It has been recommended that Irish mental health services adopt a recovery perspective
(Department of Health and Children 2006). However there is no unified theory of recovery capable of guiding services (Craig 2008). The aim of this study was to develop a coherent theory of recovering from mental health problems. This was the first grounded theory study of recovery in Ireland.
The study methodology was guided by critical realism and classical grounded theory. The study was based on open-ended individual interviews with 32 volunteers who had experienced mental health problems more than once over a period of two years and considered themselves in improvement. Most participants (n=23) were recruited via mental health services, and nine via
peer support or community groups.
The core category of recovery was labelled as 're-connecting with life'. It had three interactive subcategories: 1) reconnecting with self through accepting the self as a worthy human being capable of positive change; 2) reconnecting self with others through empathic, accepting, and
validating connection; 3) reconnecting self with others and time, through establishing coherence of one's past and actively shaping and executing one's present and future. Synchronising self and others in time was reported as an important goal and tool of reconnecting with life, and was
achieved through talking, understanding, empathy and giving back.
This study shows that through on-judgemental and accepting connection with peers or service providers persons can relearn to understand and value themselves and others, come to terms with the past, and plan and execute their present and future. This study provides evidence that through a dynamic connection with self, others and time one can regain meaningfulness of one's
life, which was found to be crucial for physical and mental health. Implications for mental health policy, practice, education and research are provided.


Within the changing tertiary environment, research activity and performance are coming under greater pressure and scrutiny. External policy and funding directives are resulting in revised institutional objectives, requiring variations to organisational structures and processes. These changes have an impact on the relationship between the institution and the individual. Institutional executives provide benchmarks for revised activity and performance, while academic staff respond to new internal directives and accountability requirements by reprioritising their responsibilities. At the same time, there will inevitably be an informal evaluation of the resourcing and support provided for staff as they experience the institutional push to attain greater research outputs. Within this dynamic environment there is the potential for tensions and negative outcomes if interactions are not carefully directed. The implications for leadership are obvious. What is less evident is whether the strategic intent of the institution resonates through the institution in alignment with the development of a supportive research culture.


Symmetry is an important cue in face and object perception. Here we used fMRI-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to shed light on the role of the occipital face area (OFA), a key region in face processing, and the lateral occipital (LO) cortex, a key area in object processing, in symmetry detection. In the first experiment, we applied TMS over the rightOFA, its left homolog (leftOFA), rightLO, and vertex (baseline) while participants were discriminating between symmetric and asymmetric dot patterns. Stimulation of rightOFA and rightLO impaired performance, causally implicating these two regions in detection of symmetry in low-level dot configurations. TMS over rightLO but not rightOFA also significantly impaired detection of nonsymmetric shapes defined by collinear Gabor patches, demonstrating that rightOFA responds to symmetry but not to all cues mediating figure-ground segregation. The second experiment showed a causal role for rightOFA but not rightLO in facial symmetry detection. Overall, our results demonstrate that both the rightOFA and rightLO are sensitive to symmetry in dot patterns, whereas only rightOFA is causally involved in facial symmetry detection.


Development of useful high-critical-temperature superconductors requires synthesis of superconducting compounds; fabrication of wires, tapes, and films from these compounds; production of composite structures that incorporate stabilizers or insulators; and design and testing of efficient components. This report describes technical progress of research and development efforts aimed at producing superconducting components in the Y-Ba-Cu, (Bi,Pb)-Sr-Ca-Cu,(Tl,Pb, Bi)-(Ba,Sr)-Ca-Cu, and Hg-Ba-Ca-Cu-O oxide systems. Topics discussed are synthesis and heat treatment of high-T{sub c} superconductors; formation of monolithic and composite wires, tapes, and coils, characterization of structures and superconducting and mechanical properties; fabrication and properties of films; and development of properties of films; and development of prototype components. Collaborations with industry and academia are documented.


Abstract. Atmospheric mercury (Hg) is a toxic pollutant and can be transported over the whole globe due to its long lifetime in the atmosphere. For the purpose of assessing Hg hemispheric transport and better characterizing regional Hg pollution, a global nested atmospheric Hg transport model (GNAQPMS-Hg – Global Nested Air Quality Prediction Modeling System for Hg) has been developed. In GNAQPMS-Hg, the gas- and aqueous-phase Hg chemistry representing the transformation among three forms of Hg: elemental mercury (Hg(0)), divalent mercury (Hg(II)), and primary particulate mercury (Hg(P)) are calculated. A detailed description of the model, including mercury emissions, gas- and aqueous-phase chemistry, and dry and wet deposition is given in this study. Worldwide observations including extensive data in China have been collected for model evaluation. Comparison results show that the model reasonably simulates the global mercury budget and the spatiotemporal variation of surface mercury concentrations and deposition. Overall, model predictions of annual total gaseous mercury (TGM) and wet deposition agree with observations within a factor of 2, and within a factor of 5 for oxidized mercury and dry deposition. The model performs significantly better in North America and Europe than in East Asia. This can probably be attributed to the large uncertainties in emission inventories, coarse model resolution and to the inconsistency between the simulation and observation periods in East Asia. Compared to the global simulation, the nested simulation shows improved skill at capturing the high spatial variability of surface Hg concentrations and deposition over East Asia. In particular, the root mean square error (RMSE) of simulated Hg wet deposition over East Asia is reduced by 24 % in the nested simulation. Model sensitivity studies indicate that Chinese primary anthropogenic emissions account for 30 and 62 % of surface mercury concentrations and deposition over China, respectively. Along the rim of the western Pacific, the contributions from Chinese sources are 11 and 15.2 % over the Korean Peninsula, 10.4 and 8.2 % over Southeast Asia, and 5.7 and 5.9 % over Japan. But for North America, Europe and western Asia, the contributions from China are all below 5 %.


This paper examines the notion of work commitment within the professional contractor workforce – a working relationship that typifies the growing number falling outside that of the traditional and ongoing employer/employee relationship. In particular, attention is given to the commitment‐related implications associated with the contracting relationship where both an employing organisation and a contracting agency are involved as both have a vested interest in managing the contractor within this construct. A specific focus of this research is the ability of a contractor to hold dual commitment and to investigate the factors that influence the levels of commitment to each party. The limited nature of data available within Australia means this study is supplemented with the much larger body of data and research from the USA. Implications from the findings of this study for human resource management practices in both contracting agencies and host organisations as well as future research needs are discussed.


Intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) affects nearly 15% of preterm infants. It can lead to ventricular dilation and cognitive impairment. To ablate IVH clots, MR-guided focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS) is investigated. This procedure requires accurate, fast and consistent quantification of ventricle and clot volumes. We developed a semi-autonomous segmentation (SAS) algorithm for measuring changes in the ventricle and clot volumes. Images are normalized, and then ventricle and clot masks are registered to the images. Voxels of the registered masks and voxels obtained by thresholding the normalized images are used as seed points for competitive region growing, which provides the final segmentation. The user selects the areas of interest for correspondence after thresholding and these selections are the final seeds for region growing. SAS was evaluated on an IVH porcine model. SAS was compared to ground truth manual segmentation (MS) for accuracy, efficiency, and consistency. Accuracy was determined by comparing clot and ventricle volumes produced by SAS and MS, and comparing contours by calculating 95% Hausdorff distances between the two labels. In Two-One-Sided Test, SAS and MS were found to be significantly equivalent (p < 0.01). SAS on average was found to be 15 times faster than MS (p < 0.01). Consistency was determined by repeated segmentation of the same image by both SAS and manual methods, SAS being significantly more consistent than MS (p < 0.05). SAS is a viable method to quantify the IVH clot and the lateral brain ventricles and it is serving in a large-scale porcine study of MRgFUS treatment of IVH clot lysis.


Wong's essay investigates James Williams's largely forgotten postbellum slave narrative, The Life and Adventures of James Williams, A Fugitive Slave (1873) to chart the various constellations of racial formations emerging from the politics and cultures of early black westward migration. Williams's once-popular autobiography chronicling his experiences as a fugitive slave and California gold miner knits together stories from the Underground Railroad with firsthand observations on Chinese labor migration and Indian resettlement in the West. This essay reads Williams's narrative alongside the key legal and political contexts that gave its narrative shape (and to which Williams addressed his text), including California Governor John Bigler's anti-coolieism campaign (1852), the California Supreme Court ruling in People v. Hall (1854), and the widely publicized Modoc War (1872-73). It builds upon the analytics for articulating racial difference honed in US race and ethnic studies to help illuminate Williams's literary efforts to formulate an early politics of comparative racialization.


The clinical efficacy of the allergen‐specific immunotherapy (AIT) has been well‐docu‐ mented using inhalant or hymenoptera‐derived allergens in atopic patients with cor‐ responding specific IgE antibodies. AIT is considered as the unique treatment that is capable of modifying the natural course of the allergic disease because it induces a variety of immunological mechanisms, with emphasis in the production of blocking IgG antibodies by IL‐10‐stimulated B cells due to the generation of Treg, Breg, or even Th2 cells. Thus, the measurement of specific IgG subclasses, particularly IgG4, to the crude extract or more importantly to allergen components, might be a useful and potential tool to follow‐up objectively the patients undergoing AIT in addition to clinical parameters. In this chapter, the authors have emphasized a very sensitive and highly specific reverse ELISA, developed by them, to measure IgG subclasses directed to clinically relevant natural allergens that are undoubtedly better when compared to those obtained with recombinant counterparts. Such a technique may produce more authentic results taking into account the IgG subclass binding capacity to a particular allergen and might be a valuable and alternative method for monitoring activation of tolerance‐inducing mecha‐ nisms in patients under AIT.


We present a new combination of existing methods to identifythe origin of internal layers in an ice sheet by unprecedented accuracy.Most continuous internal reflection horizons observed by radio-echo soundingare known to form isochrones and can be followed over large distances.With an ice core at either end of the profile, the reflection horizons presenttime markers that are used to synchronize the ice-core records. Using electricalproperties along an ice core as input to a numerical model which simulates thepropagation of electromagnetic waves in the ice we reproduce the reflectioncharacteristics of a radar profile near the ice core. The depth of origin ofreflections are identified by removing individual peaks in conductivity in theinput record, thus also removing the corresponding reflections in the syntheticradargram. A pilot study at the EPICA drilling site in Dronning Maud Land,Antarctica, shows that it is possible to locate the origin of internal reflectionswith an accuracy of 0.5 m in a depth of 2000 m and more. Our approach imposeslittle constrains on the input records, making it applicable to a number ofdrilling sites, and has several advantages over usual methods where merelyreflector traveltimes (respective depths) and ice-core profiles are compared.Both, dielectric profiling and electrical conductivity measurements can be usedas electrical model input. As we use pronounced series of reflections to calibratethe traveltime-depth relation, only a coarse density record is required. Inaddition, as we do not require explicite electromagnetic wave speeds, systematicphysical errors in the ice-core or radio-echo sounding data have no effect onthe final result. Application of this method to deep-drilling locations inAntarctica connected by radio-echo sounding will improve their relativesynchronization and will help to answer the question of phase relations ofclimate changes observed in the ice-core records at different locations.


Variability analyses for the rainfall over the Nile Basin have been confined mostly to sub-basins and the annual mean of the hydroclimatic variable based on observed short-term data from a few meteorological stations. In this paper, long-term country-wide rainfall over the period 1901–2011 was used to assess variability in the seasonal and annual rainfall volumes in all the River Nile countries in Africa. Temporal variability was determined through temporal aggregation of series rescaled nonparametrically in terms of the difference between the exceedance and non-exceedance counts of data points such that the long-term average (taken as the reference) was zero. The co-occurrence of the variability of rainfall with those of the large-scale ocean–atmosphere interactions was analyzed. Between 2000 and 2012, while the rainfall in the equatorial region was increasing, that for the countries in the northern part of the River Nile was below the reference. Generally, the variability in the rainfall of the countries in the equatorial (northern) part of the River Nile was found to be significantly linked to occurrences in the Indian and Atlantic (Pacific and Atlantic) Oceans. Significant linkages to Nino 4 regarding the variability of both the seasonal and annual rainfall of some countries were also evident.


We compared effects of a high fat diet and a carcinogen on cellular elements of the spleen and mammary gland tumors in rats. Animals were fed a 15% olive-oil diet and a group of them were exposed to a carcinogen, dimethylbenz(a)anthacene (DMBA), in two doses of 10 mg/rat. Results of the experiments were evaluated after 4 months. We studied changes in the areas of different zones of the spleen related to production of B and T lymphocytes and also the number of cells in the spleen and tumors with positive reaction to receptors related to manifestation of apoptosis (FasL and p53) and receptors related to inhibition of apoptosis (bcl-2). In the spleen, dietary fats as well as DMBA alone decreased the zones related to production of B lymphocytes and increased the number of T lymphocytes. The combined effect of a carcinogen and a high fat diet manifested in an increase in the number of lymphoid cells and macrophages. In tumors from rats fed a low-fat diet, an extremely high number of lymphoid cells was seen in the border of tumors with T cell killers as a main component of these infiltrates. In tumors from rats fed a 15% olive-oil diet, the main component of the infiltrates were macrophages. High levels of p53+ and bcl-2+ cells were found in the spleen of rats exposed to a carcinogen. The combined effect of a carcinogen and the 15% olive-oil diet inhibited production of FasL and p53 receptors and stimulated synthesis of bcl-2 protein. In tumors, a carcinogen alone stimulated the high expression of FasL and p53 proteins, but in combination with the 15% olive-oil diet synthesis of these receptors decreased while production of bcl-2 protein increased sharply. This observation may serve as an additional proof of tumor-promoter effects of a high fat diet.


This study is an attempt to investigate the fund-specific determinants of performance of conventional and Islamic mutual funds in Pakistan. For this purpose, Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio, Information Ratio and Jensen Alpha are used as proxies of funds' performance. We examine several fund-specific characteristics as potential determinants of fund performance such as fund size, turnover, liquidity, management fee, expense ratio, new money, fund age and fund family. A sample of 100 open ended mutual funds were evaluated for a period from 2011-2016. This sample is further divided into overall, conventional and Islamic funds. Data was extracted from the annual reports of mutual funds, business recorder and the daily NAV is obtained from the website of Mutual Fund Association of Pakistan. Fixed and Random effect methodology is used for the data analysis of this study. The result shows that turnover and new money have a significant positive impact on Sharpe ratio for all three samples of funds. Liquidity is positively and significantly related with Sharpe ratio in case of Islamic funds while for conventional funds age has a significant positive effect on fund's performance. Expense ratio is negatively associated with Sharpe ratio in case of conventional funds. The finding suggested that turnover, liquidity and new money demonstrates significant positive relation with information ratio for conventional funds. On the contrary, Islamic funds' performance is worsen by the new money. Sortino ratio is influenced significantly positive by fund family and fund age for all the three sample of funds. Turnover has a positive impact on the Sortino ratio of Islamic funds while management fees has negative influence on the Sortino ratio .Fund family and liquidity has been found to be significantly positively related with Jensen alpha of conventional funds while new money has significant negative effect on the Jensen alpha.


In an article in the March 8 issue of the journal PLoS Computational Biology, physicists Travis Craddock and Jack Tuszynski of the University of Alberta, and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff of the University of Arizona propose a mechanism for encoding synaptic memory in microtubules, major components of the structural cytoskeleton within neurons. The self-explanatory title of the article is "Cytoskeletal Signaling: Is Memory Encoded in Microtubule Lattices by CaMKII Phosphorylation?" Authors propose a memory code based on the representation of bit as the presence or absence of phosphorylation and represent empirical evidence consistent with 6-bit code analogous to genetic code. In this article a different interpretation of findings is proposed. The presence of phosphate is seen as an evidence for negentropic entanglement accompanied by ATP molecule making possible memory recall by sending negative energy signal to geometric past transforming ATP to ADP and thus using single metabolic quantum.


: Superovulation protocols are designed to achieve maximum embryo yields. Nevertheless, ovarian response control and the quality of obtained embryos is still a challenge. On the other hand, to save the superovulated embryos until their subsequent use, it is usual to cryopreserve them, so it is also crucial to assess their cryotolerance. The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of a single injection of corifollitropin alfa (FSH-CTP) alone or supplemented with hCG and to determine the impact of this stimulation on in vitro and in vivo development of fresh or devitrified embryos. Our outcomes showed that ovulation rate and recovered embryos were significantly increased when hCG was used. In vitro development of fresh and devitrified embryos and survival at birth was not significantly affected by superstimulation treatment. Results of this study suggest that a single injection of long acting FSH-CTP supplemented with hCG can be effectively used in rabbits to elicit an increase in ovulation rate and number of recovered embryos. Furthermore, we demonstrated that hCG supplementation had no negative effects in embryo cryosurvival and development, showing similar survival rate at birth than FSH-CTP alone group.


This report contributes to the understanding of how the the socio-economic contribution of Nordic fisheries/aquaculture are affected by the environment and environmental management, with focus on nitrogen. The report contains two case studies of how the socio-economic contribution of Danish/Swedish cod fishery in the Western Baltic Sea are affected by the nitrogen in the sea, and on how salmon growth rates in aquaculture in the Bokna Fiord are affected by nitrogen concentration. A Nordic workshop was held with the title: Fisheries, aquaculture and the marine environment: Environmental challenges and regulation, with focus on nitrogen. The finding of the case studies was presented at the workshop, together with presentations made by invited speakers on the role of nutrients and their management for Nordic fisheries/aquaculture. The discussion at the workshop is summarized in this report.


The question of institutional choice is important in all areas of the law, but particularly in the context of patent law with its divergent stakeholders, decentralized variance among industries regarding how the patent system is viewed and relied upon, and a persistent focus on reform in recent years. For over two hundred years, the courts have been the dominant force in the development of patent law. It should therefore come as no surprise to learn that a significant portion of American patent law, including some of the most important and controversial patent law doctrines, is either built upon judicial interpretation of elliptical statutory phrases or is devoid of any statutory basis. Thus, while Congress and the courts each have a hand in constructing the latticework of patent law, judges - not the authors of lex scripta - are the principal architects.The common law process - in the Hayekian sense - situates the judge within a given technological community, where norm identification can be more easily recognized and representative legal frameworks constructed that are more closely tethered to relevant social context. Such a pronounced common law role offers an opportunity to exercise significant discretion. How this judicial discretion has been managed can be gleaned from the common law's willingness to construct legal forms, most notably the choice and balance between the creation of a rule-based (or rule-like) jurisprudence and a more standard-oriented approach. The evolution of the common law of patents has been interstitial and nuanced, displaying an understanding that a body of law devoted to promoting technological innovation - a decentralized enterprise with attendant norms unique to each innovative community - more often than not requires a less dichotomous approach, constructing analytical frameworks that are situated somewhere between a spotless rule and a pure standard.Through the lens of comparative advantage, therefore, this experience provides a strong case for judicial primacy in the context of substantive reform, and an important, yet modest, Congressional role, one limited to (1) bringing about procedural change or altering patent law's judicial architecture; and (2) engaging in substantive corrective action by addressing a common law gone awry.


The purpose of this paper is to study about the various methods, which are mainly used in the authentication area. Information technology (IT) systems, their stored data and the processes are valuable resources, which need to be protected from outer world. First step toward securing an IT system is the ability to verify the identity of its users. The process of verifying a user's identity is typically referred to as user identification and authentication. Passwords are the methods that were used most often for authenticating computer users, but this approach has often proven inadequate in preventing unauthorized access to computer resources when used as the sole means of authentication. Because of above discussed problem, a new technique was emerged by researchers that can significantly improve the


In the past four decades topics related to the moral evaluation of global politics have occupied a central part of the philosophical debate. The first three sections of this essay provide a reconstruction of the defining features of the globalization of politics and of the ways in which the latter have contributed to the increased philosophical attention on the moral aspects of global affairs. In sections four to six, we move to the current debate in global political theory. Moral cosmopolitanism has come to articulate the boundaries of reasonable disagreement in global political theory and has implied a deep form of commitment to basic human rights. However, we argue in section six, agreement on basic human rights has not evolved into widespread convergence on a range of central political concepts such as distributive justice and legitimacy. Against this backdrop, in sections 7 to 10, we move on to consider the role of democracy in global politics. The main conclusion that the essay will put forward is that the complexity of the institutional landscape beyond traditional state borders does not automatically lend itself to the mechanical application of democratic institutional forms, but that democratic values can still play an important role.


As the world faces the challenge of globalisation, more and more corporations are
searching for tools to excel in the face of competition. One such tool is through ISO
9000 certification. Corporations with the ISO 9000 series certification are seen to
have the competitive advantage. For example, in the European Community countries,
it has been imperative for companies to have the certification before their
products/services are allowed to be in the EC marketplace.
Like their worldwide counterpart, Malaysian corporations are applying to be ISO
9000 certified through our ISO regulatory authority SIRIM. In this research study, I
shall study the Malaysian experiences with regards to obtaining the ISO certificate.
The objective is to cover what the companies experience in the process of fulfilling
all the 20 elements in the ISO 9000 series certification. It also attempts to evaluate if
there is a strong correlation between the certification and the company's earnings.
This study is important as it will serve as a guide to new companies seeking to be
certified.


In this book the author charts the developments in nuclear physics since its inception around a century ago by reviewing the key experiments that helped drive and shape our understanding of the field, especially in the context of the wider developments in physics in the early 20th century. In addition to providing a path through the field and the crucial events it looks at how these experiments not only answered key questions at the time but presented new challenges to the contemporary perception of the nuclear and sub-atomic worlds and how they helped develop our present understanding of nuclear physics.


The signal processing community is increasingly interested in using information theoretic concepts to build signal processing algorithms for a variety of applications. A general theory on how to apply the mathematical concepts of information theory to the field of signal processing would therefore be of great interest. This is one of the main goals of this thesis, namely to introduce a mathematical framework for information theoretic signal and image processing. The framework is based on stochastic processes for information transmission and on the error probabilities associated to these transmissions. Within the developed model, the stochastic processes account for the signal processing tasks within probability space, and the error probabilities are the optimization functions that drive the algorithms towards the signal processing objectives. The resulting conceptual framework allows us to directly apply a large number of information theoretic concepts and formulae to signal processing, including lower error bounds for the error probabilities or concepts from rate-distortion theory. In order to illustrate the theoretic framework, we show that several existing information theoretic signal processing algorithms implicitly fit our general model. This allows us to study interesting relationships between several algorithms. More importantly, we also apply the theory to three important target applications, namely multi-modal medical image registration, audio-video joint processing, and non-parametric, non-supervised classification. The first two applications are particular examples of the general concept of multi-modal feature extraction. Multi-modal feature extraction aims to determine those features in a pair of multi-modal signals that carry maximal mutual redundancy. This means that from the feature space representation of one signal we can predict the feature space representation of the second signal with low probability of error. After describing the mathematical basis, we illustrate the algorithm with examples of multi-modal medical image registration, where the algorithm adaptively extracts those features in the initial datasets which best perform the registration task. Again, this is done by determining those features which carry maximal mutual redundancy and therefore define optimally spatial registration. We also apply the model to audio-video signals to predict the localization of a speaker in a video scene from its corresponding speech signal. The resulting algorithms illustrate that the existence of features with large mutual redundancy in multi-modal signals can be used to improve multi-modal signal processing. Furthermore the general theory enables the construction of a wide range of completely new applications. Another illustrative example of the general information theoretic signal processing framework consists of information theoretic classification. Even though the basic model for multi-modal feature extraction and classification is identical, the final mathematical expressions are different and complementary. This allows us to make very interesting analogies between these two distinct applications. In particular, it is interesting to see that in analogy to registration, also classification algorithms aim to minimize error probabilities. The entirely probabilistic nature of the classification framework allows us to add a hidden Markov random field to the algorithms, resulting in the promising concept of non-parametric hidden Markov models. The classification algorithms are validated on synthetic and natural data. For instance, we apply the non-parametric hidden Markov model to the segmentation of medical images and obtain promising results in comparison to the state-of-the-art in this field. In conclusion, the experimental results show that the introduced mathematical framework leads to interesting generalizations of existing signal processing tasks and to promising results for several newly derived signal processing algorithms.


At North Barr River, Morvern, inspection of forestry planting mounds on a raised beach terrace identified a chipped stone assemblage associated with upcast deposits containing charcoal. An archaeological evaluation of the site, funded by Forestry Commission Scotland, sought to better understand the extent and character of this Mesolithic and later prehistoric lithic scatter. The lithic assemblage is predominantly debitage with some microliths and scrapers. The range of raw materials including flint, Rùm bloodstone and baked mudstone highlights wider regional networks. Other elements, including a barbed and tanged arrowhead, belong to later depositional episodes. Two mid-second millennium bc radiocarbon dates were obtained from soil associated with some lithics recovered from a mixed soil beneath colluvial deposits. The chronology of a putative stone bank or revetment is uncertain but the arrangement of stone may also date to the second millennium bc.


Numerous oceanic and atmospheric phenomena influence El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability, complicating both prediction and analysis of the mechanisms responsible for generating ENSO diversity. Predictability of ENSO events depends on the characteristics of both the forecast initial conditions and the stochastic forcing that occurs subsequent to forecast initialization. Within a linear inverse model framework, stochastic forcing reduces ENSO predictability when it excites unpredictable growth or interference after the forecast is initialized, but also enhances ENSO predictability when it excites optimal initial conditions that maximize deterministic ENSO growth. Linear inverse modeling (LIM) allows for straightforward separation between predictable signal and unpredictable noise and so can diagnose its own skill. While previous LIM studies of ENSO focused on deterministic dynamics, here we explore how noise forcing influences ENSO diversity and predictability. This study identifies stochastic forcing details potentially contributing to the development of central Pacific (CP) or eastern Pacific (EP) ENSO characteristics. The technique is then used to diagnose the relative roles of initial conditions and noise forcing throughout the evolution of several ENSO events. LIM results show varying roles of noise forcing for any given event, highlighting its utility in separating deterministic from noise-forced contributions to the evolution of individual ENSO events. For example, the strong 1982 event was considerably more influenced by noise forcing late in its evolution than the strong 1997 event, which was more predictable with long lead times due to its deterministic growth. Furthermore, the 2014 deterministic trajectory suggests that a strong event in 2014 was unlikely.


The entry in Johnson's Dictionary for "allegory" reads, "A figurative discourse, in which something other is intended, than is contained in the words literally taken; as, wealth is the daughter of diligence, and the parent of authority." This definition does not distinguish allegory from other kinds of non-literal writing; indeed, the term "figurative discourse" suggests that an allegory is simply an extended metaphor. Nowhere does the Dictionary state that an allegory may resemble what Spenser calls a "darke conceit," an elaborate system of figures, with multiple or hidden significations.[1] In addition, the illustration Johnson appends to his definition argues that he regards allegory as a rhetorical tool that clarifies rather than complicates meaning. By including his original allegory, instead of directing the reader's attention to an example such as The Faerie Queene, Johnson ensures that the user of the Dictionary will associate allegory with this economical model. Encountering Johnson's sentence outside the Dictionary context, in fact, many readers would describe it not as allegory but rather as aphorism, perhaps noting that it employs prosopopoeia. Like an aphorism, this illustrative sentence condenses our unconscious understanding of three abstract images, reinvigorating a commonplace admonition to "Work hard, get rich, and become powerful." Johnson tersely and profoundly evokes the natural bonds that should unite work, wealth, and power, while his familial metaphor teaches us that the rewards of diligence are subject to the vicissitudes affecting human relationships. Identifying wealth as the "parent of authority," he reminds us that even authority exists in a state of dependency. In short, as Bernard L. Einbond notes in his monograph on Johnson's allegories, by using abstract personification Johnson defines with "great economy the relationships among the concepts he discusses" (67). Regarding allegories as extended metaphors that focus our thoughts and reinforce and secure our understanding of abstract subject matter, Johnson shares a critical premise with Joseph Addison, who devoted a number of the Spectator papers to the defense of allegories, dream-visions, and fables. Spectator 421 states that "Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many Tracks of Light in a Discourse, that make every thing about them clear and beautiful" (3: 578).[2] Here, Addison does not describe a role for allegory appropriate for the extended narratives we normally associate with the word, works ranging from The Faerie Queene and The Pilgrim's Progress to A Tale of a Tub and Tom Jones. Allegory rather is a rhetorical device that a writer may employ in order to illuminate the more difficult parts of his argument. By analogy, the allegories that Johnson includes in The Rambler serve as "tracks of light" that "illuminate" other aspects of the periodical. The Dictionary emphasizes this sense of the term when it offers as the first example of usage for "allegory" this dictum from Ben Jonson's Discovery: "Neither must we draw out our allegory too long, lest either we make ourselves obscure, or fall into affectation, which is childish" (Johnson's emphasis). Placed immediately after the lexicographer's aphoristic illustration, Ben Jonson's admonition appears to comment approvingly on the brevity of Samuel Johnson's example.[3] Correctly managed allegory, in short, never permits the luxurious pleasure of invention to misdirect us from keeping its instructive end clearly in view. As Johnson explains in the "Life of Milton," to exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and animate them with activity has always been the right of poetry. But such airy beings are for the most part suffered only to do their natural office and retire. Thus Fame tells a tale and Victory hovers over a general or perches on a standard; but Fame and Victory can do no more. To give them any real employment or ascribe to them any material agency is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by ascribing effects to non-entity. …


We show that market-maker balance sheet and income statement variables explain time variation in liquidity, suggesting liquidity-supplier financing constraints matter. Using 11 years of NYSE specialist inventory positions and trading revenues, we find that aggregate market-level and specialist firm-level spreads widen when specialists have large positions or lose money. The effects are nonlinear and most prominent when inventories are big or trading results have been particularly poor. These sensitivities are smaller after specialist firm mergers, consistent with deep pockets easing financing constraints. Finally, compared to low volatility stocks, the liquidity of high volatility stocks is more sensitive to inventories and losses.


The planktonic foraminiferal genus, Huberella n.gen., of the Family Heterohelicidae Cushman, 1927, is described from the Turonian (Upper Cretaceous) of the western North Atlantic and equatorial Pacific. It accommodates a lineage which is characterized by the development of lid-like chamber projections attached to the previous chamber of the row in the adult portion of the test. Development of these structures does not result in the presence of accessory apertures along the zigzag suture. Two species are included in this lineage, Huberella praehuberi n.sp. and H. huberi n.sp. The latter is designated as type species of the newly described genus.


This delightful autumn story describes the woodland adventures of two acorn children who get carried away by the blustery autumn wind. Mr Squirrel and Hazel, the youngest Hazelnut child, go off in search of them and encounter a grumpy troll and the Chestnut boys along the way.


Hexagonal NaYbF4:Tm3+ upconversion nanoparticles hold promise for use in high contrast near-infrared-to-near-infrared (NIR-to-NIR) in vitro and in vivo bioimaging. However, significant hurdles remain in their preparation and control of their morphology and size, as well as in enhancement of their upconversion efficiency. Here, we describe a systematic approach to produce highly controlled hexagonal NaYbF4:Tm3+ nanoparticles with superior upconversion. We found that doping appropriate concentrations of trivalent gadolinium (Gd3+) can convert NaYbF4:Tm3+ 0.5% nanoparticles with cubic phase and irregular shape into highly monodisperse NaYbF4:Tm3+ 0.5% nanoplates or nanospheres in a pure hexagonal-phase and of tunable size. The intensity and the lifetime of the upconverted NIR luminescence at 800 nm exhibit a direct dependence on the size distribution of the resulting nanoparticles, being ascribed to the varied surface-to-volume ratios determined by the different nanoparticle size. Epitaxial growth of a thin NaYF4 shell layer of ∼2 nm on the ∼22 nm core of hexagonal NaYbF4:Gd3+ 30%/Tm3+ 0.5% nanoparticles resulted in a dramatic 350 fold NIR upconversion efficiency enhancement, because of effective suppression of surface-related quenching mechanisms. In vivo NIR-to-NIR upconversion imaging was demonstrated using a dispersion of phospholipid-polyethylene glycol (DSPE-PEG)-coated core/shell nanoparticles in phosphate buffered saline.


Hybrid electric powertrains are developed for reducing the fuel consumption and consequently the emission of carbon dioxide. The fuel consumption of those systems depends significantly on the topology of the powertrain and the applied control strategy. Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation can be used for improving the control strategy, where a real-time model of the powertrain with accurate consideration of the power losses is required. Developing those models is a time-consuming task due to the high dynamics and switching frequencies of the electrical subsystem and the various configurations of the mechanical subsystem. In this contribution methods for an efficient modeling of transmission systems and electric drives are presented. Real-Time capability as well as the correct power flows and losses are considered. Finally, simulation results are shown.


In an contemporary discussion on the undersirable effects of architecture upon
the natural landscape, our attention often centers around a speculated form
of architecture which we tend to describe tentatively as an 'ecological
architecture' or as one that is totally benign in its relations with nature.
We might ask what is an ecological architecture? The dissertation sets out
to define these terms and to develop a theoretical framework for design.
Our research objectives are as follows
1. Our initial objectives. are to derive a set of fundamental premises •
. The intention is to provide ourselves with a context with "which a
concept of ecological architect, can L.J based. Because of the
conflicting opinions that exist on the subject matter, only by
agreeing upon a common set of fundamental premises can a concerted
approach be possible. (This is examined in Chapters 2 and 3).
2. Secondly, our objectives are to derive a framework for approaching
design. This should not only cohesively unify all the pertinent
ang.' related areas of study, but also provide the designer with a
firm theoretical standpoint from "Which to approach the design of
the built environment. Such a framework should be able to be used
to analyse the impact that a proposed design might have before it
is built. (The framework is described in detail in Chapter 4).
Each of the framework' s structural components is discussed and examined in
greater detail in Chapters 5 to 8.
In Chapter 9 is our conclusion and discussion on the theoretical implications
of our research work as a whole and what it might mean in design implementation.
Included is an Appendix which contains a review of literature
Literature is
derived from a number of sources that we have found to be pertinent to this
area of research. It is howeverr not exhaustive nor can it be exhaustive since
the sources are diverse. The appendix serves as an indicator of the sources
of literature for further development of this study.


A model was developed for calculating the operating conditions of a non-adiabatic liquid dehumidifier used in solar air conditioning systems. In the experimental facility used for obtaining the data, air and triethylene glycol circulate countercurrently outside staggered copper tubes which are the filling of an absorption tower. Water flows inside the copper tubes, thus cooling the whole system and increasing the mass transfer potential for drying air. The methodology for calculating the mass transfer coefficient is based on the Merkel integral approach, taking into account the lowering of the water vapor pressure in equilibrium with the water glycol solution.


We conducted a series of experimental and modeling tests using data from the Busted Butte Unsaturated Zone Transport Test. First, we conducted a suite of reactive (e.g., Li), nonreactive (Br), and colloidal tracer experiments. These tracers were injected for 190 d from two point sources at rates of 1 and 8 mL/h, respectively. We then used a numerical simulator (FEHM), populated with laboratory‐measured hydrologic properties, to verify that our conceptual model of the tracer test yielded a good fit to the tracer breakthrough data. Additionally, we used the AMALGAM‐SO and SCEM‐UA search algorithms to find optimal parameter estimates in our conceptual model and estimate their (nonlinear) uncertainty. To this end, the FEHM model was executed more than 50,000 times using parallel computing on a distributed computer cluster. The experimental and modeling results show that (i) no breakthrough of colloids was observed, low breakthroughs of Li were found, and significant and rapid breakthrough of Br was measured, (ii) measured hydraulic parameters from rock core samples provide a relatively accurate description of flow and transport at the scale and flow rates of the Busted Butte test, and (iii) the Millington–Quirk model of diffusion as a function of volumetric water content can fit the experimental breakthrough data well; however, (iv) a constant diffusion model with a much lower effective diffusion coefficient also fits the data well, and (v) numerous different optimized parameter combinations exist that fit the observed Br data acceptably well. This implies that one should be particularly careful in assigning values of the unsaturated subsurface flow and transport parameters without recourse to examining both parameter and model formulation uncertainty.


The use of the Internet as a global communication infrastructure to support a wide range of multiconstrained applications and services poses new challenges to ISPs regarding network services management and auditing. In this context, the semantic characterization and modeling of services provided to users assumes an essential role in fostering service management automation. Moreover, the semantic and formal description of services allows enhancing the negotiation and interoperability between clients and service providers. This paper reports the first steps toward the definition of an ontology for multiservice networks that eases and systemizes decision support of QoS deployment in ISP infrastructures, according to service levels established in SLAs. Other management tasks such as dynamic service negotiation and configuration, service monitoring and auditing may also benefit from the present ontology proposal.


Abstract : In evolutionary graph theory biologists study the problem of determining the probability that a small number of mutants overtake a population that is structured on a weighted, possibly directed graph. Currently Monte Carlo simulations are used for estimating such fixation probabilities on directed graphs, since no good analytical methods exist. In this paper, we introduce a novel deterministic algorithm for computing fixation probabilities for strongly connected directed, weighted evolutionary graphs under the case of neutral drift, which we show to be a lower bound for the case where the mutant is more fit than the rest of the population (previously, this was only observed from simulation). We also show that, in neutral drift, fixation probability is additive under the weighted, directed case. We implement our algorithm and show experimentally that it consistently outperforms Monte Carlo simulations by several orders of magnitude, which can allow researchers to study fixation probability on much larger graphs.


Background: Floating knee is a term used for ipsilateral tibial and femoral fractures, associated to many life-threatening complications. We report our experience in the treatment of these injuries over a period of six years, reviewing and comparing the results with those published in the literature. Methods: This is a retrospective, descriptive and observational study, done from January 2003 to July 2009 including 16 patients: 11 males (68.7%) and 5 females (31.3%). The average age was 38.5 years (20 70 years). We used the Fraser classification for floating knee, and evaluated: range of motion, the material used in surgery, associated injuries, healing time, complications and additional surgeries. Results: Twelve of 16 patients (75%) had associated injuries. Twelve patients (75%) received early definitive treatment while in 4 (25%) damage was controlled. The average healing time of both bones was 6 months. Eight patients (50%) required additional surgeries. Conclusions: Floating knee is often the result of polytrauma. The different published series report an average of 50 to 62% associated injuries. Damage control with external fixation is an excellent option. The best treatment for these fractures is early and definite stabilization, which allows for early mobilization, reduces systemic problems in polytrauma, and the complications associated with a long stay in bed. Recibido el 12-3-10. Aceptado luego de la evaluación el 12-10-2010.


We study the problem of natural language-based video retrieval, the task of finding relevant videos given natural language search queries. Most recent state-of-the-art (SOTA) approaches would embed the video and query separately and map the video and query embeddings into a joint latent space to calculate a similarity score between them. To learn a video representation, existing solutions generally use all the frames or sample a subset of frames from the video using uniform sampling. The former solution could be computationally prohibitive while the latter may inject noise from uninformative frames into the final video representation. To this end, we propose mmSampler, a learning-based sampler, to adaptively select salient frames to represent the videos for m ulti m odal video retrieval. mmSampler can greatly reduce the computational overhead for video representation without affecting the retrieval performance. We learn a lightweight policy network to decide whether to further process or discard a frame. By adopting the Gumbel-Softmax trick, we train the sampler jointly with the video retrieval model end-to-end in an efficient manner. Experimental results on benchmark datasets such as ActivityNet, DiDeMo and MSRVTT demonstrate that mmSampler achieves improved retrieval performance while saving as much as 43% GFLOPs per video.


Atkinson's Theorem (Atkinson, 1970) is a classic result in inequality measurement. It establishes Lorenz dominance as a useful criterion for comparative judgements of inequality between distributions. If a Lorenz distribution A dominates distribution B, then all indices in a broad class of measures must confirm A as less unequal than B. Recent research, however, shows that standard inequality theory cannot be applied to ordinal data (Zheng, 2008), such as self-reported health status or educational attainment. A new theory in development (Apouey, 2007; Abul Naga and Yalcin, 2008) measures disparity of ordinal data as polarization. Typically a criterion used to compare distributions is the polarization relation as proposed by Allison and Foster (AF) (2004). We characterize classes of polarization measures equivalent to the AF relation analogously to Atkinson's original approach.


We compiled new and published data on the natural abundance N isotope composition (δ15N values) of soil and plant organic matter from around the world. Across a broad range of climate and ecosystem types, we found that soil and plant δ15N values systematically decreased with increasing mean annual precipitation (MAP) and decreasing mean annual temperature (MAT). Because most undisturbed soils are near N steady state, the observations suggest that an increasing fraction of ecosystem N losses are 15N‐depleted forms (NO3, N2O, etc.) with decreasing MAP and increasing MAT. Wetter and colder ecosystems appear to be more efficient in conserving and recycling mineral N. Globally, plant δ15N values are more negative than soils, but the difference (δ15Nplant‐δ15Nsoil) increases with decreasing MAT (and secondarily increasing MAP), suggesting a systematic change in the source of plant‐available N (organic/NH4+ versus NO3−) with climate. Nitrogen isotopes reflect time integrated measures of the controls on N storage that are critical for predictions of how these ecosystems will respond to human‐mediated disturbances of the global N cycle.


The constant development of new multimedia applications, which are "greedy" in terms of bandwidth and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, calls for new approaches to the traffic policing problem. This paper proposes, analyzes and presents an extensive performance evaluation of such a new approach, namely the activity-based video traffic policing. Using as a motivation recent work, which has shown that the classic traffic policing mechanisms provide unnecessarily strict policing for conforming but bursty video users, we propose five simple and efficient new mechanisms, which take into consideration and exploit video activity and the Group-of Pictures (GoP) pattern of the video traces. Contrary to the classic approach, our mechanisms do not use a token generator based on a fixed rate, but vary the token generation rate according to specific video activity-based algorithms. The results show significant improvement for conforming users, and reveal that dynamic traffic policing can provide much higher efficiency than the widely used static mechanisms. One of the new mechanisms, the Frame Size Aware Token Bucket, is shown to clearly outperform all other policing approaches for conforming users, and to provide comparable policing results with the classic mechanisms for non-conforming video users.


No one in the world are expecting this Covid-19 pandemic, impacting mostly on the healthy issue, economic issue, social issue and much more that human being never thought about it. In the white cellar worker, working from home now is a necessity, not just about bringing work to home but many issues raise during this working condition. One of the issues raises is about productivity. For workers that used to work remotely using technology they don't feel any issues, however, on the others hand for those just enter this new work style, it might be a problem. Telecommuting work have been getting popularity in the late 1980s, mostly this way of work is in respond to many issues in the develop country. As it may too early to conclude where telecommuting and work from home is an apple to apple comparison, as far as the research done in the past, it may can be concluded that  the essence is the same. However, little research have been done in the past decade for looking at the telecommuting productivity especially the developing countries. This unexpected event (Covid-19) forces white cellar worker working from home, regardless what type of organization they work for. It may create new work habit, perhaps promote work life balance better for some, or maybe on the other hand bring new productivity issues. It is important in this occasion, that APMBA will open special issue for August 2020 issue to encourage scholars around the world to submit their paper consist of ideas regarding working from home issues. With this editorial note, I would like also to congratulate four paper that addressing marketing, entrepreneurship, operation  and finance issue resulted from the 3rd AICMBS conference which was held in October 2019 that coloring the research dissemination through this scholarly venue.


Assessment of colony infestation by Varroa destructor is a crucial part of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) applied to beekeeping. Natural mite fall, quantified by counting the mites on sticky sheets, is considered a reference method to estimate varroa infestation level in honey bee colonies. However, in recent years, alternative methods that can be used in field conditions have been investigated. In this paper, we report the results of the evaluation of two different methods to estimate the levels of varroa infestation. The experiment involved 151 honey bee colonies in nine apiaries of four countries (Algeria, Croatia, Italy, Poland). After the main honey flow, we compared the 10-day natural mite fall and the powdered sugar roll methods with the varroa population in each colony. According to our results, the powdered sugar roll method could be suggested to beekeepers as a suitable IPM tool for varroa control, while natural mite fall represents a more accurate method that could be adopted for selection/research purposes.


Recent years have witnessed the widespread diffusion of the criminal jury trial across the globe. Considered by many to be foundational to participatory democracy, nations as culturally and geographically diverse as Mexico, Kazakhstan, and Japan are currently in the process of adopting mechanisms for lay participation in the adjudication of criminal cases. This Article investigates the historical origins of the jury trial's global spread, focusing particular attention on the recent example of South Korea. Identifying three "waves" of the jury trial's global diffusion – the first driven by British Colonialism, the second by the Napoleonic Wars, and the third by the post-Cold War spread of political democracy – the Article notes that the jury trial's introduction into Asia lies within this most-recent wave. It then offers a socio-political account of the origins of the Korean jury trial, finding that – contrary to existing accounts – its rise is best conceptualized as merely one rivet in larger atmospheric shifts occurring within Korean society at the turn of the millennium. The Article also explores the curious discord between escalating skepticism of the jury trial in those nations where it enjoys the deepest historical roots and its recent vast geographic expansion. Assessing the Korean system from within this inconsistency, the Article finds that – by adopting a unique, hybrid institutional design, which combines elements of the common law jury, the mixed tribunal prevalent in many civil law nations, and homegrown innovations – the Korean system endeavors to alleviate tensions inherent in existing iterations of lay adjudication. In so doing, it serves as a potential model for nations allured by the democratic promise of vesting ordinary citizens with judicial authority, but reticent to adopt either of the two most-prevalent, yet widely-discredited, institutional mechanisms thereof. The Article then attempts to carefully unpack how the Korean jury trial system contrasts with existing systems, especially those in the United States and Western Europe. In addition, it identifies a range of possible critiques of the Korean system and assesses their relative weight from a comparative perspective. The Article finds that – while significant – the Korean system's weaknesses are generally comparable to the well-documented afflictions of existing systems. Finally, the Article offers a brief exploration of the ways in which the introduction of the jury trial in Korea might have broader effects on the nation's legal system: by enhancing systemic legitimacy, by enabling a new avenue for doctrinal development, and by shifting bargaining power to criminal defendants.


The pharmacology of prejunctional serotonin (5-HT) heteroreceptors that regulate the release of norepinephrine (NE) was studied in isolated bovine and human iris-ciliary bodies. The effect of exogenous 5-HT and various 5-HT receptor agonists was examined on the release of [3H]-norepinephrine ([3H]NE). Both 5-HT and m-chlorophenyl-biguanide (m-CPBG) caused enhancement in the field-stimulated release of [3H]NE from bovine tissues whereas 5-carboxamidotryptamine (5-CT) had no such effect. On the other hand, 8hydroxy-dipropylaminotetralin (8-OH-DPAT), caused a significant dose-related inhibition of evoked [3H]NE release. In human iris-ciliary bodies, 5-HT caused an inhibitory response on electrically-evoked [3H]NE release at low concentrations but produced an excitatory action at concentrations greater than 3 microM. To further confirm the nature of the prejunctional 5-HT heteroreceptors regulating [3H]NE release, effects of 5-HT3, 5-HT6 and 5-HT7 receptor antagonists were examined on a standard response to 5-HT. All antagonists examined caused a concentration-dependent inhibition of the response elicited by the standard 5-HT-induced response with the following rank order of potency (as measured by IC30 values): MDL-72222 >> SB-258719 > RO-04-690. We conclude that the excitatory prejunctional 5-HT heteroreceptors present in bovine iris-ciliary bodies belong to the 5-HT3 receptor subtype.


Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a known risk factor for certain head and neck cancers. Tumors of head and neck region are heterogeneous in nature with different incidences, mortalities and prognosis for different subsites. Unlike oropharynx, where data favors inclusion of HPV status in disease management, role of HPV in oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is not well understood. The prevalence of HPV in OSCC, although considered lower than oropharynx, vary greatly based on the choice of HPV assay and patient geography. Additionally, data on HPV +ve OSCC is scarce and there is less agreement on HPV being a good prognostic factor in OSCC. Here with 153 OSCC patients, using multiple analytes and assays, we show that a high prevalence (33-58%) of HPV16/18 DNA did not correlate with an equally high prevalence of transcriptionally active viral genomes (E6/E7 RNA prevalence 15%) in tumors. Only 6% of the tumors showed the presence of both HPV DNA and HPV16/18 E6/E7 RNA and none with both p16 and HPV RNA. Most tumors with relatively high-copy HPV DNA and/or HPV E6/E7 mRMA, but not with HPV DNA alone (irrespective of copy number), were wild type for TP53 and CASP8 genes. In our study, p16 protein, HPV DNA and E6/E7 RNA, either alone or in combinations, did not correlate with patient survival. Using genome-wide methylation data, 9 HPV-associated genes stratified the HPV +ve from the HPV −ve tumor groups with high confidence (p<0.008) when relatively high-copy number of HPV DNA and/or HPV E6/E7 RNA were considered to define HPV positivity and not HPV DNA alone irrespective of their copy number (p<0.2). Taken together, we conclude that tests measuring HPV DNA alone without viral load and/or viral RNA may not be a true measures of HPV infection in oral cavity tumors and therefore are not informative. Conflict of interests None of the authors declare any conflicts of interest.


The Congenital Myasthenic Syndromes (CMS) are a group of rare genetic disorders affecting neuromuscular transmission and often presents within first year of life. A high index of suspicion is usually required as clinical manifestations can be variable and non specific. RAPSN mutations are likely to be one of the common causes for CMS in patients of Indo-European ethnic origin. Clinical phenotype includes arthrogryposis, respiratory crises, transient torticollis at birth, facial deformities and weakness. Chronic stridor as an early manifestation of CMS has not been described before.


From the early Cold War until the mid-1960s, government and military agencies moved to purchase and install air raid sirens across the country, as part of a program to prepare Canada for nuclear war. The sirens transformed everyday public sites into often unwelcome reminders of the ever-present threat of nuclear war. The siren network was dismantled at the end of the Cold War, yet, in the past five years, "rediscovery" of sirens has generated debate over whether to restore and repurpose the alarms for commemorative display or to discard them as a legacy of the absurdity of nuclear survival plans. This study, using recently released archival sources, presents the material history and cultural impact of the Canadian air raid siren.


This study examines the part that Malta played in British military strategy in the
period between the mid-1920s and the end of the war in North Africa in May 1943.
A well-equipped British naval base had been established at Malta in the
nineteenth century, and its importance increased after the end of the First World War.
This was because it was chosen as the base for the Royal Navy's 'Main Fleet', largely
to allow it to move more rapidly to the Far East in the event of war with Japan. It was
essential that such an important base be adequately protected against sea or air attack,
especially after Anglo-Italian relations deteriorated during the Abyssinian crisis of
1935-6, but the completion of an effective defence scheme was continually deferred.
The reasons for this delay, and its impact on Malta's strategic value, are considered in
the first part of this study, and the conclusion is reached that, given Britain's scarce
resources, Malta was not unduly neglected.
When Italy declared war on 10 June 1940 Malta was immediately bombed, but
no attempt was made to capture the island. This allowed the British authorities to
strengthen Malta's defensive and offensive capabilities in order, primarily, to reduce the
flow of supplies to the Axis forces in North Africa. The second part of this study
examines the factors that, at times, limited Malta's offensive operations and weighs
these failures against the successes achieved at other times. This analysis concludes that
the British derived significant operational advantages from the use of bases at Malta. In
particular, during three critical periods when Allied offensives were in progress naval
and air forces operating from Malta by sinking and damaging enemy shipping
significantly reduced the flow of enemy supplies to North Africa and thereby made a
major contribution to reducing Axis strength.


This paper assesses the evolution of storminess along the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula through the calculation of extreme (1%) Total Water Levels (eTWL) on both observed (tide gauge and buoy data) and hindcasted (SIMAR-44) data. Those events were first identified and then characterized in terms of oceanographic parameters and at- mospheric circulation features. Additionally, an analysis of the long-term trends in both types of data was performed. Most of the events correspond to a rough wave climate and moderate storm surges, linked to extratropical disturbances following a northern track. While local atmospheric condi- tions seem to be evolving towards lesser storminess, their impact has been balanced by the favorable exposure of the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula to the increasing frequency and strength of distant disturbances crossing the North Atlantic. This evolution is also correctly reproduced by the simulated long-term evolution of the forcing compo- nent (meteorological sea level residuals and wave run up) of the Total Water Level values calculated from the SIMAR 44 database, since sea level residuals have been experiencing a reduction while waves are arriving with longer periods. Fi- nally, the addition of the rate of relative sea level trend to the temporal evolution of the atmospheric forcing component of the Total Water Level values is enough to simulate more fre- quent and persistent eTWL.


The genesis of this set of five papers on prefilled (or pre-populated) personal income tax returns was the observation that the Quebec government had initiated in December 2007 a prefilled personal income tax program. A target group of 100,000 tax filers, 80% of whom were age 65 or older were to receive a prefilled form for the 2007 tax year. The stated intent was that, for the 2008 fiscal year, 300,000 individuals filing a paper form should receive a prefilled form; for the 2009 fiscal year, this should be offered electronically to 1,000,000 tax filers; and for the 2010 fiscal year almost all Quebec tax filers would receive a prefilled form. This program of using prefilled tax returns was ambitious both in its intended coverage and in the speed with which it was to be rolled out. It was also only the second subnational program we are aware of. It thus seemed appropriate to carry out a study of that program's implementation in 2008, something that could be done only when the relevant data became available in late 2008. Chapter 4, by Francois Vaillancourt, examines the Quebec program. It also seemed appropriate to compare Quebec's experience with prefilled tax forms to that of other tax jurisdictions implementing such a program. The most obvious candidate for inclusion in this comparison is California's ReadyReturn program since it is the other program at the subnational level. Chapter 3, by Brian Erard, discusses this. One was then left with choosing other countries. After examining a list found in a publication of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Forum on Tax Administration Taxpayer Services Sub-group, 2006) and drawing on our knowledge of tax collection arrangements, we selected three countries — Australia, Belgium and Spain — that like Canada are federal in the nature of their intergovernmental financial and tax arrangements, if not in their constitutions, and for which information on the prefilled program could be found. Thus, we also have Chapter 1, by Chris Evans and Binh Tran-Nam, on Australia, Chapter 2, by Magali Verdonck, on Belgium, and Chapter 5, Jose M. Duran-Cabre, on Spain.


Approximately 6.3 million bone fractures occur annually in the USA, resulting in considerable morbidity, deterioration in quality of life, loss of productivity and wages, and sometimes death (e.g. hip fractures). Although anabolic and antiresorptive agents have been introduced for treatment of osteoporosis, no systemically-administered drug has been developed to accelerate the fracture healing process. To address this need, we have undertaken to target a bone anabolic agent selectively to fracture surfaces in order to concentrate the drug's healing power directly on the fracture site. We report here that conjugation of dasatinib to a bone fracture-homing oligopeptide via a releasable linker reduces fractured femur healing times in mice by ~60% without causing overt off-target toxicity or remodeling of nontraumatized bones. Thus, achievement of healthy bone density, normal bone volume, and healthy bone mechanical properties at the fracture site is realized after only 3-4 weeks in dasatinib-targeted mice, but requires ~8 weeks in PBS-treated controls. Moreover, optimizations have been implemented to the dosing regimen and releasing mechanisms of this targeted-dasatinib therapy, which has enabled us to cut the total doses by half, reduce the risk of premature release in circulation, and still improve upon the therapeutic efficacy. These efforts might reduce the burden associated with frequent doses on patients with broken bones and lower potential toxicity brought by drug degradation in the blood stream. In addition to dasatinib, a few other small molecules have also been targeted to fracture surfaces and identified as prospective therapeutic agents for the acceleration of fracture repair. In conclusion, in this dissertation, we have successfully targeted dasatinib to bone fracture surfaces, which can significantly accelerate the healing process at dasatinib concentrations that are known to be safe in oncological applications. A modular synthetic method has also been developed to allow for easy conversion of a bone-anabolic warhead into a fracture-targeted version for improved fracture repair.


Green microalgae (Chlorophyta) dominate soils in the northern temperate climate zone, however, their biodiversity is still poorly understood. Available diversity inventories rely on light microscopy and morphospecies, which are hardly distinguishable without molecular markers. Whereas particular attention was paid to molecular diversity of terrestrial microalgae in extreme regions, temperate climate zones remain almost unexplored. We aim to uncover the phylogenetic diversity of green microlagae isolated from Central European soils and from periodically desiccating freshwater creek biofilms. Such terrestrial and semi-aquatic habitats are inhabited by green microalgae, which are presumably able of long-distance dispersal. Their cosmopolitan distribution is presumed, however, supporting molecular evidence is almost missing. By assembling newly obtained green algal sequences together with accessions from remote geographic regions, we further aim to address a question of biogeography of terrestrial microalgae.
Soil samples were taken from grassland and forest plots within the German Biodiversity Exploratories. Freshwater biofilms dominated by green microalgae were sampled in two karstwater creeks in Germany. In total, 280 new monoclonal cultures of green microalgae were examined by molecular phylogenetic methods and by light microscopy. By using ribosomal 18S and ITS2 sequences, we recognized about 100 monophyletic species of green microalgae. The newly obtained sequences were blasted against public databases in order to infer taxonomy, distribution and ecology of the detected species. Further monoclonal cultures and environmental clones originated from additional samplings in Germany, Ecuador, the Arctic and Antarctic. Most Chlorophyta isolated from German soils were highly similar (≥ 99.5% threshold) to cultured relatives already known from Europe, predominantly from soils and further terrestrial substrates such as tree barks and rocks. Considering a lower similarity threshold (≥ 99%), about 90% of our cultures matched environmental clones inferred from various terrestrial and aquatic habitats. Similarly, Chlorophyta detected in creek biofilms partly represent terrestrial species, but some are known also from planktonic communities. In soils, we detected novel species mostly within established lineages. Only one soil isolate, provisionally named Navichloris fusiformis, was recognized as a member of a novel monophyletic lineage, comprising accessions from South and North American deserts. In multiple cases, molecular data supported close relatedness between the European soil isolates and species from tropics and polar regions. We show, that well supported monophyletic clades of Stichococcus exhibit either temperate-polar or temperate-tropical distributions. In contrast, some monophyletic clades of Chlorella-like microalgae were so far evidenced only from polar regions and hot deserts. The long-distance dispersal was finally confirmed for particular species of Stichococcus, Chlorella and Klebsormidum. Forest and grassland soils in Central Europe host species of green microalgae otherwise known from a broad spectrum of terrestrial as well as aquatic habitats. New species and even novel lineages can still be uncovered by using standard culturing techniques. Despite the striking similarity between some European and exotic species, unambiguous molecular evidence of the intraspecific long-distance dispersal is still scant. At the present state of knowledge, our data suggest the existence of biogeography of airborne microalgae.


Home to the Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, and Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania offers some of the finest big game watching in the world, from elephants and rhinos to chimpanzees and lions. This field guide covers all the larger mammals of Tanzania, including marine mammals and some newly discovered species. Detailed accounts are provided for more than 135 species, along with color photos, color illustrations of marine mammals, and distribution maps. Accounts for land species give information on identification, subspecies, similar species, ecology, behavior, distribution, conservation status, and where best to see each species. The guide also features plates with side-by-side photographic comparisons of species that are easily confused, as well as first-time-ever species checklists for every national park.The definitive, most up-to-date field guide to the larger mammals of Tanzania, including marine mammalsFeatures detailed species accounts and numerous color photos throughoutProvides tips on where to see each speciesIncludes species checklists for every national park


The central role of macrophytes for the functioning of aquatic systems means that the most effective way to manage these systems is often through vegetation management. For this we need to understand the mechanisms regulating vegetation distribution. Submerged macrophyte distribution is mainly related to water depth, water transparency and epiphytic growth. The distribution of emergent vegetation can largely be predicted from water depth and substrate characteristics. Also, in both submerged and emergent macrophytes, the effects on the vegetation of grazing can be dramatic. Management should aim at providing environmental conditions favouring the desired ecosystem state, rather than methods directly aimed at the vegetation. For example, the best method for promoting establishment of emergent vegetation is often lowering of the water level. To establish submerged vegetation, water transparency can be increased through biomanipulation (the removal of zooplanktivorous fish leading to increased zooplankton grazing pressure on phytoplankton). Changes in water depth and introduction of grazers are often effective measures to control growth of aquatic weeds.


Polystyrene is a promising organic insulator for use in organic electronic devices owing to its excellent electrical and mechanical characteristics. However, much of the work that has been done in characterising polystyrene has been done on films several micrometres thick, and as such is difficult to relate to the properties that need to be considered for electronic devices, where films thicknesses are generally in the nanometre range. In this report, we focus on the electrical characteristics of nanometre thin films, both in terms of current-voltage behavior, and capacitance-voltage characteristics and how the properties of the polystyrene films are altered by differing annealing temperatures.


Personal data is no longer just personal. Social networks and pervasive environmental surveillance via cellphones and the 'internet of things' extract minute-by-minute details of our behavior and cognition. This information accumulates into a valuable asset. It then circulates among data brokers, targeted advertisers, political campaigns, and even foreign states as fuel for predictive interventions. Rich gains flow to firms well positioned to leverage these new information aggregates. The privacy losses, economic exploitation, structural inequalities, and democratic backsliding produced by personal data economies, however, fall upon society at large.

This Article proposes a novel regulatory intervention to mitigate the harms from transforming personal data into an asset. States and municipalities should create "public trusts" as governance vehicles for their residents' locational and personal data. An asset in "public trust" is owed and managed by the state. The state can permit its use, and even allow limited alienation, if doing so benefits a broad public rather than a handful of firms. Unique among the legal interventions proposed for new data economies, a public trust for data allows a democratic polity to durably commit to public-regarding management of its informational resources, coupled to judicially enforceable limits on private exploitation and public allocation decisions. The public trust itself is a common-law doctrine of ancient roots revived in the Progressive Era as an instrument to protect public assets against private exploitation. Both federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have since endorsed a variety of doctrinal formulations. The result today is a rich repertoire of rules and remedies for the management of common property. Personal data, usefully, has many similarities to assets long managed by public trust. And familiar justifications for creation of a public trust logically extend to personal data. Indeed, municipalities in the United States, Europe, and Canada have started to experiment with limited forms of a public trust in data. Generalizing from those experiences, this Article offers a more general 'proof of concept' for how personal data economies can be leashed through the public trust.


The negative impact of economic development on vegetation health in China was assessed using gross domestic product (GDP) and the Global Inventory Modelling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data. Five levels of vegetation changes were established based on the NDVI data and their distribution was established, which shows that almost a quarter of the total area of China suffered a severe to moderate decrease in vegetation cover from 1992 to 2002. The relationship between GDP growth and vegetation degradation was established through regression to show that the reasonable range for China's economic growth is between 5.9% and 11.5%. China's economic activities will have little impact on its vegetation health if GDP growth is lower than 5.9%. It is shown that the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta in China, the two regions with GDP growth of more than 12%, have undergone the most severe degradation in vegetation health.


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Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are multi‐potent cells that can differentiate into osteoblasts, adipocytes, chondrocytes and myocytes. This potential declines with aging. We investigated whether the sirtuin SIRT1 had a function in MSCs by creating MSC specific SIRT1 knock‐out (MSCKO) mice. Aged MSCKO mice (2.2 years old) showed defects in tissues derived from MSCs; i.e. a reduction in subcutaneous fat, cortical bone thickness and trabecular volume. Young mice showed related but less pronounced effects. MSCs isolated from MSCKO mice showed reduced differentiation towards osteoblasts and chondrocytes in vitro, but no difference in proliferation or apoptosis. Expression of β‐catenin targets important for differentiation was reduced in MSCKO cells. Moreover, while β‐catenin itself (T41A mutant resistant to cytosolic turnover) accumulated in the nuclei of wild‐type MSCs, it was unable to do so in MSCKO cells. However, mutating K49R or K345R in β‐catenin to mimic deacetylation restored nuclear localization and differentiation potential in MSCKO cells. We conclude that SIRT1 deacetylates β‐catenin to promote its accumulation in the nucleus leading to transcription of genes for MSC differentiation.


In the first part of this thesis, a general one dimensional theory of strategically determined phenotypes is developed and applied to biological signalling games. Abstract modular modelling techniques are utilised to solve hitherto analytically intractable problems including error-prone signalling, and how to incorporate genetic features into optimization models. Links are drawn between previous biological models, such as the War of Attrition and Strategic Handicap mod- els. Mistakes in previous biological models are recognised and, where possible, rectified. A number of novel insights into biological phenomena arising from the models are presented, including analyses of: when free signals are possible; honest signalling of future paternal investment; dimorphic signals; the effects of the mechanisms of female discrimination in sexual selection on male signalling strategies; and the effects of relatedness on the magnitude and stability of equi- librium signalling strategies. It is argued that Zahavi's proposed demarcation between signal selection and natural selection is unjustifiable from a theoretical perspective. The second part of the thesis concerns the epistatic handicap process of sex- ual selection. Unlike the conditional and revealing handicap mechanisms, the epistatic or 'Zahavian' handicap mechanism of sexual selection has hitherto found scant support in the theoretical literature, as it appeared to function only under the most extreme conditions. A continuous game theory model, a quantitative genetics model, and a three locus major gene model are presented which show that the epistatic handicap mechanism can function, independent of the Fisher process of sexual selection, under reasonable assumptions. More- over, the game theory model illuminates the connection between the strategic and epistatic handicap mechanisms. The quantitative genetics and major gene models, together with a fourth model, are also used to show that a general argu- ment concerning indirect genetic correlations, which has appeared in a number of papers on sexual selection, is specious. Finally, a general theorem on games that satisfy the single-crossing condition (also known as the sorting, Spence-Mirrless, or constant sign condition) which underlies many of the results presented in the first part of the thesis is proven in appendix C. Applying a limit result to this general theorem provides a new proof of, and extensions to, Nash's existence result for equilibria to strategic- form games without having to resort to Kakutani's fixed point theorem.


Importance
The US is currently an epicenter of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, yet few national data are available on patient characteristics, treatment, and outcomes of critical illness from COVID-19.

Objectives
To assess factors associated with death and to examine interhospital variation in treatment and outcomes for patients with COVID-19.

Design, Setting, and Participants
This multicenter cohort study assessed 2215 adults with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 who were admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) at 65 hospitals across the US from March 4 to April 4, 2020.

Exposures
Patient-level data, including demographics, comorbidities, and organ dysfunction, and hospital characteristics, including number of ICU beds.

Main Outcomes and Measures
The primary outcome was 28-day in-hospital mortality. Multilevel logistic regression was used to evaluate factors associated with death and to examine interhospital variation in treatment and outcomes.

Results
A total of 2215 patients (mean [SD] age, 60.5 [14.5] years; 1436 [64.8%] male; 1738 [78.5%] with at least 1 chronic comorbidity) were included in the study. At 28 days after ICU admission, 784 patients (35.4%) had died, 824 (37.2%) were discharged, and 607 (27.4%) remained hospitalized. At the end of study follow-up (median, 16 days; interquartile range, 8-28 days), 875 patients (39.5%) had died, 1203 (54.3%) were discharged, and 137 (6.2%) remained hospitalized. Factors independently associated with death included older age (≥80 vs <40 years of age: odds ratio [OR], 11.15; 95% CI, 6.19-20.06), male sex (OR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.19-1.90), higher body mass index (≥40 vs <25: OR, 1.51; 95% CI, 1.01-2.25), coronary artery disease (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.07-2.02), active cancer (OR, 2.15; 95% CI, 1.35-3.43), and the presence of hypoxemia (Pao2:Fio2<100 vs ≥300 mm Hg: OR, 2.94; 95% CI, 2.11-4.08), liver dysfunction (liver Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score of 2 vs 0: OR, 2.61; 95% CI, 1.30-5.25), and kidney dysfunction (renal Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score of 4 vs 0: OR, 2.43; 95% CI, 1.46-4.05) at ICU admission. Patients admitted to hospitals with fewer ICU beds had a higher risk of death (<50 vs ≥100 ICU beds: OR, 3.28; 95% CI, 2.16-4.99). Hospitals varied considerably in the risk-adjusted proportion of patients who died (range, 6.6%-80.8%) and in the percentage of patients who received hydroxychloroquine, tocilizumab, and other treatments and supportive therapies.

Conclusions and Relevance
This study identified demographic, clinical, and hospital-level risk factors that may be associated with death in critically ill patients with COVID-19 and can facilitate the identification of medications and supportive therapies to improve outcomes.


This work quantifies the differences between the two sources of spatial information of precipitation on FRAME modelled wet deposition of oxidised sulphur (SOx), nitrogen (NOy) and reduced nitrogen (NHx) for two years in an area of Poland. The model was run twice, first with precipitation dataset calculated with the WRF model (pWRF). The second run was based on interpolation of measured precipitation with kriging (pOK). SOx, NOy and NHx wet deposition calculated with pWRF precipitation gives lower country mean values if compared with pOK. The maximum values are higher for pWRF precipitation. Grid to grid correlation between pOK and pWRF modelled wet deposition is similar for both years, with the lowest values for NHx and the highest for SOx. The model-measurement agreement is better for the pOK FRAME run. The results show large uncertainties related with wet deposition modelling due to uncertainties in rainfall data.


Soybean oil and palm olein were used to fry French fries, chicken leg fillets and pork chops. Total polar compounds were measured by column chromatography and two rapid-measuring devices (Ebro FOM 310 and Testo 270). Acid value was determined by titration method and a 3M Shortening Monitor. The results showed that the content of total polar compounds and acid value in both soybean oil and palm olein increased linearly with frying time. The influence of oil type on the content of total polar compounds and acid value in used oil was significant, but the effect of food type on these parameters was not observed. The rate of total polar compounds generation in palm olein was lower than that in soybean oil. All rapid methods used in this study had results that highly correlated with those from column chromatography, but moderately correlated with the titration method. We found that Ebro FOM 310 was more suitable for monitoring the quality of soybean oil during frying, while Testo 270 was suitable for palm olein. These results provided the basis for choosing the proper rapid-measuring device to control the quality of frying oil in restaurants.


Every 30 seconds, a lower limb is amputated as a result of diabetes; of all the amputations in the world, about 70% are suffered by people with diabetes – foot ulceration being a key factor in developing regions. Yet these amputations can be prevented. As well as medical factors, numerous social and socio-environmental issues affect the development of diabetic foot problems. This report focuses on Africa-specific factors. Although in Africa neuropathy is a major contributing factor, it is not the only one: even a simple injury that becomes infected can be a precursor to amputation. The authors reflect on some of the factors affecting diabetes care in Senegal, and make some suggestions for improvements in the prevention and management of the diabetic foot.


Carbon steel cantilever beams are widely used in many applications
in aerospace, civil and mechanical engineering. Pitting corrosion is a
phenomenon which places severe limitations on the design of such applications.
As such, understanding this phenomenon and the methods to deal with it, are of
a great importance. This paper presents numerical investigation by using F. E.
(Finite Element) simulation on the load carrying capacity of corroded
cantilever beams with pitting corrosion damage. The pitting corrosion hole
shape has been modeled using ASTM G46 Standard Guide. Several different cases
of pitting corrosion, represented by hemispherical holes, were modeled and
examined by using ANSYS computer program. Clamped edge constraint was used on
one end, while the other end was free. In these F. E. models, element
of Solid95 was used and comparison to Bernoulli-Euler theory was made. The
effect of the radius of the pitting corrosion holes on the stresses in the beam
was examined in comparison to yield stress. It has been found that the M. S.
(Margin of Safety) has been reduced gradually with increasing radii. Agreement
with Bernoulli-Euler theory has been achieved only for small radii. Moreover,
three methods of pitting corrosion repairs were examined, together with Bernoulli-Euler
theory comparison: 1) Regular surface repair; 2) Extension
surface repair; and 3) "Handy Removal". It was found that extension surface repair
has the highest M. S. value.


The 2004 Sumatra (Mw 9.1) earthquake was preceded by a seismic quiescence that began 13 years before the mainshock. An earthquake catalog created by the International Seismological Centre is analyzed in the study area, 80°–110° E, 10° S–20° N, between 1964 and 2004, including 1153 earthquakes shallower than 100 kmwith body-wave magnitude of 5:0 ≤ mb ≤ 6:7. A detailed analysis of the earthquake catalog using a gridding technique (ZMAP) shows the quiescent area is located between 3° and 6° N, which covers the southeastern part of the focal area, including the rupture initiation point of the 2004 Sumatra earthquake. The observed spatial pattern of quiescence can be explained by stress perturbation due to a long-term slow slip located on the deeper edge of themainshock fault, which is predicted by a numerical simulation based on a laboratory-derived friction law. Although the quiescence is not significant statistically, it may still be considered unlikely that such an anomalous quiescence would occur at almost the same time and location as other long-term anomalies reported in the previous studies, including decreases in b-value and tidal triggering.


The paper shows the results of an integration of the remote laboratory WebLab-Deusto-PLD at the "Programmable Logic" course of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Deusto (Spain). Presented herein is a technical overview of the laboratory, a description of access to it, and an analysis of the user experience derived from conducted surveys since 2004. The surveys' analysis shows a correlation between two advantages of the remote experimentation: efficiency/usefulness and immersion/control. The prospective work includes an improving the WebLab-Deusto usability, an extension of the capabilities of the overall system and further its implementation in curricula.


Ray tracing followed by calculation of travel times and other quantities at specified points by means of interpolation within ray tubes is a method which was developed in the SW3D consortium several years ago. The emphasis was put on calculation of all existing ray–theory arrivals, and not the first arrivals only. The method was successfully applied by the SW3D researchers in many applications. The method was also described in several papers published in previous reports of the consortium and also in reviewed journals. As the method appears recently to be of higher interest of at least some consortium members, we present here this paper, which aims to present a short description of the method, to briefly mention its numerical realization and the computer codes developed for the method, to give an overview of the recent applicability of the computer codes, to shortly mention the plans for future extension of the method, and to present the list of examples of the application of the method.


NF-κB/Rel proteins are ubiquitous transcription factors that are activated by proinflammatory signals or engagement of Ag receptors. To study the role of NF-κB/Rel signaling in T lymphocytes during autoimmune disease, we investigated type II collagen-induced arthritis (CIA) in transgenic mice expressing a constitutive inhibitor of NF-κB/Rel (IκBα(ΔN)) in the T lineage. Expression of the IκBα(ΔN) transgene was persistently high in adult peripheral lymphoid organs and undetectable in T cell-depleted splenocytes, suggesting the expression of the transgene is restricted to the T lineage. The incidence and severity of CIA were decreased significantly in these IκBα(ΔN) transgenic mice compared with nontransgenic littermates. Inhibition of CIA was not due solely to a decrease in their CD8+ population because transfer of wild-type CD8+ cells into transgenic mice failed to restore disease susceptibility. Protection against disease was associated with a moderate decrease in clonal expansion and a profound and persistent decrease in Ag-induced IFN-γ production in vivo. Consistent with decreased level of anti-type II collagen-specific Abs and IFN-γ, serum levels of IgG2a anti-CII Abs were significantly reduced. However, anti-CII-specific IgG1 levels were normal, indicating that some aspects of T cell help were unaffected. Taken together, these results suggest that inhibition of NF-κB in T cells impairs CIA development in vivo through decreases in type 1 T cell-dependent responses.