same crossroads as the automotive industry in the late 1970s. Margins are collapsing and customization is rapidly increasing. The automotive industry turned to quality and its no coincidence that in the money management industry many of the spectacular failures have been due largely to problems in quality control. The financial industry in on the verge of a quality revolution. New and old firms alike are creating new investment vehicles and new strategies that are radically changing the nature of the industry. To compete, mutual funds, hedge fund industries, banks and proprietary trading firms are being forced to quickly research, test and implement trade selection and execution systems. And, just as in the early stages of factory automation, quality suffers and leads to defects. Many financial firms fall short of quality, lacking processes and methodologies for proper development and evaluation of trading and investment systems. Authors Kumiega and Van Vliet present a new step-by-step methodology for such development. Their methodology (called K|V) has been presented in numerous journal articles and at academic and industry conferences and is rapidly being accepted as the preferred business process for the institutional trading and hedge fund industries for development, presentation, and evaluation of trading and investment systems. The K|V model for trading system development combines new product development, project management and software development methodologies into one robust system. After four stages, the methodology requires repeating the entire waterfall for continuous improvement. The discussion quality and its applications to the front office is presented using lessons learned by the authors after using the methodology in the real world. As a result, it is flexible and modifiable to fit various projects in finance in different types of firms. Their methodology works equally well for short-term trading systems, longer-term portfolio management or mutual fund style investment strategies as well as more sophisticated ones employing derivative instruments in hedge funds. Additionally, readers will be able to quickly modify the standard K|V methodology to meet their unique needs and to quickly build other quantitatively drive applications for finance. At the beginning and the end of the book the authors pose a key question: Are you willing to change and embrace quality for the 21st century or are willing to accept extinction? The real gem in this book is that the concepts give the reader a road map to avoid extinction. This book presents a robust process engineering framework for developing and evaluating trading and investment systems. It offers best practices along the step-by-step process will mitigate project risk, model risk, and ensure data quality. It includes a quality model for backtesting and managing market risk of working systems.


This paper describes the current use of computers in the civil engineering undergraduate education of students at Clemson Univrsity, the land-grant university of the State of South Carolina. It is evident that computers, particularly microcomputers, have been well integrated into most of the required civil engineering courses. Clemson graduates, therefore, should find it relatively easy to adapt to the various computing environments that are currently available in the government and industry. The University, College, and Department, on the other hand, also seem ready to respond to the inevitable changes that are occurring in the computing technology.


Animacy detection is a problem whose solution has been shown to be beneficial for a number of syntactic and semantic tasks. We present a state-of-the-art system for this task which uses a number of simple classifiers with heterogeneous data sources in a voting scheme. We show how this framework can give us direct insight into the behavior of the system, allowing us to more easily diagnose sources of error.


CEELO reviewed data on 21 states' principal licensure requirements, conducted structured interviews with experts on principal preparation and professional development in 7 states, and spoke with staff at the National Association of Elementary School Principals and the National Institute for School Leadership. Our research reveals an array of administrator licensure titles assigned to grade-level authority across states, some permitting principals or administrators the flexibility to oversee programs ranging from early childhood through high school. To date, only Illinois has included early childhood content specifically in their licensure and accreditation processes. Early childhood content is not a required element of principal preparation or professional development for principals in most states, according to our findings. Very few states have any formal requirement for early childhood content in licensure for principals responsible for early education programs. Some states have developed policies and programs that acknowledge a need for integrating early childhood content (DE, IL, MD, NJ, PA, WA), but very few have progressed beyond initial stages of providing training or outlining policies. www.ceelo.org| firstname.lastname@example.com 2 CEELO POLICY REPORT – July 2014 ECE Principal Preparation


The European Commission adopted a "Regulation on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions in matters of succession." One of the most important issues that this Regulation addresses is the determination of the law applicable to a given succession for nationals of one member state with habitual residence in another member state. The Regulation provides that in such cases, the governing law to the succession will be the law of the state in which the deceased had his or her habitual residence at death. The UK, together with Ireland and Denmark, did not opt-in to this Regulation. This paper analyzes the impact of the UK's decision not to opt-in to the Regulation and argues that the UK will manage to preserve its system of private international law but will not avoid being affected by the provisions of the Regulation. In this sense the UK will minimize, but not escape, the effects of the European Regulation on cross-border succession.


Net farm income for all representative farms will be lower in 2003 than in 1995-96, but net farm income will be level throughout the 1997-2005 period. Cropland prices are projected to fall in all regions of North Dakota after peaking in 1996-97. Cash rental rates are projected to follow cropland prices. Debt-to-asset ratios for most farms, although rising across the forecast period, will not reach levels that imperil credit worthiness. Debt-to-asset ratios for the low profit and small size farms are higher than those for large and high profit farms.


HAPLESS2 (HAP2) is a broadly conserved, gamete-expressed transmembrane protein that was shown recently to be structurally homologous to viral class II fusion proteins, which initiate fusion with host cells via insertion of fusion loops into the host membrane. However, the functional conformation of the HAP2 fusion loops has remained unknown, as the reported X-ray structure of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii HAP2 lacked this critical region. Here, we report a structure-guided alignment that reveals diversification of the proposed HAP2 fusion loops. Representative crystal structures show that in flowering plants, HAP2 has a single prominent fusion loop projecting an amphipathic helix at its apex, while in trypanosomes, three small nonpolar loops of HAP2 are poised to interact with the target membrane. A detailed structure-function analysis of the Arabidopsis HAP2 amphipathic fusion helix defines key residues that are essential for membrane insertion and for gamete fusion. Our study suggests that HAP2 may have evolved multiple modes of membrane insertion to accommodate the diversity of membrane environments it has encountered during eukaryotic evolution.


This paper studies the impinging droplets on superhydrophobic textured surfaces and proposes a design guideline for nonwetting surfaces under droplet impingement. A new wetting pressure, the effective water hammer pressure, is introduced in the study to clearly define wetting states for the impinging droplets. This approach establishes the design criteria for nonwetting surfaces to impinging droplets. For impingement speed higher than raindrop speed, the surfaces need to have sub-100-nm features to generate a large enough antiwetting pressure for the droplets to take a nonwetting state after impingement.


Denoising diffusion models (DDMs) have emerged as a powerful class of generative models. A forward diffusion process slowly perturbs the data, while a deep model learns to gradually denoise. Synthesis amounts to solving a differential equation (DE) defined by the learnt model. Solving the DE requires slow iterative solvers for high-quality generation. In this work, we propose Higher-Order Denoising Diffusion Solvers (GENIE): Based on truncated Taylor methods, we derive a novel higher-order solver that significantly accelerates synthesis. Our solver relies on higher-order gradients of the perturbed data distribution, that is, higher-order score functions. In practice, only Jacobian-vector products (JVPs) are required and we propose to extract them from the first-order score network via automatic differentiation. We then distill the JVPs into a separate neural network that allows us to efficiently compute the necessary higher-order terms for our novel sampler during synthesis. We only need to train a small additional head on top of the first-order score network. We validate GENIE on multiple image generation benchmarks and demonstrate that GENIE outperforms all previous solvers. Unlike recent methods that fundamentally alter the generation process in DDMs, our GENIE solves the true generative DE and still enables applications such as encoding and guided sampling. Project page and code: https://nv-tlabs.github.io/GENIE.


This policy brief examines South Africa's role in resolving some of the intricate crises on the African continent. The focus is on the perceived predatory nature of South Africa's relations with the rest of the continent, and why such relations are Utopian, without malice intended. Though interests are the main drivers of foreign policy formulation, South Africa had since 1994 relied on the astute and shrewd nature of its former presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki to drive the foreign policy agenda of South Africa. In the post-Mbeki era, democratic exigencies have been the main drivers of South African policy on Africa, with little reference to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The myth surrounding South Africa's involvement on the continent stems from the bullish and structural weakness of the domestic foreign policy generation process. The brief argues that South Africa needs to reallocate its resources and restrategise its African policy agenda in order to offer insights into adaptations in foreign policy that emerging economies are pursuing in other regions of the world.


We conducted a laboratory-based observational study where pairs of people performed search tasks communicating verbally. Examination of the discourse allowed commonly used interactions to be identified for Spoken Conversational Search (SCS). We compared the interactions to existing models of search behaviour. We find that SCS is more complex and interactive than traditional search. This work enhances our understanding of different search behaviours and proposes research opportunities for an audio-only search system. Future work will focus on creating models of search behaviour for SCS and evaluating these against actual SCS systems.


In the second half of 1845 the focus of Polk's correspondence shifted from those issues relating to the formation of his administration and distribution of part patronage to those that would give shape and consequence to his presidency: the admission of Texas, preparation for its defense, restoration of diplomatic relations with Mexico, and termination of joint occupancy of the Oregon Country. For the most part the incoming letters tended to urge rather more militancy on the Texas and Oregon questions than Polk would adopt, and notions of national destiny registered a singular theme of buoyant confidence in taking on both Mexico and Great Britain if military action should be required. President Polk and Secretary of State James Buchanan succeeded in both using and controlling the surge of nationalism that heightened expectations for expansion westward. Polk and Buchanan agreed on the importance of reestablishing diplomatic relations with Mexico, but the President chose to take a personal hand in managing the selection and instruction of John Slidell, whose departure for Vera Cruz would not be made public until he had arrived in Mexico. Polk wanted to give the fledgling Mexican administration of Jose Joaquin Herrera a chance to compose Mexico's differences with Washington free of contrary pressures from Great Britain and France; and he fully understood the price that Herrara might pay for a peaceful settlement of the Texas question. If Mexico required more than $6 million for the purchase of their two most northern provinces, as provided in his instructions, Slidell might agree to any reasonable additional sum. Slidell's mission probably never had much chance of success, for without control of his military the Herrara administration could neither give up its claim to Texas nor overcome British opposition to the sale of New Mexico and Upper California. Within but a few days of Slidell's arrival in the Mexican capital, Mariano Paredes y Argilla organized a military coup, put the Herrera government to flight, and on January 2, 1846, declared himself interim of president of Mexico. Polk left on the table his predecessor's initiative to divide the Oregon Country at the 49th parallel with all of Vancouver Island going to the British. The summary rejection of that offer by the British minister to Washington, Richard Packenham, so angered Polk that on August 30th he formally withdrew all prior offers to settle the dispute. The British foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, disavowed and assured the U.S. minister to Britain, Louis McLane, that no ultimatum had been sanctioned by his government. Buchanan tried in vain to soften Polk's decision to initiate further negotiations, but he had determined to give the required one year advance notice prior to abrogating the treaty of joint occupancy. Accordingly, in his First Annual Message to Congress Polk asked for a joint resolution terminating Oregon agreements with Great Britain. Polk received high praise for his Message and its hard line on Texas and Oregon. In addition to the texts, briefs, and annotations, the editors have calendared all of the documents for the last six months of 1845. Entries for unpublished letters include documents' dates, addresses, classifications, repositories, and precis. The Polk Project is sponsored by the University of Tennessee and assisted by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Nations Endowment for the Humantines, and the Tennessee Historical Commission. The Authors: Wayne Cutler is research professor of history at the University of Tennessee. He earned his bachelor's degree at Lamar University and his master's and doctor's degrees and University of Texas at Austin. Professor Cutler became director of the Polk Project in 1975, served as associate editor in the fourth volume of the correspondence, and headed the editorial team in the preparation of the series' fifth and subsequent volumes. He began his professional career in 1966 as an editorial associate of the Southwestern Historic Quarterly and moved to the assistant editorship of the Henry Clay Project in 1970. James L. Rogers II, the Project's associate editor from 1995 until 2002, received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Louisiana at Monroe and his doctor's degree from the University of Tennessee. He joined the Polk staff in 1991 as graduate research assistant and became associate editor following completion of the series' ninth volume.


Heparan sulfate proteoglycans cooperate with basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF/FGF2) signaling to control osteoblast growth and differentiation, as well as metabolic functions of osteoblasts. FGF2 signaling modulates the expression and activity of Runt‐related transcription factor 2 (Runx2/Cbfa1), a key regulator of osteoblast proliferation and maturation. Here, we have characterized novel Runx2 target genes in osteoprogenitors under conditions that promote growth arrest while not yet permitting sustained phenotypic maturation. Runx2 enhances expression of genes related to proteoglycan‐mediated signaling, including FGF receptors (e.g., FGFR2 and FGFR3) and proteoglycans (e.g., syndecans [Sdc1, Sdc2, Sdc3], glypicans [Gpc1], versican [Vcan]). Runx2 increases expression of the glycosyltransferase Exostosin‐1 (Ext1) and heparanase, as well as alters the relative expression of N‐linked sulfotransferases (Ndst1 = Ndst2 > Ndst3) and enzymes mediating O‐linked sulfation of heparan sulfate (Hs2st > Hs6st) or chondroitin sulfate (Cs4st > Cs6st). Runx2 cooperates with FGF2 to induce expression of Sdc4 and the sulfatase Galns, but Runx2 and FGF2 suppress Gpc6, thus suggesting intricate Runx2 and FGF2 dependent changes in proteoglycan utilization. One functional consequence of Runx2 mediated modulations in proteoglycan‐related gene expression is a change in the responsiveness of bone markers to FGF2 stimulation. Runx2 and FGF2 synergistically enhance osteopontin expression (>100 fold), while FGF2 blocks Runx2 induction of alkaline phosphatase. Our data suggest that Runx2 and the FGF/proteoglycan axis may form an extracellular matrix (ECM)‐related regulatory feed‐back loop that controls osteoblast proliferation and execution of the osteogenic program. J. Cell. Biochem. 107: 144–154, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


The striking affinities that have developed between radical-conservative movements in Western Europe and Russia since the end of the Cold War have been widely noted. This essay considers these affinities through the example of the Soviet historian and geographer Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912–1992). It argues that Gumilev and the European New Right developed perspectives that were highly comparable, founded on similar principles, and articulated through similar images and allusions. Yet despite the powerful resonances in terms of basic concepts and theoretical orientation, there were nonetheless deep differences in terms of the conclusions regarding the practical implications for their respective societies that Gumilev and the Europeans deduced from these principles.


The introduction of the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) by financial institutions has changed the face of banking globally, Nigeria inclusive. The mechanism has provided a kind of collective sigh-of-relief to both the bank and their customers, offering convenient, speedy and round the clock services. However, it is not without some inherent challenges as many bank customers who are not proficient in English language found the ATM cumbersome and unfriendly. Attempting to provide solution to these challenges, some banks in Nigeria have developed and introduced the indigenous language version of the Automated Teller Machine options. Yet, user's response did not reflect the anticipated level of enthusiasm as a result of operational complexities and translation equivalence challenges especially for the Yoruba menu option. In view of this, this work makes an attempt to present an improved translation model introducing Yoruba tone marking to assist those who do not understand the English language, but are monolingual only in Yoruba language to effectively interact with the system. Specifically, an attempt is made to translate the menu option of Automated Teller Machine in conformity with the phonological and morphological processes in Yorùbá, following the natural strategy of lexical expansion in the Yorùbá language itself. Phrases and sentences of translation were conducted, employing equivalent model. The data (content) considered were arranged bearing in mind the principle of relatedness for proper reference and analysis. During translation, the strategies of morphological processes of semantic extension, borrowing, nominalization, indigenization and composition were used. The system framework designed to test the model was found to reflect the anticipated level of user's enthusiasm. The research work does not only assist those who are not proficient in English language to effectively interact with the system, but also overcomes the challenges of the present design and consequently widens the scope of ATM usage in the interior parts of the country.


Animal healthcare robots are a form of healthcare or wellness devices that possess the appearance of animals or pets and that collect data on the user. The appearance, use, and nature of data collected by these robots illustrate two types of devices for which privacy regulation falls short: Internet of Things ("IoT") devices and healthcare devices. This paper surveys the animal healthcare robots currently in the market, details the special privacy concerns associated with such robots, examines the current state of potentially relevant privacy laws, and makes recommendations for privacy regulation in the future.


Pursuing a question of Oxley, we investigate whether the edge set of a graph admits a bipartition so that the contraction of either partite set produces a series-parallel graph. While Oxley's question in general remains unanswered, our investigations led to two graph operations (Chapters 2 and 4) which are of independent interest. We present some partial results toward Oxley's question in Chapter 3. The central results of the dissertation involve an operation on cubic graphs called the switch; in the literature, a similar operation is known as the edge slide. In Chapter 2, the author proves that we can transform, with switches, any connected, cubic graph on n vertices into any other connected, cubic graph on n vertices. Furthermore, connectivity, up to internal 4-connectedness, can be preserved during the operations. In 2007, Demaine, Hajiaghayi, and Mohar proved the following: for a fixed genus g and any integer k ≥ 2, and for every graph G of Euler genus at most g, the edges of G can be partitioned into k sets such that contracting any one of the sets produces a graph of tree-width at most O(gk). In Chapter 3 we sharpen this result, when k = 2, for the projective plane (g = 1) and the torus (g = 2). During early simultaneous investigations of Jaeger's Dual-Hamiltonian conjecture and Oxley's question, we obtained a simple structure theorem on cubic, internally 4-connected graphs; that result is found in Chapter 4.


One of the greatest problems in the production of bioenergy is related to the cultivation of high-quality perennials having a particular chemical content. The yield and chemical content thereof is largely influenced by fertilisers: their types and norms, especially by ones used during the growing period. The production of heat requires plants bringing high biomass yield, having high combustion ability, high heat output and low ash content. Perennial grasses are essential for the agricultural production sector in Latvia. The nature and extent of winter damage on grasslands highly depends upon the climatic conditions, moreover it influences both persistency and yield. Scientists have found out that plant biomass is one of the best sources that may be used for the production of solid biofuels. Ash is one of the main indicators in heat production, since higher content thereof causes problems in the automatic combustion process. Analysis of the ash content among all the three grass plants shows the lowest indicator in timothy, followed by meadow fescue, and festulolium. Analysis of the ash content depending on the fertiliser applied was conducted as well, and it indicated that festulolium, timothy, and meadow fescue effectively react on the treatment with fertilisers. The data acquired shows that biomass has a high ash content; therefore it could be useful to produce pellets from grass plant biomass, mixing it with wood, which would reduce ash content (one of the key problems in the combustion process causing problems for the heating system).


Better Plants-Better Biorefining: A Personal Perspective
The developments in plant science are beginning to significantly change our vision of what is possible for the biorefining of plant material. It is clear that we no longer need to 'settle' for native plants and their bioresources, which in turn often lead to costly and expensive fractionation and deconstruction technologies. Although the farmer and consumer have benefitted from numerous transgenic plants with superior food and textile products, it has taken some time for the research community to fully focus its efforts on improving the biorefining potential of agro-energy crops, forests and plant residues


Will, Imagination, and Reason sets forth a new understanding of reality and knowledge with far-reaching implications for the study of man and society. Employing a systematic approach, Claes Ryn goes to the philosophical depths to rethink and reconstitute the epistemology of the humanities and social sciences. He shows that will and imagination, together, constitute our basic outlook on life and that reason derives its material and general orientation from the interaction between them. The imaginative master-minds--novelists, poets, composers, painters, and others--powerfully affect the sensibility and direction of society. Sometimes a distorting, self-serving willfulness at the base of their visions draws civilization, including reason, into dangerous illusion. More penetrating and balanced vision and rationality spring from a different quality of will. Ryn explains the kind of interplay between will, imagination, and reason that is conducive to a deepened sense of reality and to intellectual understanding. He argues that human life and self-knowledge are inescapably historical. In developing his dialectical view of intellect, he draws from Irving Babbitt, Benedetto Croce, and other philosophers to refute positivistic, formalistic, and ahistorical theories of knowledge and to develop his alternative. Advancing a systematic epistemological argument, Ryn throws much new light on the nature of reason but also on central issues of ethics and aesthetics. This trenchant and original work is indispensable to philosophers, social, political and cultural theorists, literary scholars, and historians.


Independent component analysis (ICA) is becoming an increasingly important tool for analyzing large data sets. In essence, ICA separates an observed set of signal mixtures into a set of statistically independent component signals, or source signals. In so doing, this powerful method can extract the relatively small amount of useful information typically found in large data sets. The applications for ICA range from speech processing, brain imaging, and electrical brain signals to telecommunications and stock predictions. In Independent Component Analysis, Jim Stone presents the essentials of ICA and related techniques (projection pursuit and complexity pursuit) in a tutorial style, using intuitive examples described in simple geometric terms. The treatment fills the need for a basic primer on ICA that can be used by readers of varying levels of mathematical sophistication, including engineers, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists who need to know the essentials of this evolving method. An overview establishes the strategy implicit in ICA in terms of its essentially physical underpinnings and describes how ICA is based on the key observations that different physical processes generate outputs that are statistically independent of each other. The book then describes what Stone calls "the mathematical nuts and bolts" of how ICA works. Presenting only essential mathematical proofs, Stone guides the reader through an exploration of the fundamental characteristics of ICA. Topics covered include the geometry of mixing and unmixing; methods for blind source separation; and applications of ICA, including voice mixtures, EEG, fMRI, and fetal heart monitoring. The appendixes provide a vector matrix tutorial, plus basic demonstration computer code that allows the reader to see how each mathematical method described in the text translates into working Matlab computer code.


Over the past thirty years, the United States has lost commanding leads in business after business. We no longer make cameras, TVs, MP3 players, cell phones, or DVD players, and we have become the world's largest debtor nation. Everyone thinks this is because of cheap labor costs, but in fact Asian leaders have a fundamental and different way of thinking about business. They are playing a different game. If the U.S. wants to regain its competitiveness and preserve its global power, it must play the game as it's played in the rest of the world. Winner Take All tells us what it takes to be competitive, and how we need to reform our thinking to regain what we have lost. Richard Elkus isn't afraid to bring a few sacred cows to the slaughter. This is the essential primer for any policy maker, business leader, or general reader interested in knowing how America can regain the economic clout it once had.


: Although routine healthcare data are not collected for research, they are increasingly used in epidemiology and are key real-world evidence for improving healthcare. This study presents a method to identify prostate cancer cases from a large English primary care database. 19,619 (1.3%) men had a code for prostate cancer diagnosis. Codes for medium and high Gleason grading enabled identification of additional 94 (0.5%) cases. Many studies do not report codes used to identify patients, and if published, the lists of codes differ from study to study. This can lead to poor research reproducibility and hinder validation. This work demonstrates that carefully developed comprehensive lists of clinical codes can be used to identify prostate cancer; and that approaches that do not solely rely on clinical codes such as ontologies or data linkage should also be considered.


Aim : Os acromiale is a rare shoulder condition, which may be symptomatic. The rate of rotator cuff disease in the presence of os acromiale is unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of os acromiale in patients with massive rotator cuff tears and in those with cuff tear arthropathy. Material and Methods : Prospective data collection was performed on all patients who were treated for massive rotator cuff tear and\or cuff arthropathy in our unit in period of one year. In particular presence or absence of os acromiale, size of rotator cuff tear and signs of arthritic changes were noted. These were detected by various ways including plain radiograph, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging or arthroscopy. Results : We found that 16 out of 135 (12%) of patients with massive rotator cuff tears had an associated os acromiale. Furthermore, 26 out of 82 (32%) patients with cuff arthropathy had an associated os acromiale. Conclusion : Our study provides evidence that os acromiale is associated with massive rotator cuff tears and cuff arthropathy. It may suggest that os acromiale plays a role in pathophysiology of massive tears and that it may need to be addressed in addition to repair of the rotator cuff tear when managing patients with both os acromiale and massive rotator cuff tears.


Understanding diffuse Galactic radio emission is interesting both in its own right and for minimizing foreground contamination of cosmological measurements. cosmic microwave background experiments have focused on frequencies ≥ 10 GHz, whereas 21-cm tomography of the high-redshift universe will mainly focus on ≤0.2 GHz, for which less is currently known about Galactic emission. Motivated by this, we present a global sky model derived from all publicly available total power large-area radio surveys, digitized with optical character recognition when necessary and compiled into a uniform format, as well as the new Villa Elisa data extending the 1.42-GHz map to the entire sky. We quantify statistical and systematic uncertainties in these surveys by comparing them with various global multifrequency model fits. We find that a principal component based model with only three components can fit the 11 most accurate data sets (at 10, 22, 45 and 408 MHz and 1.42, 2.326, 23, 33, 41, 61, 94 GHz) to an accuracy around 1-10 per cent depending on frequency and sky region. Both our data compilation and our software returning a predicted all-sky map at any frequency from 10 MHz to 100 GHz are publicly available at http://space.mit.edu/home/angelica/gsm.


Author(s): Bakker, Sarah Aaltje | Advisor(s): Caldwell, Melissa L | Abstract: This dissertation explores the reconfiguration of Syriac Orthodox liturgical tradition among Aramaic-speaking Christian refugees in the Netherlands. Under the pressures of Dutch integration policy and the global politics of secular recognition, the Syriac liturgy is rapidly losing its significance as the central axis of social life and kinship-relations in the Syriac Orthodox diaspora. As such, it has become a site for debate over how to be religiously, culturally, and ethnically distinct despite the narrative binary of Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East that dominates Dutch multiculturalism discourse. Every week, young Syriac Orthodox women and men congregate at their churches to practice singing the liturgy in classical Syriac. What they sing, and how they decide to sing it, mediates their experiments in religious and ethical reinvention, with implications for their efforts at political representation. Singers contend not only with conditions of inaudibility produced by histories of ethnic cleansing, migration, and assimilation, but also with the fragments of European Christianity that shape the sensory regime of secular modernity. Public debates over the integration of religious minorities illuminate this condition of fragmentation, as well as the contest over competing conceptions of ethical personhood inherent in the politics of pluralism in Europe.


The legal framework regarding EU Justice and Home Affairs Law was changed fundamentally by the Treaty of Lisbon, so that the usual rules on decision-making, jurisdiction of the Court of Justice, legal instruments and legal effect are now largely applied to this area of law. The various issues falling within the scope of JHA law are now set out in Title V of Part Three of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which is divided into five chapters, beginning with general provisions, followed by chapters on immigration and asylum, civil law, criminal law and policing law. This paper examines the application of the new rules in practice, in particular the impact of extending QMV; the extended legislative powers of the European Parliament; the role of the Commission as compared to the Member States; and the role of national parliaments. It concludes that this area of EU law is now fully part of the mainstream, with the exception of the special opt-outs for three Member States. However, it now follows that some of the general problems of EU law apply to JHA legislation, and there are emergent problems ensuring that JHA legislation is applied in practice by Member States, in particular from the perspective of the ECHR.


Programs where firms sell emissions ``offsets'' to reduce their emissions continue to provide important complementsto traditional environmental regulations. However in many cases, particularly with current and prospective climate change policy, they continue to be very controversial. The problem of adverse selection lies at the heart of this controversy, as critics of offset programs continue to produce evidence that these projects are paying firms for actions they would have undertaken anyway, and are not producing ``additional'' reductions. This paper explores the theoretical sources of non-additional offsets. An important distinction arises between sales that indicate adverse selection and those that reveal information about aggregate emissions levels.


The Lambeth-based Bread and Roses Festival marked the centenary of the successful Bread and Roses strike for improved working conditions by women in the textile factories of Massachusetts. The festival aimed to investigate the interaction between workers' rights and capitalism through performance art, photography (historical and contemporary) and documentary and fiction film. This was a new type of research for me, as a co-director and co-curator, and raised questions of how to curate a festival combining film, photography, music performance art and installation art, and how to engage the local community with the arts and the festival's themes.

The festival showcased a broad range of films, from new releases to rarely seen work. All community-hosted screenings and art events were free to attend. Screenings were held in the Clapham Common bandstand, the studioSTRIKE community cinema, community centres and cinemas across Lambeth. We secured the UK premiere of the acclaimed Uprising of '34; incorporated a live musical score to Eisenstein's Strike and Srdjan Keca's Mirage films; and presented previously unseen archive films from the London Screen Study Collection. The outdoor art programme included political performance art, artists' films, and readings. We also curated a photography exhibition, including images from the Lambeth Archive. Live music included the Clapham Community Choir.

A key aim was to foster debates around the themes of the festival. Fifteen of the twenty-one screenings had an after-event with not only filmmakers but also barristers, activists, journalists and local community groups such as the Women's Institute. We have maintained contact with our audiences since the festival through social media and newsletters.

The festival received external funding from the Arts Council, Film London, Battersea and Wandsworth Trades Council, the Lipman and Miliband Trust, the GMB and the Workers Beer Company.


In this special issue of Signs, the contributors address the complex and powerful relationship between gender and the rise of the global Right. This discussion demonstrates how, in transnational terms, the Right has become a significant player in gender politics. It resists the denaturalizing, deconstructive analysis of gender and sex in critical, feminist, and queer scholarship and directs its efforts toward reinstating dominant essentialized gender and sexual norms. These efforts are often coupled with assertions of racial, ethnic, or religious majoritarianism. There is no one formula in responding to this right-wing ideological creep, but one thing is certain: feminist and other progressive groups need to seriously engage with this phenomenon. The compilation of articles for this special issue is one such effort.


The Logarithmic Mean Temperature Difference (LMTD) method and the effectiveness-NTU method are the two important methods for design and analysis of heat exchangers. The derivation of these two methods relies on a critical assumption, i.e., the fluid specific heats are constant. Under special operating conditions where one fluid experiences condensation or evaporation at constant temperature, these two methods are still valid. In practice, however, the fluid temperature in heat exchangers will never remain constant during phase change because of pressure drop. Meanwhile, zeotropic refrigerant mixtures exhibit temperature variations even during a constant pressure phase change process. Therefore, both LMTD and effectiveness-NTU methods can introduce appreciable errors when applying to the cases in which refrigerant temperature change is not caused by heat transfer, rather than by pressure drop or temperature glide. This paper proposes modified LMTD method and effectiveness-NTU relations to remove the restriction of constant temperature phase change in the original approaches. The new methods account for the effects of pressure drop and temperature glide on the two-phase heat transfer process and make corresponding corrections based on simplifying assumptions. The new methods are applicable for both parallel-flow and counter-flow configurations, with phase change on one side. Rigorous error analyses indicate that the new approaches can substantially improve the thermal performance prediction for heat exchangers with large pressure drop and temperature glide.


Abstract : Background : This work aims to analyze trends of syphilis infections in the Piedmont Region (Italy) between 2002 and 2008, and to evaluate risk factors for infection.  Methods : Syphilis trends were described according to socio-demographic characteristics, sexual behavior, condom use, number of partners and HIV infection. Independent risk factors for syphilis among men having sex with men (MSM), men having sex with women (MSW), and women were identified through logistic regression comparing cases with 12,773 negative patients. Results : Between 2002 and 2008, 1,046 cases of syphilis were diagnosed, with peaks in 2004 and 2007. The risk of a syphilis diagnosis was independently associated with being older than 24, having a low education level, homosexual behavior, HIV self-reported infection (for MSM and MSW), number of partners (for MSW and women) and non- consistent condom use (for women). Conclusions : Recent outbreaks suggest that the attention to syphilis can't be lowered. Screening, treatment of cases and notification of partners should be reinforced and integrated with sexual health education and counselling in high-risk environments. Surveillance data must be continuously collected.


AIMS
To survey retention protocols and need for practical retention guidelines among orthodontists in Norway and to compare the results with similar studies in other countries.

METHODS
A questionnaire was mailed to all members of the Norwegian Association of Orthodontists. It included questions about their background and their current retention protocol, as well as their perceived need for common retention guidelines.

RESULTS
The response rate was 77.7% (69.3% males and 30.7% females). The most common maxillary retainer was a combination of a fixed and removable retainer, followed by a clear thermoplastic retainer. In the mandible, a fixed retainer bonded to all anterior teeth was most common (66.4%). Retention in the maxilla lasted 2 to 3 years (34.7%) or 3 to 5 years (23.8%). In the mandible, 41.5% of the orthodontists left the retainer in place for >5 years. When retention lasted more than 3 years, 70% of the orthodontists left the responsibility for retainer checkups to the patients or the general practitioners. The main reason for choosing a certain retention protocol was clinical experience (57.4%). Only 3.5% of the orthodontists based their protocols on information from the literature. Half?of the orthodontists, significantly women, expressed a need for common retention guidelines.

CONCLUSIONS
In Norway, bonded retainers alone were reported to be most commonly used in the mandible, while bonded retainers used in combination with a removable retainer appear to be the most commonly used appliances in the maxilla. This is similar to the most frequently used retainers in other countries, but there are disparities in duration and follow-up protocols. Most female orthodontists desire common retention guidelines.


This book is a second edition, updated and expanded toexplain the technologies that help us find information on the web. Search engines and web navigation tools have become ubiquitous in our day to day use of the web as an information source, a tool for commercial transactions and a social computing tool. Moreover, through the mobile web we have access to the web's services when we are on the move. This book demystifies the tools that we use when interacting with the web, and gives the reader a detailed overview of where we are and where we are going in terms of search engine and web navigation technologies.


Social identity of professionals is enhanced at their association meetings. A strong social identity later promotes the advocacy for the importance of the profession. For e.g. nurses who have a strong professional identity would advocate for the importance of their profession (nursing) at their organizations viz. hospitals. Local chapters of professional associations provide education and networking opportunities with similar professionals. Yet, attendance at local chapter meetings tends to be a challenge. This paper examines the link of social identity, past participation, program content, delivery mode and co-production with the professional association and the perceived importance of the profession in the member's organization. I investigate the link of the importance of the profession to advocacy initiatives that the member might undertake in her or his organization. The paper offers a model and conducts a survey of association members and finds that social identity alone is not a significant predictor of the perceived importance of the profession but social identity operates interactively with other relevant variables like past participation, program content, delivery mode of association programs. "1.1.1 Local chapters of AAPC are essential in setting the standard of professionalism and higher education, while developing personal improvement and strong networking opportunities." Page 1 2018 AAPC Local Chapter Handbook. (AAPC 2018) 1


In her article, "Comparative Literature and Cultural Identity," Jola Skulj proposes a framework inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin's work. Skulj argues that the validity of cultural identity cannot be an equivalent to the measure of originality of an inherent national subjectivity in it. Such an idea of identity concept, quite acceptable in the nineteenth century, is insufficient to the views in literary studies today. From the standpoint of comparative literature, cultural identity exists only through its own deconstruction and permanent multiplication of several cultural relations. The identity principle of individual cultures is in fact established through the principle of otherness or -to use Bakhtin's terminology -through the principle of dialogism. As any individuality, cultural identity is a meeting point of several cross-cultural implications. It is of a complex plurivocal character, open to its own changes in order to preserve its own being in a new context of interests. Skulj argues that cultural identity is genuinely an intertext expressed in many instances in and via culture texts including literature. Thus, permanently re-interpreted cultural identity undoubtedly refers to the field of research of cross-cultural interactions and such a concept of cultural identity pre-eminently belongs to an expanded field of comparative studies. Jola Skulj, "Comparative Literature and Cultural Identity" page 2 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.4 (2000):


The present paper describes the development of a low cost, highly accurate low capacitance measurement system that can be used over a range of 0 – 400 pF with a resolution of 1 pF. The range of capacitance may be easily altered by a simple resistance or capacitance variation of the measurement circuit. This capacitance measurement system uses quad two-input NAND Schmitt trigger circuit CD4093B with hysteresis for the measurement and this system is integrated with PIC 18F2550 microcontroller for data acquisition purpose. The microcontroller interacts with software developed in the PC end through USB architecture and an attractive graphical user interface (GUI) based system is developed in the PC end to provide the user with real time, online display of capacitance under measurement. The system uses a differential mode of capacitance measurement, with reference to a trimmer capacitance, that effectively compensates lead capacitances, a notorious error encountered in usual low capacitance measurements. The hysteresis provided in the Schmitt-trigger circuits enable reliable operation of the system by greatly minimizing the possibility of false triggering because of stray interferences, usually regarded as another source of significant error. The real life testing of the proposed system showed that our measurements could produce highly accurate capacitance measurements, when compared to cutting edge, high end digital capacitance meters. Keywords—Capacitance measurement, NAND Schmitt trigger, microcontroller, GUI, lead compensation, hysteresis.


This study explores the intra-household impact of improved dual-purpose cowpea (IDPC) from a gender perspective, in terms of productivity and food, fodder, and income availability, the impact of which is linked to the income thus placed in the women's hands. Surplus income is important in providing food and nutritional benefits to the home, particularly during periods of risk. More importantly, income generated through the adoption of improved cowpea varieties has entered a largely female domain, where transfers of income reserves were passed on between women of different ages, with significant impact in terms of social and economic development. However, the technology has strengthened the separation of working spheres between men and women. Future technologies should, from the outset, explore provisions existing within the local rubric, to focus on women with the aim of expanding their participation in agriculture with the associated benefits to their families.


We describe a stand‐alone software utility named TREMOrEC, which carries out training and test of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. TREMOrEC is developed in Visual C++ and runs under Microsoft Windows operating systems. Ease of use and short time processing, along with the excellent performance of the SVM classifier, make this tool ideal for volcano monitoring. The development of TREMOrEC is motivated by the successful application of the SVM classifier to volcanic tremor data recorded at Mount Etna in 2001. In that application, spectrograms of volcanic tremor were divided according to their recording date into four classes associated with different states of activity, i.e., pre‐eruptive, lava fountain, eruptive, or post‐eruptive. During the training, SVM learned the a priori classification. The classifier's performance was then evaluated on test sets not considered for training. The classification results matched the actual class membership with an error of less than 6%.


Controlled frequency tuning of an optical parametric oscillator is accomplished through the application of a dc electric field that perturbs the index ellipsoids for the pump, the signal, and the idler beams by means of the linear electro-optic (Pockels) effect. The changes in the refractive indices induce a dispersion-compensating wavelength tuning of the optical parametric oscillator signal and idler beams to maintain the birefringent phase-matching condition. Broadband wavelength tuning by the electro-optic effect in a mid-infrared lithium niobate optical parametric oscillator is demonstrated. A linear dependence of the wavelength shift on applied voltage is observed with an idler tuning range of up to ∼90 nm achieved electro-optically. Tuning rates in excess of 5 cm-1/(kV/cm) are obtained. All observations, including the dispersion in the tuning rate, are quantitatively described by a simple theory that uses no adjustable parameters.


Bacterial mastitis is a significant problem for the dairy industry. A vaccine against mastitis pathogens could potentially target dendritic cells (DC). While there has been some research describing bovine DC populations in-vitro, little is known about DC in mammary tissue. In this study, immunohistofluorescence was used to identify and localize bovine mammary DC. DC were found in alveoli, in epithelia, and in interalveolar tissue. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) was used to characterize mammary DC as expressing CD11c, MHC-II, CD205, CD11b, and CD8α. FACS allowed us to distinguish DC (CD14) from macrophages (CD14). Two DC subsets, CD11a, CD11a, were evident in the mammary gland while an additional CD11a population was identified in the supramammary lymph node. After phagocytosis of bacterial components such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS), DC undergo a maturation process, in which they upregulate homing receptors, such as CCR7, and antigen presentation markers, including MHCII and CD80. A primary cell culture model was used to evaluate changes in transcription of CD80 and CCR7 after LPS stimulation. Cell cultures contained digested and Ficoll separated mammary tissue or supramammary lymph node tissue. While the presence of CCR7 and CD80 was confirmed, CD80 and CCR7 transcripts were not upregulated after LPS stimulation. Further, CD11c, CD14, MHCII, CD11b, CD11a, and CD205 protein levels, as assessed by FACS, were similar in LPS stimulated cultures and unstimulated controls. Overall, these studies provide a better understanding of mammary gland immunology, while potentially aiding in the development of novel DC based vaccines.


Background Nucleic acid amplification tests are increasingly used for the rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis. We undertook a comparative study of the efficiency and diagnostic yield of a real-time PCR senX3-regX3 based assay versus the classical IS6110 target and the new commercial methods. Methods This single-blind prospective comparative study included 145 consecutive samples: 76 from patients with culture-confirmed tuberculosis (86.8% pulmonary and 13.2% extrapulmonary tuberculosis: 48.7% smear-positive and 51.3% smear-negative) and 69 control samples (24 from patients diagnosed with non-tuberculous mycobacteria infections and 45 from patients with suspected tuberculosis which was eventually ruled out). All samples were tested by two CE-marked assays (Xpert®MTB/RIF and AnyplexTM plus MTB/NTM) and two in-house assays targeting senX3-regX3 and the IS6110 gene. Results The detection limit ranged from 1.00E+01 fg for Anyplex, senX3-regX3 and IS6110 to 1.00E+04 fg for Xpert. All three Xpert, senX3-regX3 and IS6110 assays detected all 37 smear-positive cases. Conversely, Anyplex was positive in 34 (91.9%) smear-positive cases. In patients with smear-negative tuberculosis, differences were observed between the assays; Xpert detected 22 (56.41%) of the 39 smear-negative samples, Anyplex 24 (61.53%), senX3-regX3 28 (71.79%) and IS6110 35 (89.74%). Xpert and senX3-regX3 were negative in all control samples; however, the false positive rate was 8.7% and 13% for Anyplex and IS6110, respectively. The overall sensitivity was 77.6%, 85.7%, 77.3% and 94.7% and the specificity was 100%, 100%, 90.8% and 87.0% for the Xpert, senX3-regX3, Anyplex and IS6110 assays, respectively. Conclusion Real-time PCR assays targeting IS6110 lack the desired specificity. The Xpert MTB/RIF and in-house senX3-regX3 assays are both sensitive and specific for the detection of MTBC in both pulmonary and extrapulmonary samples. Therefore, the real time PCR senX3-regX3 based assay could be a useful and complementary tool in the diagnosis of tuberculosis.


mpulsivity has been shown to be related to both substance- and
non-substance addictions. In the case of internet gaming
addiction, on one hand, higher impulsivity and sensation
seeking have been reported in problematic online gamers. On the
other hand, problematic online gamers were also identified as
introverted, socially anxious, and generally inhibited in
behaviour. Our study investigates the role of dysfunctional
impulsivity in gaming addiction. A sample of 1,510 Czech and
Slovak online gamers completed a questionnaire that was
advertised online and targeted the core of the gaming
community. Internet gaming addiction was measured using the
Addiction-Engagement Questionnaire (Charlton & Danforth, 2010).
Dysfunctional impulsivity was measured using the 11 items of
Dickman's (1990) sub-scale of the Impulsivity Inventory.
Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated for
variables and a regression model was constructed using
hierarchical linear regression to determine the association
between online gaming addiction and dysfunctional impulsivity,
while controlling for age, gender, and the frequency of online
gaming. A set of chi-square tests was employed to compare the
patterns of addiction criteria among highly impulsive addicted
gamers and non-impulsive addicted gamers. Although
dysfunctional impulsivity was a good predictor of gaming
addiction (beta = .252), it actually explained only about 7% of
the addiction variance. Problematic gamers high on impulsivity
had similar patterns of addiction criteria as non-impulsive
gamers, with only one exception – they had a significantly
higher tendency to relapse. There was no role of impulsivity in
gaming engagement. The results suggest that dysfunctional
impulsivity is a risk factor for online gaming addiction
(similar to other addictions), but it does not have prominent
explanatory value in itself. Also, the results show that
problematic gamers high on impulsivity are more prone to
relapse and reinstatement.


In this paper, we present TeleHuman, a cylindrical 3D display portal for life-size human telepresence. The TeleHuman 3D videoconferencing system supports 360 degree motion parallax as the viewer moves around the cylinder and optionally, stereoscopic 3D display of the remote person. We evaluated the effect of perspective cues on the conveyance of nonverbal cues in two experiments using a one-way telecommunication version of the system. The first experiment focused on how well the system preserves gaze and hand pointing cues. The second experiment evaluated how well the system conveys 3D body postural information. We compared 3 perspective conditions: a conventional 2D view, a 2D view with 360 degree motion parallax, and a stereoscopic view with 360 degree motion parallax. Results suggest the combined presence of motion parallax and stereoscopic cues significantly improved the accuracy with which participants were able to assess gaze and hand pointing cues, and to instruct others on 3D body poses. The inclusion of motion parallax and stereoscopic cues also led to significant increases in the sense of social presence and telepresence reported by participants.


Title retention functionally serves as a security device for ensuring the payment of the purchase price in a sales contract, but not all jurisdictions recognize it as a security interest. The research aims to compare the recognition and treatment of title retention in Vietnam, England, France, the United States and Australia. It examines the issues arising in Vietnam concerning the existing law of title retention and the prospect of a reform that possibly involves the importation of the Article 9 model. The research is conducted using the doctrinal and comparative analysis methods with the aid of a critical outlook and a discussion on the legal transplant. It is found that English law insists on the formalism approach that does not accept title retention to the original goods as a security interest. It raises the unexpected impact on the Sale of Goods Act after the FG Wilson (Engineering) Ltd v John Holt & Co (Liverpool) Ltd and PST Energy 7 Shipping LLC v OW Bunker Malta Ltd rulings. Vietnamese law adopts the French law approach that treats title retention as a security interest, but it is merely a seller-based security interest that excludes the participation of other. Article 9 of the American Uniform Commercial Code and the Australian Person Property Securities Act are an appealing and increasingly-accepted model of the law on secured transactions. It introduces the concept of purchase-money security interest that includes the title retention arrangement. The functionalism, unitary approach and the notice filing system under the Article 9 offer a comprehensive treatment of a purchase-money security interest as the exception of the general security interest. The findings suggest that even though Article 9 is currently a good model in this area, the import of this model may encounter some resistance from the angle of legal culture and legal practice. From the Vietnamese perspective, it is possible to build the law of purchase-money security interest running parallel with other devices in the scheme of a Civil Code before considering adopting a unitary functionalism law of secured transactions.