The limitations of traditional toxicity testing characterized by high-cost animal models with low-throughput readouts, inconsistent responses, ethical issues, and extrapolability to humans call for alternative strategies for chemical risk assessment. A new strategy using in vitro human cell-based assays has been designed to identify key toxicity pathways and molecular mechanisms leading to the prediction of an in vivo response. The emergence of quantitative high-throughput screening (qHTS) technology has proved to be an efficient way to decompose complex toxicological end points to specific pathways of targeted organs. In addition, qHTS has made a significant impact on computational toxicology in two aspects. First, the ease of mechanism of action identification brought about by in vitro assays has enhanced the simplicity and effectiveness of machine learning, and second, the high-throughput nature and high reproducibility of qHTS have greatly improved the data quality and increased the quantity of training datasets available for predictive model construction. In this review, the benefits of qHTS routinely used in the US Tox21 program will be highlighted. Quantitative structure–activity relationships models built on traditional in vivo data and new qHTS data will be compared and analyzed. In conjunction with the transition from the pilot phase to the production phase of the Tox21 program, more qHTS data will be made available that will enrich the data pool for predictive toxicology. It is perceivable that new in silico toxicity models based on high-quality qHTS data will achieve unprecedented reliability and robustness, thus becoming a valuable tool for risk assessment and drug discovery.


Diet is a pivotal contributing factor to the onset and progression of some chronic ail- ments nowadays. The conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a bioactive component of ruminant fat, introduces more elucidates what we know polyunsaturated fats and diseases. CLA, a mixture of isomers c9, t11 and t10, c12, is the most abundant ranging from 80 to 90% of total CLA isomers and account for most known health benefits. Dairy milk and meat are the major dietary sources of CLA, and its concentration is of great interest to human health. The biofunctionalities of CLA from enriched dairy products are major attributes in the context of a substance present in our everyday diet. Thus, dietary modifications in animal feed, synthetic and microbial production have been made to increase CLA intake to enhance its clinical manifestations. However, the bioavailability and distribution of enriched or supplemented CLA has not been fully elucidated because of its response variation in different animal models. This chapter deals with different dietary sources, availability, enhancement of CLA in dairy products and its positive manifestation against different maladies. In conclusion, it is feasible to produce CLA-enriched dairy products with acceptable storage and sensory characteristics while deriving its nutritional benefits.


The paper provides an insight into the design and tender of the more than 13 km long "Wienerwald" railway tunnel in Austria. The project comprises a double track tunnel section including an enlarged widening section at the transition to the two single track tunnels, a ventilation cavern with a permanent ventilation shaft, three permanent emergency exits within the double track section and more than 20 cross passages connecting the single track tubes. Temporary structures include an inclined disposal gallery and three shafts for ventilation during construction. For the disposal of excavation material not required for the construction of the open track a capacious landfill site is foreseen. The project has been tendered with two design alternatives regarding the construction method applied for the single-track tubes at the western section of the project (conventional method NATM or TBM driving). For evaluation of the preferred bid a risk assessment was carried out to quantify the influence of the applied construction method. Finally three construction lots have been combined into one big tender package. Molasse and Flysch formations characterize the geological conditions along the tunnel. The tunnel will cross several extensive fault/shear zones with an extension of up to 80 m. The overburden ranges from about 10 m at the portal areas up to a maximum of 200 meters.


We introduce the notion of query substitution, that is, generating a new query to replace a user's original search query. Our technique uses modifications based on typical substitutions web searchers make to their queries. In this way the new query is strongly related to the original query, containing terms closely related to all of the original terms. This contrasts with query expansion through pseudo-relevance feedback, which is costly and can lead to query drift. This also contrasts with query relaxation through boolean or TFIDF retrieval, which reduces the specificity of the query. We define a scale for evaluating query substitution, and show that our method performs well at generating new queries related to the original queries. We build a model for selecting between candidates, by using a number of features relating the query-candidate pair, and by fitting the model to human judgments of relevance of query suggestions. This further improves the quality of the candidates generated. Experiments show that our techniques significantly increase coverage and effectiveness in the setting of sponsored search.


The success of exports in Vietnam has become a driving force for economic growth since the reform in 1986. The paper uses data from 2001 to 2004 to estimates the gravity model for Vietnam's exports with the random effect estimation. The empirical results show that the bilateral trade of Vietnam has positive relationship with the country's GDP and importing countries' GDP. Furthermore, it has a negative relationship with distance from Vietnam to trading partners. These results are the same as the previous studies of the gravity model. Particularly, foreign direct investment, border effects and exchange rate play a significant role in promoting exports of Vietnam. Besides, the deepened integration into the region and world market also has significant impacts on expanding exports of Vietnam. Therefore, these factors have contributed to explaining the success in exports of Vietnam over the past few years.


The project incorporated a literature review; analysis of ten years of crash data from every jurisdiction in Australia and New Zealand; analysis of three years of detailed hospital injury data for older road users in South Australia; analysis of the contributing factors in older road user crashes examined using the Centre for Automotive Safety Research in-depth investigation method; consultations with representatives of all jurisdictions in Australia and New Zealand; and a summary of relevant sections of road safety strategies in a sample of international jurisdictions.  The report provides policy recommendations and describes crash countermeasures relevant to older road users.


CONNIE NEIGEL [*] I INTRODUCTION The development of copyright law in Russia and China is similar in several respects. Both countries developed their copyright laws much later than did Western Europe. Both countries refused to adopt international copyright agreements until pressured by other members of the international community, particularly the United States. Both countries refused adequately to protect foreign works. Despite these similarities, however, Russia and China have experienced very different treatment from the United States when U.S. copyrights have been violated. On the one hand, the United States has aggressively pursued trade sanctions against China to force it to adopt stricter intellectual property laws. With Russia, on the other hand, the United States has adopted a much milder approach and has not threatened trade remedies, despite the widespread piracy of U.S. works in Russia. In general, the United States has appeared to pursue different political, economic, and military goals in its relationships with Russia and China . For example, the United States supported the Russian government after the collapse of the Soviet Union and sought to strengthen the Russian economy, rather than possibly weakening it with threats of trade sanctions. In contrast, the United States threatened trade sanctions against China in an attempt to reduce the U.S. trade imbalance with China. In addition, U.S. policy toward China has been influenced by events in Tiananmen Square and other human rights abuses as well as China's policy of exporting arms and nuclear technology to Third World countries. By contrast, the United States has sought to maintain good relations with Russia to influence its policies of disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation. Finally, the United States has attacked piracy more aggressively in China because China exports its pirated works from the United States into Western markets, resulting in the direct competition of these low-cost, pirated works with legitimate U.S. works. For all of these reasons, the United States has pursu ed China's copyright abuses more aggressively than it has pursued similar abuses by Russia. This article attempts to explain the reasons for this disparate treatment. This article supplements the treatment of intellectual property law in Law and Contemporary Problems, including the Spring 1996 issue on the Lanham Act. Part II of this article traces the indigenous historical development of Russia's copyright system during the era of tsarist rule in Russia up to the Soviet era and explores more recent responses to external pressures from other members of the international community, in particular the United States. In similar fashion, Part III traces the historical development of China's copyright system, indigenously as well as in response to U.S. trade pressures. Part IV then examines the U.S. response to piracy in Russia and China and attempts to explain the disparate treatment. II HISTORY OF RUSSIA'S COPYRIGHT LAW Although Russia developed its first copyright law in the early nineteenth century, it did not adhere to international copyright agreements until almost 150 years later, when external pressures forced the then-Soviet Union to adapt its laws to more stringent international norms. A. Indigenous Development of Russia's Copyright Law Russia produced many of the great composers and authors of the world, but it lagged behind Western Europe in its development of copyright law by almost a century. [1] Western European countries published books in Slavic languages--and even used the Cyrillic alphabet--soon after the, invention of the printing press in 1476, but Russia did not publish its first known book until 1564, almost a century later. [2] Despite its late development, Russia's copyright law followed a similar path to the laws of Western Europe in the early years. Like its European counterparts, the Russian monarchy sought to control the dissemination of information by controlling printing. …


Following myocardial infarction (MI), left ventricular (LV) remodeling initiates a series of maladaptive events that may induce heart failure (HF). The use of injectable biomaterials is an attractive approach to attenuate negative remodeling; however, optimal properties for these systems have not been identified. The general hypothesis is that the properties of injectable hydrogels control the magnitude and duration of stabilization in the weakened myocardium and the ability to attenuate LV remodeling. To test this hypothesis, three specific aims were developed. Increased stress due to geometric alterations is thought to exacerbate LV remodeling, causing infarct expansion. Aim 1 utilized methacrylated hyaluronic acid (MeHA) hydrogels to demonstrate ex vivo that macromer modification and oxidation-reduction (redox) initiator concentrations influence the mechanical properties of hydrogel/myocardium composites and their distribution in tissue. Experimental data incorporation into a finite element model of the dilated LV validated previous in vivo geometric outcomes and generally demonstrated the largest stress reduction with higher mechanics and larger volumes. Aims 2 and 3 evaluated the influence of temporal mechanical support on LV remodeling in an in vivo MI model. Hydroxyethyl methacrylate groups were coupled to HA to produce hydrolytically degradable hydrogels (HeMA-HA) polymerized via redox reactions. In Aim 2, hydrogel gelation, mechanics, and degradation properties were varied by altering HeMA modification to yield low and high HeMA-HA with similar gelation and initial mechanics but accelerated degradation kinetics compared to previously studied low and high MeHA. High HeMA-HA was more effective than low HeMA-HA treatment in limiting remodeling; however, high HeMA-HA only limited LV dilation for 2 weeks, while its high MeHA counterpart sustained support up to 8 weeks. In Aim 3, a hydrogel/microsphere composite system was evaluated as an alternative approach to enhance temporal support via collagen bulking through controlled macrophage responses. The composite treatment increased myocardial thickness and decreased chamber volumes compared to hydrogel alone. This work demonstrates the significance of the magnitude and duration of mechanical support in attenuating LV remodeling and provides insight on optimal material properties for injectable biomaterials to develop better therapies to prevent HF. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Bioengineering This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/710 First Advisor Jason A. Burdick


The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) have become a serious problem for developing and developed countries alike in recent years. Since the early decades of this century, the number of people infected with HIV in Indonesia has increased significantly. Compared with other countries in Asia however, the percentage of people with HIV in Indonesia in 2009 is still relatively low at about 0.15 percent of those aged 15-49 years, or approximately 186,000 Indonesians. Access to education is seen as tantamount to HIV prevention and reduction (World Bank, 2002; Boler and Kate, undated; Vandemoortele and Delamonica, 2000). In 2000, a new term was coined to describe the correlation between HIV prevention and reduction and good access to education, namely the 'education vaccine'. Despite this, the numbers of PLHIV who are forced to reduce or cease their education due to HIV and AIDS is quite large. From a global standpoint, HIV and AIDS represents a major challenge to the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) of securing education for all by 2015 (UNESCO, 2001; Wijngaarden and Shaeffer, 2004).


To investigate the relationships between agronomic traits and molecular markers in sand plantain ( Plantago psyllium ), a set of 17 ecotypes collected in Iran were evaluated. Twelve ISSR primers were tested through multiple regression analysis to identify the marker-trait association between ISSR data and agronomic traits. Finally, the 12 primers amplified 129 fragments (loci) among ecotypes: 91 fragments (70.54%) of the 129 fragments showed polymorphism with an average of 7.58% per primer and the rate of this polymorphism ranged from at least 57.14% for UBC824 primer up to 54.62% for UBC813 primer. Polymorphic information content ranged from 0.27 (UBC814) to 0.41 (UBC813), with an average of 0.36. Stepwise regression analysis between the molecular data as independent variables and the studied traits as dependent variables was performed to identify informative markers associated with the agronomic traits. Seventy ISSR fragments were found associated with eight morphological traits. Some of ISSR markers were associated with more than one trait in multiple regression analysis that may be due to the pleiotropic effect of the linked quantitative trait locus on different traits or is linkage of different genes. However, for a better understanding of these relationships, preparation of a segregating population and linkage mapping are necessary. Also, these result could be useful in marker-assisted breeding programmes when no other genetic information is available.


This book critically investigates the expanding involvement of a leading emerging power, Brazil, in one of Africa's fastest growing economies, Mozambique. It focuses on the dynamics of Brazilian development assistance, its flagship engagement in Mozambique's agricultural and resource sector and the burgeoning social ties that bind them together. With elites in Brazil and Mozambique celebrating the strengths of South-South Cooperation, there is an emerging belief that the two countries are on the path to forging a new development partnership. However, despite these official discourses, there is growing evidence that the conduct of Brazilian firms and the policies promoted by Brazilian development assistance projects are generating negative fallout within local communities and among local environmental activists. Indeed, the complexities of Brazil's economic diplomacy and its private commercial interests, coupled with the involvement of everyone from Brazilian NGOs operating in the health sector to missionaries evangelising in rural towns in Mozambique, seem to affirm the unique characteristics of this growing relationship and the problems that it is facing in becoming truly sustainable.The book aims: • To focus on the content of Brazil's diversifying engagement with Mozambique, looking at the role of economic cooperation and development assistance in facilitating closer ties. • To analyse the circumstances surrounding the rising conflicts over the specific application of Brazil's South-South Cooperation strategies with Mozambique's resource, and construction sectors, among others. • To interrogate how social and cultural dimensions impact upon the penetration of Mozambican society by Brazilians. • To assess whether Brazil-Mozambican ties, celebrated by elites in both countries as representing a new form of development cooperation, is in fact producing a distinctively new partnership.


In order to properly determine the efficacy of marine protected areas (MPAs), a seascape perspective that integrates ecosystem elements at the appropriate ecological scale is necessary. Over the past four decades, Hawaii has developed a system of 11 Marine Life Conservation Districts (MLCDs) to conserve and replenish marine resources around the state. Initially established to provide opportunities for public interaction with the marine environment, these MLCDs vary in size, habitat quality, and management regimes, providing an excellent opportunity to test hypotheses concerning MPA design and function using multiple discrete sampling units. Digital benthic habitat maps for all MLCDs and adjacent habitats were used to evaluate the efficacy of existing MLCDs using a spatially explicit stratified random sampling design. Analysis of benthic cover validated the a priori classification of habitat types and provided justification for using these habitat strata to conduct stratified random sampling and analyses of fish habitat utilization patterns. Results showed that a number of fish assemblage characteristics (e.g., species richness, biomass, diversity) vary among habitat types, but were significantly higher in MLCDs compared with adjacent fished areas across all habitat types. Overall fish biomass was 2.6 times greater in the MLCDs compared to open areas. In addition, apex predators and other species were more abundant and larger in the MLCDs, illustrating the effectiveness of these closures in conserving fish populations within their boundaries. Habitat type, protected area size, and level of protection from fishing were all important determinates of MLCD effectiveness with respect to their associated fish assemblages. Although size of these protected areas was positively correlated with a number of fish assemblage characteristics, all appear too small to have any measurable influence on the adjacent fished areas. These protected areas were not designed for biodiversity conservation or fisheries enhancement yet still provide varying degrees of protection for fish populations within their boundaries. Implementing this type of biogeographic process, using remote sensing technology and sampling across the range of habitats present within the seascape, provides a robust evaluation of existing MPAs and can help to define ecologically relevant boundaries for future MPA design in a range of locations.


USA Customs have a power coming from the 337 clause to stop importing the foreign products which violated the intellectual property rights in America. But this clause was accused of protecting international trade in the name of protecting intellectual property rights. With the development of economy, the strategy of intellectual property was vigorously implemented in Anhui from 2009 to 2013. Consequently, the quantity and quality of patents had been increased greatly and their growths were in the forefront of the country. Under this background, high-tech products and electromechanical products in Anhui to USA will face a great hidden trouble from 337 investigations. So it is necessary to give layout of patents in advance and be prepared for coping with 337 investigations on the basis of market share of products from Anhui enterprises in the US and according to whether these products will be involved.


In many real-life applications, the available source training information is either too small or not representative enough of the underlying target test problem. In the past few years, a new line of machine learning research has been developed to overcome such awkward situations, called Domain Adaptation (DA), giving rise to many adaptation algorithms and theoretical results in the form of generalization bounds. In this paper, a novel contribution is proposed in the form of a DA algorithm dealing with string-structured data, inspired from the DA support vector machine (SVM) technique introduced in [Bruzzone et al, PAMI 2010]. To ensure the convergence of SVM-based learning, the similarity functions involved in the process must be valid kernels, i.e. positive semi-definite (PSD) and symmetric. However, in the string-based context that we are considering in this paper, this condition is often not satisfied. Indeed, it has been proven that most string similarity functions based on the edit distance are not PSD. To overcome this drawback, we make use in this paper of the new theory of learning with good similarity functions introduced by Balcan et al., which (i) does not require the use of a valid kernel to learn well and (ii) allows us to induce sparser models. We take advantage of this theoretical framework to propose a new DA algorithm using good edit similarity functions. Using a suitable string-representation of handwritten digits, we show that are our new algorithm is very efficient to deal with the scaling and rotation problems usually encountered in image classification.


AIM
The aim was to evaluate a new anaesthetic routine and to study the effect of spinal opioids for caesarean section on postoperative pain, expectations of pain, satisfaction with pain treatment, breastfeeding, infant care and length of hospital stay.

BACKGROUND
Inadequate postoperative pain relief is a problem among hospitalised patients. Women undergoing caesarean section have been shown to experience high levels of pain during the first days after operation. Women are expected to breastfeed and care for their newborn while recovering from major abdominal surgery and sufficient pain relief are of importance.

DESIGN
Comparative patient survey.

METHODS
Data were collected through a questionnaire distributed to two independent samples of women undergoing elective and emergency caesarean section before and after the introduction of an additive of opioids in obstetric spinal anaesthesia. Chi-square tests were performed, and risk ratios were used for bivariate analysis. Logistic regression modelling was used for multivariate analysis.

RESULTS
The group of women undergoing caesarean section with opioids added to the spinal anaesthesia reported significantly lower levels of experienced pain. High pain levels irrespective of mode of caesarean section affected breastfeeding and infant care. Length of hospital stay for caesarean women was shortened and the consumption of analgesics was reduced.

CONCLUSIONS
Women receiving an additive of opioids in spinal anaesthesia experienced lower levels of pain. Low pain levels facilitate breastfeeding and infant care and are of relevance for financial considerations.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE
The results of this study indicate that spinal opioids for women undergoing caesarean section have a positive effect on the postoperative pain experience. Women undergoing caesarean section and have high pain levels are in special need of attention and care because of a higher risk of a decreased ability to breastfeed and to take care of their newborn.


Background: Steroid sulfatase (STS)-mediated desulfation regulates the chemical and functional homeostasis of estrogens. Results: Overexpression of STS in the liver improved metabolic functions in mouse models of obesity and type 2 diabetes through sex-specific mechanisms. Conclusion: STS-mediated estrogen reactivation is beneficial in energy and glucose metabolism. Significance: Liver-specific activation of estrogen signaling may represent a novel approach to manage metabolic syndrome. The steroid sulfatase (STS)-mediated desulfation is a critical metabolic mechanism that regulates the chemical and functional homeostasis of endogenous and exogenous molecules. In this report, we first showed that the liver expression of Sts was induced in both the high fat diet (HFD) and ob/ob models of obesity and type 2 diabetes and during the fed to fasting transition. In defining the functional relevance of STS induction in metabolic disease, we showed that overexpression of STS in the liver of transgenic mice alleviated HFD and ob/ob models of obesity and type 2 diabetes, including reduced body weight, improved insulin sensitivity, and decreased hepatic steatosis and inflammation. Interestingly, STS exerted its metabolic benefit through sex-specific mechanisms. In female mice, STS may have increased hepatic estrogen activity by converting biologically inactive estrogen sulfates to active estrogens and consequently improved the metabolic functions, whereas ovariectomy abolished this protective effect. In contrast, the metabolic benefit of STS in males may have been accounted for by the male-specific decrease of inflammation in white adipose tissue and skeletal muscle as well as a pattern of skeletal muscle gene expression that favors energy expenditure. The metabolic benefit in male STS transgenic mice was retained after castration. Treatment with the STS substrate estrone sulfate also improved metabolic functions in both the HFD and ob/ob models. Our results have uncovered a novel function of STS in energy metabolism and type 2 diabetes. Liver-specific STS induction or estrogen/estrogen sulfate delivery may represent a novel approach to manage metabolic syndrome.


For decades, state funding of public historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) has been shown to be de facto discriminatory relative to the funding of their predominately white counterparts. Although the dual system has been legally dismantled, the disparate funding has remained in place in a number of ways. For example, recent research shows that in 1995 approximately 17% of the fewer state funding dollars allocated to historically black institutions (HBI) relative to predominately white institutions (PWI) could be attributed to fiscal discrimination. After more than a decade, the present research uses 2006 finance data to provide tests as to the extent of progress in moving HBI toward greater funding equality.


This paper presents a simple formula that relates the tail index of the firm size distribution to the aggregate speed with which an economy converges to its balanced growth path. The fact that there are so many firms in the right tail implies that aggregate shocks that permanently destroy employment among incumbent firms, rather than cause these firms to scale back temporarily, are followed by slow recoveries. This is true despite the presence of many rapidly growing firms. Aggregate convergence rates are non-linear: they can be very high for economies far below the balanced growth path and very low for advanced economies. JEL classification: E1, L1


The transcription factor WRKY15 mediates an organellar switch from salt tolerance to sensitivity. Abiotic environmental stress, such as salinity and drought, is a major limitation in agricultural productivity. Plants have evolved organelle-to-nucleus signaling pathways that modify nuclear gene transcription in order to sustain or restore function in stressed organelles. In Arabidopsis thaliana, such signaling triggered by mitochondrial dysfunction is termed mitochondrial retrograde regulation (MRR) and enables plant cells to tolerate abiotic stresses such as salinity. Using transcriptomics and transgenic plants, Vanderauwera et al. showed that the transcription factor WRKY15 reduced salt tolerance in A. thaliana by inducing the unfolded protein response (UPR) in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in response to salt stress. Transgenic plants that overexpressed WRKY15 (WRKY15OE) showed an increase in dose-dependent sensitivity to increasing NaCl concentrations compared with wild-type plants, exhibiting stunted growth, cellular degeneration, and decreased chlorophyll production. Transcriptomics in WRKY15OE plants revealed that salt intensely activated the expression of genes involved in the UPR but reduced the expression of genes in the mitochondrial dysfunction regulon (MDR), which may be critical to the MRR. Persistent activation of the UPR increases cytosolic calcium concentrations, which can result in sustained mitochondrial calcium uptake. Although MDR gene expression and energy (ATP) production are activated in the mitochondria in response to calcium uptake, which is facilitated by Ca2+/calmodulin (CaM), these mitochondrial processes are inhibited by sustained calcium uptake. Although the MDR transcriptional regulation was closely linked to cytosolic calcium concentration and mitochondrial calcium uptake, plants overexpressing WRKY15 lacking CaM binding ability exhibited a similar salt sensitivity to the WRKY15OE plants, indicating that the WRKY15-mediated transcriptional changes are likely independent of its regulation by CaM. The data suggest a model whereby WRKY15 mediates a switch from mitochondria-induced salt tolerance to ER-induced salt sensitivity by activating UPR in plant cells and suppressing MRR. Whether targeting WRKY15 could improve salt tolerance in plants is not clear; the authors found that incomplete knockdown of WRKY15 in A. thaliana had no effect on salt sensitivity compared with wild-type plants, suggesting that even a low threshold of functional WRKY15 reduces salt tolerance. These findings advance our understanding of the organellar signaling pathways that mediate salt sensitivity in plants, which is critical to engineering salt-tolerant crops. S. Vanderauwera, K. Vandenbroucke, A. Inzé, B. van de Cotte, P. Mühlenbock, R. De Rycke, N. Naouar, T. Van Gaever, M. C. E. Van Montagu, F. Van Breusegem, AtWRKY15 perturbation abolishes the mitochondrial stress response that steers osmotic stress tolerance in Arabidopsis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, 20113–20118 (2012). [PubMed]


This study investigates the importance of human evaluations of coherence in predicting human judgments of holistic essay quality. Of secondary interest is the potential for computational indices of cohesion and coherence to model human judgments of coherence. The results indicate that human judgments of coherence are the most predictive features of holistic essay scores and that computational indices related to text structure, semantic coherence, lexical sophistication, and grammatical complexity best explain human judgments of text coherence. These findings have important implications for understanding the role of coherence in writing quality.


Enteral nutrition is often mandatory, especially for patients in vegetative or minimally conscious state. However, its application is nonviable in certain cases due to various adverse effects. Some of these are explained by absence of the cephalic phase of digestion, during which exocrine, endocrine, and motor physiological responses prepare the digestive system to receive, digest, transform, and utilize ingested nutrients. These responses result from the stimulation by nutrients of cephalic sensory systems, mainly in the oropharyngeal cavity, and can also be elicited by food-related thoughts or expectations. The digestive system appears able to rapidly assess the suitability of food and transmit this information to the brain. The vagus nerve and its brainstem relays in the caudal nucleus of the solitary tract (NST) and parabrachial complex appear to participate in the anatomic pathway responsible for this rapid processing. Thus, blockade of the vagus nerve, NST, or external lateral parabrachial region (LPBe) interrupts expression of conditioned taste preferences induced by administration of "predigested" food, while LPBe activation by electric stimulation generates similar preferences to those observed after cephalic food administration. This review may help design enteral diets better adapted to digestive physiology and develop pharmacological interventions against adverse effects of enteral nutrition.


Faced with the exponential development of Big Data and both its legal and economic repercussions, we are still slightly in the dark concerning the use of digital information.  In the perpetual balance between confidentiality and transparency, this data will lead us to call into question how we understand certain paradigms, such as the Hippocratic Oath in medicine. As a consequence, a reflection on the study of the risks associated with the ethical issues surrounding the design and manipulation of this ?massive data" seems to be essential. This book provides a direction and ethical value to these significant volumes of data. It proposes an ethical analysis model and recommendations to better keep this data in check. This empirical and ethico-technical approach brings together the first aspects of a moral framework directed toward thought, conscience and the responsibility of citizens concerned by the use of data of a personal nature.Defines Big Data applications in healthPresents the ethical value of the medical datasphere via the description of a model of an ethical analysis of Big DataProvides the recommendations and steps necessary for successful management and governance of personal health dataHelps readers determine what conditions are essential for the development of the study of Big Data


Purpose

This study aims to identify mechanisms to manage conflicts that occur when organizations with different cultures, habits and experiences try to coordinate effectively in international joint ventures (IJV). This study proposes that partners can promote their joint venture performance to the extent that they rely on cooperative rather than competitive conflict management. This study further hypothesizes that adopting collectivist values strengthens relationships and thereby provides a foundation for cooperative conflict management.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected data for this study in Shanghai, which is currently the most attractive province in China for FDI (FDI Intelligence, 2014). In all, 75 pairs of foreign and Chinese managers at middle and senior levels, knowledgeable about the joint venture relationships, completed their respective questionnaires.

Findings

Results of the structural equation analyses support the hypotheses that collectivist values support cooperative conflict management that in turn facilitates joint venture learning and performance. In contrast, individualistic values promoted competitive conflict management which in turn frustrated IJV performance.

Practical implications

Results suggest that IJV managers can strengthen their venture by developing collective values and training such cooperative conflict management skills as self-expression and demonstrating understanding of opposing views.

Originality/value

This study directly documents that while conflicts may interfere they can also stimulate discussions and decisions that promote coordination and performance of IJVs. This study contributes to conflict management research that has largely focused on investigating the consequences of approaches by examining conditions that promote constructive conflict management approaches.


The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the changing status of the world's biological diversity. The first sections below provide general information on the nature and scope of biological diversity, and broad trends at genetic and species level. Subsequent sections outline the status of the general ecosystem types that are the subject of thematic programmes established by the Convention, and brief remarks are given on other important habitat types.


Technological change is altering the nature of contract toward a greater focus on intangible assets. The direction of technological change toward greater connectivity, interoperability, mobile communications, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), virtual inventions, and cooperative research and development (R&D) has profound implications. This article develops a new framework that I refer to as "Intellectual Law" to address this shift. The article introduces the concept of "Intellectual Contract" (IC) to characterize agreements for invention, innovation, and technology adoption. The article also introduces the concept of "Intellectual Tort" (IT) to describe liability including but not limited to misappropriation of trade secrets and infringement of patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Intellectual Law provides a consistent framework for IC, IT and Intellectual Property (IP). The article observes that legal protections for inventors cannot rely solely on what has proven to be a flawed combination of IT and IP. The article argues that greater emphasis on IC would improve both IT and IP. Because IC protects expectation interests it is essential for creating, developing, sharing, and applying intangible assets. IC generates gains from trade that enhance the benefits of inventors, innovators and adopters beyond what can be achieved by IT and IP alone.


Abstract. We elaborated a new method for observing water surface areas and river stages using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is based on processing multitemporal five orthophotomaps produced from the UAV-taken visible light images of nine sites of the river, acquired with a sufficient overlap in each part. Water surface areas are calculated in the first place, and subsequently expressed as fractions of total areas of water-covered terrain at a given site of the river recorded on five dates. The logarithms of the fractions are later calculated, producing five samples, each consisted of nine elements. In order to detect statistically significant increments of water surface areas between two orthophotomaps, we apply the asymptotic and bootstrapped versions of the Student's t test, preceded by other tests that aim to check model assumptions. The procedure is applied to five orthophotomaps covering nine sites of the Ścinawka river (south-western (SW) Poland). The data have been acquired during the experimental campaign, at which flight settings were kept unchanged over nearly 3 years (2012–2014). We have found that it is possible to detect transitions between water surface areas associated with all characteristic water levels (low, mean, intermediate and high stages). In addition, we infer that the identified transitions hold for characteristic river stages as well. In the experiment we detected all increments of water level: (1) from low stages to mean, intermediate and high stages; (2) from mean stages to intermediate and high stages; and (3) from intermediate stages to high stages. Potential applications of the elaborated method include verification of hydrodynamic models and the associated predictions of high flows as well as monitoring water levels of rivers in ungauged basins.


As the linguistic/cultural turn of the last forty years has begun to ebb, socio-legal and legal-humanist scholarship has seen an accelerating return to materiality. This paper asks what relationship may be forthcoming between the "new materialisms" and "vibrant matter" of recent years, and older materialisms – both historical and literary, both Marxist and non-Marxist – that held sway prior to post-structuralism? What impact might such a relationship have on the forms, notably "spatial justice," that materiality is assuming in current legal studies? To attempt answers, the paper turns to two figures from more than half a century ago: Gaston Bachelard – once famous, now mostly forgotten; and Walter Benjamin – once largely forgotten, now famous. A prolific and much-admired writer between 1930 and 1960, Bachelard pursued two trajectories of inquiry: a dialectical and materialist and historical (but non-Marxist) philosophy of science; and a poetics of the material imagination based on inquiry into the literary reception and representation of the prime elements – earth, water, fire, and air. Between the late 1920s and 1940, meanwhile, Benjamin developed an idiosyncratic but potent form of historical materialism dedicated to "arousing [the world] from its dream of itself." The paper argues that by mobilizing Bachelard and Benjamin for scholarship at the intersection of law and the humanities, old and new materialisms can be brought into a satisfying conjunction that simultaneously offers a poetics for spatial justice and lays a foundation for a materialist legal historiography for the twenty-first century.


Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) plants become infected with over 30 RNA or DNA viruses in different parts of the world but little is known about viruses infecting sweetpotato crops in Central America, the center of sweetpotato domestication. Small-RNA deep-sequencing (SRDS) analysis was used to detect viruses in sweetpotato in Honduras and Guatemala, which detected Sweet potato feathery mottle virus strain RC and Sweet potato virus C (Potyvirus spp.), Sweet potato chlorotic stunt virus strain WA (SPCSV-WA; Crinivirus sp.), Sweet potato leaf curl Georgia virus (Begomovirus sp.), and Sweet potato pakakuy virus strain B (synonym: Sweet potato badnavirus B). Results were confirmed by polymerase chain reaction and sequencing of the amplicons. Four viruses were detected in a sweetpotato sample from the Galapagos Islands. Serological assays available to two of the five viruses gave results consistent with those obtained by SRDS, and were negative for six additional sweetpotato viruses tested. Plants coinfected with SPCSV-WA and one to two other viruses displayed severe foliar symptoms of epinasty and leaf malformation, purpling, vein banding, or chlorosis. The results suggest that SRDS is suitable for use as a universal, robust, and reliable method for detection of plant viruses, and especially useful for determining virus infections in crops infected with a wide range of unrelated viruses.


This essay provides a few critical points of view on Ni Peimin's recent English translation of the Analects . It shows that his translations of ren into "human-heartedness" and of li into "ritual propriety" may indicate a willingness to recast these Confucian concepts in the modern ideology of western subjectivism or individualism, whereas Confucianism is not in the direction of such ideologies. Moreover, while Ni seems to offer a "no-rule" view of Confucian virtue ethics, he cannot deny the existence of moral rules and principles in the Confucian system. It is insufficient for him to emphasize the importance of Confucian "instructions" or "methods" as he does without explicating their relations to Confucian rules. Additionally, Ni's gongfu Confucianism provides a necessary and healthy step back from the contemporary principlism that has been dominant and popular in contemporary politics, ethics, and applied ethics, but Ni goes too far in denying the importance of the moral rules and principles that are implicit or explicit in the Confucian ritual practices and upheld in Confucius's Analects .


The spatial distribution of photon modes confined in a 0D cavity and a 1D W1 waveguide is investigated on AlN-based photonic crystal (PC) membranes by spectrally resolved scanning confocal microscopy in the ultra-violet spectral range. The influence of the fabrication-induced disorder of the PC on the photon modes is analyzed. The cavity modes are shown to be robust with respect to disorder, whereas the 1D modes of the W1 waveguide are localized near its cut-off frequency. Those modifications of the lowest energy photonic modes are compared to simulations of weakly disordered photonic structures.


PM1 (particles having aerodynamic diameter < 1.0 µm) concentrations were measured at a sampling site inside the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur campus for 11 months from July, 2008–May, 2009. The sampling was carried out for all the major seasons of India and a total of 90 samples were collected. The chemical speciation data in terms of element and anion concentrations of all the collected samples were closely studied for any seasonal phenomena and different source contributions to PM1 mass. Average PM1 concentration was found to be highest (199 µg/m 3 ) during winter and lowest (31 µg/m 3 ) during monsoon season. Concentrations of different elements and anions also followed similar trend as PM1 concentration. Nitrate and sulfate were the two most predominant anionic species contributing to almost 80%–90% of total anionic concentrations. Crustal elements (Ca, Mg, and Fe) were the main contributors within the total elemental concentrations. Overall, it was found that anions contributed up to 35% of the total PM1 mass. Factor Analysis of chemical speciation data and UNMIX (Version 6) revealed that secondary sources and vehicular emissions were the two main sources contributing to PM1 mass with minor contributions from paved road dust and coal combustion sources.


The Afrikaans film industry is facing a difficult time, as many Afrikaans films are struggling financially. By determining the key factors contributing to the ticket purchases for Afrikaans films, the Afrikaans film industry can be assisted to increase ticket sales. Younger consumers are the future market for most industries, and since films are a leisure activity enjoyed by many young individuals, a better understanding of the needs and preferences of younger cinema attendees will contribute to the sustainability of the future market. The results revealed five key factors contributing to the ticket purchases of younger Afrikaans cinema attendee, namely Marketing, Proudly Afrikaans, Production Credentials, Quality Facilities and Quality Films. ANOVAs and t-tests were conducted to analyze the data further. It was found that all the factors have a stronger influence on the attendees the younger they are; attendees who prefer Afrikaans films over English films are also more influenced by these factors; and attendees who view three or more films in one month are more influenced by the factors Quality Facilities, Proudly Afrikaans and Production Credentials. The managerial implications of this are discussed and recommendations are made for Afrikaans film marketers and producers in order for them to better cater for the needs of this younger cinema attendee, and ultimately contribute to the growth of the Afrikaans film industry.


The problem of the electromagnetic acceleration of cosmic rays to high energies by turbulent magnetic fields within the confines of our galaxy is considered. The model of the magnetic field used is essentially that proposed by Fermi, in which the field is assumed to be fairly regular and to run along the spiral arm of the galaxy. The magnetic field plays a dual role, storing or trapping the cosmic rays, and accelerating them when the field is not static. The fluctuating part of the magnetic field is described statistically in terms of a spectral decomposition of the field into hydromagnetic waves of different wave lengths moving in the direction of the primary field.

Two main problems are of concern: (a) the energy distribution of the high energy particles, and (b) the angular distribution of these particles. A partial differential equation of the diffusion type is derived which describes statistically the behavior of an ensemble of particles undergoing accelerating and decelerating interactions (betatron interactions) with the varying magnetic field. In addition to accelerating the particles, the betatron interactions change the component of momentum parallel to the field in a way which depends on the energy change. In addition to these processes, the differential equation accounts for interactions with inhomogeneities in the field whose scale is small compared to the helix radius, as well as removal of particles by nuclear collisions and by diffusion of particles out of the region of the magnetic field. Solutions to the steady-state diffusion equation show that a power-law energy spectrum results for the high energy particles. The exponent in the power-law spectrum is related to the parameters describing the magnetic field, the mean-square velocity of the turbulent medium, and the mean time for loss of particles by nuclear collisions and diffusion out of the spiral arm. An approximate form of the space-dependent steady-state diffusion equation is solved to estimate the mean time for escape of the particles by diffusion, and to relate this parameter to the length of the spiral arm and to the parameters describing the magnetic field. The results also show that the angular distribution of the particles is inextricably tied up with the energy spectrum, with the degree of anisotropy being determined by the relative effectiveness of the scattering by small scale inhomogeneities which tend to make the distribution isotropic, and the betatron processes which tend to make the distribution highly anisotropic with most of the particles lying in very steep spirals.

It appears from the results that a set of parameters describing the magnetic field can be found which are astronomically plausible, and which give results for the power-law exponent and the anisotropy within the range of values observed experimentally.


The association between changing body mass index (BMI) and mammographic breast density is important to better evaluate how to adjust for BMI gain/loss in longitudinal studies of density and breast cancer risk. Increasing BMI has been associated with decreasing percent dense area but the effect on absolute dense area is unclear. No studies have explored a longitudinal association using volumetric density measurement. Methods: We examined the association between change in BMI and change in volumetric breast density among 24,556 women who received breast imaging at the San Francisco Mammography Registry from 2007–2013. Height and weight were self-reported at the time of mammography. Breast density was assessed using single x-ray absorptiometry (SXA) volumetric measurement. The cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between BMI and absolute dense volume (DV) and percent dense volume (PDV) were assessed using multivariable adjusted regression. Results: Women were primarily Caucasian (66%) or Asian (25%) and most were postmenopausal (64%) at time of first mammogram. In cross-sectional analysis, BMI was positively associated with DV (β = 2.95 cm3, 95% CI, 2.69–3.21) and inversely associated with PDV (β = −2.03%, 95% CI, −2.09–−1.98). In longitudinal analysis, an annual increase in BMI was associated with an annual decrease in both DV (β = −1.01 cm3/year, 95% CI, −1.59–−0.42) and PDV (β = −1.17%/year, 95% CI, −1.31–−1.04). Findings were consistent between pre- and postmenopausal women. The annual decrease in DV was strongest among premenopausal women who were initially overweight or obese (P < 0.01 for interaction by initial BMI). Conclusion: Our findings support an inverse association between change in BMI and change in PDV. Longitudinal studies of PDV and breast cancer risk, or those using PDV as an indicator of breast cancer risk, should consider adjusting for change in BMI. The association between increasing BMI and decreasing DV is unexpected and will require confirmation using volumetric methods.


Abstract Answer set programming—the most popular problem solving paradigm based on logic programs—has been recently extended to support uninterpreted function symbols (Syrjänen 2001, Bonatti 2004; Simkus and Eiter 2007; Gebser et al. 2007; Baselice et al. 2009; Calimeri et al. 2008). All of these approaches have some limitation. In this paper we propose a class of programs called FP2 that enjoys a different trade-off between expressiveness and complexity. FP2 is inspired by the extension of finitary normal programs with local variables introduced in (Bonatti 2004, Section 5). FP2 programs enjoy the following unique combination of properties: (i) the ability of expressing predicates with infinite extensions; (ii) full support for predicates with arbitrary arity; (iii) decidability of FP2 membership checking; (iv) decidability of skeptical and credulous stable model reasoning for call-safe queries. Odd cycles are supported by composing FP2 programs with argument restricted programs.


Synthetic molecules capable of activating the expression of specific genes are of great interest as tools for biological research and, potentially, as a novel class of pharmaceutical agents. It has been demonstrated previously that such synthetic transcription factor mimics (STFMs) can be constructed by connecting a sequence-specific DNA-binding module to a molecule capable of binding to the transcriptional machinery via a suitable linker. These chimeras mimic the two basic properties of native transcription factors, which are able to recognize a promoter sequence specifically and to recruit the transcriptional machinery to that promoter. However, none of the compounds of this type reported to date have been shown to function in living cells. We report here the first example of a cell-permeable STFM that activates the transcription of a reporter gene in mammalian cells. The compound is composed of a cell-permeable coactivator-binding peptoid fused to a DNA-binding hairpin polyamide. The peptoid was identified by screening a combinatorial library of approximately 50,000 compounds for binding to the KIX domain of the CREB-binding protein (CBP), a mammalian transcription coactivator. When incubated with cultured HeLa cells carrying a luciferase reporter plasmid bearing several hairpin polyamide-binding sites, a 5-fold increase in luciferase expression was observed. These experiments set the stage for the identification of hairpin polyamide-peptoid conjugates that are targeted to native genes.


Abstract : Organizational conception and business practice share much in common with military strategy. The two areas of study have had a mutually supportive relationship for decades. Particularly since the commencement of the 20th Century, the business community has borrowed freely from and refined military thinking. This practice has been in large part credited with the enormous success of the industrial expansion of the United States and Canada. Many of today's multi-corporations gained global prominence from adopting and employing military concepts and people. But the phenomenon has not been altogether one-sided. Since the 1970s, the military profession has in turn embraced organizational thinking and business practices. This paper will focus on the military's attempt to assimilate aspects of management and organizational theory, as well as business experience, to bring direction and meaning to its present and future placement in the 21st Century. More specifically, the author will examine the formal strategies of both the United States and Canadian Armies within the context of present organizational thinking as taught by leading institutions and utilized by Corporate North America. This paper will argue that the penchant of both Armies to internalize business concepts and strategies has left the two Nations' Armies in a perilous situation pertaining to strategy formulation and direction. Using current management and organizational models, the author intends to identify the fundamental weaknesses within the two Armies' strategies. More importantly, as both Armies engage enterprise-wide transformation, the author will demonstrate how this fundamental weakness in cognition and application has the very real possibility of jeopardizing the relevancy of both Nation's land forces.


Time-Space: Constructing Meaning Through Temporal Phenomena Ashley Brooke Kennedy This thesis is an examination of the signifi cance of time and temporal phenomena in the conception and construction of the built environment. It began as a question regarding the aging and life-span of contemporary buildings, in contrast with those that have at present survived long enough to earn designation as 'historic' buildings. The term 'temporal phenomena' is defi ned here as sensory experiences which make the passage of time accessible and meaningful to those interacting with the built environment. Le Corbusier wrote that an original intent of painting was to record, to create permanent evidence of events and things that passed away with time and were forgotten, or couldn't be seen later. He suggests that the camera is a much better tool for this, and so painting has lost part of its purpose. Buildings and cities have always had the effect of retaining memory and creating cultural meanings. Cultural reliance on continuous improvements in environmental and building technologies have obviated the building's ancient place as a datum through which human beings understand the passage of time. And perhaps it is the loss of that sacred duty that leads to short-lived, disposable buildings, and the proliferation of placeless-ness in contemporary environments. A design for a brewery on the banks of the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia became the vehicle to explore strategies for making time meaningful and present through the physical reality of the building, the brewing process, and the interrelated lives of the brewer and the city. Abstract.........................iii........................ii


Background Dying people and older people have often been thought of as high users of hospitals, but current population-based evidence is needed to confirm or refute this claim. Purpose Quantitative population-based study designed to identify and describe hospital patients who are high users. Methods Data for all 2014–2015 Canadian hospital patients (excluding Quebec) were analyzed to identify and describe high users through descriptive-comparative and regression analysis tests. Results Only a small proportion of patients are high users in relation to multiple admissions or 30+ inpatient days of care, and with considerable diversity among them and relatively few of these advanced in age or dying in hospital. Conclusions Relatively few patients are high users of hospitals. These people are most often under age 65, so they have the potential to be ill and high users for many years. Flagging would enable individualized care planning to reduce illness exacerbations or slow disease progression and address other risk factors for long or repeat hospitalizations.


This work focuses on the validation of a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) and ferrohydrodynamic (FHD) model for non-isothermal flows in conjunction with Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids. The importance of this research field is to gain insight into the interaction of non-linear viscous behaviour of blood flow in the presence of MHD and FHD effects, because its biomedical application such as magneto resonance imaging (MRI) is in the centre of research interest. For incompressible flows coupled with MHD and FHD models, the Lorentz force and a Joule heating term appear due to the MHD effects and the magnetization and magnetocaloric terms appear due to the FHD effects in the non-linear momentum and temperature equations, respectively. Tzirtzilakis and Loukopoulos [1] investigated the effects of MHD and FHD for incompressible non-isothermal flows in conjunction with Newtonian fluids in a small rectangular channel. Their model excluded the non-linear viscous behaviour of blood flows considering blood as a Newtonian biofluid. Tzirakis et al. [2, 3] modelled the effects of MHD and FHD for incompressible isothermal flows in a circular duct and through a stenosis in conjunction with both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids, although their approach neglects the non-isothermal magnetocaloric FHD effects. Due to the fact that there is a lack of experimental data available for non-isothermal and non-Newtonian blood flows in the presence of MHD and FHD effects, therefore the objective of this study is to establish adequate validation test cases in order to assess the reliability of the implemented non-isothermal and non-Newtonian MHD-FHD models. The non-isothermal Hartmann flow has been chosen as a benchmark physical problem to study velocity and temperature distributions for Newtonian fluids and non-Newtonian blood flows in a planar microfluidic channel. In addition to this, the numerical behaviour of an incompressible and non-isothermal non-Newtonian blood flow has been investigated from computational aspects when a dipole-like rotational magnetic field generated by infinite conducting wires. The numerical results are compared to available computational data taken from literature [2].


Images of fans have a central place in the media construction of mega-sport events. In this paper we examine this phenomenon, drawing on fieldwork carried out during the football World Cup 2010. The study is part of a project investigating how local and transnational events are mediated through large format screens in public space, and including the public's media practices. Here we trace fans' performance of identity in several of the public viewing areas (PVAs) established for the World Cup. First we look at the identities that are negotiated and expressed within PVAs. In what ways are local, national and regional identities mixed and recast within the context of the event? Then we turn to the media flow, where we find that the screen content in each venue must be understood both in terms of broadcasting and narrowcasting, and address the questions: How do professional media report in and from the fan parks? Finally, how do these reports relate to coverage from the stadiums? Despite visual similarities and reciprocity between the performance of fandom in PVAs and the image of the fan that is broadcast transnationally, the images serve different functions in these different venues.


A light-trail is a generalization of a lightpath allowing multiple nodes to be able to communicate along the path, leading to all-optical spatial traffic grooming. A light-trail exhibits properties of dynamic bandwidth provisioning, optical multicasting and sub-wavelength grooming, and architecturally is analogous to a shared wavelength optical bus. Arbitration within the bus is conducted by an out-of-band control channel. The bus feature results in a node that has a large pass-through loss, restricting the size of a light-trail to metro environments. Due to this limitation, it is difficult to extend the light-trail concept to regional or core networks. In this paper we exhaustively investigate the concept of multi-hop light-trails (MLTs) - a method to provide multi-hop communication in light-trails, thus enhancing their reach. Node architecture and protocol requirements for creating MLTs are discussed. We then discuss design issues for MLTs in regional area networks through a problem formulation that is solved using convex optimization. The problem formulation takes into consideration issues such as routing MLTs as well as assigning connections (defined as sub-wavelength traffic requests) to MLTs. Two polynomial-time heuristic algorithms for creation of MLTs are presented. One of the algorithms is a static implementation, while the other is a dynamic implementation - with unknown traffic. A detailed delay analysis is also presented that enables computation of end-to-end delay over MLTs using different flow assignment algorithms. A simulation study validates the MLT concept.


Introduction: The effect of two physical training methods on older adults should be investigated in greater depth and its results shared with the community. Objective: To determine the effects of two types of physical training on the functional features associated with the cognitive state and the effect on a physiological mediator of growth hormone (IGF-1) in older women. Material and Methods: Quasi-experimental study that included 12 weeks of training in two groups divided into resistance and aerobic training. The study included a population of 113 women aged 69.39 ± 6.48 years from Talcahuano, Chile. All participants were randomly assigned to either group. The MINIMENTAL test was used to examine the executive functions of cognitive state and blood concentration of IGF-1, which was also used to examine neurotrophic factors. For the assessment of physical condition, an indirect test was used for the maximum mass displaced in one repetition (1RM) by the limbs and the TM6 test to estimate maximal oxygen consumption. Results: Significant differences between the groups with respect to the total score obtained in the MINIMENTAL test (EG1 = 28.13 ± 2.26; EG2 = 28.57 ± 1.83 and CG = 23.47 ± 2.80; ANOVA; p = 0.000) were observed. A post hoc analysis revealed no significant differences when examining executive functions individually between groups (Bonferroni; p > 0.05). An increase in the neurotrophic factor IGF-1 was also recorded in the training groups (EG1 p = 0.014 and EG2 p = 0.005). The pre- and post-test showed large differences in magnitude in the resistance training group (ES = 0.9; 20.41% change). Conclusion: Both workouts produce an overall improvement in the functions associated with cognitive status and increase blood concentrations of IGF-1 in older adults.


Climate change impacts in coastal areas (CA) have exposed coastal ecosystems to unprecedented conditions. System dynamic modelling (SD) has been used as a powerful tool to improve climate change adaptation (CCA) strategies. However, until now there are no review papers that summarize how academic literature that employs SD modelling has addressed CCA in CA. Hence, the main objective of this study is to provide an overview of the state of the art of this field. A systematic literature review was chosen as the main method of analysis, which was complemented with a bibliometric analysis and a categorization of the main contents of the papers selected. Our results suggest that the literature is clustered in three groups: physical or social impacts, water and agriculture management, as well as ecosystem services. Following the classification of key representative risks (KRK) of the IPCC, some topics have been addressed more than others. Most papers focus on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) compared to adaptation to slow onset hazards. Besides, research in developing countries remains scarce, except for the case of Vietnam. One group of models seem to be in an advanced stage or abstract enough to be applied in other areas, whereas another group is better suited for local modelling. Quantitative SD modelling has been preferred compared to qualitative or mixed approaches. Finally, Stella and Vensim seem to be the most popular platforms to run simulations.


The usefulness of the atomic-beam laser-rf double-resonance technique as an aid in the interpretation of complex optical spectra is investigated. A 2-A-wide region (centered on 5441 A) in the spectrum of Tb i is selected for the test. Some 25 atomic lines, many with severely overlapping hyperfine structure (hfs) patterns, had been observed in the region, and only a few of these had been successfully classified. The procedure followed for each line was to measure the hfs intervals of the lower level precisely and then to compare them with the known intervals of previously designated low levels. The procedure leads to a successful identification for only about half of the levels studied, owing principally to the small size of the ensemble of levels with known splittings. The method does have advantages, however, and is shown to be a useful supplement to conventional spectroscopic techniques. A number of new line classifications, level designations, and hfs intervals are reported.


This study examines the relationship between personal network characteristics and innovation performance. Specifically, it investigates the effects of two properties of personal networks on actors' propensities to engage in innovation activities: network sparseness and network diversity. The study contributes also to decoupling social network structure and individual agency (i.e. tertius iungens orientation) as critical factors influencing engagement in innovation. The study highlights the importance of a particular strategic behavioral orientation of individuals to coordinate and mobilize network resources to foster the implementation of innovative ideas. Our findings show an inverted U-shaped relationship between network sparseness, network diversity and innovation, and a positive moderating role of a tertius iungens orientation on the curvilinear relationship between both network properties and innovation. Our hypotheses are tested on a large sample of Spanish biomedical scientists working in diverse institutional settings.


Identity has recently become one of the most frequently theorised and explored topics within various sub-branches of social sciences. Collective identities in general, and their ancestry and construction in particular, are being perceived in different ways by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and, last but not least, discourse-analysts. This article aims at shedding a new light on the concept of European identity, which, so far, has been most frequently analysed within the context of the European Union and its political and economic impact on European space. Despite drawing theoretically on some well-grounded traditions of research on European identity, such as, e.g., analysis of its contradiction and suplementariness with national identities, or, its interconnection with such concepts as European citizenship or European integration, the analysis of European identity presented here is put in the context of globally understood identification processes. Empirically, the article draws on the analysis of TV talk show thematically bound by the topics concerning European Union's impact on national identities.


STUDY OBJECTIVE
To compare the degree of improvement in pulmonary function achieved with recombinant human DNase I (rhDNase) administered by three different aerosol delivery systems: DeVilbiss Pulmo-Aide compressor with the Marquest Acorn II nebulizer, the Hudson T Up-draft nebulizer, and the Pari LC Jet Plus nebulizer with the Pari Inhalier Boy compressor. These produce similar aerosols in vitro in terms of size distribution and activity of delivered rhDNase.

STUDY DESIGN
Multicenter, randomized, open-label, parallel-group comparison of changes from baseline in pulmonary function variables in each test group. Patients were treated with rhDNase (2.5 mg bid) for 15 days, administered with three different aerosol delivery systems.

SETTING
Outpatient clinics at 26 sites in the United States.

PATIENTS
397 patients > 5 years of age with cystic fibrosis and baseline forced vital capacity (FVC) values between 40 and 70% of predicted values.

RESULTS
All three nebulizers gave comparable improvements in pulmonary function. FEV1 increased by an average of 13.2 to 14.1%, FVC by 10.9 to 11.8% and forced midexpiratory flow (FEF25-75) by 16.5 to 17.1%. No unusual or unexpected adverse events were reported other than those that would be expected in patients with cystic fibrosis.

CONCLUSIONS
Recombinant human DNase I produced a similar magnitude of improvement in the pulmonary function of patients with cystic fibrosis when the drug was administered using three different types of nebulizer systems with similar in vitro delivery and safety characteristics.


Abstract:Across a wide range of cultural forms, including philosophy, cultural theory, literature and art, the figure of the clock has drawn suspicion, censure and outright hostility. In contrast, even while maps have been shown to be complicit with forms of domination, they are also widely recognised as tools that can be critically reworked in the service of more liberatory ends. This paper seeks to counteract the tendency to see clocks in this way, arguing that they have many more interesting possibilities than they are usually given credit for. An analysis of approaches to clocks in continental philosophy critiques the way they have too often been dismissed as unworthy of further analysis, and argues that this dismissal is based upon an inadequate understanding of how clocks operate. Seeking to move towards more critical and curious approaches, the paper draws inspiration from critical cartography in order to call for the development of a 'critical horology' which would emphasise both the fundamentally political nature of clocks, and the potential for designing them otherwise. A discussion of temporal design provides a range of examples of how clocks might open up new horizons within the politics of time.


Relations between Spain and Persia in the Early Modern Period are often presented as the story of two bookends-one formed by the mission of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the court of Tamerlane at the turn of the fifteenth century; the other represented by the embassy Don Garcia de Silva y Figueroa undertook to the court of the Safavid Shah `Abbas I on behalf of King Philip III between 1614 and 1624. The Iberian involvement with Persia in the two centuries between these two events is mostly told as a Portuguese, maritime-oriented one. This book is the first to break out of that mould. It addresses the various ways in which the Spanish crown sought and maintained contact with Persia, either independently or, after the creation of the Iberian Union in 1580, in consort with the Portuguese, in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. We learn about the motley crew of men who sailed the Mediterranean or rounded the Cape on their way to the Safavid state, the diplomats who sought to lure the shah into a joint anti-Ottoman front, the missionaries who hoped to convert him and his subjects to the 'True Faith', the adventurers and spies who dreamed of strategic advantage and commercial control. The essays assembled here also examine the various initiatives launched by Persia's rulers towards the Spanish court, their proposals for military cooperation or the sale of silk. Originating as a conference held in 2013 at the Instituto de Historia del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas in Madrid, this volume thus sheds light on many little known aspects of the complex and multifaceted relationship between these two empires in the Early Modern Period.


Innovations play a significant role in surviving in economic and market games. However the innovation is not self-sufficient tool for response of all future challenges and needs. It requires potential for new knowledge generation, adaptation and commercialization, and support of government. Therefore the article presents a conceptual analysis of the relationship between innovation and entrepreneurship, with the main focus being on the business sector, highlighting the role of government policy in the promotion of innovation through entrepreneurship. It is said that the dimension of innovation is at the core of entrepreneurship, but at the same time these concepts still often are defined singly. The concept of entrepreneurship is often wrongly explained, just as business activity or establishment of new enterprises without focus on innovation. In this respect, there is a suggestion to adopt the concept of innovative entrepreneurship as the new direction for development of innovation through entrepreneurship.


The process when freshly emitted black carbon particles are forming clusters and the mixing of these black carbon clusters and mineral dust particles has been simulated for a two-dimensional system. This has been done by combining diffusion-limited cluster aggregation and multifractal turbulent velocity fields. A simple model where the mineral dust particles drive the deposition of black carbon has been developed and investigated, suited for quantifying the deposition of black carbon aerosols in dry, desert-like areas such as Sahara or the Arabian peninsula. This is of interest as it is assumed that the lifetime of black carbon particles in the soil of these areas are very long. The deposition of black carbon may change the albedo of the surface of the Earth, which may effect both local weather and the climate. The results from the model, although uncertain, indicate that the lifetime of black carbon in the atmosphere with respect to uptake on larger dust aerosols is short enough to allow a substantial fraction of the BC emitted (mostly from flaring from oil/gas extraction) to be deposited in the high albedo desert regions where emissions occur.


This article describes the morphological and chemical characterization of stimuli-responsive functionalized silicon surfaces provided in parallel by atomic force spectroscopy (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) enhanced by the single-beam sample reference attenuated total reflection method (SBSR-ATR). The stimuli-responsive behavior of the surfaces was obtained by grafting-to in melt carboxyl-terminated poly-N-isopropylacryl amides (PNIPAAM) with different degree of polymerization (DP) on epoxide-functionalized silicon substrates. The unprecedented real time and in situ physicochemical insight into the temperature-triggered response of the densely packed superficial brushes allowed for the selection of a PNIPAAM with a specific DP as a suitable polymer for the fabrication of silicon membranes exhibiting switchable nanopores. The fabrication process combines the manufacture of nanoporous silicon surfaces and their subsequent chemical functionalization by the grafting-to in melt of the selected polymer. Then, relevant information was obtained in what concerns the chemical modifications behind the topographical changes that drive the functioning of PNIPAAM-based hybrid nanovalves as well as the timescale on which the opening and closing of the nanopores occur.


The introduction of agent technology raises several security issues that are beyond conventional security mechanisms capability and considerations, but research in protecting the agent from malicious host attack is evolving. This research proposes two approaches to protecting an agent from being attacked by a malicious host. The first approach consists of an obfuscation algorithm that is able to protect the confidentiality of an agent and make it more difficult for a malicious host to spy on the agent. The algorithm uses multiple polynomial functions with multiple random inputs to convert an agent's critical data to a value that is meaningless to the malicious host. The effectiveness of the obfuscation algorithm is enhanced by addition of noise code. The second approach consists of a mechanism that is able to protect the integrity of the agent using state information, recorded during the agent execution process in a remote host environment, to detect a manipulation attack by a malicious host. Both approaches are implemented using a master-slave agent architecture that operates on a distributed migration pattern. Two sets of experimental test were conducted. The first set of experiments measures the migration and migration+computation overheads of the itinerary and distributed migration patterns. The second set of experiments is used to measure the security overhead of the proposed approaches. The protection of the agent is assessed by analysis of its effectiveness under known attacks. Finally, an agent-based application, known as Secure Flight Finder Agent-based System (SecureFAS) is developed, in order to prove the function of the proposed approaches.


Stable isotope ratios of various organisms were analyzed to elucidate food web structure in the pelagic zone of Lake Baikal. The pelagic food web of Lake Baikal is simple and consists of five major ecological groups: phytoplankton (Aulacoseira baicalensis), mesozooplankton (Epischura baicalensis), macrozooplankton amphipod (Macrohectopus branickii), fish (Coregonus autumnalis migratorius and four species of cottoid fishes), and seal (Phoca sibirica). Because of the low diversity and consequently small number of possible diets for each species, we were able to quantitatively estimate the diet composition of each animal with stable isotopes. Our carbon isotope data indicated that pelagic phytoplankton are the primary carbon source of the pelagic food web because δ13C levels of animals were close to those of pelagic phytoplankton. The δ15N levels of animals showed a clear trend of stepwise enrichment with trophic level according to the following equation: δ15N (‰) = 3.3 (Trophic Level – 1) – 3.8. In addition to interspecific food web analysis, important pelagic animals, such as M. branickii, two species of pelagic sculpin, C. autumnalis migratorius, and P. sibirica, were also examined, with emphasis on ontogenic diet changes. δ15N levels of M. branickii and sculpins increased with body length, suggesting a change in feeding habits during growth. We demonstrate that carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes can be successfully applied to elucidate trophic relationships and conclude that the pelagic food web of Lake Baikal has an ideal, isotopically ordered structure.


IIASA celebrated its twentieth anniversary on May 12-13 with its fourth general conference, IIASA '92: An International Conference on the Challenges to Systems Analysis in the Nineties and Beyond. The conference focused on the relations between environment and development and on studies that integrate the methods and findings of several disciplines. The role of systems analysis, a method especially suited to taking account of the linkages between phenomena and of the hierarchical organization of the natural and social world, was also assessed, taking account of the implications this has for IIASA's research approach and activities.

This paper is one of six IIASA Collaborative Papers published as part of the report on the conference, an earlier instalment of which was Science and Sustainability, published in 1992.

In his paper Dr. Chadwick provides a summary of the principal global models to attract attention over the last few years. What may be called the "global modeling movement" reached its peak in the 1970s -- ten are listed in Chadwick's summary -- and then declined down to two in the 1980s, but apparently the movement has by no means lost its force in the 1990s.

To this reader the interest of the models is in the varied and often mutually contradicting results that they produced, all working from similar data and using computer programs with about the same features. Thus the World 2 model, attributed to Jay Forrester, and World 3, developed by Meadows et al., both showed that the world has already, or on present trends will soon, pass its sustainable limit and then collapse. The Rariloche model, originating in Argentina that has had financial difficulties, considers that if the developed countries can pass down two percent of GNP as aid all will be well - the environmental problem is less urgent than the financial. The Japanese model, FUGI, would attain harmonious growth by shifting investment to developing countries, provided there is coordination among the investing countries.

Dr. Chadwick's group is preparing its own model, POLESTAR, that should be released soon. Much of the paper is concerned with the new model, that will have some novel and potentially valuable features. What are the criteria of success of a model? In the past the main criterion has been to arouse the interest of a wide public. POLESTAR seeks to meet more exacting requirements than this. We will have to wait for the results before its success can be judged. Meanwhile the reader will be interested in the plan on which it is being created.


ABSTRACT New ground sloths (Mammalia, Xenarthra, Mylodontidae) from the Neogene of the Bolivian Altiplano. Two new Mylodontinae (Xenarthra, Tardigrada, Mylodontoidea) from the Bolivian Altiplano are described. One of them, Pleurolestodon dalenzae n. sp., was discovered a few meters below a volcanic tuff, Toba 76, that may be used as a reference stratigraphic level and is dated at 5.4 Ma; it could be Huayquerian (late Miocene) or at the Huayquerian-Montehermosan boundary in age. The other taxon, Simomylodon uccasamamensis n. gen., n. sp., was recovered from many localities of a horizon bounded below by Toba 76 and above by another volcanic level, the 2.8 Ma Ayo Ayo tuff; its age is Montehermosan-Chapadmalalan (early and middle Pliocene). Analysis of these taxa indicates that they are Mylodontidae more closely related to Glossotherium, Glossotheridium, Kiyumylodon and Paramylodon than to Lestodon or Thinobadistes.


My dissertation, under the direction of Dr Pius Ngandu Nkashama explores the spread of African rhetorical tropes in the Atlantic world. Building on Henry Louis Gates theory of Signifying, I use the West African God of fate Esu and the West African cultural figure of the griot as cultural referents for the persistence of African tropes in the New World and their subsequent dissemination throughout the Atlantic world. Analyzing those two West African referents and their connections to New World cultures such as Afro-Brazilian capoeira angola, hip hop and African-American poetry, I attempt to demonstrate the centrality of the trope of Signifying in the Black Atlantic world through the analysis of related concepts and through close textual analysis.
Strategic dissimulation, deception and double-entendre appear as fundamental strategic rhetorical tricks that are shared both by African and Afro-Diasporic populations. I present those rhetorical tricks as both part of an African cultural continuum and an incorporation and response to oppression and exploitation of African people worldwide. In the diverse forms I analyze, I am more specifically interested in the contact between orality and the culture of writing, in black intertextuality, in the circulation of Signifying in the Atlantic world, as well as the historical dimension of this trope in particular as it relates to myth formation.
The introduction to this work explores the imperialist framework which has determined relations between Western nations and Africa for at least four hundred years, up until the present period. The in depth analysis of the mechanisms of imperialism and colonialism in the work of authors such as Edward Said, Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon constitutes the back bone of this introduction.
The first chapter focuses on the West African figures of Esu and the griot as cultural referents for the New World. I describe the place these figures occupy in their respective societies and isolate common features such as mediation, ambiguity, liminality as basis for the rest of my analysis.
The second chapter is focused on the New World human manifestations of the West African principles described in chapter one. I describe first the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira angola, then focus on the African American verse tradition and finally describe hip hop culture, and rap in particular. The capoeirista, the African American poet and the rapper all appear as New World embodiment of the West African griot.
The third and final chapter is dedicated to the analysis of poems and songs from our New World cultural forms. I focus more specifically on Henry Louis Gates concept of Signifying, in particular in the tension between orality and the culture of writing present within this trope. I also look at black intertextuality through Signifying revisions. Finally, I focus my analysis on myth formation in those different forms.


Activity recognition that recognises who a user is by what they are doing at a specific point of time is attracting an enormous amount of attention. Whilst previous research in activity recognition has focused on wearable dedicated sensors (body worn sensors) or using a smartphone's sensors (e.g. accelerometer and gyroscope), little attention is given to the use of wearable devices – which tend to be sensor-rich highly personal technologies. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the current state of the art in transparent and continuous authentication using acceleration and gyroscope sensors and an advanced feature selection approach to select the optimal features for each user. Two experiments are conducted; the first experiment used all the extracted features (i.e., 143 unique features) while (for comparison) a more selective set of only 30 features are used in the second experiment. The best results of the first experiment are average Euclidean distance scores of 0.55 and 1.41 for users' intra acceleration and gyroscope signals respectively and 3.33 and 5.85 for users' inter acceleration and gyroscope activities accordingly- providing sufficient disparity in distance to suggest a strong classification performance. In comparison, the second experiment demonstrated stronger results when evaluated (at best the average Euclidean distance scores is 0.03 and 0.19 for users' intra acceleration and gyroscope signals respectively and 1.65 and 1.1 for users' inter acceleration and gyroscope activities). The findings demonstrate that the technology is sufficiently capable and the nature of the signals captured sufficiently discriminative to be useful in performing activity recognition. Moreover, the proposed feature selection approach could offer better results


Recently, a phosphorus isomer named green phosphorus was theoretically predicted with a similar interlayer interaction compared to that of black phosphorus, thus indicating that individual layers can be mechanically exfoliated to form two-dimensional (2D) layers known as green phosphorene. In this work, we investigated the properties of green phosphorene nanoribbons along both armchair and zigzag directions with ribbon widths up to 57 A using density functional theory. Effects of ribbon width and strain on the mechanical and electronic properties of the ribbons were studied. The Young's modulus, effect of quantum confinement on the band gap, and effect of strain on the band structures of the ribbons were investigated. The green phosphorene ribbons were found to exhibit prominent anisotropic properties, with the Young's modulus in the range of 10-35 GPa for the armchair green phosphorene nanoribbons (AGPNR) and 160-170 GPa for the zigzag green phosphorene nanoribbons (ZGPNR), which are the same order of magnitude as those of the 2D sheets. The work function was found to be between 5 eV ∼ 5.7 eV for the range of widths studied. Both size and strain trigger direct-indirect band gap transitions in the ribbons and their transition mechanisms were discussed.Recently, a phosphorus isomer named green phosphorus was theoretically predicted with a similar interlayer interaction compared to that of black phosphorus, thus indicating that individual layers can be mechanically exfoliated to form two-dimensional (2D) layers known as green phosphorene. In this work, we investigated the properties of green phosphorene nanoribbons along both armchair and zigzag directions with ribbon widths up to 57 A using density functional theory. Effects of ribbon width and strain on the mechanical and electronic properties of the ribbons were studied. The Young's modulus, effect of quantum confinement on the band gap, and effect of strain on the band structures of the ribbons were investigated. The green phosphorene ribbons were found to exhibit prominent anisotropic properties, with the Young's modulus in the range of 10-35 GPa for the armchair green phosphorene nanoribbons (AGPNR) and 160-170 GPa for the zigzag green phosphorene nanoribbons (ZGPNR), which are the same order of ma...


World-renowned for his academic integrity, industriousness and commitment to scientific objectivity, Mankind Quarterly editorial board member Raymond B. Cattell has made massive contributions to behavioral science which have altered the direction and pace of research in various psychological fields. These include personality, intelligence, temperament, human motivation, learning and multivariate behavioral analysis. However, his concerns about the future of mankind's genetic heritage and about the need to apply scientific knowledge to the resolution of ethical dilemmas have led a small group of non-scientists to exert pressure to suppress professional recognition of his exceptional contributions to psychological science on grounds that had nothing to do with the magnitude of his contribution to science. KEY WORDS: Raymond B. Cattell, American Psychological Foundation, Multivariate Behavioral Research, IQ, Personality. In historic terms, the achievements of creative intellects such as Galileo, Newton and Darwin have generated a fervent degree of criticism. Over the years the salience of Raymond Bernard Cattell's impressive record of accomplishments has likewise fueled criticism from hostile social ideologues. Despite these shallow critiques, no one anticipated the intense eleventh-hour pressure that forced the American Psychological Foundation to withhold their lifetime achievement award to one of the most qualified candidates ever to be selected for this recognition. The following biographical sketch borrows heavily from the material prepared by Professor John L. Horn for submission to the American Psychological Foundation as a part of the nominating process which led the APF awards committee, comprising six former presidents, to grant professor Cattell the 1997 Gold Medal Award for Lifetime Achievement in Psychological Science. The decision to withhold the award after it had been publicly announced and after Cattell had travelled from Honolulu to Chicago to receive it, was made as a result of pressure from a small group of non-psychologists on grounds that were purely political. Early Life Born in England in 1905, Raymond Bernard Cattell was the second of three sons raised in a gifted family with solid English and Scottish roots. His family moved from Staffordshire (in England) to Devonshire when he was six years of age, and he therefore spent the formative years of his childhood in the Devonshire countryside. Following the tradition of his father and grandfather's family-run manufacturing and engineering factories, Cattell's two brothers took up engineering as a profession. Raymond Cattell, however, chose differently. In 1924 he won a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge University, at the exceptionally early age of fifteen and just four years later, at the age of nineteen, he graduated with first class honors with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry. He was obviously a child of exceptional intelligence, his father's IQ having been recorded as 120, and his mother's as 150. During this period, Cattell's scientific interests shifted from chemistry to the emerging field of psychology. This decision was made after attending a lecture by the eminent British psychologist, Sir Cyril Burt. Cattell's first publication ("The Significance of the Actual Resistance in Psycho-Galvanic Experiments") appeared in the British Journal of Psychology in 1928, while he was still engaged in postgraduate studies at the University of London under the direction of Charles Spearman. He won his Ph.D. in 1928, and his dissertation on The Subjective Character of Cognition was published as a British Journal of Psychology monograph in 1931. Early in his career, Cattell developed two fundamental interests that have influenced the scope and direction of his life's work: the importance of establishing an objective framework from which to study individual differences in human behavior and the necessity of applying scientific principles to social, political and economic problems. …


As water variability in international river basins is expected to increase, due to the predicted effects of climate change, inter-state agreements to settle consequent disputes become paramount. Specifically, the mechanisms that states negotiate as part of these agreements are important. We argue that our best attempts to consider the ability of states to deal with variability in the future, rests with considering how the agreements have fared in the past. In this paper we investigate whether particular mechanisms help mitigate inter-country tensions over shared water. We utilize a corpus of documented international water treaties pertaining to water quantity or allocation, hydropower and flood-control (those issues most affected by water variability), and the Basins at Risk events database to test particular hypotheses regarding the viability, or resiliency, of treaties to water variability. In general, we argue that particular treaty features and mechanisms are more apt to deal with decreased or increased river flow – in our particular case measured as a derived coefficient of variation pertaining to precipitation and river run-off. In essence, the presence of these instruments in a given treaty should decrease the likelihood of riparian complaints, or grievances, regarding the issue at hand. Treaties are coded for the particular mechanisms sought, and the events database is combed for related grievances and events. Our theory considers other control variables, but in this draft paper we investigate one in particular – trade. Generally, our statistical analysis finds that treaty mechanisms that are flexible and binding, with respect to flow variability, correspond with a decrease in the frequency and intensity of country complaints. Particular institutional mechanisms (e.g. enforcement, conflict resolution/dispute resolution and drought adaptation) also matter in further reducing country grievances due to flow variability and consequent treaty compliance problems.