Being able to understand the effects of relatedness on adult cranial morphology has implications for inferring population histories, and for informing us about the influence of social behaviors on these patterns of population relatedness. Several methods have been developed to infer relatedness among human or other primate populations using metric data. This thesis uses detailed genealogical and demographic information for free-ranging rhesus macaques born over four decades on Cayo Santiago along with individually matched cranial measurements and interprets the resulting patterns in a socioecological framework. I used R-matrix methods to examine cranial shape variation among social lineages on Cayo Santiago and changes over time. Results from the lineage analysis support the male migration effect of fission and the lineal effect of fission, which increased the genetic variation between two lineages. Lineagespecific mating and random male gene flow both decreased the genetic variation among the lineages. When the lineages were combined and divided into four time periods, a strong temporal trend was observed. This temporal trend is most likely due to environmental differentiation over time and some degree of genetic drift. This thesis demonstrates how behavioral mechanisms affect genetic relationships among populations and that linear distances derived from cranial measurements can provide information about population structure and population history even at this small spatial and temporal scale.


The authors of the original paper "The deregulation of STIM1 and store operative calcium entry (SOCE) impaired aortic smooth muscle cells contractility in aortic medial degeneration" (Biosci Rep. (2019), 39(1), DOI: 10.1042/BSR20181504), would like to provide the following correction statement: The picture in Figure 3D was replaced by a new set of images. Due to our carelessness, the image of transwell experiment of 0.4μM (40×) were the magnify of that of DMSO group (100×). We apologise for this mistake. We have repeated this experiment, and present the correct image in this revised version. We confirm that it does not affect the conclusions of the study.


Abstract In the 1944 Vesuvius eruption, the shallow magma chamber was disrupted during the highly energetic explosive phases. Abundant cognate xenoliths such as subvolcanic fergusites and cumulates, hornfels, skarns and rare marbles occur in tephra deposits. Mineral chemistry, melt inclusions in minerals and glassy matrix compositions show that fergusites (highly crystalline rocks made of leucite, clinopyroxene, plagioclase, olivine, apatite, oxides and glass) do not correspond to melt compositions but result from combined sidewall accumulation of crystals, formed from K-tephriphonolitic magma resident in the chamber, and in situ crystallization of the intercumulus melt. Very low H2O contents in the intercumulus glass are revealed by FTIR and apatite composition. Whole rock compositions are essentially determined by the bulk mineral assemblages. Glass-bearing fergusites constitute the outer shell of the magma chamber consisting of a highly viscous crystal mush with a melt content in the range 20−50 wt.%. The leucite/(clinopyroxene+olivine) modal ratio, varies with the extraction order of magmas from the chamber, decreasing upwards in the stratigraphic sequence. This reflects a vertical mineralogical zonation of the crystal mush. These data contribute to the interpretation of the subvolcanic low-pressure crystallization processes at the magma chamber sidewalls affecting alkaline potassic magmas.


Ruler of the Delhi Sultanate in northern India from 1236 to 1240, Raziya is a striking example of a woman who rose to power in a pre-modern Islamic society. It was Raziya's father's recognition and cultivation of her wisdom and ruling capacities, as well as his apparent naming of her as his successor, that paved the way for her accession to the throne. This article offers an explanation of how Raziya was able to rule in an environment in which the birth of daughters normally gave rise to disappointment and women had few avenues for authority. It will argue that despite medieval Muslim India's assigning to women a status separate from and inferior to that of men, a metaphorical space existed in which women could identify or be identified as men. As in many non-Muslim societies, such identification could become a means for a daughter to enter into male sociopolitical spheres.


The National Science Foundation (NSF) Lower Atmosphere Observing Facilities (LAOF) Educational Deployment Program is a short-term facilities deployment program designed to strengthen STEM-related education. It provides access to eight separate research facilities for authentic instruction in the field of observational meteorology and engineering. Facilities are available for graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 education, and can be deployed to a College or University for up to three weeks. Anomalies were found in the diversity of requested facilities and requesting Principal Investigators (PIs) in the 46 education deployments from the calendar years of 2008-2015. A needs assessment was conducted to determine actual program performance, identify performance gaps in the program, and to determine the desired program performance. The needs assessment resulted in a data-driven recommendation action plan to close the gaps that when implemented, will increase the diversity of requesting PIs and the requested facilities, thereby increasing diversity within the education program.


A national scheme to monitor wildfowl was established in 1947 because of increasing conflicts between development and conservation needs and the lack of data with which to judge these issues objectively. Originally based at the Natural History Museum, responsibility for the scheme passed in 1954 to The Wildfowl Trust, now The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT), which has played a central role in this and other waterfowl monitoring schemes ever since. This paper describes the growth and development of count schemes for wildfowl, and latterly waterfowl, principally in the UK but also internationally where WWT has played a pivotal role. The invaluable contribution made by the volunteer counter network is highlighted. The extent of the data gathered to date is summarised and examples are used to illustrate the general increase in wildfowl numbers in the UK over this period. The influence of the count scheme on the conservation of waterfowl and wetlands is also described.


The amended returns proposal would create a duty for a taxpayer to correct material factual errors on its tax return when the error is discovered. Failure to correct an erroneous but innocent representation is considered to be a form of deceit in American tort and contract law.The proposal is made as a part of the Shelf Project, a collaboration by tax professionals to develop and perfect proposals to help Congress when it needs to raise revenue. Shelf Project proposals are intended to raise revenue, defend the tax base, follow the money, and improve the rationality and efficiency of the tax system. The tax community can propose, follow, or edit proposals at http://www.taxshelf.org. A longer description of the Shelf Project can be found at ''The Shelf Project: Revenue-Raising Projects That Defend the Tax Base,'' Tax Notes, Dec. 10, 2007, p. 1077, Doc 2007-22632, 2007 TNT 238-37.Shelf Project proposals follow the format of a congressional tax committee report in explaining current law, what is wrong with it, and how to fix it.Copyright 2008 T. Keith Fogg and Calvin H. Johnson.


AIMS
To investigate how gender composition of the drinking group affects young adults' alcohol consumption on weekend evenings over and above the effect of drinking-group size.

DESIGN
Using the internet-based cellphone-optimized assessment technique (ICAT), participants completed online questionnaires on their cell phones every hour from 8 p.m. to midnight on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings during five consecutive weekends.

SETTING
French-speaking Switzerland.

PARTICIPANTS
Convenience sample of 183 young adults (53.0% female, mean age = 23.1) who completed a total of 4141 hourly assessments.

MEASUREMENTS
Alcohol consumption and number of male and female friends present assessed at 8 p.m., 9 p.m., 10 p.m., 11 p.m. and midnight.

FINDINGS
Results of three-level negative binomial regression analyses showed that women consumed significantly more drinks per hour when drinking in mixed-gender groups (Z-values ranging from 2.9 to 5.3, all P < 0.01) and significantly fewer drinks when drinking with men only (Z = -2.7, P < 0.01), compared with drinking with women only. Men reported consuming more drinks per hour in mixed-gender groups of equal gender composition (Z = 2.4, P < 0.05) or mixed-gender groups with men in the majority (Z = 2.2, P < 0.05) and fewer hourly drinks when drinking with women only (Z = -4.9, P < 0.001), compared with drinking with men only. Drinking-group size predicted the hourly number of drinks for women (Z = 6.0, P < 0.001) and men (Z = 5.5, P < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS
Drinking-group gender composition is associated with number of drinks consumed per hour, over and above the impact of the drinking-group size. Young adults report consuming more drinks per hour when drinking with mixed-gender groups than with same-gender groups.


There is probably no subject in the philosophy of art which has prompted more impassioned theorizing than the question of the 'cognitive value' of works of art. 'In the end', one influential critic has stated, 'I do not distinguish between science and art except as regards method. Both provide us with a view of reality and both are indispensable to a complete understanding of the universe.' If a man is not prepared to distinguish between science and art one may well wonder what he is prepared to distinguish between, but in all fairness it should be pointed out that the writings of anti-cognitivists contain equally strenuous statements of doctrine. For I. A. Richards, poetry consists of 'pseudo-statements' which are 'true' if they 'suit and serve some attitude or link together attitudes which on other grounds are desirable'.


The multi resolution analysis are important parts of image processing. Curvelet transform is analysis method which have been using wide variety of applications in multi resolution analysis. Ripplet-I transform is defined by recently generalising of the curvelet transform by adding parameters support (c) and degree (d). Even though this transform has been found out recently, it has been using wide variety of applications. Fast discrete and complex fast discrete versions of ripplet-I transform were examined by this study. In denoising application, better results were obtained with fast discrete and complex fast discrete versions of ripplet-I transform by discrete ripplet-I transform.


Among herbal plants which had been commercialized recently include Orthosiphon aristatus Boldingh. or better known as Java Tea and "misai kucing". The plant's leaves are believed to be able to help prevent and eliminate bladder stone apart from some other purposes when used alone or in combination with other plants. The production of the plant using tissue culture technique is hoped to reduce the time for growth under normal cultivation and to produce in a large quantity from a small source of explant. Sources of explant for this study were derived from leaves and stems for comparison. Each of the explants was grown under various plant growth regulators at various concentrations and combinations to determine the best hormone concentration that give adventitious shoots. Explants from stems were found to produce the best overall result with 0.2 mg/L BAP and 0.5 mg/L NAA but at a slower rate. The best result obtained from leaves explants was with 0.2 mg/L BAP which induces shoot faster than stem explants but at a smaller quantity. In comparison to the results from leaves explants, BAP with the same concentration using the stem explants gave a higher number of adventitious shoots. Stems are found to be a better explants source for regeneration of O. aristatus.


I was fascinated by an article of Shin et al. published in the March issue. As a Korean national studying medicine in the United Kingdom, I noticed that the authors' use of the National Health Service's (NHS) Health Check Program as a reference point was misplaced. Korea's current health check-up and screening programs are far more thorough than those of the NHS Health Check Program, which is implemented just once every 5 years and the laboratory tests are limited to cholesterol and hemoglobin A1c levels. Most NHS preventive measures are opportunistic, which is an area where Korea could improve. Unlike Korea's quasi-public healthcare system, the United Kingdom operates on a single-payer system in which patients have no costs other than through taxation. All NHS patients are registered with general practitioners and allocated to dedicated general practitioners who are remunerated via a complex system of base fees per patient and outcome-based incentives, which are set forth in the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF). Example incentives are annual asthma checkups and blood pressure monitoring of diabetic patients. To earn the maximum possible income, practitioners proactively seek patients for check-ups, usually using nurses. Korea's current primary care system encourages as many patient encounters as possible because remuneration primarily is on a per patient visit basis. Therefore, clinicians have little incentive to thoroughly read individual patients' histories or perform opportunistic reviews of chronic conditions outside the purposes of the visit. This differs from the United Kingdom, where digital patient records actively alert clinicians of outstanding items in the QOF, which fully exploits a consultation's opportunities. For example, a chronic asthma patient seeking care for something unrelated to asthma would obtain an asthma review. Health outcomes are thereby improved. This is a highly relevant approach from the perspective of healthcare service use among people of relatively low socioeconomic status because they tend to seek care less often, usually because of financial or other personal constraints. Rather than trying to improve national screening programs to improve healthcare for these patients, a better approach might be to increase their access to opportunistic health check-ups during scheduled visits. This approach would improve health outcomes better than public information campaigns targeting lower socioeconomic groups, and it would function well given the lack of continuity in the Korean primary care system.


Stream networks can attenuate and modify hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological signals generated in the terrestrial and in-stream portions of watersheds. Stream networks can modify watershed signals through spatially variable stream gains and losses to and from groundwater, described herein as hydrologic turnover. We measured hydrologic gain and loss at the reach scale using conservative tracer experiments throughout the Bull Trout Watershed in the Sawtooth Mountains of central Idaho. These experiments allowed us to track water moving into and out of groundwater from and to stream water. We extended these measured reach scale water balance components to the stream network using observed empirical relationships between 1) accumulated watershed area and stream discharge, and 2) stream discharge and percent discharge lost from the stream. We developed a watershed and stream network-scale model to simulate hydrologic turnover across stream networks to quantify its effects across watershed of varying structure and stream networks of varying geometry. These analyses elucidated the influence of watershed inputs to streams on downstream stream water composition. We determined that the magnitude of contributions to discharge from any upstream watershed input depended on the magnitude of the initial input, but also on the amount of hydrologic turnover downstream along the stream network. Downstream hydrologic turnover was a function of the intersection of watershed structure and stream network geometry. Our results suggest that a distributed representation of hydrologic turnover at the stream network scale is requisite for understanding how the stream network filters and modifies watershed inputs signals observed in streams or watershed outlets.


The COVID-19 pandemic affects people's everyday way of life International tourism is one of the most affected activities today, since one of the key measures in the strategy of keeping control over the new pandemic is preventing closer human contact This includes restricting and discouraging the movement of people towards tourism destinations These measures have caused major problems for the tourism industry and no form of tourism has been spared The COVID-19 outbreak, as a real threat to public life and health, has established a new measure as a mandatory condition in everyday life globally - called social distancing This measure has various impacts on religious communities and a strong influence on how and under which circumstances religious travel and pilgrimages can take place - it means not only physical distancing but also excluding individuals or groups from participating in one another's lives This paper focuses on social distancing from a religious perspective and its implications for religious activities and travel Further, the paper points to the role of religious communities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, considering both criticism and its role in saving lives This paper examines social distancing measures' impact on everyday religious activities from the Church point of view Taking the example of the Serbian Orthodox Church's standpoint and official announcements, the paper considers the important role and contribution of its religious community - several key elements have been singled out Furthermore, this paper points out factors of the pandemic which affect the faithful and the Church - official decisions / announcements of the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as the influence of the anti-pandemic measures on religious activities and travel The example also shows the 'strong point' of religion (religious community influence and strong mindset) which can be accepted or misunderstood as 'resistance' to the anti-pandemic measures © International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage


Nowadays, a technology demonstrator platform popular amongst the research community given their relatively low cost and short development time are cubesats. Nevertheless, cubesats are by definition nano-satellites of small volume and mass, and therefore, they traditionally only allowed very limited sizes of any expandable structure onboard with final deployed areas in the order of a few square meters. This conflicts with the large areas required for efficient solar sails, making the demonstration of this exotic concept bound to more expensive missions with a dedicated launch. The applications that will be discussed throughout the thesis will be: three-axis stabilised solar sailing with a "rigid" support structure; and drag assisted deorbiting of a large host craft using a solar sail. Both of these applications still need validation in space, especially for Earth-bound missions.

The main goal of this research effort is thus to satisfy the need of available deployable booms for their use on systems of unprecedented mass per unit area with cubesat-like mission constraints that will ultimately place more trust in gossamer concepts. For this, two novel rollable booms and their deployment mechanisms have been developed, one based on metallic tape-springs and the other on bistable composite slit tubes. Analyses and tests confirmed that the former boom has scalability problems related to stowage-induced boom axial curvature, and coil blossoming management. Reliable sail deployments of a 4 x 4 m^2 sail were achieved with them. The latter boom design solves previous scalability problems of bistable composite booms. The ground demonstrator tested deploys reliably a 5 x 5 m^2 sail, with the current compact boom design shown to be efficiently scalable for 100 m^2 class sails. To enable even larger sails with the bistable booms developed, a novel architecture named the completely stripped solar sail has been proposed. A simple experiment demonstrated the beneficial effect that dividing the sail into sets of parallel strips and using a continuous sail-boom attachment suspension configuration has towards scalability of the concept.

A new structural characterisation programme developed means by which to characterise the slender booms properties. In addition, the test results validated and/or updated the imperfection seeded finite element models produced. These models are ultimately utilised in high-fidelity predictions of the performance of the solar sail booms under the established operational loads, as well as in the scalability analyses of the sail concepts proposed with them.

Lastly, the first gossamer sail-based deorbiting system in it class, developed for medium mass (< 1000 kg) objects in Low Earth Orbit under an ESA contract, is introduced. Mission requirements, designs, and the purposely developed qualification programme are shown for the final system that reached TRL 5-6. The challenges and lessons learned from the ground testing of such lightweight structures are also documented with the aim of assisting future design and development efforts of similar concepts.


We present CellIQ, a real-time cellular network analytics system that supports rich and sophisticated analysis tasks. CellIQ is motivated by the lack of support for realtime analytics or advanced tasks such as spatio-temporal traffic hotspots and handoff sequences with performance problems in state-of-the-art systems, and the interest in such tasks by network operators. CellIQ represents cellular network data as a stream of domain specific graphs, each from a batch of data. Leveraging domain specific characteristics--the spatial and temporal locality of cellular network data--CellIQ presents a number of optimizations including geo-partitioning of input data, radius-based message broadcast, and incremental graph updates to support efficient analysis. Using data from a live cellular network and representative analytic tasks, we demonstrate that CellIQ enables fast and efficient cellular network analytics--compared to an implementation without cellular specific operators, CellIQ is 2× to 5× faster.


A. calamus that grows in province of Baluchistan and Kerman in Iran plays a major role in the revival of traditional medicine. Despite the useful role of this plant in many ailments, its anti-bacterial properties are not well understood. In this study, we investigated anti-bacterial activities of rhizomes ware of A. calamus against various strains of bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The anti-microbial activity of extracts of A.calamus was assessed by disc diffusion method. Rhizomes extracted by ethanol, methanol solvents and essential oil were obtained by clevenger apparatus. Antibacterial effects of the extracts tested at concentrations (25, 100, 200, 250, 300, 400 mg/ml). The Minimal Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of extracts ranged from 25-100 mg/ml against the susceptible bacteria. All the Minimal Bactericidal Concentrations (MBCs) were the same as the MICs. Our results revealed that ethanolic and methanolic extracts have an inhibitory effect on all gram positive and negative strains and it is comparable with kanamycin, an anti-bacterial reference drug. Amongst extracts of A.calamus, ethanolic extracts showed maximum inhibitory activity (16mm) against Staphylococcus epidermidis. So we can conclude that this plant has anti-bacterial properties on all gram positive and negative bacteria. The result can be related to the nature of the compounds found in this plant. The effective GC-MS method was performed for the determination of essential oil compounds of A.calamus. The Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis revealed that the presence of phenyl propanoids, monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes and β-asarone in essential oil of the plant caused its antibacterial properties. Our result showed that the ethanolic and methanolic extracts of A. calamus could be useful for the development of effective treatment for the control of infectious diseases.


Measuring constituent concentrations of processing liquids provides highly useful data for industrial process control. Techniques that allow online measurement will greatly save resources and energy, making them highly attractive for enterprises. In this paper, we develop a technique based on time-resolved photoacoustics for simultaneously measuring the optical absorption coefficient, acoustic speed, and thermal-acoustic transformation coefficient of an absorbing liquid, using an experimental setup that merely employs a nanosecond pulsed laser with millijoule energy and a single piezoelectric transducer with a wide frequency bandwidth. As investigated samples, we use potassium chromate, glucose, and their mixing solutions. Experimental results show that the value of each parameter measured in a mixed solution is approximately equal to the sum value of the same parameter in the constituent solutions. This means that a simultaneous measurement of these parameters enables us to calculate two or three constituent concentrations in a mixed liquid, if the constituent substances differ clearly from one another in terms of their optical absorption, acoustic speed, or thermal-acoustic transformation properties.


Several reasons underlie the increased efforts towards internationalisation by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) including the emergence of global and niche industries, technological developments and the increased importance of global networks and alliances (Etemad, 2004). Positioned within the field of international entrepreneurship, this study addresses the following broad research problem: what is the role of top management, networks and external environment on the internationalisation of SMEs operating in the Australian food and beverage sector? A multi-theoretical approach is used to examine this research problem. This study draws on internationalisation theory (Johanson & Vahlne, 1977, 2009), the resource-based view (Barney, 1991), the knowledge-based view (Grant, 1996), network theory (Granovetter, 1973; Johansson & Mattson, 1988) and entrepreneurship theory (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). While previous research highlights the role of top management, networks and external-environment on the internationalisation of SMEs, opportunities for further research exist. In addition, there are concerns that the field of international entrepreneurship remains dominated by research on international new ventures (IN V s) (Keupp & Gassman, 2009). In addressing these concerns, the broad research problem is examined across three categories of SMEs: INVs (defined as SMEs that have commenced internationalisation less than three years from inception), late international SMEs (defined as SMEs that commenced internationalisation after three years from inception), and domestic SMEs (defined as SMEs that are over three years of age and have not yet internationalised). The three research questions addressed in the present study are as follows: 1. What is the role of top management on the internationalisation of SMEs? 2. What is the role of networks on the internationalisation of SMEs? 3. What is the role of the external environment on the internationalisation of SMEs? To examine the role of top management, networks and external environment on internationalisation, the present study employed a multiple case-study approach comprising fifteen SMEs from the Australian food and beverage (F&B) sector. This sector plays an important role in the development of Australia's economy (Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry, 2008), however it is undergoing rapid changes associated with the increasing globalisation of food production and retail markets and significant rationalisation and integration of the supply chain (Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry, 2007a). In light of these changes, it is crucial that Australian F&B SMEs are able to compete effectively at home and in foreign markets. Despite this, only a small number of studies have examined internationalisation within the Australian context (Fischer, 2004). In addressing Research Question 1, the present study identifies four managerial mindset characteristics that explain internationalisation. These are: cosmopolitanism, cognitive complexity, risk tolerance and commitment to internationalisation. With regard to Research Question 2, the findings contribute towards an understanding of how smaller firms differ in their development and utilisation of networks for internationalisation. The study also highlights the importance of strong international business relationships, and explicates the opportunity costs and network rigidity resulting from existing networks, which may affect internationalisation. In addressing Research Question 3, four salient external environment forces are identitied to explain why some Australian F&B SMEs internationalise and others stay focussed primarily on the domestic market. These are domestic push forces relating to threats from a consolidated retail sector, domestic pull forces relating to sustainability in a small domestic market, international pull forces relating to the perceived superiority ofproduct in international markets, and international push forces relating to competitive pressures abroad. In applying a multi-theoretical approach to examine intemationalisation across three groups of SMEs, the findings of the present study extend existing theoretical and empirical literature within the field of international entrepreneurship. In addition, the study contributes to practice. From a managerial perspective, the findings may provide managers with a framework upon which to evaluate their firm's internationalisation against the internationalisation of others in the industry. They may also be able to gauge the effect of their firms' managerial mindsets and networks on intemationalisation given the nature of the external environment. Government policy-makers may be able to use these findings to develop new or existing initiatives to assist SME managers operating within the Australian F&B sector internationalise. The present study also provides empirical contributions and suggestions to further existing research.


[1] Knowledge of solar sector polarity effects on the ionosphere may provide some clues in understanding of the ionospheric day-to-day variability and "hysteresis" effect on foF2. Ionospheric response to changes in solar sector polarity has not been fully documented previously, partly due to the limitation of observations. In this study, a solar-terrestrial connection ranging from solar sector boundary (SB) crossings, geomagnetic disturbances and ionospheric perturbations has been demonstrated. The increases in interplanetary solar wind speed within three days are seen after SB crossings, while the decreases in solar wind dynamic pressure and magnetic field intensity immediately after SB crossings are confirmed by the superposed epoch analysis results. Furthermore, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) Bz component turns from northward to southward in March equinox and June solstice as the Earth passes from a solar sector of outward to inward directed magnetic fields, whereas the reverse situation occurs for the transition from toward to away sectors. The IMF Bz component for the same solar sector polarity has opposite signs between March equinox and September equinox, and also between June solstice and December solstice. In order to know how the ionosphere reacts to the interplanetary solar wind variations linkage of SB crossings, the F2 region critical frequency (foF2) covering about four solar cycles and total electron content (TEC) during 1998–2011 are utilized to extract the related information, revealing that they are not modified significantly and vary within the range of ±15% on average. The responses of the ionospheric TEC to SB crossings exhibit complex temporal and spatial variations and have strong dependencies on season, latitude, and solar cycle. This effect is more appreciable in equinoctial months than in solstitial months, which is mainly caused by larger southwardBzcomponents in equinox. In September equinox, latitudinal profile of relative variations of foF2 at noon is featured by depressions at high latitudes and enhancements in low-equatorial latitudes during IMF away sectors. The negative phase of foF2 is delayed at solar minimum relative to it during other parts of solar cycle, which might be associated with the difference in longevity of major interplanetary solar wind drivers perturbing the Earth's environment in different phases of solar cycle.


The brain is a privileged site of systemic cancer metastasis. The stages of the metastatic journey from the periphery to the brain are driven by molecular events that tie the original site of disease to the distant host tissue. This preference is not arbitrary but rather a directed phenomenon that includes such critical steps as angiogenesis and the preparation of the premetastatic niche. It appears that the connection between naive brain and cancer cells is made in advance of any metastatic breach of the blood-brain barrier. This contributes to the preferential homing of cancer cells to the brain. Delineation of the guidance mechanisms and elements that influence cancer cell motility and dormancy are important for the advancement of treatment modalities aimed at the remediation of this devastating disease.


"Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars' Club" paints a vivid, fascinating portrait of a community deeply grounded in tradition and dynamically engaged in the present. A collection of forty interwoven stories, conversations, and teachings about Western Cherokee life, beliefs, and the art of storytelling, the book orchestrates a multilayered conversation between a group of honored Cherokee elders, storytellers, and knowledge-keepers and the communities their stories touch. Collaborating with Hastings Shade, Sammy Still, Sequoyah Guess, and Woody Hansen, Cherokee scholar Christopher B. Teuton has assembled the first collection of traditional and contemporary Western Cherokee stories published in over forty years. Not simply a compilation, "Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars' Club" explores the art of Cherokee storytelling, or as it is known in the Cherokee language, "gagoga" (gah-goh-ga), literally translated as "he or she is lying." The book reveals how the members of the Liars' Club understand the power and purposes of oral traditional stories and how these stories articulate Cherokee tradition, or "teachings," which the storytellers claim are fundamental to a construction of Cherokee selfhood and cultural belonging. Four of the stories are presented in both English and Cherokee.


Cybersecurity, defined as the prevention and mitigation of malicious interference with digital devices and networks, is a key area of contest for digitalized politics, especially in uncertain and turbulent situations. Nowhere is this more starkly illustrated than in states such as Egypt, where the period since the January 2011 revolution has seen several changes of government and the subsequent consolidation of executive power, increasingly strict limits on free speech, and extensive violence by Islamist groups against the state and civilian targets and by the state against protesters and dissidents. How, then, are cybersecurity policies, practices, and technologies deployed and contested in uncertain political environments? The article argues that cybersecurity provides a way for the Egyptian government and opposition activists to "manipulate uncertainty" to their advantage. Each side uses cybersecurity policies, practices, and technologies to restrict their adversary's scope for action, seeking to make the other more predictable while retaining or increasing their own freedom of action. In addition to providing extensive empirical data on cybersecurity developments in Egypt, the article makes two theoretical contributions. First, it shows how political struggles between state and opposition movements assimilate the influential language and content of cybersecurity, generating distinct cybersecurity politics. Second, it highlights the role of uncertainty as a driver—among others—of cycles of innovation and response in contentious politics, including those that center on cybersecurity.


Combining empirical research with simulation modeling may improve our understanding of the dynamics of crop:weed competition and for testing hypotheses on the importance of specific traits for enhancing crop performance in mixtures. Two field experiments were conducted to quantify and compare estimates of traits important for radiation interception and utilization in four maize hybrids and Abutilon theophrasti grown in monoculture. Early leaf area growth rate did not vary among maize hybrids within a year, but varied among years. The response of CO 2 assimilation rate to absorbed radiation and leaf nitrogen content did not differ among hybrids. Abutilon theophrasti and two old maize hybrids partitioned more new biomass to stem relative to reproductive organs than newer hybrids. Old hybrids had greater specific leaf area during the period of most rapid growth, grew taller, and leaf area was distributed higher in their canopy. Extinction coefficients for diffuse radiation did not differ among hybrids or between years. Results suggest that these four maize hybrids may differ in their ability to intercept incident radiation, which may influence their ability to compete for light.


Young Mäori parents strategically navigate Western parenting expectations, and issues of indigeneity in their construction of early parenting. A culturally based narrative approach to research with young Mäori parents revealed personal stories of early parenting located in wider expectations from family and peers, their Indigenous community and society. The application of a Mäori relational analytical framework reveals how young Mäori parents navigate and negotiate assumptions about being young and being Mäori. They draw on Mäori understandings about raising children to resist assumptions that having a child at a young age contributes to entirely negative experiences. Furthermore, identifying with Western attributes of good parenting helps to counter the negative social outcomes often attributed to Mäori parenting. Further strengthening of positive experiences of early parenting for Mäori requires a broader approach to developing positive representations of Mäori caregiving and Mäori identity and integrating these into parenting supports.


Impinging jets have received considerable attention during the last decade. The reason is mainly due to their inherent characteristics of high rates of heat transfer besides having simple geometry. Thus most practical applications of jet impingement occur in industries where the heat transfer requirements have exceeded capacity of ordinary heating and cooling techniques. This work presents and discusses the results of an experimental investigation of heat transfer between the horizontal smooth and rough plate of impinged jets. The round jets are used. The experiment is focused on the verification of the jet effect on the distribution of local heat transfer coefficient on the impinged target surface. The effect of flow in jet to test plate distance are also examined at fixed intersect spacing (S/D).It is revealed that flow of the jet improves the radial uniformity of the heat transfer significantly. The heat transfer deteriorates in the stagnation region but gets enhanced in wall jet region.


Effective intersection control can play an important role in reducing traffic congestion and associated vehicular emissions. This is vitally needed in developing countries, where air pollution is reaching life threatening levels. This paper presents EcoLight intersection control for developing regions, where budget is constrained and network connectivity is very poor. EcoLight learns effective control offline using state-of-the-art Deep Reinforcement Learning methods, but deploys highly efficient runtime control algorithms on low cost embedded devices that work standalone on road without server connectivity. EcoLight optimizes both average case and worst case values of throughput, travel time and other metrics, as evaluated on open-source datasets from New York and on a custom developing region dataset.


A court will not entertain an application for judicial review of legislation where the applicant does not disclose his/her right, interest or legitimate expectation on the subject matter of the complaint. This requirement of public adjudication is a vital component of the principle of justiciability. Originally developed as a principle of administrative law, this requirement has been imported into constitutional adjudication by the courts through their interpretation of the provisions of the constitution. This is the case in the United States, Australia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe where the law of standing remains in the traditionalist domain. Although the common law of standing has witnessed flashes of judicial activism in recent years owing to the sporadic judicial broadening of its base, it is the Canadian courts that have developed a systematic approach to the subject. They have developed four identifiable and guiding rules whereby citizens genuinely desirous of challenging the constitutionality of legislation, are granted standing in the discretion of the courts. The litigant can approach the courts in his/her own capacity, in the public interest or, where the party was brought on a criminaly charge or civil suit, in defence of such charge or claim. This paper critically analyses the foregoing developments.


In this book, Azzam Tamimi introduces the thought of Sheikh Rachid Ghannouchi, the renowned Islamist political activist who heads Tunisia's most important - albeit banned - Islamist political opposition to the current authoritarian regime of Zine Abidine Ben Ali. Ghannouchi is the leader of a school in modern Islamic political thought that advocates democracy and pluralism. He believes democracy to be a set of mechanisms for guaranteeing the sovereignty of the people and for supplying safety valves against corruption and the hegemonic monopoly of power. While insisting on the compatibility of democracy with Islam, he believes that because of their secular foundations contemporary forms of liberal democracy may not suit Muslim societies. He insists, however, that Islam is compatible with Western thought in matters concerning the system of government, human rights, and civil liberties.


In a detailed study, the effect of sensitizing tissues to insulin with a thiazolidinedione (pioglitazone) on postprandial lipid metabolism was compared to a group of type 2 diabetic patients treated with sulphonylurea (glibenclamide) in a treatment regime designed to achieve equivalent glycaemic control (HbAlc) in both groups. An oral fat tolerance test was administered after a 6 week treatment with diet and after 20 weeks treatment with glibenclamide or pioglitazone. Glycaemic control in both groups was unchanged by either treatment but in the fasting state, insulin sensitization caused a significant reduction in plasma total triglyceride content due to a significant reduction in total VLDL and, in particular, VLDL-2 present. The overall triglyceride response to the fat test showed a significant improvement to control clearance levels in the pioglitazone group that was not observed in the glibenclamide group. Chylomicron and chylomicron remnant clearance improved with insulin sensitization. IDL and LDL-TG was significantly higher in the diabetic patients than the controls and after treatment with thiazolidinedione the triglyceride content of these lipoproteins was reduced by contrast to glibenclamide treatment. Cholesterol content did not change significantly over the postprandial period either overall or in lipoproteins. There were only small effects on the enzymes of lipoprotein remodelling (LCAT, CETP, PLTP, HL or LPL) by insulin sensitization. Insulin release was reduced over the postprandial period by insulin sensitization and a significant reduction of proinsulin and 32-33 split-proinsulin also occurred. The results of this study show that sensitizing tissues to the action of insulin causes a reduction in insulin resistance (HOMA) and a more rapid clearance of postprandial lipoproteins. In addition there is an apparent beneficial effect on ?-cell function which is manifested by lower levels of incompletely processed insulin species probably caused by a less prolonged period of glycaemia.


Abstract Migrant workers bring an enormous contribution to the development of the Central Asia (CA) region by providing skills that fill labour market needs in countries of destination, and by providing remittances, return of talent and enhanced commercial activity in their countries of origin, i.e., Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. International labour mobility has become increasingly important in CA over the past two decades. The collapse of the Soviet Union and centralized employment system has entailed considerable changes in labour markets and growth of internal and external labour migration. The regional migration has affected all population strata, all age categories, men and women, various occupations and social groups in CA. Migration has strengthened economic linkages between actors in the regions as well as increased the development of speed gaps between various countries. According to the Central Asia Human Development Report (UNDP), just within the period from early 1989 to early 2002, nearly 3 million people, or over 20% of the population, migrated from Kazakhstan; 694,000 people (11% of the population) from Tajikistan; over 1 million people (4%) from Uzbekistan, and 360,000 people (7%) from Kyrgyzstan.


For its advantage in GPU acceleration and less dependency on human experts, machine learning has been an emerging tool for solving the placement and routing problems, as two critical steps in modern chip design flow. Being still in its early stage, there are fundamental issues: scalability, reward design, and end-to-end learning paradigm etc. To achieve end-to-end placement learning, we first propose a joint learning method termed by DeepPlace for the placement of macros and standard cells, by the integration of reinforcement learning with a gradient based optimization scheme. To further bridge the placement with the subsequent routing task, we also develop a joint learning approach via reinforcement learning to fulfill both macro placement and routing, which is called DeepPR. One key design in our (reinforcement) learning paradigm involves a multi-view embedding model to encode both global graph level and local node level information of the input macros. Moreover, the random network distillation is devised to encourage exploration. Experiments on public chip design benchmarks show that our method can effectively learn from experience and also provides intermediate placement for the post standard cell placement, within few hours for training.


In the recent decades there has been an unprecedented globalization of trade. One of the most important factors that made this possible is the containerization of the supply chain. As a consequence container terminals have become essential for todays globalized economy. The trend of containerization has further extended to the cold supply chain through the use of reefers (refrigerated containers), resulting in a tremendous increase in the trade of food and other perishable goods. In case of import dependent countries like Qatar the cold supply chain has become essential for food security. The number of reefers at container terminals has substantially grown and as a consequence their energy use. In average ports, the largest part of energy is consumed by crane operations and cooling of reefers. In case of ports that are dedicated to export/import of foods the cooling of reefers becomes the largest component of terminal energy consumption. This is especially the case in countries with extreme temperatures like Qatar. Although there has been a substantial amount of research dedicated to optimizing operational procedures of cranes at container terminals with a focus on minimizing energy use, similar approaches have not been explored in case of reefers and the related cold supply chain. In this work we focused on the potential of exploiting a terminal truck appointment system (TAS) to this goal. The main objective of the TAS is to minimize the waiting times at the port gates and to maximize the utilization of container yard equipment. It is important to note that previous research has shown that the information from the TAS can be used to optimize the crane operations. The majority of the existing research on TAS systems has been dedicated to evaluating the potential benefits that such systems can bring to a port in the sense of truck turn times. The concept of including reefer related information into a TAS adds a new dimension to the problem. This is due to the fact that the energy use of a reefer container is directly related to its dwelling time. The idea is to minimize the stay of reefers at the port. To be more precise the objective is to minimize the time since a reefer is unloaded to the port until a truck takes it out of the port. In practice this means that we wish to get the trucks that import the reefers to come to the port as soon as possible. This type of work adds a new type of objective where there is a higher priority related to trucks importing reefers. It is possible to develop a mixed integer program to assist in designing optimal methods for TAS related issues it is often not the best choice. The problem is that due to the high level of unpredictability in the movement of trucks inside and outside of the port the evaluation of a TAS system in this way is often not adequate. Due to this fact, the evaluation of such systems is frequently done using discrete event simulations (DES). In the existing literature the schedule for trucks is fixed, and further analysis is done to evaluate the effect of missed appointments and the percentage of «walk-in» trucks. The DES is only used for the truck arrivals to the port and related use of resources (Entrance Gate, Yard, Exit Gate, etc.). In the proposed research we extend the DES to also include dynamic appointment scheduling. To be more precise, we analyze how requests arrive and how appointments are given. This is important in the context of reefers since we want to give then higher priority, in the sense of leaving appointment slots open for truckers that transport them out of the port, which would otherwise be booked. The proposed DES is used to evaluate several strategies for appointments systems for both minimizing turn times of trucks and the dwelling times of containers. We show that some strategies can notably decrease the energy used for reefer cooling while maintaining short truck turn times.


Abstract. As part of the BAQS-Met 2007 field campaign, Aerodyne time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometers (ToF-AMS) were deployed at two sites in southwestern Ontario from 17 June to 11 July 2007. One instrument was located at Harrow, ON, a rural, agriculture-dominated area approximately 40 km southeast of the Detroit/Windsor/Windsor urban area and 5 km north of Lake Erie. The second instrument was located at Bear Creek, ON, a rural site approximately 70 km northeast of the Harrow site and 50 km east of Detroit/Windsor. Positive matrix factorization analysis of the combined organic mass spectral dataset yields factors related to secondary organic aerosol (SOA), direct emissions, and a factor tentatively attributed to the reactive uptake of isoprene and/or condensation of its early generation reaction products. This is the first application of PMF to simultaneous AMS measurements at different sites, an approach which allows for self-consistent, direct comparison of the datasets. Case studies are utilized to investigate processing of SOA from (1) fresh emissions from Detroit/Windsor and (2) regional aerosol during periods of inter-site flow. A strong correlation is observed between SOA/excess CO and photochemical age as represented by the NOx/NOy ratio for Detroit/Windsor outflow. Although this correlation is not evident for more aged air, measurements at the two sites during inter-site transport nevertheless show evidence of continued atmospheric processing by SOA production. However, the rate of SOA production decreases with airmass age from an initial value of ~10.1 μg m−3 ppmvCO−1 h−1 for the first ~10 h of plume processing to near-zero in an aged airmass (i.e. after several days). The initial SOA production rate is comparable to the observed rate in Mexico City over similar timescales.


Being a unique
hazard, COVID-19 led to various global distortions. Tourism was significantly
affected, and numerous authors are discussing future implications for the
industry. However, only a few studies consider the effects of COVID-19-related
measures on tourism's demand side. For
the state of Bavaria (Germany), we introduce the relevant legislative measures
and their implications on tourism demand. Following Sigala's
(2020)
suggestion, we illustrate the tourism demand development during the pandemic in
space and time by analysing Bavaria's
overnight stays on the districts'
administrative level. For the first nine months of the ongoing pandemic, we
identify the district's population
density, its relative location to major cities, and tourism intensity being
decisive for both, decline and recovery. Recommendations for policy action can
be derived directly from the different spatial and temporal developments we
have identified. Thus, it appears that individual districts vary considerably,
especially in the speed and extent of their recovery following the first shutdown,
in part due to the factors identified. Due to the varying degrees to which the
districts and their tourism businesses recover after the crisis, we argue that
customised, regionally differentiated political measures should be considered.


Many believe a Google search can identify most of the information available on the Internet on a given subject. But there is an entire online world – a massive one – beyond the reach of Google or any other search engine. Policymakers should take a cue from prosecutors – who just convicted one of its criminal masterminds – and start giving it some attention.The scale of the Internet's underworld is immense. The number of non-indexed web sites, known as the Deep Web, is estimated to be 400 to 500 times larger than the surface web of indexed, searchable web sites. And the Deep Web is where the dark side of the Internet flourishes. While there are plenty of law-abiding citizens and well-intentioned individuals (such as journalists, political dissidents, and whistleblowers) who conduct their online activities below the surface, the part of the Deep Web known as the Darknet has become a haven for regulatory evasion, crime, and threats to national security.This policy brief outlines what the Deep Web and Darknet are, how they are accessed, and why we should care about them. For policymakers, the continuing growth of the Deep Web in general and the accelerated expansion of the Darknet in particular pose new policy challenges. The response to these challenges may have profound implications for civil liberties, national security, and the global economy at large.


The impact of an interactive ocean on the midlatitude atmosphere is examined using a 31-yr integration of a variable depth mixed layer ocean model of the North Atlantic (between 208 and 608N) coupled to the NCAR Community Climate model (CCM1). Coupled model results are compared with a 31-yr control simulation where the annual cycle of sea surface temperatures is prescribed. The analysis focuses on the northern fall and winter months. Coupling does not change the mean wintertime model climatology (December‐February); however, it does have a significant impact on model variance. Air temperature and mixing ratio variance increase while total surface heat flux variance decreases. In addition, it is found that air‐sea interaction has a greater impact on seasonally averaged variance than monthly variance. There is an enhancement in the persistence of air temperature anomalies on interannual timescales as a result of coupling. In the North Atlantic sector, surface air and ocean temperature anomalies during late winter are uncorrelated with the following summer but are significantly correlated (0.4‐0.6) with anomalies during the following winter. These autocorrelations are consistent with the ''re-emergence'' mechanism, where late winter ocean temperature anomalies are sequestered beneath the shallow summer mixed layer and are reincorporated into the deepening fall mixed layer. The elimination of temperature anomalies from below the mixed layer in a series of uncoupled sensitivity experiments notably reduces the persistence of year-to-year anomalies. The persistence of air temperature anomalies on monthly timescales also increases with coupling and is likely associated with ''decreased thermal damping.'' When coupled to the atmosphere, the ocean is able to adjust to the overlying atmosphere so that the negative feedback associated with anomalous heat fluxes decreases, and air temperature anomalies decay more slowly.


We report the results of a reciprocal transplant experiment that tested plasticity in the heat shock response (HSR) of an intertidal mussel, Mytilus californianus (Conrad), in its natural habi- tat. We predicted that mussels inhabiting the upper edge of their vertical distribution, the high inter- tidal mussel bed, would display physiological signatures of greater thermal stress, specifically higher levels of an inducible heat shock protein isoform, Hsp72, and a higher temperature at which de novo synthesis of Hsp72 begins (threshold induction temperature). However, due to limits in physiological plasticity, we also predicted that the HSR of mussels transplanted between high and low areas would resemble that of mussels from both their source and their transplant microhabitats. The transplant experiment was conducted on the central coast of Oregon; mussels were transplanted between and within the high and low intertidal areas of the mussel bed in May 2001 and collected for measure- ment in August 2001. In addition, mussels from the natural populations of these areas were collected for comparison with experimental groups in May and August 2001. Using dissected gill tissue from each group of mussels, threshold induction temperatures and cellular levels of isoforms of the 70 kDa Hsp gene family were measured using in vitro metabolic labeling and immunochemical detection, respectively. The results demonstrated that the HSR was highly plastic over small spatial scales in the rocky intertidal habitat, although the compensation of the transplanted mussels was not perfect in every group. For example, although the induction temperature range was similar among mussels either collected from, or transplanted to the high-bed, those transplanted to the low-bed from the high zone displayed a broader range of induction temperatures, indicating that some mussels retained elements in their HSR with greater resemblance to mussels from their source microhabitat than those in their new microhabitat. Levels of inducible Hsp72 were greater in mussels from the high-bed than the low-bed, indicating that organisms from closely spaced microhabitats experience different levels of protein damage from environmental stress.


Abstract. The ISPRS Student Consortium (ISPRS SC) continues to engage the youth in many activities aligned with the mission and vision of ISPRS. For the term 2016 – 2020, the ISPRS SC strengthened its foundations through collaboration within the ISPRS Council and Technical Commission V, and increasing its presence in various ISPRS events. The Consortium Board introduced several changes in the organization: (1) re-designed the official logo, which was used in different communication and media, (2) revision of the Consortium's Statutes, (3) continued the legacy of the summer schools through a new set of guidelines that coordinated all summer schools organized within ISPRS, (4) launched the Webinar Series, (5) repackaged the Newsletter into SpeCtrum, (6) introduction of two new awards, (7) hosting of a three-day Youth Forum in the ISPRS Congress and (8) the introduction of the ISPRS SC Student Chapters. A total of 13 issues had been published under SpeCtrum, two of which featured the ISPRS and an outstanding special issue on Women in Remote Sensing and Geospatial Information that received over 500 reads overnight. The SpeCtrum continued to seek experts, professors and contributors who willingly shared their work and inspire the youth. SpeCtrum had been publishing high quality articles and had been featuring outstanding scientists and researchers in the fields of remote sensing, photogrammetry and spatial information science. The Consortium also launched the Webinar Series and kicked off with an introduction on Google Earth Engine and followed by the applications of deep learning in remote sensing in 2020. For this term, a total of 16 summer schools were hosted across the globe, including one hosted under the ISPRS Education and Capacity Building Initiatives in 2018. The Consortium also partnered with international organizations such as Geo-informatics and Space Technology Development Agency, ASEAN Research and Training Center for Space Technology and Applications and the local chapters of the IEEE – Geosciences and Remote Sensing Society Young Professionals (IEEE – GRSS YP) in Brazil. The members of the Consortium had been increasing in the past year, especially with its increased presence in various social media platforms. The Consortium envisions a future, where the younger generation takes the lead and engages in relevant social and global issues and contributing significantly to the scientific community. As a student and youth organization, it aims to continue to develop more ways of knowledge transfer, capacity building and establishing professional networks to prepare students and young professionals for a future of collaboration and cooperation.


The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of chrysin and its metal conjugates chrysin-copper and chrysinmanganese on auxotrophic strains of Escherichia coli for lysine and vitamin B12. Further studies were also done on Lactobacillus delbrueckii for histidine. The auxotrophic strains were supplemented with chrysin metal conjugates along with their respective growth limiting factor. Gradient was created by increasing the concentration of chrysin conjugates and gradually decreasing the concentration of growth limiting factor sequence. At 0.15 g/ml concentration of chrysin metal conjugates auxotrophic strains were reverted to prototrophs. The reverted strains were grown in minimal agar with Ethidium Bromide and organisms were able to grow in the range of 0.10g/ml up to 0.34g/ml concentration. From Reverse Mutation assay Chrysin and its metal conjugates proved to be mutagenic agent but not a carcinogen. The assumption of Ames test that when a compound is mutagen there is 90% chance of it being carcinogen but chrysin comes in remaining 10% i.e. it is a mutagen but not a carcinogen.


Universal properties of language constrain not only the languages themselves, but also which directions of change are possible. Implicational universals, where one linguistic property is seen to constrain, or in the weaker case, have a probabilistic influence upon the value of another parameter, have a more controversial relationship with language change. Some, e.g. Cysouw (2003a), have challenged the very validity of the notion of the implicational universal, with some welcome criticisms of its overuse. But if we still accept the notion, it is nevertheless evident that in the case of a probabilistic rather than an absolute implicational universal, we will be unable to establish an exceptionless pattern of change. This paper examines one ongoing change within Tunisian Arabic which is mediated by dialect contact. It suggests that for some changes induced by dialect contact, the question of the role of implicational universals in predicting and/or constraining outcomes of change is worth further investigation. This is based on a strong match observed between the route of change and an implicational universal.


In 2002, quantitative phototransect surveys documenting coral community structure off three coastal resorts in Hawai'i were repeated to produce long-term data sets of 12 to 22 yr duration. At the first site, in Honolua Bay off the Kapalua Resort on Maui, a runoff event from surrounding pineapple fields following a winter storm in early 2002 deposited sediment on the inner reef that remained in the bay for at least 6 months. Between 1992 and 2002 survey data showed that significant declines in coral cover occurred on seven of eight transects, causing an overall reduction in coral cover of about 33% throughout the entire bay. Rainfall records indicate that the 2002 storm was of relatively small magnitude; however subsequent resuspension and flushing by waves did not take place for several months, exacerbating the smothering effects of the sediment. Periodic sedimentation events of various magnitude and duration have resulted in cycles of damage and recovery that have produced a coral community that reflects intermediate disturbance and a coral community structure dominated by sediment-resistant species. The two other long-term surveys, off Mauna Lani Resort on the west coast of the island of Hawai'i (1983Ð2002), and Princeville Resort on the north shore of Kaua'i (1980Ð2002), both revealed a pattern of consistent increase in coral cover at all stations. At these open coastal sites, anthropogenic effects are undetectable relative to natural factors that affect coral community structure. A lack of maximum wave events during the interval between surveys may partially explain the increase in coral cover. Activities from shoreline development appeared to have no effect on coral community structure during the study interval. The results of these three studies suggest a framework for coral reef management in Hawai'i by concentrating efforts on embayments and areas with restricted circulation. Because such areas compose less than 10% of the coastal areas, the overall condition of the majority of coral reefs in Hawai' i is relatively good. Nevertheless, embayments are major recreational sites and it is these environments for which we suggest that the major need for management exists and should be focused. On a global scale, concerns of catastrophic loss from anthropogenic impact to coral reefs may be valid in many areas of the world, but they do not accurately depict the condition of coral reefs in Hawai'i.


Mate infusions have been recently and frequently used as dietary supplements because of their health effects to prevent atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease and to be antioxidant. The aim of this study was to determine phenolic compounds and antioxidant activities of green mate (GM) and roasted mate (RM) extracts and compare them with green tea (GT). Total polyphenol content of GM and RM extracts was found to be similar and to range from 237.20 to 438.50 mg gallic acid equivalent (GAE) g-1 dry extract and from 256.72 to 473.11 mg GAE g-1 dry extract depending on the solvent used and type of fraction, respectively. Polyphenol yield of GM and RM extracts were in the range of 20.94-101.72 mg GAE g-1 dw leaf and 22.08-74.56 mg GAE g-1 dw leaf, respectively. GM and RM extracts exhibited similar antioxidant activity when measured by reducing power. However, RM extracts had significantly higher protection factor (PF) values determined by rancimat assay and radical scavenging activity (RSA) determined by DPPH radical scavenging compared to GM extracts. In general, RM extracts had higher antioxidant activity than GM extracts although both mate leaves were found to have similar phenolic profiles and contain mainly chlorogenic acid and isomers as a phenolic matter.


Although most research method textbooks provide very good coverage of key elements of empirical studies, but we still see many papers that are published with incomplete methodological information. In a recent seminar meeting with doctoral students, we found a paper published with no information about how the key dependent variable was measured (not even mentioning whether it's binary or on an interval scale). Except for this missing information, the paper looks perfect, reasonable theories, adequate sample size, excellent model fits, PLS analysis with reasonable justification, significant of most hypotheses except a minor one. Unfortunately, without knowing how the dependent variable was measured, we could not assess whether the research method was appropriate; nor the meaning of the effect sizes in the structural equation model. Embarrassingly, I had to explain why this paper was accepted and published in a reasonably good journal with no reviewer paid attention to the measurement of the dependent variable. In my own experience, there are quite a few other problems such as missing sample size, mismatch between tables and associated texts, etc.. These occur not only in low quality journal papers.


This paper develops 30 novel quantitative indicators of grand corruption that operationalize 20 distinct techniques of corruption in the context of public procurement. Each indicator rests on a thorough qualitative understanding of rent extraction from public contracts by corrupt networks as evidenced by academic literature, interviews and media content analysis. Feasibility and usefulness of the proposed indicators are demonstrated using micro-level public procurement data from Hungary in 2009-2012. While the prime value of this broad set of indicators is the possibility of combining them into a robust composite indicator of high-level corruption, the high degree of detail also reveals that many regulatory interventions have succeeded in changing the form of corruption, but not its overall incidence.


The Household Economy Approach (HEA) adds value to the assessment of access to food and food security in emergency situations. However, the approach fails to identify the specific causes of vulnerability that are related to gender dynamics within households. In the context of food security in the Sahel region, this report aims to provide ideas and courses of action to address this important gap by incorporating a gender perspective. It analyses the theoretical and methodological limitations of the HEA approach and explores new ways that could significantly improve its performance in the future.


The tension between experiential chaos and artistic control is a constant if varying presence, and acts as a fertile, dangerous, but ultimately enriching principle, in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, and Yeats. Each poet is highly self-conscious about this tension, a self-consciousness traceable to their Romantic and post-Romantic understanding of the nature of poetry. Situating itself in the present post-McGannian critical landscape, my thesis looks at poetry through the lens of a new formalism. The thesis valorises aesthetic subtleties and lays emphasis on poetry's performative intelligence.

The Introduction describes in detail the approach, method, and contents of the thesis. Section one examines the poetics of Byron, Shelley and Yeats, focusing on how each poet figures his attempted control of the potentially chaotic text. The first chapter, on Byron's poetics, centres on Don Juan, Beppo and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and argues for the presence of a coherent poetics in his oeuvre. Chapter two, on Shelley's poetics, examines A Defence of Poetry and its relationship with Shelley's poetry, giving particular attention to Alastor and "Mont Blanc." Chapter three examines the self-consciousness of Yeats's poetics, and explores the way in which he makes poetry express his effort towards mastery while retaining the chaos that permits creative freedom in The Wanderings of Oisin, the Byzantium poems, and "Easter 1916."

The struggle to assert poetic control is a form of heroism, and the second section examines the concept of the hero in works by each of the poets. I illustrate how traditional critical accounts of the poets underestimate the complexity that governs their versions of heroism. Chapter four, on Cain and The Giaour, and chapter five, on Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, trace Byron's evolving challenge to any straightforward notion of heroism. Chapter six views Shelley's Epipsychidion as a climactic exploration of the poet-as-hero, while chapter seven explores Adonais's radical refiguring of the heroic and the elegiac. Chapters eight and nine focus on "The Tower," on Yeats's creation of a uniquely personal, yet carefully impersonal, poetic monument to the poet-hero.

The chaos of the actual, from which Byron, Shelley, and Yeats create their poetry, wars constantly with, but also paradoxically enables, the control they attempt to establish. It is their staging of the quarrel between chaos and control that not only provides them with the material out of which they make poetry but also means that their practice foreshadows and at times outflanks our critical constructions.


As an alternative to standard adhesive connections, the PhD research project 'Novel Laminated Connections for Structural Glass Applications', which recently started at the ICOM-EPFL, focuses on the use of polymer foil/interlayer materials to laminate (metal) connections to glass. Two interlayer materials, namely the ionomer SentryGlas (SG) and the structural transparent addition-cured silicon (TSSA) seem good candidates for this lamination connection technique, and are investigated in this research. The research includes experimental and numerical studies, and aims at developing a model for predicting the deformation and failure behaviour of laminated connections.


To realize multi-objective optimization of the parallel-connected double-effect mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) system, this paper established an optimization model based on the Strength Pareto Evolution Algorithm 2 (SPEA2), where the total power consumption and the heat exchange area were taken as the optimization objectives. The optimal combination of evaporation temperature, compression temperature rise and emission concentration was obtained by employing the SPEA2-based multi-objective evolutionary algorithm together with the fuzzy set theory. The emission concentration was added as a variable on the basis of the original optimization, and the optimization results were compared with the original operation conditions. The results showed that the total power consumption of the system lowered by 22.9kW and the heat exchange area was reduced by 110.5m2; the coefficient of performance (COP) and exergy efficiency heightened by 8.4% and 24.0%, respectively, and the exergy loss decreased by 84.6kW. These results indicate that the established model for system optimization can make up for the deficiency of evaluating and optimizing system performance by manipulating a single decision variable and improve the energy utilization and thermodynamic perfection of the target system.


The newly appointed elementary assistant principal enters the administrative job with unclear role expectations since few studies have examined the position closely. Literature consistently supports the principal as key to the effectiveness of the assistant principal. The position of assistant principal is viewed as important to schools, yet the complex role is seen as unclear and in a state of change. This study explores the experiences of an elementary assistant principal over the course of her first year and was guided by the question: How does an elementary school assistant principal come to understand her role?

Both phenomenology and symbolic interaction provided frameworks from which to view this single case study. Phenomenology facilitated the description and analysis of the role of this elementary assistant principal, Lucy. Since human beings actively engage "in creating their world and their understandings of it" (Ponticell & Zepeda, 2000), symbolic interaction facilitated the inclusion of additional perspectives from key participants within the context of Lucy's school.

The Four Case Study Design Tests (Yin, 1994) were applied to check for goodness, credibility, and transferability. Following consistent procedures over time, using multiple sources, categorizing concepts, and key informant interviews provided strength to this case study. Interviews were analyzed using the constant comparative method of data analysis (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998), and member checking, and the triangulation of data verified the accuracy of data.

Categories emerged from early studies drawing attention to the dimensions of the elementary assistant principal. Key informant interviews indicated the critical impact of relationships, creating opportunities for deeper responses and contributing to Lucy's role conceptualization based on the informants' personal experiences. Archival data provided additional directives from within the school district, facilitating confusion surrounding Lucy's role conceptualization. Additionally, data identified the principal as a major influence on this elementary assistant principal.

The significance of this study to the field of educational leadership is the close examination of a single case study, a novice elementary administrator. Further case studies like this have the potential to contribute thicker descriptions and a clearer understanding of the perspectives, actions, and interactions affecting the elementary assistant principal.


Background: This study was conducted to reveal that whether i.v. injection of oleuropein, the most potent polyphenolic antioxidant in olive leaf, has any effect on the magnitude of reperfusion arrhythmia in anesthetized rats or not. Methods: Eighty male Wistar rats were divided into 8 groups of 10 each: groups 1 and 5 were assigned as the prophylactic and treatment control groups, groups 2 and 6 as the prophylactic and treatment groups with lidocaine (10 mg/kg), groups 3 and 4 as the prophylactic groups with 10 and 50 mg/kg oleuropein (i.v.), and groups 7 and 8 as the treatment groups with 10 and 50 mg/kg oleuropein (i.v.), respectively. Reperfusion injury was induced by 5-min regional ischemia and 15-min reperfusion of left anterior descending coronary artery. Heart rate, blood pressure, and electrocardiogram were monitored throughout the procedure. Results: blood pressure was significantly decreased by infusion of 50 mg/kg oleuropein in groups 4 and 8, but unlike the lidocaine as a standard anti-arrhythmic drug in groups 2 and 5 had not significant effect on heart rate. The onset of arrhythmia in groups received oleuropein (groups 3, 4, 7, and 8) was significantly delayed. The mortality rate due to irreversible ventricular fibrillation was also significantly reduced in groups 3, 4, 7, and 8. The effect of lidocaine in groups 2 and 5 was more potent than that in oleuropein group. Conclusion: These findings indicate that i.v. injection of oleuropein possibly through its antioxidant activity reduces the magnitude of reperfusion-induced arrhythmia.


The search for natural antioxidants from plants would continue to be a dominant research interest for many years. This is because of the increasing understanding on the role of oxidative stress in damaging cell structures such as DNA, due to over production of free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) in human systems, which are linked to inflammation, cancer and diabetes. However, phenolic compounds especially from phytochemicals or vegetable foods play important roles in reducing the risk of these diseases and reinforces the importance of natural antioxidants in human health. These antioxidant molecules neutralize or quench the ROS by either hydrogen atom transfer or single electron transfer mechanisms. Thus, the capacity to scavenge ROS and free radicals or inhibits lipid peroxidation is measured quantitatively as the strength of antioxidant activity. Several chemical and biochemical protocols have been used in the evaluation of plant extracts as antioxidants. Overwhelming literature reports have indicated varying degrees of antioxidant efficacies of extracts from Nigerian medicinal plants in comparison to synthetic antioxidants. These efficacies were analyzed to provide insight into the strength of antioxidant activity. This chapter reviewed 250 Nigerian medicinal plants in search of evidence for effective antioxidants.


This book describes in fascinating detail the history of the use of anesthesia in childbirth and in so doing offers a unique perspective on the interaction between medical science and social values. Dr. Donald Caton traces the responses of physicians and their patients to the pain of childbirth from the popularization of anesthesia to the natural childbirth movement and beyond. He finds that physicians discovered what could be done to manage pain, and patients decided what would be done. Dr. Caton discusses how nineteenth-century physicians began to think and act like scientists; how people learned to reject the belief that pain and suffering are inevitable components of life; and how a later generation came to think that pain may have important functions for the individual and society. Finally he shows the extent to which cultural and social values have influenced "scientific" medical decisions.


The history of nations is a history of haves and have-nots, and as we approach the millennium, the gap between rich and poor countries is widening. In this engrossing and important new work, eminent historian David Landes explores the complex, fascinating and often startling causes of the wealth and poverty of nations. The answers are found not only in the large forces at work in economies: geography, religion, the broad swings of politics, but also in the small surprising details. In Europe, the invention of spectacles doubled the working life of skilled craftsmen, and played a prominent role in the creation of articulated machines, and in China, the failure to adopt the clock fundamentally hindered economic development. The relief of poverty is vital to the survival of us all. As David Landes brilliantly shows, the key to future success lies in understanding the lessons the past has to teach us - lessons uniquely imparted in this groundbreaking and vital book which exemplifies narrative history at its best.


Building automation systems rely heavily on general-purpose computers and communication protocols, which are often affected by security vulnerabilities. In this paper, we first analyze the attack surface of a real building automation system - based on the widely used KNX protocol-connected to a general-purpose IP network. To this end, we analyze the vulnerabilities of KNX-based networks highlighted by previous research work, which, however, did not corroborate their findings with experimental results. To verify the practical exploitability of these vulnerabilities and their potential impact, we implement a full-fledged testbed infrastructure that reproduces the typical deployment of a building automation system. On this testbed, we show the feasibility of a practical attack that leverages and combines the aforementioned vulnerabilities. We show the ease of reverse engineering the vendor-specific components of the KNX protocol. Our attack leverages the IP-to-KNX connectivity to send arbitrary commands which are executed by the actuators. We conclude that the vulnerabilities highlighted by previous work are effectively exploitable in practice, with severe results. Although we use KNX as a target, our work can be generalized to other communication protocols, often characterized by similar issues. Finally, we analyze the countermeasures proposed in previous literature and reveal the limitations that prevent their adoption in practice. We suggest a practical stopgap measure to protect real KNX-based BASs from our attack.


This paper discusses the design and development of a new Modular, Autonomously Reconfigurable Serial manipulator platform for advanced manufacturing, termed as the MARS manipulator. The platform consists of i) an 18-Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) serial-link manipulator capable of locking any of its joints at any position in their continuous range, such that it can emulate fewer-DOF serial manipulators with different kinematic and dynamic parameters, and ii) an integrated simulation and design environment that provides control over the manipulator hardware as well as a toolset for the design, implementation and optimization of a desired manipulator configuration for a given task. The effectiveness of the MARS manipulator to adapt its configuration to various tasks is examined by assuming two well-known configurations, SCARA and articulated, and by performing a specific task with each of them. The variation in effectiveness of the two configurations in terms of the end-effector trajectory, end-effector accuracy and power consumption is discussed. Further, these configurations are optimized with respect to their performance accuracy, and compared to their pre-optimized versions. Finally, the accuracy model of the simulation is compared against the physical hardware system, running the same task.


Bovine milk proteins have been identified that possess broad spectrum antimicrobial activity. In vitro, these proteins upon degradation by digestive enzyme s or microbial enzymes have been shown to release antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which exhibit unique mechanism for killing bacteria compared with current antibiotics. These AMPs selectively binds to the outer lipid membrane of the bacterium and form blist ers and pores, which eventually result in lys is of the cell leading to cellular death. Present research has been carried out to find out the minimal inhibitory effect of peptide released during fermentation under controlled condition on Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. Bioactive peptides generated during fermentation were separated using different techniques and tested for antimicrobial activity. These peptides first purified with gel filtration technique and then subjected to reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography. Broth dilution and well diffusion methods were used to determine the lowest concentration of antimicrobial peptides agent (minimal inhibitory concentration, MIC) that can inhibit the growth of selected pathogen; we find that under defined test conditions, AMPs inhibits the visible growth of the bacterium being investigated. This study demonstrated that bioactive peptides having antimicrobial acitivity generated during fermentation with L. helveticus showed a minimum of 8mm zone of inhibition against gram positive S. aureus and 9mm against gram negative E. coli on plates containing 20µl peptide concentration as compared to respective plates or broth tubes which determines the lowest concentration of the assayed antimicrobial peptide, minimal inhibitory concentration, (MIC). The amount of peptide as calculated for 20µl peptide suspension was 0.34 mg/ml. Therefore we can conclude that 0.34 mg/ml of may be considered as minimal inhibitory concentration for the inhibition of growth of S. aureus and E. coli. Further study and animal trials must be carried out to decide final dose of such peptide to be used for therapeutic agent or as in food preservation.


AbstractThe aim of this study is to highlight the professional's perspectives and work with young girls who have eating disorder anorexia nervousa. We assume a social constructivist perspective where the professional's interpretations and perspectives on the issue anorexia considered. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with seven professionals in the areas of work, social services, school counselor, school nurse, anorexia unit and child and adolescent psychiatry (BUP).From a thematic analysis of the interviews, three themes emerged. The themes the study deals with are; causes, symptoms and measures.The analysis highlights our professional's and previous research, the reasons why young people into anorexia is individual and influenced by several factors. The results also show that the treatment has an important role in the development and processing of the disease anorexia. Further highlighting the results of different forms of measures that are important based on respondents' different professions. What is considered important to address is different from the respondents' characteristics, skills and tasks.


The Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP) is one of the candidate solutions to address the scalability issues in inter-domain routing. The current proposals for its control plane (e.g., ALT, CONS, NERD) have various shortcomings, including the potential dropping of packets at LISP routers during the resolution of the EID-to-RLOC mapping. In this paper, we introduce a new Control Plane (CP) for LISP supported by an architecture that borrows concepts from both the Path Computation Element (PCE) and Intelligent Route Control (IRC). Our CP is able to tackle three different problems simultaneously: (i) packets sourced from end-hosts are neither dropped nor queued during the mapping resolution; (ii) the EID-to-RLOC mapping can be obtained and configured approximately within the DNS resolution time needed to fetch the destination EID address; and (iii) our approach can blend IRC with the PCE capabilities, to perform upstream/downstream Traffic Engineering (TE) through the dynamic management of the mappings. In particular, our CP supports the utilization of different LISP ingress and egress local routers for the same flow sourced from a domain.


The present paper compares expected inflation to (econometric) inflation forecasts based on a number of forecasting techniques from the literature using a panel of ten industrialized countries during the period of 1988 to 2007. To capture expected inflation we develop a recursive filtering algorithm which extracts unexpected inflation from real interest rate data, even in the presence of diverse risks and a potential Mundell-Tobin-effect. The extracted unexpected inflation is compared to the forecasting errors of ten econometric forecasts. Beside the standard AR(p) and ARMA(1,1) models, which are known to perform best on average, we also employ several Phillips curve based approaches, VAR, dynamic factor models and two simple model avering approaches.


Fuel cells are increasingly important sources of electrical power as they can reduce the world's use of fossil fuels, leading to benefits such as decreased greenhouse gas emissions and cleaner air. However, their dynamic responses are slower than that of typical electrical and electronic systems drawing power from them. Hence, it is important to properly characterize an equivalent circuit model of the fuel cell's dynamic behaviour, for performing accurate analysis and optimal design of the power systems based on such sources. This paper describes a method of estimating the parameters of a second-order equivalent circuit model, a first-order model being less accurate, for the direct methanol fuel cell from measurements of its responses to step-changes in load at various temperatures, fuel flow rates and fuel concentrations. Analysis of these parameter values, which provided excellent fits of the test data, indicated that they are quite sensitive to temperature but relatively insensitive to fuel flow rates – more so for load-off than for load-on responses – for the same fuel concentration. Furthermore, different fuel concentrations resulted in greater variability of the parameter values during the load-on responses as compared to the load-off ones.


We consider the problem of estimating the graph structure associated with a discrete Markov random field. We describe a method based on $\ell_1$-regularized logistic regression, in which the neighborhood of any given node is estimated by performing logistic regression subject to an $\ell_1$-constraint. Our framework applies to the high-dimensional setting, in which both the number of nodes $p$ and maximum neighborhood sizes $d$ are allowed to grow as a function of the number of observations $n$. Our main results provide sufficient conditions on the triple $(n, p, d)$ for the method to succeed in consistently estimating the neighborhood of every node in the graph simultaneously. Under certain assumptions on the population Fisher information matrix, we prove that consistent neighborhood selection can be obtained for sample sizes $n = \Omega(d^3 \log p)$, with the error decaying as $\order(\exp(-C n/d^3))$ for some constant $C$. If these same assumptions are imposed directly on the sample matrices, we show that $n = \Omega(d^2 \log p)$ samples are sufficient.


As an effort to promote the national rubber industry, the government of
Indonesia in the past has implemented various policies and programmes.
One of them is the Nucleus Estate and Smallholders I Project (NES). The
NES I project was officially introduced in 1977 as a pilot project in
implementing the contract farming system in Indonesia, and it has
progressively developed ever since. It involved a total area of about 5,852
hectares and 2,926 farmers. However, the project faced one major problem,
that is poor loan collection where quite a Significant number of farmers
involved in the project who were not able to repay the loan on time.
According to the Pusat Pengkajian dan Pengembangan Agribisnis
(1994), the total amount of loans that had been disbursed by the NES
project was RP 12.690 billion and out of this amount only R P 6.533 billion or
about 51 percent had been repaid by the project participants.Recognition the above problem, the general objective of the study is to
examine the loan repayment performance of a contract farming system
through the NES I Project in East Aceh, Indonesia. The specific objectives of
the study are to assess the performance of the non-defaulters and the
defaulters in terms of their productivity, income and adoption of technology;
and to identify key factors influencing borrowers of NES I project to repay
their loans.
This study was conducted at the NES I project, which is located at
about 89 km from Langsa in East Aceh District of Aceh Province, Indonesia,
and adjacent to the State-Owned Enterprise, i.e., PT. Perkebunan Nusantara
I. For the purpose of this study, one hundred respondents were chosen as
the sample of the study which consisted of 65 non-defaulters and 35
defaulters.
The study shows that, with the exception of the tapping frequency,
there is no significant difference between the non-defaulters and the
defaulters in terms of some of the economic variables such as level of
productivity, income level and adoption of technology.
The analysis of logit model which provides 81 percent of correct
prediction indicates that, with the exception of the farmers' income level, the signs of the estimated coefficients of other explanatory variables are as
expected according to a priori reasoning. Generally, the model indicates that
the probability that a farmer will become a non-defaulter is positively related
to educational attainment, farming experience, productivity, other sources of
income, attitude towards loan repayment, knowledge about the rubber
technology and satisfaction with the NES I project activities and services, but
negatively related to age, family size and income. However, only the
coefficients of educational attainment, family size and knowledge about the
rubber technology are found to be significant at the 5 percent level.


Contamination of the environment due to heavy metals and organic waste is a serious problem nowadays. These types of contaminants are toxic and can be dangerous to human health. Heavy metal contaminants include copper, lead and hexavalent chromium while phenol, benzene and toluene are examples of organic pollutants. A treatment of these contaminated waste chemicals must be carried out before they can be released into the environment. Conventional techniques for the treatment of these contaminants are not cost - effective as they are chemical and energy - intensive. Thus, the emerging biological methods for treating these wastes i.e. bioremediation, is more favorable. In this study, a locally isolated bacterium, Acinetobacter haemolyticus was chosen for the removal of Cr (VI) and phenol using batch and column systems. Cr (VI) and phenol removal studies were carried out separately and simultaneously using batch and column systems. When treated separately, about 90% and 95% of Cr (VI) could be removed using the batch and column system, respectively. However, for phenol, 30 - 65% and 50 - 80% of the organic compound could be removed using the batch and column system, respectively. In the simultaneous treatment process, the mixed waste effluent of Cr (VI) and phenol was also treated using the same system. About 70% and 85% of Cr (VI) could be removed in the batch and column system respectively while for phenol, about 30 - 40% was removed using the batch system and 50 - 60% for the column system. The batch system also required a longer retention time compared to the column system. This study has demonstrated the ability of Acinetobacter haemolitycus to remove Cr (VI) and phenol both from separate and mixed effluent, thus offering a promising alternative method for the detoxification of both pollutants prior to releasing the effluent into the environment.


This paper presents a new method for solving linear inverse problems where the observations are corrupted with a mixed Poisson-Gaussian noise. To generate a reliable solution, a regularized approach is often adopted in the literature. In this context, the optimal selection of the regularization parameters is of crucial importance in terms of estimation performance. The variational Bayesian-based approach we propose in this work allows us to automatically estimate the original signal and the associated regularization parameter from the observed data. A majorization-minimization technique is employed to circumvent the difficulties raised by the intricate form of the Poisson-Gaussian likelihood. Experimental results show that the proposed method is fast and achieves state-of-the art performance in comparison with approaches where the regularization parameters are manually adjusted.