Dinuclear [Cu(H2pmide)(NO3)Cu(Hpmide)](NO3)2 (1) and trinuclear [(pmide)2Co3(CH3CO2)2(NCS)2]·4CH3OH (2) coordination complexes have been prepared by the reaction of the tetradentate H2pmide ligand and Cu(NO3)2·3H2O or Co(CH3CO2)2·4H2O/NaNCS in organic solvent (H2pmide = N-(2-pyridylmethyl)iminodiethanol). In 1, one copper(II) ion is bonded with a H2pmide, and the other is coordinated with a mono-deprotonated Hpmide−. The copper(II) ions are linked through an ethoxo group of the Hpmide− ligand and two oxygen atoms of a nitrate ion, resulting in an asymmetric dinuclear structure. In 2, two terminal cobalt(III) units are coordinated with pmide2−, NCS−, and CH3CO2−. The terminal units are each connected to a central cobalt(II) cation through the two oxygen atoms of pmide2− and one bridged acetate ion, giving rise to a mixed-valence trinuclear cobalt complex formulated as CoIII–CoII–CoIII. Complex 1 shows a strong antiferromagnetic interaction through the ethoxo and nitrato groups between the copper(II) ions [g = 2.070, J = –88.1 cm−1 (–61.2 K)]. However, complex 2 behaves as a paramagnetic cobalt(II) monomer, due to the diamagnetic cobalt(III) ions in the terminal units [g = 2.526, |D| = 51.8 cm−1 (36.0 K)].


Intelligence operations face the challenging task of predicting the shape of future wars. This task is hindered by their limited ability to warn of peacetime foreign military innovation. Using formerly classified sources-in particular, the reports of military attaches and other diplomat-officers-Thomas G. Mahnken sheds light on the shadowy world of U.S. intelligence-gathering, tracing how America learned of military developments in Japan, Germany, and Great Britain in the period between the two world wars.The interwar period witnessed both a considerable shift in the balance of power in Europe and Asia and the emergence of new ways of war, such as carrier aviation, amphibious operations, and combined-arms armored warfare. American attempts to follow these developments, Mahnken says, illustrate the problems that intelligence organizations face in their efforts to bridge the gulf between prewar expectations and wartime reality. He finds three reasons for intelligence's relative lack of success: intelligence agencies are more inclined to monitor established weapons systems than to search for new ones; their attention is more likely to focus on technology and doctrine already demonstrated in combat; and they have more success identifying innovation in areas their own country is testing.Uncovering Ways of War substantially revises the perception of how American intelligence performed prior to World War II. Mahnken challenges the assumption that intelligence regarding foreign militaries had little influence on the development of U.S. weapons and doctrine. Finally, he explains the obstacles these agencies must still negotiate as they seek to understand foreign efforts to exploit the information revolution.


Decarburisation of bainitic ferrite laths and its influence on the microstructure in Fe-Cr-Si-C steel The paper presents an investigation of the time required for the diffusion of carbon out of supersaturated laths of ferrite into the retained austenite. The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate how a thermodynamic method can be used for solving a problem of the decarburisation of bainite laths. This should in principle enable to examine the partitioning of carbon from supersaturated ferrite laths into adjacent austenite and the carbon content in retained austenite using analytical method. The obtained results illustrates that the estimated times with the reference to the executed thermal processing are not capable of decarburising the sheaf of ferrite included thick laths of bainitic ferrite during the period of austempering. A consequence of the precipitation of cementite from austenite during austempering is that the growth of bainitic ferrite can continue to larger extent and that the resulting microstructure is not an ausferrite but it is a mixture of bainitic ferrite, retained austenite and carbides.


This paper investigates the optimal power routing problem in relay-based cooperative networks, where the relays are arbitrarily positioned. We generalize the standard shortest path routing algorithm (GSPRA) to find an minimum-power distributed MIMO multi-hop route from a source to a destination while satisfying a given e2e outage probability demand. The task of the proposed approach includes how to group relays to virtual antenna array (VAA) and discover the optimal multi-hop path. Instead of using per hop (or link) constraint, which is assumed by most of the existing routing algorithm, an e2e outage probability constraint is assumed for more relevance and freedom in practical systems. Under the concept of virtual node and virtual link, an efficient power allocation solution for general distributed MIMO multi-hop networks is used to calculate link costs for the shortest path algorithm. The proposed routing approach can fully exploit the merits of both cooperative communications and multi-hop transmissions. The significant power savings due to the proposed approach in comparison to the existing algorithms is demonstrated by numerical results.


This chapter focuses on the skills needed to use the law to answer a problem question. It guides students through the process of analysing a scenario in order to identify the relevant issues to ensure that their answers are comprehensive and do not miss any important points. It outlines strategies to ensure that the law is applied effectively and that good use is made of supporting authorities.


There are deep black nationalist roots for many of the images and
ideologies of contemporary racial justice efforts. This collection reconsiders the Black Aesthetic and the revolutionary art of the Black Arts movement (BAM), forging connections between the recent past and contemporary social justice activism. Focusing on black literary and visual art of the Black Arts Movement, this collection highlights artists whose work diverged from
narrow definitions of the Black Aesthetic and black nationalism. Adding to the reanimation of discourses surrounding BAM, this collection comes at a time when today's racial justice efforts are mining earlier eras for their iconography, ideology, and implementation. As numerous contemporary activists ground their work in the legacies of mid-twentieth-century activism and adopt many of the grassroots techniques it fostered, this collection
remembers and re-envisions the art that both supported and shaped that earlier era. It furthers contemporary conversations by exploring BAM's implications for cultural and literary studies and its legacy for current social justice work and the multiple arts that support it.


Disease type and severity spur specific tissue alterations that can guide formulation of an optimal material for a selected clinical condition. Location, location, location When buying a house, we research neighborhoods and carefully choose an environment that fits our personality. So why does a "one-material-fits-all" mentality dominate when choosing a biomaterial for various clinical scenarios? Now, Oliva et al. attempt to shift that mindset by defining the molecular properties of diseased-tissue microenvironments and then tuning a dendrimer/dextran–based material to thrive differentially under selected clinical conditions. By measuring tissue modifications and material performance—in two gut diseases and under varying degrees of severity—the authors unveiled contextual effects on the compatibility between a biomaterial and its neighborhood. These findings drove development of a predictive paradigm that matches a material with its model home—a practice that may one day translate to improved clinical outcomes. A "one material fits all" mindset ignores profound differences in target tissues that affect their responses and reactivity. Yet little attention has been paid to the role of diseased tissue on material performance, biocompatibility, and healing capacity. We assessed material-tissue interactions with a prototypical adhesive material based on dendrimer/dextran and colon as a model tissue platform. Adhesive materials have high sensitivity to changes in their environment and can be exploited to probe and quantify the influence of even subtle modifications in tissue architecture and biology. We studied inflammatory colitis and colon cancer and found not only a difference in adhesion related to surface chemical interactions but also the existence of a complex interplay that determined the overall dendrimer/dextran biomaterial compatibility. Compatibility was contextual, not simply a constitutive property of the material, and was related to the extent and nature of immune cells in the diseased environment present before material implantation. We then showed how to use information about local alterations of the tissue microenvironment to assess disease severity. This in turn guided us to an optimal dendrimer/dextran formulation choice using a predictive model based on clinically relevant conditions.


Realistic rendering of natural materials such as marble, jade, human skin, etc. requires the simulation of subsurface scattering of light. Such high-fidelity rendering, however, takes a significant amount of computation time, precluding its use in real-time application. This paper introduces a new technique for rendering the appearance of translucent material in real-time based on spherical harmonics. The technique consists of two passes, first the irradiance of the object is projected on a spherical harmonic basis, then in the second pass the exitant radiance is evaluated. This technique is not physically based, but it ensures high frame rates. It also supports deformable objects and with no precomputation time, so it could be used in interactive applications including videogames.


'We could be like two people who inject themselves with truth serum, and at long last have to tell it - the truth I want to be able to say to myself, "I bled truth with her," yes, that's what I want. Be a knife for me, and I, I swear, will be a knife for you.' An awkward, neurotic seller of rare books writes a desperate letter to a beautiful stranger whom he sees at a class reunion. This simple, lonely attempt at seduction begins a love affair of words between Yair and Miriam, two married, middle-aged adults, dissatisfied with their lives, yearning for the connection that has always eluded them - and, eventually, reawakened to feelings that they thought had passed them by. Their correspondence unfolds into an exchange of their most naked confessions: of desire, childhood tragedies, joys, and humiliations. Through the dialogue between Yair - a family man and surprisingly successful adulterer, whose guarded letters reveal a life of duplicity - and Miriam, at first deceptively open and warm, who fills her life with distraction to avoid a past full of painful secrets, "Be My Knife" explores the nature and the limits of intimacy.


Emergent curriculum is present in many early childhood classrooms but sharing the deep thoughts, reflections and actions of young children engaged in emergent curriculum is often hindered by the use of traditional report cards. Through the use of year-long preschool stories, teachers write about these young children using the children's thought processes and experiences as the central data source. This practice illustrates trust of the child and the child's daily actions as critical in understanding the child. The purpose of this paper is to re-visit previously written preschool stories from multiple perspectives including the child featured in the story, the family of the child, the creator of the preschool stories, and a co-teacher within the community. This reexamination offers another way to consider the preschool stories, opening the work to revision and rethinking.


This paper proposes a research-based tool to assist visually impaired persons (VIPs) in using the Internet via screen readers. The proposed tool is inspired by research on modeling web use and model-based highlighting. This tool assists VIPs in selecting goal-relevant information on web pages. A computational cognitive model simulates the VIPs' Internet use. An intelligent agent capable of dynamic highlighting and selective reading based on efficient machine learning algorithms runs alongside the (simulated) user. The agent learns from interacting with the cognitive model and the information space. This agent is implemented in an adaptive interface that takes, expands and updates a user goal, finds goal-relevant information and suggests it to the (simulated) user in an appropriate way. The proposed tool could be applied in situations that require handling information overload with limited perceptive and cognitive capabilities.


The increase in government secrecy is an important and troubling policy trend. Although the trend predates the 2000 presidential election, the movement towards government secrecy has accelerated dramatically in the Bush Administration. The case for open government is usually based on political principles embraced by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. This article seeks to bolster these arguments by applying agency theory to the question of how much secrecy is too much. While agency theory is most often used to analyze private sector economic relationships, commentators have also applied it to the analysis of methods for holding legislators and Executive Branch officials accountable to the public. This paper extends this literature by using agency theory to evaluate the impact of burgeoning secrecy on the likelihood that Executive Branch officials will engage in faithful and forceful implementation of statutory mandates, particularly in the arenas of protecting public health, safety, and natural resources. The paper first explains why agency theory is useful in analyzing how the government should resolve conflicts between transparency and other important public policy objectives. Our use of agency theory then produces the following insight. While wise policymaking requires a balancing of competing interests in secrecy and openness, such decisions must be made by dispassionate and authoritative officials who have no personal stake in whether the information is ultimately disclosed. We therefore make three recommendations. Congress should reverse judicial interpretations that have weakened the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by restoring the open government requirements that Congress intended to impose when it wrote those laws. Congress should also limit the secrecy protections of the Critical Infrastructure Act (CIIA) to situations where there is a reasonable likelihood that transparency presents a tangible risk to the nation's security.


This set of papers arose from a Discussion Meeting held in the Department of Geology & Applied Geology, University of Glasgow, on 9–10 September 1997. The aim of the Meeting was to review the progress which had been made in resolving some of the more controversial aspects of the pre-Silurian Caledonide geology of the British Isles and Scandinavia. It was also held to mark the retirements of two well-known Caledonide geologists: Professors Bernard Leake and Donald Ramsay. There were 34 talks and poster contributions, and the meeting was attended by over 100 people. We would like to thank our colleague Tim Dempster for helping to convene and organize the meeting. It was fitting that the Meeting should be held in the Gregory Building, which was named after the Glasgow Professor who not only pioneered work on rift tectonics and regional uplift in Africa, but also wrote a perceptive book on 'Dalradian Geology' (Gregory 1931). In this work, Gregory pointed out that his observations were made over a period of 25 years, being made on 'recreational weekends', and mainly in winter 'when the ground is less obscured by vegetation and the Highland mountains most attractive': an approach motivated by a spirit of enquiry, and very productive, but one which would be out of step with current research strategies. We would like to dedicate this set of papers to Mark Piasecki who died on 13 June 1999. Mark was the first person to draw attention to major problems concerning the relationship


Aim: To make quantitative estimates of the burden of disease attributable to alcohol in the year 2000 on a global basis. Design: Secondary data analysis. Measurements: Two dimensions of alcohol exposure were included: average volume of alcohol consumption and patterns of drinking. There were also two main outcome measures: mortality, i.e. the number of deaths, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), i.e. the number of years of life lost to premature mortality or to disability. All estimates were prepared separately by sex, age group and WHO region. Findings: Alcohol causes a considerable disease burden: 3.2% of the global deaths and 4.0% of the global DALYs in the year 2000 could be attributed to this exposure. There were marked differences by sex and region for both outcomes. In addition, there were differences by disease category and type of outcome; in particular, unintentional injuries contributed most to alcohol-attributable mortality burden while neuropsychiatric diseases contributed most to alcohol-attributable disease burden. Discussion/Conclusions: The underlying assumptions are discussed and reasons are given as to why the estimates should still be considered conservative despite the considerable burden attributable to alcohol globally.


Gene editing aims to modify the genetic sequence at a precise genomic location. Recent breakthroughs in gene editing techniques such as the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) system have ushered in a new era for gene editing and health innovation. The purpose of the Expert Meeting (6-7 July 2017, Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Berlin, Germany) was to explore the core scientific, legal, regulatory and societal challenges facing the responsible development and use of gene editing in somatic cells for advanced therapies. Experts noted that the trajectory of gene editing in research and development and the uptake of future therapies in the clinical setting remain unclear due to uncertainties in the scientific, regulatory, and economic landscapes. Many policy issues are also raised in the context of other emerging technologies. Governance must cope with a moving technical frontier and some level of uncertainty around risks and benefits.


Spam has become an important problem for computer security because it is a channel for the spreading of threats such as computer viruses, worms and phishing. Currently, more than 85% of received emails are spam. Historical approaches to combat these messages, including simple techniques such as sender blacklisting or the use of email signatures, are no longer completely reliable. Many solutions utilise machine-learning approaches trained using statistical representations of the terms that usually appear in the emails. However, these methods require a time-consuming training step with labelled data. Dealing with the situation where the availability of labelled training instances is limited slows down the progress of filtering systems and offers advantages to spammers. In a previous work, we presented the first spam filtering method based on anomaly detection that reduces the necessity of labelling spam messages and only employs the representation of legitimate emails. We showed that this method achieved high accuracy rates detecting spam while maintaining a low false positive rate and reducing the effort produced by labelling spam. In this paper, we enhance that system applying a data reduction algorithm to the labelled dataset, finding similarities among legitimate emails and grouping them to form consistent clusters that reduce the amount of needed comparisons. We show that this improvement reduces drastically the processing time, while maintaining detection and false positive rates stable.


Several prominent theories predict that argument strength plays an important role in message processing and effects. Traditional strategies to measure perceived argument strength have limitations in responsivity to emerging arguments in public discourse. This article examines the utility of a survey-embedded wiki platform (wiki survey) to identify strong and weak arguments in dynamic information environments. Participants completed two wiki surveys, embedded within a larger survey of U.S. adults ( N = 1,506), asking them to choose between randomly selected pairs of arguments related to marijuana legalization or to add new arguments to the item pools. The method identified 32 novel, user-generated arguments, over and above an original set of 26 arguments identified by study authors through a review of the literature and a content analysis of news media coverage on the topic. The wiki survey also produced variation in perceived strength of arguments among relevant demographic and social groups.


The foods we eat in childhood impact on health in adult life. With the increasing incidence of diet related diseases such as non insulin dependent diabetes and cancer it is important that food intakes are monitored. Further in order to assess the effectiveness of health promotion initiatives methods of assessing intake are required which are both accurate and sensitive enough to detect changes in diet. If nutrient intakes are of interest these methods must include a measure or estimate of the amount of food consumed. Weighing foods imposes a large burden on the subject, may not be practical or possible in some sub-sections of populations e. g. children, and often results in underreporting. The purpose of this work was to develop methods for assessing dietary intake in 4 to 11 year olds; to assess the relative validity of these methods; to utilise the methods to assess the effectiveness of a dietary intervention and to assess the validity of current methods of assessing portion size for use with children. Two methods of assessing dietary intake were developed and pilot tested with children aged 4 to 11 years old. A food record designed to measure frequency of fruit and vegetable intake and a food diary with interview using food photographs to measure nutrient intake. Following refinement the methods were used to assess the effectiveness of a fruit and vegetable intervention. In a further study the validity of adult food photographs and food models in estimating portion size with children was assessed in an interview where children were shown known weights of foods. The food record and food diary were successful in detecting changes in intake of fruit and vegetables as a result of the intervention. The food record was found to be difficult to complete and was accurate in measuring fruit and vegetable intakes only at the group level. Accuracy of chi ' ldren's estimates of portion size were poor, children significantly overestimated food portion sizes on average using both the food photographs and the food models. The precision of children's estimates of portion size was also poor with a large range of overand underestimates of portion size using both the food models and the food photographs.


A number of indolocarbazole-based anion receptors were prepared and their anion-binding behaviors were characterized in solution and in the solid state. First, chain-length-dependent binding affinities of chloride ion were revealed using a series of indolocarbazoles that consisted of one to four indolocarbazole units. The binding affinities were steadily enhanced from monomer to dimer, then to trimer by Gibb's free energy (–∆∆G) = 2.4 ± 0.1 kcal/mol, and then nearly saturated. Second, a water-soluble trimer folded to generate an internal helical cavity with six convergent NHs, wherein small halides bound in water in the order of Cl– (65 M–1) > F– (46 M–1), and Br– (19 M–1). Third, X-ray crystal structures clearly proved helical folding of a trimer in the presence of sulfate ion, in which left- and right-handed helices stacked alternatively. It was also shown that the selectivity of anion binding could be varied by the modification of the spacer groups connecting indolocarbazole units. Finally, we prepared chiral indolocabazole dimers that adopted helical structures by intramolecular hydrogen bonds and displayed complete inversion of the helical sense upon anion binding. The dimers gave characteristic optical readouts in a reversible manner according to chemical stimuli, thus functioning as chirooptical molecular switches.


Background
Treatment for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) is of particular concern in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) initiating biologic therapies to prevent tuberculosis (TB) reactivation. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of LTBI treatment in IBD patients receiving biologic therapy.

Methods
There was a retrospective review of all IBD patients diagnosed with LTBI following a tuberculin skin test (TST) and/or interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) and who received biologic therapy between 2002 and 2016. The primary outcome was tuberculosis reactivation after completion of LTBI treatment.

Results
Three-hundred twenty-nine IBD patients were identified, and 35 (27 Crohn's disease; 8 ulcerative colitis) met the study inclusion criteria. The mean age was 38.3 years, and 68.6% were male. The most common LTBI treatment regimen was isoniazid (INH) for 9 months (74%). Biologic therapies used were infliximab (40%), adalimumab (29%), vedolizumab (20%), and certolizumab pegol (11%). Combination therapy with an immunomodulator was administered in 57% of cases. The median time from initiation of LTBI treatment to biologics was 43 days. The mean duration of follow-up was 2.9 years. The estimated median annual risk of TB reactivation without treatment was 0.52% by a prediction formula. Only 1 patient taking adalimumab monotherapy developed reactivation of TB several years after completing 6 months of isoniazid therapy. The estimated TB reactivation rate was 0.98 cases per 100 patient-years of follow-up in our cohort.

Conclusions
Treatment for LTBI in patients with IBD treated with biologics is effective but does not eliminate the risk of reactivation. 10.1093/ibd/izy133_video1izy133.video15776720675001.


Directional resultatives show puzzling syntactic restrictions. In Romance, broadly speaking, they do not occur at all with manner-of-motion verbs. In Dutch, directional resultatives with mannerof- motion verbs usually force postpositional order in the directional PP — but prepositional order is grammatical under cir cumstances that have so far defied a unified and insightful account. Focusing primarily on Dutch, this paper presents an analysis of directional resultative constructions and the syntactic representation of manner of motion which is centred around the following main claims: (a) directional resultative construc tions with manner-of-motion verbs can in principle be built on either of two structures, one featuring the light verb GO and the other the light verb GET; (b) while both light verbs take a small-clausal complement, GET takes one that is headed by a particle; (c) the particle in GET-constructions can license a null directional P in the struc ture of directional PPs built on a non-inherently directional adposition, and deliver prepositional order; (d) the absence of a particle in GO-constructions forces the null directional P in directional PPs built on non-inherently directional adpositions to either incorporate into GO or have the locative P embedded in its com plement to raise up to it; (e) manner-of-motion verbs have a MANNER component adjoined to GO/GET; (f) P–incorporation into MANNER-modified GO/GET is inadmissible (due to a ban on multiple adjunction to the same head); (g) in GO+MANNER structures, a null directional P can hence be licensed only by having a loc a tive P raise up to it; (h) raising of a locative P up to a directional P results in postpositional word order in Dutch, whereas the absence of raising of PLoc up to PDir delivers prepositional surface order.


Summary and Conclusions
Our results confirm the observation that Hetrazan does not possess activity against the adult worms. Although the lethal action of the drug against the microfilarias has been well demonstrated (10), most of our patients have shown a recurrence of the microfilarias after variable periods of negative biopsies extending up to 8 months, although in these cases the microfilarias were fewer in number than before starting the treatment. At times these recurrences could be explained by the presence of nodules containing living worms, but various patients (No. 2, 4, 9, 10, 12 and 15) did not show any nodules and still gave some positive biopsies. It is quite possible that adult worms were present that escaped detection and therefore extirpation. Also we may include the possibility that a certain proportion of the microfilarias may escape the action of the Hetrazan, harbored in some internal organ of the host.
Concerning the possibility of using Hetrazan prophylactically in endemic zones, it appears that only partial results can be obtained since the disappearance of the microfilarias does not occur in all the treated patients. It would be necessary to make studies on the density of microfilarias needed to insure infection of the simulid vectors. It seems evident that to obtain a permanent modification in the epidemiology of the disease it is indispensable to bring action against the vectors themselves with the object of decreasing their numbers. However, the administration of the drug to individual patients appears justified in view of the favorable clinical response obtained in most of the cases.


Climate change is one of the most pressing problems the world is facing today. Due to human emissions, the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is escalating at a concerning rate. This increase is causing ocean temperatures to rise, pH levels to lower, and altering the habitats of countless species. Balaenoptera musculus, or the blue whale, is a highly migratory species that relies on the stability of its' habitats for foraging and calving grounds. They rely on the upwelling of nutrients and consistent conditions that allow for substantial prey populations to accumulate. With the effects of climate change altering the temperature and pH of these areas, prey populations may shift their distribution, thus altering the blue whales migration patterns. I reviewed numerous papers with a focus on three main topics: current blue whale migration pattern, current conditions for their calving and foraging grounds, and the climate change projections for those key areas. The response to climate change of the blue whales main food source, krill, was additionally looked at. The cold, nutrient rich water of the Northeast Pacific provides a viable habitat for euphausiid crustaceans, such as krill, to flourish in numbers. The blue whales use these feeding grounds in the summer months, and winter in tropical waters. The Costa Rican Dome is an area of significant upwelling and warm waters, which provide suitable waters for birthing their calves. The unprecedented changes to these areas could significantly impact blue whale abundance and distribution.


Independence Axiom offers designers a guide to good design. It declares that the design parameters (DPs) conceived for a good design must maintain the independence of the design functional requirements (FRs). Specifically, by relating FRs to DPs through a design matrix [DM] with elements ∂FRi/∂DPj, Independence Axiom declares that only designs with diagonal or triangular design matrix can maintain the functional independence of FRs; and that they should be the only acceptable ones. Starting with the formal definition of functional independence, we derive the criterion for functional independence of FRs as the Jacobian determinant | J | ≠ 0; where the Jacobian matrix [ J ] is shown to be identically equal to [DM]. We further show that if and only if | J | ≠ 0 can the design FRs achieve their target values. Thus the criterion | J | ≠ 0 substantiates the declaration of Independence Axiom since determinant of a diagonal or triangular design matrix is not equal to zero. It serves as the mathematical basis for teaching and implementing Independence Axiom in design. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the implementation of Independence Axiom via the Jacobian determinant | J |.


Modular robots are mechatronic systems that can rearrange their connectivity to create new topologies to accomplish diverse tasks. In previous work, we have studied a modular reconfigurable robot (Slimebot) characterized by a spontaneous inter-module connection control mechanism. The modules of Slimebot connect to each other via a functional material which satisfies physical coupling between the ones. Here, we investigate the effect of heterogeneous inter-module coupling strengths on the adaptivity of Slimebot (here measured in terms of structural stability and locomotive speed). Simulation results show that a certain amount of heterogeneity improves the adaptivity of the system compared to the case of homogeneous modules. The only assumption that needs to be satisfied by the system with heterogeneous couplings is compliance to Steinberg's energy minimization theory.


Lime pozzolan mortars have been used by numerous ancient civilizations of builders, and are now regaining popularity as environmental sustainable alternatives to cements for masonry and concrete applications. This paper studies the relationship between the composition and physical characteristics of nine pozzolans and their corresponding reactivity, water demand, setting times and mechanical properties in lime/pozzolan pastes. A diverse selection of artificial pozzolans were investigated including Ground Granulated Blastfurnace Slag (GGBS); Leca; Pulverised Fuel Ash (PFA); Calcined Clay (MetaStar); Microsilica (MS); Rice Husk Ash (RHA); Red Brick Dust (RBD); Tile and Yellow Brick Dust (YBD). Each pozzolan was found to have a particular water demand for a given workabililty that was related to the particle surface area. It was concluded that the pozzolan surface area has a much greater influence on the water demand of the paste than its particle size or the lime:pozzolan ratio. It appears from this research, that the effect of the water content of the paste on the setting times surpasses the influence of the reactivity of the pozzolans. It was also demonstrated that the particle size of the pozzolan critically affects the set of the paste, both the coarsest and the finest pozzolans set the fastest; and there is a critical particle size, ranging between 63 and 250um, for which the set slows down significantly. Finally, it was also noted that pozzolanic reaction takes place at variable speed for different pozzolans, and that there can be instances when hydration can be slower than carbonation.


Chozanshi was a swordsman with a deep understanding of Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Shinto. "The Demon's Sermon" is a masterful syncretic treatment of these philosophies and religions, bringing their central meanings to bear on the essence of the martial arts. The demon delivering the sermon is the long-nosed half-man, half-bird Tengu, a terrifying but not necessarily malevolent figure who inhabits the recesses of Mount Kurama. Opening this volume is a selection of short, humorous tales from Chozanshi's "The Hayseed Taoist" ("Inaka Soshi"). The stories are lessons about spontaneity and non-attachment, and prime the reader philosophically for 'The Demon'. The final section is a translation of "The Mysterious Technique of the Cat" ("Neko no Myojutsu"), also from "The Hayseed Taoist" and a traditional favourite of the martial artists of Japan. The section summarises the entire work and adroitly illustrates Lao Tzu's dictum that "The master acts, relying on nothing."


I. INTRODUCTION In corporate law, there are two avenues through which a shareholder may attempt to sue a corporation in which the shareholder has stock: a direct or a derivative cause of action.1 A direct action is a claim asserted by a shareholder to remedy a personal injury suffered by that shareholder.2 A derivative shareholder action is a claim brought by a shareholder on behalf of a corporation to remedy an injury suffered by the corporation when the corporation's directors or officers have failed to do so.3 Different tests exist to determine whether a shareholder may sue a corporation directly rather than derivatively, and state law determines which test is to apply.4 This Note analyzes the three most commonly used tests as applied in Delaware, Illinois, and Indiana. These states in particular are discussed because courts in Delaware, Illinois, and Indiana have decidedly chosen one test to apply and have sufficiently developed the case law to allow for an analysis of the three tests. Part III.A of this Note investigates the direct harm test as applied in Delaware and the Delaware courts' inability to apply the direct harm test with clarity. Part III.B examines the special injury test used by courts in Illinois and highlights the lack of decisiveness within Illinois case law as to whether a special injury is one that is suffered by shareholders in general, or only by the specific shareholder who brings the suit. Part III.C explores the duty owed test as applied in Indiana and the exception the Indiana Supreme Court created for closely-held corporations, which allows for more successful direct shareholder claims. Through this analysis, it appears that the duty owed and direct harm tests lead to the most shareholder success in direct shareholder litigation. However, the duty owed test is the least arbitrary, and most clearly defined and applied. Therefore, courts should apply the duty owed test to determine whether a shareholder claim states a direct cause of action. II. BACKGROUND A. Differences Between Derivative and Direct Shareholder Claims In corporate law, shareholders have the power to sue the corporations in which they own stock through two different means: direct shareholder suits and derivative shareholder suits.5 In general, criteria vary for determining whether a shareholder has the authority to file a direct, rather than derivative, claim.6 However, the ability to bring a direct suit is important to a shareholder. This is because the remedies and procedural steps involved in direct actions are more beneficial to shareholders than the remedies and procedural steps in derivative actions.7 In a derivative lawsuit, shareholders bring an action on behalf of the corporation for a wrong to the entity itself.8 As a result, all damages received in a derivative suit belong to the corporation and not the individual shareholder bringing the suit.9 In a direct action, on the other hand, a shareholder brings an action against the corporation for an injury to the shareholder itself, and not the corporation as a whole.10 Therefore, in a direct shareholder action the court awards all damages directly to the shareholder or shareholders participating in the action.11 Although shareholders tend to have a preference for direct suits because of their ability to receive damages directly and to avoid procedural requirements such as demand,12 courts generally require that shareholders sue derivatively.13 This is intended to prevent multiplicity of lawsuits by shareholders, to protect corporate creditors by giving the money back to the corporation, to protect the interests of all shareholders by increasing the value of their shares, and to benefit the injured shareholders specifically by increasing the value of their shares.14 1. Derivative Shareholder Claims Derivative shareholder claims allow shareholders to sue on behalf of the corporation in order to enforce a right of the corporation that the entity itself has failed to assert. …


In America today the intense and controversial debate over the censorship of pornography continues to call into question the values of a modern, democratic culture. This ground-breaking collection of ten critical essays traces the history and various uses of pornography in early modern Europe, offering the historical perspective crucial to understanding current issues of artistic censorship. The essays, by historians and literary theorists, examine how pornography emerged between 1500 and 1800 as a literary practice and a category of knowledge intimately linked to the formative moments of Western modernity and the democratization of culture. They reveal that the first modern writers and engravers of pornography were part of the demimonde of heretics, freethinkers, and libertines who constituted the dark underside of the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. From the beginning, early modern European pornography used the shock of sex to test the boundaries and regulation of decent and obscene behavior and expression in the public and private spheres, criticizing and even subverting religious and political authorities as well social and sexual norms. Contents: Introduction, Lynn Hunt. Humanism, Politics, and Pornography in Renaissance Italy, Paula Findlen. The Politics of Pornography: L'Ecole des filles, Joan Dejean. Sometimes a Sceptre is only a Sceptre: Pornography and Politics in Restoration England, Rachel Weil. The Materialist World of Pornography, Margaret C. Jacob. Truth and the Obscene Word in Eighteenth-Century French Pornography, Lucienne Frappier-Mazur. The Pornographic Whore: Prostitution in French Pornography from Margot to Juliette, Kathryn Norberg. Erotic Fantasy and the Libertine Dispensation in Eighteenth-Century England, Randolph Trumbach. Politics and Pornography in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic, Wijnand W. Mijnhardt. Pornography and the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt.


In this paper – A Comparison of Forecasting Methods for Frequency of Rainfall in Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria – statistical analysis of two different forecasting techniques, Box Jenkins SARIMA and Holt-Winters Exponential Smoothing, using the data collected from the National Root Crop Research Institute, Umudike (2007-2016) was carried out with a view to determining a better forecasting method. This was achieved using four forecast error statistics–ME, MASE, MAE and RSME. Although SARIMA method has the minimum error values, a paired sample t-test shows that there is no significant difference between the forecast values obtained from the two forecasting methods. This therefore presupposes that the HoltWinters is equally a good forecasting method for the frequency of Rainfall in Nigeria.


Social features are increasingly integrated within the search results page of the main commercial search engines. There is, however, little understanding of the utility of social features in traditional search. In this paper, we study utility in the context of social annotations, which are markings indicating that a person in the social network of the user has liked or shared a result document. We introduce a taxonomy of social relevance aspects that influence the utility of social annotations in search, spanning query classes, the social network, and content relevance. We present the results of a user study quantifying the utility of social annotations and the interplay between social relevance aspects. Through the user study we gain insights on conditions under which social annotations are most useful to a user. Finally, we present machine learned models for predicting the utility of a social annotation using the user study judgments as an optimization criterion. We model the learning task with features drawn from web usage logs, and show empirical evidence over real-world head and tail queries that the problem is learnable and that in many cases we can predict the utility of a social annotation.


Wireless communications are becoming more and more important in our world. Wireless
communication is an alternative to wire communications, often more expensive to deploy due
to the extensive number of cables. In some location, it is simply not possible to deploy cables
and wireless communications come up handy reducing by far the expenses. We can also see the
part of wireless communications in our day to day life, from cellular phone, to computer wifi
and even headphones.
One of the other ways to use wireless communications is through sensor networks. Sensors are
small devices with small transmission range and low energy consumption. Sensors can be used
in environmental monitoring, for example to monitor temperature in a forest and, this way,
prevent the apparition of fires.
The standard protocol 802.15.4 defines a physical layer and a MAC layer which are well suited
to be used in sensor network such as LR-WPAN (Low Rate Wireless Personal Area Network). This
project will focus on the simulation of a sensor network using 802.15.4 protocol deployed on
train wheels. Those sensors would be able to retrieve information as temperature or vibration
values and transmit them to a more powerful computer able to treat that information.
First of all, I will rapidly describe some simulators which could be used to perform the
simulation. By the study of some characteristics, a choice will be drawn.
Then, to ensure the reliability of the simulator, a set of tests will be conducted and the results
obtained will be compared to theoretical ones.
Finally, the last part will deal with the simulation of the sensor network on the train. I will
explain the protocol itself and then perform some tests of energy consumption and throughput


[1] Understanding the dynamics of marine ice sheets is integral to studying the evolution of the Antarctic ice sheet in both the short and long terms. An important component of the dynamics, grounding line migration, has proved difficult to represent in numerical models, and most successful attempts have made use of techniques that are only readily applicable to flow line models. However, to capture the stress transmission involved in another important component, the buttressing of a marine ice sheet by its ice shelf, the transverse direction must also be resolved. We introduce a model that solves the time-dependent shelfy stream equations and makes use of mesh adaption techniques to overcome the difficulties typically associated with the numerics of grounding line migration. We compare the model output with a recent benchmark for flow line models and show that our model yields an accurate solution while using far less resources than would be required without mesh adaption. We also show that the mesh adapting techniques extend to two horizontal dimensions. Experiments are carried out to determine how both ice shelf buttressing and ice rises affect the marine instability predicted for an ice sheet on a foredeepened bed. We find that buttressing is not always sufficient to stabilize such a sheet but collapse of the grounded portion is still greatly delayed. We also find that the effect of an ice rise is similar to that of narrowing the ice shelf.


Economists have long been interested in the effect of technological change on the labor market. Our recent research has focused on how technological change influences the retirement decisions of older workers,(1) the skill acquisition of young workers,(2) and the interindustry wage structure.(3) Since data on the rate of technological change faced by workers in their jobs is unavailable in any non-firm-level dataset, we have used industry-level measures of technological change instead. In our early work on retirement, we studied the manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors and used the Jorgenson productivity growth series as a proxy for the industry rate of technological change. In our work on skill acquisition and the interindustry wage structure, we restricted the analysis to the manufacturing sector because of the difficulties in accurately measuring technological change outside the manufacturing sector. We used a number of additional proxies for technological change: the NBER productivity series; the Census of Manufacturers series on investment in computers; the industry's R and D-to-sales ratio; the industry's use of patents; and the number of scientists and engineers employed within the industry. This approach has enabled us to examine the robustness of alternative measures of technological change, thereby increasing our confidence in the results. Technological Change and Retirement Decisions Technological change can affect retirement decisions in two main ways: directly, through its effect on the amount of on-the-job training, and indirectly, through its effect on the depreciation rate of the stock of human capital. Economic theory does not clearly predict the effect of technological change on the optimal level of on-the-job training, though. This relationship depends on the effects of technological change on the marginal return to training, and on the complementarity and substitutability between schooling and training. If technological change and on-the-job training are positively correlated, then human capital theory predicts that workers in industries with higher rates of technological change will retire later.(4) However, in industries that have higher rates of technological change, human capital will depreciate at a faster rate. These higher rates of depreciation will lead to a lower optimal level of investment, inducing earlier retirement. Hence, from a theoretical perspective, the relationship between the long-run variation in the rate of technological change across industries and the age of retirement is ambiguous. If there is a net positive correlation between on-the-job training and technological change, though, the industries that are characterized by higher rates of technological change will have later retirement ages. Unexpected changes in the industry rate of technological change can also influence retirement decisions. For example, an unexpected increase in the rate of technological change will produce an increase in the depreciation rate of the human capital stock, leading to a revised rate of investment in human capital. If older workers are unlikely to revise their planned investments in human capital, then the higher depreciation rate will induce earlier retirement. In our empirical work using the 1966-83 National Longitudinal Surveys of Older Men, we find that it is important to distinguish between long-run variations and unexpected changes in industry rates of technological change. Our two main findings are that workers in industries with higher average rates of technological change retire later than workers in industries with lower rates of technological change, and that an unexpected increase in the rate of technological change induces earlier retirement, especially for workers 65 and older. Technological Change and the Skill Acquisition of Young Workers Observed investments in training are the outcome of a supply and demand interaction between employers and workers. …


Welfare states contribute to people's well-being in many different ways. Bringing all these contributions under a common metric is tricky. Here we propose doing so through the notion of temporal autonomy: the freedom to spend one's time as one pleases, outside the necessities of everyday life. Using income and time use surveys from five countries (the USA, Australia, Germany, France, and Sweden) that represent the principal types of welfare and gender regimes, we propose ways of operationalising the time that is strictly necessary for people to spend in paid labour, unpaid household labour, and personal care. The time people have at their disposal after taking into account what is strictly necessary in these three arenas – which we christen discretionary time – represents people's temporal autonomy. We measure the impact on this of government taxes, transfers, and childcare subsidies in these five countries. In so doing, we calibrate the contributions of the different welfare and gender regimes that exist in these countries, in ways that correspond to the lived reality of people's daily lives.


Forests play an important role in the global carbon (C) cycle, and the South Korean forests also contribute to this global C cycle. While the South Korean forest ecosystem was almost completely destroyed by exploitation and the Korean War, it has successfully recovered because of national-scale reforestation programs since 1973. There have been several studies on the estimation of C stocks and balances over the past decades in the South Korean forests. However, a retrospective long-term study that includes biomass and dead organic matter C and validates dead organic matter C is still lacking. Accordingly, we estimated the C stocks and their changes of both biomass and dead organic matter C during the 1954–2012 period using a process-based model, the Korean Forest Soil Carbon model, and the 5th South Korean national forest inventory (NFI) report. Validation processes were also conducted based on the 5th NFI and statistical data. Simulation results showed that the biomass C stocks increased from 36.4 to 440.4 Tg C at a rate of 7.0 Tg C yr −1 during the period 1954–2012. The dead organic matter C stocks increased from 386.0 to 463.1 Tg C at a rate of 1.3 Tg C yr −1 during the same period. The estimates of biomass and dead organic matter C stocks agreed well with observed C stock data. The annual net biome production (NBP) during the period 1954–2012 was 141.3 g C m −2 yr −1 , which increased from −8.8 g C m −2 yr −1 in 1955 to 436.6 g C m −2 yr −1 in 2012. Because of the small forested area, the South Korean forests had a comparatively lower contribution to the annual C sequestration by global forests. In contrast, because of the extensive reforestation programs, the NBP of South Korean forests was much higher than those of other countries. Our results could provide the forest C dynamics in South Korean forests before and after the onset of reforestation programs.


The usefulness of technical drawings as well as scientific illustrations such as medical drawings of human anatomy essentially depends on the placement of labels that describe all relevant parts of the figure. In order to not spoil or clutter the figure with text, the labels are often placed around the figure and are associated by thin connecting lines to their features, respectively. This labeling technique is known as external label placement. In this paper we introduce a flexible and general approach for external label placement assuming a contour of the figure prescribing the possible positions of the labels. While much research on external label placement aims for fast labeling procedures for interactive systems, we focus on highest-quality illustrations. Based on interviews with domain experts and a semi-automatic analysis of 202 handmade anatomical drawings, we identify a set of 18 layout quality criteria, naturally not all of equal importance. We design a new geometric label placement algorithm that is based only on the most important criteria. Yet, other criteria can flexibly be included in the algorithm, either as hard constraints not to be violated or as soft constraints whose violation is penalized by a general cost function. We formally prove that our approach yields labelings that satisfy all hard constraints and have minimum overall cost. Introducing several speedup techniques, we further demonstrate how to deploy our approach in practice. In an experimental evaluation on real-world anatomical drawings we show that the resulting labelings are of high quality and can be produced in adequate time.


Adaptation of brain storming technique to teach standard seven learners in English composition writing offers the learners an opportunity to work well together with behaviour, collaboration and communication well natured .The objective was to determine the influence of whole class technique on learners' achievement in composition writing skills in public primary schools in Kisumu County. The piagets theory 1967 was used to determine brain storming, technique on standard seven learners achievement in English composition writing skills. Non-equivalent control group with pre and post –test groups research design was adopted. The sample size of 292 was drawn from 6 teachers of English, 6 head teachers and standard seven pupils in public schools. Data was collected via questionnaire, observation schedules and check lists. Analysis was done using descriptive statistics.The findings indicated that brain writing strategy is moderately used (m= 3.40 SD of 1.269), pie storm teaching technique is highly used (m= 3.733 and SD of 1.796), and brain wave and brain writing strategy relatively contribute to learners' composition writing skills The computed z values for brainstorming technique elements revealed a z-statistic value higher than the zCritical value and P-value less than 0.05. Thus, the study rejected the entire five Null hypotheses as there was a statistically significant relationship between: individual group technique, whole class technique, small group technique, round robin technique and relay technique; and learners' achievement in composition writing skills in public primary schools in Kisumu County. For policy makers and implementers, ministry of Education and Kenya National Examination Council, should address the use of inquiring-based learning in order to provoke critical-thinking in learners as the new (CBC) gets rooted to curb the negative attitude of embracing change of teaching for life and not for exams .For theory similar studies should be carried out using inferential statistics, especially multiple regression analysis to assess how the individual strategies of brainstorming teaching technique contribute to overall learners' learning achievements. Other researches can use the Humanist child development theory to cater for the concerns of a paradigm shift to the thinking about holistic development of the learners. .


Combination of GaN light source and Si-microelectromechanical systems (MEMSs) is a promising hybrid structure for optical MEMS. As one of GaN-Si hybrid structures, a freestanding GaN/HfO2 membrane was fabricated on Si substrate. Unlike conventional GaN membrane on Si substrate, the fabricated membrane had a tensile stress by using the HfO2 layer. Therefore, the GaN/HfO2 membrane was flat enough to be useful for several MEMS. The GaN crystal was grown by molecular beam epitaxy on the HfO2 layer deposited on Si substrate. The surface of the HfO2 layer was nitrified before GaN crystal growth, and thus, a part of HfO2 surface was changed to HfN, the lattice of which matched well to that of GaN. The characteristics of the GaN crystal grown on the nitrified HfO2 layer were also investigated.


Background Sports injuries are highly disadvantageous for Physical Education (PE) students, because they can lead to physical discomfort, and absence from sports classes resulting in higher study career costs. Objective To investigate the magnitude of the injury problem in PE students and to explore risk factors for sustaining an injury. Design A prospective cohort study with six months follow up. Participants and setting 280 Dutch freshmen PE students. Assessment of risk factors Prior to the start of the school year, all students underwent a medical examination to assess height, weight, percentage of body fat, blood pressure, visual acuity, muscle-skeletal functioning, and cardio-respiratory endurance. During the six months follow up, an online questionnaire was conducted on a weekly basis to monitor injuries and illnesses (OSTRC Overuse Injury Questionnaire). Furthermore, every two weeks an online questionnaire (POMS and RESTQ-Sports) was administered to measure mood and perceived stress and recovery of the students. Main outcome measures Frequencies and characteristics of injuries and illnesses. Results According to the OSTRC Overuse Injury Questionnaire, 22.5% of the students had physical problems regarding injuries during the first month of the school year, and 11.2% of the students were ill. Data collection will end in February 2014. We will perform a logistic regression analysis to test whether the injured students differ significantly from non injured students based on characteristics such as age, sex, body composition, and muscle-skeletal functioning. Conclusions Preliminary results showed that the risk of sustaining an injury and becoming ill is high for freshmen PE students. Screening at the start of the school year may play an important role in identifying the students at risk.


Fracture mechanics principles have been used to study the effects of welding on the rate of fatigue crack growth (FCG) in a low-carbon structural steel. The steel concerned is used widely in the fabrication of the structural framework of passenger buses. Tests were carried out on the base metal (BM), heat affected zone (HAZ) and weld metal (WM). Both the near threshold and midrange regimes of crack growth were studied. In the midrange regime, the FCG rate was highest in the HAZ and lowest in the WM. Near the threshold, the FCG rate was highest in the BM and lowest in the WM. The results are explained in terms of microstructural changes due to welding, welding residual stresses, and fracture mechanisms. Recommendations to reduce the incidence of fatigue cracking have been made


Objective: Cerebral vascular events are the second leading cause of mortality worldwide and is increasing in developing countries. Epidemiological studies are important to improve outcomes and preventive and supportive strategies. This research was aimed to study epidemiology of stroke in Tabriz, Iran. Materials and Methods :This cross-sectional, analytic population-based study was performed from May 2009 to April 2010. Information about probable stroke events was obtained from 5000 randomly selected people. In a door-to-door process, questionnaires were completed by a trained team. Any probable stroke case was referred to a stroke expert for further evaluation. After diagnosing stroke cases, 214 healthy people were assembled for a control group to compare stroke related risk factors. Results :Out of 5000 studied people, 34(0.68%) stroke patients, with a mean age of 68.7 years (range: 38-85), were detected. Nineteen (56%) patients were male, 31 (91%) were ischemic, and 3 (9%) had hemorrhagic stroke. Six first-ever strokes occurred in the 1 year study period. Identified risk factors included hypertension in 25 (74%), hyperlipidemia in 11 (32%), diabetes mellitus in 9 (27%), smoking in 10 (29%) and coronary artery disease in 6 (18%). Conclusion : This report showed a high incidence rate of stroke of about 120 per 100,000 people and a remarkably high prevalence of hypertension. It speaks to the need to make special health system strategies to raise awareness for primary and secondary prevention of stroke.


Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) is a noninvasive method for measuring tissue stiffness in vivo. In MRE propagating shear waves are produced in soft tissue by an external actuator and these shear waves are imaged to determine the stiffness of the region non-invasively. In this paper a noble Acoustic MRE breast actuator has been proposed. MR data has been acquired at 85 hz on silicone phantom and shear modulus reconstruction has been performed using inverse reconstruction algorithm. The actuator has been successful in detecting very small size (7.5 mm diameter) tumor with surrounding and tumor stiffness contrast ratio 1:2.


In history, medicinal plants were proven as a source of active compounds with therapeutic applications, and at present, they are an important collection for the discovery of novel drug leads. Caralluma is a genus used as traditional medicine. The present article thoroughly reviewed about the classification of Caralluma into subgenera, number of its species, its distribution in different parts of the world, and pharmacological activities exhibited by different species of Caralluma.


Exploiting the emerging reality of affordable multi-core architectures goes through providing programmers with simple abstractions that would enable them to easily turn their sequential programs into concurrent ones that expose as much parallelism as possible. While transactional memory promises to make concurrent programming easy to a wide programmer community, current implementations either disallow nested transactions to run in parallel or do not scale to arbitrary parallel nesting depths. This is an important obstacle to the central goal of transactional memory, as programmers can only start parallel threads in restricted parts of their code.
 This paper addresses the intrinsic difficulty behind the support for parallel nesting in transactional memory, and proposes a novel solution that, to the best of our knowledge, is the first practical solution to meet the lowest theoretical upper bound known for the problem.
 Using a synthetic workload configured to test parallel transactions on a multi-core machine, a practical implementation of our algorithm yields substantial speed-ups (up to 22x with 33 threads) relatively to serial nesting, and shows that the time to start and commit transactions, as well as to detect conflicts, is independent of nesting depth.


Objective: To compare postoperative seizure-free survival between older and younger adults. Methods: A retrospective cohort of 107 temporal lobe epilepsy patients with a diagnosis of mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS) received anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) between 1993 and 2014. We divided the lower three quartiles (younger) and top quartile (older, all 47+ years) of patients, then reviewed patient registry and electronic medical records to determine time to first self-reported seizure after ATL, the primary outcome (mean = 3.5 years of follow-up, SD = 3.6). We also assessed Engel classifications, intraoperative and postoperative treatment complications, and social disability. We used Cox proportional hazard models to assess the association between individual traits and time of seizure recurrence. Results: During follow-up, 35/107 (32.7%) patients had post-operative seizure(s). After adjustment for potential confounders there were no significant differences in the probability of post-operative seizures between the older and younger groups, though we had limited precision (hazard ratio of 0.67 [0.28–1.59]), (p = 0.36). There were more treatment complications and disability in older patients (18% vs. 1.3% for any complications, 84.62% vs. 58.23% for driving disability, and 84.6% vs. 60.7% for work disability, p < 0.05). Conclusion: Older patients appear to have more complications after ATL, compared with younger patients. Age, however, does not appear to have a large independent association with seizure recurrence. © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


By the Roman age the traditional stories of Greek myth had long since ceased to reflect popular culture. Mythology had become instead a central element in elite culture. If one did not know the stories one would not understand most of the allusions in the poets and orators, classics and contemporaries alike; nor would one be able to identify the scenes represented on the mosaic floors and wall paintings in your cultivated friends' houses, or on the silverware on their tables at dinner. Mythology was no longer imbibed in the nursery; nor could it be simply picked up from the often oblique allusions in the classics. It had to be learned in school, as illustrated by the extraordinary amount of elementary mythological information in the many surviving ancient commentaries on the classics, notably Servius, who offers a mythical story for almost every person, place, and even plant Vergil mentions. Commentators used the classics as pegs on which to hang stories they thought their students should know. A surprisingly large number of mythographic treatises survive from the early empire, and many papyrus fragments from lost works prove that they were in common use. In addition, author Alan Cameron identifies a hitherto unrecognized type of aid to the reading of Greek and Latin classical and classicizing texts-what might be called mythographic companions to learned poets such as Aratus, Callimachus, Vergil, and Ovid, complete with source references. Much of this book is devoted to an analysis of the importance evidently attached to citing classical sources for mythical stories, the clearest proof that they were now a part of learned culture. So central were these source references that the more unscrupulous faked them, sometimes on the grand scale.


With the call for a change in the way students are prepared to meet the demands of the 21 century, new teaching methods are under investigation. Problem-based learning is one such method believed to encourage the skills students need to succeed. The purpose of this study is to outline the implications for using this approach to teach digital technology skills. Through this developmental study, a learning module was designed and developed for instruction in an eighth grade technology class. The research study also included an expert review and evaluation of the module through implementation in a middle school in southern New Jersey. The findings are presented and implications include the need for a shift in several aspects of education; a shift in how students are taught, a shift in the role teachers assume through this approach, and a shift in how teachers are trained to implement this teaching approach. Finally, recommendations are made for instructional designers seeking to develop a model for instruction in a problem-based learning environment.


Abstract. NASA's MODIS sensors have been observing the Earth from polar orbit, from Terra since early 2000 and from Aqua since mid 2002. We have applied a consistent retrieval and processing algorithm to both sensors to derive the Collection 5 (C005) dark-target aerosol products over land. Here, we validate the MODIS along-orbit Level 2 products by comparing to quality assured Level 2 AERONET sunphotometer measurements at over 300 sites. From 85 463 collocations, representing mutually cloud-free conditions, we find that >66% (one standard deviation) of MODIS-retrieved aerosol optical depth (AOD) values compare to AERONET-observed values within an expected error (EE) envelope of ±(0.05 + 15%), with high correlation (R = 0.9). Thus, the MODIS AOD product is validated and quantitative. However, even though we can define EEs for MODIS-reported Angstrom exponent and fine AOD over land, these products do not have similar physical validity. Although validated globally, MODIS-retrieved AOD does not fall within the EE envelope everywhere. We characterize some of the residual biases that are related to specific aerosol conditions, observation geometry, and/or surface properties, and relate them to situations where particular MODIS algorithm assumptions are violated. Both Terra's and Aqua's–retrieved AOD are similarly comparable to AERONET, however, Terra's global AOD bias changes with time, overestimating (by ~0.005) before 2004, and underestimating by similar magnitude after. This suggests how small calibration uncertainties of


For animal species with dynamic interactions, understanding social patterns can be difficult. Social network analysis quantifies associations and their intensity between individuals within a population, revealing the overall patterns of the society. We used networks to test the hypothesis that the elusive African forest elephant Loxodonta cyclotis exhibits fission−fusion social dynamics, similar to other elephant species. We observed associations between individuals in savanna clearings in Lope National Park, Gabon, in 2006, 2008, and 2010. When possible, dung was collected from individuals for genetic analyses using 10 microsatellite loci and the mitochon- drial DNA control region. Using simple ratio association indices, networks were created for each year, wet and dry seasons, individuals detected at least twice, and for all females. We identified 118 unique adult females, for 40 of which we obtained genetic information. Networks had low densities, many disconnected components, short average path lengths, and high clustering coeffi- cients. Within components, average relatedness was 0.093 ± 0.071 (SD) and females appeared to share mitochondrial haplotypes. We detected 1 large component consisting of 22 adult females, but there were few preferred associations (8 of 65, 12.3%). No seasonal or yearly differences were observed. Our results substantiate fission−fusion dynamics in forest elephants; however, the net- works are more disconnected than those for other elephant species, possibly due to poaching and ecological constraints in the forest environment.


Precipitation pulses play an important role in regulating ecosystem carbon exchange and balance of semiarid steppe ecosystems. It has been predicted that the frequency of extreme rain events will increase in the future, especially in the arid and semiarid regions. We hypothesize that large rain pulses favor carbon sequestration, while small ones cause more carbon release in the semiarid steppes. To understand the potential response in carbon sequestration capacity of semiarid steppes to the changes in rain pulse size, we conducted a manipulative experiment with five simulated rain pulse sizes (0, 5, 10, 25, and 75 mm) in Inner Mongolia steppe. Our results showed that both gross ecosystem productivity (GEP) and ecosystem respiration (Re) responded rapidly (within 24 h) to rain pulses and the initial response time was independent of pulse size. However, the time of peak GEP was 1–3 days later than that of Re, which depended on pulse size. Larger pulses caused greater magnitude and longer duration of variations in GEP and Re. Differences in the response time of microbes and plants to wetting events constrained the response pattern of heterotrophic (Rh) and autotrophic (Ra) components of Re following a rain event. Rh contributed more to the increase of Re in the early stage of rain pulse response, while Ra played an more important role later, and determined the duration of pulse response, especially for large rain events of >10 mm. The distinct responses of ecosystem photosynthesis and respiration to increasing pulse sizes led to a threshold in rain pulse size between 10 and 25 mm, above which post wetting responses favored carbon sequestration. The disproportionate increase of the primary productivity of higher plants, compared with those in the activities of microbial decomposers to larger pulse events suggests that the carbon sequestration capacity of Inner Mongolia steppes will be sensitive to changes in precipitation size distribution rather than just precipitation amount.


In 2003 a new 12-week full time Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) programme called Certificate in English Language Teaching (Cert ELT) was offered by the Department of Education at the Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) for the first time. While other TESOL programmes offered by Wintec are for trained teachers and teacher-aides, the new Cert ELT programme is for those with little or no previous teaching experience. The curriculum development and delivery of Wintec's TESOL programmes are informed by a constructivist view of learning which has held a prominent focus in educational literature since the late 1980s. This theory of learning sees learners as active participants in the processes of incorporating, synthesising and constructing knowledge within their previous experience (Arlidge, 2000; Zepke, Nugent & Leach 2003). Of particular relevance within TESOL literature is the social constructivist view which claims that a key element in the learning process is that knowledge is socially constructed through dialogue and interaction with others (Randall & Thornton, 2001; Malderez & Bodoczky, 1999; James, 2001). Also relevant is the reflective model of TESOL teacher education as outlined by Wallace (1993) in which trainees participate in a continuous cycle of teaching, observation, reflection and discussion in order to become reflective practitioners. A lack of information concerning what happens to the Cert ELT students once they graduate from the programme motivated the research discussed in this paper. Data collection included a questionnaire and individual interviews. The questionnaire gathered information concerning the graduates' employment destinations, and the interviews focussed on the graduates' retrospective views of those components of the programme associated with a social constructivist view of learning. These components included experiential learning, reflective practice and collaborative practice. It is expected that insights gained from this project will be of interest to other TESOL professionals and teacher educators.


Macrobenthic invertebrates were sampled quantitatively in the main channel of the Austrian Danube on 6 dates between April 1993 and February 1995. A modified air lift sampler (PEHOFER 1998; BRETSCHKO & SCHONBAUER 1998) was used. Due to flood control structures built during the last century, the stretch of the Danube investigated is severely regulated and characterized by straightening, steep and heavily stabilized banks, high current speeds up to 3m s -1 , and a water depth of up to 6 m with gravel sediments, Biologically important structures are restricted to a periodically inundated gravel bar and permanently inundated groyne fields. Three transects of the main channel were sampled in the centre, near the banks and near the groyne fields. Additionally, samples were also taken from areas between the groynes. Out of a total number of 181 reported taxa, only 6 species (Jaera istri, Stylodrilus heringianus, Canthocamptus staphylinus, Corophium curvispinum, Rheotanytarsus rhenanus and Rheotanytarsus sp.) were quantitatively important. Although insects were the most diverse group, with 109 out of 181 identified species so far, the most abundant groups with regard to their mean densities were Crustacea (Isopoda, Harpacticoida and Amphipoda) and worms (Oligochaeta and Nematoda) representing over 86% of the sampled fauna. The dominant taxonomic units occurred over the entire cross section. Macroinvertebrate densities were surprisingly high, even in the shipping channel with the highest current speeds and greatest water depths, but stream fauna was more abundant and diverse in areas protected from the current, such as the groyne fields. The preference of the fauma for protected areas and the distinct temporal pattern, with highest densities in summer and lowest densities in winter, was independent of the discharge regime and is attributed to the life histories of the most frequent taxa.


We study how public and private disclosure requirements interact to influence both tax regulator enforcement and firm disclosure. To capture IRS enforcement activities, we introduce a novel dataset of IRS acquisition of firms' public financial disclosures, which we label IRS attention. We examine the implementation of two new disclosure requirements that potentially alter IRS attention: FIN 48, which increased public tax disclosure requirements, and Schedule UTP, which increased private tax disclosure. We find that IRS attention increased following FIN 48 but subsequently decreased following Schedule UTP, consistent with public and private disclosure interacting to influence tax enforcement. We next examine how private tax disclosure requirements under Schedule UTP affected firms' public disclosure responses. We find that, following Schedule UTP, firms significantly increased the quantity and altered the content of their tax-related disclosures, consistent with lower tax-related proprietary costs of disclosure. Our results suggest that changes in SEC disclosure requirements altered the IRS's behavior with regard to public information acquisition, and, relatedly, changes in IRS private disclosure requirements appear to change firms' public disclosure behavior.


Abstract For the "Mégajoule" Laser (LMJ) facility of the CEA, amorphous hydrogenated carbon (a-C:H) is the nominal ablator to be used for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. These capsules contain the fusible deuterium-tritium mixture to achieve ignition. Coatings are prepared by glow discharge polymerization (GDP) with trans-2-butene and hydrogen. The films properties have been investigated. Laser fusion targets must have optimized characteristics: a diameter of about 2.4 mm for LMJ targets, a thickness up to 175 μm, a sphericity and a thickness concentricity better than 99% and an outer and an inner roughness lower than 20 nm at high modes. The surface finish of these laser fusion targets must be extremely smooth to minimize hydrodynamic instabilities. Movchan and Demchishin, and later Thornton introduced a structure zone model (SZM) based on both evaporated and sputtered metals. They investigated the influence of base temperature and the sputtering gas pressure on structure and properties of thick polycrystalline coatings of nickel, titanium, tungsten, aluminum oxide. An original cross-sectional analysis by atomic force microscopy (AFM) allows amorphous materials characterization and permits to make an analogy between the amorphous GDP material and the existing model (SZM). The purpose of this work is to understand the relationship between the deposition parameters, the growing structures and the surface roughness. The coating structure as a function of deposition parameters was first studied on plane silicon substrates and then optimized on PAMS shells. By adjusting the coating parameters, the structures are modified, and in some case, the high modes roughness decreases dramatically.


The need for high bandwidth operational amplifiers (op amp) exists for numerous applications. This need requires research in the area of Op Amp bandwidth extension. The exploited method in this thesis uses a class of compensation called Indirect Feedback Frequency Compensation in which the compensation current is fed back indirectly from the output to an internal high impedance node, to extend the bandwidth of an Op Amp. Among various compensation methods for operational amplifiers, indirect compensation offers potentially large benefits in regards to power to speed trade-off. The indirect compensated Op Amps can exhibit significant improvements in speed over traditional Miller compensated Op Amps and result in much smaller layout size and lower power consumption. However the technique has not been widely used in practice due to a lack of clear design procedure. This thesis develops an analytical description of how indirect compensation works and derives key trade off equations among various specifications. These results provide the insight needed for practically designing operational amplifiers with this technique. Based on the results, a step-by-step design procedure is proposed for an operational amplifier using indirect compensation. To demonstrate the proposed design procedure, a two stage Op Amp is designed. The Op Amp achieved a 2 MHz gain-bandwidth product (GBW) driving a large capacitive load (100 pF). The GBW of the Op Amp was improved by a factor of 10 times compared to the miller compensation scheme. The amplifier documented in this thesis achieved a higher simulated figures-of-merit (FoMs) compared to the state-of-art and can be directly used in integrated systems to achieve higher performance.


Magnetic sensors can be classified according to whether they measure the total magnetic field or the vector components of the magnetic field. The techniques used to produce both types of magnetic sensors encompass many aspects of physics and electronics. Here, we describe and compare most of the common technologies used for magnetic field sensing. These include search coil, fluxgate, optically pumped, nuclear precession, SQUID, Hall-effect, anisotropic magnetoresistance, giant magnetoresistance, magnetic tunnel junctions, giant magnetoimpedance, magnetostrictive/piezoelectric composites, magnetodiode, magnetotransistor, fiber optic, magnetooptic, and microelectromechanical systems-based magnetic sensors. The usage of these sensors in relation to working with or around Earth's magnetic field is also presented


Analysis of proteins from cultured cells often requires sample processing at a larger volume scale. Examples include isolation of cell fractions from larger homogenates, determination of enzyme activities as well as harvesting of proteins from sparsely growing cells. The new Eppendorf Tubes 5.0 mL are the ideal vessel format for these applications. Their use allows larger processing volumes, high centrifugation forces and improved handling.


The proliferation of land reclamation projects around the world has increased the need for advanced studies on the mechanical behavior of soft clays. One of the most important aspects of soft clay behaviour is the time dependent deformation characteristics. The behavioral characteristics of soft clays suggest that an overstress type soil model is suitable for the analysis of such deposits. A model initially proposed by P. Perzyna has been extended with the addition of a Cam Clay type yield criterion and implemented in a finite element code to analyze geotechnical problems in two dimensions. In addition to describing the monotonic loading behavior, the model is used for the analysis of soft clays under vibrational loads from vehicle traffic. In order to investigate the effects of vibrations on the rate dependent behaviour of soft clays, a new vibrational slump test has been devised. The results are used to explain the processes involved during the deformation of a clay sample under its own weight. It is seen that the variations of the parameters used in the soil model exhibit a marked resemblance to the variations of the fundamental material state variables such as the flow volume, activation energy, and entropy. In the light of this observation, the possible relationships between the material parameters used in the present viscoplasticity model and the thermodynamic variables from rate process theory are discussed. The conclusions drawn from the vibrational slump test results as well as the careful examination of the constitutive model have been implemented in a Finite Element computer code. The predictive abilities of this program have been established by comparison with field measurements and the behavior of a soft clay foundation under the effect of surface vibrations is simulated. It is found that vehicle traffic during and after the construction of landfills (or embankments) noticeably retards the consolidation process and creates prolonged periods of quasi-undrained conditions


This review describes approaches to the analysis of fractal properties of physiological observations. Fractals are useful to describe the natural irregularity of physiological systems because their irregularity is not truly random and can be demonstrated to have spatial or temporal correlation. The concepts of fractal analysis are introduced from intuitive, visual, and mathematical perspectives. The regional heterogeneities of pulmonary and myocardial flows are discussed as applications of spatial fractal analysis, and methods for estimating a fractal dimension from physiological data are presented. Although the methods used for fractal analyses of physiological data are still under development and will require additional validation, they appear to have great potential for the study of physiology at scales of resolution ranging from the microcirculation to the intact organism.


The delivery of IS services is very resource consuming in all organizations. In an era in which management optimization is one of the bases for competitive advantage, sourcing options must be judged carefully. Traditionally, the dilemma has been considered in terms of make (insourcing) or buy (outsourcing). But both of these options have shown a certain amount of problems. Although outsourcing has allowed firms to concentrate on their core competencies, it has also shown several issues that prove it is not a panacea. Insourcing, on the other hand, does not allow a great deal of flexibility and we also find that it is every time more frequent that firms do not want their amount of staff to grow. Between both options, the internal mechanism has arisen. Its use entitles the creation of an intermediate society between the organization and the market. This article shows two cases of organizations from different environments in which the sourcing process involved the creation of an intermediate organization to act as the described buffering mechanism. Both processes were related to the IS/ICT function, one in Spain and another one in Italy. The study of the two cases has helped us identify and confirm empirically a number of features achieved by this internal mechanism use.


Abstract Rationale and objectives: Emergency contraceptives pills (ECPs) are described as drugs that work by either inhibiting or delaying ovulation without affecting implantation. In our opinion, as we aim at demonstrating, both EMA documents and the experimental papers indicate that they prevalently inhibit embryo-implantation. LNG-ECPs: literature: LNG-ECPs never prevent ovulation when are taken in the most fertile days (EMA-EPAR on ellaOne® p. 9, first table). Conversely, they prevent the formation of an adequate corpus luteum. When they are taken pre-ovulatory ovulations occur regularly, but pregnancies do not appear. Taken after ovulation, they seem ineffective in preventing pregnancies. UPA-ECPs: literature: EllaOne® prevents ovulation only when is taken in the first fertile day. Thereafter, its anti-ovulatory effect drops sharply and becomes insignificant (8%) 36 h before ovulation, in the most fertile days (Brache); its decreasing anti-ovulatory effect cannot explain a consistently high effectiveness in preventing pregnancies (≥80%) that does not decrease depending on which of the 5 d it is taken after unprotected intercourse. Besides, ovulation occurs regularly in 91.7% of women taking ellaOne® weekly, for eight consecutive weeks (EMA-CHMP-Assessment Report 'EMA/73099/2015': study HRA2914-554, p. 7). Lastly, Lira-Albarrán administered ellaOne® to women in the most fertile pre-ovulatory days: they had normal ovulation, but their endometrium, evaluated through samples obtained in the implantation window, became inhospitable: the expression of 1183 genes was exactly the opposite of that observed in the receptive pro-gestational endometrium. This agrees with information by EMA-CHMP-Assessment Report 'EMEA/261787/2009' (p. 8): after UPA administration 'the proteins necessary to begin and maintain pregnancy are not synthesized'. Conclusions: Emergency Contraceptives work prevalently by preventing embryo-implantation. People shall receive correct information.


The Joint European Torus (JET) has recently operated with deuterium-tritium (DT) mixtures, carried out an International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) physics campaign in hydrogen, deuterium, DT and tritium, installed the Mark IIGB `Gas Box' divertor fully by remote handling and started physics experiments with this more closed divertor. The DT experiments set records for fusion power (16.1?MW), ratio of fusion power to plasma input power (0.62, and 0.95?? 0.17 if a similar plasma could be obtained in steady state) and fusion duration (4?MW for 4?s). A large scale tritium supply and processing plant, the first of its kind, allowed the repeated use of the 20?g of tritium on-site to supply 99.3?g of tritium to the machine. The H?mode threshold power is significantly lower in DT, but the global energy confinement time is practically unchanged (no isotope effect). Dimensionless scaling `wind tunnel' experiments in DT extrapolate to ignition with ITER parameters. The scaling is close to gyro-Bohm, but the mass dependence is not correct. Separating the thermal plasma energy into core and pedestal contributions could resolve this discrepancy (leading to proper gyro-Bohm scaling for the core) and also account for confinement degradation at high density and at high radiated power. Several radiofrequency heating schemes have been tested successfully in DT, showing good agreement with calculations. Alpha particle heating has been clearly observed and is consistent with classical expectations. Internal transport barriers have been established in optimized magnetic shear discharges in DT and steady state conditions have been approached with simultaneous internal and edge transport barriers. First results with the newly installed Mark IIGB divertor show that the in-out symmetry of the divertor plasma can be modified using differential gas fuelling, that optimized shear discharges can be produced and that krypton gas puffing is effective in restoring L?mode edge conditions and establishing an internal transport barrier in such discharges.


In this report, Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg focus on the potential for shared and interactive learning made possible by the Internet. They argue that the single most important characteristic of the Internet is its capacity for world-wide community and the limitless exchange of ideas. The Internet brings about a way of learning that is not new or revolutionary but is now the norm for todays graduating high school and college classes. It is for this reason that Davidson and Goldberg call on us to examine potential new models of digital learning and rethink our virtually enabled and enhanced learning institutions. This report is available in a free digital edition on the MIT Press website at http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513593. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning


A wing-type imbedded electrodes was introduced into the lateral light emitting diode configuration (WTIE-LEDs) to reduce the effect of light shading of electrode in conventional sapphire-based LEDs (CSB-LEDs). The WTIE-LEDs with double-side roughened surface structures not only can eliminate the light shading of electrode and bonding wire, but also increase the light extraction and light output power. Contrast to CSB-LEDs, a 79% enhancement of output intensity in the WTIE-LED was obtained at 100 mA injection current. Similarly, the output power of packaged WTIE-LEDs was enhanced 59% higher compared with the packaged CSB-LEDs at the same injection condition. Therefore, using the imbedded contact to reduce light shading would be a promising prospective for LEDs to achieve high output power.


Peacekeeping organizations have recently begun to critically evaluate their operations concerning the effects their activities have on the local community in post-conflict environments. There is now an increased recognition that local-level, or day-to-day, activities
play a much more significant role in post-conflict stabilization than once attributed and that they affect policy goals more directly than previously thought. Yet, a systematic study of the effects of military bases in post-conflict environments is absent. This research begins to fill this gap concerning military bases established in post-conflict environments. It uses process tracing through within case study comparison and livelihoods focused political economy analysis of the Republic of Kosovo to address several questions: what
are the impacts of the base construction activities; what are the effects of the day-to-day sustainment activities, and what are the effects of the continued presence of the base on relations between military and local elites. Noting the economic gains of shadow economies by war-time elites often translates into political power in a post-war environment, elites' relations with the military base may assure their dominance through control of access to high-paying base employment and profitable business relationships. Thus, the everyday practices of establishing and maintaining military bases in post-conflict environments, which directly affect the political, social and economic components of the local political economy, may permanently affect stability and development. Field research of these questions finds substantial variance between bases, which have roots in
the procedures of the lead contributing nation. Overall, political effects are limited, while social and economic effects are mixed. Given the size, characteristics and enduring presence of military bases in peace operations, it is therefore necessary to look beyond size of the base, and interrogate more closely the specific practices, rules and regulations that they follow to identify their effects on the local political economy and implications for sustainable peacebuilding.


The mean field theory of multilayer neural networks centers around a particular infinite-width scaling, in which the learning dynamics is shown to be closely tracked by the mean field limit. A random fluctuation around this infinite-width limit is expected from a large-width expansion to the next order. This fluctuation has been studied only in the case of shallow networks, where previous works employ heavily technical notions or additional formulation ideas amenable only to that case. Treatment of the multilayer case has been missing, with the chief difficulty in finding a formulation that must capture the stochastic dependency across not only time but also depth. In this work, we initiate the study of the fluctuation in the case of multilayer networks, at any network depth. Leveraging on the neuronal embedding framework recently introduced by Nguyen and Pham [17], we systematically derive a system of dynamical equations, called the second-order mean field limit, that captures the limiting fluctuation distribution. We demonstrate through the framework the complex interaction among neurons in this second-order mean field limit, the stochasticity with cross-layer dependency and the nonlinear time evolution inherent in the limiting fluctuation. A limit theorem is proven to relate quantitatively this limit to the fluctuation realized by large-width networks. We apply the result to show a stability property of gradient descent mean field training: in the large-width regime, along the training trajectory, it progressively biases towards a solution with "minimal fluctuation" (in fact, vanishing fluctuation) in the learned output function, even after the network has been initialized at or has converged (sufficiently fast) to a global optimum. This extends a similar phenomenon previously shown only for shallow networks with a squared loss in the empirical risk minimization setting, to multilayer networks with a loss function that is not necessarily convex in a more general setting.