The question of cognitive differences between human populations is one of the most contentious issues in the study of human diversity. After reviewing the worldwide patterns of cognitive test performance, this article evaluates alternative causal hypotheses and evolutionary mechanisms. Racial affiliation and latitude correlate with IQ test performance, as does economic development. Religion, a history of colonialism, and a history of Communist rule are important in some cases. This article proposes mechanisms of gene-culture co-evolution that can explain the worldwide patterns. The genetic component of these mechanisms is likely to become testable with further advances in molecular genetics. Key Words: Evolution; Intelligence; Population genetics; Brain size; Race differences; Natural selection; Polymorphism; Mutational load; Geneculture coevolution. Population genetics is the study of genetic variation in human populations, and IQ population genetics is the population-level study of those genetic variations that influence mental ability. Admittedly, this field does not yet exist as an area of established scientific inquiry because hardly any of the genetic variations that influence human cognition in the nonpathological range are known at the present time. However, the first reports about intelligence-related genetic traits have appeared in the literature (Egan et al., 2001, 2003), and more information is likely to become available in the not too distant future. At this point in time we can only chart the worldwide variations in people's performance on standardized cognitive tests, and evaluate the plausibility of causal hypotheses. In this article I review the available evidence, not to advance one or another explanation but to provide a road map for future studies that will increasingly rely on the methods of molecular genetics. The Nature of Human Genetic Diversity When the genomes of two unrelated people are compared, about one in every 1200 nucleotides in their DNA is different: 2.5 million differences altogether. A disproportionate amount of this variation is in non-coding "junk DNA" and is presumably irrelevant for any phenotypic trait (Venter et ai, 2001). This level of genetic diversity is low when compared with other animal species. The only sensible explanation is that modern humans evolved from a relatively small population only recently. Over time, all small populations tend toward homogeneity because many of the less common genetic variants get lost by natural selection or by chance. Reconstructions of the history of mitochondrial DNA (Ingman et al., 2000), the Ychromosome (Underbill et al., 2001) and autosomal nuclear DNA (Marth et al., 2003) all converge on the conclusion that our ancestors emerged from a moderately severe population bottleneck sometime between 50,000 and 150,000 years ago, at roughly the time when physically modern Homo sapiens began spreading over the world. Both genetic evidence (Irigmari et al., 2000; Underbill et al, 2001; Zhivotovsky et al., 2003) and the fossil record (White et al., 2003) point to Africa as the likely homeland of our species. According to the most widely accepted scenario, one or more subgroups of early modern humans left Africa between 120,000 and 100,000 years ago to become the ancestors of the non-African populations. This implies that most of the "racial" variation we see today evolved in this short time period. For example, population-level differences in climate-selected traits such as skin color can have evolved only after the spread of modern humans out of the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa and South Asia. Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., Menozzi, P and Piazza, A. (1994) The History and Geography of Human Genes., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (p. 156) state that Homo Sapiens migrated into the Near East about 100,000 bp. and were in China by 60,000 bp. A similar time scale applies to the evolution of possible cognitive differences between human populations. …


For those who approach Buddhism as a system of mental development, this book is a reliable and accessible guide to understanding the significance of themes from the Pali discourses. Themes include grasping, right view, craving, passion, contemplation of feeling, happiness, and liberation. A rare combination of scholarly rigour and extensive meditation experience from the author provides veracity to these studies and explorations.


When a free-falling liquid droplet is hit by a laser it experiences a strong ablation-driven pressure pulse. Here we study the resulting droplet deformation in the regime where the ablation pressure duration is short, i.e. comparable to the time scale on which pressure waves travel through the droplet. To this end, an acoustic analytic model for the pressure, pressure impulse and velocity fields inside the droplet is developed in the limit of small density fluctuations. This model is used to examine how the droplet deformation depends on the pressure pulse duration while the total momentum to the droplet is kept constant. Within the limits of this analytic model, we demonstrate that when the total momentum transferred to the droplet is small the droplet shape evolution is indistinguishable from an incompressible droplet deformation. However, when the momentum transfer is increased the droplet response is strongly affected by the pulse duration. In this later regime, compressed flow regimes alter the droplet shape evolution considerably.


Bacl<.ground The medical schemes industry has been characterised by extreme uncertainty in recent times. Industry turbulence can be attributed to a number of factors that have impacted on the manner in which business is conducted. Amongst these the most significant is the change in legislation that has occurred in the laws governing the administration of medical schemes. The industry is characterised by an increasing number of schemes competing for a finite number of profitable customers. In light of these changes, it was thought prudent to investigate the consumer behaviour characteristics surrounding this industry. Objectives The objective of the study was to determine the factors that influence consumers to choose particular medical schemes over others. To this end it was hypothesised that four factors, namely price, benefits offered, ancillary benefits and broker influence played significant role in the decision making process of consumers . Methods Data was collected using a research questionnaire. This questionnaire was issued to respondents who had recently purchased, or attempted to purchase medical cover. Contact was made with the respondents via a snowball sampling method, using insurance brokers as points of contact. The questionnaire was composed of a mixture of open ended, dichotomous and disconfirmation scale type questions . Results Of the four factors that were hypothesised to significantly influence consumers in their choice of medical schemes, it was found that two were proved correct. These being, the benefits offered and the price of the offering respectively. The third hypothesis, the effect of an ancillary benefits programme was found to influence the consumer in their choice, however respondents did not regard the programmes as vital. They did however indicate that they tried to purchase cover that included an ancillary benefits programme. The final hypothesis was disproved as it was found that consumers did not always follow the recommendations of the broker in choosinz a o


Fairness is an important performance criterion in all resource allocation schemes, including those in distributed computer systems. However, it is often specified only qualitatively. The quantitative measures proposed in the literature are either too specific to a particular application, or suffer from some undesirable characteristics. In this paper, we have introduced a quantitative measure called Indiex of FRairness. The index is applicable to any resource sharing or allocation problem. It is independent of the amount of the resource. The fairness index always lies between 0 and 1. This boundedness aids intuitive understanding of the fairness index. For example, a distribution algorithm with a fairness of 0.10 means that it is unfair to 90% of the users. Also, the discrimination index can be defined as 1 - fairness index.


There has been considerable interest and sometimes concern for teenage parents. This interest has developed for two reasons, firstly, it has been viewed that teenage parents are inappropriately young to have children, and secondly, it has popularly been thought that the number of female teenagers becoming pregnant and subsequently giving birth to children has dramatically increased over the last twenty years. Much of this attention has focused on the young mother, because she has been thought to shoulder the major responsibility for looking after the child. This is not untypical of research on parenting which has adopted a mother biased approach, although there has been a more recent interest in the fathers. The object of this study was to examine the experiences of one hundred young fathers, aged seventeen to twenty two, who were regularly involved with their infant. The fathers were interviewed at home and data was collected on all aspects of their family participation.

Younger fathers appeared to be an extremely disadvantaged group, many had few or no formal qualifications and during a period of high general unemployment a disproportionate number of the sample were unemployed. The financial responsibilities of fatherhood placed added burdens on this group and restricted many of the opportunities that should have been available to men of this age.

Contrary to popular opinion the young fathers interviewed often had long standing relationships with the mother and were highly psychologically involved with their children; although they were not always highly participant in child care activities. As with research on older fathers, younger fathers were shown not to take on the major responsibilities of caring for children, even though some (those who were unemployed) had a greater opportunity to do so. They reported being interested and involved at every stage of the child's life, even during the periods when circumstances made it more difficult for them to be highly participant; the nature of this involvement changed as the needs of the mother and the child altered. However because of their age, and as a consequence their lack of preparation, many young fathers and mothers had to negotiate a turbulent period which was sometimes very stressful. This study suggests that although being young in itself does not necessarily cause younger parents to be qualitatively different from older parents, it does indicate that they face more problems which because of their age they may be more vulnerable to.


Number of ICU beds is one in the important indexes of providing health care for the critically ill patients around the world. Lack of ICU beds may delay admission to ICU and causes patients' poorer prognosis [1]. There are 20 and 15 ICU beds/100,000 inhabitants in the USA and Canada respectively. In European countries including Germany, France and UK the number of ICU beds per 100,000 persons is 25, 10 and less than 5 respectively [2]. In Iran, based on the available data, the number of ICU beds per 100,000 population is1-1.5.A neighboring country, Turkey has 2.5 beds per 100,000 inhabitants. In Asian countries including South Korea, Japan and China there are 10.5,13 and less than 5 beds per 100,000 population, respectively [3]. Occupancy rate of ICU beds in Iran is 100%. Regarding to the limitation of available resources, allocation of these resources in the best way for improvement of patients' care is mandatory. Two common approaches for ICU admission and discharge are based on the disease type and priority. However this approach may weaken physicians' clinical judgment. Based on these data, a local protocol following a multidisciplinary consensus is provided in Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex, Tehran, Iran, for an improvement in benefits from the ICU care. This is a local prioritization system that is implemented in Imam Khomeini Hospital. For preparing the protocol, number of ICU beds, health care provider staff, financial resources, patients'family support and outpatient facilities have been considered. The primary goal of this protocol is identifying patients who will be receiving the highest (priority 1) and least (priority 4) benefits from the ICU care. In this protocol candidate patients for ICU care are categorized as following: [4-5] 1. This group is benefited more than the others. They have not any baseline disease. Thanks to trained staff and other facilities such as fluid therapy and invasive monitoring, usage of vasoactive drugs or mechanical ventilation, they have high cure probability. Example: Patient in hemodynamic instability or shock conditions who needs vasoactive drugs and invasive monitoring. II.      Patient who needs mechanical ventilation. 2. Patients in this group have a compensated state and do not need mechanical ventilation or invasive intervention but they are in an impending state of decompensation. Example: High risk post-operative patients. II.      Ongoing (continuation of) Diabetic Keto Acidosis despite adequate therapy. III.    Drug overdosage. IV.    Acute pulmonary edema. V.      An acute asthmatic attack before intubation and a need for ventilator support. VI.    Iatrogenic complication following diagnostic or therapeutic intervention. 3. Acutely unstable patients with poor prognostic conditions due to concomitant chronic diseases or severity of acute illnesses. These patients benefit from the ICU care for a short time following intubation or cardiopulmonary resuscitation and they have poor chance of cure. Example: End stage cardiac or pulmonary diseases complicated with an acute process. Progressive cancer without improvement in spite of chemotherapy with an acute superimposed disease. III.    Progressive cirrhosis presented with sepsis IV.    Dialysis dependent renal failure patients presenting with sepsis V.      I.V. drug abusers who are presented with an acute medical or surgical disease. 4. Progressive irreversible disease that benefits only from palliative care. I.       Incurable progressive cancer patient II.      Severe irreversible brain damage III.    Irreversible multi organ failure IV.    Permanent vegetative state


Logic alone does not dictate the structure of inference and proof in trials. Trials are part of a social process, and the structure of proof in trials is influenced by many factors other than logic. However, logic (of various kinds and varying degrees of formality) does usually influence proof in trials to some extent. The role of logic (broadly understood) in determining the structure of proof in trials is constrained by the character of the human being as an intelligent evolving organism. The structure of proof in a specific proof system may furnish hints and clues about the how such an organism can and should deliberate productively about evidence. The argument of the paper has an Aristotelian tinge. The argument also has a hyper-modern tinge because the paper draws on AI literature for inspiration. (The concept of an organism plays an important role in both Aristotelian philosophy and in some strands of hyper-modern AI theorizing.) One important implication of the premise that the human creature is an intelligent evolving organism is that evidential inference necessarily involves subterranean, or "tacit," sensory, cognitive, conceptual, and logical processes. Another important implication of a neo-Aristotelian vision of the human organism is that human "information processing" can and does both evolve and emerge (to some degree) into consciousness over time. A third important implication is that conscious deliberation can to some extent (but only to a limited extent) manage and coordinate the workings of submerged sensory, cognitive, and logical processes -- and there is no paradox in supposing that this is so. Whether human beings, human societies, and methods of factual proof in trials are gradually becoming more rational and inferentially efficient as well as more humane is unknowable. But there is reason to hope that this is the case.


A theoretical study that follows the lines of previous photonic band structure investigations has been undertaken in search of a two-dimensional (2D) periodic dielectric structure that exhibits a certain type of photonic band structure for application as an external feedback mirror for laser diode arrays and broad-area devices. Instead of looking for an absolute band gap for a band of frequencies, we are particularly interested in structures that exhibit only stop bands, i.e., bands with a narrow extent in both frequency and angle. This type of reflecting structure, which can also be termed a 2D Bragg reflector, could provide improved mode control for both longitudinal and transverse characteristics of the modes for these devices. Our study, which employed photonic band structure calculational methods, showed that square lattice dielectric structures exhibit such stop bands for both TE and TM waves and could be used as photonic band structure mirrors to induce better mode control.


BACKGROUND
The physical and psychosocial environments in nursing homes influence the residents' everyday life as well as their well-being and thriving. The staff's perceptions of and relationships with the residents are crucially important to quality care. Quality care is described often as person-centred. Few measurement tools exist that focus on person-centred care in nursing homes.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Norwegian version of the Person-centred Climate Questionnaire-Staff version (PCQ-S).

DESIGN
This study had a cross-sectional survey design.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTINGS
Two hundred and nine healthcare and support staff in five nursing homes in the eastern part of Norway.

METHODS
The Swedish PCQ-S was translated into Norwegian with forward and backward translation. The relevance of the items included in the questionnaire was assessed by an expert panel of 10 nursing home care staff, because the questionnaire has not been used in this context previously. A psychometric evaluation using statistical estimates of validity and reliability was performed. The discriminatory capacity of the questionnaire was also tested.

RESULTS
The content validity index was satisfactory (0.78). The PCQ-S showed high internal consistency reliability in that Cronbach's α was satisfactory for the total scale (0.92) and the three subscales (0.81, 0.89 and 0.87). The test-retest reliability was also satisfactory as evident from a Spearman's correlation coefficient of 0.76 (p < 0.01) between the total PCQ scores at test and retest. The Norwegian version retained the original factor structure of the Swedish version.

CONCLUSION
As the psychometric evaluation showed satisfactory validity and reliability scores, this study supports the Norwegian version of the PCQ-S when applied to a sample of nursing home staff.


One of the most important standard-setting organizations in the world is the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), an arm of the United Nations based in Geneva, Switzerland. This chapter will discuss the role of and process for standardization in the ITU with respect to spectrum and satellite management - two aspects that will become increasingly important for the Future Generation of Information and Communications Technology. In particular, we will focus on the ITU-R, the ITU organization that deals with radio and spectrum management. We will consider the role of the ITU in broader terms through its increasingly prominent role in the standardization of spectrum management matters related to satellites. In conclusion, we will see the ITU's role in spectrum management has been quite effective with regards to satellite and space law. However, we will also see that ITU's future ability to be effective in this area will depend on: (1) the organization's willingness to distance itself from the centralized planning notions that arise from its command-and-control approach to spectrum allocation and allotment and (2) an ensuing increased commitment by the United States to the ITU's processes.


As the Journal of Micropalaeontology enters its second decade, the editorial board has taken the opportunity to introduce some changes in its format. You may have already noticed the different layout of the title pages and the way in which text wraps around diagrams; we have also changed the font and font size, and are using more bold lettering in the systematics sections and explanation of plates. We hope that these changes will make the Journal easier to read. We also considered publication on matt paper, and thanks to the helpfulness of the printer were able to compare plates printed on different paper; however the editorial board was unanimous in deciding to keep with glossy paper because detail was clearly lost when plates were printed on matt. The end of one decade and the start of a new one is always a time for reflection. The Journal is a valuable vehicle for the publication of systematic work, and this will remain its primary role. However, the editors would like to see the submission of more of the "ideas" type of paper. Some thoughts on this are offered here. The first of what is hoped to be a series, "Essays in Micropalaeontology", is published in this part. The format is intended for short critiques, opinions, or discussion of topics which are of interest to a wide audience. They may deal with a particular group of micro-organisms, but the content should be of general interest to most micropalaeontologists. John Haynes has opened. . .


Comments are an integral part of software development; they are natural language descriptions associated with source code elements. Understanding explicit associations can be useful in improving code comprehensibility and maintaining the consistency between code and comments. As an initial step towards this larger goal, we address the task of associating entities in Javadoc comments with elements in Java source code. We propose an approach for automatically extracting supervised data using revision histories of open source projects and present a manually annotated evaluation dataset for this task. We develop a binary classifier and a sequence labeling model by crafting a rich feature set which encompasses various aspects of code, comments, and the relationships between them. Experiments show that our systems outperform several baselines learning from the proposed supervision.


The Malaysian economy has undergone substantial industrial transformation, shifting from primary commodity production to manufacturing in slightly more than 5 decades since achieving independence. However, efforts to deepen manufacturing development have not succeeded in nurturing a critical mass of domestic entrepreneurs with indigenous innovative capacities as industrialization continues to be dependent on imported technology and capital. Instead, the manufacturing sector is facing premature deindustrialization. In view of these developments, this study aims to assess the extent of industrial deepening in a country through the development of linkages, as well as the key factors that have contributed to this. This has important policy lessons for other developing countries that are following similar export-oriented, foreign direct investment-led strategies for their industrial development. The main findings of this study indicate that while trade and investment policies have contributed to the development of the manufacturing sector, they have also fostered closer integration with the rest of the world rather than within the domestic economy. The electrical and electronics subsector has relatively weaker backward linkages than other subsectors in the economy. Deepening internal integration requires complementary labor, human capital, and technology policies that can facilitate the development of linkages in the manufacturing sector.


Although there is continuous advice to increase consumption of dietary fibre, the intake of dietary fibre by individuals remains inadequate. Bread is potentially a major source of dietary fibre in the population; however, a factor mitigating against adequate consumption of high fibre bread is the damage caused by the fibre to the aerated structures of bread, which is key to its palatability and appeal. Wheat bran is a rich source of dietary fibre but its presence in wholemeal bread damages the aerated structures and lessens its appeal.

Addition of wheat bran and other sources of dietary fibre to bread tends to give decreased dough strength and loaf volume, impaired crumb structure and reduced crumb softness. Potential mechanisms reported in the literature by which bran exerts its deleterious effects include dilution of the gluten protein, mechanical disruption of gluten films, and starch gelatinisation at a lower temperature during baking (as a consequence of the increased water availability) giving less oven spring and lower loaf volumes. The particle size of the wheat bran mediates its detrimental effect, with smaller particles generally giving finer crumb textures, although not necessarily producing larger loaf volumes or the most appealing or healthy bread.

However, the full complexity of the effects of bran within the range of dough formulations and breadmaking processes is not yet understood, making it hard to find ways to produce acceptable high-fibre breads. Meanwhile, another potential new class of fibre-based bakery ingredient are Arabinoxylans (AX) which can be extracted from biorefinery by-products such as wheat bran, oat bran and sugarcane bagasse. AX can have either beneficial or detrimental effects on the dough depending on the type or level of AX used. This thesis therefore presents work to understand effects of bran and AX on dough aeration and rheology in order to better understand their effects in bread.

The effects of ethanol and retardation time (over 18 hours at 4°C) were investigated with the use of the Dynamic Dough Density (DDD) system, to investigate the hypothesis that retardation affected dough expansion through the production of ethanol by the yeast during the retardation period, and to demonstrate the sensitivity and usefulness of the DDD system prior to its use to investigate fibre effects in doughs. The addition of ethanol even at small levels decreased the maximum expansion of dough, while retardation showed the reverse, giving an increase in maximum dough expansion over time. It was therefore concluded that the effects of retardation did not arise as a result of ethanol. The DDD system proved a sensitive discriminator of these effects.

The Solvent Retention Capacity (SRC) test was used to determine the effect of fibre addition on water absorption. The SRC test uses four solvents to distinguish effects related to protein, starch damage and pentosans. The test was sensitive to addition of bran and AX, but its interpretation was ambiguous as it is conventionally used for characterising white flours.

Rheological studies were carried out using creep-recovery measurements and the expansion capabilities of dough formulations were investigated using the DDD system. Bread doughs were found to be less compliant with an increase in the level of fibre added; AX also inhibited the expansion capacity of bread doughs.

Bread aeration and dough rheology were investigated simultaneously by varying processing and ingredient factors during mixing. Dough aeration was quantified using dough density measurements, while dough rheology was characterised under dynamic oscillatory deformations using a Kinexus rheometer. Doughs were prepared using a bench top Minorpin mixer and a high-speed laboratory scale Tweedy 1 mixer. The high-speed Tweedy 1 mixer developed the gluten network better, leading to greater DDD expansion than the doughs produced from the Minorpin mixer. Dough formulations containing wheat bran gave less expansion in the DDD system. Dough formulations containing AX from wheat bran and from sugarcane bagasse also decreased DDD expansion, more so for AX from bagasse that wheat bran. Bread loaf volume decreased in all formulations with added fibre.

The current work has expanded understanding of the effects of fibre on aspects of dough and bread quality: aeration and rheology of doughs, water absorption, expansion of doughs, and baked loaf volume.


Testing a computer system is a challenging task, both due to the large number of possible test cases and the limited resources allocated for testing activities. This means that only a subset of all possible test cases can be chosen to test a system, and therefore the decision on the selection of test cases becomes important. The result of static analysis of a system can be used to help with this decision, in the context of model-based development of systems, this means that the analysis performed on a system model can be used to prioritize and guide the testing efforts. Furthermore, since models allow expression of non-functional requirements (such as performance, timing and security), model-guided testing can be used to direct testing towards specific parts of the system which have large impact on such requirements. In this paper, we focus on modeling and trade-off analysis of non-functional requirements and how static analysis helps to identify problematic parts of a system and thus guide the selection of test cases to target such parts.


One of the requirements of agile manufacturing, the necessity to gain flexibility, can be reached by using a supplier network. A possible way to develop a supplier network is by subcontracting to parties in industrialising countries. In most cases, it is necessary to transfer technology. The aircraft industry is an industry in which such technology transfer frequently takes place. This research project examined the process and consequences of technology transfer in the field of manufacturing. Four case studies were carried out in the aircraft industry. The case studies showed that there are two types of technology transfer technology selling and technology sharing. Technology sharing frequently takes place in the aircraft industry. The results indicate that "Destination Companies" hardly benefited technologically from technology sharing because the Destination Company is selected for its existing capabilities. In addition, it is questionable whether production technology transfer contributes to economic growth for industrially developing countries. "Source Companies" that want to work towards agile manufacturing have limited options for technology transfer towards industrially developing countries due to the requirements placed upon the capabilities of the Destination Company and the infrastructure requirements for countries.


IES 3 Professional Skills, issued by the International Federation of Accountants in 2003, lists five essential skills that professional accountants need to acquire: intellectual, technical and functional, personal, interpersonal and communication, and organisational and business management skills. In education programmes, accounting students may be required to work in teams and may therefore acquire some of these skills through the team experience. IES 8, Competence requirements for audit professionals, includes "working in teams effectively" and "presenting, discussing, and defending views effectively through formal, informal, written, and spoken communication" as part of the skills requirement which should be included in the education and development programme for audit professionals. Working in teams, or cooperative learning, is a teaching technique used in the formal education phase, which enables students to acquire some of these skills. The paper uses the results of a questionnaire survey to investigate how teams function in an accounting project. Although the results indicate that skills such as meeting management and interpersonal skills have a positive effect on the students' satisfaction with the team, no link could be found to the students' project mark. These results suggest that skills such as meeting management and interpersonal skills, if included in the formal education phase, may contribute positively to students' career preparedness. The study also found that students did not consider peer assessment appropriate.


Current graph representation (GR) algorithms require huge demand of human experts in hyperparameter tuning, which significantly limits their practical applications, leading to an urge for automated graph representation without human intervention. Although automated machine learning (AutoML) serves as a good candidate for automatic hyperparameter tuning, little literature has been reported on automated graph presentation learning and the only existing work employs a black-box strategy, lacking insights into explaining the relative importance of different hyperparameters. To address this issue, we study explainable automated graph representation with hyperparameter importance in this paper. We propose an explainable AutoML approach for graph representation (e-AutoGR) which utilizes explainable graph features during performance estimation and learns decorrelated importance weights for different hyperparameters in affecting the model performance through a non-linear decorrelated weighting regression. These learned importance weights can in turn help to provide more insights in hyperparameter search procedure. We theoretically prove the soundness of the decorrelated weighting algorithm. Extensive experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of our proposed e-AutoGR model against state-of-the-art methods in terms of both model performance and hyperparameter importance explainability. Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. Correspondence to: Xin Wang <xin firstname.lastname@example.com>, Wenwu Zhu <email@example.com>. Proceedings of the 38 th International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 139, 2021. Copyright 2021 by the author(s).


Distance—physical, material distance—is an obviously spatial concept, but one rarely engaged by legal or feminist geographers. We take up this oversight in relation to the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, which adjudicated the constitutionality of a Texas law that imposed new regulations on abortion providers. Because half of the state's abortion providers were unable to meet these regulations and thus closed, the distance that many Texas women had to travel for abortion services increased dramatically. In part because of these increases, the Supreme Court ultimately determined that the Texas laws imposed an unconstitutional "undue burden." Bringing together case law and ethnographic data, this article traces the process by which distance is made legally "legible" in the context of reproductive injustice. In so doing, it confronts more uneasy realities of distance, including the discursive dismissal of social and literal immobility and isolation; contradictory readings of "emptiness"; and the material spatiality of distance through the nonplace-ness of rural areas. Together, these factors illuminate a more significant distance, namely the epistemic and social distance that exists between the legal performance of distance in litigation and the embodied traversal of distance by a woman seeking an abortion in Texas. Prioritizing rural distance as material, legal and gendered, our work engages and augments the nascent field of feminist legal geographies. It likewise challenges legal geographers' insistence on urban space by uncovering the ways in which even the relative "emptiness" of distance is intimately consequential. Finally, this paper makes connections between the exercise of the abortion right and the exercise of other rights that implicate distance, most notably the right to vote. Just as abortion regulations have often had the effect of requiring women to travel farther for abortion services, voter ID laws have the effect of requiring voters to travel to a public agency in order to secure the requisite identity document. Other voting regulations and state and local voting practices may similarly impose spatial burdens on voters. We thus assert that what Whole Woman's Health reveals about making distance legally cognizable finds ready legal application in other contexts.


Blepharoplasty is one of the most common cosmetic surgeries performed on the male patient. Whereas in the past the male patient would present later in life for eyelid surgery to address functional issues, he now presents earlier in life with an interest in aesthetic improvement as the primary motivating factor. This article reviews the approach of the senior author (SWP) to rejuvenation of the lower eyelid complex. Specifically, we discuss the indications for and techniques of the transcutaneous and transconjunctival approaches for blepharoplasty. As well, adjunctive procedures for rejuvenation of the lower eyelid complex, including fat transposition, lateral canthoplasty, and skin resurfacing, are reviewed.


Specifying the content of a requirement or a prohibition up front — e.g. replacing a "reasonable speed" requirement with a fifty-five miles per hour speed limit — can make life easier for enforcers and citizens alike. Recent efforts to substitute international tax rules for decades-old standards may do just the opposite, jeopardizing the "miracle" that is today's international tax regime. Enhanced information exchange and formulary apportionment will undermine the legitimacy that is essential to the success of any international legal regime. A better solution would overhaul the century-old benefits principle to weave enforcement deep into the fabric of the international tax regime. Only then will it meet today's tests as successfully as it once rose to the challenge of double taxation.


The equiatomic TiNiSi type tetrelides YTX (space group Pnma) with T = Ni, Ir and X = Si, Ge, Sn, Pb were synthesized from the elements by arc-melting or via high-frequency-melting of the elements in sealed niobium ampoules. All samples were characterized by powder X-ray diffraction using the Guinier technique. The structures of YNiGe, YNiPb, YIrSi, YIrGe, and YIrSn were refined from single crystal X-ray diffractometer data. The YTX tetrelides are characterized by a three-dimensional [TX] network that consists of puckered T3X3 hexagons with T-X distances in the order of the sums of the covalent radii. YIrSi and YIrGe show a reverse occupancy of the T and X sites with respect to the remaining YTX compounds, which is most likely a size effect. Solid state NMR studies reveal the sensitivity of (89)Y Knight shifts to electronic structure details. A monotonic dependence on the tetrelide Pauling electronegativity is observed in addition. The stannides YTSn (T = Ni, Rh, Ir, Pt) were further characterized by (119)Sn Mössbauer spectroscopy. They show single signals that are subjected to quadrupole splitting. Comparison of the isomer shifts with the whole series of YTSn stannides gives no hint of obvious correlations as a consequence of the valence electron count but reveals a systematic decrease with atomic number within a given group.


Domestic violence is a national health crisis, which affects people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic classes. Traumatic brain injury is common in victims because of the high frequency of head and neck injuries inflicted through abuse. These recurrent injuries can lead to chronic symptoms with high morbidity. We conducted a retrospective chart review of 115 patients with a history of head trauma as a result of domestic violence. All patients were seen in a subspecialty traumatic brain injury clinic, at which time information regarding their histories and self-reported symptoms were recorded. In total, 109 females and 6 males were included in our study, with an age range of 4-68 years. Overall, 88% reported more than one injury and 81% reported a history of loss of consciousness associated with their injuries. Only 21% sought medical help at the time of injury. Whereas 85% had a history of abuse in adulthood, 22% had experienced abuse in both childhood and adulthood, and 60% of the patients abused as children went on to be abused as adults. Headache was the most common chief complaint, but on a self-reported symptom severity scale, behavioral symptoms were the most severe. Psychiatric disease was present in 84% of patients. Traumatic brain injury is a frequent sequela of domestic violence, from which many victims sustain multiple injuries without seeking medical care. Brain injuries are often sustained over many years and lead to lasting physical, behavioral, and cognitive consequences. Better understanding of these injuries will lead to improved care for this population.


The reach and power of Swinburne's irony in Atalanta in Calydon remains unexamined and unappreciated. From its initial reception in 1865, the poem has been recognized for its compelling, virtuosic prosody, its theological provocativeness, its exquisite relationship to Greek tragedy, and its pervasive concerns with fate, love, the treacherous-wonderful net of kinship, and with our inescapable mortalities. Together with Poems and Ballads, published the following year, it established Swinburne as a masterful, challenging, deeply learned, often heretical and offending, and clearly untrammeled acolyte of the muses. Atalanta invited specific discussions of its Greekness. Had Swinburne produced the most successful, trenchant English drama in the Greek mode; was it importantly flawed; was his Erechtheus perhaps more authentic? These issues variously occupied and fascinated a number of classically-trained Swinburne critics. Especially in the burst of commentaries on Atalanta in the 1920s and early 30s, the depth of his knowledge of Greek tragedy and his ability to recreate it were debated. Marion Wier's published doctoral dissertation, The Influence of Aeschylus and Euripides on the Structure and Content of Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon and Erechtheus (1920), initiated the contending appraisals. Wier simply aligns passages from the three playwrights to suggest parallels. Others, such as William Rutland and Samuel Chew, are more venturesome in their discussions. (1) Certain assertions emerge as unarguable: Swinburne was an extraordinarily accomplished classicist; the concerns and even the tone of his drama are consonant with those of the ancients; and the exuberance and sensual playfulness of his prosody and very likely the attitude he assigns to his Chorus (of Calydonian maidens) depart from the conventions of G reek tragedy. Swinburne announced his admiration for Aeschylus and his disdain for Euripides. To those who had bristled that Swinburne violated the strict, spare classical form, Kenneth Haynes more recently responded that they were mistakenly accepting Winckelmann's Greece: "light," "definite," "precise." He sees in the poem the wilder, more embellished style of Aeschylus, adding that "Swinburne found in Aeschylus a language that can be used to express disintegration." "Complementing what I see as the central role of irony," Haynes continues, "'division' and its cognates are key words in Atalanta." (2) The story of Atalanta, Althea, and Meleager, as Rutland and C. M. Bowra point out, was one of antiquity's best known legends, retold from Homer to Ovid. (3) Sophocles and Euripides each wrote a "Meleager" play and Aeschylus an "Atalanta," all of which--perhaps fortuitously for Swinburne--survive only in the meagerest of fragments (Bowra, p. 223). Sidestepping the question of how exact Swinburne's scholarship actually was, the amalgam fused into Atalanta is astonishing. Within a luxuriantly lyrical dramatic poem (hardly a familiar quality of Attic tragedy), he achieves a cohesive and coherent simulation of a Greek drama. Distorting what would likely be expressed by a traditional chorus, Swinburne manages to berate whatever gods may be--in a manner that reproduces the attitudes associated, for example, with Sophocles. As Rutland observes, "Atalanta in Calydon is a symphony on the favorite theme of Greek tragedy--'Call no man happy while he lives'" (pp. 172-173). He particularly reminds us of Sophocles's comment in Oedipus at Colonus: "The happiest lot is never to have been born" (p. 189). Bowra suggests Swinburne's drama was "his tribute to Aeschylus and Sophocles, his attempt to reproduce the poetical spirit which he found in both of them" (p. 223). The models, influences, themes, imagery, and prosody of Atalanta have been frequently discussed. There was a modern renascence of interest in Swinburne, probably seeded by John Rosenberg's 1967 article for Victorian Studies (which became the Introduction to the Modern Library volume of the Selected Poetry), followed in 1971 by this journal's double issue dedicated to the poet, and then Jerome McGann's beguiling conversation, Swinburne: An Experiment in Criticism (1972). …


ABSTRACT This Article calls on Congress and the state legislatures to grant large cities and counties standing to enforce the Federal Trade Commission Act (the FTC Act) and its state statutory counterparts (or little Acts). The FTC Act, a federal law, prohibits businesses from engaging in any "unlawful, "unfair," or "deceptive" acts or practices, and the little Acts apply similarly broad prohibitions in all fifty states. This fifty-one-statute consumer protection regime--which has been the law of the land for several decades--carries enormous promise to halt a wide range of unlawful and harmful corporate practices in their earliest stages. Unfortunately, that promise has not been fulfilled because these laws are chronically under-enforced. At present, only one federal agency--the Federal Trade Commission--has broad standing to enforce the FTC Act; while state Attorneys General and consumers typically have standing to enforce the little Acts, they cannot keep up with the rate of corporate malfeasance. This Article argues that the nation's legislatures should invite cities and counties with populations over 50,000 into consumer protection enforcement by granting them standing to seek injunctive relief and penalties under the FTC Act and little Acts. It addresses the practical benefits and barriers to disaggregating consumer protection enforcement in this way and discusses the attendant localism and federalism concerns. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction I. The Current Consumer Protection Enforcement Regime and Its Limitations A. The FTC Act B. The Little Acts C. Barriers to Local Legislation D. Barriers to Private Enforcement Actions E. Why Consider Local (Rather than Additional State or Federal) Consumer Protection Enforcement? II. Expanding Local Enforcement of State and Federal Consumer Protection Laws A. Municipal Right of Action Under FTC Act B. Municipal Right of Action Under the Little Acts C. Practical Barriers to Local Consumer Protection Enforcement 1. Politics 2. Money 3. Culture 4. Sophistication III. Theoretical Concerns Disaggregation Raises A. Localism Concerns: What About Local Autonomy? B. Federalism Concerns: Uniformity, Over-Enforcement, and Parochialism Conclusion Appendix INTRODUCTION The nation's consumer protection regime is broken. (1) The problem is not a lack of good law: federal and state legislatures have enacted far-reaching consumer protection statutes, most notably the expansive Federal Trade Commission Act (the FTC Act or the Act) (2) and its state statutory counterparts (the little Acts). (3) The problem is that due to insufficient funding and staffing, (4) industry capture, (5) or some combination of both, (6) these potentially powerful bodies of consumer protection law are woefully under-enforced. (7) At present, the FTC Act is enforced almost exclusively by the FTC itself. (8) The Act does not provide for a private right of action or public rights of action by state or local governments (unlike, for example, the Clean Air Act). (9) Furthermore, among the fifty little Acts, only seven permit city and county enforcement, (10) and only eleven permit district attorney enforcement. (11) This paper calls for Congress and the state legislatures to extend consumer protection enforcement standing to cities and counties with populations over 50,000. (12) For several decades, scholars and policy experts have pointed out the enormous gaps in consumer protection enforcement, and called for a more effective approach. Nearly half a century ago, Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed spurred broad efforts to protect consumers. (13) Ten years after Mr. Nader published his book, Ann Marie Tracey pointed out that "[c]onsumer laws are not self-executing," and called for local criminal prosecution of consumer rights violations. …


The phenomenon of 'marginal' part-time employment is characterized by very short hours of work. Although very short hours is the key characteristic of this form of employment (e.g., less than 15 hours a week or less than 20 hours per week), it is a complex continuum. and the working time arrangements that are associated with it can take diverse forms with a range of defining attributes. This policy brief intends to facilitate a better understanding of this broad spectrum of working time arrangements and provide some suggestions regarding how to improve the quality of such short-hours part-time work.


This pioneering ethnographic analysis provides a far-reaching critique of 'ethnic' China's changing cultural topography. The study offers a timely reexamination of the complex and subtle processes of identification and belonging in a 'Tibetan' autonomous area. This work highlights how policies and social categories are anything but self-evident or monolithic: instead, local people are actively engaged in reinterpreting and modifying official policies in practice.


Sandy sediment samples from eleven beaches in southwestern Mexico were texturally, petrologic and chemically analyzed. Our goals were to interpret the provenance of the sands in terms of grain size, petrogrology and geochemistry and to observe if the beach environment reflects accurately the source rock in three adjacent river basins dominated by sedimentary, volcanic and plutonic rocks respectively. Three littoral segments were divided in terms of lithological differences: the Cihuatlan (western), Armeria (central) and Coahuayana (eastern) river basins and their respective beach segments. The Cihuatlan river basin is influenced by granitoids, whereas the Armeria and Coahuayana river basins are dominated by the influence of intermediate to basic volcanic rocks and sedimentary rocks represented by limestones. This is supported by the enrichment of Fe2O3, CaO, MgO, TiO2, V, Cr, Co and Zn, and a depletion of SiO2, Al2O3, Na2O K2O, Ba, Sr and Rb from the western segment toward the eastern segment. The chemical index of alteration (C.I.A.) values were higher in beaches from the Armeria and Coahuayana river segments. This is probably caused by weathering feldspars in the volcanic lithics due to more humid conditions in the source area. Sedimentary calcareous lithics in the Armeria and Coahuayana river basins are depleted due to their low resistance to high energy of fluvial and river-marine conditions. Despite the fact limestone outcrops are more than 40 % in the central (Armeria) and eastern (Coahuayana) basins, the beach sediments do not reflect limestone sources. Heavy minerals concentration is related to the influence of Armeria and Coahuayana river basins and likelly produced by the erosion of intermediate to mafic Quaternary lavas.


1. On Characterizing Designs By Their Codes (B. Bagchi).- 2. The Geometry of Extremal Elements in a Lie Algebra (A.M. Cohen).- 3. Properties of a 27-dimensional Space of Symmetric Bilinear Forms Acted on by E6 (R. Gow).- 4. On the Geometry of Global Function Fields, the Riemann-Roch Theorem, and Finiteness Properties of S-arithmetic Groups (R. Gramlich).- 5. Some Remarks on Two-Transitive Permutation Groups as Multiplication Groups of Quasigroups (G. Hiss, F. Lubeck).- 6. Curve Complexes Versus Tits Buildings: Structures and Applications (Lizhen Ji).- 7. On Isotypies Between Galois Conjugate Blocks (R. Kessar).- 8. Representations of Unitriangular Groups (T. Le, K. Magaard).- 9. Hermitian Vernonesean Caps (J. Schillewaert, H. Van Maldeghem).- 10. On a Class of c.F4-geometries (A. Pasini).- 11. Buildings and Kac-Moody Groups (B. Remy).- 12. Some Equations Over Finite Fields Related to Simple Groups of Suzuki and Ree Types (N.S. Narasimha Sastry).- 13. Oppositeness in Buildings and Simple Modules for Finite Groups of Lie Type (P. Sin).- 14. Modular Representations, Old and New (B. Srinivasan).- 15. The Use of Blocking Sets in Galois Geometries and in Related Research Areas (V. Pepe, L. Storme).- 16. Quadratic Actions (F.G. Timmesfeld).- Problem Set.-


Aliasing is crucial for supporting useful implementation patterns, but it makes reasoning about programs difficult. To deal with this problem, numerous type-based aliasing control mechanisms have been proposed, expressing properties such as uniqueness. Uniqueness, however, is black-and-white: either a reference is unique or it can be arbitrarily aliased; and global: excluding aliases throughout the entire system, making code brittle to changing requirements. Disjointness domains, a new approach to alias control, address this problem by enabling more graduations between uniqueness and arbitrary reference sharing. They allow expressing aliasing constraints local to a certain set of variables (either stack variables or fields) for instance that no aliasing occurs between variables within some set of variables but between such sets or the opposite, that aliasing occurs within that set but not between different sets. A hierarchy of disjointness domains controls the flow of references through a program, helping the programmer reason about disjointness and enforce local alias invariants. The resulting system supports fine-grained control of aliasing between both variables and objects, making aliasing explicit to programmers, compilers, and tooling. This paper presents a formal account of disjointness domains along with examples. Disjointness domains provide novel means of expressing may-alias kinds of constraints, which may prove useful in compiler optimisation and verification.


This chapter covers first the precipitation and coarsening processes in Fe-Ni-Al alloys aged artificially at high temperatures, as well as their effect on the mechanical properties. These results show the precipitation evolution, morphology of precipi‐ tates, coarsening kinetics and mechanical properties such as hardness. Additionally, the effect of alloying elements such as copper and chromium is also studied on the precipitation and coarsening processes. The main results of this section are concerning on the coarsening kinetics and its effect on hardness. Besides, the diffusion couple method is employed to study the precipitation and coarsening process in different Fe-Ni-Al alloy compositions, as well as its effect on the hardness. All the above aspects of precipitation and coarsening are also supported with Thermo-Calc calculations.


Althusser and His Contemporaries alters and expands understanding of Louis Althusser and French philosophy of the 1960s and 1970s. Thousands of pages of previously unpublished work from different periods of Althusser's career have been made available in French since his death in 1990. Based on meticulous study of the philosopher's posthumous publications, as well as his unpublished manuscripts, lecture notes, letters, and marginalia, Warren Montag provides a thoroughgoing reevaluation of Althusser's philosophical project. Montag shows that the theorist was intensely engaged with the work of his contemporaries, particularly Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Lacan. Examining Althusser's philosophy as a series of encounters with his peers' thought, Montag contends that Althusser's major philosophical confrontations revolved around three themes: structure, subject, and beginnings and endings. Reading Althusser reading his contemporaries, Montag sheds new light on structuralism, poststructuralism, and the extraordinary moment of French thought in the 1960s and 1970s.


Cootes Paradise Marsh is a hypereutrophic coastal wetland of Lake Ontario that has received sewage from the town of Dundas, Ontario for over eight decades. As such, sediments are nutrient rich and phosphorus release from the sediments is substantial. Release rates of soluble reactive phosphorus from frozen sediments collected at eleven representative sites in the marsh were highly variable, ranging from 0.96 to 28.28 mg m2 d−1. We wanted to evaluate spatial variance of the benthic microbial community and determine if this variation could be correlated to phosphorus release rates from corresponding sediments. Fresh sediment samples were collected from the same sites and characterized on the basis of sole-carbon-source utilization patterns through a Principal Components Analysis. Microbial communities located closest to the sewage outfall, had a high affinity for phosphorylated substrates, and used mainly carbohydrates, and were separated from communities located distal to the sewage source, which readily used polymers and simple sugars. Subsequently, sediment samples were collected from two sources and kept frozen for later phosphorus-release experiments while comparable samples were also collected to characterize the benthic microbial community from these sites. Phosphorus-release rates and utilization of specific substrates for the frozen sediment samples were significantly correlated (Spearman's Rank Correlation Analysis; P = 0.041), indicating a direct link between release and patterns of carbon utilization. Microbial communities of freshly collected sediments differed significantly from those of frozen sediments, and these differences were also observed for corresponding phosphorus-release rates. We conclude that the microbial community structure likely plays a major and direct role in the release and uptake of phosphorus from the sediment in Cootes Paradise Marsh.


Indium oxide films were reactively deposited on the indium oxide substrates at 25-100°C. The influence of the substrate on the film structure and the physical properties was studied. The structure of the films was greatly dependent of the freshness of the substrate surface. Crystallized films could be deposited even at room temperature on the fresh substrates. On the air-exposed substrates, films were amorphous at room temperature, and partially crystallized at the higher substrate temperatures. The influence of the substrate on the electrical resistivity and optical transmission of the films was described. The effect of the heat-treatment of the air-exposed substrates on the film structure was also studied. Further, the contamination of the substrate surface was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The results suggested that the surface of the substrates was refreshed by heating in vacuum at and above 300°C.


I. INTRODUCTION Following the completion of the United States decennial census in the year 2000, state legislatures and federal courts returned to the frenzied and familiar world of congressional and state legislative redistricting and reapportionment.1 In the course of redrawing electoral district boundaries and rebalancing district populations, the actions of state legislatures are often and inevitably called into question before the federal bench. But who should decide the size and shape of the fundamental divisions of our electoral system?2 States, and more particularly state legislatures, are constitutionally endowed with the power and prerogative to draw the physical boundaries of legislative and congressional districts.3 The courts, however, play a vital role in ensuring that redistricting and reapportionment plans do not violate constitutional guarantees of equal protection by preventing "invidious discrimination"4 and by upholding the "one person, one vote" principle.5 In the context of congressional districting, the Supreme Court has given states a strict requirement that distinct districts within a state be of nearly equal population.6 In other words, any deviation from an equal population distribution must be justified by a legitimate state interest.7 In contrast, judicial review of state legislative districting plans represents a significant intrusion into an inherently local process and the courts have been appropriately deferential to state legislatures, so long as the resulting population deviations are de minimis.8 Consequently, courts have not traditionally required states to justify total population deviations that are below 10%, so long as there is no evidence of invidious discrimination.9 Deviations above 10%, however, are prima facie evidence of invidious discrimination and trigger, by implication, a type of strict scrutiny review that requires states to justify such deviations by showing that they are the result of some traditional state interest.10 The 10% threshold has proven to be a workable standard,11 as evidenced by the great reliance of most states; the majority have drawn state legislative districts with deviations falling between 9 and 10% in at least one, and usually both, houses of their state legislatures.12 Yet, in Cox v. Larios, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed the decision of a three-judge district court that upset precedent by invalidating a Georgia state legislative redistricting statute with a total population deviation within the 10% limit.13 The Court, in the absence of any colorable claim of racial discrimination, vote dilution, or unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering, essentially applied strict scrutiny by requiring the Georgia General Assembly to justify its plan despite the absence of discrimination against a suspect classification.14 The Court justified the outcome because it found evidence that state legislators were partially motivated by political interests in enacting the redistricting proposal.15 Cox represents a significant departure from precedent and creates an unworkable standard for state legislatures to meet when drawing state legislative districts by effectively eliminating the traditional 10% safe harbor and by proscribing partisan influence. The Cox court ignores the reality and the political nature of state legislatures16 and removes the flexibility that state legislatures need to reach political compromises in what is arguably their most heated and politically contentious function.17 As a consequence, legislatures may become unable to enact politically viable districting plans, leaving this task to the courts.18 Even when compromise is achieved, and states adopt a redistricting plan, anytime they fail to achieve a zero population deviation there will be allegations of undue political influence and an inevitable onslaught of politically motivated lawsuits.19 The ensuing judicial dominion might not only infringe on state legislative discretion but would likely cost states millions of dollars in increased litigation expenses. …


A discovery system for detecting correspondences in data is described, based on the familiar induction methods of J. S. Mill. Given a set of observations, the system induces the "causally" related facts in these observations. Its application to empirical linguistic discovery is described. The paper is organized as follows. I begin the discussion by revealing two developments, the transformationalists' critique of "discovery procedures" and naive inductivism, which have led to the neglect of discovery issues, arguing that more attention needs to be paid to discovery in linguistics. Then, Mill's methods are introduced, and the system, incorporating them, is described, using as one illustration the discovery of (a part of) the famous Germanic Consonant Shift, known as Grimm's Law.


The transmission of extracellular signals to the interior of the cell is a function of plasma membrane receptors, of which the seven transmembrane receptor family is by far the largest and most versatile. Classically, these receptors stimulate heterotrimeric G proteins, which control rates of generation of diffusible second messengers and entry of ions at the plasma membrane. Recent evidence, however, indicates another previously unappreciated strategy used by the receptors to regulate intracellular signaling pathways. They direct the recruitment, activation, and scaffolding of cytoplasmic signaling complexes via two multifunctional adaptor and transducer molecules, β-arrestins 1 and 2. This mechanism regulates aspects of cell motility, chemotaxis, apoptosis, and likely other cellular functions through a rapidly expanding list of signaling pathways.


Background Telaprevir is a new drug for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV). Purpose To compare the safety of telaprevir treatment between HCV mono-infected patients and HIV co-infected patients. Materials and methods Retrospective observational study of 1 year and 6 months (January 2012–June 2013) conducted in our Health Department. Patients were included with HCV genotype 1 who had completed 12 weeks of treatment with telaprevir. Demographic characteristics were collected and related to treatment, adverse drug reactions (ADRs) reported, transfusion requirements or supportive treatment, ribavirin dose reductions and treatment suspensions. The ADRs recorded were classified according to Division of AIDS (DAIDS.v.1.0) Results We included 88 patients, 40.9% co-infected with HIV. The groups were similar in demographic characteristics, patient type and genotype, however the rate of cirrhosis was higher in the co-infected group (97.2% vs. 53.8% p < 0.005). Toxicity including all grades: no differences between the groups for anaemia, neutropenia, lymphopenia, thrombocytopenia, hyperuricaemia and renal toxicity. The incidence of hyperbilirubinaemia was higher in the co-infected group (50% vs. 26.9% p = 0.02). There was a higher incidence of hyperbilirubinaemia G3-G4 in the co-infected group (27.8% vs. 3.8% p = 0.002). In contrast, the incidence of neutropenia G3-G4 was higher in mono-infected group (25% vs 8.3%, p = 0.04). The dose of ribavirin was modified more in the co-infected group than in the mono-infected group (65.8% vs. 30.6% p = 0.001), and exogenous erythropoietin used more often (38.5% vs. 13.9% p = 0.01). No differences were observed in the transfusion rate (21.2% vs. 11.1%, p = 0.173). Colony stimulating factors were used only in one patient in the mono-infected group. Conclusions Similar toxicity profiles were observed between the two groups, although with a higher incidence of hyperbilirubinaemia in the co-infected group, which could be related to the use of the antiretroviral atazanavir. No conflict of interest.


Josic, D., D. Delic, N. Rasulic, o. staJkovic, D. kuzmaNovic, a. staNoJkovic and R. Pivic, 2012. indigenous Pseudomonads from rhizosphere of maize grown on pseudogley soil in serbia. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 18: 197-206 Pseudomonads are distributed widely in temperate soils and often predominate among bacteria from plant rhizosphere. the present study revealed the genodiversity among 67 pseudomonads isolates from maize rhizosphere (39) and non-rhizospheric (28) nutrient poor pseudogley soil. Results from the screening for plant growth promoting (PGP) traits (phosphate solubilization, siderophore and indoleacetic acid production, enzymatic activity) and rep-PCR fingerprinting of isolates using ERIC and (GTG)5 primers indicated low diversity existing in this selective environment. We selected five different isolates – two of them were non-phytopathogenic isolates with protease, lipase and phospholipase activity, ability to solubilize tricalcium phosphate and produce indoleacetic acids. all isolates inhibited growth of some of seven investigated phytopathogenic fungi. isolate Q4m showed high enzymatic activity, good phosphate solubilization and production of siderophores and high amount of indoleacetic acids (from 8.6 μg/ml without tryptophan in medium to 26 μg/ml with 5 mm tryptophan added in medium). this selected strain has the potential to enhance plant growth and participate in phosphorus and iron availability in


We detail the role of single nanometric apertures milled in a gold film to enhance the fluorescence emission of Alexa Fluor 647 molecules. Combining fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and lifetime measurements, we determine the respective contributions of excitation and emission in the observed enhanced fluorescence. We characterize a broad range of nanoaperture diameters from 80 to 310 nm, and highlight the link between the fluorescence enhancement and the local photonic density of states. These results are of great interest to increase the effectiveness of fluorescence-based single molecule detection and to understand the interaction between a quantum emitter and a nanometric metal structure.


Using a Spanish survey, this paper investigates the relationship between firm size and working conditions, and whether firm size differences in workers' job satisfaction can be accounted for by differences in their work environment. The results indicate that: (1) workers in larger firms have a significantly lower level of autonomy and, in general, face worse working conditions; (2) working in large firms has no statistically significant effect on job satisfaction after controlling for working conditions; and (3) no systematic differences exist in worker mobility across firm-size categories. We conclude that observed wage differentials by firm size are utility-equalizing, so they are due to differences in working conditions.


Recent advances in Question Answering have lead to the development of very complex models which compute rich representations for query and documents by capturing all pairwise interactions between query and document words. This makes these models expensive in space and time, and in practice one has to restrict the length of the documents that can be fed to these models. Such models have also been recently employed for the task of predicting dialog responses from available background documents (e.g., Holl-E dataset). However, here the documents are longer, thereby rendering these complex models infeasible except in select restricted settings. In order to overcome this, we use standard simple models which do not capture all pairwise interactions, but learn to emulate certain characteristics of a complex teacher network. Specifically, we first investigate the conicity of representations learned by a complex model and observe that it is significantly lower than that of simpler models. Based on this insight, we modify the simple architecture to mimic this characteristic. We go further by using knowledge distillation approaches, where the simple model acts as a student and learns to match the output from the complex teacher network. We experiment with the Holl-E dialog data set and show that by mimicking characteristics and matching outputs from a teacher, even a simple network can give improved performance.


1 Introduction Rachel Croson and Gary Bolton 2 Communication in Bargaining Experiments Gary Charness 3 Communication Media: for Negotiation Process and Outcome Zoe I. Barsness 4 Intermediation and Diffusion of Responsibility in Negotiation: A Case of Bounded Ethicality Neeru Paharia, Lucas C. Coffman and Max H. Bazerman 5 Deception in Negotiations: The Role of Emotions Francesca Gino and Catherine Shea 6 Communicating Frames in Negotiations Kathleen L. McGinn and Markus Noth 7 Models of Coalition Formation in Multilateral Negotiations Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay and Kalyan Chatterjee 8 Gaming with Fairness: Some Conjectures on Behavior in Alternating Offer Bargaining Experiments Rami Zwick and Vincent Mak 9 Wages, Inequity and Questions about Incentive Schemes Peter Werner 10 Social Comparison in Negotiation Jan Crusius and Thomas Mussweiler 11 The Utility of Relationships in Negotiation Ashley D. Brown and Jared R. Curhan 12 Connectivity and Cooperation Nancy R. Buchan, Enrique Fatas and Gianluca Grimalda 13 Trust, Distrust and Bargaining Iris Bohnet and Stephan Meier 14 Evolution and Breakdown of Trust in Continuous Time Amnon Rapoport and Ryan O. Murphy 15 Contracting Brit Grosskopf 16 Negotiating Reputations Axel Ockenfels and Paul Resnick 17 Bargaining and Negotiations: What should experimentalists explore more thoroughly? Werner Guth 18 Biased Beliefs in Negotiation George Wu, Richard Larrick, and Raegan Tennant 19 Bluffing, Agonism, and the Role of Overconfidence in Negotiation Samuel A. Swift and Don Moore 20 Risk in Negotiation: Judgments of Likelihood and Value Richard P. Larrick and George Wu 21 Heterogeneity in Ultimatum Bargaining: The Role of Information, Individual Characteristics, and Emotions Angela C. M. de Oliveira and Catherine C. Eckel 22 A Model of When to Negotiate: Why Women Don't Ask Linda Babcock, Julia Bear, and Hannah Riley Bowles 23 Explaining and Predicting Cultural Differences in Negotiation Michele J. Gelfand, Laura Severance, C. Ashley Fulmer and May Al Dabbagh 24 Bargaining Games with Joint Production Emin Karagozo?lu 25 Upstream and Downstream Negotiation Research Leigh Thompson, Brian Lucas, and Erika Richardson


PURPOSE
DIR algorithms differ by physical principles employed in their design which in turn determines complexity of the transformation that the algorithm allows. Indiscriminate application of different algorithms without regard for their limitations may lead to significant discrepancies in research results and in clinical procedures. We compare two different algorithms in Head and Neck (H&N) patients to assess what aspects of DIR use are most sensitive to differences between algorithms.

METHODS
H&N patients are enrolled in a protocol which acquires weekly FBCT and daily double CBCT. Each FBCT study is contoured by the same physician. Two DIR algorithms are compared: Small Deformation Inverse-Consistent Linear Elastic (SICLE), and the ITK Diffeomorphic Demons (ITKDD) as implemented in the ITK package. Both algorithms employ significantly different physical principles in their design and consequently impose different restrictions on the complexity of transformation they allow. We compare Jacobian Volume Histograms (JVH), Spatial Discrepancy Volume Histograms (SDVH), BED and physical dose accumulation results and resulting plan evaluation indices.

RESULTS
Analysis of mean Jacobian shows that both algorithms are able to detect changes in structure volumes, though they differ quantitatively from one another and from the ground truth as established by the analysis of changes in contours. Width of Jacobian distributions is very different indicating that Jacobian should not be used as a measure of volume change at a voxel level without independent validation. Analysis of SDVHs shows that dose lookup points implied by both algorithms are separated by 5mm - 10mm over approximately 30% of most volumes. These differences translate into clearly visible though not very significant differences in BED and dose accumulation. We further observe that physical dose accumulation in external beam H&N patients is a good proxy for direct BED accumulation.

CONCLUSIONS
Different DIR algorithms may have to be applied selectively in different areas of treatment planning. Acknowledgments: Supported by NIH Grant P01 CA11602.


Research on embryonic stem cells has generated great intrigue in the scientific community. Many medical researchers consider stem cell-based therapies to have the potential of treating a host of human ailments and yielding a number of medical benefits. They are motivated by the possibility of treating incurable diseases or facilitating effective treatment methods. Their enthusiasm is shared by many of those who are afflicted with these debilitating diseases.


Objective The purpose of this systematic review was to determine (1) treatment options for bipolar cartilage lesions of the knee, (2) patient-reported outcomes following various surgical treatments, and (3) complication and failure rates following surgery. Design A literature search of PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and CINHAL was performed using PRISMA guidelines. Patients were included if they had bipolar cartilage lesions of the knee treated surgically. Lesion characteristics, surgical technique, patient-reported outcomes, complication rates, failure rates, and survivorship were recorded. Results Fourteen studies yielded 301 knees treated surgically. Patient age ranged from 15 to 74 years. Surgical techniques included 138 autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI), 156 osteochondral allograft transplantation (OCA), and 7 osteochondral autograft transfer system (OATS). Seven studies reported a concomitant procedure rate that ranged from 0% to 88%. Eight studies reported that both reciprocal lesions received surgical treatment, while 6 studies did not specify. Lesion size ranged from 1 to 41 cm2. All reported postoperative improvements in patient-reported outcomes, but the measures were very heterogeneous. There were no major complications and the rate of minor complications ranged from 0% to 50%. Survivorship ranged from 40% to 100% for OCA, 76% to 95% for ACI, and 100% for the 1 study evaluating OATS. Conclusions Bipolar cartilage lesions of the knee typically involve a large surface area and are most commonly treated with ACI or OCA, while OATS may be an option for smaller lesions. Improvements in mid-term patient-reported outcomes were reported for all surgical procedures and they can be performed safely with a low rate of major complications.


The aim of this study was to find out the constraints encountered in teaching of practical agriculture in the Senior High School within the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The research population was 150 students and 10 Agricultural Science teachers. The proportional and convenient sampling techniques were used in selecting the students and teachers respectively. Data was collected using questionnaire. The questionnaire was made up of both open and close-ended questions. Descriptive statistical techniques such as frequencies and percentages, pie charts, bar graphs as well as independent samples t-test and one-way between groups ANOVA were employed in analyzing the data gathered. The Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 was the software that was used in the data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that practical teaching of Agricultural Science in the Senior High Schools was greatly impeded by the non-existence of the following: lack of school garden, animal farm, educational trips, demonstration plots, and well-equipped laboratory. Also, lack of funds was found to be the major challenge to practical work in Agricultural Science in the Senior High Schools. Based on the findings of the study, the government, Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and other stakeholders should help in providing the needed resources such as school garden, animal farm, demonstration plots, wellequipped laboratories among others to facilitate the teaching and learning of Agricultural Science in the schools.


The contribution of small-scale fisheries is significant regarding food security and employment, especially in the developing countries. However, with the persistent overfishing and unstainable exploitation, the performance of small-scale fisheries was severely devastated, not only due to its weak governance but of poor management, perverse subsidies, destructive fishing practices, and unrestricted access. Community-based fisheries management (CBFM) is a process by which the people themselves are given the opportunity as well as the responsibility to manage their resources, define their needs, goals, and to make decisions that have an impact upon their well-beings. Due to its social and economic benefits of efficiency, equity and sustainability, it is widely employed in the developing countries in Asia. This research focused on the impact analysis of CBFM on the sustainable management of fisheries resources and fisher's livelihood in Cambodia, Bangladesh and Philippines by applying meta-analysis to quantify the magnitude of intervention and analyze the heterogeneity of the effects in each country. By integration of difference-in-difference in the construction of effect size, more accurate estimate of effect sizes was derived. The results show a consistent positive effect on management indicators in all three countries, which justified that CBFM was an effective and sustainable approach to organizing and managing fishing activities and fishing community. The mix results in the effect size of fish catch indicated that CBFM was better effective with the implementation of stock recovery programs.


A measurement of the b jet production cross section is presented for events containing a Z boson produced in p (p) over bar collisions at root s = 1.96 TeV, using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2 fb(-1) collected by the CDF II detector at the Tevatron. Z bosons are selected in the electron and muon decay modes. Jets are considered with transverse energy E-T > 20 GeV and pseudorapidity vertical bar eta vertical bar < 1.5 and are identified as b jets using a secondary vertex algorithm. The ratio of the integrated Z + b jet cross section to the inclusive Z production cross section is measured to be 3.32 +/- 0.53(stat) +/- 0.42(syst) x 10(-3). This ratio is also measured differentially in jet E-T, jet eta, Z-boson transverse momentum, number of jets, and number of b jets. The predictions from leading-order Monte Carlo generators and next-to-leading-order QCD calculations are found to be consistent with the measurements within experimental and theoretical uncertainties.


NOVEL CHARACTERIZATION OF MATERIALS USING THz SPECTROSCOPIC TECHNIQUES by Amartya Sengupta Significant scientific and technical challenges within the terahertz (THz) frequency regime have recently motivated an array of new research activities. This involves numerous applications of this region of the electromagnetic spectrum between approximately 100 GHz (3mm) and 3 1Hz (100 gm) for both spectroscopy and imaging purposes. 1Hz time domain spectroscopy is unique in that the time domain waveforms are measured and the complex optical constants are deduced directly without resorting to the Kramers-Kronig Analysis. In this work, 1Hz spectroscopy has been used to characterize different types of materials. Materials investigated consisted of semiconductors, gate dielectric materials, high energetic materials and cyclic olefin polymers. Besides demonstrating that surface roughness affects the 1Hz transmission, one of the most significant contributions of this work has been to deduce the number of defect states in buried layers. The study also attempts to develop a preliminary model based on effective medium approximations to predict the thickness of the interfacial layer which might be having a myriad of applications in the semiconductor industry. The characterization of a cyclic olefin polymer showed that it is probably the "candidate of the future" for fabrication of far infrared optics mainly because of its low loss and transparency in both the visible and far infrared region of the EM spectrum. NOVEL CHARACTERIZATION OF MATERIALS USING THz SPECTROSCOPIC TECHNIQUES


From an ancient Greek term related to the "leavening of bread" (en, in; zyme, leaven), an enzyme can be defined as a substance showing the properties of a catalyst that is produced as a result of cellular activity. Every proteinaceous enzyme that performs hydrolysis of peptide bonds is appropriately termed "protease" (peptidase). All of them share aspects of catalytic strategy, but with some variation. As a result, the proteases are grouped into six different catalytic families: serine, threonine, cysteine, aspartic, glutamic and metallopeptidases (http://merops.sanger.ac.uk/). The larger families (cysteine, serine, aspartic and metallopeptidases) have a wide range of distribution on living organism groups, and are also present in the "controversial" viruses. As a well‐represented family, the cysteine proteases play important roles in events such as signalling pathways, programmed cell death (PCD), nutrient mobilization, protein maturing, hormone synthesis and degradation. In the past two decades, an increased interest was driven to the study of the programmed cell death (PCD), mainly after the discovery of caspase‐related proteins and caspase‐like activities in organisms not metazoan. Caspases are cysteine proteases that cleave their substrate after aspartate residues and are part of signalling cascades of the apoptotic PCD process (also in inflammatory process), unique of metazoan. The caspase‐ related proteins are named paracaspases and metacaspases. Paracaspases are found on metazoan and Dictyostelium, whereas the metacaspases are present on plants, fungi and groups of protozoan. On plants, PCD has features that are distinct from that of animals and is an important pathway on developmental events, defensive and stress response (biotic and abiotic). All these events have their own particularities, but the participation of proteases seems to be universal with those responsible for caspase‐like activities and metacaspases having an increasing number of reports that put them as important for plant PCD. In this chapter, we tackle important aspects of the proteases, in special that involved in plant PDC, as well as their specific regulators. Aspects of function, catalytic mechanisms and interaction with ligands will be on focus.


Avoiding leaks is essential for accurate measurement of biogas production by batch assays. Here we present a simple method for detecting leaks and correcting results, based on the change in bottle mass during incubation. Three experiments were carried out using pure chemicals, wastewater sludge, and other complex substrates to test and demonstrate the method, and leaks were detected in all three. The frequency and magnitude of leakage was related to headspace pressure and the number of times bottle septa had been punctured. Comparison to an independent estimate of leakage in two experiments showed that the proposed method is accurate. This mass-based approach can generally be used to detect leaks as small as 20% of total biogas or methane production, or lower when biogas production is high relative to the precision of mass measurements. Additional research is needed to improve the sensitivity of the method and to better understand the causes of leakage. Given the potential importance of leaks and the simplicity of leakage measurements, we recommend that this method is always used in batch biogas assays.


A split-plot experimental design was imposed in the year of planting and maintained for the first five growing seasons in a high density apple orchard on M.9 rootstock planted at 1.5 m (within row) × 4 m (between row) in a loamy sand soil susceptible to K defi ciency when drip-irrigated. Four N-K fertigation treatments involving low (N1) and high (N2) rates of N combined with 0 (K0) or 15 g K/tree per year (K1) were applied in fi ve replicated and randomized main plot units. Subplots consisted of three-tree plots of each of the apple cultivars Gala, Fuji, Fiesta and Spartan. Soil solution monitoring indicated the maintenance of distinctly different soil solution N and K concentrations in the respective N-K treatments during the study. The most important plant response was prevention of the development of K defi ciency by the K1-fertigation treatment. Fertigation of 15 g K/tree generally increased leaf K, fruit K and Mg concentrations, fruit size and yield and fruit titratable acidity and red coloration at harvest for all cultivars. K fertigation also decreased leaf Mg and B concentrations, fruit N, P and Ca concentration and fruit fi rmness. In addition to leaf K concentrations <1%, K defi ciency was associated with fruit K concentrations <100 mg/100 g fresh weight and soil solution K concentration <5 mg·L-1. Increasing the rate of fertigated N when growth was constrained by K defi ciency increased leaf N and Mn


The progress of artificial intelligence is reaching a point that some research questions that were only relevant for human and other animal agents are becoming relevant for artificial agents as well. One of those questions comes from human intelligence research and is known as Spearman's Law of Diminishing Returns (SLODR). Charles Spearman, the father of factor analysis and the g factor (a dominant factor explaining most of the variance in cognitive tests for human populations), observed that when the analysis was restricted to the subpopulation of most able subjects, the relevance of this dominant factor diminished, as if the power of general intelligence were saturated or not fully used by the most able individuals. In about a century, there have been numerous theoretical explanations and experiments to confirm or reject Spearman's hypothesis. However, all of them have been based on human or animal populations. In this paper, we analyse for the first time whether the SLODR makes sense for artificial agents and what its role should be in the analysis of general-purpose AI. We use a synthetic scenario based on modified elementary cellular automata (ECA) where the ECA rules work as tasks and the population of agents is generated with an agent policy language. Different slices of the population by ability and of the tasks by difficulty are analysed, showing that SLODR does not really appear. Indeed, even if very slightly, we find the reverse, i.e., that more correlation takes place for more able subpopulations, what we conjecture as the Universal Law of Augmenting Returns (ULOAR).


This essay interprets Hannah Arendt's concept of the "social question" through a reading of her controversial essay "Reflections on Little Rock." I argue that Arendt's social question refers to social climbing and not simply poverty, as she initially suggests. The social-climbing framework illuminates "Little Rock" in two ways. First, it explains why Arendt opposed mandatory school desegregation, which she saw as black social climbing, that is, African American citizens and the NAACP using the US courts and federal government to raise the status of African Americans to the level of whites. Second, and more significant, it provides a framework for criticizing "Little Rock" with Arendt's own standards and criteria in mind. Reminded by Arendt of the suspect politics of social climbing, we can see something she did not: segregation was not "natural" association but an institution established after the Civil War to protect white social climbing and social advancement.


We consider two approaches for building component-based systems, which we call respectively architecture-based and architecture-agnostic. The former consists in describing coordination constraints in a purely declarative manner through parameterizable glue operators; it provides higher abstraction level and, consequently, stronger correctness by construction. The latter uses simple fixed coordination primitives, which are spread across component behaviour; it is more error-prone, but allows performance optimisation. We study architecture internalization leading from an architecture-based system to an equivalent architecture-agnostic one, focusing, in particular, on component-based systems described in BIP. BIP uses connectors for hierarchical composition of components. We study connector internalization in three steps. 1) We introduce and study the properties of interaction expressions, which represent the combined information about all the effects of an interaction. We show that they are a very powerful tool for specifying and analyzing structured interaction. 2) We formalize the connector semantics of BIP by using interaction expressions. The formalization proves to be mathematically rigorous and concise. 3) We introduce the T/B component model and provide a semantics preserving translation of BIP into this model. The translation is compositional that is, it preserves the structure of the source models. The results are illustrated by simple examples. A Java implementation is evaluated on two case studies.


We investigate how strong lensing of dusty, star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) by foreground galaxies can be used as a probe of dark matter halo substructure. We find that spatially resolved spectroscopy of lensed sources allows dramatic improvements to measurements of lens parameters. In particular, we find that modeling of the full, three-dimensional (angular position and radial velocity) data can significantly facilitate substructure detection, increasing the sensitivity of observables to lower mass subhalos. We carry out simulations of lensed dusty sources observed by early ALMA (Cycle 1) and use a Fisher matrix analysis to study the parameter degeneracies and mass detection limits of this method. We find that even with conservative assumptions, it is possible to detect galactic dark matter subhalos of ∼108 M☉ with high significance in most lensed DSFGs. Specifically, we find that in typical DSFG lenses, there is a ∼55% probability of detecting a substructure with M > 108 M☉ with more than 5σ detection significance in each lens, if the abundance of substructure is consistent with previous lensing results. The full ALMA array, with its significantly enhanced sensitivity and resolution, should improve these estimates considerably. Given the sample of ∼100 lenses provided by surveys such as the South Pole Telescope, our understanding of dark matter substructure in typical galaxy halos is poised to improve dramatically over the next few years.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the mechanical properties and corrosion behavior of friction stir welding (FSW) connection of A517 (B) steel plate. Mechanical properties and corrosion behavior of weld zone were evaluated after reaching to optimum FSW microstructure with the lowest martensite phase. Thus, after the identifying phase microstructure by SEM and XRD analysis, mechanical properties were analyzed by micro-hardness and tensile test. Micro hardness data shows slight increases in stir zone (SZ) compared with the base metal (BM); although a reduction of about 17% in hardness of heat-affected zone (HAZ) was sensible. Reduction of hardness in the HAZ was appeared as drop by about 12 percent of the yield strength and 19 percent of ultimate strength compared with BM. SEM images from fracture surface of the tensile sample showed bi-modal distribution of large and small Dimples being sings of softness of HAZ .Comparing corrosion behavior in solution consist of 3.5 wt% of NaCl showed that there was no passive layers to prevent dissolution of the metal in the SZ and BM. while BM and SZ had fairly similar corrosion rates, Difference of 50 mV between corrosion potential of SZ and BM showed that in galvanic condition, corrosion resistance of BM could be lower than SZ.


BACKGROUND
Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is a condition in which a clot forms in the deep veins, most commonly of the leg. It occurs in approximately 1 in 1,000 people. If left untreated, the clot can travel up to the lungs and cause a potentially life-threatening pulmonary embolism (PE). Previously, a DVT was treated with the anticoagulants heparin and vitamin K antagonists. However, two forms of novel oral anticoagulants (NOACs) have been developed: oral direct thrombin inhibitors (DTI) and oral factor Xa inhibitors. The new drugs have characteristics that may be favourable over conventional treatment, including oral administration, a predictable effect, lack of frequent monitoring or re-dosing and few known drug interactions. To date, no Cochrane review has measured the effectiveness and safety of these drugs in the treatment of DVT.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effectiveness of oral DTIs and oral factor Xa inhibitors for the treatment of DVT.

SEARCH METHODS
The Cochrane Peripheral Vascular Diseases Group Trials Search Co-ordinator searched the Specialised Register (last searched January 2015) and the Cochrane Register of Studies (last searched January 2015). We searched clinical trials databases for details of ongoing or unpublished studies and the reference lists of relevant articles retrieved by electronic searches for additional citations.

SELECTION CRITERIA
We included randomised controlled trials in which people with a DVT confirmed by standard imaging techniques, were allocated to receive an oral DTI or an oral factor Xa inhibitor for the treatment of DVT.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Two review authors (LR, JM) independently extracted the data and assessed the risk of bias in the trials. Any disagreements were resolved by discussion with the third review author (PK). We performed meta-analyses when we considered heterogeneity low. The two primary outcomes were recurrent VTE and PE. Other outcomes included all-cause mortality and major bleeding. We calculated all outcomes using an odds ratio (OR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI).

MAIN RESULTS
We included 11 randomised controlled trials of 27,945 participants. Three studies tested oral DTIs (two dabigatran and one ximelagatran), while eight tested oral factor Xa inhibitors (four rivaroxaban, two apixaban and two edoxaban). We deemed all included studies to be of high methodological quality and low risk of bias. The quality of the evidence was graded as high as the outcomes were direct and effect estimates were consistent and precise, as reflected in the narrow CIs around the ORs. Meta-analysis of three studies (7596 participants) comparing oral DTIs with standard anticoagulation groups showed no difference in the rate of recurrent VTE (OR 1.09; 95% CI 0.80 to 1.49), recurrent DVT (OR 1.08; 95% CI 0.74 to 1.58), fatal PE (OR 1.00; 95% CI 0.27 to 3.70), non-fatal PE (OR 1.12; 95% CI 0.66 to 1.90) or all-cause mortality (OR 0.82; 95% CI 0.60 to 1.13). However, oral DTIs were associated with reduced bleeding (OR 0.68; 95% CI 0.47 to 0.98). Meta-analysis of eight studies (16,356 participants) comparing oral factor Xa inhibitors with standard anticoagulation demonstrated a similar rate of recurrent VTE between the two treatments (OR 0.89; 95% CI 0.73 to 1.07). Oral factor Xa inhibitors were associated with a lower rate of recurrent DVT (OR 0.75; 95% CI 0.57 to 0.98). However, this was a weak association, heavily dependent on one study. The rate of fatal (OR 1.20; 95% CI 0.71 to 2.03), non-fatal PE (OR 0.94; 95% CI 0.68 to 1.28) and all-cause mortality (OR 0.90; 95% CI 0.65 to 1.23) was similar between the two treatment groups. Oral factor Xa inhibitors were also associated with reduced bleeding (OR 0.57; 95% CI 0.43 to 0.76). None of the included studies measured post-thrombotic syndrome or health-related quality of life.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
NOACs such as DTIs and factor Xa inhibitors may be an effective and safe alternative to conventional anticoagulation treatment for acute DVT.