Understanding domain wall (DW) motion in nanoscale ferromagnetic structures reveals intriguing physics, with tremendous potential applications in logic devices and racetrack memory. Work has been done to move a series of DWs uniformly, either by passing spin-polarized currents or applying non-uniform magnetic fields. One challenge remained is to create and move individual DWs in arbitrary locations. We developed a technique to generate localized circular magnetic field by applying a current through the tip of the atomic force microscope (AFM) and thereby manipulating the state of the ferromagnetic rings[1, 2]. Now we extend our ability to control domain walls in various structures, such as straight wires with notches and zigzag wires. By placing the tip near a 180◦ DW in a vertex of a zigzag wire, we can move the 180◦ DW along the wire and form a stable 360◦ DW in neighboring vertex. We can also separate the 360◦ DW back to two 180◦ DWs or annihilate the 360◦ DW entirely. Micromagnetic simulations have been performed at Odyssey computer cluster at Harvard University with Object Oriented Micro Magnetic Framework (OOMMF), a public domain program distributed by NIST, to study the evolution of magnetic states in various structures in a uniform or circular magnetic field. NiFe and Co nanowires have been fabricated with Electron Beam Lithography and lift-off technique. We are presently working on to experimentally pass current through AFM tip and examine magnetic states with Magnetic Force Microscope (MFM) imaging. In the future, we plan to simultaneously measure magnetoresistance while manipulating DWs in order to monitor the motion while it is occurring. We would also like to understand the probabilistic nature of DW motion in a greater depth.


This paper proposes a novel approach for generation scheduling using sensitivity characteristic of a Security Analyzer Neural Network (SANN) for improving static security of power system. In this paper, the potential overloading at the post contingency steady- state associated with each line outage is proposed as a security index which is used for evaluation and enhancement of system static security. A multilayer feed forward neural network is trained as SANN for both evaluation and enhancement of system security. The input of SANN is load/generation pattern. By using sensitivity characteristic of SANN, sensitivity of security indices with respect to generation pattern is used as a guide line for generation rescheduling aimed to enhance security. Economic characteristic of generation pattern is also considered in the process of rescheduling to find an optimum generation pattern satisfying both security and economic aspects of power system. One interesting feature of the proposed approach is its ability for flexible handling of system security into generation rescheduling and compromising with the economic feature with any degree of coordination. By using SANN, several generation patterns with different level of security and cost could be evaluated which constitute the Pareto solution of the multi-objective problem. A compromised generation pattern could be found from Pareto solution with any degree of coordination between security and cost. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is studied on the IEEE 30 bus system with promising results.


The first Carboniferous and ?Permian marine macrofaunas from the Antarctic continent are described from three sites near Mount King, Alexander Island, Antarctic Peninsula. They include bivalves, brachiopods, bryozoans, crinoids, gastropods, a possible monoplacophoran, nautiloids and a possible serpulid or microconchid. Overall the faunas of two localities are Carboniferous in age and compare well with the Levipustula levis Zone of Argentina and eastern Australia, and are of Namurian (Serpukhovian–Bashkirian) age, based mainly on the brachiopod and bryozoan faunas. Less positive brachiopod evidence from a third locality indicates the presence of a linoproductid fauna of possible Carboniferous or Permian (Gzhelian–Artinskian) age, having affinities with the Argentinian Cancrinella fauna. The lithological and structural characteristics of the Mount King beds are comparable to the accretionary complex of the LeMay Group (hitherto of only proven Jurassic–Cretaceous age) of Alexander Island, in which they are provisionally placed. However, the beds may also correlate with the Trinity Peninsula Group (Carboniferous–Triassic) of the northern Antarctic Peninsula. The features of the Mount King beds are consistent with the presence of an accretionery complex related to an island arc in the Late Palaeozoic, but are not necessarily conclusive proof of the presence of such a terrane at that time in what is now Alexander Island.


Introduction: Unintentional intra-arterial injection of drugs has serious problems and morbidity such as pain, ischemia, gangrene, and infection. Aberrant vascularization is a frequent cause of intra-arterial injection.Case Report: We describe a pediatric case of accidental cannulation of aberrant arterial vessel during venous insertion and our brachial plexus block treatment to obtain continuous vasodilatation to prevent ischemic effects.Conclusion: Sympatholysis with peripheral nerve blocks may decrease morbidity providing an additional benefit to pharmacological treatment by increasing blood flow to the tissue after the intra-arterial injection


Cosmic microwave background (CMB) studies require observations in several frequency bands simultaneously. For example, the detection of clusters of remote galaxies can be performed by comparing CMB photon fluxes at different frequencies, using the spectral deformation of the Planck law, due to the Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect. We propose a single pixel design to receive and detect simultaneously two frequency bands of the (CMB), centered at 150 and 220 GHz. It is composed of a bow-tie antenna, sensitive to the polarization of the incident radiation, feeding a diplexer structure to separate the signal towards two kinetic inductance resonators associated respectively with the 130–170 and 200–270 GHz frequency bands. The diplexer makes use of 150 nm thick niobium-based superconducting transmission lines of the coplanar strip-lines (CPS) type, for filtering and separation purposes, deposited on a 30 μm thick quartz substrate. A new coplanar matching structure, taking into account the kinetic inductance of the superconducting films, is proposed and achieves a nearly perfect match over more than 25% of each frequency band, along with a signal separation ratio above 30 dB at both center frequencies. The size of a single pixel is 0.9 mm × 1.2 mm.


The timing, duration and pattern of the poorly documented wing moult in the Eurasian Stone-curlew Burhinus oedicnemus were described and related to the breeding cycle. Between 1998 and 2007, 141 birds were trapped in the Taro River Regional Park (Parma, Italy) both while incubating and during the post-breeding season. The timing of primary moult was estimated according to the method of Underhill & Zucchini (1988) and Underhill et al. (1990). Primary moult was very slow and overlapped most of the breeding season, beginning in early May and ending in October. Secondary moult was much more irregular and was not completed within a single moult cycle. Innermost and outermost secondaries were more likely to be shed than those at the centre of this tract. Juvenile secondaries were not shed during the first winter. The study provides the first detailed analysis of wing moult in the Eurasian Stone-curlew and suggests some useful ageing criteria based on the pattern of secondary moult. The extensive overlap between breeding and moulting is relatively uncommon compared to other waders. This could be interpreted as a way to maximize breeding success through renesting potential (up to 4 attempts), i.e. by spreading the cost of moult over a prolonged time period. A between-species comparison using independent contrasts was consistent with this hypothesis: species with a prolonged breeding season also showed considerable overlap in the timing of primary moult and breeding activities.


A new laser scanning microscope system has been developed to observe the spatial distribution of light scattering particles or defects in a partially transparent object. The present microscope has an optical probe whose intensity is modulated by the interference effect between two crossed laser beams with slightly different frequencies. In this paper, a Zeeman laser combined with a simple polarizing optical system is used to produce two such coherent beams. Experimental results obtained by using a latex sphere and a microscale as the target show qualitatively that high image contrast is obtained by the present method even if some obscuring particles exist in front of the probe volume. Distributions of light scattering particles or defects in a LiNbO(3) and TGS single crystal can be visualized by a computer-controlled scan stage.


ABSTRACT We consider the problem related to clustering of gamma-ray bursts (from "BATSE" catalogue) through kernel principal component analysis in which our proposed kernel outperforms results of other competent kernels in terms of clustering accuracy and we obtain three physically interpretable groups of gamma-ray bursts. The effectivity of the suggested kernel in combination with kernel principal component analysis in revealing natural clusters in noisy and nonlinear data while reducing the dimension of the data is also explored in two simulated data sets.


There is a continuing need to develop a simple and reliable biomonitoring technique for pollutants in aquatic systems. Mytilid mussels have been used extensively around the world for monitoring a range of pollutants. However the analysis of soft tissues in such programmes has some drawbacks, one of which is the large amount of variation between individuals in levels of specific pollutant. In order to assess the suitability of lysosomal kidney granules for such a role, it must be established that they are involved in the accumulation and detoxification of pollutants, and the range of change within the granules must also be assessed.

The structure and composition of intracellular metal-containing granules extracted from the kidney of the marine mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis from a non-polluted site have been examined using a variety of techniques. Comparisons were made between granules extracted from these mussels and those loaded with zinc in the laboratory, and those exposed to excess levels of zinc in the field. In addition, intracellular and extracellular metal-containing granules have been extracted from the freshwater mussel, Velesunio angasi and examined using similar techniques.

Granules isolated from the kidney tissue of fifty M. galloprovincialis (using a centrifugation process) were pooled to produce a single sample. Inductively-coupled plasma spectroscopy (ICP) revealed that the concentration of zinc in the kidney granules increased with the level of zinc-loading from a mean value of 5 260 mcg.g-1 in freshly harvested animals to 12 487 mcg.g-1 in animals loaded with 2.5 mcg.g-1 zinc for 28 days. The other main elements present in the granules were phosphorus, sulfur, sodium, calcium, iron and copper. Granules from mussels exposed to excess zinc in the field had a greater concentration of zinc (13 570 mcg.g-1) than both field control animals (1 424 mcg.g-1) and the mussels loaded at the highest level of zinc in the laboratory. Silicon was also present in the granules extracted from the field-contaminated mussels.

Both light and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) of kidney tissue from M. galloprovincialis loaded with zinc in the laboratory showed signs of increasing degeneration as the level of zinc-loading increased. All cells examined contained membrane-bound granules. The kidney tissue of the field-contaminated mussels, despite containing high levels of zinc and many granules, showed no signs of degeneration.

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of the granules revealed that they were spherical in shape, while energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) of the isolated granules confirmed the results of the ICP analysis with regard to elemental composition. TEM also revealed that the granules themselves underwent structural changes as the level of zinc-loading increased. Thus, granules extracted from freshly harvested animals were electron-dense and regular in shape while zinc-loading produced granules with a concentric ring formation. In kidney tissue from mussels that were maintained in clean seawater for 14 days following 28 days of zinc-loading, the majority of the granules visible had the concentric ring formation. Granules with concentric rings were not found in kidney cells of the field-contaminated mussels. The number of multivesicular bodies in individual kidney cells also increased during zinc-loading and a positive relationship exists between the number of these bodies and the mean diameter of the granules in the cells.

The lack of degeneration in the cells of the kidney tissue in the field-contaminated mussels is almost certainly due to the fact that these animals were subjected to a chronic excess of zinc, rather than an acute dose as occurred in the laboratory-loaded animals. Presumably, this longer time period allows the animal to adapt and establish defence mechanisms, including the production of granules.

The acute exposure to zinc, combined with the stress of being kept in the laboratory, may also have resulted in the appearance of granules with concentric rings in the laboratory zinc-loaded mussels.

In the freshwater mussel Velesunio angasi, extracellular granules were found mainly on the labial palps, mantle edge, gills and the junction between the foot and the visceral mass. ICP of pooled granules and EDS analysis of isolated granules showed that calcium, phosphorus, iron, manganese and barium were the major elements present. Two types of intracellular granules were isolated from the kidney cells of V. angasi, the first time this has been recorded. The first was similar in composition to the extracellular granules and it was hypothesised that these two groups of granules are actually insoluble deposits of metal phosphates, despite being membrane-bound in the kidney cells. The second type of intracellular granule was mainly composed of phosphorus and sulphur and was possibly lysosomal.

It appears that difficulties with extraction of the granules and the analysis of the samples preclude the use of the metal-containing kidney granules of either M. galloprovincialis or V. angasi as biomarkers. The use of other biomarkers for pollutant contamination in mussels is discussed.


Business travellers are increasingly using mobile devices, resulting in a need to understand who the users of this technology are and how they use it. Even though some have attempted to segment mobile travel service user groups, to date, there has been no attempt to segment business travellers in terms of their mobile travel application usage. Convenience sampling is used, and a self-administered online questionnaire completed by 232 business travellers. By means of cluster analysis four clusters are identified which share similar characteristics. The most important elements in the formation of the clusters are the type of organisation and device ownership. This research answers the call by previous researchers that further research on mobile devices should emphasise more than just the functionalities of the device.


Background and Aim
Many compounds derived from medicinal plants, such as antioxidants and polyphenols have significant roles in prevention and treatment of various cancers. Activation of apoptosis related pathways is one of the mechanisms for inhibition of cancer progression. In this study, we investigated the effect of molecular dynamics simulation of hesperetin on the pre-apoptotic factors of Bad, Bak, and Bim.
Material and Methods
In this study we collected data about 3 dimensional structure and Protein Data Bank (PDB) files of three apoptotic factors of Bad, Bak, and Bim from Protein Data Bank (http://www.rscb.org/pdb). Using VMD v1.9.2, AutoDock v.4.2, and Gromacs v.4.5.4 softwares, we started processes such as optimization, simulation, molecular docking and molecular dynamics calculations.
Results
Binding of Bad molecule to hesperetin led to release of the highest amount of energy and reduced changes in the radius of gyration of Bad protein. But after binding of Bim and Bak proteins to hesperetin, changes in the radius of gyration, increased. The most frequent change in the secondary protein structure was related to increased amount of Bent structure and decreased amount of β-sheet structure in Bim molecule.
Conclusion
Hesperetin can affect the activities of pre-apoptotic factors of Bad, Bak, and Bim by influencing their molecular dynamics. It seems that hesperetin has the highest effect on the activation of Bad molecule. Also, it can activate Bim protein and induce apoptosis via inducing alternations in the secondary structure of the protein.
Keywords: Molecular dynamic , Apoptosis , Hesperetin


Intense concern and worry over funding is alleviated after Congress passed legislation to fix the health center funding cliff with a two-year extension and $600 million in additional dollars to further support health center operations and address unmet needs. The news came as a huge comfort to Community Health of South Florida Inc. (CHI) and other community health centers nationwide who had been waiting on reauthorization of funding since October 2017. The good news didn't stop there. Congress also reauthorized funding for two years for Teaching Health Center GME programs such as the Brodes H. Hartley Teaching Health Center at Community Health of South Florida, Inc. CHI's teaching health center develops and trains medical residents to address a looming shortage of primary care physicians. The extension of funding for that program helps realign finances by closely linking them to the true cost of training physicians in primary care specialties "This is a win, win situation for everyone," said Brodes H. Hartley Jr., President and CEO of CHI. "It's a win for the 83,000 patients that we care for every year. We manage diseases for them, heal their ailments and care for them physically and mentally. This is also a win for our employees who devote themselves to caring for these people and a win for our residents learning to care for a diverse population." The victory comes just days after an all-out advocacy effort. CHI employees adorned themselves in red to show a passion and urgency for healthcare funding. The National "Red Alert Day," on February 6th prompted CHI staff and people across the country to post photos on social media and make phone calls and emails to U.S. Congressional and Senate leaders urging them to address the funding cliff facing community health centers nationwide. The health of 27 million Americans was in jeopardy. Those people rely on Community Health Centers to provide high quality, affordable healthcare. Licensed Mental Health Technician and Coordinator for Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement, Celia Mion, wore red pants on Red Alert Day in honor of CHI's mission. "I really believe in bringing healthcare to all people," said Mion. "We need it not only for people who can't afford it, but also the people who rely on these programs to improve their lives regardless of economics." Latricia Segura-Branch PharmD, a pharmacist at CHI wore a large red flower in her hair along with fellow pharmacy staff. She knows the dire need and said without support for life-saving medications and medication management services that community health centers provide, patients are in danger. "If there were no pharmacies in community health centers especially 340B pharmacies, patients would go without the proper medications that they need," said Segura-Branch. According to the National Association for Community Health Centers (NACHC) the extension of funds secures healthcare for27 million patients by ensuring thousands of sites will be able to keep their doors open. For those tasked with the job of molding the next generation of doctors, reauthorization of funding for teaching health centers is a big burden relieved from their hearts and minds. "Traditionally underserved rural and urban areas face the greatest challenges recruiting physicians," said Dr. Saint Anthony Amofah, Chief Academic Officer and Chief Medical Officer. "We are so grateful that the federal government is helping with this investment to grow our own physicians. This goes a long way in addressing key healthcare gaps among some of the most vulnerable people in our communities." Funding for Community Health Centers Reauthorized


This paper presents an approach for understanding the soft-tissue behavior in surface contact with a probe scanning the tissue. The application domain is confocal microlaparoscopy, mostly used for imaging the outer surface of the organs in the abdominal cavity. The probe is swept over the tissue to collect sequential images to obtain a large field of view with mosaicking. The problem we address is that the tissue also moves with the probe due to its softness; therefore, the resulting mosaic is not in the same shape and dimension as traversed by the probe. Our approach is inspired by the finger slip studies and adapts the idea of load-slip phenomenon that explains the movement of the soft part of the finger when dragged on a hard surface. We propose the concept of loading-distance and perform measurements on beef liver and chicken breast tissues. We propose a protocol to determine the loading-distance prior to an automated scan and introduce an approach to compensate the tissue movement in raster scans. Our implementation and experiments show that we can have an image mosaic of the tissue surface in a desired rectangular shape with this approach.


Getting Started Introducing Reproducible Research What Is Reproducible Research? Why Should Research Be Reproducible? Who Should Read This Book? The Tools of Reproducible Research Why Use R, knitr, and RStudio for Reproducible Research? Book Overview Getting Started with Reproducible Research The Big Picture: A Workflow for Reproducible Research Practical Tips for Reproducible Research Getting Started with R, RStudio, and knitr Using R: The Basics Using RStudio Using knitr: The Basics Getting Started with File Management File Paths and Naming Conventions Organizing Your Research Project Setting Directories as RStudio Projects R File Manipulation Commands Unix-like Shell Commands for File Management File Navigation in RStudio Data Gathering and Storage Storing, Collaborating, Accessing Files, and Versioning Saving Data in Reproducible Formats Storing Your Files in the Cloud: Dropbox Storing Your Files in the Cloud: GitHub RStudio and GitHub Gathering Data with R Organize Your Data Gathering: Makefiles Importing Locally Stored Data Sets Importing Data Sets from the Internet Advanced Automatic Data Gathering: Web Scraping Preparing Data for Analysis Cleaning Data for Merging Merging Data Sets Analysis and Results Statistical Modeling and knitr Incorporating Analyses into the Markup Dynamically Including Modular Analysis Files Reproducibly Random: set.seed Computationally Intensive Analyses Showing Results with Tables Basic knitr Syntax for Tables Table Basics Creating Tables from R Objects Showing Results with Figures Including Non-knitted Graphics Basic knitr Figure Options Knitting R's Default Graphics Including ggplot2 Graphics JavaScript graphs with googleVis Presentation Documents Presenting with LaTeX The Basics Bibliographies with BibTeX Presentations with LaTeX Beamer Large LaTeX Documents: Theses, Books, and Batch Reports Planning Large Documents Large Documents with Traditional LaTeX knitr and Large Documents Child Documents in a Different Markup Language Creating Batch Reports Presenting on the Web with Markdown The Basics Markdown with Pandoc and Custom CSS Slideshows with Markdown, knitr, and HTML Publishing Markdown Documents Conclusion Citing Reproducible Research Licensing Your Reproducible Research Sharing Your Code in Packages Project Development: Public or Private? Is it Possible to Completely Future Proof Your Research? Bibliography Index


In general, vernacular environments might be described as the settings which occurred as the products of the socio-cultural, economic and especially local characteristics of the particular region by and for the inhabitants of that region. When these environments are considered, it is obvious that the main considerations of the builders and/or the owners of them were to achieve functionally proper and environmentally appropriate solutions for themselves. In this respect, the way of life, climate, topography, available material and existing building technology might be described as the formative concerns of vernacular environments in general and in Cyprus as well. On the other hand, when housing developments today on the Island of Cyprus and their problems are investigated, it might be easily perceived that most of them fail to fit to the existing environmental conditions because of the lack of consideration given to the ecosystem. As time changes, the needs, requirements and especially the way of life change. Therefore the need to transform and adapt houses, villages, cities etc to the changing and developing conditions is inevitable. However, while performing these changes it is important to investigate the vernacular houses and their settings, which were developed harmoniously with the ecosystem of a particular region and act as sustainability indicators. In brief, this study aims to investigate the particular vernacular houses and settings of Cyprus, to find out the main characteristics of them in the manner of responding to the environmental and cultural values. We intend to list these characteristics in order to provide a vision for future housing developments to achieve environmentally sustainable developments in Cyprus.


In the data, a sizable fraction of price changes are temporary price reductions referred to as sales. Existing models include no role for sales. Hence, when confronted with data in which a large fraction of price changes are sales related, the models must either exclude sales from the data or leave them in and implicitly treat sales like any other price change. When sales are included, prices change frequently and standard sticky price models with this high frequency of price changes predict small effects from money shocks. If sales are excluded, prices change much less frequently and a standard sticky price model with this low frequency of price changes predict much larger effects of money shocks. This paper adds a motive for sales in a parsimonious extension of existing sticky price models. We show that the model can account for most of the patterns of sales in the data. Using our model as the data generating process, we evaluate the existing approaches and find that neither well approximates the real effects of money in our economy in which sales are explicitly modeled.


This paper examines the impact of a change in the advertising tax on prices, output, and welfare. Results show that a supply shift alone (i.e., advertising is ineffective and hence there is no demand shift) will result in higher retail prices, lower farm output, higher retail-farm price ratios, and losses in benefits to society. If the supply shift is accompanied by a demand shift due to effective advertising, the retail price will be higher. Farm output and the retail-farm price ratio, however, will be smaller compared to an isolated supply shift. Given the advertising elasticities found so far in empirical studies (less than 0.10), an increase in producer assessments or check-offs for the purpose of increasing demand through advertising will lead to welfare loss. Research and new product development may be .better alternatives to increasing demand from a social perspective.


Aim

To describe the daily tasks undertaken by dietitians working within the inpatient and outpatient sectors within the NSW public hospital system.

Methods

This study used an ethnographic methodology that employed a direct, non-participatory, discontinuous, observational technique to observe hospital dietitians, in both outpatient and inpatient settings, during a typical work shift. Trained volunteer observers collected the data over a three-year period (2008, 2009 and 2010). The data were combined and then sorted into five categories including: direct patient care, indirect patient care, communication, administration and education of self or others.

Results

A total of 609 hours and 21 minutes were observed across a three-year time period 2008–2010. On average, the dietitians in both inpatient and outpatient settings spent 18.3–32.2% of their time in direct patient care activities. The majority of time was spent in indirect patient care activities such as: information collection, documentation and discussion with other health-care professionals. A comparison between the two work settings showed that those dietitians working in the inpatient setting spent less time in direct patient care (18.3% vs 33.1%, P < 0.05), and more time in indirect care activities (41.7% vs 23.3%, P < 0.05) and in communication about patient care (22.7% vs 14.4%, P < 0.05).

Conclusions

The findings show that dietitians spend most of their time doing activities that support patient care, but these activities occur away from the patient.


In the World Wide Web, a very large number of resources are made available through digital libraries. The existence of many individual digital libraries, maintained by different organizations, brings challenges to the discoverability and usage of these resources by potential users. A widely-used approach is metadata aggregation, where a central organization takes the role of facilitating the discoverability and use of the resources, by collecting their associated metadata. The central organization has the possibility to further promote the usage of the resources by means that cannot be efficiently undertaken by each digital library in isolation. This paper focuses in the domain of cultural heritage, where OAI-PMH has been the embraced solution, since discovery of resources was only feasible if based on metadata instead of fulltext. However, the technological landscape has changed. Nowadays, with the technological improvements accomplished by network communications, computational capacity, and Internet search engines, the motivation for adopting OAI-PMH is not as clear as it used to be. In this paper, we present the results of our initial analysis of available potential technologies, in particular, the following: IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework); Webmention; Linked Data Notifications; Sitemaps; ResourceSync; Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS); and the Linked Data Platform.


Glaucoma still represents the most frequent cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. The technological advances lead to innovative surgeries, which are rapidly introduced in clinical practice. New devices to lower intraocular pressure without opening the eye wall, bypassing the trabecular meshwork, or shunting the aqueous humor to the suprachoroidal space have been approved undergoing clinical assessment within clinical trials. Currently, other devices under evaluation are showing promising results. Although these methods will increase the options available for glaucoma surgeons, it is unclear if they could replace the present standard surgeries, such as trabeculectomy, deep sclerectomy, and glaucoma drainage devices. Moreover, the standard procedures are continuously modified in different ways to become safer and more effective.

In this issue L. Choritz et al. investigate whether increased concentrations of endothelin-1 in the aqueous humor samples of glaucoma patients influenced wound healing and bleb fibrosis after standard trabeculectomy with mitomycin C. Endothelin-1 is a potent vasoconstrictor produced in the eye by the ciliary epithelium and to be released into the aqueous humor. It has been implicated in the pathophysiology of glaucoma. Endothelin-1 is believed to be involved in the regulation of intraocular pressure (IOP) via effects on the contractility of ciliary muscle and trabecular meshwork.

W. Niu et al. evaluated the efficacy and safety of three different biodegradable terpolymers after trabeculectomy in rabbit eyes compared with Ologen™. The use of these implants aims to reduce the use of mitomycin C as an antiscarring agent. The first implant used was a porous collagen-glycosaminoglycan matrix, which prevents the adhesion of the conjunctiva and sclera and the collapse of the subconjunctival space after trabeculectomy, leading to collagen deposition and microcyst formation after penetrating antiglaucomatous surgery.

Despite the increasing use of antifibrotic agents to modulate the wound healing response, bleb failure remains a common complication of glaucoma filtration surgery. In the paper by W. Liu et al. the needle revision and subconjunctival mitomycin C injection were compared with needling and subconjunctival 5-Fluorouracil injection for early dysfunctional filtration blebs after trabeculectomies.

Neovascular glaucoma is one of the most recalcitrant glaucoma types to treatment and has one of the worst outcomes compared to other types of glaucoma. Neovascular glaucoma often needs surgical treatment because medical treatment fails to adequately control intraocular pressure. In a retrospective study, H. Yan investigated the long term surgical outcomes, treating neovascular glaucoma complicated by vitreous haemorrhage with 23-gauge vitrectomy combined with phacoemulsification, panretinal laser photocoagulation, and trabeculectomy without using anti-VEGF agents.

C. Cagini et al. explored the role of canaloplasty in the surgical management of glaucoma with an extensive review. Canaloplasty is a nonpenetrating blebless surgical technique for open-angle glaucoma, similar to viscocanalostomy, in which a flexible microcatheter is inserted within Schlemm's canal for the entire 360 degrees. The results of this ab externo technique are really encouraging. S. A. Gandolfi et al. compared canaloplasty with an ab interno minimally invasive glaucoma surgery, the Hydrus™ implant. Both techniques are innovative and aim to restore the natural pathway, dilating a large size of Schlemm's canal. The results of this retrospective, comparative case series were collected after 2-year follow-up.

A. F. Resende et al. presented a review on the iStent. This trabecular bypass stent is another minimally invasive glaucoma surgery device that has quickly gained popularity in the last years. Randomized controlled trials are still needed to assess the role of these devices in glaucoma surgery.

Finally, S. Jacob et al. presented a new surgical technique, the stab incision glaucoma surgery. Even though it looks similar to standard trabeculectomy the main advantages are the sliding of the superior conjunctiva without dissecting, the creation of a superficial corneoscleral tunnel in a single step, the punch of the internal lip of the tunnel, and finally the suture of the conjunctival incision alone.

In summary, this issue includes different approaches presented by diverse authors covering several topics related to improving of standard filtering surgery and wound healing and to new surgical techniques. This publication will provide valuable information that should be helpful in clinical practice for the whole ophthalmology community, mainly for glaucoma surgeons.

Michele Figus

Shlomo Melamed

Antonio Ferreras

Giorgio Marchini

Vital P. Costa


Knowledge Management has become the most strategic resource in the new business environment. This research is based on the analysis of the strategic knowledge held within a multinational group; a leader in the design and production of a great variety of components for the automotive industry. It focuses on achieving feasibility and real applications by identifying knowledge gaps that must be overcome to perform certain activities, so as to take the right decision on its acquisition in terms of what to acquire, how to acquire it, and the associated time and costs. We use a recently developed artificial neural architecture called Cooperative Maximum-Likelihood Hebbian Learning, a tool to develop part of an Integral Global Model of Business Management, which has the potential to bring about a global improvement in the firm by adding value, flexibility and competitiveness. From this perspective, the model used in the study generalizes the hypothesis of organizational survival and competitiveness, so that the organization is able to identify, strengthen, and use key knowledge to reach pole position. Our conclusions suggest that it is possible to specify the knowledge that is held but is underused in the departments, taking into account their current levels of knowledge, their relevance and the urgency to acquire new knowledge. Moreover, an analysis of the required evolution rate of the present knowledge may be included which, among other aspects helps detect new knowledge, eliminate obsolete knowledge and validate new needs.


Within the next 50 years, children of color will comprise nearly 60% of all school-aged children in the United States. Currently, in large urban cities such as New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles, the percentage of White school children is less than 20% of the total enrollment (Orfield & Yun, 1999). In recent years, the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) adopted and revised a position statement encouraging school counselors to ensure that culturally diverse students have "access to appropriate services and opportunities promoting [their] maximum development" (ASCA, 1999). However, little is known about school counselors' attitudes toward culturally diverse students and the resultant impact of such attitudes on their ability to address the needs of these students. Multicultural counseling competence refers to counselors' attitudes/beliefs, knowledge, and skills in counseling people from diverse cultural groups (Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992). One aspect of being multiculturally competent is having an awareness and acceptance of both similarities and differences among others (Sue et al., 1992). Vontress (1988, 1996) noted that being aware of and accepting of others' similarities and differences is a vital goal for counselors who work with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. Effective multicultural counseling is rooted in the premise that although people share common or universal experiences (e.g., basic biological functions or life processes), they also have important differences based on cultural group memberships such as race or sex (Fuertes, Miville, Mohr, Sedlacek, & Gretchen, 2000; Miville et al., 1999; Vontress, 1996). An awareness and acceptance of both similarities and differences among people is identified as universal-diverse orientation (UDO; Miville et al., 1999). UDO consists of three components: "(a) relativistic appreciation of oneself and others, (b) seeking a diversity of contact with others, and (c) a sense of connection with the larger society or humanity as a whole" (Fuertes et al., 2000, p. 158). According to Miville et al. (1999), individuals' UDO may allow them to bond with others who are similar, while also understanding and appreciating people who are different. In particular, counselors' ability to effectively communicate and interact with clients in therapeutic relationships involves the counselors' competence in focusing on both similarities and differences (Miville et al., 1999). Thus, school counselors' awareness of how culturally diverse students may be alike and different from them may be vital to building successful alliances with these students (Fuertes et al., 2000). School counselors' cultural group memberships may have significant and varying effects on their social attitudes and beliefs, both within and across cultural groups (e.g., Coleman, 1995; Helms, 1990; Miville et al., 1999). Hence, it is important that such attitudes and beliefs be examined in relation to aspects of their ability to provide culturally competent services to students. Moreover, because numerous cultural (e.g., racial, ethnic, sex, social class, sexual orientation, religious affiliation) differences may exist between school counselors and their students, it is vital that these counselors are cognizant of such differences so as to sufficiently consider the impact of students' cultural backgrounds in their lives. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between school counselors' UDO and their self-reported multicultural counseling knowledge and awareness. Because previous multicultural education has been found to be significantly positively associated with school counselors' self-perceived multicultural counseling competence in several investigations (e.g., Constantine, 2001; Constantine & Yeh, 2001), the variance contributed by this construct was accounted for prior to examining the contribution of UDO to these dimensions of school counselors' self-reported multicultural counseling competence. …


We study the time development of the population of X-type critical points in a two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic model during the early stages of freely decaying turbulence. At sufficiently high magnetic Reynolds number Rem, we find that the number of neutral points increases as Rem3/2, while the rates of reconnection at the most active sites decrease. The distribution of rates remains approximately exponential. We focus in particular on delicate issues of accuracy, which arise in these numerical experiments, in that the proliferation of X-points is also a feature of under-resolved simulations. The "splitting" of neutral points at high Reynolds number appears to be a fundamental feature of the cascade that has important implications for understanding the relationship between reconnection and turbulence, an issue of considerable importance for the Magnetospheric Multiscale and Solar Probe missions as well as observation of reconnection in the solar wind.


The Clinical Studies of the National Institute of Mental Health--Clinical Research Branch Collaborative Program on the Psychobiology of Depression offer an opportunity to clarify the relationship between personality and depression. Thirty-one female patients with primary nonbipolar major depressive disorder were assessed diagnostically using the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia and completed a battery of standard self-report personality inventories when they were completely symptom free. Their personality scale scores were compared with those of female relatives who had recovered from the same type of disorder, those of female relatives with no history of psychiatric illness, and published scale norms. Compared with the normal population, both groups of recovered depressives were introverted, submissive, and passive, with increased interpersonal dependency but normal emotional strength. Comparison to never-ill relatives yielded similar results except that the never-ill relatives had scores reflecting extraordinary emotional strength.


To analyze the mechanism of the antitumor effect of an adenoviral vector expressing the p53 tumor suppressor (Ad-p53) in vivo, we quantitatively assessed p53-targeted gene expression and visualized transcriptional activity of p53 in tumors in nude mice treated with Ad-p53. Human lung cancer (H1299) xenografts established in nude mice were treated by intratumoral administration of Ad-p53. The levels of expression of exogenous p53 and p53-targeted genes p21, MDM2, Noxa, and p53AIP1 were quantified by real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) and induction of apoptosiswas observed histochemically on days1–3, 7, and 14 after treatment. Expression of mRNA of exogenous p53 and p53-targeted genes (except p53AIP1) was at its maximum 1 day after Ad-p53 treatment and then decreased rapidly; apoptosis was evident in situ 2–3 days after treatment. We developed a noninvasive and simple method for monitoring the transcriptional activity of exogenous p53 following intratumoral administration of Ad-p53 in nude mice. We established H1299 cells that express the green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter gene under the control of p53-responsive p21 promoter (i.e., the p53R-GFP reporter system). Xenografts of these cells in nude mice were treated by intratumoral administration of Ad-p53, and the transcriptional activity of exogenous p53 could be visualized as intratumoral GFP expression in real time by 3-CCD camera. Expression of GFP was maximal 3 days after treatment and decreased remarkably by 7 days after treatment. We demonstrated that Ad-p53 treatment rapidly induced p53-targeted genes and apoptosis in tumors and succeeded in visualizing p53 transcriptional activity in vivo. We also found that Ad-p53 infection induced phosphorylation of p53 at Ser in p53-sensitive H1299 cells in vitro but not in p53-resistant H226Br cells, suggesting that phosphorylation of Ser is involved in p53dependent apoptosis. Our data indicate that quantitative analysis of p53-targeted gene expression by real-time quantitative RT-PCR and visualization of p53 transcriptional activity in fresh xenografts by using the p53R-GFP reporter systemmaybe useful in assessing themechanisms of the antitumor effects of Ad-p53 and novel therapeutic approaches. [Mol Cancer Ther. 2004;3(1):93–100]


The contractual approach proposes the introduction of clauses in sovereign debt contracts to address a number of inefficiencies in sovereign debt markets. Two of its central innovations are collective action clauses and seniority clauses. This paper analyses these two clauses when: (1) repayment is endogenous and depends on creditor lobbying effort; (2) litigation for full repayment does not increase the payment to be extracted from the creditor. There is a positive externality of effort that strongly interacts with asset distribution and contractual clauses. Individual litigation is not desirable from the creditors' point of view since it weakens the incentives to exert effort. Collective action clauses block litigation and maximise repayment, especially when creditors are heterogeneous in the amount of debt they hold. The adoption of seniority clauses modifies the incentives to exert effort and thus repayment. This effect can be positive or negative. If average portfolio sizes are similar but the marginal loan being repaid is unevenly distributed among creditors, repayment falls. Since effort decisions are influenced by asset distribution, the paper also identifies and analyses a novel role for secondary markets.


Background Technologies for making and manipulating DNA have enabled advances in biology ever since the discovery of the DNA double helix. But introducing site-specific modifications in the genomes of cells and organisms remained elusive. Early approaches relied on the principle of site-specific recognition of DNA sequences by oligonucleotides, small molecules, or self-splicing introns. More recently, the site-directed zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and TAL effector nucleases (TALENs) using the principles of DNA-protein recognition were developed. However, difficulties of protein design, synthesis, and validation remained a barrier to widespread adoption of these engineered nucleases for routine use. The Cas9 enzyme (blue) generates breaks in double-stranded DNA by using its two catalytic centers (blades) to cleave each strand of a DNA target site (gold) next to a PAM sequence (red) and matching the 20-nucleotide sequence (orange) of the single guide RNA (sgRNA). The sgRNA includes a dual-RNA sequence derived from CRISPR RNA (light green) and a separate transcript (tracrRNA, dark green) that binds and stabilizes the Cas9 protein. Cas9-sgRNA–mediated DNA cleavage produces a blunt double-stranded break that triggers repair enzymes to disrupt or replace DNA sequences at or near the cleavage site. Catalytically inactive forms of Cas9 can also be used for programmable regulation of transcription and visualization of genomic loci. Advances The field of biology is now experiencing a transformative phase with the advent of facile genome engineering in animals and plants using RNA-programmable CRISPR-Cas9. The CRISPR-Cas9 technology originates from type II CRISPR-Cas systems, which provide bacteria with adaptive immunity to viruses and plasmids. The CRISPR-associated protein Cas9 is an endonuclease that uses a guide sequence within an RNA duplex, tracrRNA:crRNA, to form base pairs with DNA target sequences, enabling Cas9 to introduce a site-specific double-strand break in the DNA. The dual tracrRNA:crRNA was engineered as a single guide RNA (sgRNA) that retains two critical features: a sequence at the 5′ side that determines the DNA target site by Watson-Crick base-pairing and a duplex RNA structure at the 3′ side that binds to Cas9. This finding created a simple two-component system in which changes in the guide sequence of the sgRNA program Cas9 to target any DNA sequence of interest. The simplicity of CRISPR-Cas9 programming, together with a unique DNA cleaving mechanism, the capacity for multiplexed target recognition, and the existence of many natural type II CRISPR-Cas system variants, has enabled remarkable developments using this cost-effective and easy-to-use technology to precisely and efficiently target, edit, modify, regulate, and mark genomic loci of a wide array of cells and organisms. Outlook CRISPR-Cas9 has triggered a revolution in which laboratories around the world are using the technology for innovative applications in biology. This Review illustrates the power of the technology to systematically analyze gene functions in mammalian cells, study genomic rearrangements and the progression of cancers or other diseases, and potentially correct genetic mutations responsible for inherited disorders. CRISPR-Cas9 is having a major impact on functional genomics conducted in experimental systems. Its application in genome-wide studies will enable large-scale screening for drug targets and other phenotypes and will facilitate the generation of engineered animal models that will benefit pharmacological studies and the understanding of human diseases. CRISPR-Cas9 applications in plants and fungi also promise to change the pace and course of agricultural research. Future research directions to improve the technology will include engineering or identifying smaller Cas9 variants with distinct specificity that may be more amenable to delivery in human cells. Understanding the homology-directed repair mechanisms that follow Cas9-mediated DNA cleavage will enhance insertion of new or corrected sequences into genomes. The development of specific methods for efficient and safe delivery of Cas9 and its guide RNAs to cells and tissues will also be critical for applications of the technology in human gene therapy. The advent of facile genome engineering using the bacterial RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas9 system in animals and plants is transforming biology. We review the history of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeat) biology from its initial discovery through the elucidation of the CRISPR-Cas9 enzyme mechanism, which has set the stage for remarkable developments using this technology to modify, regulate, or mark genomic loci in a wide variety of cells and organisms from all three domains of life. These results highlight a new era in which genomic manipulation is no longer a bottleneck to experiments, paving the way toward fundamental discoveries in biology, with applications in all branches of biotechnology, as well as strategies for human therapeutics. CRISPR-cas: A revolution in genome engineering The ability to engineer genomic DNA in cells and organisms easily and precisely will have major implications for basic biology research, medicine, and biotechnology. Doudna and Charpentier review the history of genome editing technologies, including oligonucleotide coupled to genome cleaving agents that rely on endogenous repair and recombination systems to complete the targeted changes, self-splicing introns, and zinc-finger nucleases and TAL effector nucleases. They then describe how clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPRs), and their associated (Cas) nucleases, were discovered to constitute an adaptive immune system in bacteria. They document development of the CRISPR-Cas system into a facile genome engineering tool that is revolutionizing all areas of molecular biology. Science, this issue 10.1126/science.1258096


ABSTRACT Businesses that experience problems with physical products they have purchased find that the legal system provides adequate redress for their grievances. Large verdicts or out of court settlements are not unusual for product liability in business-to-business transactions. Software vendors routinely immunize themselves from such product liability by including exculpatory language in the agreements to which users must agree as they install the software. This paper examines the rights of companies to collect damages from software vendors when their products introduce errors or fail to perform transaction processing tasks correctly. The paper also outlines future trends in this area. ERRORS IN BUSINESS SOFTWARE Software vendors regularly ship software that has defects that are known to the vendor and that the vendor does not disclose to the purchaser (Kaner and Pels, 1998). Some of these defects are quite serious. For example, in the case of Mortenson v. Timberline (2000), Mortenson used Timberline's Precision Bid Analysis Software to prepare a bid for construction of a medical center. The software contained errors that caused Mortenson to bid the job approximately $2 million lower than it should have bid. Bills (2002) reports a software glitch at the Bank of America that processed automated clearing house payments incorrectly, resulting in unauthorized charges to thousands of customer accounts. Although individual examples of software errors are interesting to read, the true danger of the current situation is made clear by studies of the extent to which accounting software is plagued by errors and by estimates of the dollar impact of these errors. Financial Executive's News (2002) presented a feature report on a series of common errors in mid-level accounting software packages. Goodwin (2002) reports the results of a study of 45 financial software applications. The study found that more than half of the applications contained errors that could have been fixed easily if they had been detected during the design of the software. Estimates of the annual cost to U.S. businesses of software errors is approximately $60 billion (Jusko, 2002; Trembly, 2002). The way that software errors enter the software production process and the final software product is also enlightening. If software errors were the inevitable outcome of a complex process, which some researchers have argued in the past (Foster, 2003 ; Nakashima and Oyama, 1999; Roush, 2003), then there might not be much that legal reform could do about the problem. Although it is true that some software error situations are probably beyond the control of software vendors (for example, the rapid development cycles of annual revisions of tax preparation software might make them the exception to the rule (Johnston, 2001)), most business software developers do not work on tight deadlines and rapidly changing tax rules. Kaner and Pels (1998) report that some software publishers track the number of errors that are discovered in their software after it has been released, calling these bugs their "surprises." They only include errors in this category that had not been detected in the software development process by programmers, quality assurance technicians, or by their own customer support staff. A common experience among these companies is to have fewer than five "surprise" bugs surface after the software is released. Many of them report only one or two such "surprise" errors. This means that the large number of bugs identified in the industry press is not a true reflection of some innate condition in software development. In fact, it suggests that most software vendors know about the vast majority of the bugs that exist in the software they release. They just are not telling their customers about the errors. LIMITS OF TOLERANCE An increasing number of writers are reporting that business managers and IT staff members are coming to believe that tolerating software errors is no longer necessary (Foster, 2003; Hunter and Boscher, 2003). …


This paper discusses the findings from a one-year ethnographic study of young people attending Entry to Employment (E2E) programmes in two local authorities in the north of England. The paper locates E2E within the broader context of provision for low-achieving young people and of UK government policy on reducing the proportion of young people who are not in education, employment or training. Although discourses associated with these categories of young people often present them in negative terms, the paper shows that this type of conceptualisation is inadequate to understand the lives of young people on the margins of education and employment. The paper also finds that the success of E2E in improving employability is mixed. The programme helps young people to improve their confidence, basic skills and personal effectiveness, as well as provides opportunities to acquire qualifications. However, employability is also linked to broader social and economic factors. Although E2E can help young people gain employment, particularly in relatively low-skill areas of work, in adverse economic conditions, the programme is unlikely to offer participants a labour market advantage.


Rising complexity, numbers and severity of natural and manmade disasters enhance the importance of reducing vulnerability, or on contrary – increasing resilience, of different kind of systems, including those of social, engineering (infrastructure), and environmental (ecological) nature. The goal of this research is to explore urban resilience as an integral system of social, environmental, and engineering resilience. This report analyses the concepts of each kind of resilience and identifies key factors influencing social, ecological, and infrastructure resilience discussing how these factors relate within urban systems. The achievement of resilience of urban and regional systems happens through the interaction of the different elements (social, psychological, physical, structural, and environmental, etc.); therefore, resilient city could be determined by synergy of resilient society, resilient infrastructure and resilient environment of the given area. Based on literature analysis, the current research provides some insights on conceptual framework for assessment of complex urban systems in terms of resilience. To be able to evaluate resilience and define effective measures for prevention and risk mitigation, and thereby strengthen resilience, we propose to develop an e-platform, joining risk parameters' Monitoring Systems, which feed with data Resiliency Index calculation domain. Both these elements result in Multirisk Platform, which could serve for awareness and shared decision making for resilient people in resilient city.


A robust methodology for estimating the value of service reliability improvements is presented. Although econometric models for estimating value of service (interruption costs) have been established and widely accepted, analysts often resort to applying relatively crude interruption cost estimation techniques in assessing the economic impacts of transmission and distribution investments. This paper first shows how the use of these techniques can substantially impact the estimated value of service improvements. A simple yet robust methodology that does not rely heavily on simplifying assumptions is presented. When a smart grid investment is proposed, reliability improvement is one of the most frequently cited benefits. Using the best methodology for estimating the value of this benefit is imperative. By providing directions on how to implement this methodology, this paper sends a practical, usable message to the industry.


This paper seeks to better understand the historical origins of current differences in norms and beliefs about the appropriate role of women in society. We test the hypothesis that traditional agricultural practices influenced the historical gender division of labor and the evolution and persistence of gender norms. We find that, consistent with existing hypotheses, the descendants of societies that traditionally practiced plough agriculture, today have lower rates of female participation in the workplace, in politics, and in entrepreneurial activities, as well as a greater prevalence of attitudes favoring gender inequality. We identify the causal impact of traditional plough use by exploiting variation in the historical geo-climatic suitability of the environment for growing crops that differentially benefited from the adoption of the plough. Our IV estimates, based on this variation, support the findings from OLS. To isolate the importance of cultural transmission as a mechanism, we examine female labor force participation of second-generation immigrants living within the US.


The study aims at estimating comprehensive effects of non-farm employments (NFEs) on poverty based on an intensive field survey conducted in 2008 on about 175 small landholding households in developed four villages of Comilla Sadar Upazila. We analyze participating factors of small household workers in NFEs and their effects on household production (farming and non-farm activities) and consumption (both food and non-food). For estimating consumption effects (poverty), we focus on food adequacy, income poverty and education poverty (as a part of human poverty). At each level of estimation, we depend on appropriate econometric regressions. Results find the significant positive role of overall NFEs on household NFAs rather faming. Remittance incomes do not contribute in household production either farming or non-farm activities and food adequacy; and thus, these must be spent on non-food consumption. Education-poverty levels are worse than income poverty levels among small households. The increasing NFI is reducing some income poverty, but it is yet to realize in achieving household education; however, access to formal sector employments by the small household workers is significantly reducing education poverty. Therefore, qualitative diversification of the poor household workers and productive use of household remittance incomes deserve special attention.


Recent researches have demonstrated that the insula is the crucial hub of the human brain networks and most vulnerable region of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, little is known about the changes of functional connectivity of insular subregions in the AD patients. In this study, we collected resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data including 32 AD patients and 38 healthy controls (HCs). By defining three subregions of insula, we mapped whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and identified several distinct RSFC patterns of the insular subregions: For positive connectivity, three cognitive-related RSFC patterns were identified within insula that suggest anterior-to-posterior functional subdivisions: (1) an dorsal anterior zone of the insula that exhibits RSFC with executive control network (ECN); (2) a ventral anterior zone of insula, exhibits functional connectivity with the salience network (SN); (3) a posterior zone along the insula exhibits functional connectivity with the sensorimotor network (SMN). In addition, we found significant negative connectivities between the each insular subregion and several special default mode network (DMN) regions. Compared with controls, the AD patients demonstrated distinct disruption of positive RSFCs in the different network (ECN and SMN), suggesting the impairment of the functional integrity. There were no differences of the positive RSFCs in the SN between the two groups. On the other hand, several DMN regions showed increased negative RSFCs to the sub-region of insula in the AD patients, indicating compensatory plasticity. Furthermore, these abnormal insular subregions RSFCs are closely correlated with cognitive performances in the AD patients. Our findings suggested that different insular subregions presented distinct RSFC patterns with various functional networks, which are differently affected in the AD patients.


Rational: Heart failure is a common, costly, and frequently fatal disease. One in three cases of heart failure is due to dilated cardiomyopathy. NHE1 expression and activity are increased in this cardiac defect. We have previously shown that elevated activity of NHE1 in the cardiomyocytes induced cardiac hypertrophy in transgenic mice. However, it protected the myocardium following ischemia/reperfusion. This overexpression of active NHE1 elicited modulation of gene expression in cardiomyocytes including an up regulation of myocardial osteopontin (OPN) expression and a decrease of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR)γ. Since transgenic mice phenotype is very often influenced by the integration position of the transgene, we decide to create new transgenic mice to ascertain our previous data and to test the role of modulated genes. Method and results: We have created 5 new mouse lines overexpressing a constitutively active form of NHE1 specifically in cardiomyocytes (KNHE1+). We have evaluated by echocardiography the cardiac phenotypes and function of two of these new mouse lines. Then heart were harvested and submitted to histological, immunohistological and QRT-PCR analysis. Our data showed that in the both KNHE1 studied lines, a number of mice demonstrated heart remodeling identified by a significant decrease in diastolic interventricular septal (IVSd) and diastolic left ventricular posterior wall (LVPW) thickness and an increased diastolic left ventricular internal dimension (LVIDd) (see table 1). Moreover these hearts demonstrated impaired function with a decreased fraction shortening (<21 % vs 31% in wild type mouse) and ejection fraction. However, the proportion of 12 weeks old mice demonstrating this defect is different in both lines 13% (3/24) in line #4 and 58% (11/19) in line#1 vs 0% (0/37). ANP and BNP up regulation in line #1 confirmed heart suffering. Current experiment is designed to perform a longitudinal study examining evolution of these proportions with the age of the animals. Conclusions: We have developed an interesting comparative model of active NHE1 transgenic mouse lines with low and high rate dilated cardiomyopathy identifying evidence of early and late mechanisms. Further studies will be conducted to evaluate the phenotypes of the other mouse lines and the mechanism by which these changes are occuring.


Travel-time variability is a noteworthy factor in network performance. It measures the temporal uncertainty experienced by users in their movement between any two nodes in a network. The importance of the time variance depends on the penalties incurred by the users. In road networks, travelers consider the existence of this journey uncertainty in their selection of routes. This choice process takes into account travel-time variability and other characteristics of the travelers and the road network. In this complex behavioral response, a feasible decision is spawned based on not only the amalgamation of attributes, but also on the experience travelers incurred from previous situations. Over the past several years, the analysis of these behavioral responses (travelers' route choices) to fluctuations in travel-time variability has become a central topic in transportation research. These have generally been based on theoretical approaches built upon Wardropian equilibrium, or empirical formulations using Random Utility Theory. This report focuses on the travel behavior of commuters using Interstate 394 (I-394) and the swapping (bridge) choice behavior of commuters crossing the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The inferences of this report are based on collected Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking data and accompanying surveys. Furthermore, it also employs two distinct approaches (estimation of Value of Reliability [VOR] and econometric modeling with travelers' intrapersonal data) in order to analyze the behavioral responses of two distinct sets of subjects in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul (Twin Cities) area.


A few recent reports have indicated that metastatic growth of several human cancer cells could be promoted by radiotherapy. C6-L cells expressing the firefly luciferase (fLuc) gene were implanted subcutaneously into the right thigh of BALB/c nu/nu mice. C6-L xenograft mice were treated locally with 50-Gy γ-irradiation (γ-IR) in five 10-Gy fractions. Metastatic tumors were evaluated after γ-IR by imaging techniques. Total RNA from non-irradiated primary tumor (NRPT), γ-irradiated primary tumor (RPT), and three metastatic lung nodule was isolated and analyzed by microarray. Metastatic lung nodules were detected by BLI and PET/CT after 6–9 weeks of γ-IR in 6 (17.1%) of the 35 mice. The images clearly demonstrated high [18F]FLT and [18F]FDG uptake into metastatic lung nodules. Whole mRNA expression patterns were analyzed by microarray to elucidate the changes among NRPT, RPT and metastatic lung nodules after γ-IR. In particular, expression changes in the cancer stem cell markers were highly significant in RPT. We observed the metastatic tumors after γ-IR in a tumor-bearing animal model using molecular imaging methods and analyzed the gene expression profile to elucidate genetic changes after γ-IR.


Homeownership rates differ widely across European countries. We document that part of this variation is driven by differences in the fraction of adults co-residing with their parents. Comparing Germany and Italy, we show that in contrast to homeownership rates per household, homeownership rates per individual are very similar during the first part of the life cycle. To understand these patterns, we build an overlapping-generations model where individuals face uninsurable income risk and make consumption-saving and housing tenure decisions. We embed an explicit intergenerational link between children and parents to capture the three-way trade-off between owning, renting, and co-residing. Calibrating the model to Germany we explore the role of income profiles, housing policies, and the taste for independence and show that a combination of these factors goes a long way in explaining the differential life-cycle patterns of living arrangements between the two countries.


This is the first study that estimates the potential production for any underutilised
crop on a global basis. Our long-term aim is to demonstrate how this approach,
initially for bambara groundnut, can be used to assess the potential productivity
of many underutilised food crops at locations beyond their current distribution.
The most significant contributions from this study are the integration of a
weather simulator and a crop simulation model into a Geographical Information
System (GIS) to predict potential production of bambara groundnut over
the globe. The integration came through a coincidence of interests. FAO needed
to improve the knowledge and better use of underutilised crops that can contribute
to the food security of the world s poorest people. For the University of
Nottingham it was an opportunity to provide a geographic basis for their existing
crop model that had been refined by the third author so that predictions of
bambara groundnut potential could be extended to new sites.
Integration of the weather generator and model into a GIS was based on the
experiences gained by the second author in using fish growth models to estimate
potential for fish farming in Africa (FAO, 1998, available at www.fao.org/docrep/
W8522e/W8522E00.htm).


Background: Oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) is a relatively recent specialty in Sudan. Despite its great contribution in health services? difficulties are experienced due to the lack of knowledge of the healthcare professionals and medical students as well as the public concerning the scope of OMFS.

Objective General objectives:
a. To assess the awareness of the healthcare professional? medical students and dental students about the scope of OMFS.
b. To bridge the gap of knowledge between the medical profession and the specialty of OMF.

Specific objective:
1. To increase the knowledge of the medical professionals by establishing OMFS departments in general hospitals.
2. To address medical schools to include a module of OMFS in the undergraduate curriculum.
3. To include lectures and shifts to attend referred clinics and operating sessions at OMFS units for postgraduates.
4. To include OMFS as an elective rotation in the internship period.

Materials and methods: The study was conducted at Khartoum State. A single paper of a questionnaire in English was given to fifty medical specialist, fifty medical residents in different specialties (internal medicine? general surgery, neurosurgery?ENT surgery ?plastic surgery? pediatrics? orthopedics? emergency medicine and obstetrics and gynecology,? fifty medical general practitioners (MGP), fifty medical house officers, fifty medical students(final year)and fifty dental students (final year) giving the total number of three hundred responses. Twelve pathological conditions were chosen as follows: 1-simple and complicated tooth extraction 2-facial trauma3- cysts of the oral and Para oral and head and neck region 4-correction of facial deformity 5-clefT lip and palate 6-oral cancer and head and neck malignancies 7-facialreconstruction 8- facial infections 9-dental implants 10- maxillary sinus tumors 11-tempromandibular joint disorders 12- salivary glands disorders. They were asked to choose the most appropriate specialty to treat the problem. Referral patterns were either to a plastic surgeon? ENT? OMF surgeon? General Surgeon? or other specialty.

Results: The data showed that there was general consensus among healthcare professionals and medical students about the role of OMFS in teeth extraction? dental implants and tempro-mandibular joint disorders. But for the role of OMFS in the treatment of facial trauma? facial infections? cysts of the oral and para oral region? cleft lip and palate? oral cancer and malignancies of the head and neck? facial defects reconstruction? maxillary sinus tumors and salivary glands disorders only 30.8% (the mean) of medical specialists?47.1%(the mean) of medical residents?55.3%(the mean) of medical general practitioners ?36% (the mean)of medical house officers and 34.4% (the mean)of medical students selected OMFS to treat these problems. Dental students showed high awareness of the scope of OMFS as 83.2% (the mean) of them selected OMF surgeons to treat the selected disorders.

Conclusion: While the dental students realize the scope of the specialty to a great extent? medical professionals and medical students are not fully aware of services which is supposed to be offered by the specialty to the patients. In order to ensure the proper referral of all patients? the specialty needs to be known by medical professionals and medical students.


Infrared images are firstly analyzed using the multifractal theory so that the singularity of each pixel can be extracted from the images. The multifractal spectrum is then estimated, which can reflect overall characteristic of an infrared image. Thus the edge and texture of an infrared image can be accurately extracted based on the singularity of each pixel and the multifractal spectrum. Finally the edge pixels are classified and enhanced in accordance with the sensitivity of human visual system to the edge profile of an infrared image. The experimental results obtained by this approach are compared with those obtained by other methods. It is found that the proposed approach can be used to highlight the edge area of an infrared image to make an infrared image more suitable for observation by human eyes.


Abstract The Craniofacial Collaboration UK (CC-UK) is a joint initiative that seeks to address some of the limitations of previous developmental research with this patient group by providing systematically collected, robust data from clinically and chronologically homogenous representative samples of children. The current paper outlines the developmental outcomes at the age of 5 for children who had previously undergone primary surgery for single-suture sagittal synostosis (SS). It shows broad consistencies with the previous CC-UK work, indicating that the majority of children with SS will perform within the average range compared to peers across a number of developmental, behavioral and emotional domains. However, the group mean for children with SS indicates significantly greater difficulties with fine motor skills and hyperactivity, relative to normative data. Unexpectedly, children with SS had significantly better problem solving skills. While it is reassuring that the majority of children are broadly developing in line with their unaffected peers, these small but significant differences may be early indicators of some of the subtle difficulties documented in older children with craniosynostosis. Longitudinal follow up is therefore important to understand the developmental trajectory for children with SS and identification of potentially 'at risk' sub groups within this diagnostic cohort.


Evaluation can take many forms, but any process directly involves the teacher. Teacher's Self-evaluation is a process whereby teacher collects the data on his own teaching effectiveness and analysis the information to consider improvement to that teaching. This process can be undertaken in a number of ways. However, the unique benefit of teacher's selfevaluation is the close involvement of teacher in the consideration of the effectiveness of their own teaching. This article considers self-evaluation, teacher's self-evaluation and suggests a technique that has been found to be successful for teacher himself, students, institution and by this, Quality Enhancement in Education and quality assurance in education system.


It is an undeniable clichA© that the world at large and Africa in particular is facing serious environmental problems such as deforestation, water pollution, air pollution, wetlands destruction, poaching as well as global warming. These problems are mainly caused by economic pressure for industrialization, technological advancement, population growth, poverty and ignorance. Western moral speculations like deep ecology, land ethic, ecofeminism and as well as scientific approaches methodologies have been employed in other to solve this problem. However these theories have been proven not to be very much effective. African ecocommunitarianism as a hypothesis, implanted on Indigenous information framework can contribute to supply a local-developed answer for our current environmental issues. For Africa, environmental ethics is metaphysically embedded in what it means to be or to exist. Consequently, October 4, 2018environmental ethics should be understood as stretching from the individual being to involve the communities of other persons, non-human persons as well the environment


Predisposing, Enabling and Reinforcing Factors Associated with the Use of Reproductive Cancer Screening among Peruvian Women Tara Kathleen Hayes Constant Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Annette L. Fitzpatrick, PhD Epidemiology Breast cancer is a major cause of death for women in Peru, and may soon surpass cervical cancer as the number one cause of cancer mortality among Peruvian women. Yet little is known about the determinants of reproductive cancer screening utilization in low and middle income countries. Data from a survey of risk factors for non-communicable diseases (FRENT), undertaken by the Ministry of Health in four Peruvian cities, was used to investigate variables representing three conceptual categories of barriers to obtaining mammograms, clinical breast exams, and pap smears based on a PRECEDE/PROCEED conceptual framework and previous qualitative work. Regression models revealed stress (predisposing), physician access and insurance (enabling), and marital status and previous child abuse (reinforcing) to be factors associated with screening, with some differences found across outcome and by age. Results provide evidence to direct interventions for increasing reproductive cancer screening in Peru.


This thesis discusses the creation of a cell culture system for germ cells from the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. While a culture system exists for C. elegans embryonic cells, they have poor long term survival, and cannot be used for experiments after five days. As well, the media used for this embryonic culture leads to very rapid death of germ cells. Therefore, a better culture system is needed. Here, a method for harvesting germ cells is provided as well as a media, CeM1, that has been optimized so that these cultured germ cells can remain alive and at fairly constant numbers for at least 28 days. In addition, germ cell proliferation is shown for germ cells between days 1-4 in certain conditions, which is predicted to be a result of signals from bacteria. INDEX WORDS: C. elegans, Germline, Cell culture, Growth media, CKI-2, GLP-1, DAF-16 DEFINING THE CONDITIONS FOR CAENORHABDITIS ELEGANS GERM CELL PRIMARY CULTURES


Physical Security: 150 Things You Should Know, Second Edition is a useful reference for those at any stage of their security career. This practical guide covers the latest technological trends for managing the physical security needs of buildings and campuses of all sizes. Through anecdotes, case studies, and documented procedures, the authors have amassed the most complete collection of information on physical security available.

 Security practitioners of all levels will find this book easy to use as they look for practical tips to understand and manage the latest physical security technologies, such as biometrics, IP video, video analytics, and mass notification, as well as the latest principles in access control, command and control, perimeter protection, and visitor management.

 Offers a comprehensive overview of the latest trends in physical security, surveillance, and access control technologies

 Provides practical tips on a wide variety of physical security topics

 Features new technologies, such as biometrics, high definition cameras, and IP video

 Blends theory and practice with a specific focus on today's global business environment and the various security, safety, and asset protection challenges associated with it


Abstract Nine species of bat are known to occur across the six New England states, but most aspects of their natural history, such as foraging habitat use, are poorly understood. Recent published research has documented the importance of still-water habitats as foci of bat flight activity. To better understand and document habitat use in southern New England, we used the AnaBat II acoustical monitoring system to assess species composition and relative levels of summer flight activity. Active acoustic surveys were conducted in six habitat types on the Quabbin Reservation in central Massachusetts in 2003 and 2004. Bat flight activity, as measured by numbers of echolocation call sequences, was high, with an average of 24 search-phase and 4 feeding-buzz calls per 20-minute survey period. Myotis lucifugus (little brown bat) was the most commonly recorded species. Bat flight activity was high over all still-water habitats, but greatest over large ponds. Large-bodied bats, such as Eptesicus fuscus (big brown bat), were recorded more often in open, structurally uncluttered habitats. Of the small-bodied bats, little brown bats were ubiquitous, whereas Myotis septentrionalis (northern myotis) was most common in structurally cluttered habitats of seasonal forest (vernal) pools and along forest streams. Generalized habitat associations among the bat species we recorded are similar to those reported for other New England forest sites. The Quabbin Reservation is an excellent site to continue examining bat-habitat relationships because of the abundance and diversity of aquatic habitats, in both cluttered closed-canopy and uncluttered open-canopy settings.


To the enterprising journalists of early eighteenth-century Great Britain, the refined status of "author" remained elusive. Journalism itself was a nascent occupation formed in the processes of cultural legitimatization, commercialization, and politicization of authorship. In London, James Ralph, an American expatriate and political writer, emerged as a spokesman for journalism. In his Case of Authors by Profession or Trade , a short treatise published in 1758, Ralph argued that "professional" authors included journalists and other non-patroned writers. They deserved respect as an occupational group, and a special role in society. Ralph equated and extended the privileged notions of authorship and the role of the author — essentially, respectability and some limited independence from political and financial pressures — to his fellow journalists. His Case is worth revisiting because it shows how literary culture was being challenged in his era, extended and subverted as it was by his fellow journalists and their more transitory creations.


Ordovician arc magmatism in the Welsh Basin culminated in the development of a NE-SW corridor of intense volcanism extending for > 65 km in northwest Wales from Conwy through Snowdonia to Llanbedrog in the central Llŷn Peninsula. New data from central Llŷn reveal four eruptive phases: Llŷn Phase 1 produced up to 800 m of subalkaline rhyolites and acid ash-flow tuffs (Pen-ychain Rhyolitic Complex), interpreted as the SW margin of the Llwyd Mawr/Pitts Head caldera. The Complex thins rapidly westwards from the eruptive centre, and lies within clastic sediments and minor basaltic lithic tuffs of the Cwm Eigiau Formation (Soudleyan-Longvillian). Llŷn Phase 2 is recorded by a 120 m thick pyroclastic flow (Allt Fawr Rhyolitic Tuff Formation) which interrupted Longvillian marine sedimentation (Cwm Eigiau Formation below; Dwyfach Formation above). This ash-flow tuff is more alkaline than the products of both Llwyd Mawr and Snowdon, and is interpreted as having flowed from an as yet unidentified source in northern Llŷn. Llŷn Phase 3 involved the growth of a major centre which erupted over dominantly marine siltstones (Dwyfach Formation) locally to produce > 1000 m of lavas and tuffs that define the Llanbedrog Volcanic Group. This Llanbedrog volcanism evolved from intermediate to acid compositions, with early basaltic trachyandesites (Penmaen Formation) followed by up to 275 m of rhyodacites (Foel Ddu Rhyodacite Formation) and climaxing with up to 500 m of rhyolitic ash flow tuffs (Carneddol Rhyolitic Tuff Formation). The Llanbedrog Volcanic Group (and associated intrusions) define a geochemically coherent fractionation trend along the subalkaline/alkaline boundary. Around the Llanbedrog volcanic edifice an apron of volcaniclastic-rich sediment (Yoke House Formation) graded outwards into surrounding deeper marine conditions where Dwyfach silts and muds continued to be deposited. Faunal evidence suggests that eruptions took place across the Longvillian to Woolstonian boundary, and final foundering of the Llanbedrog centre was followed by deposition of graptolitic mud (Nod Glas Formation) in Woolstonian times. Llŷn Phase 4 erupted up to 100 m of arc tholeiitic basaltic lavas and tuffs on to these marine muds. Recognition of these four phases on Llŷn confirms the transience of the Snowdonia volcanic corridor, within which all eruptions took place over a few million years inside the span of three mid-Caradoc stages (Soudleyan, Longvillian, Woolstonian) and two graptolite zones (Dicranograptus clingani and Diplograptus multidens). With the exception of early andesitic eruptions in the northeast (Foel Fras) and southwest (Penmaen) of the corridor, magmatism was bimodal and dominated by rhyolite. At least six great (>500 m) rhyolitic ash-flow tuff sequences were erupted (Conwy, Capel Curig, Pitts Head/Llwyd Mawr/Pen-ychain, Snowdon, Llanbedrog and Crafnant). Basaltic eruptions spatially associated with these centres typically constructed strombolian cones and/or accumulated within submarine depressions. Rhyolite petrogenesis is attributed to some combination of sub-crustal melt ponding and fractionation plus partial remelting of older (Avalonian) arc basement within an actively deforming lithospheric corridor of intense magmatic activity. The transient burst of mid-Caradoc volcanicity in northwest Wales represents the climax of some 38 Ma of arc magmatism across the Welsh basin and the sudden cessation of eruptions presumably records a change from oblique subduction to transcurrent movements along this part of the Iapetus margin.


The purpose of this study was to test a model of veterans' college adjustment that demonstrated how combat exposure can lead to psychological distress and a lack of empathy and trust, how those variables interact and affect social support and classroom interactions, and how all the variables effect college adjustment self-efficacy. The study quantified the prevalence of PTSD, anxiety, depression, and stress in the student veteran population, finding that rates were lower than in a previous study on student veterans and on par with the active duty military. Although the proposed SEM model did not fit the data, subsequent stepwise regressions found that combat exposure was significantly inversely associated with trust and empathy, and directly correlated with psychological distress. Psychological distress was found to inversely affect trust, empathy, social support, alienation in the classroom, and feeling connected to other students and faculty. Trust and empathy scores were found to affect social support, and combat exposure and psychological distress were found to affect social support through their influence on trust and empathy. Social support was found to have the largest influence on college self-efficacy adjustment scores. In addition, the study found that gender affected the outcomes of the model. Implications of these results were discussed, along with limitations to the study and possible future research.


While many key legal settings for native title are already in place, recent history tells us that important legislative and judicial choices about Indigenous land justice will continue to be made in coming years and that constitutional arrangements will exert a significant shaping influence on the outcome. A range of viable proposals for constitutional reform are presently under consideration for a 2013 referendum which could materially affect the future pursuit of land justice for first peoples in Australia. These include, in particular, a non-discrimination clause with respect to race, which allows for positive Indigenous-specific laws, including ones enacted under a revised power in section 51(xxvi) of the Constitution, and a constitutional provision to support agreement-making between governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.


The economics literature generally finds a positive, but small, gain in income to native‐born populations from immigrants and potentially large gains in world incomes. But immigrants can also impact a recipient nation's institutions. A growing empirical literature supports the importance of strong private property rights, a rule of law, and an environment of economic freedom for promoting long run prosperity. Comparatively little work has tried to explain economic freedom as a dependent variable. This paper empirically examines how immigration impacts a region's policies and institutions. We find small but positive increases in institutional quality as a result of immigration.


Hollow carbon fibers with diameters on the order of 30 nm were grown on a ceramic porous substrate, which was used as the oxygen electrode in lithium-oxygen (Li–O2) batteries. These all-carbon-fiber (binder-free) electrodes were found to yield high gravimetric energies (up to 2500 W h kgdischarged−1) in Li–O2cells, translating to an energy enhancement ∼4 times greater than the state-of-the-art lithium intercalation compounds such as LiCoO2 (∼600 W h kgelectrode−1). The high gravimetric energy achieved in this study can be attributed to low carbon packing in the grown carbon-fiber electrodes and highly efficient utilization of the available carbon mass and void volume for Li2O2 formation. The nanofiber structure allowed for the clear visualization of Li2O2 formation and morphological evolution during discharge and its disappearance upon charge, where Li2O2 particles grown on the sidewalls of the aligned carbon fibers were found to be toroids, having particle sizes increasing (up to ∼1 μm) with increasing depth-of-discharge. The visualization of Li2O2 morphologies upon discharge and disappearance upon charge represents a critical step toward understanding key processes that limit the rate capability and low round-trip efficiencies of Li–O2 batteries, which are not currently understood within the field.


We give compact extended formulations for the packing and partitioning orbitopes (with respect to the full symmetric group) described and analyzed in Kaibel and Pfetsch [Kaibel, V., M. E. Pfetsch. 2008. Packing and partitioning orbitopes. Math. Programming, Ser. A114(1) 1--36]. These polytopes are the convex hulls of all 0/1-matrices with lexicographically sorted columns and at most, respectively, exactly one 1-entry per row. They are important objects for symmetry reduction in certain integer programs. Using the extended formulations, we also derive a rather simple proof of the fact established in the paper mentioned above, that basically shifted-column inequalities suffice to describe those orbitopes linearly.


In this work, a free space optical (FSO) link for the ground-to-train (G2T-FSO) communications is proposed. Analytical analysis is carried out for the curved rail tracks. We show that the transmitter divergence angle, the transmit power and the size of the concentration lens need to increase for the curved section of the rail track compared to the straight track. We derive the analytical expression for the received power level based on the link geometry for the case of the curved track In the worst case scenario when the curvature radius is 120 m, the transmit power at the optical base station (BS) needs to increase by over 2 dB when the concentration lens radius is increased by 5 times. Analyses also show that the received power along the track increases with the curvature radius for the same transmit power and receiver optics illustrating the effect due to link geometry. Additionally, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the bit error rate (BER) performance of the system for the curved track with different curvature radii is analysed at data rates of 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps for an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel showing a good agreement between the theoretical and the simulated BER. Finally, effect of scintillations on the G2T-FSO link performance is discussed.


Abstract. I assess the feasibility of using multivariate scaling relationships to estimate glacier volume from glacier inventory data. Scaling laws are calibrated against volume observations optimized for the specific purpose of estimating total global glacier ice volume. I find that adjustments for continentality and elevation range improve skill of area–volume scaling. These scaling relationships are applied to each record in the Randolph Glacier Inventory, which is the first globally complete inventory of glaciers and ice caps. I estimate that the total volume of all glaciers in the world is 0.35 p 0.07 m sea level equivalent, including ice sheet peripheral glaciers. This is substantially less than a recent state-of-the-art estimate. Area–volume scaling bias issues for large ice masses, and incomplete inventory data are offered as explanations for the difference.


SPOT simulation imagery was acquired for a test site in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, U.K. This data was qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated for its potential application in forest resource mapping and management. A variety of techniques are described for enhancing the image with the aim of providing species level discrimination within the forest. Visual interpretation of the imagery was more successful than automated classification. The heterogeneity within the forest classes, and in particular between the forest and urban class, resulted in poor discrimination using traditional `per-pixel' automated methods of classification. Different means of assessing classification accuracy are proposed. Two techniques for measuring textural variation were investigated in an attempt to improve classification accuracy. The first of these, a sequential segmentation method, was found to be beneficial. The second, a parallel segmentation method, resulted in little improvement though this may be related to a combination of resolution in size of the texture extraction area. The effect on classification accuracy of combining the SPOT simulation imagery with other data types is investigated. A grid cell encoding technique was selected as most appropriate for storing digitised topographic (elevation, slope) and ground truth data. Topographic data were shown to improve species-level classification, though with sixteen classes overall accuracies were consistently below 50%. Neither sub-division into age groups or the incorporation of principal components and a band ratio significantly improved classification accuracy. It is concluded that SPOT imagery will not permit species level classification within forested areas as diverse as the Forest of Dean. The imagery will be most useful as part of a multi-stage sampling scheme. The use of texture analysis is highly recommended for extracting maximum information content from the data. Incorporation of the imagery into a GIS will both aid discrimination and provide a useful management tool.