The remote laboratory is based on a system of realtime communications that uses an engine that controls a photovoltaic panel and a computer that manages communication between the remote user and the local computer application. It consists of a communications card on the parallel port in order to use an old computer and thus minimize costs and avoid programming a pic, because this is not the goal of the course. The software was developed for that card from Visual Basic. The students who were going to do the course weren't programmers and this software, even though simple, has more than enough power for this application. The peripheral device is basically a relay board. Two relays make the engine, which drives the photovoltaic panel, turn to the left, and the other two make it turn to the right. The left side is matched to the east one and the right side to the west one; the panel is bent with a fixed position depending on the latitude. In the east-west scan the south is included, which is the position in which the photovoltaic panel would be fixed in case an immobile installation was intended. To get a real-time feedback there are two webcams. One of them shows the movement of the photovoltaic panel and the other one displays the voltage and electric current supplied by the generator. Viewing voltage and current and taking into account the time, the energy can be calculated. It is possible to obtain radiation diagrams at distance and verify the data obtained with the the data published. After developing the local system, the focus of the issue was that the system was operational at distance . We used the Windows Server operating system and a remote desktop program. The operating system controls access to the different users of the application. Each user enters his/her username and password. This way each student has his own desktop and practices. The remote desktop allows remote connection to the Internet. We used the free app TeamViewer for remote access to the system without having to go into the router configurations. This is necessary because in many cases the local IP number is not public. This solution made possible that the remote control application was operating from the network.


ABSTRACT Trillium (Melanthiaceae) is a highly diverse genus in the Southeast and includes many local endemics. Previous studies on Trillium in eastern North America identified significant genetic structure associated with limited seed dispersal and historical landscape barriers. In this study, genetic structure was examined in Trillium cuneatum and T. stamineum across Mississippi and western Alabama to look for further evidence that landscape features influence genetic structure at local scales. DNA sequence variation in the trnL intron and trnL-trnF intergenic region was examined across 12 populations of T. cuneatum and six populations of T. stamineum. Samples of Trillium ludovicianum and Trillium foetidissimum were included for comparison. Five and four haplotypes were discovered in T. cuneatum and T. stamineum, respectively, but most populations were fixed for a single haplotype. Haplotypes from T. cuneatum in southwestern Mississippi were also present in congeneric species. Significant geographic structure was found in both species, and divergent haplotypes found on either side of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers suggest barriers to gene flow in the study area. Strong population differentiation suggests that seed dispersal is limited in both species. Given the strong degree of genetic structure detected in both species and their preference of mesic forests, it is expected that both species will continue to diverge at local scales.


In just 24 sessions of one hour or less, you will be up and running with Dynamics CRM 4. Using a straightforward, step-by-step approach, this book offers a quick way for you to get started with Dynamics CRM by leveraging real business examples, practice exercises, and big picture theory. In addition to learning how to use the core application, you will develop a deeper understanding of how Dynamics CRM fits into todays business needs. Step-by-step instructions carefully walk you through the questions, issues, and tasks most common to Dynamics CRM. Quizzes and Exercises at the end of each chapter help you build and test your knowledge. By the Way notes present interesting pieces of information related to the discussion. Did You Know? tips offer advice or show you easier ways to perform tasks. Watch Out! cautions alert you to possible problems and give you advice on how to avoid them. Learn how to Orchestrate a successful CRM project Identify building blocks of Dynamics CRM Automate processes Create and manage your business units and users Use and maintain security roles Redefine an account Import new contacts and distribute leads Create marketing campaigns and capture the results Convert a lead to an account and contact Configure your display Capture contact and activity details Email directly from Dynamics CRM Master scheduling Integrate Dynamics CRM with Microsoft Excel and other applications Create simple workflows Customize and add utilities


ABSTRACT Although contemporary twin-engine airliners offer superior fuel efficiency and reduced noise levels compared to yesterday's three- and four-engine airliners, they are more vulnerable to total loss of thrust due to reduced engine redundancy. In the event of total loss of thrust, quick reference handbooks are designed to provide a successful recovery of at least one engine. However, if an engine recovery is not achieved, flight crews are left with little to no guidance on how to handle the engines-out landing. Therefore, the idea of engines-out landing trajectory optimization should be further developed for contemporary twin-engine airliners. A major obstacle to the development of this idea is the inaccessibility of aircraft-specific aerodynamic data for airliners. To fill in this gap, this study applies a kinematic trajectory optimization method to the Boeing 737 Next Generation (NG), which is the second best-selling aircraft family as of today after the competing Airbus A320. Unlike conventional trajectory optimization methods, the kinematic algorithm requires minimal input of aircraft-specific aerodynamic data that can be effortlessly collected in a full-flight simulator. The article simulates a realistic bird-strike scenario and conducts flight simulation tests in a Boeing 737 NG full-flight simulator to assess the applicability of the kinematic methodology to the Boeing 737 NG aircraft. The results demonstrate that the algorithm can compute the optimum trajectory within 4% error. The accuracy and computationally undemanding algorithm of the kinematic methodology makes it promising for real-world use on the Boeing 737 NG aircraft.


Why are so many immigrant workplaces non-unionized and what can the labor movement do about it? The questions about whether and how effectively to bring immigrant workers into the labor movement involve not just the impact of immigrant labor on organizing efforts, but also the effect of the labor movement's policy positions on immigrant labor. According to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations ("AFL-CIO"), protections for immigrant workers are as important to the labor movement as protecting jobs for U.S. workers. While there are great examples of union success in organizing immigrant workplaces, however, the vast majority of immigrant workers remain unorganized. The residential construction industry is one of the areas where low-skilled, non-unionized immigrant workplaces dominate the landscape. Unions have had some limited and scattered success in rebuilding the residential construction industry labor movement in places like Los Angeles, California, but the success has not been sustained. In this article, I share perspectives of local residential construction workers and labor leaders collected from a series of interviews in Las Vegas, Nevada about obstacles to organizing immigrants. I conducted over 100 interviews between 2006 and 2008 that are the basis for a larger project on working conditions among immigrant workers in the residential construction industry in Las Vegas. In this article, I explore how immigrant workers and local organizers respond to questions about the difficulties in organizing immigrants. Their responses should provide some guidance to policy advocates and the labor movement as they formulate positions around comprehensive immigration reform proposals. In Part I of this article, I describe what academics view as obstacles to immigrant worker organizing, including changes in the structure of the construction industry, and restrictive immigration laws. In Part II, I describe the Las Vegas Residential Construction Industry Study and explore the gap in perceptions between local union leaders and non-union workers about obstacles to organizing. I conclude in this part that the construction trade union movement must incorporate aspects of immigrant organizing strategies that have occurred in the service industry. In Part III, I explore the effects of union activity in the most recent negotiations over comprehensive immigration reform, analyzing how the AFL-CIO's position might work at cross-purposes to its stated goals of organizing immigrant workplaces and bringing immigrants into the labor movement. I conclude that by conceding the contingent nature of construction work and then limiting the legal avenues for immigration into construction work, the AFL-CIO's compromises further weaken local labor organizers' attempts to organize immigrants.


Future generations of gravitational wave detectors will require significant progress in the reduction of all forms of noise affecting the system. One form of noise it is
critical to reduce is thermal noise, which can be described as the consequence of the atoms which make up the measurement optics experiencing vibrations because
of their non-zero temperature. The dielectric multilayer coatings of the mirror in an interferometric gravitational wave detector are known to contribute significantly
to the overall levels of thermal noise. The next generation of gravitational wave detectors may need to use exotic coatings, cryogenic operating temperatures and silicon mirror substrates in an effort to mitigate the effects of thermal noise.

Chapter Two describes thermal noise in detail, and introduces the concepts of substrate noise, coating noise, thermoelastic dissipation, mechanical loss and the
formulae used to calculate them.

Chapter Three describes the current state of research on the factors affecting mechanical loss in dielectric coatings. The technique of probing the structure and
dissipation characteristics of materials by assessing the shape and position of the low temperature excess loss feature known as a Debye peak is introduced. The
cryogenic mechanical loss measurement apparatus used in Chapters Four, Five and Six is described and characterised.
Chapter Four concerns the variation of mechanical loss of ion-beam sputtered silica coatings with temperature and investigates the effects of heat-treatment upon
them. The low-temperature Debye peak was found in some modes of a sample heat treated at 300oC and an Arrhenius analysis provided a characteristic energy for the
dissipation process of (17.3 ± 2.3)meV. Further heat treatment of silica at 600oC and 800oC appears to narrow the Debye peak, which is thought to be indicative of the narrowing of the distribution of bond angles in the amorphous silica network.

Hafnia is investigated as an alternative coating material in Chapter Five. The mechanical loss of hafnia heat-treated at 300oC was measured and two excess loss features were discovered, one below 100K and one above 200K. Electron scattering measurements indicate that this sample may already have developed polycrystalline regions which are known to be connected to high levels of mechanical loss.
The mechanical loss of an un-heat-treated hafnia coating is also measured and an extremely low coating loss of 1.87 × 10−5 is found at 20K.

Chapter Six describes an experiment to find the mechanical loss of a hydroxycatalysis bond between silicon cantilevers at temperatures between 10K and 300K.This new technique for the measurement of the mechanical loss of bond material
produced a minimum upper limit of the bond loss of (0.13 ± 0.03) occurring in the fundamental mode at 80K and upper limit of the bond loss of (0.19 ± 0.07) occurring in the third mode at 15K.
Chapter Seven describes the development and testing of a nodal support system to enable cryogenic measurements of cylindrical bulk mirror substrates to be made.
The efficacy of the support varied significantly with the frequency of the mode and the cryogenic measurements were partially successful.
The major results in this work are the successful measurements of the mechanical
loss of amorphous hafnia coatings at low temperatures and the use of a structure
made from hydroxy-catalysis bonded silicon cantilevers to obtain an upper limit for
the mechanical loss of the bond material. These results may inform technological
advances that reduce the level of thermal noise experienced in future gravitational
wave detectors.


White clover (Trifolium repens L.) stands in the southeastern USA survive during summer drought predominantly through persistence of stolons. The decay and death of stolons during the hot, humid summer may be partially due to fungal diseases. This study determined the effect of summer fungicide applications on stolon survival of 'Regal' and 'Louisiana S-1' white clover compared with drought-tolerant Brown Loam Syn. No. 2 germplasm (BLSyn). The three white clover entries were grown in the field on a Catalpa silty clay (fine, montmorillonitic, thermic Fluvaquentic Hapludoll) at Mississippi State, MS, in three separate 1-yr studies. During summer stolon dormancy, plots of each entry were either untreated or sprayed biweekly with benomyl [methyl 1-(butylcarbamoyl)-2-benzimidazole-carbamate]. In 2 of 3 yr, BLSyn had 23 to 63% greater ground cover, 33 to 55% greater stolon density, and 30 to 47% greater relative live stolon length following the summer drought than Louisiana S-1. In all 3 yr, BLSyn had greater relative live stolon length (7-18%) following the summer drought than Regal. Plots treated with benomyl had 14 to 52% greater stolon density (in 2 of 3 yr), 14 to 40% greater stolon growing point density, and 9 to 27% greater relative live stolon length than untreated plots. Benomyl treatment gave less of an increase in relative live stolon length of BLSyn than in the two cultivars. These results suggest that fungal pathogenesis may reduce white clover stolon survival during summer dormancy, and that greater fungal disease resistance could be part of the mechanism of improved summer survival in BLSyn white clover.


This study examines the price behaviour of East Asian stock markets and individual stocks listed on the Bursa Malaysia in the light of random walk hypothesis by utilizing the new and powerful statistical tool, namely the Brock-Dechert-Scheinkman (BDS) test and Hinich Bispectrum test. This study emphasizes three main objectives. Firstly, this study examines the random walk behaviour and nonlinearity of East Asian stock indices and individual stock return series traded on Bursa Malaysia. Secondly, to ensure the consistency of the results, this study break the full sample period into 5 sub-periods with respect to the financial liberalization and the 1997 Asian financial crisis as the break points to observe whether these two issues will prevent the stocks from randomly pricing or vice versa. Lastly, this study also addresses the issue of whether market size influences the stock price behaviour by comparing the results of large-capitalization stocks and small-capitalization stocks. The following reveal the findings of this study. The econometric investigations (results of BDS) reveal that all the East Asian stock indices and individual stocks listed in the Bursa Malaysia do not follow a random walk process over the full sample period from January 1985 through December 2005. Besides that, the Hinich Bispectrum results reveal that nonlinearity exists in the East Asian stock prices and individual stock prices traded in the Bursa Malaysia. Through the sub-periods analysis, empirical evidence from this study suggests that 1997 Asian financial crisis prevents stock price from following a random walk process. This result comes from the SST (Singapore) and several individual stocks in which pocket of efficiency found before the occurrence of the Asian financial crisis but disappear during and after the crisis period. Lastly, although the analysis on individual stock does not provide any support that market size will influence the stock price randomness, analysis of the East Asian stock indices provide a useful comparison in which, Japan stock market is efficiently performed provide a strong support that market size is a matter of the randomness of the stock prices.


Purpose : Myopia is a global public health issue, however, no information exists as to how research findings on retardation strategies are being adopted in clinical practice.Methods : A self-administrated, internet-based questionnaire (SurveyMonkey, USA) was distributed, in 6 languages, through professional bodies to eye care practitioners globally. The questionnaire consisted of 9 questions regarding their awareness of the increasing prevalence of myopia and the implications of this; their perception of the relative efficacy of the available myopia management strategies; their prescribing frequency of each type of correction; the annual progression rate of myopia they believe requires management; their preferred management strategies dependence on patient's age and refractive error; and their rationale for prescribing single vision spectacles as primary method of management.Results : Nine hundred and seventy-one responses were received from Africa (n = 6), Asia (n = 291), Australasia (n = 119), Europe (n = 339), North America (n = 133), and South America (n = 82) respectively. Where possible (n ≥ 30), a sub-analysis of individual countries was conducted. Concern was higher (median 9/10) in Asia than any other continent (7/10, p < 0.001), and Asia considered itself more active in implementing myopia control strategies (8/10, p < 0.001) than Australasia, Europe (7/10), North America (4/10) or South America (5/10). Orthokeratology was perceived to be the most effective method of myopia control, followed by increased time spent outdoors and pharmaceutical approaches, while under-correction and single vision spectacles were perceived to be least effective (p < 0.05). Although intra-regional differences existed, 63.0 (±37.8)% of practitioners prescribed single vision spectacles or contact lenses as the primary type of correction for myopic patients globally. The main justifications for their reluctance to prescribe anything other than single vision were increased cost (35.6%), inadequate information (33.3%), and the unpredictability of the outcome (28.2%).Conclusions : Regardless of the practitioners' awareness of the relative efficacy of various methods available, the vast majority still prescribe single vision interventions to young myopes. In view of the increasing prevalence of myopia and the existing evidence for interventions to slow myopia progression, clear guidelines for myopia control needs to be established.


We developed spatially explicit models of moose (Alces alces) population density for the province of Ontario using the geostatistical technique kriging. The models were based on moose surveys divided into four time periods from 1975 to 1995. Density change was calculated for the 1975-1979, 1980-1984, 1985-1989, and 1990-1995 time periods to visualize regional trends in population change. Between 1975 and 1995, moose density increased in the northwest and southeast parts of the province and decreased in some northern pockets. A marked increase in density occurred in the late 1980s, when both the selective moose harvest system and moose habitat guidelines were introduced in Ontario. Although a general increase in survey effort occurred in about 1986, no effect of survey effort was detected on moose population change between the first and last time periods (P = 0.215). To evaluate the possible effect of reducing number of survey plots on density estimates, we recreated density maps by using 25, 50, and 75% of the original data and compared the full-data maps with the reduced-data maps. The regression slopes and r 2 for reduced-data versus full-data maps approached 1.0 as sample rate increased from 25 to 75% (B = 0.88, 0.86, and 0.96; r 2 = 0.82, 0.88, and 0.95). A κ analysis also suggests an acceptable performance of the 75% data map (κ = 0.716). Resume : Nous avons concu des modeles spatiaux de densite des populations d'orignaux (Alces alces) de la province d'Ontario au moyen d'une technique geostatistique, le krigage. Les modeles sont bases sur des recensements d'orignaux divises en quatre periodes de 1975 a 1995. Les changements de densite ont ete calcules pour les periodes


In a two–stage study, the possibility of using high–rate anaerobic digesters to enhance the performance of dairy
lagoons was explored. Four anaerobic sequencing batch reactors (ASBR) and four downflow anaerobic filters (DFAF) were
tested, with two of each type operated at 25

C, and the other two at 35

C. The first stage of the experiment explored using
the high–rate digesters on liquid effluent from a screw–press treating dairy manure slurry. The first–stage experiment
demonstrated that settling processes, rather than biodegradation, accounted for most of the organic matter reduction in both
reactor types, when operated at a 0.5–d hydraulic retention time. Specifically, settling accounted for an average of 100% of
the chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal in the ASBR reactors, and for an average of 72% of the COD removal in the
DFAF reactors. These results prompted the second stage of the experiment, which explored the possibility of using the reactors
to remove volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from dairy lagoon supernatant. Diluted manure slurry was spiked with acetic acid (HAc)
to simulate the supernatant of an overloaded lagoon. At VFA loading rates of 1.0 and 3.0 kg HAc m –3 d –1 , both reactor types
achieved moderate VFA removal. However, at a loading rate of 6.0 kg HAc m –3 d –1 , the ASBR reactors were ineffective,
whereas the DFAF reactors, at both 25

C and 35

C, removed more than 80% of the influent HAc. At a loading rate of 12 kg
HAc m –3 d –1 , the DFAFs achieved removal rates of 75%; removal rates dropped to 50% at the maximum loading tested, 24 kg
HAc m –3 d –1 . Based on these experiments, it appears that the DFAF reactors are suited to the task of rapidly removing
accumulated VFA from lagoon supernatant.


A review of RF transmission lines on silicon substrates is presented. Through measurements and calculated results, it is shown that attenuation is dominated by conductor loss if silicon substrates with a resistivity greater than 2500 ¿-cm are used. Si passivation layers affect the transmission line attenuation; however, measured results demonstrate that passivation layers do not necessarily increase attenuation. If standard, low resistivity Si wafers must be used, alternative transmission lines such as thin film microstrip and CPW on thick polyimide layers must be used. Measured results presented here show that low loss per unit length is achievable with these transmission lines.


Social search is having a flourishing success for its effectiveness in retrieving high quality information useful to achieve complex search goals. Surprisingly, the potential of the social paradigm at the basis of collaborative tagging in satisfying complex search intents has been unexplored so far. We propose an extended model of folksonomies that allows to compose and tag complex user-defined relations among items, users, and tags. We show that this model offers several means to fulfill complex search tasks that are hard to be achieved by other existing services. Furthermore, we support the validity of our approach through a data-driven analysis on Flickr photosets and we present an online portal that provides this new user experience.


The early case detection followed by WHO/MDT is the most important in leprosy control program not only for the destruction of linkage of infection but also the prevention of disability in leprosy. PIME Sisters leprosy program has been carrying out active case detection for leprosy since 1986 in Khulna, the third biggest metropolitan city in Bangladesh. The relation between several detection modes and their associated disability grading was analyzed in order to see the contribution of each detection mode to disability grading. The disability grading of new registered patients from 1995 to 1997, 1,115 cases in total was analyzed according to its detection mode. Voluntary reporting patients from "out of control area" had both high disability grading of G = 2 (38.0%) and high MB rate (39.3%). On the other hand voluntary reporting patients in control area had less disability grading of G = 2 (12.2%) and less MB rate (25.3%). The number of patients referred by local doctors was still small and had both high disability grading of G = 2 (27.0%) and high MB rate (51.4%). Children detected under school surveillance did not have any marked disability of G = 2 (0%) and were almost PB patients (88.6%). (Prevalence rate of school surveillance was low.) Patients detected under general surveillance had low disability grading of G = 2 (2.6%). The disability grading (G = 2) of voluntary patients from control area (12.2%) was three times as much as that of patients from general surveillance (2.6%). Lastly patients of family contacts who were aware of the first symptoms had relatively less disability grading (5.9%). The small number of patients referred by local doctors (3.3% of total number) with high disability grading meant that there would be still great need of information programs on leprosy for local medical professions to think about leprosy. The high disability grading of patients from "out of control area" meant that the more effective leprosy control program should be done in "out of control area".


At its simplest, any formal review of the type of electoral system that South Africa has, has three broad options. Firstly, it could conclude that things should be left as they are. Secondly, it could conclude that radical reforms are necessary and call for a shift to a fundamentally different system based only on constituency representation. Or thirdly, it could call for moderate reforms to address the weaknesses of a proportional representation system by infusing it with elements of constituency representation, while guaranteeing overall proportionality of legislative seats to votes. To what extent can the views of ordinary South Africans inform such a choice? The task of measuring citizens' preferences on this issue is daunting even to the most optimistic public opinion researcher. Certainly, those South Africans who have voted in both national and local government elections now have at least some exposure to different kinds of electoral systems, to which middle-aged and older white citizens add the memories of a purely constituent based system. However, the degree to which people have internalised what happens once they cast their vote, or its implications for the behaviour of elected officials and party leaders, is certainly open to question. In order to provide the Electoral Task Team with the most useful information on public attitudes, this survey of public opinion focuses, firstly, on measuring public views of the system they have in front of them and, secondly on assessing what they want out of a voting system in general. The responses reveal the following conclusions to the three broad choices outlined above. There would be little public support for a radical shift toward a first-past-the-post, single-member constituency system. This is good news for the ETT since the Constitution requires that any system result 'in general, in proportional representation'. In fact, South Africans appreciate the achievements of the current system that maximises many values that a first-past-the-post system would have difficulty providing, such as proportionality, and also maximum inclusiveness and fairness. There is minimal preference for the type of candidate centered, United States-style weak party system that a first-past-the-post system can encourage. Indeed, for the most part, people are happy with the present system. If South Africans are generally satisfied with what they have, does this mean that the ETT should say simply: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'? We feel the evidence provided by the survey answers in the negative. First of all, public satisfaction with the current system is neither consensual nor widespread. Significantly higher proportions are dissatisfied than one would prefer, given that a voting system is an integral part of the overall constitutional framework. Secondly, while South Africans appreciate that the existing system produces proportionality, inclusiveness and fairness, they also emphasize other values that a pure list-based version of proportional representation has difficulty producing: values such as independent-minded legislators accountable to local grass roots public opinion. Finally, far from saying 'it ain't broke', other survey results suggest strongly that the system is 'broke' in at least one very important way. While Parliament has tried to address the lack of a direct connection between the people and the legislature by assigning putative constituencies to MPs, very few South Africans contact their MPs, and evidence from other surveys demonstrates that few people can even hazard a guess about who their MP is supposed to be. Perhaps most damning, this survey shows that just one in five South Africans think that national and provincial legislators listen to the opinions of ordinary citizens or look out for their interests. Left unchecked, such views threaten to turn into a cancer in the body politic that slowly eats away at public confidence in democratic institutions. The introduction of a constituency system would not, in itself, resolve all the issues giving rise to voters' perceptions that South Africa's politicians do not care about their needs or opinions. However, introducing some form of constituency system would provide a direct link between voters and their representatives, thereby enhancing the sense of obligation of the latter to the former. The responses reported in this survey suggest that voters would support the introduction of a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system, featuring the introduction of multi-member constituencies. Such a reformed system would maintain overall representativeness (as well as other favoured electoral values like fairness and equality) whilst simultaneously enhancing prospects for accountability.


This volume is the first book-length explication of hermeneutics in social work. It attempts to clarify and reconstruct the moral basis of social work. Against the mainstream current of doing social work with the technical-rational outlook, this book argues that value constitutes the very core of social work. It is with this solid foundation of moral concepts that social work techniques are reconstituted.This volume seamlessly combines theoretical discussions with empirical studies. It starts with a theoretical inquiry that combines hermeneutics and critical theory and examines the moral nature of social work. It then extends the theoretical analysis to empirical research on mental illness, cancer, community development and social work management. Redefining the relationship between theory and practice, the discussion on first-person value involvement and dialogical mode of understanding will inspire social workers to develop their professional practice in a new light. This volume will capture the attention of both social work scholars and frontline social work practitioners. The hermeneutic point of view will also be of interest to readers/students of social theory and social research.


OBJECTIVE
Occasionally, patients with eating disorders have been subsequently diagnosed with esophageal achalasia. We sought to establish whether eating disorders and achalasia coexisted more often than expected by chance alone.

METHOD
National record-linkage study of hospital inpatients in England, between 2001 and 2017. Use of Cox proportional hazards to compare the occurrence of achalasia in cohorts of people with or without anorexia nervosa (AN), and with or without bulimia nervosa (BN), with adjustment of the comparisons for such confounders as age, sex, and year of admission.

RESULTS
There were 18,500 people in the AN cohort, 11,300 in the BN cohort, and 8.7 million in the comparison cohort. The Cox regression hazard ratio, comparing the AN cohort with the reference cohort, was 3.4 (95% confidence interval 1.8-6.3) and that in the BN cohort was 4.2 (2.2-8.2).

DISCUSSION
AN and achalasia, and BN and achalasia, were diagnosed in the same individuals, more often than expected by chance. Clinicians should be aware of the possible associations with achalasia because the treatment of eating disorders and achalasia is different.


The G protein–coupled receptor GPER promotes hypertension and aging-induced tissue damage through reactive oxygen species. Preventing the ravages of ROS Ligand-dependent activation of the G protein–coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) has been reported to confer cardiovascular benefits. However, Meyer et al. found that genetic absence of Gper conferred protection from cardiovascular pathologies associated with aging and hypertension. GPER activity was required to increase the abundance of the enzyme Nox1 in vascular smooth muscle cells, blood vessels, and myocardium, and was associated with enhanced production of tissue-damaging superoxide. Aged mice that were deficient in Gper developed much less cardiac fibrosis and hypertrophy and also retained greater cardiovascular function. In addition, a pharmacological inhibitor of GPER reduced blood pressure, superoxide production, and Nox1 abundance in hypertensive mice. Thus, inhibitors of GPER are potential therapies for cardiovascular diseases and conditions characterized by excessive superoxide generation. Pharmacological activation of the heptahelical G protein–coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) by selective ligands counteracts multiple aspects of cardiovascular disease. We thus expected that genetic deletion or pharmacological inhibition of GPER would further aggravate such disease states, particularly with age. To the contrary, we found that genetic ablation of Gper in mice prevented cardiovascular pathologies associated with aging by reducing superoxide (⋅O2−) formation by NADPH oxidase (Nox) specifically through reducing the expression of the Nox isoform Nox1. Blocking GPER activity pharmacologically with G36, a synthetic, small-molecule, GPER-selective blocker (GRB), decreased Nox1 abundance and ⋅O2− production to basal amounts in cells exposed to angiotensin II and in mice chronically infused with angiotensin II, reducing arterial hypertension. Thus, this study revealed a role for GPER activity in regulating Nox1 abundance and associated ⋅O2−-mediated structural and functional damage that contributes to disease pathology. Our results indicated that GRBs represent a new class of drugs that can reduce Nox abundance and activity and could be used for the treatment of chronic disease processes involving excessive ⋅O2− formation, including arterial hypertension and heart failure.


Protein comparative modelling (CM) is a predictive technique to build an atomic model for a polypeptide chain, based on the experimentally determined structures of related proteins (templates). It is widely used in Structural Biology, with applications ranging from mutation analysis, protein and drug design to function prediction and analysis, particularly when there are no experimental structures of the protein of interest. Therefore, CM is an important tool to process the amount of data generated by genomic projects. Several problems affect the performance of CM and therefore solutions for them are needed to increase its applicability. In this work different algorithms and approaches were tested with this aim, particularly to help in template selection and alignment, and some useful insights were obtained. First, this work describes the development of DomainFishing, a tool to split protein sequences into functionally and structurally defined domains and to align each of them to the available templates. The performance of our approach is benchmarked and some problems and possible developments are identified. When comparing different alignment procedures none of them is found to be consistently superior, suggesting that a combination of several could be an advantage. Driven by these ideas and the fact that selecting templates can be a difficult problem, a new modelling approach is designed and tested. This algorithm uses crossover, mutation and selection within populations of protein models generated from different templates and alignments to obtain recombinant structures optimised in terms of fitness. Despite our simple definition of fitness, the procedure is shown to be robust to some alignment errors while simplifying the task of selecting templates, making it a good candidate for automatic building of reliable protein models. In-house benchmarks of the method show its strengths and limitations. The method was also benchmarked during the fifth Critical Assessment of techniques for protein Structure Prediction (CASP5), in which its perfomance was encouraging both for comparative modelling and fold recognition targets, among the top 20 predictors. Finally, we present some data to support a possible evolutionary feedback mechanism between protein structure and gene structure, using human and murine genomic data, structural data from the Protein Data Bank and the protein recombination methodology. This may have some implications for understanding protein evolution and protein design, which are discussed.


Strict maternal inheritance renders the mitochondrial genome susceptible to accumulating mutations that harm males, but are otherwise benign or beneficial for females. This 'mother's curse' effect can degrade male survival and fertility if unopposed by counteracting evolutionary processes. Coadaptation between nuclear and mitochondrial genomes—with nuclear genes evolving to compensate for male-harming mitochondrial substitutions—may ultimately resolve mother's curse. However, males are still expected to incur a transient fitness cost during mito-nuclear coevolution, and it remains unclear how severe such costs should be. We present a population genetic analysis of mito-nuclear coadaptation to resolve mother's curse effects, and show that the magnitude of the 'male mitochondrial load'—the negative impact of mitochondrial substitutions on male fitness components—may be large, even when genetic variation for compensatory evolution is abundant. We also find that the male load is surprisingly sensitive to population size: male fitness costs of mito-nuclear coevolution are particularly pronounced in both small and large populations, and minimized in populations of intermediate size. Our results reveal complex interactions between demography and genetic constraints during the resolution of mother's curse, suggesting potentially widespread species differences in susceptibility to mother's curse effects.


Abstract Context. Measuring and calibrating relations between cluster observables is critical for resource-limited studies. The mass–richness relation of clusters offers an observationally inexpensive way of estimating masses. Its calibration is essential for cluster and cosmological studies, especially for high-redshift clusters. Weak gravitational lensing magnification is a promising and complementary method to shear studies, that can be applied at higher redshifts. Aims. We aim to employ the weak lensing magnification method to calibrate the mass–richness relation up to a redshift of 1.4. We used the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (SpARCS) galaxy cluster candidates (0.2 < z < 1.4) and optical data from the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) to test whether magnification can be effectively used to constrain the mass of high-redshift clusters. Methods. Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs) selected using the u-band dropout technique and their colours were used as a background sample of sources. LBG positions were cross-correlated with the centres of the sample of SpARCS clusters to estimate the magnification signal, which was optimally-weighted using an externally-calibrated LBG luminosity function. The signal was measured for cluster sub-samples, binned in both redshift and richness. Results. We measured the cross-correlation between the positions of galaxy cluster candidates and LBGs and detected a weak lensing magnification signal for all bins at a detection significance of 2.6–5.5 σ . In particular, the significance of the measurement for clusters with z> 1.0 is 4.1 σ ; for the entire cluster sample we obtained an average M 200 of 1.28 -0.21+0.23 × 10 14 M ⊙ . Conclusions. Our measurements demonstrated the feasibility of using weak lensing magnification as a viable tool for determining the average halo masses for samples of high redshift galaxy clusters. The results also established the success of using galaxy over-densities to select massive clusters at z > 1. Additional studies are necessary for further modelling of the various systematic effects ABSTRACT Context. Measuring and calibrating relations between cluster observables is critical for resource-limited studies. The mass–richness relation of clusters o ff ers an observationally inexpensive way of estimating masses. Its calibration is essential for cluster and cosmological studies, especially for high-redshift clusters. Weak gravitational lensing magnification is a promising and complementary method to shear studies, that can be applied at higher redshifts. Aims. We aim to employ the weak lensing magnification method to calibrate the mass–richness relation up to a redshift of 1.4. We used the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (SpARCS) galaxy cluster candidates (0 . 2 < z < 1 . 4) and optical data from the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) to test whether magnification can be e ff ectively used to constrain the mass of high-redshift clusters. and for clusters cluster average M 1.28 + . (cid:12) Our measurements demonstrated the feasibility of using weak lensing magnification as a viable tool for determining the average halo masses for samples of high redshift galaxy clusters. The results also established the success of using galaxy over- densities to select massive clusters at z > 1. Additional studies are necessary for further modelling of the various systematic e ff ects we discussed.


The cost-effectiveness of policies providing welfare-enhancing products for free or at highly subsidized prices is often compromised by the fact that many individuals do not use the products provided. The cost-effectiveness of these distribution programs can thus be improved by either targeting products to individuals more likely to use the product being provided or by increasing usage among those receiving the product. In this paper we present the results of a field experiment testing two policy instruments designed to improve the cost-effectiveness of a program to distribute free eyeglasses to myopic children in rural China. We first study how well an ordeal mechanism—imposing a non-monetary cost on recipients to acquire a product—targets the provision of eyeglasses to those who would use them and saves program resources by screening out those who would not. Our second intervention aims to increase uptake and usage by providing a training program on the benefits of eyeglasses and addressing misinformation that contributes to low levels of usage. We test how both of these approaches independently and jointly affect the cost-effectiveness of the program and overall usage of eyeglasses. Our results imply that both interventions improve cost-effectiveness relative to pure free distribution without compromising the primary policy goal of increasing overall usage. Combining the two interventions, however, provides no additional benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness or increasing usage relative to either intervention alone.


Analysing the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we present a new empirical method to investigate the extent to which households reduce their financial risk exposure when confronted with background risk. Our novel modelling approach – termed a deflated fractional ordered probit model – quantifies how the overall asset composition in a portfolio adjusts with background risk, and is unique in recovering for, any given risky asset class, the shares that are reallocated to a safer asset category. Background risk exerts a significant impact on household portfolios, resulting in a 'flight from risk', away from riskier to safe assets.


Abstract Israel–China bilateral ties have witnessed significant growth since the establishment of full diplomatic relations in January, 1992. Both countries are currently investing their energies in realising the full potential of their on-going partnership in the innovation economy. Growing tourist linkages are another facet of the burgeoning relationship. While China has 'comprehensive strategic partnerships' with more than 30 countries, including with those in Israel's neighbourhood, like Egypt and Iran, the term 'strategic' is conspicuously absent in describing the nature of the bilateral ties by either Israel or China. The relationship is instead described as a 'comprehensive innovation partnership'. This article shows that three limiting factors continue to cast a shadow on the China–Israel partnership. These are: the conundrum of defence trade and security ties; China's long-standing support of the Palestinian cause in international forums, like the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)—multilateral bodies whose work is routinely described as a 'joke' and a 'circus' by Israel's top leadership; and China's growing stakes with the wider West Asia region, animated by arms, energy and infrastructure deals.


In this paper we seek to assess the implication of decentralization on livelihood, biodiversity and ecological sustainability in Uganda. We aim to explain the change in woody-cover distributions in the Mabira Forest Reserve in the patches around Nakalanga and Kirugu settlements located on the northwestern edge of the forest. The purpose of the investigation was to further the understanding of how resource regimes, governed through a particular, enduring sociopolitical structure (decentralization), affect local use and management decisions in forest biomes as smallholders further integrate into external markets. Forest product use, residents' occupation, food security, land, and food decisions are analysed to assess the importance of the forest on community livelihoods. The expansion of sugarcane in the Mabira forest edge, the introduction of collaborative forest management, and forest governance are linked to the sustainability of the current property arrangements and production systems practiced. Uganda's historical forest policy insights are presented to aid in better understanding of institutional design for environmental governance in forest biomes that partly explain existing outcomes of not only local users (e.g., livelihood and flow of resources), but also stakeholders at national, regional, and global levels. Although ddecentralization is fully institutionalized as a governance strategy, there is yet limited impact of decentralization policy on the livelihood of residents at the local level.


We describe a comprehensive linear approach to the problem of imaging brain activity with high temporal as well as spatial resolution based on combining EEG and MEG data with anatomical constraints derived from MRI images. The "inverse problem" of estimating the distribution of dipole strengths over the cortical surface is highly underdetermined, even given closely spaced EEG and MEG recordings. We have obtained much better solutions to this problem by explicitly incorporating both local cortical orientation as well as spatial covariance of sources and sensors into our formulation. An explicit polygonal model of the cortical manifold is first constructed as follows: (1) slice data in three orthogonal planes of section (needle-shaped voxels) are combined with a linear deblurring technique to make a single high-resolution 3-D image (cubic voxels), (2) the image is recursively flood-filled to determine the topology of the gray-white matter border, and (3) the resulting continuous surface is refined by relaxing it against the original 3-D gray-scale image using a deformable template method, which is also used to computationally flatten the cortex for easier viewing. The explicit solution to an error minimization formulation of an optimal inverse linear operator (for a particular cortical manifold, sensor placement, noise and prior source covariance) gives rise to a compact expression that is practically computable for hundreds of sensors and thousands of sources. The inverse solution can then be weighted for a particular (averaged) event using the sensor covariance for that event. Model studies suggest that we may be able to localize multiple cortical sources with spatial resolution as good as PET with this technique, while retaining a much finer grained picture of activity over time.


Previously, we found that myometrial tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) messenger RNA (mRNA) expression did not increase with preterm or term labor. To further investigate the role of TNF-α in human labor, we studied TNF-α receptor (TNFR1A and B) expression, regulation, and associated intracellular signaling pathways in human myometrial samples obtained both before and after the onset of labor and in primary cultures of uterine smooth muscle cells (USMCs). We found that the mRNA expression of both receptors increased with advancing gestation and labor and protein levels of TNFR1B were significantly higher in term laboring myometrial samples than in nonlabor controls. Tumor necrosis factor-ᾳ treatment of USMCs activated all mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) subtypes and nuclear factor κ-B (NF-κB). The TNF-α induced increases in the expression of TNFR1B and prostaglandin H synthase type 2 were reduced by inhibitors of NF-κB and MAPKs, respectively. The TNF-α induced increase in interleukin 8 (IL-8) appeared to be independent of MAPK and NF-κB pathway. These data suggest that the uterus may become more sensitive to the action of TNF-α with advancing gestation and labor and that TNF-α acts via MAPK and NF-κB to promote labor-associated gene expression.


Do language learners who are taught by an innovative method show better results than those who are taught traditionally? Do speakers of one language variety speak faster than speakers of another variety? Do people of one gender use more hedging constructions than people of another? In this chapter, you will learn how to make such comparisons using the parametric t -test and the non-parametric Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney tests for dependent and independent samples. You will learn how to compute the standard error and confidence intervals for the mean. The case studies will involve differences between high- and low-frequency nouns with regard to the number of associations that they trigger and their abstractness/concreteness scores.


This clearly written guide to the Stanislavski method has long been a favorite among students and teachers of acting. Now, in light of books and articles recently published in the Soviet Union, Sonia Moore has made revisions that include a new section on the subtext of a role. She provides detailed explanations of all the methods that actors in training have found indispensable for more than twenty years. Designed to create better actors, this guide will put individuals in touch with themselves and increase personal sensitivity as well.


Speak Your Mind Effectively!
The best, most direct way to convey your intelligence, expertise, professionalism, and personality to other people is through talking to them. But most people have no idea what they sound like. And even if they do, they don't think they can change it. It's the Way You Say It is a thorough, nuts-and-bolts guide to becoming aware and taking control of how you communicate with others. Dr. Carol Fleming provides detailed advice and scores of exercises for • Understanding how others hear you • Dealing with specific speech problems • Varying your vocal patterns to make your speech more dynamic • Using grammar and vocabulary to increase your clarity and impact • Reinforcing your message with nonverbal cues • Conquering stage fright An entire section of the book focuses on communication issues in the workplace—interviews, presentations, voice mail, and more. Dr. Fleming puts a human face on her advice through vivid before-and-after stories of forty men and women who came to her for help. "No other skills will position you ahead of your competition as much as good speaking and presentation skills. No book approaches the depth and breadth of Dr. Carol Fleming's It's the Way You Say It." —Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE, keynote speaker, executive speech coach, and president of Fripp & Associates


A cursive Korean character consists of several Korean alphabets where connection is present within and among the alphabets. Recognition of Korean characters can be carried out by splitting each character into smaller primitives. Small line segments can be used as the primitives. But this approach requires too much processing time, for there can be many candidate references to be matched to one input character and each reference usually consists of too many primitives. In this paper, we propose an approach using structural curvature models to overcome the difficulties of using small line segments. These models are obtained by segmenting the input character at the points showing sudden change in direction, excessive rotation, etc. By doing this, rather larger and structural curve segments can be used as the basic primitives to be matched resulting in the savings of processing time and better recognition rate.


Faced with society's increasing expectations, the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy uses environmental management as an increasingly critical criterion in the allocation of farm subsidies, with a shift in focus from production and area-based subsidies to payments for supplying public goods. There is an increasing demand to assess the ecological and environmental performance of farms as public money spent on provision of environmental services requires justification. The objective of this research is to strengthen the basis of the concept of farm-level environmental performance assessment. Firstly we give an overview of indicator-based sustainability assessment tools. Even though there are several diff erent tools developed globally, and the themes and indicators for the assessment of environmental performance are very similar, there are significant differences in terms of data survey among them. Secondly we describe the development and field testing of the 'Green-point system' developed in Hungary. This system is able to measure the environmental performance of farms and their value/ capability of providing public goods and sustaining ecosystem services through a framework of farm enterprise calculations and assessments. The Green-point system fits well into the stream of yet scarce approaches and efforts, which in several European countries aim to introduce and strengthen the so-called result-based agri-environmental schemes alongside the currently rather dominant management-based approaches.


Development of a serially multiplexed fiber-optic acoustic emission (AE) sensor is described. The sensor detects AE events in real time at two different points along the length of an optical fiber. The time-domain waveform contains signals from the two locations, and a method is introduced for identification of the signals. Detection and identification of signals along a single data stream reduces the data-acquisition rigor and provides for rapid real-time damage location detection in materials. The sensor consists of two optical fiber coils along an arbitrary length in a Michelson interferometer arrangement. The formulations involve the methodology for tagging of the time-domain signals. The process leads to matching of the arrival times in the waveform to the individual coils along the length of the optical fiber. The waveform is detected at the quadrature point for maximum sensitivity. A bias is created through differentiation and superposition of the waveform to accomplish signal identification. The experimental program involved proof of concept tests by way of damage location detection along the lengths of individual composite rods. Conventional piezoelectric transducers were also employed for comparison of results.


Topic segmentation and labeling is often considered a prerequisite for higher-level conversation analysis and has been shown to be useful in many Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications. We present two new corpora of email and blog conversations annotated with topics, and evaluate annotator reliability for the segmentation and labeling tasks in these asynchronous conversations. We propose a complete computational framework for topic segmentation and labeling in asynchronous conversations. Our approach extends state-of-the-art methods by considering a fine-grained structure of an asynchronous conversation, along with other conversational features by applying recent graph-based methods for NLP. For topic segmentation, we propose two novel unsupervised models that exploit the fine-grained conversational structure, and a novel graph-theoretic supervised model that combines lexical, conversational and topic features. For topic labeling, we propose two novel (unsupervised) random walk models that respectively capture conversation specific clues from two different sources: the leading sentences and the fine-grained conversational structure. Empirical evaluation shows that the segmentation and the labeling performed by our best models beat the state-of-the-art, and are highly correlated with human annotations.


The ligand for CD40 (CD40L) is expressed on the surface of activated CD4+ T cells and its role in T-B cell collaborations and thymus- dependent humoral immunity is well established. Recently, by generating CD40L-knockout mice, we have confirmed its previously described role in humoral immunity and defined another important function of this molecule in the in vivo clonal expansion of antigen-specific CD4+ T cells. Here, we investigated the potential in vivo role of CD40L in antiviral immunity by examining the immune response mounted by CD40L- deficient mice following infection with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), Pichinde virus, or vesicular stomatitis virus. Humoral immune responses of CD40L-deficient mice to these viruses were severely compromised, although moderate titres of antiviral IgM and some IgG2a were produced by virus-infected CD40L-deficient mice by a CD4+ T cell- independent mechanism. By contrast, CD40L-deficient mice made strong primary CTL responses to all three viruses. Interestingly however, although memory CTL activity was detectable in CD40L-deficient mice two months after infection with LCMV, the memory CTL response was much less efficient than in wild-type mice. Together, the results show that CD40- CD40L interactions are required for strong antiviral humoral immune responses, and reveal a novel role for CD40L in the establishment and/or maintenance of CD8+ CTL memory.


A significant increase in the global demand of animal products is expected in the near future, because of evolving food consumption patterns in emerging countries. To fulfil the needs, a "Livestock Revolution" should occur and it will have to target in priority smallholder farms in developing countries, as they are the main actors in supply chains of milk and meat. To achieve such an increase in milk yield and live weight gain within numerous farms, new tools of intervention have to be tested. In fact, in many developing countries, State services are currently withdrawing from their traditional support to farmers, and therefore innovative methods should be set-up. They will also require a more responsible implication of the stakeholders in supply chains, particularly with well organized farmers' associations. In areas characterized by water stress and climate change, this should be a top priority issue in the agenda of agricultural development institutions. As livestock production involves many processes from water to forage biomass elaboration and dietary rations conceptions, it is generally acknowledged that it necessitates important volumes of water. In this article, an example of an intervention research is presented from the Tadla irrigation scheme (centre of Morocco) as an illustration of intensive cattle production in a context of irrigation in a semi arid region (less than 300 mm of annual rainfall). Results related to follow-ups of water productivity through cattle farming and trials to increase the average milk yield per cow are presented. A reflection on the possibilities to use "virtual water" and on the generalisation of such methods to a whole population of dairy farmers in a supply basin (i.e. an irrigation scheme) is finally developed with its consequences on the economic sustainability of smallholder units. Thus, a capacity building process is urgently required to upgrade farmers' performances. This will induce the adoption of sound on-farm practices, from irrigation systems to soil fertility management and forage biomass production. It will also rely on the continuous design of balanced dietary rations for lactating cows and their impacts on cattle load (number of cattle per ha of forage). Finally, more attention should be paid to the existing farmers' co-operatives, which would constitute crucial operators in disseminating innovation processes to face the challenges of water shortage in cattle production systems.


The 1998 stylized model of Krugman constituted a ground-breaking contribution explaining the long lasting Japanese stagnation as the consequence of a 'liquidity trap' situation featuring a negative natural interest rate. Our critique to such a proposal will focus on three aspects. First, we will question the logical structure of the model, providing an alternative interpretation of its closure. Second, we will argue that aggregate demand has no role in the explanation, as the cause for the persistent excess of savings over desired investment is the result of a supply side shock plus a financial rigidity on the nominal interest rate. Finally, we will discuss the restrictive assumptions needed to get a negative natural interest rate, the concept that lies at the foundation of the entire theoretical apparatus. Our conclusion is that the explanation offered within the 1998 contribution does not provide a satisfying rationale for the Japanese stagnation.


Following the big wave of 1990s-early 2000s EU copyright reforms (Directive 2001/29/EC—the so called InfoSoc Directive—was adopted in 2001), over the past few years the main feature of EU Commission's copyright policy has probably been consulting with interested stakeholders about the need for further updates or major reforms of the acquis. It is however difficult to think of consultations that have translated to actual reform proposals. The 2008 Green Paper on Copyright in the Knowledge Economy included a call for comments (there were about 350 in the end) on issues pertaining to exceptions and limitations in Article 5 of the InfoSoc Directive. Nothing changed as a result of this stakeholder exercise, unless you consider the creation of the Content Online Platform, ie a "stakeholders' discussion and cooperation platform", an actual step forward for EU copyright reform debate. The outcome of the 2009 Consultation on Creative Content Online was not more encouraging. Despite being aimed at discussing the challenges facing digitization of content and distribution channels, it attracted around 200 responses (which is over 40% less than its 2008 predecessor), and passed unnoticed outside niche—possibly too niche—circles. Switching for a moment away from public consultations, in its 2011 blueprint ambitiously titled A Single Market for Intellectual Property Rights boosting creativity and innovation to provide economic growth, high quality jobs and first class products and services in Europe, the Commission anticipated a number of (minor, I think) legislative initiatives (on orphan works and collective rights management) and—again—a new round of consultations on two topical copyright issues, ie further harmonization of copyright laws of Member States, and re-opening the InfoSoc Directive. While the EU has adopted specific directives on orphan works (Directive 2012/ 28/EU) and collective rights management (Directive 2014/26/ EU), no progress has been made on the front of the two really big policy issues identified in the blueprint. Proof of the above is the most recent Public Consultation on the Review of EU Copyright Rules that ran between December 2013 and March 2014. Again, the Commission asked about deepening the harmonization of the copyright laws of EU Member States and the need for changing/ clarifying/updating key provisions of the InfoSoc Directive with regard to both exclusive rights and related exceptions and limitations. Following the conclusion of this last consultation, there should be (or rather: should have been, considering that current Commission's term of office will end in October this year?) a White Paper aimed at identifying potential areas for legislative intervention, and an Impact Assessment. Draft versions of both documents have been already leaked, and do not look particularly ambitious. All this creates the impression that—also this time—no real copyright reform will occur. This may not be the worst case scenario though. What is most worrisome is in fact the high—and at times fairly intolerable—degree of partisanship of those involved in the copyright debate and the instrumental use that the Commission itself has made of the instrumental data thus collected. In a recent briefing prepared for the European Parliament and entitled Adapating the EU Copyright Rules to the Digital Transformation, Stephane Reynolds reviewed the implementation, application and effectiveness of EU copyright policy over the past few years. He observed that public consultations have featured prominently and have essentially served to gather and confirm qualitative—rather than quantitative—data. In other words, you were not mistaken in thinking that all those stakeholder exercises looked like sort of a deja-vu: they were. To this add the sudden rise in the numbers of participation: the 2013–14 Public Consultation received 9,500 responses. This was not because Europe has been recently invaded by armies of copyright enthusiasts, but rather because popular stakeholder-driven initiatives such as Fix Copyright!, Creators for Europe and Copywrongs.eu really boosted participation by providing pre-filled response forms. While this is good for creating a copyright culture also among non-specialists, it also strengthens the impression that consultations are bound to become even more repositories of sclerotized data that can hardly be considered economic evidence (apparently the only real, acceptable type of evidence), if evidence at all. Besides well-known refrains on competitiveness and effectiveness of the EU single market, it is still unclear where EU copyright policy is heading. Moreover, it seems that asking repeatedly the same people might not help see the way. The next Commission will hopefully appreciate the actual legacy—if any—of these years spent consulting, as well as the quality of the data used to carry out the most recent (minor) reform agenda. But will it?


The gamma-ray burst (GRB) 080503 was classified as a short GRB with extended emission (Perley et al. 2009). The origin of such extended emission (found in about a quarter of Swift short GRBs) is still unclear and may provide some clues to the identity of the elusive progenitors of short GRBs. The extended emission from GRB080503 is followed by a rapid decay phase (RDP) that is detected over an unusually large dynamical range (one decade in time and � 3:5 decades in flux), making it ideal for studying the nature of the extended emission from short GRBs. We model the broad envelope of extended emission and the subsequent RDP using a physical model for the prompt GRB emission and its high latitude emission tail (Genet & Granot 2009), in which the prompt emission (and its tail) is the sum of its individual pulses (and their tails). For GRB080503, a single pulse fit is found to be unacceptable, even when ignoring short timescale variability. The RDP displays very strong spectral evolution and shows some evidence for the presence of two spectral components with different temporal behaviour, likely arising from distinct physical regions. A two pulse fit (a first pulse accounting for the gamma-ray extended emission and decay phase, and the second pulse accounting mostly for the X-ray decay phase) provides a much better (though not perfect) fit to the data. The shallow gamma-ray and steep hard X-ray decays are hard to account for simultaneously, and require the second pulse to deviate from the simplest version of the model we use. Therefore, while high latitude emission is a viable explanation for the RDP in GRB080503, it does not pass our tests with flying colors, and it is quite plausible that another mechanism is at work here. Finally, we note that the properties of the RDP following the extended emission of short GRBs (keeping in mind the very small number of well studied cases so far) appear to have different properties than that following the prompt emission of long GRBs. However, a larger sample of short GRBs with extended emission is required before any strong conclusion can be drawn.


Abstract : This research addresses the numerical distortion of features due to the presence of clouds in an image. The research aims to quantify the probability of a mismatch between two features in a single image, which will describe the likelihood that a visual navigation system incorrectly tracks a feature throughout an image sequence, leading to position miscalculations. First, an algorithm is developed for calculating transparency of clouds in images at the pixel level. The algorithm determines transparency based on the distance between each pixel color and the average pixel color of the clouds. The algorithm is used to create a dataset of cloudy aerial images. Matching features are then detected between the original and cloudy images, which allows a direct comparison between features with and without clouds. The transparency values are used to segment the detected features into three categories, based on whether the features are located in the regions without clouds, along edges of clouds, or with clouds. The error between features on the cloudy and cloud-free images is determined, and used as a basis for generating a synthetic dataset with statistically similar properties. Lastly, Monte Carlo techniques are used to nd the probability of mismatching.


A method based on the variation of the area ratio of the base surface of microlenses to the light-emitting surface of the planar OLED device has been demonstrated. This method can evaluate the performance of microlens arrays with a desired geometrical shape on the improvement of the luminance efficiency for the planar light emitting devices. The maximum enhancement of the luminance efficiency of the devices in the studied microlens arrays is 56%. It is also found that the improvement of the luminance efficiency of the devices increases linearly with decreasing base length of the microlens array.


Background: The debate over the optimum ways to reform organ donation and transplantation legislation has been underscored by individual countries' successes and failures. The availability of potential donors, transplantation infrastructure (capacity, coordination, and training), healthcare expenditures, and public awareness/attitudes have also been identified as contributing factors. Thus, legislative reform alone is not sufficient to optimally change donation rates. So this study was undertaken for promotion of organ donation through teaching programme to improve the knowledge and attitude of college students. Aim: To assess the effect of structured teaching programme regarding organ donation on knowledge and attitude among 1st year B.Sc Nursing students. Methods and Material: Pre experimental design was adopted for this study. 60 samples were selected by purposive sampling technique. The data was collected by using self structured questionnaire and three point likert scale developed by the researcher. The tool was validated by experts and the reliability was established through the test-retest method. The pilot study was conducted on 6 subjects of Rajiv Gandhi College of Nursing, Jammu. The Karl Pearson's coefficient of correlation was computed and the reliability was found to be 0.80 for knowledge and 0.90 for attitude. The tool was administered for pre test to 60 1st year B.Sc Nursing students of BEE ENN College of Nursing, Jammu. Teaching programme was administered and after a gap of one week, retest was given. The collected data was tabulated, analyzed and interpreted by using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The findings showed that the pre-test knowledge i.e, 31(51.76%) had inadequate knowledge and 29 (48.3%) had moderately adequate knowledge whereas in post-test, 51(85%) had adequate knowledge and 9 (15%) had moderately adequate knowledge. And the attitude, in pre-test 25 (41.7%) had neutral and 35 (58.3%) had negative attitude. The post-test attitude revealed that all subjects i.e, 60 (100%) had positive attitude. Paired't' test was applied to assess the effect of teaching programme on attitude of subjects. The obtained't' value was found to be highly significant at the level of p < 0.05. It was inferred that the 1st year B.Sc Nursing students exposed to the planned teaching program had significant increase in post-test knowledge and attitude. There was no significant association between the post test level of knowledge and attitude of 1st year B.Sc Nursing students regarding organ donation with the selected demographic variables. The investigator feels that, organ donation is a social issue element. So the organ donation knowledge is not constrained with any of the demographic variables like age, religion, marital status and previous exposure about organ donation information. Conclusion: Better knowledge may ultimately translate into the act of donation. Effective measures should be taken to educate people with relevant information with the involvement of media, doctors and religious scholars.


The ancestral state of human skin pigmentation evolved in response to high ultraviolet radiation (UVR) stress. Some argue that pigmentation evolved to limit folate photolysis, therein limiting neural tube defects. Pigmentation also protects against sunburn which decreases the efficiency of sweating and potentiates skin infection. Pigmentation increases the efficacy of skin as a barrier to infection. Skin cancer has been rejected or minimized as a selective pressure because it is believed to have little or no effect on mortality during reproductive years. This argument ignores evidence of human longevity as a derived life history trait and the adaptive value of investment in offspring and kin, particularly during the post-reproductive lifespan. Opponents argue that lifespan in prehistoric hunter-gatherers was too short to be relevant to the evolution of skin pigmentation. This argument is flawed in that it relies on estimates of longevity at birth rather than adolescence. When appropriate estimates are used, it is clear that human longevity has a deep evolutionary history. We use a life history perspective to demonstrate the value of skin pigmentation as an adaptation to skin cancer with the following points: UVR exposure increases dysregulation of gene expression in skin cells leading to immortal cell lines; cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) affects individuals throughout reproductive years; and lifespan was longer than has previously been acknowledged, providing the opportunity for kin selection. This hypothesis is not at odds with the folate or barrier hypotheses. We stress that the evolution of skin pigmentation is complex and is an ongoing process.


We analyze the statistical performance of a recently proposed convex tensor decomposition algorithm. Conventionally tensor decomposition has been formulated as non-convex optimization problems, which hindered the analysis of their performance. We show under some conditions that the mean squared error of the convex method scales linearly with the quantity we call the normalized rank of the true tensor. The current analysis naturally extends the analysis of convex low-rank matrix estimation to tensors. Furthermore, we show through numerical experiments that our theory can precisely predict the scaling behaviour in practice.


`Low Cost Home Ownership' represents a package of policy measures which are part of government housing policy to extend home ownership. The package was outlined by the Department of the Environment in a publicity brochure entitled `A First Home' (1981) aimed at local authorities and housing associations. The different Low Cost Home Ownership measures have been pioneered and implemented at a local level as part of the government's wider strategy of privatising housing provision and consumption. This thesis is directly concerned with exploring the structure, substance and impact of Low Cost Home Ownership policy, in the context of Glasgow. The thesis is based on three levels of analysis, linked through a focus on policy and the role of the state at national and local levels. First, a preliminary level of analysis evaluates the success of Low Cost Home Owernship policy in its own terms. It is suggested, for example, that the term `low cost' home ownership is a misnomer in many cases. At a second level of analysis, the thesis examines the structure of policy, including the division between central and local levels of government, and the categorisation of policy as, for instance, housing or planning. A third level of analysis incorporates the substance of Low Cost Home Ownership policy. The underlying assumptions of the policy are analysed, particularly the tenure bias of Low Cost Home Ownership. Urban policy encompasses Low Cost Home Ownership policy measures in several cities, including Glasgow, and the thesis examines the functionalist objectives of population and socio economic stability in the city. In addition, Low Cost Home Ownership policy in Glasgow is aimed at widening tenure choice and meeting housing needs. An analysis of these policy objectives requires the conceptualisation of `choice' and `need' in housing policy and housing studies.


The spectacular success of deep generative models calls for quantitative tools to measure their statistical performance. Divergence frontiers have recently been proposed as an evaluation framework for generative models, due to their ability to measure the quality-diversity trade-off inherent to deep generative modeling. We establish non-asymptotic bounds on the sample complexity of divergence frontiers. We also introduce frontier integrals which provide summary statistics of divergence frontiers. We show how smoothed estimators such as Good-Turing or Krichevsky-Trofimov can overcome the missing mass problem and lead to faster rates of convergence. We illustrate the theoretical results with numerical examples from natural language processing and computer vision.


Variations in the course and branches of the musculocutaneous nerve and the absence of the nerve have been reported in the literature. During the routine dissection of a 65-year-old male cadaver, we observed a variant brachial plexus characterized by the absence of the musculocutaneous nerve bilaterally. The median nerve took over the area of supply of the musculocutaneous nerve by giving both the muscular and sensory branches. The coracobrachialis muscle was innervated by a branch of lateral cord bilaterally. From median nerve, two branches emerged: one to biceps brachii muscle and the other one to brachialis muscle, which continued as lateral cutaneous nerve of forearm. We also observed a communicating branch between ulnar and radial nerves at high humeral level at right side. A branch emerged from this communicating branch and innervated triceps brachii muscle. These variations have clinical significance during surgical procedures in brachial plexus block, diagnostic clinical neurophysiology.


cGMP is a second messenger that produces its effects by interacting with intracellular receptor proteins. In smooth muscle cells, one of the major receptors for cGMP is the serine/threonine protein kinase, cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG). PKG has been shown to catalyze the phosphorylation of a number of physiologically relevant proteins whose function it is to regulate the contractile activity of the smooth muscle cell. These include proteins that regulate free intracellular calcium levels, the cytoskeleton, and the phosphorylation state of the regulatory light chain of smooth muscle myosin. Other studies have shown that vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) that are cultured in vitro may cease to express PKG and will, coincidentally, acquire a noncontractile, synthetic phenotype. The restoration of PKG expression to the synthetic phenotype VSMC results in the cells acquiring a more contractile phenotype. These more recent studies suggest that PKG controls VSMC gene expression that, in turn, regulates phenotypic modulation of the cells. Therefore, the regulation of PKG gene expression appears to be linked to phenotypic modulation of VSMC. Because several vascular disorders are related to the accumulation of synthetic, fibroproliferative VSMC in the vessel wall, it is likely that changes in the activity of the nitric oxide/cGMP/PKG pathway is involved the development of these diseases.


New age practitioners and other alternative groups seek to create a heterotopia at a distance from mainstream society, and this necessitates some control over the use of media practices. To theorize the role of digital media in the making of a heterotopia, I have studied Ängsbacka, a community for alternative lifestyles, in a small mid-Swedish town. Using the concept of heterotopia as a starting point to understand how Ängsbacka functions as a space outside of mainstream society, I then use media theories about disconnection and the avoidance of context collapse in the analysis of their media practices. The analysis shows that the community has an ambivalent set of both explicit and implicit rules and norms aiming at both inclusion and exclusion of digital media. Studying the role of media use in the construction of a heterotopia adds new layers to the ongoing discussion about the use and non-use of digital media.


The thesis explores the impacts of being exposed to hate material online, so called cyberhate, using social psychological theories of group identity as a framework to explore victimisation experiences when targeted directly or witnessing others from the same identity group being targeted, known as indirect victimisation. Three papers examine these impacts with two commonly stigmatised groups; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people (LGB&T) and Muslims. Paper 1 reports the results from two online surveys about the nature of cyberhate experienced by these two groups. Results indicate it is a common and frequent problem occurring over a range of internet platforms and mediums and there are a number of negative emotional reactions and behavioural intentions similar to those reported by Intergroup Emotions Theory after group identity challenges. Paper 2 uses qualitative interviews with victims of cyberhate to gain a detailed understanding of the impacts of being victimised. Participants indicated that there is a level of resilience to being targeted as bad behaviour is expected online, but being exposed to hateful material causes many to take avoidance action, avoiding certain parts of the internet. Paper 3 presents the results of an innovative experimental study exposing members of the stigmatised groups and a control to hate material. Those viewing group specific hate material felt angrier than when just viewing generally unpleasant material. The current research finds that being targeted online has similar negative impacts to offline hate crime, both to those who are targeted directly but also those who are indirectly victimised.


BACKGROUND
Elucidating the mechanisms of naturally acquired immunity to Plasmodium falciparum infections would be highly valuable for malaria vaccine development. Asymptomatic multiclonal infections have been shown to predict protection from clinical malaria in a transmission-dependent manner, but the mechanisms underlying this are unclear. We assessed the breadth of antibody responses to several vaccine candidate merozoite antigens in relation to the infecting parasite population and clinical immunity.

METHODS
In a cohort study in Tanzania, 320 children aged 1-16 years who were asymptomatic at baseline were included. We genotyped P. falciparum infections by targeting the msp2 gene using polymerase chain reaction and capillary electrophoresis and measured antibodies to 7 merozoite antigens using a multiplex assay. We assessed the correlation between the number of clones and the breadth of the antibody response, and examined their effects on the risk of malaria during 40 weeks of follow-up using age-adjusted multivariate regression models.

RESULTS
The antibody breadth was positively correlated with the number of clones (RR [risk ratio], 1.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.32-2.02). Multiclonal infections were associated with a nonsignificant reduction in the risk of malaria in the absence of antibodies (RR, 0.83; 95% CI, .29-2.34). The breadth of the antibody response was significantly associated with a reduced risk of malaria in the absence of infections (RR, 0.25; 95% CI, .09-.66). In combination, these factors were associated with a lower risk of malaria than they were individually (RR, 0.14; 95% CI, .04-.48).

CONCLUSIONS
These data suggest that malaria vaccines mimicking naturally acquired immunity should ideally induce antibody responses that can be boosted by natural infections.


This work addresses the problem of weight drift in direct adaptive control of underdamped systems using a multilayer perceptron (backpropagation network). When the number of hidden units in the neural network is small, the modeling error causes severe weight drift. Weight drift can lead to a control effort that chatters about the origin, which may excite the system's natural frequency. For this type of system, the traditional robust weight update methods of e-modification and deadzone will sacrifice performance to prevent the weight drift. This paper proposes a new method that can prevent weight drift without sacrificing performance. A set of alternate weights is trained online to approximate the output of the original (control) weights. The design of the weight update law keeps the control weights from drifting too far from these alternate weights. A Lyapunov analysis proves the semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness of all signals. An experimental simulation, trajectory tracking of a two-link flexible-joint robot using the backstepping method, illustrates the improvement in performance compared to e-modification and deadzone. The new method not only achieves performance 10 times better than other methods, but also eliminates the chatter in the control as well.


In this review, we document end-of-life medical spending: its level, composition, funding, and contribution to aggregate medical spending. We discuss how end-of-life expenses affect household behavior and economic evidence on the efficacy of medical spending at the end of life. Finally, we document recent trends in health and chronic disease at older ages and discuss what they might imply for end-of-life spending and medical spending in the aggregate.


SLLS336B IMPORTANT NOTICE Texas Instruments Incorporated and its subsidiaries (TI) reserve the right to make corrections, modifications, enhancements, improvements, and other changes to its products and services at any time and to discontinue any product or service without notice. Customers should obtain the latest relevant information before placing orders and should verify that such information is current and complete. All products are sold subject to TI's terms and conditions of sale supplied at the time of order acknowledgment. TI warrants performance of its hardware products to the specifications applicable at the time of sale in accordance with TI's standard warranty. Testing and other quality control techniques are used to the extent TI deems necessary to support this warranty. Except where mandated by government requirements, testing of all parameters of each product is not necessarily performed. TI assumes no liability for applications assistance or customer product design. Customers are responsible for their products and applications using TI components. To minimize the risks associated with customer products and applications, customers should provide adequate design and operating safeguards. TI does not warrant or represent that any license, either express or implied, is granted under any TI patent right, copyright, mask work right, or other TI intellectual property right relating to any combination, machine, or process in which TI products or services are used. Information published by TI regarding third-party products or services does not constitute a license from TI to use such products or services or a warranty or endorsement thereof. Use of such information may require a license from a third party under the patents or other intellectual property of the third party, or a license from TI under the patents or other intellectual property of TI. Reproduction of information in TI data books or data sheets is permissible only if reproduction is without alteration and is accompanied by all associated warranties, conditions, limitations, and notices. Reproduction of this information with alteration is an unfair and deceptive business practice. TI is not responsible or liable for such altered documentation. Resale of TI products or services with statements different from or beyond the parameters stated by TI for that product or service voids all express and any implied warranties for the associated TI product or service and is an unfair and deceptive business practice. TI is not responsible or liable for any such statements.


Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) technology is omnipresent in the devices around us today, mainly used as passive bandpass filters in most radio systems like smartphones and TV antennas or as delay lines in telecommunications. More recently, the possibility to use SAW devices for wireless identification has surfaced and generated the first widespread applications such as on the highways in Norway over 2 decades ago. Their environmentally robust structure and passive use is very interesting for many applications in outdoor environments or chemically challenging places. It is possible to read many of them simultaneously and the amount of information that can be carried is much higher than printed barcodes. This semester project was aimed at learning how to design and fabricate an RFID device based on SAW technology in a cleanroom and trying to optimize the parameters of the device while reducing its size. Optical lithography tools with feature sizes down to 2 μm will help achieve this before E-Beam lithography can further decrease the features in scale of the structures involved in a SAW RFID tag. While creating an entire working wireless tag would take more time than available, the objective is to take this project as far as it can to pave the way for future students to search on this topic and increase knowledge about SAW devices.


The proliferation of golf courses in tourist areas in the Mediterranean has increased water needs substantially. The objective of this paper is to model the political process associated with water distribution decision-making in water-scarce areas. This has been done by developing a pressure group model. Results allow the relative importance of pressure group size and the relationship between size and resources devoted to political lobbying to be characterized. Empirical analysis confirms results of the model with respect to lobbying activities of golf promoters. The relative size of the different groups involved plays a significant role in the efforts made for political pressure. Water deficit becomes a very relevant variable suggesting that in water-scarce scenarios lobbying activity will be more important.


Background: Dyspnea is highly distressing experience of breathlessness that limits the activities of daily living and affects an increasingly large group of patients with respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Aims: The aim of our study was to investigate the prevalence of dyspnea and its associated factors in patients with COPD. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out among 221 COPD patients of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, Nepal. Patients' dyspnea was assessed using the modified Medical Research Council Dyspnea Scale and Dyspnea 12 Questionnaire. Patient's anxiety and depression were measured using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and COPD Assessment Test (CAT) was used to measure the impact of COPD. Mann–Whitney and Kruskal–Wallis test were used to find out the association between variables. Multiple regression analysis was used to find out the most significant factor associated with dyspnea. Results: Out of 221 patients, almost all (92.8%) patients had some degrees of dyspnea. Dyspnea was statistically significantly associated with age (P < 0.001), education (P < 0.001), marital status (P < 0.001), type of family (P = 0.009), working status (P < 0.001), duration of illness (P < 0.001), history of previous hospitalization (P < 0.001), status of hospitalization in the last year (P < 0.001), domiciliary oxygen therapy (P < 0.001), other comorbidities (P < 0.001), anxiety (P < 0.001), and depression (P < 0.001). Conclusions: This study concludes that dyspnea is highly prevalent in COPD, and duration of illness, depression, and CAT score were the most significant factors associated with dyspnea in patients with COPD.


The aim of this paper is to analyse Solow's model, introducing the consideration that steady state labour productivity (in efficiency units) and its determinans are not constant values, for a country over a given period of time. They are, in fact, time series with unit roots. First, the paper shows that Solow's model can be interpreted as an error correction model and it could be consistent with the stochastic nature of the variables. Secondly, implications about integration and coinstegration of the relevant series are tested. We use data coming from four countries over the period 1960-88. The error correction mechanism implied by Solow's model never appers to have been operative: convergence of current productivity towards its (stochastic) steady state path does not emerge in any considered case.


The Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa (Academic Alliance) was formed in response to issues such as lack of infrastructure, poverty, lack of political will, insufficient laboratory support, political corruption, lack of financial support from developed countries, insufficient health care delivery systems, lack of training and knowledge among African physicians of the multiple complexities of the care of HIV/AIDS, and others. This Alliance will be focused on designing clinical and prevention strategies that will be readily applicable to both rural and urban health centers throughout Africa. An integral part of the core mission of the Alliance is to enhance HIV/AIDS care in resource-limited settings. A multinational selection committee of representatives will review all applications. Clinical experience comprises 50% of the training program and is conducted in both inpatient and outpatient settings; it includes bedside teaching rounds, an overview of a systematic approach to HIV/AIDS care and management, home visitation for AIDS palliation, and exposure to community outreach programs in both HIV/AIDS care and prevention. In addition, a quarterly news-letter will be developed and distributed to graduates of the Academic Alliance training programs, HIV/AIDS care providers, and health care facilities throughout Africa that focuses on recent advances in HIV/AIDS care, treatment, and prevention. The primary purpose of the laboratory program is to provide virologic, immunologic, and microbiologic laboratory support for the care of HIV-infected patients.


Introduction: Two very different approaches, mindfulness—a state of open, non-judgmental awareness and attention towards ones experiences in the present moment—and web-based interventions—a way of delivering various health interventions in a cost efficient, flexible and yet efficacious manner—have been demonstrated to have promising effects on aspects of mental and physical health. Aims and method: In this randomised-controlled pilot study a 12 sessions (two modules, 6 days, 20 min per day), structured, self-guided web-based mindfulness training, incorporating audio and interactive visual material, was used to evaluate effects on well-being, perceived stress, mindfulness and mood. A two-group design using a wait-list included healthy adults (n=50), aged 20–73, who were recruited over the internet using a large number of e-mails. Results: Statistical analyses showed significant improvements for mindfulness, distress and negative affect following the training. The training showed to have a long-term impact on these measures, resulting in a further decrease reported in the 3-month follow-up. This study contributes to the growing body of research on mindfulness and web-based interventions alike, showing that a combination of both produces a feasible and promising intervention which could be used for reducing distress in a wider population as well as an adjunct for existing face-to-face and web-based interventions.